Month February 2022

The Enemy of Rumors

Steve Keating 1 Comment

When I was a graduate student working towards my PhD in Psychology I developed a theory on the origin of rumors. Oh wait, I forgot, I was never a graduate student working towards a PhD in anything. I’m just a sales guy who has been around long enough to know some stuff. (Let’s see if my non PhD turns into a rumor) 🙂

But I did develop a theory on the origin of rumors. I figure people have this space inside them, like in their brain, where they hold information. They are most comfortable when that space is full. If it isn’t filled with actual information from factual sources then they fill it themselves, often with rumors. 

That would make factual information the enemy of rumors. 

Bosses, managers and even leaders all claim to hate rumors floating around in their organizations. Yet they fail to understand their own role in the creation of those rumors. When they fail to keep their people full of factual information their people latch on to rumors to fill up their information space. 

Many bosses, lots of managers and even some leaders believe that information is power. They think that when they share information they somehow lose some of their power and control over their people. So they withhold information. Even information that could help their people be more productive and successful. 

What Authentic Leaders understand is that information only becomes powerful with it is shared with people who can somehow benefit from it. Some people may use the information to avoid a problem. Other people may use it to solve a problem that already exists. Still other may use it to finish a creative project that was started by someone else who lacked the information required to finish it. Many people just pass the information along to other people to help them grow and develop. 

Still more people file the information away in their “space” until the day they find a use for it. 

Very little information is actually useless. It will likely all be used at the appropriate time and place. That’s why the most successful people gather bits of information every single day. Most people call the gathering of those bits of information learning. 

So if you’re a boss, manager or leader ask yourself how much information do you withhold from your people for the simple reason that you can. Ask yourself if your unproductive habit of not sharing information stems from your belief that holding onto information somehow makes you more important or powerful. Ask yourself if your unwillingness to share information might be a result of you lacking faith in your own leadership abilities. 

Then ask yourself what information you’re holding right now that could help the people you lead. Maybe it’s information that would help build the culture of your organization. Maybe it’s information that could help the sales team sell more. Maybe it’s information that could help your people help more customers. And maybe it’s just a fun tidbit of information about the company that people would appreciate knowing. 

Once you’ve answered those questions then you can launch your assault on rumors within your team or organization. Information is a formidable enemy of rumors. Arm your people with the information they want and need and their space will be too full to allow rumors to enter.

The Time to Lead

Steve Keating 2 Comments

Leading people is not easy. Especially when compared to managing things. There are management processes and standard work practices. Both are predictable, you do certain things, you get a known outcome as a result. 

But people can’t be managed, they must be led. When leading people there are few predictable outcomes. People will always surprise you. We can’t know for certain how people will react in various circumstances until we see them react. Just because they acted in a particular way does not guarantee they will act the same way when they are in similar circumstances. 

That can make leading people a significant challenge. It can also make leading people very rewarding. Authentic Leadership helps people grow and develop. It frequently helps ordinary people achieve extraordinary results. It turns followers into leaders. 

The challenge of actually leading people is what causes many people in leadership positions to attempt to manage their people. Attempting to manage people causes an entire host of problems. In fact most of the personnel “problems” that an HR department deals with are a result of a person being managed rather than led. 

The employee may be labeled a “problem employee” when in reality it could well be a leadership issue. 

People in leadership positions who don’t actually lead quickly become frustrated with their people. They don’t understand why people won’t respond in predictable patterns. They give the same direction to 5 different people and they get 5 different results. They are also unlikely to understand their own role in the 5 different results. 

If you’re in a leadership position and you’re struggling with the performance of your people you first have to consider your role in their performance. You need to accept the fact that their performance is at least partly related to your effectiveness in leading them. If you have someone in your organization who is underperforming then there are two possible “root causes.” One, you hired the wrong person or you put them in the wrong role. Two, you are not providing them with the skills and tools they need to succeed. Either way, you must own that. 

