AchieveGlobal's blog

The Cure for the Common (Workplace) Bully: Build Trust with the Basic Principles!

By Sharon Daniels

The idea of bullying in the workplace may not be a new one, but a recent CareerBuilder survey provides some startling statistics, making it clear that this is all but a rare phenomenon… and becoming more common each year.

Conducted online by Harris Interactive between May and June of 2012, the CareerBuilder study included 3,800 workers across the U.S. and found that 35 percent of workers have felt bullied at work – and that’s up from 27 percent the previous year.

In a Washington State Department of Labor and Industries article, Workplace Bullying is defined as: “repeated, unreasonable actions of individuals (or a group) directed towards an employee (or a group of employees), which are intended to intimidate, degrade, humiliate or undermine; or which create a risk to the health or safety of the employee(s).”

The article goes on to point to these examples of workplace bullying, including:

• Unwanted or invalid criticism
• Blame without factual justification
• Being treated differently than the rest of the your work group
• Being sworn at
• Exclusion or social isolation
• Being shouted at or being humiliated
• Excessive monitoring or micro-managing
• Being given work with unrealistic deadlines

For leaders, there are behaviors that can and should be avoided, and approaches that should be adopted. At AchieveGlobal, we see these Six Basic Principles as key to building an environment of trust, and a establishing a workplace where bullying is far less likely to take place:

1. Focus on the situation, issue or behavior, not on the person.
2. Maintain the self-confidence and self-esteem of others.
3. Maintain constructive relationships, encouraging a diversity of opinions and perspectives.
4. Take initiative to make things better, by owning up to your past mistakes and focusing on the positive.
5. Lead by example, setting high standards for your self, and for others.
6. Think beyond the moment – making thoughtful plans and behaving ethically.

The cost of unchecked bullying can be high, leading to employee absenteeism and turnover, potential legal action, and decreased productivity. So, maintaining a workplace where bullying becomes unacceptable benefits workers and the organization in far more profound ways than simply keeping everyone happy.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Ready for New Year Resolutions? Trends for Staying on Top in 2013

By Sharon Daniels 

As we get ready to flip our digital calendar pages to the year 2013, it’s worth reflecting on the directions in which our companies are likely to evolve over the coming months.

In a recent TechSling article, titled “Top Business Trends for 2013,” writer Edwin Chan outlines four trends that businesses should consider as they seek improved business processes, improved employee recruitment and retention in the coming new year.

You might contemplate these trends as possible resolutions for the New Year:

1. Embracing mobile technology. There’s a growing need for businesses to recognize that smartphones and tablet devices can be used for exploring new opportunities and interacting with prospective employees. To stay on top, businesses should consider investing in recruiting processes that make use of mobile technology.
   
   
2. Removing the stigma of “remote.” For many leaders, telework is still a difficult pill to swallow. Today, major companies allow their employees to telecommute at least three days per week. Employees increasingly expect that their employers will be flexible when it comes to work hours, and approaches to getting the work done. 
   
   
3. Using a multifactored approach to employee retention. The TechSling article cites an AchieveGlobal study in which we discovered six key factors to ensure employee satisfaction and retention, including:
   
   • Targeted recruiting to hire workers likely to stay
   • Ensuring employees have the right tools to succeed at their job
   • Staying familiar with learning and development goals for employee
   • Giving employees recognition and opportunities to contribute to corporate achievements
   • Making connections between employees and others in the organization who can help them achieve their career goals
   • Encouraging collaboration by hiring competent workers who work well with others on the team.
     
     
4. Targeting global markets, by using the talents of local employees via outsourced staff.

It’s an increasingly competitive world of business, and to stay on top, takes a commitment to monitoring and adjusting strategic plans based on the latest trends.

If I had to sum it up, in 2013, it’s likely a formula for success might be found in three words: technology, telecommuting, and talent.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Does Your Leader Have a Command of the People Zone?

By Sharon Daniels

No matter their expertise, the results they achieve or their experience – if an executive does not have the ability to inspire a spirit of collaboration and respect amongst the team and enterprise, he/she won’t hold a mantle of leadership for long.

Every day I work to help business leaders understand the value and importance of developing a holistic mastery of the six zones, or qualities, of 21^st century leadership (shown in the diagram on the right).  

This truth was wonderfully illustrated in a great New York Times article that I recently read about the dismissal of a long-time Apple executive.

While recognized for his talents and technology vision that echoed that of Steve Jobs, Scott Forstall, the executive in charge of the company’s mobile software efforts and retail stores, was let go due to his divisive personality and inability to work with others.

The complaints of Forstall were numerous. He refused to offer apologies in the face of mistakes, he couldn’t be in the same room with colleagues and his ego inhibited any meaningful team work. Simply put, while he may have been strong in the business zone, he didn’t have a command of the people zone.

A command of the people zone of leadership is essentially an executive’s license to lead. It equips leaders with the skills to connect with others, encourage collaboration and guide action toward shared goals. No one can go it alone and leaders must realize that their success is based on their ability to motivate and mobilize the people they work with in a meaningful and sustained way.

When leaders ignore the people zone, the workplace can quickly become antagonistic, contentious and counter-productive.

While Forstall could boast his technology vision and experience, he couldn’t deliver on culture, team work or empathy, making it necessary for the company to make a change in leadership that would benefit the entire team.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

It’s the Most Wonderful Time… To Be Trained!

By Sharon Daniels

The lessons about the importance of preparation are all around us as we mark the lead up to one of the busiest times of year – the holiday season.

For businesses looking toward the holiday season, it’s important to remember that the better we prepare and the more we put things in the right place early on, the more likely we are to make the most of the increased business this time of year can offer.

Has your workforce been trained for this busy time? For the stresses and uncertainties that can arise from an increased workflow?

A consistently trained workforce is an important foundation on which holiday readiness relies upon. Plus, what your company is doing now by way of training will not only impact the holiday season this year, but will also build toward business strength in the year and years to come.

I’ve written before about the defining moments of the customer relationship, and we can similarly value each moment leading up to a major season of busyness. Some of the best articles I’ve read about preparing for Thanksgiving Day, for example, provide guidelines for a countdown timetable: purchase the Turkey and other ingredients one week in advance, defrost and season the turkey 24-36 hours in advance… and so on.

Having a similar timetabled plan for preparing and motivating your workforce to successfully close out the year is key. Perhaps the two most important factors to consider when planning for the holidays are:

1. Ensure leaders and front-line employees are skilled and ready to deliver positive defining moments during every customer encounter
2. Anticipate human mistakes and process gaps – and put contingencies in place

The real success at this time of year depends on what you do throughout the year to prepare for it. One sure-fire way to stay prepared and add value to customers is to have a consistent training program in place – not to just reap benefits in the upcoming season, but throughout the entire life of the business.  

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

It’s Beginning To Look a Lot Like… Hiring Season!

By Sharon Daniels

If you’ve walked through some of the major department stores, you’ve likely noticed Thanksgiving centerpieces, singing Santas, holiday wreaths, Hanukkah menorahs and Kwanzaa Kinaras are already filling the aisles. That means the happiest time of the year is just around the corner. It also means that it’s hiring season.

For many companies, this hiring season is an opportunity to fill some positions that will only last the duration of the holidays, and other positions that also have the potential to become long-term or permanent.

In a recent Chicago Tribune article, KC Blonski – AchieveGlobal’s director of leisure and retail markets noted that seasonal hiring levels are likely to be approximately the same as last year. The difference this year though is that companies aren’t just hiring with the holiday season in mind. Instead, companies are recruiting workers who fit well within company culture, who are keenly representative of the brand, and who are prepared to focus on each defining moment of the customer service experience.

