Effectiveness

“I Know You Can Do It!”

18 Aug
by Bridget DiCello

“I know you can do it!”  Why are these such powerful words?  When voiced by a someone about a colleague or team member, they express confidence in that person.  Despite the independent, confident, maybe egotistical approach of people who are difficult to work with, I believe there is a great lack of self-confidence under the surface, being hidden by confident speech.  When someone who they respect, whether because of a great relationship or by only an official relationship, says they believe they can do something, it energizes that person.

You are telling them that you believe in them and that they should believe in themselves.  Too mushy for you?  Well, it’s powerful and used well, can bring about significant changes in performance and levels of cooperation.

Do you tell team members this who you find difficult to interact with?  Can you get yourself to believe it for those who have less than stellar performance?

Why would you say this if you don’t believe it 100%?  There is power in what we say about ourselves and what others say about us.  By saying, “I know you can do it,” you are instilling a determination in that person.

You will find the most success when you follow up by holding them accountable to what they have agreed to.

What if they fail?  Doesn’t that mean you were wrong?  No!  It just depends on what timeframe you are talking about.  If you say they can accomplish something and they get frustrated because they didn’t get it done in a week.  Push harder.  Insist you know they can do it and ask them what the next step they are going to do is.  Everything is accomplished with a series of small steps.

Sometimes team members may at first look to prove you wrong in order to stay in their comfortable current level of performance.  Insist you believe they can do what needs to be done, that they have the ability to learn and to accomplish more than they have.

Try it.  Say, “I know you can do it!” with conviction to each person important to your success once a week and see what happens!

Return on your Networking Investment

12 Aug
by Bridget DiCello

If you’re faced with an extremely busy schedule and increased demands in a challenging economy – you cannot spend a lot of time networking unless you get a good return on investment. Yet you find it necessary to get out and meet new people, connect and enhance relationships with current contacts and referral sources, and be out and be seen. You may not enjoy the typical “networking event,” because it doesn’t produce enough results to make the expense, time and discomfort of being around a bunch of people you don’t know, worth it.

From my experience, key activities that make it worth it your time and effort to attend an event:
• Decide what you need to achieve to make it worth attending events. Do you plan to make new contacts? If you do, do you know who specifically you’d like to meet or can you describe your target prospect? Do you wish to build relationships with current contacts or prospects by going where they go? Do you wish to achieve general visibility in larger crowds of professionals?
• Plan your month. Act purposefully. As much as possible, evaluate the events that are coming up in the next month and decide the best use of your time. Seeing some of the same people at events gives you an opportunity to deepen the relationships, but seeing them three times in the same month devalues that benefit. Plan to attend a variety of events to achieve your most important goals and stick within your budget.
• Invite people to attend with you. If they can’t go, the invitation itself is a meaningful contact and builds that relationship. If they can go, they will appreciate the opportunity, especially if it is an event of which they were not aware. It’s an opportunity to spend some time with the person you invite and introduce them to others.
• Show up early and act as a host. Stand near the door and welcome people. You can help them to feel comfortable, and have an easy conversation opener as they walk in the door.
• Move from conversation to conversation. Typically, making multiple contacts at an event will make it more worth your time. Spend 15 minutes talking to one very solid contact if that makes sense at the time, but reserve deeper conversations for a follow up meeting where they are often a better fit.
• Connect two people you know to one another. And vice versa, ask someone you know to introduce you to a contact they know and you would like to meet.
• Follow up with important contacts. I have long since stopped following up with everyone I meet. I know that some conventional networking wisdom will tell you to connect with a lot of people, not knowing who could help you/who you could help some day. Personally, I look at the return on investment of my time, am clear with where my beneficial connections will most likely lie, and spend my time there.

How about you? How do you ensure a profitable return on investment of your networking, time, energy and money?

Learn from Leaders who Fail as well as from Leaders who Succeed

04 Aug
by Bridget DiCello

If you wish to become a more effective leader within your organization, it makes a lot of sense to study great leaders, read what they write and what others write about them and talk to them if you can get the opportunity.

However, it also makes sense to study and talk to the leaders who have tried and failed, and to successful leaders about their failures.  It’s powerful to learn from mistakes others make, especially from those who have been in positions of leadership, stressful situations and under great pressure.