You must also consider how you “see” your people. Are your people an expense or an investment. When you are attempting to coach an underperforming team member do you think “I’m going to have to SPEND time ON that person to get them up to speed.” Or do you think to yourself, “I have an opportunity to INVEST time WITH that person to help them reach the potential I see in them.” 

The difference in that mindset will shape every conversation with your team. Your people will pick up on that attitude and they will respond accordingly. If you believe your people are a problem then I can almost guarantee you that your people will be a problem. 

Leading people, Authentically Leading them, will take an investment of time. Often a substantial investment. If you don’t have the time to truly lead then you are doing your people and your organization a disservice by occupying a leadership position. You may want to stick with managing things because it could be that people just aren’t for you. 

What Do YOU Control?

Steve Keating 5 Comments

I was in a meeting with a team of high performing Sales Professionals and the discussion turned to all the things that frustrate salespeople. The list of frustrations for people who make their living selling has never been longer. Kinda like the list of frustrations for everyone. 

Most of the things that frustrated this group were things that they couldn’t control. Some of those things directly affected their paycheck and therefore their standard of living. Kinda like everyone else these days. 

Once we determined most of frustrations shared by these Sales Professionals were beyond their control we changed directions. We starting looking at the list of things they could control. They were a little surprised, maybe a lot surprised, that the list of what they had 100% control over was much longer than their list of frustrations. 

Kinda like the rest of us.  

It also became abundantly clear that this group of usually capable, well disciplined professionals were allowing the things they couldn’t control to prevent them from controlling the things they could. 

That happens to all of us sometimes, perhaps more than sometimes. Perhaps way more. 

But it’s so much easier to focus on the things we don’t control because we don’t have to expend any effort to correct them. What we don’t realize is that we’re still expending energy. It’s just wasted energy that we use to complain about the stuff we’re not expending energy on correcting. 

Yes, we are often forced to deal with things that we can’t control. Things that frustrate us immensely. But that doesn’t mean they have to control our life. 

You’ll be more successful if you use your energy to focus on the things YOU can control. You’ll also have a happier life. You’ll have a better attitude. You’ll be more productive. You’ll feel more in control. Actually, you won’t just feel more in control, you’ll have taken back control of your life. Even in these incredibly frustrating times. 

If you want control over your life then make yourself a list of all the things that you have control over in your life. I promise if you think this through it will be a long list. 

Some examples from my list include:

  • My attitude
  • My appearance (I dress exactly as I would if I was going to the office or meeting customers. The only difference is instead of a left turn to go into the garage I take three additional steps forward into my home office.) 
  • My level of productivity 
  • My response to the people I have contact with (despite what you may have heard there is no requirement that you allow someone else’s poor planning to become your problem)
  • My level of kindness towards others (there is never a reason to add to another person’s bad day)
  • My level of effort I put towards whatever I’m doing
  • My decisions
  • My level of commitment to earning what I’m paid (there is not and never will be any obstacle that can prevent you from giving your best effort…unless you allow it to)
  • My level of desire to help others succeed
  • My level of respect for people who I may disagree with or people who have very different viewpoints than my own
  • My level of empathy for people who are frustrated by the things they can’t control and haven’t learned to focus on the things they can

And the list could go on and on. 

Make your own list and share it for others in the comments section. Maybe we can help each other focus on the things we can control and decrease our level of frustration at the same time. 

Those would seem to be to be pretty good things to do. 

The Decisions You Make, Make You

Steve Keating 2 Comments

Research shows that the average person makes 35,000 decisions…a day! Assuming 7 hours of sleep each day that leaves 17 hours. That makes for a little over 2000 decisions an hour or one decision every two seconds. 

After seeing that research the first decision I made was to decide the researchers must be nuts. If we’re all making 35,000 decisions a day then we can’t be doing anything else. But then I made another decision to read a bit further. The article said decisions include things like deciding to read further in an article. Deciding to ignore a text notification while reading. Deciding to shift my position in the chair I was reading in. 