In other words, holiday workers have greater potential to become long-term employees, which changes the holiday hiring dynamic for both employers and potential employees.

For workers, going in for a holiday job should take on greater significance than simply filling in an application form – with little commitment. Instead, workers seeking holiday employment should take time to research the company and build an understanding of how the company does business, and what makes it stand out from its competitors.

For employers, the holiday hiring season presents invaluable opportunities to scout the hiring pool for potential long-term workers, which can mean taking a longer, more detailed look at holiday season applicants.

This year, for many companies seasonal employees are more likely to stick around long after the holiday decorations are taken down, and even beyond the after-Christmas sales. That seems like good tidings all around.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Where There is Service… There are Mistakes.

By Sharon Daniels

Recently, I blogged about the gripes people have when it comes to poor service: bad attitude, lack of product knowledge, long wait times… and the list goes on. A good solution to making sure outstanding service is performed consistently is training employees to deliver on customer value.

Yet, it’s still smart to accept and plan for the fact that humans, machines, or processes are not 100% effective all the time. Mistakes will happen with customers. Good service leaders understand the importance of having employees skilled and able to effectively recover from a mistake, leaving the customer feeling satisfied and valued.  

In cases of a service breakdown, service providers can leave a positive impression by:

• Making an appropriate gesture of goodwill and making up for the mistake and the inconvenience it caused the customer.
• Keeping promises. When a service breakdown occurs, from the customer’s point of view, a
  promise has already been broken. At this point, it is critical to do whatever else is promised to improve the situation.
• Focus on the human side. While addressing the business side of the mistake is important, showing compassion towards the customer about the impacts of the mistake demonstrates a genuine effort to make things right. 
• Following up with the customer after all is said and done. This helps assure the customer the apology and actions are sincere and that the service provider is concerned about customer satisfaction. Follow-up also demonstrates commitment to the customer relationship.

Conventional wisdom says first impressions are the ones that count, yet behavioral science research tells us the real truth: final impressions are more important.

Last week, AchieveGlobal’s Director of Retail and Hospitality Markets, K.C. Blonski, was featured in a Fast Company 30 Second MBA video on how to handle mistakes.  Play the video below to hear his advice:

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Achieve Survey Insight: All Aboard for Destination Change!

By Sharon Daniels

In today’s business environment “change” isn’t simply the scenery that goes by as the company evolves. Change is the journey. We might even say that it’s also the destination. To thrive, or even survive, businesses must be able to perform, while being in a constant state of flux, as they restructure, downsize and redefine their market strategies.

But even after a few years of intense uncertainty and change, companies still seem to struggle with two things:

1. Accepting that change is a given, and,
2. Understanding the importance of managing that change

Each month, AchieveGlobal hosts an online poll through our eNewsletter, Achieve. In August, our survey  asked, “When thinking of a recent change that happened within your organization, do you believe the change management was handled effectively?”

How organizations view their recent change management initiatives:
  
  

Alarmingly, 69% of respondents responded, “No, the change was handled poorly.” This means that many companies have significant work to do in how they handle change. 

Our recent article Change is a Given: Now What? outlines mistakes that companies make when facing organizational change:

1. Executives don’t keep employees in the loop about the change
2. Senior management doesn’t listen to the concerns and ideas of workers
3. Middle managers feel excluded and resist cooperating with change
4. Leaders suffer information-overload and are distracted from opportunities to focus on the
   human aspects of change

Yet 31% of our survey participants said that the change went well. So what did their companies likely do to ensure that change was handled successfully? It’s quite likely that these companies engaged in some combination of these 10 leadership practices that build change capability:

1. Share with employees both the good and the bad realities.
2. Spotlight workers who are managing, guiding and facilitating change effectively.
3. Embrace experimentation so that workers can learn from their mistakes.
4. Encourage individual contributions to change by building meaningful involvement.
5. Keep everyone informed of change on all levels.
6. Maintain open channels of communication to encourage valuable feedback.
7. Put measurement strategies in place to gauge what’s working and what’s not.
8. Use resources wisely.
9. Adjust processes that are slowing progress.
10. Address and respond to resistance to the change with firmness and compassion.

As you can see from the list of these 10 best practices, real change takes more than formalizing a process or series of projects. It takes a change-capable culture. 

To subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Achieve and participate in our regular polls, visit http://www.achieveglobal.com/research-and-resources/enewsletters.aspx

An Achieve Survey Insight: “Please Listen Carefully as Our Menu Options Have Changed…”

By Sharon Daniels

When you think of the phrase “good customer service,” what comes to mind? It might be a friendly service representative behind a desk, or a helpful voice over the phone. It probably is NOT the sound of an automated help desk, or online help site that automatically directs you to the company’s FAQ page instead of providing you with a direct line to a service representative.

Each month, AchieveGlobal runs an online poll through our eNewsletter, Achieve. In June, our survey asked, “Which of these poor service experiences frustrates you the most?” 

The response was resounding. People are most frustrated when no service person is available or all service options are automated, or electronic.

As it turns out, and perhaps not so surprisingly, people expect that service will be delivered by people, not by machines! Over half of the participants in our poll indicated that not having an actual person to interact with was a top concern when dealing with a company.

But our survey also revealed other pet peeves when it comes to poor service, including:

-      Service representatives who don’t do what they promise

-      Service persons who propose solutions that are unhelpful

-      Service people who are rude

-      Service people who don’t have the required knowledge

For these common shortcomings, customer service training is the certain remedy, so it’s worth our while to remember a few basics of training, including:

• It must be tailored to the needs of each service team member
• Organizations must ensure that it is an on-going process
• It should be embedded into the corporate culture

The good news is that all of these poor service experiences can be fixed. Organizations need to realize that technology isn’t a replacement for the human touch – so build processes that allow a customer to reach a person. And training can go a long way to making that eventual interaction a positive one for your customers.

To subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Achieve and participate in our regular polls, visit http://www.achieveglobal.com/research-and-resources/enewsletters.aspx

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

“Please Don’t Go…” How and Why Companies Should Retain Employees

By Sharon Daniels

In a recent post, I wrote about the simultaneous occurrence of two conflicting trends: high unemployment and high talent shortage. With this reality in mind, it may not seem so strange that while the job market is extremely competitive, organizations still struggle to recruit workers.

In fact, in a recent study by AchieveGlobal, titled Worldwide Trends in Employee Retention, our research revealed that nearly 25% of participants said they were planning to leave their job in the next year. This may seem surprising, given the fickle job market. Logic seems to dictate that if you have a job in these times, you’re wise to hold on to it! 

But the reality is far more nuanced. Our study revealed that today, as we struggle to climb out of the deep recession of the past few years, people continue to leave their companies for some of the same reasons they always have.

The top three reasons workers leave their employers are:

1.    Insufficient compensation and benefits

2.    Lack of growth and development opportunities

3.    Contributions not being appreciated by management

And there are so many reasons that companies should generally strive to retain employees, not the least of which is that recruitment, though often necessary, is a cost that can be avoided by retaining the right people. When employees leave, companies also suffer other negative residual effects, including:

• Declining employee morale
• Weakening of community relations
• Decreasing production quality
• Weakening of employee relationships
• Diminishing financial performance of the
  organization

But trying to retain good employees does not have to be a shot in the dark. Our research pointed to four fundamental strategies that employers can use in order to retain employees:

1.    Offering competitive compensation

2.    Ensuring employee recognition

3.    Providing growth and development opportunities

4.    Ensuring a healthy work-life balance.

It is precisely those high-performing employees who will be attractive to other organizations. So, once we realize that they can find an employer in almost any economic environment, we must build a culture that embraces them and provides for their professional needs. And, these strategies will help in recruiting as well, so the benefits will continue to accrue through good times and bad.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Building Leadership Talent …Through Timing and Training

By Sharon Daniels

The life of a leader in today’s organization is anything but simple.

