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3 Steps to Help Your Managers Prepare for Difficult Conversations
In times of challenges and uncertainty, supervisors might be experiencing an increase in the number of difficult conversations with their staff. These could include delivering bad news about an employee’s job, informing staff about work restructuring, or discussing other complicated and stressful work situations. Preparing for the conversation Before going into the conversation, ask yourself several key questions. Consult with peers, and other appropriate resources to be sure you’re comfortable with the answers. Key questions include: What is my purpose
Bring Your Customers on the Journey with You
How to make it easy for prospects and customers to buy….. A customer journey map is a very simple idea: a diagram that illustrates the steps your customer(s) go through in engaging with your company, whether it be a product, an online experience, retail experience, or a service, or any combination. The more touch-points you have, the more complicated - but necessary - such a map becomes. A customer journey map does three things for you and your customer: It
How to Find Your Best Clients
And it’s not necessarily those who spend the most…. The squeaky wheel is the one that gets the oil. We all know that. And the customers that complain are the ones we listen to, and with good cause. But when we do so we often forget to pay sufficient attention to our other customers. Because these “wheels” aren’t “squeaking” we don’t give them enough attention (or oil)! So, if you don’t listen to your customers how do you know what
The Three Aspects of Culture
Perspectives on culture There is a lot of discussion about the importance of culture in creating and driving a high-performing business. We all “know” what we are talking about, but none of us can clearly define it. As a result we all have a common and shared understanding of something we cannot articulate and agree to. So let’s have a look at gaining some clarity. Your organization’s culture reflects the predominant way of thinking, behaving and working. It is not
The Customer is NOT Always Right!
3 reasons why the customer is not always right One of the oldest adages for customer experience and customer service is “The customer is always right!”. Sorry, I don’t hold with that. Why? People assume that it is better to keep a customer rather than alienate a customer. But often this is not the best decision to make. I want to distinguish between two types of customers – those who buy products and those who buy services. There is a
Why We Avoid Difficult Conversations
You have nothing to fear but fear itself At work one of the things a person fear most, and actively try to avoid, is having a difficult conversation with a boss, a peer or a report. Let’s face it, we don’t like it as it represents the unknown – whenever you enter into a difficult conversation you never know where and how it is going to go. Our natural reaction to uncertainty is fear and, when we are in a
Your Boss – Seriously Successful or Downright Deluded?
Which answer do you think is most common? Strangely enough, the answer is probably both! Marshall Goldsmith shares a story: One night over dinner, I listened to a wise military leader share his experience with an eager, newly minted General, “Recently, have you started to notice that when you tell jokes, everyone erupts into laughter—and that when you say something ‘wise’ everyone nods their heads in solemn agreement?” The new General replied, “Why, yes, I have.” The older General laughed,
Rigor vs. Effort
Doing things with rigor takes effort, but not everything you put effort into is done with rigor. We often look at how hard we work as a measure of the quality of our work. But this is wrong. When you are looking at the quality of the outcomes you or your team produce you need to consider two elements: Effort – how hard you work at getting the work done. Rigor – how well you adhere to the process of
Shaping Your Future
What you can do to bring the future back to today. In the current business environment leaders are subject to increasing demands on their time, requiring faster responses, with less information in shorter time-scales. In this age of infinite information and endless distraction, it’s easy to spend an entire day reacting and responding to what others want as opposed to what we want or need to do. Here is a question for you. Do a quick calculation of the percentage