Ask them to share with you not only what not to do and but learn also what to do instead.  It’s very difficult for anyone to focus only on what not to do.  It’s important you gain from these leaders what they would do again if they had the chance to do it over again – hindsight is a powerful 20-20 view.

David Burkus has a great story on his blog about the power of studying failure – by looking at the bullet holes in an aircraft.

To learn from a leader’s experiences, Ask Questions.  Just because a leader’s approach was successful in their situation, their advice may be hard to apply to your world.  Dive into their decision making processes as well.  Ask how they decided to take the path they took in their particular situation to become successful in it.

A successful leader probably doesn’t realize all the good things they did, just the more obvious or those about which they are most proud.  The more questions you can ask about situations where they were successful, and the more you can get them talking, the more knowledge you can glean beyond the things they would tell you if they only summarized their lessons.

These suggestions assume that you can have a one-on-one conversation with these leaders.  That is the environment where the best lessons are learned.  Because most of us cannot call Bill Gates and make a lunch date, you need to think of the leaders you know and ask for a bit of their time.  If you are prepared with intelligent questions, that you send them prior to the meeting, many leaders will be happy to share their insights and wisdom.

What insights have you learned from your failures?

What does Top-of-the-Line Service Look Like in Your Industry?

01 Jul
by Bridget DiCello

In the May 2011 edition of Entrepreneur Magazine, The Best in Business Travel article compared different levels of hotel service, and the description of top-of-the-line Premium service was inspiring!

It described how the hotels in this class remembered a guest’s allergy to feathers and adjusted the bedding, remembered his favorite wine and provided it complimentary, provided an outdoor temperature reading in the room so the guest could dress appropriately, had an enormous fitness center with 30 complimentary classes per week, delivered comic books instead of a newspaper because of the guest’s offhanded remark, and made a special trip to purchase a case of a guest’s preferred type of bottled water.

While I have never held a job in this top of the line hospitality environment, I think it would be incredibly fulfilling.  Or can we provide this level of service in every one of our businesses? Logistically, it requires two things to excel in service – employee time and resources (labor costs) and money (to purchase preferred wine, bottled water outside of a purchase agreement, etc.).  Many businesses, if they don’t charge premium prices, don’t have the revenue or profit margin to add awesome customer service perks.

So, unless you are a 5-star hotel or a Nordstrom’s, are you out of luck?

Ask yourself, “What is it that the guests really like about this Premium service?”   In order to answer that question, we need to look at two types of premium service that I have experienced:  Perks Service and Custom Service.

Perks Service – This is where every amenity is present.  Anything that you think of is readily available at no additional charge.  From the example above, that would be the 30 complimentary fitness classes a week.  This level of service is expensive to provide because each of these perks cost the company money, but the return on investment can be significant depending on your product and your customers.

Custom Service – This is where the customer service is tailored to each customer’s needs and wants.  This requires that we listen to each customer to hear what they really want and what is important to them.  From the example above, this is delivering the guest’s favorite wine or comic books that they mentioned the last visit.

Both levels of service require that we listen to the customer.  The Perks Service requires we listen to them as a group and offer what is important to our customer base as a whole.  The Custom Service requires that we listen to an individual, remember what they’ve said and deliver that customized service next time we interact with them.  This is more difficult, more often overlooked, can have a tremendously powerful impact and has the potential to cost a lot less to implement than the Perks Service.  But, it requires that you hear and remember what the customer says.

Listening is like riding your bike next to someone who is walking.  You can think at 400 words per minute and most people speak about 100 words per minute.  The danger in listening is that your brain is thinking about something else with that excess capacity.

It doesn’t cost anything to listen to someone, and often it doesn’t cost much to customize the service they receive to some degree.  Where are those opportunities in your business and your industry?

Time Consuming Conversations – Time Wasters or Absolute Best Use of Your Time?

21 Jun
by Bridget DiCello

One of the biggest time wasters in your business day is time spent talking with other people!

AND

One of the absolute best uses of your work time is productive conversations with people important to your success!