So much has changed in the workplace that affects employees, and that of course impacts how leaders lead – or how they should lead. Leaders of a few decades ago were more likely to bear responsibility for work teams in a single geography, whose modes of communication were mostly paper-based or phone-based. Looking back, it seems those times must have been much simpler for us – but of course, each era has its challenges.

Today’s leaders are more likely to lead teams with members dispersed across different states or provinces in a single country, or across a multitude of culturally and linguistically diverse geographies. Leaders are also required to help workers navigate the realities of new communication channels – i.e., social media and the strengths and liabilities of those networking capabilities.

In a recent article for Chief Learning Officer titled, “The Changing Face of Leadership,” writer Mark Bashrum asked me how organizations should cultivate front-line leaders who can meet the organization’s expectations.

The key to my response was quite simple: the answer lies in timing and training. Despite the challenges of the virtual and social worlds that define today’s workspaces, leaders can rise to these challenges by focusing on the fundamentals of timing and training.

Timing means that leaders need to help sales and service associates uncover and meet customers’ needs at every step of the buying process. The thinking behind this focus is that every customer builds a sense of his/her relationship with an organization with every interaction. We refer to those opportunities as defining moments, and effective leaders help employees think of every moment as important in shaping a positive customer relationship.

And then there’s training. Front-line leaders should be developed through coaching and customer service training programs that elevate skills from transaction-based client interactions to experience-focused delivery.

In a recent post, I shared how one of our clients worked with AchieveGlobal to change a transaction-focused sales culture in order to build a more service-focused organization. This included developing a leadership training strategy that worked specifically for their organizational needs, and recognizing that training is an on-going process.

So while leaders can learn how to manage virtual teams effectively, and discover ways they can help employees build an understanding of how to navigate the complex world of social media, the fundamental task of leadership lies in understanding the significance of every moment, for every team member, and maintaining a desire to improve the customer experience through a combination of exquisite timing and targeted training. 

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

More Than a Feeling: Dispelling Myths about Emotion and Service

By Sharon Daniels

As much as we’d like to think of ourselves as creatures of logic, much of the time emotion rules our actions. We take great pride in being informed consumers so that we can make the right choice. “This car has better fuel mileage, that car has stronger safety features… “but” then we decide “I just like this one more, because my parents had the same make and model.”

From the clothes we wear to the food and beverages in our refrigerators, only part of our decisions as consumers are governed by the logical side of our brain. The other part of those decisions is sheer emotion.

In a whitepaper titled, Leveraging the Power of Emotion to Improve Service, AchieveGlobal explored some of the things companies tend to assume when it comes to the emotional side of service choices.

Here are three of six myths about how emotions relate to service, and how to better understand these connections:

Myth #1: The first impression is all that matters

It’s worth noting that first impressions are important, but all the goodwill built by a strong initial gesture can be eradicated if the service interaction breaks down and ends on a sour note. Insight: Companies are wise to recognize all the defining moments that characterize the service interaction. Ending on a strong note is key.

Myth #2: If you don’t address the negative, it will go unnoticed

Many companies are aware that there are necessary but unpleasant components of their customers’ service experience: a long wait or premium prices for example. Not addressing these issues won’t make customer experiences better. To the contrary, customers are more likely to dwell on the drawbacks and feel negatively toward the company if it doesn’t address the unpleasantness, rationalize it, and minimize it. Insight: Companies should recognize unpleasantness that’s part of the service experience, help customers understand the necessity for these moments, and be sure to work past them efficiently.

Myth #3: “I can show you facts that will make you trust me.”

Building credibility is far less about logic and reason, and more about making sure customers directly experience service characterized by defining moments that organically build trust. Insight: Companies should focus on building service relationships that lead to customer trust on all levels.

It’s smart to remember that customers haven’t simply chosen your company because your products and services fulfill their needs. They’ve also come to you for an experience which will be defined through moment-by-moment interactions with your company.

You must then deliver service that’s positive and sincerely customer-focused in order to earn the customer’s trust and loyalty.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

The New Normal. High Talent Shortage AND High Unemployment… At the Same Time?

By Sharon Daniels

Picture a simple pulley system. When one side goes up, the other goes down. The relationship between unemployment numbers, and the difficulty employers have filling jobs should, it seems, also follow this sort of logic.

But recent trends reveal that this is just not necessarily true. In fact, a recent study from Manpower Group reveals that, despite unemployment trends indicating higher numbers of workers available for work, employers continue to report difficulty finding the talent their organizations need. Over a third of businesses surveyed by Manpower Group cited the inability to meet talent needs as a barrier to their business goals.

This seems as counterintuitive as a simple pulley whose load moves in the same direction as the force applied to the pulley. A force pulls down, the load on the pulley moves up. Similarly, more people available for work, means companies have their pick of workers to choose from, right?

Not necessarily.

One factor likely at play here is that the economy is improving, though it may be more gradual than we’d all like. As economic trends generally improve, some employers have begun to hire new talent, or re-hire workers that were laid off when the recession was at its worst. This, of course, would affect the pool of remaining talent from which companies can choose.

But here are some added insights from the Manpower Study:

• A lack of available candidates with the right technical expertise and employable skills
  continues to frustrate employers;
• People who have in-demand skills are becoming more and more selective as they evaluate
  their employment options;
• The top five jobs that employers are having trouble filling are: Engineers, Technicians, Sales Representatives, Skilled Trade Workers and Production Operators.

There are two ways that these tensions will likely continue to affect the job market:

• Organizations will need to develop more effective recruitment and retention efforts
• Companies will have to re-evaluate their talent development strategies

Given this disconnect between a growing talent pool and a shortage of qualified candidates, companies are wise to build strategic links between their business goals, their hiring, talent management, and coaching.  

And this is logic doesn’t defy physics: companies with more developed recruiting efforts, along with worker retention and training programs, are less likely to be susceptible to the challenges of talent shortages that seem an integral part of the new normal.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

The Power of Coaching

By Sharon Daniels, CEO & President of AchieveGlobal

This has been a remarkable season of truly great sporting accomplishments. Michael Phelps’ rise to being the most-medalled Olympic athlete of all times, Gabby Douglas’ gold in all-around gymnastics, and South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius history-making appearance as the first double amputee Olympic sprinter. And then there are the athletes who seem to keep defying the odds, coming back to win medals after critics have all but pronounced them has-beens: Jamaica’s Usain Bolt regains ground he lost in qualifying races, and of course, Japan’s Hiroshi Hoketsu becoming the oldest Olympian in 92 years, at the remarkable age of 71… and the list goes on.

As we hear the stories of how these athletes overcome barriers to their Olympic goals, we also learn of the integral role played by each athlete’s coach:  

• the coach who reminded the gymnast not to focus on the scoreboard, but instead on her routine;
• the coach who led one athlete from mediocre performance in one sport to record-breaking performance in another;
• the swimmer and his coach with the 16-year partnership in breaking world and Olympic records.

Coaches – in athletics and in business – are vital for guiding, challenging, and helping their charges to grow. And this need for coaching becomes very evident when an organization seeks to  fundamentally change its culture and direction.

When Ohio-based State Auto Group set out to change its underwriting-centered culture to a more assertive sales culture, coaching became a major focus for the company. For AchieveGlobal, working with a client like State Auto was tremendously rewarding, as they confronted the challenges associated with change, and found new strength through the process of coaching.

