Getting the Results You Want

By Robyn Donahue

Business is in large part about setting and achieving goals and objectives, and ultimately delivering results.  At IntelliSource it’s about delivering results for our customers and providing opportunities for our employees. As managers we are responsible not only for our own performance but the performance of others.  What we sometime underestimate is the power of our assumptions regarding the goal, individuals integral to the team, group performance, economic conditions, have on the actual outcomes which are produced.  Is how we think about the goal that important?  In my experience, the answer is yes!  Consider Nikki Nemerouf’s perspective and then take a step back and identify a result or work relationship that you’re not happy with and list the assumptions you have about the situation and the individuals associated.

Do the assumptions you have serve you well?  If not, play around with changing your assumptions.  For example, you can assume that the economy is bad and opportunities are limited, therefore the chance that your team will make its business objectives are limited.  If you have that assumption, chances are great your team does as well.  How excited will they be about their work if they feel from the start there’s no way to succeed. Consider, how powerful it could be if you change your assumptions… or at least challenge them to determine if they are based on fact, or your interpretation of facts.  If how you approached the achievement of those same objectives leveraged the assumption that because of current economic conditions new opportunities were being created simultaneously with those that were disappearing, you could lead your team to creatively seek out,  identify and leverage new opportunities that would enable your team to meet its objectives.

Consider Nikki’s perspective

Nikki Nemerouf:

Have you ever had the experience of looking forward to meeting a friend for lunch?  You hold that person as very dear to you and as someone whom you always have a good time with.  The behavior you engage in during your preparation for your get-together is spirited and uplifting.  When you actually meet your facial expression is likely to convey a real delight and perhaps joy.

Then there are those people in our lives with whom the relationship is strained.  When we know we “have” to interact with them our behavior and spirit both prior to the interaction and during maybe abrupt, terse, tense, controlled, and the result of the interaction are usually not productive nor inspiring.

What is the difference?  Is it truly the other person or circumstance or is it a dynamic that mostly operates in our blindspot.  A dynamic, that if unchecked, will drive us to enter conversations with a pre established mindset that focuses on validating itself.

This dynamic is called “An Assumption”.   Assumptions are made up stories about the other person or circumstance that we take as real.

Leaders that “assume” that the meeting with the customer will be difficult usually discover that “they were absolutely right.  Whereas those leaders who enter a conversation with a customer with the assumption that this will be a wonderful interchange are likely to experience the ease of building rapport and establishing a path forward.

With one particular team at Intellisource the participants were eager to unveil the underlying assumptions they had with a particular individual that led to an unworkable relationship.  Through our inquiry we noticed that most of these underlying assumptions had a historical basis that was related to something or someone which preceeded the current relationship.

Having that insight revealed the participants were then able to begin creating new “stories” about the people they had previously struggled with.

Tune in next month to discover how well it is working.  In the meantime I invite you to examine those relationships in your lives that are less than wonderful.  What are the underlying assumptions that you have made up based upon previously difficult interactions.  Are assumptions based upon facts?  Or assumptions based upon your interpretation of those facts?

Consider the following incident that occurred for me on the plane ride home from my visit with Intellisource:

Something fascinating happened on the plane ride home regarding the power of assumptive thinking:  I was sitting in the exit row between two wonderful people from Oaklahoma City.  Directly in front of us was a mother with a two year old who seemed uncontrollable.  Periodically he would let out an uncontrolled shrill that would literally pierce all of our ear drums.. We then would comment to one another about how disturbing it was, joke about how we had hoped he would fall asleep during the flight.    After an hour of this non stop litiny of periodic shrilling, my seat partner suggest to me:  “I believe this young child might have Turrets syndrome.  When he said that all of a sudden it occurred to me that was a distinct possibility.

From that moment on not only did I stop obsessing about how disturbing this child was to the silence I had hoped for but when the shrills occurred it no longer effected our conversation.  It was if the noise just blended into the background with all of the other noises on the plane.  It was no longer distinct or worthy of comment.

