Communication

How to Win at Leading Change

What happens when you want to introduce change in your business? Let’s look at a typical example.

In many companies, a big change is discussed in meetings and memos for weeks or months by the top team. They eventually reach a decision, prepare a presentation and call all the staff to a big meeting.

Well, the change is announced, with an impressive array of PowerPoint slides, and the employees are encouraged to go away and ‘be more productive’, or ’sell more products’ or ‘implement the new marketing strategy’ or whatever.

Admit it, it can be frustrating when the staff, looking none too impressed, file out of the room whispering ‘here we go again’ or ‘what a waste of time’. And then come the deputations of angry staff who spend a huge amount of your precious time attacking the new plan.

In some ways the obvious, angry and aggressive attacks are the easiest to handle. One manager told us: “You just have to take it on the chin, stay firm, keep the testosterone levels high and keep on like a broken record.” I’m not sure I agree, but it is a common strategy.

The less obvious, underground attacks are more difficult to deal with. What’s being said round the water cooler? Who is using the informal networks and the company corridors to build roadblocks for your strategy?

And if you think you haven’t got informal resistance – you’re wrong. You just haven’t found it yet.

If there’s a lot of resistance to change, you may feel tempted to force the change through. You may say ‘What the company needs is immediate action’, and you may believe that allowing people to debate the issue is a waste of time.

Resist that temptation. Without persuading enough people in the organization that there is a need for change, the change process will fail.

And most change efforts fail. There’s research to suggest four in every five change efforts fail.

So you’ve got to get people on-side. And a bit of political forethought on your part can avoid a failure. So let’s take a step back.

We know that people like to be given a say in big changes. Of course, you may have the responsibility to make and take the big decisions. You’re the boss after all.

But your people need time to understand the original problem. And they need time to accept the solution you’ve come up with. Debating that change and being heard is an essential part of that process.

They also need time because maybe the idea you’ve come up with can be modified or improved.

And if you’re the strong manager we think you are, maybe you’ll have the courage to accept someone else’s idea, if it’s better than yours.

So have the courage to open up even the biggest debates. You will win greater success, faster. Trust the process.

And remember that resistance is useful. It tells you that the change process has begun.

If you want the leadership success you deserve, get the leadership training you deserve. Download more free articles and leadership training videos from Steven Sonsino, an international business school professor and author of the Amazon bestseller “The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders”
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The Truth About Leadership – It’s Good to Talk

Business leaders generally don’t ‘do’ anything. It’s true.

They don’t work on the factory conveyor belt, they don’t write the sales copy, they don’t service the computers.

What leaders do do is talk for a living.

If you’re a senior executive, reflect for a moment on your typical day at work. The chances are that you spend most of your time in conversation with others. The people you talk with varies from day to day. Even from moment to moment.

You talk with your peers, your suppliers, your subordinates and even with your customers. (Though possibly not as much as you should.)

And the style of your conversation varies: it might be an apparently casual chat, or a formal meeting or a conference.

And yet many business leaders get very touchy if you suggest they spend their days talking. They retort: “Are you accusing me of being all talk and no action?”

Some leaders seem to see this as an insult. But it’s not an insult – it’s simply a way of describing what business leaders do.

When we call someone ‘all talk and no action’ we seem to be accusing them of wasting their time chatting and not getting anything done. However, if you’re a successful leader, your conversations won’t be unstructured and pointless. As a result of your conversations, things will happen. After all, 100 per cent of your ‘action’ should be to get other people to do things.

And if you get five or 20 people doing the right things, then you’ve achieved far more than if you tried to do the work of 20 people yourself.

Lead through others. And let your talk drive the actions of your people.

For every talker, there must be a listener.

But leaders don’t listen. They just don’t listen. It’s true.

The 360 degree surveys that we do suggest that leaders are usually too full of themselves and their own ideas to listen to anyone else. They don’t seem to value anyone else’s ideas or opinions.

And yet, it’s important to remember that a key part of good conversation is to be a good listener. This is a lesson that senior leaders need to learn today more than ever.

Why? Well suppose you want to introduce a change into a fast moving business. It’s all very well deciding to take your organization in a particular direction, and it’s all very well telling your staff what you want them to do. But how do you know they will do what you tell them? Unless you listen, you don’t.