In a recent webinar, AchieveGlobal VP of Sales Chris Cowan discussed this process of change with State Auto VP of Sales, John Petrucci. In that interview, Petrucci highlighted how State Auto focused on coaching to implement meaningful organizational change. This included:

• Identifying four key areas of focus that would need development, in order to change the sales culture (sales skills, sales coaching, negotiation skills and financial management);
• Recognizing that not all effective sales people are effective sales leaders;
• Providing training for sales team members to help them learn how to become effective coaches and sales leaders;
• Providing opportunities for all Regional Managers to participate in AchieveGlobal’s Professional Sales Coaching™ program;
• Using a three-tiered structure to implement training, including the establishment of Coaches’ Coaches, who would provide more efficient lines of communication with sales team members, and help reinforce training;
• Ensuring that training is an on-going process.

Perhaps the greatest realization about coaching is that it should be a consistent and on-going process. For State Auto, it is now embedded in the company’s culture and has become a key component of communication, providing links to the frontline salespeople in the field so that the company better understands where training and support are needed.

Michael Phelps’ mother sums up the root of all successful coaching when she pondered the relationship between Michael and his coach Bob Bowman: “Bob knows Michael like the back of his hand. Michael knows Bob’s going to get him where he needs to be…”

Coaching is, when best executed, an ongoing dialog which helps a company understand what strengths can be leveraged, what liabilities need to be addressed, and what methods can help the company build toward new goals.

Whether working with a world-class sprinter or a salesperson in a retail store, a diver on the verge of greatness or an accounts payable manager, the foundation of good coaching is trust, understanding, and a common desire to be better than you presently are.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

An "Achieve" Survey Insight: Percentage of Workforce Working Virtually

By Sharon Daniels

Several factors seem to provide employers and employees with good reason to explore the benefits of working virtually, whether at home or from a separate location, including:

• Increased access to technology that facilitates virtual work
• Public incentives as part of programs that seek to lessen traffic congestion or focus on clean air initiatives

But the results from our recent poll painted a much different picture.

Each month, AchieveGlobal runs an online poll through our eNewsletter, Achieve. In July, our survey asked, “What percentage of your workforce works virtually (from home office or other
separate location)?”

Surprisingly, very few workers work virtually. Most of the participants in this study indicated that less than 25% of their workforce works from home.

This, despite the fact that research indicates that workers are more likely to choose and stay with a company that offers telework opportunities, and that virtual work can provide opportunities for increasing cost effectiveness.

Perhaps a contributing factor to this trend is the perception that managing or leading a virtual workforce can present added technical challenges. But as I mentioned in a recent post, being an effective virtual leader isn’t so much about managing technology, but rather about applying the six zones of leadership to the specifics of virtual leadership:

1. being reflective about one’s own virtual capabilities
2. understanding how the company affects, and is affected by, its environment
3. recognizing differences among people in the virtual workforce
4. emphasizing creative thinking in teleworking teams
5. focusing on connections across time and space
6. staying committed to business productivity

By focusing more on these six leadership principles, perhaps more companies will be willing to launch more wholeheartedly into the world of virtual work, in order to take advantage of the social, human, and financial benefits.

To subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Achieve and participate in our regular polls, visit http://www.achieveglobal.com/research-and-resources/enewsletters.aspx

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Coaching to Win: Why a Sales Leadership Strategy Makes All the Difference

By Sharon Daniels

It’s simple…at least on the face of it.

If your sales organization wants to increase profits you need a high-performing sales team. And if you want a high-performing sales team, you’d better embrace coaching as a winning strategy. The truth is that a sales leader’s approach to coaching can make the difference between mediocre performance and highly effective sales teams.

AchieveGlobal and CSO Insights recently hosted a webinar titled, “Sales Leadership: Coaching for Top Performance” and during our discussion, host and Managing Partner of CSO Insights, Jim Dickie, provided listeners with some important data that point to one key fact: coaching is absolutely integral to improving sales. Here are some salient takeaways that Jim mentioned in his introduction:

Deals vs. Leads
When sales leaders are trying to build the effectiveness of the sales team, they often drive them to generate more leads. The company invests time and resources to increase lead-gen, but to what end? Once the leads are generated, is the company truly equipped to transform the leads into closed deals? Instead, Dickie notes that companies should strike the right balance between resources spent on leads and resources spent on closing deals.

Quality vs. Activity
When companies focus on getting more leads in the pipeline, this can often have the effect of a downward turn in productivity. CSO Insights research points to the fact that when lead-generation activity alone is increased, deals often result in “no decision.” On the other hand, when companies maintain the same lead-gen activity and focus on increasing quality of sales interactions, there’s a marked decrease in “no decisions.”

Support and Retain
Research also points to the fact that salespeople tend to stay with companies where sales managers give them support and mentoring. Intelligence also suggests that companies that can retain productive sales representatives over a longer period of time increasingly benefit from the tenure of those sales team members.

Train, train, train
We’ve all heard the tale of the once-star player who tried to become a coach…and failed. Not every great salesperson is naturally equipped to become a great sales manager. So if a company decides that it wants to promote an effective salesperson into a managerial position, it needs to support that person with the necessary training.

But what does it mean to build a winning sales team? And how does coaching fit into that picture? I’ll invite you to return next week to read my next post about how one of our clients built a layered, more assertive, yet balanced sales culture that resulted in markedly improved sales performance.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

A Leadership Ode to the Olympics…Faster, Further, Higher, Better!

By Sharon Daniels

We are just over a week into the 2012 Olympic Games, and if we are to judge from the events of the past few days, the Olympic spirit is alive and well! Not only did the pageantry and majesty of the opening ceremony delight and excite, but the Games remind us that, while there are 204 countries competing this year, all of the athletes, spectators and fans are bound by a common interest and love of healthy competition.

In a recent article in Talent Management magazine, Rick Lash of the Hay Group and I shared some of our reflections on what we can learn from the London Olympics. Our contemplations focused on five lessons that leaders can learn from the world’s biggest sports stage:

1. Go the [planning] distance.
Leadership takes a commitment to the long-term. Ask the planning committee that first put together the bid to host the 2012 Olympics – back in 2003! Successful leadership takes a devotion to thinking strategically and projecting beyond the immediate future, while also managing day-to-day activities which are strung together to become long-term strategic direction.

2. Teem with team spirit.
Being an integral part of a winning team isn’t just about appreciating the strengths of others. It’s also about understanding how one’s own strengths fit into fulfilling the team’s goals. Leaders must help team members focus on the big picture, where they fit into that big picture, and how their contributions will provide the most value.

3. Know the need.
Olympic athletes personify how individual intrinsic needs build internal motivation. In the workplace, leaders can help team members feel appreciated for their expertise, enable collaboration with peers, and foster their desire to be self-driven and self-defined. 

4. Understand the individual.
In sports, the wise coach recognizes that each member of the team is different. In business, the wise leader adapts motivation techniques to the needs, strengths and capabilities of each team member. Gone are the days when sweeping generalizations about generational differences or cultural stereotypes had any positive value in the workplace. Today’s leader gets to know how each worker performs best and then creates an environment where that worker is satisfied and productive.

5. Cherish the Competition.
At the root of this point is that competition is healthy. In the Olympics, it is the desire to overcome obstacles, beat existing records, and outperform one’s competitors that drives each athlete. In the world of work, it’s up to us to help team members develop a healthy sense of competition that builds camaraderie among colleagues, while ensuring that mutual respect and trust are not casualties of that competitive spirit.