Where is the difference?  Working productively with the right group of people is the key to multiplying success.  However, people are social creatures, who often fear something new, who wish to preserve their self-image and self-confidence, and don’t always get to the point in a conversation.  Therefore, if you wish for your ‘people time’ to be productive, it must be done purposefully.

Schedule appointments to talk.  If you plan to meet with another person and have a conversation, do it purposefully.  If you just ‘stop by’ their office or give them a call without a plan, you may end up wasting both of your time.  And they may do the same with you.

Set expectations ahead of time.  If you need to talk to them, plan a time and day and have an “agenda.”  Set a time and day on your calendars, even 15 minutes from now, to give each person time to “have their first reaction” and to prepare for the meeting.  Have the conversation ahead of time:  “When we speak, I will… and you will.. in order to accomplish [goal, task or decision].”  This works both up and down the chain of command.

For example, “I’d like to talk to you about the production logs.  How about Tuesday at 1pm for 30 minutes?  Before then, I will review the log for my areas of concern.  And you could review the log compared to last month’s as well as looking for overall opportunities for improvement.  When we sit down, we’ll go though the last two months, each sharing our observations.  Does that work for you?”  Make sure you get their commitment to the agenda you suggested.  If they don’t agree, edit or change it so that you can both prepare appropriately and not end up arguing about the agenda during the meeting.

If someone comes to you and wants to talk right then, tell them you are right in the middle of something, would like to be able to give them your full concentration and are wondering if you could come see them in 20 minutes.  Then, ascertain from them what it is they need from you when you come see them.  This asks them to think through the results they desire (which they may really not have done yet), and allows you to prepare as well, saving you both time and potential frustration.

Get very good at asking questions.   In these situations, you want to remain in control, specifically of making sure something productive comes out of the conversation.  Gladly take that responsibility.  In order to do that you need to ask questions from the standpoint of genuine curiosity to see where they are coming from and how that relates to what you are trying to accomplish.  With the information you gather, you can then notice excuses, frustrations in the form of roadblocks, and cries for attention that can get in the way of productive discussion.

When you talk, you share information.  You rarely can change anyone’s mind by talking.  By asking curious questions, you get the other person talking.  When they talk, you hear how they are really thinking.  When they talk, you can prompt them to consider your point of view.  Help them to get to a conclusion, considering what you value.  When they talk is when they think through things and may change their mind as a result.

It’s up to you to work to understand the other person.  The difficulty with having a conversation is that it is with a person – who has their own feelings, experiences, biases, expectations, etc.  The first thing they say is rarely the whole picture – as it is for you.  Ask your questions.  Give them time.

Schedule a follow up conversation if important to them or to you.  Set a time and date and the agenda for that conversation as well.

Top 10 Productivity Tips – A Focused Mind

16 Jun
by Bridget DiCello

With summer officially ready to start next week, have you finished your spring cleaning?  Spring cleaning is not only about pulling out the cleaning products and getting rid of clutter.  These practices are great and can clear your workspace and make you more productive.  However, productivity also comes from a clear head which allows you to be focused and efficient.

Top 10 Productivity Tips – Try them and see if you ‘spring’ forward:

1.  Make the right decision every moment of every day. This is my definition of good time management.  It’s a realization that we make many decisions every day of how to spend our time, whether planned or unplanned.  The more we can make those decisions consciously, according to clear goals, the more productive we will be.  Most people welcome distractions to some extent – as a relief from something stressful, difficult or unpleasant.  Act very purposefully in each moment of the day and pinpoint those times you tend to make decisions to do things not in line with your goals, however small.

2.  Revisit your goals. Dust them off.  Clean them up – do the reality check and adjust the ones that are unrealistic, get excited again about ones that might be a stretch but that you are passionate about, tweak others given your knowledge of the year so far.   And if you never did write them down, do it now.

3.  Identify what must be done this month, this week and today/tomorrow to achieve your goals. One of the best ways to be productive and make the best use of your time is to be focused and plan.  I’m not talking about the strategic five year plan.  I’m talking about knowing the 3-5 non-routine things that you want to accomplish this month to ensure you are further ahead and closer to your goals than when you started the month.  Then, decide what 2-3 things you need to do this week to make that happen.  Then look at your plan for today or tomorrow and decide what 1-3 things you need to do in those 24 hours to move forward on the week’s goals.

