If 55% of the impact of a communication is determined by the visual aspects, how do staff members who work with our customers on the phone build trust and confidence in our products and services?  Only 7% of the impact of their communication  is the actual words, the content or the verbal message. Yet that is what we spend so much time carefully crafting!  

For phone personnel that makes that 38% impact of voice quality very, very important. Voice quality includes tone, softness or loudness, accents, grammar, volume, tempo, rhythm, inflections–in other words how we say it.  These figures come from a study done in 1983 by Dr. Albert Mehrabian of UCLA.  

It makes sense to spend some of our training time for 

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Tags: Communication, Management Skills, New Employees, Performance Expectations, Training, Coaching // Add Comment »

According to a recent Gallop Poll only 6% of men wear a tie to work every day.  Sales of men’s ties have dropped to a record low of 677 million as opposed to 1.3 billion in 1995. This and other  facts about ties was the subject of an article in my local paper, The Press Democrat. 

To Tie or Not To Tie!

Not many years ago ties were required in most fine restaurants. Now you see men with baseball caps on backwards and even gang attire. The only men who seem to consistently wear a tie are funeral directors, talk show hosts, news anchors and lawyers when they are in court. And why do talk show hosts wear a suit and tie anyway?  I would laugh just as loud at Jay, David and Craig if they were wearing dress casual. Wouldn’t you? 

On the other hand those comedians 

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 Does it seem to you that you revisit the same decisions over and over?  Do you make decisions only to have them fumble and die of apathy?  Having meetings that are as effective, tight and productive as a good girdle is great.  But if the decisions made at those meetings do not have buy-in from everyone at the table, or are not formalized, the decisions may be sabotaged and rendered useless and toothless.  What are some signs that a decision is being undermined?  See if any of these sounds familiar: 

1. 1.  The supervisor or manager goes back to his department or unit and announces the decision that has been made, rolls       his/her eyes and says, “ I didn’t agree with this decision, but I got out voted”.  Well there’s a resounding endorsement!  How studious do you think that manager will be at implementing the decision?
2. 2.  The supervisor/manager fails to even report the decision to the appropriate people!  Weeks later his/her staff hear about it from other departments.  
3. As soon as the decision is made some of the participants involved in the meeting and the decisions that were made, start buzzing about the decision, criticizing it, complaining about it, saying how it won’t work. This creates doubt in the ones who did agree wholeheartedly.  People don’t start implementing the decision because it is obvious it isn’t going anywhere.  And who can blame them? 

Here’s one way to get commitment about a decision.  Ask each person, individually, to 

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Managers and supervisors can take note on how hospitals are reducing their malpractice lawsuits by counseling their doctors to apologize when they make a mistake. 

Yes it’s true there is a lot to be learned about excellent leadership, communication and collaboration from the newspaper.  Part one of this article spoke about a casino tribal leader who overcame his predecessor’s bad leadership and communication to win over a community that had been dead set against any expansion of the casino in the wine country.  Here’s a story, in the same newspaper (The Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, California) on the same day that further illustrates the points.  

The Value Of Saying You Are Sorry

When Dr. Tapas K. Das Gupta, chairman of surgical oncology at University of Illinois Medical Center discovered that he had removed tissue from the wrong rib of his patient, he did something that might have made some hospital lawyers cringe; he apologized to the patient!  He recalled saying, “After all these years, I cannot give you any excuse whatsoever.  It is just one of those things that occurred.  I have to some extent harmed you”.   

Wow, for decades malpractice lawyers have been advising doctors to 

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My local paper afforded me an opportunity to share some thoughts on the power of good communication and collaboration. 

Near my home in the wine country of Northern California there has been a decade long battle between an Indian tribe that wanted to put in a casino on their land and the neighbors who enjoy one of the most scenic and wealthy vineyard and winery regions in the world.  The tribe’s rather combative and secretive tribal leader and local government, environmental groups and wine industry associations duked it out for years.

When the casino parking structure suddenly went up, as if over night, the tribal leader finally admitted they had been “less than truthful”.  Not a good way to establish good relationships.  Back and forth it went over zoning, land use, access, fire and police protection, liquor permits and more.  

Then something very different happened. 

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For many people meetings are the bane of their workday. They dread them, have no interest in the subject, can’t figure out why they have to be there, don’t know why the meeting is being called, and think meetings are generally a waste of time. 