Over the course of 17 days, the world will witness some memorable moments by gifted, dedicated athletes. All too often we get caught up in the medal count or ignore the accomplishments of those who do not wear our flag. So take a moment to reflect on the bigger picture – these competitors represent all of us by their humanity, humility, and passion.

Let us, as leaders, use them as an inspiration as we push our teams to “go for the gold.”

 

 

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

6 Words for Inspiring Employees

By Sharon Daniels

Have you ever noticed that we’re conditioned to think of profitability and human capital as diametrically opposed? When we hear news of a company seeking to improve profits through restructuring, or through merger or acquisition, we almost expect that announcements of layoffs, “downsizing” and “rightsizing” will follow.

But take a step back and think about this: when human capital performs well, profitability shines. This means that the better prepared your workforce, the greater likelihood your organization has of being profitable.

The question is: what can a CEO, or any leader for that matter, do to improve employee performance, thus increasing the bottom line?

In a recent article in CEO Journal Magazine, I outlined strategies that can help CEOs communicate with employees toward just this end.

Leaders are wise to focus on how to create an environment in which workers can perform best. Six small words can be the answer. Ask yourself, “What do I need to do to enable my workforce to confidently and honestly say these six little words?” Equipping your team with the ability to affirm these statements can help you build a team focused on delivering top line results, exceeding customer expectations, and improving profitability:

I Know.
If your associates learn and understand what they need to do, and how that feeds into the overall success of the organization, they are more likely to connect with business goals, and increase their engagement.

I Care.
Leaders who create an environment in which workers are recognized for being competent, are encouraged to collaborate with their peers, and are given autonomy to get their work done, are more likely to have a workforce that truly cares about their performance and the well-being of their organization.

I Can.
Workers must have the necessary skills in place in order to achieve and sustain optimum productivity. A CEO that assesses the resources that workers have access to, and ensures that those resources align with business objectives, is demonstrating commitment to create an environment geared for productivity.

It goes without saying that an organization cannot function without a highly skilled and engaged workforce. Instead of simply accepting the “common wisdom” that cutting the size of the workforce can build cost savings, it’s wise to consider the bigger picture. It is the capable salesforce that generates every dollar of revenue, and it’s dedicated professionals who fulfill every order. Only passionate and committed employees fuel their organizations with innovation and creativity.

Human capital is the “secret sauce” to success and it is the job of leaders to inspire their teams to live these six mantras in all that they do.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

An "Achieve" Survey Insight: Energizing Employee Engagement

By Sharon Daniels

Each month, AchieveGlobal conducts an online poll in our eNewsletter, Achieve. In May, our survey asked, “Which of these employee engagement practices does your organization find most effective?”

The results of this poll confirm the fact that organizations are wise to consider a host of factors beyond traditional incentive and reward programs. In fact, added together, other engagement tactics significantly outnumbered incentive/reward programs:

Often, when organizations try to develop strategies to build employee engagement, their sole focus is on those practices that are familiar: cash awards, gift certificates, bonuses, travel rewards, and the like. But while these sorts of incentives and rewards may motivate employees in the short term, research indicates that their overall effectiveness can quickly wear thin.

This is likely the reason that 66% of the respondents who participated in our poll indicated that they use employee engagement practices other than rewards and incentives. At the beginning of the year, I wrote about internal motivation and how organizations can build engagement by shaping an environment where employees can satisfy three psychological needs:

• the need to feel valued as competent
• the need to collaborate
• and the need for autonomy

In short, if employees feel fulfilled on these three levels, they are more likely to remain engaged and motivated. 

It turns out that engagement practices cited by our participant organizations as being effective are programs that fulfill the intrinsic needs of employees. Offering training and development programs to employees may help build feelings of competence, and the same can be said for recognition programs which provide employees with confirmation that they are valued for their knowledge and expertise. Similarly, giving employees the freedom to build a flexible schedule and work from home can satisfy the need to exercise self-regulation. 

And while wellness programs seem to fall outside the realm of these three intrinsic needs,  organizations that offer wellness programs may be perceived by their employees as caring about the overall wellbeing and health of their employees.

The shift in thinking from rewards and punishments to a broader diversity of engagement practices takes us from “Perform well, and you might get this carrot,” to “We appreciate what you do and who you are; let us demonstrate that to you.” The move from external rewards only, to a greater appreciation of internal motivation, builds stronger bonds of commitment and engagement that will truly last.

To subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Achieve and participate in our regular polls, visit http://www.achieveglobal.com/research-and-resources/enewsletters.aspx

 

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Q&A Session: Sales Managers as Great Coaches

Sales Managers who are great coaches get much better results from their sales teams. CSO Insights and AchieveGlobal conducted a webinar recently entitled "Sales Leadership: Coaching for Top Performance."

John Petrucci, VP of Sales for State Auto Insurance, participated in the webinar and a succeeding Q&A session to tell how AchieveGlobal helped his organization roll out a winning coaching methodology. If you missed the webinar, you can view it here.

The following post, which originated on CSO Insights’ blog, covers answers to questions posed by webinar attendees. These answers came from John Petrucci from State Auto Insurance.

What is coaching?
Coaching is the process of giving instruction and providing advice to the folks who will be ‘in the game,' whether that's an athletic event or the game of business. It includes finding out where the individual currently stands in their particular skill sets, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and building on their strengths while mitigating their weaknesses. Weakness mitigation is often addressed through playing off the strengths of other players on the ‘team.' Have a good closer but a weak prospector? Team them up with a good prospector and weak closer. Coaches work to make the people they coach ‘better.'

Will you define what separates coaching from management or typical pipeline review?
Let's start with management. The classic definition of management is to plan, organize, control, and direct work. Someone can be named a manager today, and tomorrow that is what they'll do-plan, organize, control, and direct the work of the unit they are managing. Typically, they'll measure the work that is being done via a pipeline review-which looks at the results of the work they have managed. So let's say management starts in the middle and works toward the end of the ‘work process.' A coach, on the other hand, gives instructions and provides advice to the folks who will be doing the work-be that an athlete in sports or an associate in business. They prepare their charges for success, once the ‘work' is assigned. Let's say they start at the beginning, and move to the middle of the ‘work process.' Another way to say this is a coach work to make the ‘people' better, where managers work to make the ‘work' better.

How did you deal with the trust issue, or lack of trust?
One of the reasons we created the ‘coaches' coach' position was to address possible ‘trust' issues among our managers/coaches. The coaching relationship gives senior managers an opportunity to be vulnerable in a ‘safe' environment. Coaches want to talk about their ideas or decisions, but hesitate to go right to their boss about it. If they are ‘the boss,' they hesitate to let anyone know they might not have the answer. But they will talk to their coach about these same things. In our operation, we've seen an improvement in communication through this process that just wasn't present before.

How did you solve the time problem? I.e.; adding coaching to everything else on the list!
A very good question! You can't just ‘add' coaching without ‘removing' something else. Most ‘managers' buckets are already full. We didn't focus on coaching as a separate event - we worked to integrate coaching into all that we do. What we discovered is every interaction a ‘manager/coach' has with the associates they support is an opportunity to ‘coach' the person to better performance. We stopped focusing solely on the ‘process,' and started to ‘enhance' the associate as well. That's not to say process improvement isn't important, or that best practices aren't important. It is to say the most important investment a coach makes is in the associate. Once we got our ‘coaches' focused on the human element, they were able to weave coaching opportunities in throughout the day, and not focus on ‘coaching' as a stand-alone event. It didn't add to their list, it improved how they worked their list!