4.  Know your Best Time of Day. We all have a time of day where we are most productive.  Are you a morning person?  A night owl?  You only really wake up at noon?  Observe your productivity and effectiveness.  What time of day are you at your best?  When you determine when that is, schedule your most important activities at that time.  Avoid doing trivial tasks or putting out fires during that time.

5.  Schedule your day, week and month. Very few of us have schedules that never get interrupted or rearranged.  But, that is not a reason not to plan at all.  Plot out your month, schedule your week and map out your day.  Leave some “Wing it” time to fit in the little things that pop up.  Schedule a block of time to do the emails, phone calls, etc. that fill your day if you are not careful.  When at the end of the day you have not done everything you wanted to because of fires and interruptions, immediately reschedule the activities that you didn’t do for tomorrow or later in the week.

6.  Get rid of the Things to Do List. They haunt most of us.  Instead of putting something on the list, simply schedule it somewhere in your day or week.  If you cannot find anywhere to put it, that means it is really not important enough to you to get done, so don’t torture yourself with leaving it to haunt you on a list.  You may want to keep a “To Do Someday” List for those things that are great ideas, but are just not a priority right now.  Then, put it away and only look at it periodically.

7.  Schedule appointments to talk. If you plan to meet with another person and have a conversation, do it purposefully.  If you just ‘stop by’ their office or give them a call without a plan, you may end up wasting both of your time.  And they may do the same with you.  If you need to talk to them, plan a time and day and have an “agenda”.  More thoughts on that next week…

8.  Do a time log. After you have planned your month, week and day, and taken all the things to do list items and scheduled them somewhere, for just a few days – record what you actually did.  Compare your reality to your plan.  Maybe you need to adjust how you do what you do, become more effective, learn to say no, or delegate more.  Unless you have a good picture of what you are actually doing, it’s hard to have a basis for productive change.   And no, you really don’t know what you spend your time doing until you log it.  Try it and you’ll see!

9.  Stop Procrastinating. Many managers and leaders are procrastinators.  I never believed that about myself until I understood the connection between procrastinating and being a perfectionist.  For the perfectionist, it is rarely ever the right time or there is not enough time to do it right so, “Why do it?”  Not to say that perfectionists are not productive, just that certain things that are new, different or particularly important get put off for the more immediate, urgent and familiar tasks at which they can more easily succeed.

10.  Keep track of information. You may mistake being able to do a lot with being organized.  It’s amazing how much time we spend looking for something, finding information twice, having a conversation or part of it a second time, or sorting through the volumes of information we use to run our business.  Review your systems for collecting, sorting and using information in your business and to develop your team members.  Do they effectively support your mission or do they slow you down?

Comment here or join in our LinkedIn Discussion.

Page 2 of 212

  • Think Growth!

    Subscribe to this weekly e-newsletter focused on growth strategy, building your business and leading your team.

    Click here to subscribe!

  • Testimonials

    Intense Gut Check

    “Bridget DiCello’s Leadership class was an intense gut check on how to do business. Business Owners, Executives, Non Profits, and Professionals can all benefit by learning how to manage teams and communicate effectively with employees. This has helped our company to bring up production and help increase the bottom line. Her classes and coaching have …

    Sane and Profitable!

    “Bridget has kept us sane and profitable! We hired Bridget to help us manage the chaos of our growing/successful Brand Marketing Agency when it was still in its infancy. She has provided guidance and solutions for: personnel hiring, management and motivation; time management and project coordination; profitability and goal setting; project/client delegation, etc. If you …

    To the next level…

    “Bridget is a value-add to any business! Her no nonsense approach to the world of business has been a huge reason for my success. Bridget is a class act who I trust to turn to whenever I have a dilemma in my business. I would highly recommend her services to any business owner or manager …

    Increased Productivity & Accountability

    “Bridget is a true expert in her field. Her methodology “clicked” with our corporate culture, enabling us to develop internal systems and safeguards that increased productivity and accountability of our staff. I would highly advise others to garner her services when needed.” – Gene Mangiante, Owner, Mangiante Photography