Once I shifted my assumption about this little boy and his mother from being a disturbance to “struggling with a disease” I immediatly went from contempt to compassion within a nanosecond.

Leadership, Something to Think About, Uncategorized

Best wishes to all our customers, associates, employees and partners. We appreciate all of you for who you are and what you contribute to our business and to our lives. You all have a choice in who you work with and for, and we’re thankful you’ve chosen IntelliSource. Thank you!

Take the Thanksgiving Challenge and let someone know that they matter to you. Just a quick email, text, tweet or phone call will do.

All the best,

Robyn
President, IntelliSource

Something to Think About

By Vistage member and speaker Daniel “Dana” Borowka co-author of Cracking the Personality Code

Many businesses now use personality tests to better understand employees and potential hires. These tests essentially describe a person’s pattern of behavior and thought process. Test results can help managers with employee development, team building, conflict resolution and succession planning.

Using the information gleaned in personality tests can improve hiring decisions and make teams and departments more productive.  These tests are now part of standard recruiting practice for many branches of the government and military and many Fortune 500 companies.

Personality testing has many uses for employers, here are the top seven:

1. Get the real picture on job candidates. It can be hard to uncover information on job candidates who always put their best foot forward during an interview. Personality test uncover a great deal about a person’s ability to work well with other personalities, their problem-solving skills, their thought processes, and their ability to tolerate stress. The objective information you get can help you make an informed decision about a candidate.

2. Pinpoint a candidate’s skills. Each employee has strengths and weaknesses. Personality tests help you uncover those with objectivity. Once you pinpoint the good and the bad, you can coach an employee to see measureable improvement.

3. Learn to manage difficult people. Face it, there will always be difficult people and flare-ups on the job. Personality assessments help to diagnose potential sources of workplace conflict. The best way to deal with a problem is to prevent it.

4. Get everybody to play nice. Sales, marketing, operations and financial people have to interact to make the company run smoothly. Many employees get frustrated with co-workers and wonder why everyone doesn’t act like them. Through the use of personality profiles, managers can coach employees how to interact better with peers.

5.  Make managers better leaders. When managers understand what makes their people tick, they become better leaders. Knowing personality traits can help to better motivate teams, communicate change and delegate authority.

6. Pick better teams. Today much work is done by ad hoc teams that come together for a specific purpose. Before you assemble a team, it pays to know the strengths and weaknesses of the team members. Sometimes this can be the difference between a productive team that gets the job done and one that pulls apart at the seams.

7. Set up employees for success. Sometimes we hire the right employee and put them in the wrong job.  Understanding preferred work styles and where a person would be happiest goes a long way to improving retention and productivity.

For more information on personality testing, you can see my book Cracking the Personality Code which explains what managers and business owners need to know about hiring and managing employees with the help of personality testing.

Vistage member and speaker Daniel “Dana” Borowka helps organizations in raising the hiring bar by using work style and in-depth personality assessments. Dana a partner of Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC. Dana can be reached at dana@lighthouseconsulting.com.

Leadership, Something to Think About

As the flu season begins in the U.S., businesses are looking for ways to protect their employees and ensure continued productivity. Below are 10 tips from the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) that you can use to help protect the health of your employees.

1. Develop policies that encourage ill workers to stay at home without fear of any reprisals.

2. Develop other flexible policies to allow workers to telework (if feasible) and create other leave policies to allow workers to stay home to care for sick family members or care for children if schools close.

3. Provide resources and a work environment that promotes personal hygiene. For example, provide tissues, no-touch trash cans, hand soap, hand sanitizer, disinfectants and disposable towels for workers to clean their work surfaces.

4. Provide education and training materials in an easy-to- understand format and in the appropriate language and literacy level for all employees. See www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/business.

5. Instruct employees who are well, but who have an ill family member at home with the flu, that they can go to work as usual. These employees should monitor their health every day, and notify their supervisor and stay home if they become ill. Employees who have a certain underlying medical condition or who are pregnant should promptly call their health care provider for advice if they become ill.