How much patience would you have with your "needs improvement" sales reps in this complicated period?
Once we began coaching in earnest-and our associates ‘felt the love' if you will of their coach working to improve their performance-most associates we considered ‘under-performers' opted out on their own. We had some we needed to counsel to look into other opportunities, both within and outside of State Auto. We had to let a few go. Remember, we also reorganized during this time frame, which left us with more associates than needed in some of our field positions. We didn't have too much time to deal with this issue, as the reorganization was forcing our hand. Under our current structure, coaching allows us a much closer-and much more timely-view of our associates, and we can address the weaker performers more quickly. In the past, there was some room to run and hide.

Changing behaviors is usually quite difficult. What did you do specifically to achieve this? Did you, for instance, set performance measures? What were they?
I believe I mentioned in the webinar we have best practices in place here at State Auto. We currently have 40 BPs our field associates can use. One of the measurement pieces was their ability to properly execute the BPs related to their business unit. There were forms they had to complete, showing the steps of the BP were completed. We encouraged their coach to ‘witness' at least one of the activities where a BP was being used, to provide confirmation the steps of the BP were not just being completed, but being completed like we would like to see them executed. That is where coaching came into play-when steps or BPs were not being executed properly. Another measurement piece was to track the number of sales calls, and which agencies the associates called on. When we did our agency segmentation in 2008, we discovered three of the six segments would help us grow, and three of the six would not. The three that could help us grow had about 17% of our agency plant. We needed to have our regional sales associates calling on those agencies. We expected, all things being equal, the agencies the associates worked with would grow, and not decline, in their business with us. We also expected them to make an underwriting profit. Those were a few of the metrics we employed as we started this journey.

What do you mean by organic growth?
For State Auto, organic growth comes from selling new policies to people not insured with us, and selling more insurance to folks already insured with us. It does not include growth secured from acquisitions or mergers.

How do you enable coaching using a CRM tool that equips sales managers with information to coach effectively throughout the sales cycle?
This answer comes from Jim Dickie, Managing Partner, CSO Insights
Over the past six months we have started to benchmark how sales organizations are using CRM solutions from firms like Revegy, Mindjet, and Pipeline Manager to develop and implement key account plans. These systems prompt the rep through the process of developing a comprehensive plan to penetrate an account. They then automatically track the progress the rep is making against achieving key selling tasks. If they detect an opportunity starting to get off track, they automatically notify the appropriate sales manager and they can then proactively reach out to the sales person and conduct a coaching session around the issues the CRM applications surfaced.

The Virtual Leader in Training

By Sharon Daniels

If you have been following this blog (and I thank you for doing so), you know how much time and energy the AchieveGlobal team devotes to leadership research and best practices.

Whether building new training modules, speaking at conferences, or adding insights to various published articles, our mandate is to share information that makes people at all levels of an organization better leaders.

Recently, we have set our sights on developing principles and resources related to virtual leadership. For leaders who seek success in the world of virtual work, there are a multitude of tried and true strategies. While managing technology can help, on a fundamental level, these strategies have less to do with technology and are far simpler than we might imagine. The reality is that behaviors and traits that make leaders successful generally are the same for leaders of virtual workforces.

A recent article in The Public Manager makes this point beautifully. In the Spring 2012 issue of this magazine, AchieveGlobal’s Keather Snyder examined virtual leadership as it relates to the federal government, and pointed to AchieveGlobal’s Six Zones of Leadership, recognizing how each zone applies to virtual leadership:

Reflection
Leaders should examine their own attitudes toward virtual work, and how these affect their capabilities in managing virtual teams.

Society
Strength in this leadership zone means that virtual leaders understand how economic and environmental conditions affect the company and its workforce, and also how the organization impacts these conditions.

Diversity
Virtual leaders embrace gender, ethnic, age, nationality and work style, among other differences, and develop a more nuanced approach than one-size-fits-all. They encourage collaboration among people with disparate talents, backgrounds, and work arrangements.

Ingenuity
Virtual leaders should recognize, and promote, the importance of creative thinking and innovation among teleworking teams.

People
It goes without saying that virtual leaders must place high emphasis on securing commitment from the team, inspiring a distant workforce, and communicating effectively from miles away.

Business
To drive bottom-line results, virtual leaders remain committed to making use of technology and the ability to maximize both synchronous and asynchronous capabilities of virtual work to measure performance and drive productivity and efficiency.

Virtual leadership is not a new discipline but rather a subset of the broader capabilities that make a good leader. Whether managing workers in person or remotely, great leaders use the Six Zones to build satisfied and productive teams.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Leadership Lessons from Game 5 of the NBA Finals

By Sharon Daniels

In the media blitz aftermath of the Miami Heat’s Game 5 win, the iconic image of the series is that of LeBron James speaking at the post-game news conference, his right hand casually draped over the Larry O’Brien NBA Championship Trophy, the MVP trophy at his left shoulder. The photo is profound testimony to James’ prowess as an individual player.

But the photo doesn’t convey what Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra cites as the deeper reasons behind LeBron James’ success: his rootedness, generosity and the respect he holds for his team mates.

The five-game series between the Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder was replete with excitement, breath-taking plays, and highly emotional moments.

It also offered an opportunity to consider some important leadership lessons:

James’ Technique: Share the Spotlight.
As MVP for the regular-season and for the Finals, in many ways, it was James who led the Heat to victory. But the point has been well made that he didn’t do it alone. Observers and critics agree that The Heat simmered when LeBron drew on the strengths of his team, passing the ball more frequently – from Wade, to Bosh to Battier to Haslem.

• Leadership Lesson Learned: Recognize Talent in Others.
  The reminder to “pass the ball” is essential. Recently, I wrote about Coaching for Internal Motivation, identifying how leaders can foster a motivated workforce through Needs-Based Coaching by, among other things, realizing talent in others. Just imagine what a different game this would have been without Bosh’s rebounds and blocked shots, or Battier’s sorely needed three-pointers. Effective leaders trust, support and give recognition to the capabilities of their team members. By doing this, leaders are more likely to draw on the diversity of strengths of their team and build a collaborative focus on success.
  
  

James’ Technique: Look Inward.
James spent much of his career, from high school to the NBA, under the bright lights of speculation, criticism and even condemnation. James himself is quoted as saying that the best thing to happen to him was losing the 2010-2011 Finals to the Mavericks, which sent him into a period of deep introspection, ultimately leading to this year’s incredible win.

• Leadership Lesson Learned: Emphasize Reflection.
  Of the six zones of leadership identified by AchieveGlobal, Reflection is the zone that helps leaders become stronger in the other zones. By adopting a degree of introspection, leaders are able to see their place in the big picture, and are more likely to take responsibility for their own mistakes. Best practices grouped under Reflection help leaders clarify what makes them effective leaders, and how they can improve in every other zone.
  
  

Heat Technique: Embrace the Unconventional.
In the playoffs, the Heat used James in the lesser-powered forward slot, and positioned Chris Bosh at center. The Heat needed stronger defense to thwart the Thunder. To many, this seemed to build an almost inside-out power dynamic, but as analysts have noted since the win, for several minutes in the final game, the Heat were neither tall nor conventional, but their versatility made them unstoppable.

• Leadership Lesson Learned: Innovation Cultivates Growth.
  Leaders need to draw direct links between where the company is now, its strategic direction, and what it will take to achieve organizational goals. By identifying strengths, being realistic about vulnerabilities, and embracing innovation, leaders can help to fortify the company against adversity, and move toward greater strength. Needs-based coaching also helps to draw links between strategic direction, and workers’ intrinsic psychological needs.
  