So whether we really make 35,000 decisions a day or not, it became clear to me that we make a whole lot more decisions than we are actually aware of. Some of those decisions have very little impact on our lives. Others have a major impact. And many, perhaps very many, we won’t understand their impact for years. 

I suspect many of the “outcomes” of our decisions we never tie back to a decision at all. But this much I’m certain of…the better the decisions we make the better the life we make as well. 

We make many huge decisions without ever considering the impact and consequences they could, or will, have on our lives. That’s because we often don’t realize how big some of our everyday decisions are.

For example, the decision about the people you allow into your life. You are the compilation of the five people you most frequently interact with. Yet for most of us we never even consider the influence other people have on our lives. We allow negative people, people who procrastinate, people who find a problem with every solution into our lives and then wonder why we struggle to be the person we want to be. 

If you want to be more successful then hang out with successful, positive and supportive people. 

I see salespeople all the time who when deciding to make one more sales call on a given day or knock off early they choose knocking off early. That’s a terrible choice in most every case. They limit their success, they limit their career and they limit their income. Salespeople who make that poor choice even a handful of times a month will need to work years to make up the lost income. But when deciding when their day will end they almost never consider the long-term consequences. 

The first step to making better decisions is realizing how many decisions you actually make. 

Little decisions, like deciding between a plain Hershey Bar or a Hershey Bar with Almonds won’t be life altering. But it’s likely that more decisions than you think will indeed have a long-term impact on your life. The most successful people consider the consequences of the consequences before making those decisions. 

You are potentially one choice away from a completely different life. There are two types of people in the world, those who believe their life is largely the sum of their choices and those who believe their life is chosen for them by the lottery of circumstances. 

If you don’t believe that then it’s likely you’re in the second group. If you’re interested in success that’s not the group you want to be in. 

Accept responsibility for your choices and you’ll be accepting responsibility for your life. 

Measuring Authentic Leadership

Steve Keating 6 Comments

I was asked recently what characteristics I look for in an Authentic Leader. Well that’s a big question and the answer would consume several blog posts. But perhaps the most important “characteristic” isn’t a characteristic at all. It also isn’t “in” the leader. 

If I want to know how authentic a leader is, and how effective they are, I don’t look at the leader. I look at the people they lead. I look to see if their followers are authentic as well. Are they committed to the leader? Are they engaged and consistently motivated? Are they accomplishing extraordinary things?

Most important, what percentage of them are moving beyond Authentic Followership to become leaders themselves?

The most common shortcoming of limited leaders is they fail to help their followers become leaders. I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve seen people in leadership positions lose an opportunity for promotion. The opportunity was lost because they had not built even one of their followers into a leader capable of taking over their role. 

I frequently see leaders who move on, either to retire or move up into a different organization, and there is no one on their team prepared to step in and lead. It happens again and again. In every organization. Every single day. 

If you’re in a leadership position and you’re not working with your people to help them grow from follower to leader then you may possess certain characteristics of an Authentic Leader but you are not leading authentically. 

Authentic Leaders do not create more followers, they create more leaders. Leaders who grow more leaders leave behind a legacy that limited leaders can’t. 

If you’re trying to determine if someone is an Authentic Leader look at the people they lead. If they are transforming from follower to leader then it’s very likely the person leading them is a true Authentic Leader. If not then they are in all likelihood being led by a leader who is at least somewhat limited. 

Leaders who help followers become leaders have the potential to unleash explosive growth within their organization. They have the potential to help ordinary people achieve extraordinary accomplishments. Their leadership outlasts their time as a leader. 

When you see a leader like that you know you’re looking at an Authentic Leader. That‘s true even if you can’t see the obvious characteristics of Authentic Leadership.

A Culture of Customer Service

Steve Keating 3 Comments

Over the years I’ve done a bunch of Customer Service Training. I don’t do much anymore because the “new” methods for providing customer service seem to have more to do with profitability and less to do with service. 