6. Encourage workers to obtain a seasonal influenza vaccine, if it is appropriate for them according to CDC recommendations (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/keyfacts.htm). This helps to prevent illness from seasonal influenza strains that may circulate at the same time as the 2009 H1N1 flu.

7. Encourage employees to get the 2009 H1N1 vaccine when it becomes available if they are in a priority group according to CDC recommendations. For information on groups recommended for seasonal and H1N1 vaccines, please see www.flu.gov. Consider granting employees time off from work to get vaccinated when the vaccine is available in your community.

8. Provide workers with up-to-date information on influenza risk factors, protective behaviors, and instruction on proper behaviors (for example, cough etiquette; avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth; and hand hygiene).

9. Plan to implement practices to minimize face-to-face contact between workers if advised by the local health department. Consider the use of such strategies as extended use of e-mail, websites and teleconferences, encouraging flexible work arrangements (for example, telecommuting or flexible work hours) to reduce the number of workers who must be at the work site at the same time or in one specific location.

10. If an employee does become sick while at work, place the employee in a separate room or area until they can go home, away from other workers. If the employee needs to go into a common area prior to leaving, he or she should cover coughs/sneezes with a tissue or wear a facemask if available and tolerable. Ask the employee to go home as soon as possible.

How to Prevent Getting or Spreading the Flu

Encourage your employees to protect their own health and the health of those around them with these tips:

1. Stay home if you are sick with influenza-like symptoms such as fever or chills AND cough or sore throat. In addition, symptoms of flu can include runny nose, body aches, headache, tiredness, diarrhea, or vomiting. CDC recommends that sick workers stay home if they are ill with influenza-like illness until at least 24 hours after they are free of fever (100° F [37.8° C] or greater) or signs of a fever without the use of fever-reducing medications. This would require employees to stay home for 3 to 5 days in most cases. CDC recommends this time period away from work regardless of whether or not antiviral medications are used.

2. Wash your hands frequently with soap and water for 20 seconds or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available.

3. Avoid close contact with sick people.

4. Avoid touching your nose, mouth and eyes.

5. Cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue, or cough and sneeze into your upper sleeve. Dispose of tissues in no-touch trash receptacles.

6. Wash your hands or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer after coughing, sneezing, or blowing your nose.

7. Keep frequently touched common surfaces clean, such as telephones, computer equipment, etc.

8. Try not to use other workers’ phones, desks, offices, or other work tools and equipment. If necessary, consider cleaning them first with a disinfectant.

9. Maintain a healthy lifestyle; attention to rest, diet, exercise, and relaxation helps maintain physical and emotional health.

For more information see the Vistage article How to Protect Yourself and Your Employees from H1N1 Flu or the CDC article 2009 H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) and You.

Something to Think About

A New Way For Businesses To Operate

By Kelly Smedley

Over the past 20 years, a lively discussion has taken place on the merits-and demerits- of outsourcing. Driven by the desire to reduce costs and focus on core business imperatives, many companies have shifted functions such as manufacturing, software development and customer care to outside vendors operating both domestically and internationally. The emergence of cost-effective technology and telecommunications platforms has greatly facilitated the outsourcing movement, Author and journalist Thomas Friedman brilliantly described this phenomengn in his best-selling book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, in which he analyzes the growth of global interconnectedness and
commerce.

To read more about ThinSourcing, download the attached pdf.

ThinSourcing

Something to Think About

by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan
http://www.threelawsofperformance.com/

An old Cherokee chief is teaching his grandson about life: “ A fight is going on inside of me,” he said to the boy.  “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

“One is evil- he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self –doubt and ego.

The other is good- he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

This is the same fight that is going on inside you- and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old chief simply replied, “the one you feed.”

Something to Think About

One day, I hopped in a taxi and took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car pulled out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches.

The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us, but my driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean he was really friendly. I asked, “Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital.”

This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, “The Law of the Garbage Truck.”

He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.

The lesson was simple, amazing and true. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, anger and frustration. So love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don’t and just smile genuinely and wave to people’s everyday garbage. After all, life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it.

Have a great, garbage-free day.

Something to Think About