  

Without a doubt, the Heat have earned their place in championship history, and LeBron James his title as “a once-in-a-generation basketball player.” As James himself noted, “when you’re committed and you give everything to the game, the game pays off and gives back to you.”

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

A Tapestry Approach to Mentoring

By Sharon Daniels

There’s a terrific article in Diversity Executive magazine’s most recent issue, titled “Different Is Better (at least when it comes to mentoring),” which examines trends among many companies toward mentoring that pairs people from different backgrounds.

The fundamental thinking behind this practice is simple: If a mentee is paired with a mentor who possesses a very similar background and set of experiences, then the spectrum of learning opportunities is minimized. The mentee will likely only learn in a sort of linear way – from the perspective of a very similar mentor. But, if you allow people from far more diverse backgrounds to be paired in a mentoring relationship, the spectrum of learning is greatly enhanced.

This approach fits so naturally with wider trends toward recognizing the importance of diversity in the workplace and beyond. Maya Angelou speaks of the significance of each individual thread in the tapestry of life, a philosophy which is mirrored in diversity mentoring.

In the Diversity Executive article, AchieveGlobal’s Director of Solution Development, Craig Perrin, offers four best practices for companies to consider before establishing mentoring relationships among employees:

• Pair mentors with dissimilar mentees. By making sure that mentoring pairs are heterogeneous, organizations can ensure diversity across gender, ethnicity and experiences. This creates a catalyst for real learning within the mentoring relationship.
  
  
• Question assumptions. It’s natural, when we first meet other people, to make assumptions based on our previous experiences or awareness. The better we’re able to interact with each other as individuals, instead of as stereotypes, the richer the mentoring relations will be.
  
  
• Discover similarities. Even across experiences and backgrounds that make us different, we can always discover similarities. The more we are able to ensure the channels of communication are open for honest discovery, the more likely both people in the mentoring relationship will benefit from each other’s expertise and perspectives.
  
  
• Dig for details. Often, organizations think of the mentoring relationship as the mentor downloading information and imparting wisdom to a mentee. While important, the mentor should also be encouraged to learn as much as he or she can about the mentee’s goals, interests, and talents to get a more complete picture of the mentee as a valued member of the team.  

The mentoring relationship is key to the transfer of knowledge, culture, and understanding within the organization. Organizations that build these relationships with diversity in mind can help both mentors and mentees gain true value, and learn in ways they might never have anticipated.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Telltale Signs Your Sales Reps Need a Makeover

By Sharon Daniels

With spring turning into summer, and exciting blockbusters hitting the big-screens, it seems everywhere you turn there are superheroes and action adventurers.

In a recent "Sales Source" article on Inc.com, writer Geoffrey James examines behaviors and traits that can be considered “toxic” among salespeople. While James reflects on these as personal habits, I like to think of them as the villains in our movie analogy:

1. The Lone Wolf: This team member wants to be the hero who rides alone, and therefore gets all the credit for any success, and zero blame for any failures. Chances are, though, this salesperson can end up with a large deal and no support from the team.
2. The Pipeline Stuffer: This salesperson rarely turns down an opportunity to sell, but by overscheduling, is spreading his/her capabilities too thin. And, the risk becomes that so many deals come in that the organization isn’t prepared to service all of the customers.
3. The Whale Slayer: Yes, persistence can pay, but a salesperson has to be realistic too. This villain is so preoccupied with a big deal that he conveys a false sense of promise to the team about the likelihood that the deal will come to fruition.
4. The Incredible Over-Promiser: This sales rep promises clients things that your company just can’t deliver, and risks an early end to the honeymoon once the client realizes that they’ve been hoodwinked.
5. The Showboat: These sales reps treat other team members dismissively because they think it is all about them and forget that their success is driven by the support of their team.

If you have any of these personalities in your organization, it’s likely that your sales team members are not fully maximizing the resources around them to land and close new business. Work with your sales team to eradicate these behaviors, and you’re on the road to building a far more effective team. In the Inc.com article, James also suggests that firms should stop hiring “sharks,” ensure you have a good sales training partner, keep channels of communication open, and of course, focus on customer satisfaction.

Put these ideas into practice, and more than likely, you’ll see your sales success moving up, up, and away…!

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

An “Achieve” Survey Insight: Is Your Organization Optimistic About Economic Regrowth?

By Sharon Daniels

In today’s environment, an organization’s outlook on the economic landscape is a lot more complicated than seeing the glass as half-empty or half-full. While there’s a general trend toward seeing things as gradually getting better, the big picture continues to be mixed.

Each month, AchieveGlobal conducts an online poll through our eNewsletter, Achieve. In April, our survey asked, “How optimistic is your organization about its economic regrowth?”

The results of our survey are encouraging – organizations overwhelmingly see the outlook as positive. Responding to our April survey, an impressive 74% of participants responded that they are optimistic. And, the largest segment of those optimistic respondents is highly optimistic.

But even among our respondents, there was a healthy dose of realism. Over a quarter of the participants said their organizations are not optimistic, that they are operating in their “new normal,” and that “growth isn’t expected soon.” This also seems to be in line with the broader reality that we are experiencing. While overall economic predictors seem to indicate continued growth, that growth is expected to be slow and at times fluctuating.

As Winston Churchill once said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Therefore, with challenges come opportunities: in a weak economy, organizations endure by taking action to ensure their employees’ motivation and productivity stay strong.

How are you going to instill optimism in your organization or team? Will you succumb to the pressures of today – or encourage those around you to consider a brighter tomorrow? Even as the economy sputters, great leaders are keeping their associates focused on a promising future and the opportunities available for those who seize them.

To subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Achieve, and participate in our regular polls, visit http://www.achieveglobal.com/research-and-resources/enewsletters.aspx
 
Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

An "Achieve" Survey Insight: How Can You Tell if Your Customers are Happy?

By Sharon Daniels

Question: How do you measure customer satisfaction?
Answer: Regularly and purposefully.

Each month, AchieveGlobal runs an online poll in our eNewsletter, Achieve. In March, our survey asked, “How do you measure customer satisfaction?”

The results suggest, perhaps, a more fundamental question: WHY do you measure customer satisfaction?

Of readers who responded, 10 percent noted that they measure customer satisfaction by analyzing buying patterns of customers, while 11 percent indicated that they measure satisfaction based on whether, and how many, customers give referrals. 16 percent of participants said they measure the attitudes of customers, while a significant majority of respondents indicated that they use all three of these methods to measure customer satisfaction.

 

Of course, we have learned that in today’s business climate, intensified competition means that customers tend to be more discerning about what constitutes good customer service.

The above figures seem to indicate that most companies are not leaving this to chance, but instead are keeping track of multiple measures of customer satisfaction. Ensuring that customers are happy is really that important.

This also links with the idea of building customer relationships through Defining Moments. If we agree that satisfied customers have specific buying patterns, give referrals to other potential customers and have positive attitudes towards our companies, then we need to ensure our service reinforces these customer behaviors. The only way to do that is by ensuring that every moment of every interaction a customer has with our company is positive.

As I’ve written recently, it’s also important for companies to integrate sales and service, so that all levels of the organization understand what the company does and how, and what changes need to be made and why.

The net result of a relentless focus on service is a sustainable and measurable competitive advantage. Customers will reward you with repeat business and referrals, your sales employees will see the link between service and their success, and the organization as a whole will thrive.

Now that’s something to smile about.

To subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Achieve and participate in our regular polls, visit http://www.achieveglobal.com/research-and-resources/enewsletters.aspx

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

The Win-Win-Win of Blended Learning

By Sharon Daniels

The decision to use Blended Learning is often an easy one to make, as the outcome offers several benefits to an organization. It’s also an approach that provides the flexibility that today’s workforce requires.