For these and other reasons people who dislike meetings, often arrive late, bring other work or the newspaper with them, sigh deeply during key discussion points, speak sarcastically, or exhibit other disruptive and dismissive behaviors that hamper the effectiveness of the meeting.

Here are 7 things you can do instead of holding a meeting or to reduce the number of meetings you do hold.  

1.     Assign the decision, project or recommendation to a small group who may be able to work faster and more effectively without a big group. Too many meetings get bogged down by your local contrarian, negativist, or other meeting killers.

2.     Hold a conference call or use Go To Meeting or other conference services. 

3.     Send out a 

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We all know we should. Successful managers and supervisors do it.  Results-oriented managers do it!  The people who get promoted do it.  Why don’t you? 

There are a lot of reasons not to delegate, but I have found in my years of consulting that FEAR is the big issue. Oh you can soften it and call it concerns or worry, but it’s fear and it holds you back. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons (excuses) we give for not delegating. 

• They won’t do it right and I will have to do it over. 
• They won’t do it right and I will get blamed! 
• No one knows enough to do it but me.  
• I can’t shove my work off on someone else. 
• If I give my work to the staff why will I be needed?

A closer look at these reasons (excuses) reveals that they are all fear-based. It may be mild like a worry, moderate as in concerned. or strong as in fearful.  Tell us what your reasons are in the comments section below. 

Here is a way to check out those fears.  For each fear ask yourself: 

1. Is this worry/fear realistic? 
2. Is it really, truly realistic? 
3. What is one thing I would like to delegate? 
4. What could I do to overcome this worry or barrier to delegating? 
5. What could I accomplish if I were relieved of some of these tasks?
6. Which tasks will I delegate and to whom?
7. Create an action plan 

For more help, discussion, and templates for delegating go to the resources section on the left side of this blog and click on the mini-workbook,”Delegation, Start Doing It Today” .  

What are your reasons for not delegating.  Please tell me in the comments section what your legitimate and illegitimate reasons for not delegating are.  I will assemble them into themes and get back to you on this blog.  Thanks.  

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Organizations who have fully engaged employees have a much better bottom line than those whose employees are disenchanted. Intuitively we have always known this but a  2007 Towers and Perrin study of companies worldwide confirms it. Companies will earn more money if their employees are engaged, challenged and empowered. What does engaged mean?  It means that employees are willing and anxious to give more of their discretionary efforts to their work. They are connected to their organization emotionally, know how to add value and are willing to do so. Other facts from the study include:

•   Just 21% of the worldwide work force is fully engaged. So nearly 80% of people do not contribute fully and are costing the employer money in terms of productivity, effectiveness, customer service and more. But in America the percentage of engaged workers is 29% and 28% are disengaged or disenchanted.  In Mexico those numbers are 54% and 16%, in Japan the numbers sag to a whopping 3% engaged and 72% disengaged or disenchanted!  

•  The organization has a big impact on whether or not employees are engaged.  The notion that employees are just “free agents” 

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From a new employee’s perspective your organization might resemble Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice fell down a hole and encountered a world with strange new rules and an assortment of weird characters. 

Does your work place have any characters like these from Wonderland?   

·      The White Rabbit always running around stressed and harried saying things like, “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date, no time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late”.

·      The Queen of Hearts, the ruler in Wonderland.  She is severe, dominating, childishly cruel and always screaming and yelling at her subjects, “Off with their heads!”

·      The King of Hearts who is ineffectual, but often quotes the rules. He does however undo some of the Queen’s cruel sentences. 

·      The Cheshire Cat who

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Stressed employees are not the best, most effective employees. If you and your staff are undergoing major changes, a busy business cycle, end of the year budgets or other stressful events, you may want to know that new research puts a new light on the age-old idea that all people respond to stress with the “fight or flight” response. Until rather recently 90% of the research on stress has been done with men. Women, it turns out, have an additional response to stress. Researchers have termed it the “tend and befriend” response. According to a landmark study conducted by four women researchers at UCLA, a chemical named oxytocin is released in women who are in stress.  This chemical buffers the fight or flight response and encourages a woman to tend to her children and/or befriend others. As she does those activities more oxytocin is released and more calming occurs. Oxytocin is not released in men in stressful situations. 

So while men may respond to stress by  raising their voice or holing up somewhere until they become calmer, women can calm themselves by 

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