Secondly, how do you know that they’ve understood what you want them to do? Unless you listen, you don’t. (You can hope.)

Thirdly, how do you know that your vision can be implemented as you saw it? Might someone lower in the organization have ideas that could make your vision better? Unless you listen, you have no way of knowing if there’s a better way.

So stop right here.

Please listen: the only way to get the answers to any of these questions is to listen, systematically and deeply, to your people.

OK, if you lead a large department or organization, you won’t be able to listen to everyone. But identify the key players and make sure you listen to them. Ask them how THEY see things working. That way THEY can get to grips with the details of the vision or strategy. And you can help them discover its strengths and weaknesses.

And, hey, you might even learn a thing or two yourself.

Conversation is a valuable tool, because it’s not just a way of exchanging information. By listening to someone, really listening, you boost their self-respect and confidence.

And you can also motivate them to get it right. Sometimes senior executives forget how powerful this can be.

Benefits of listening:

If you learn how to listen effectively, you can gain information at three levels:
1. You can learn what’s happening at the surface level to the people you’re talking with – but, importantly, from their perspective, not our own.
2. You can learn how people feel about what’s happening to them.
3. And you can learn how people feel about themselves.

Each of these levels can provide valuable information. Combined, they are a powerful leadership tool. They help you:
- Assess what the most important things going on in your organization right now are.
- Work out the implications for your business – what options they leave you with, or what options they create.
- And decide what to do now, if anything, as a result.

If you want the leadership success you deserve, get the leadership training you deserve. Download more free articles and leadership training videos from Steven Sonsino, an international business school professor and author of the Amazon bestseller “The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders”
Get more FREE videos and articles right now: http://www.deathofleadership.com

An Easy Way to Serve Spanish Customers in Their Native Language

On everything from groceries to electronics, multi-language instruction labels attest to the rise of Spanish-speaking consumers in American society. Spanish holds a pretty strong place in the world language arena as well. For example, out of more than 5,000 languages, Spanish ranks third for having the highest number of speakers. As a result, Spanish is playing an ever increasing role in business, media and advertising. And, seeing the need for a new skill in the workforce, a higher number of college students are flocking to learn the language.

Unfortunately, companies can’t afford to wait for a new generation of college students to serve the Spanish-speaking customers that they have today. That’s why several companies, large and small, have started outsourcing their Spanish customer service to a Spanish call center.

Communication has always been at the heart of understanding and serving customers. If your employees don’t speak the same language as your customers, communication obviously becomes a difficult or even impossible task. That is why is makes sense to hire a professional Spanish speaking call center. On the other hand, an external call center needs to meet several criteria before you turn your company’s reputation and a whole group of valuable customers over to their care.

Personally, before I would hire an external call center to take on so much responsibility, I would need to know that they were reliable, experienced and capable of providing all the services that I need. For example, depending on the business you run, those Spanish call center services might need to provide anything from customer care to order processing, lead capture, surveys, call traffic overflow, technical support, sales campaign management, appointment scheduling, customer retention, and a help desk.

If you do find a company that can accomplish all these tasks, the next step is to ask about their facilities, the number of customers they serve, and to do some research on their reputation. Good companies often have a plethora of referrals or testimonials on their side and maybe even some awards for customer service too.

Another thing you need to have is good communication lines between your company and the external call center. This means that the telecommunications company needs to be able to communicate with English speakers as well as they can communication with Spanish speakers. Otherwise, you will be experiencing the same kind of frustration you are trying to spare your customers and employees by hiring an external call center.

Anexa (http://www.anexatel.com/) provides a wide array of Spanish call center services for the clients that rely on their facilities. With more than 90% of their employees college-educated and well-trained, Anexa employees are reliable and experienced. The author, Art Gib, is a freelance writer.

How Cutting Back Communication Can Save You Time and Money – Part II

In Part 1 we looked at why starting a debate was a breakthrough way to save you time and make more money. Now let’s look at how to get a debate started.

So what’s the best way of getting your people involved in a debate? Well, it involves the most effective form of communication.