In a recent report, AchieveGlobal uncovered several key reasons that organizations across the globe have turned to Blended Learning (the integration of two or more ways to learn with immediate opportunities to use a skill, tool, or concept on the job).

Among the top reasons for adopting this fairly recent approach:

• Economic pressures
• Technology advances
• Changing demographics in the workplace
• Government regulation, and
• Globalization

We’ve found that as organizations strive to stay ahead of increasing competitive pressures, they want to learn more efficiently, while gaining valuable knowledge more effectively. The beauty of Blended Learning is that this approach offers benefits to both the learner and the organization.

 For learners, Blended Learning provides:

• Enhanced opportunities to gain knowledge from both experts and peers
• Practical results through immediate skill application

Meanwhile, for organizations, Blended Learning implies:

• Less disruption of day-to-day work
• Learning modalities that are easier to update, revise and customize

And there’s another important factor at play here. In other posts, I’ve raised concerns about so-called generational divides in the workplace, and argued that it’s fundamentally counterproductive to focus on imagined differences among workers defined through generational definitions. The reality is that we can’t make generalizations based about a person’s technological competence based on something as random as their year of birth. Instead, it’s far more productive to recognize that each individual is a complex matrix of capabilities, competencies, inclinations, desires and needs.

Blended Learning responds to this reality, allowing learning to take place across a variety of modalities, thereby making it more likely that each individual will find several methodologies that resonate with him/her.

Everybody likes choice, and it certainly seems that the more we consider Blended Learning, the more reasons there are to adopt just such an approach to corporate learning. Whether trainees or the organization, Blended Learning gives everyone greater autonomy, and a more enjoyable and positive experience.

To learn more about Blended Learning, visit our website.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

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

Absence Makes the Workforce Grow… Stronger?

By Sharon Daniels

The heading of this post is based on that age-old saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” But there’s a less-known second half of that saying: “It also makes the fond heart wander.” So there are potential positives and negatives to having space between two people in a relationship – whatever defines that relationship.

A similar duality can be said to apply to virtual workforces.

In a recent report on Leading Virtually, the point was made that when managed properly, teams that are dispersed can perform even better than teams that are collocated. The question is, what is “the secret recipe?” Using technical tools and cutting edge technology platforms can help, but virtual leadership requires a much broader set of skills.

Back to our analogy of a long distance relationship…

These days, families are called on to function across great distances for a host of reasons – job travel, kids “leaving the nest,” or military service to name a few. Making a relationship survive across distance requires much more than just being a good letter-writer, or a good “Skyper” for that matter. It takes devotion, loyalty and commitment, and an ability to express those things across the distance that separates.

In other words, it requires an understanding of what it takes to build a strong relationship in any realm, with an ability to master the reality of absence.

Similarly, effective leadership of a virtual workforce requires mastering traditional leadership skills like giving vital feedback, offering verbal recognition, and making sure the workforce is wholly focused on the broader business objectives. But even more than this, being an effective virtual leader requires planning, and leadership that encourages collaboration, individual contributions and dialogue.

So the reality is… for virtual leaders, while traditional leadership skills are a necessary part of creating a strong team, it’s also imperative to master a whole new slate of skills too.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Make Sure You’re Not Just Virtually Leading, When You’re Leading Virtually

By Sharon Daniels

You might say that the world of business these days is defined by crossing boundaries: reaching out to customers across market segments, negotiating with vendors across the globe, and shipping goods and services worldwide. So it comes as no surprise that leadership today requires the ability to lead across boundaries that are defined demographically, geographically, culturally, hierarchically, and in terms of organizational function or talent expertise.

The reality is that many leaders are managing work groups that include team members who live and work in far away geographies perhaps whom they’ve never even met in person. For leaders working in this reality, challenges abound! 

In our recent report on virtual leadership, we examined what it means to lead a team of people who may be united by a common business goal, but whose locations, cultural experiences and work environments are completely disparate.

Among several compelling discoveries, we found that across the world leaders of virtual teams have many common concerns:

1. Virtual leaders feel as if they’re relinquishing control and relying on trust with virtual employees, since it can be difficult to assess whether workers are fulfilling all their responsibilities.
2. Communication can become complicated since there are fewer opportunities for feedback and valuable face-to-face interaction.
3. It becomes more difficult to develop meaningful work relationships that in non-virtual circumstances would otherwise build greater alignment between leaders and workers.
4. Time differences result in fewer windows of opportunity for live interactions by phone, for instance.
5. Leaders also feel ill at ease with cultural differences that may be real or perceived.

As organizations continue to cut costs in response to tough economic times, and opportunities for face-to-face interactions continue to decrease, the realities of virtual leadership continue to resonate among many leaders.

But the point needs to be made: that feeling of being a voice in the virtual wilderness need not be a reality of leading across boundaries. In my next post, I’ll address how leaders can move beyond technology and adopt a simple framework for virtual leadership.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

The Virtual Leadership Conundrum

By Sharon Daniels

The idea of working in a relatively remote office location is hardly a new phenomenon. As early as the 1970s, significant numbers of employees worked in satellite offices – removed from a company’s headquarters or home office. Since that time, a growing number of workers make up virtual teams – due in large measure to the growth in personal computers, Internet technology, and increasing global initiatives that define the business environment.

Today, it's quite normal for a work team to be spread across several different geographies. The summary statistics below (represented in this infographic we recently published) paint quite a remarkable picture when it comes to the world of virtual work.

Just take a look at some of these numbers:

• From 1980 to 2009, there has been an 86% increase in the percent of people working from home.
• 47% of the U.S. workforce does not work in the same office building as their manager.
• Between 20 and 30 million people work from home at least one day a week.
• By 2010, 45% of telecommuting workers were doing so almost every day.

The statistics also point to the need for a new approach to virtual leadership. While a convincing majority of survey participants recognize that an ability to manage virtual teams will be a key competency to possess in the future, few participants think their own managers have mastered the ability to lead virtually. This is not surprising when you consider that 79% of managers have not been trained in effective virtual leadership.

So what’s a leader to do? How can they overcome the challenges leading virtually presents?

In my upcoming posts, I’ll examine the realities that define leadership in a virtual world of work, and what leaders can do to effectively manage virtual teams.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Taking Talent Management to the Top

By Sharon Daniels

Talent management is often thought of as an organizational function requiring “soft” skills like social awareness, or an ability to tailor communication to meet each employee’s individual needs.

It is perhaps for this reason that many organizations relegate talent management to a line management position when, in reality, it should be tied closely to key organizational issues.

In a Talent Management article I wrote with Robert Vulpis, executive director of HR, Learning and Development at Morgan Stanley, we explored the question of what talent leaders can do to build engagement among new recruits and manage their existing human resources.

One of the last trends we noted that I’ll mention here is making the link between talent management and C-suite executives.

Imagine any sport that requires unified team effort. Crew rowing might provide the perfect example. The coxswain, who sits in the stern and steers the boat by calling power and rhythm directions, must command the efforts of all rowers – from the bowman to the sternman. Without guidance from the coxswain, the team will potentially veer wildly off-course and lose the race.

Particularly in times of economic uncertainty, an organization needs to ensure that it has executive buy-in in order to achieve desired business results. To achieve this sort of collaboration and the resulting success, it’s imperative for organizations to heed the advice that HR professionals have been offering for years: elevate human capital management to a strategic imperative that impacts business objectives and requires C-suite endorsement.

So building engagement among new recruits and managing existing employees requires that talent leaders lobby for support from the executive team by connecting organizational goals to talent concerns.

In short, by taking talent management to the top!