I realize this is crazily old school thinking but I still believe the surest way to profitability is to provide your customers with outstanding service. It’s not a one or the other kinda thing. It’s more than a little disappointing how many people and companies disagree with me. 

Today Customer Service “experts” talk about CX Hubs, creating customer experiences, deflecting customers from expensive technical help by shifting them over to a bot or some chat thing. 

There’s actually some research that shows the Gen Z demographic would prefer to not speak with a human when accessing customer support. But not all of them and even if it were their purchasing power does not yet match that of Millennials, Gen X and Boomers. 

Most people want to talk to someone who gives a damn about helping them. 

But sadly there’s a lot more money to be made by talking about creating customer experiences and CX than there is to be made by teaching the basic skills needed to truly help a customer and make them feel valued. 

My biggest problem with most Customer Service training is that the best customer service doesn’t come from a series of actions, responses, or policies. It comes from creating a culture of caring for customers. Not only from the Customer Service Department but from every department. When I call a company for help I don’t care what department the person who answers the phone works in. I expect everyone working there to give a damn about me and every single customer. 

There are no “tricks” to helping customers. There is just help. That help doesn’t come from a policy, it comes from a deeply held conviction that helping customers is the right thing to do. It’s always always always the right thing to do. 

A culture of caring for customers can only be “taught” by modeling it. It must be coached and demonstrated on a daily basis. 

If Customer Service isn’t everyone’s responsibility then sooner or later your customer will get the feeling that it’s nobody’s responsibility. If your organization treats Customer Service as an expense rather than an investment your customers will quickly pick up on that mindset too.

Customers by and large are good people. They don’t want to be a bother so when they feel as if they are bothering you they will stop…stop bothering and stop buying. 

How does your business treat customers…like an expense or an investment? Think about that.

Are You a Sales Manager or a Sales Leader?

Steve Keating Leave a comment

If you’re responsible for the sales team in your organization I hope you understand the difference between managing your sales team and leading them. I also hope you’re doing both. 

But it’s very likely you’re only doing one of them and that the one you’re doing is managing. 

That’s because somewhere in the neighborhood of 99% of Sales Managers were promoted to Sales Manager because they were excellent salespeople. When they were promoted they were told to manage the sales team. No one ever said a word about leading them. 

Most Sales Managers manage their sales teams the same way they were managed. If their manager happened to also be a leader then they may do some leading. But for the most part Sales Managers just manage and don’t even realize they aren’t leading. 

Solid sales management is essential for a steady consistent growth in sales. But the only path to explosive sales growth is leadership. I have seen company after company invest millions of dollars over years and years to develop their sales team.  All while spending virtually nothing, or actually nothing, to develop their sales leaders. 

I guess that’s not surprising considering somewhere between 70-80% of people in leadership positions have less than 1 hour of formal leadership training during their careers. That’s less than 1 hour, as in 60 minutes. It’s like buying one car after another without an engine and wondering why none of them get you anywhere. 

Some organizations have managers who can’t lead and some have leaders who can’t manage. So long as an organization has both they can do just fine. But the most successful organizations have managers who can lead and leaders who can manage. They understand the difference between the two and move seamlessly back and forth. 

But for a person in a Sales Management role to be effective they MUST be both manager and leader. 

As a Sales Manager they define territories, they set quotas, they hold people accountable, (as do Sales Leaders) they analyze numbers and help put deals together. They manage the “stuff” that goes into selling. 

A Sales Leader is focused on the people who sell and frequently on the people who buy. They are the motivator that salespeople need. They are the coaches they wish they had when they were actively selling. They teach, they listen, and most of all they show they care about the people on the front lines of selling. Their salespeople. They lead the people in selling.

To any company looking to train their salespeople I would say it’s one of the best investments you can make in your organization. But I’d also say don’t forget your sales leaders. Investing in real leadership training for your sales leaders is a force multiplier that pays dividends year after year. 

Or you can sit in your bright shiny new engineless car and wonder what’s over that next horizon.