As you might guess, this is face-to-face contact. It has been shown over and over again that a ‘rich’ communication style – face-to-face, and usually one-to-one – is the best way to communicate complex messages.

Face-to-face is so much better than ‘lean’ styles such as memos or emails.

But obviously, I can hear you saying, the number of people you can talk with one-to-one is limited.

But ‘rich’ communication can include any situation where people can see you and hear you. It means they can take in your body language and sincerity. It means you get rapid feedback, and can establish a personal focus.

In other words, an opportunity for rich communication includes any situation where people can learn what’s going on as quickly as possible, both in terms of actual content and also at an emotional level.

So are you using blogs or video messaging or town hall meetings as much as you could be? Get out and about to let people see and share your messages. Let them see and share you, your questions and your concerns.

At the very least you should talk face-to-face with your line managers and ask them to do the same with their staff. And make sure they tell you what feedback they receive.

Decision-making is a crucial part of business leadership. But there’s little point in making a decision that’s wrong (because you didn’t talk to the right people), or making a decision that no one acts on (because there’s too much resistance to the change), or making a decision that’s misunderstood (because you didn’t communicate it to people in the right way).

There’s still a place for the blunt memo or routine email, but save these for routine, simple information. Where more complex issues are involved, try to communicate face-to-face with as many as possible. And don’t tell them what to think. Ask them what they think.

It can be uncomfortable, but you need time, commitment and often a thick skin to enter a debate. In the end, though, it saves you time and makes you money. Not only that, but it earns the commitment of other people, and can help you gain more success as a leader, more than you dreamed possible.

If you want the leadership success you deserve, get the leadership training you deserve. Download more free articles and leadership training videos from Steven Sonsino, an international business school professor and author of the Amazon bestseller “The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders”
Get more FREE videos and articles right now: http://www.deathofleadership.com

Office Phone System with VoIP vs. PBX

As the owner or manager of a medium or small office, you may find yourself looking at a myriad of options for your new or upgrade office phone system.

You have almost certainly heard the debate about the advantages of VoIP vs. PBX systems, and you are tying to make the best decision to fit your business’s current and future telephony needs.

You don’t have to be an expert to find the best office phone system these days. And, the even better news is that a good solution doesn’t have to cost you a fortune as it certainly would have in the not too distant past!

Small to medium sized businesses have struggled for years with the limited options in office phone systems on the market. Larger companies were able to buy and service large PBX systems to handle their calls, while smaller offices struggled finding something that was affordable and effective.

Usually, the solution of the past for these small offices was to gather together many physical phone lines coming into the office space and expensive phones with multiple line capabilities.

Thanks to the advances in VoIP technology, small and medium sized businesses now have great options that are easy to maintain and affordable.

- What is VoIP?

VoIP is an industry acronym which stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol.” All that means, is that you can transmit your voice digitally over the internet.

The chief advantage of VoIP is that you do not need a lot of specialized equipment inside your building as you do with a traditional PBX system. Instead, you use your existing computer network to transmit your calls over your Internet connection rather than over telephone landlines.

- PBX vs. VoIP Equipment

Traditional PBX systems work by having “trunk lines” come into your office from the local phone company. From there, the PBX system uses physical lines going to each individual phone to be able to transfer calls within the system.

VoIP doesn’t require these expensive trunk lines, and you no longer need to have separate phone and computer network cable installed into each office. VoIP phone systems use your existing computer network to transmit and receive all of your calls.

Essentially, your calls arrive through the same wire as your e-mail messages.

- How does VoIP Save Your Business Money?

VoIP saves your business money because you don’t need the multitude of expensive phone lines installed into your building from your local phone company.

In addition, PBX equipment requires telephone cables to each extension which VoIP does not need, saving you money on cable installation within your building.

Lastly, VoIP calls are routed over the internet, not the phone system, and your long distance and local calls are much cheaper to make because of it.

VoIP is a great option for small to medium sized businesses looking for the ability to have an advanced and efficient office phone system with a lower cost and ease of administration.

Buying new or upgrading your office phone system, Louisiana businesses look for cost-effective and beneficial technology for the office. At Mark L Gray & Associates, http://www.marklgray.com/, they offer exceptional service and support.