See Monkey Do

Given today’s economy, saving money and making the most of your employees is the surest way to boost profits. With this in mind, let us turn to the benefits of performance management software. It is common knowledge that a smart business will streamline its procedures to the strengths of each member of staff to get the best from them. The main difficulty lies in identifying and tracking this data. Just keeping track of employee performance and determining progress in that performance is a significant task. First of all, you implement employee evaluation reviews to evaluate and track the work done by each staff member. If you’re using established approaches, your next step will be the manual analysis of all the raw data you have gathered just to track future progress and define objectives.

With performance appraisal software, all you need to do is examine the various metrics and factors to pinpoint the ideal goals and subsequently track the employee’s development. Generating as it does more precise information for less time invested, this is of course a major saving on its own. It is of course possible simply to use the system to record raw data like performance reviews and to make your own assessment. Performance appraisal software can do more than help employees. Both clients and suppliers can be studied using such programs, giving you even more performance appraisal tools. With suppliers in particular you can demonstrate the weak points like slow delivery times, bad loss records, etc.

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Clients can also be examined in terms of how they impact your company, and once again this information can be used to streamline your business practices and benefit your bank balance. Then, you can customize your ordering and stock handling to maximize your income while reducing outgoing money. Not only that but the better awareness of your target demographics will permit more efficient advertising.

Keeping an eye on both market and suppliers is smooth sailing with performance management software. It renders staff performance management a breeze and far more effective when encouraging staff through demonstrable goals dramatically. The sky honestly can be the limit with performance management software backing you up.

Let’s not forget that in addition to increased income, profits can also be generated by cutting costs and by encouraging more effective use of employee time. Employee performance appraisal software, despite frequently being overlooked, is a great benefit to companies wishing to do this.

It is common knowledge that a profitable company adjusts its procedures to the abilities of each staff member to get the most from them. Discovering and making this knowledge ready for use is often where things can become challenging, though. Identifying and keeping track of development through employee performance appraisal alone can turn into a huge task. First of all, you use employee performance appraisal techniques to evaluate and keep track of the work carried out by each worker. If you’re using established approaches, the next step will be to manually assess all the raw data points you have gathered simply to be able to track future advancement and define objectives.

Using performance management software you can be confident that this assessment is done for you and you only need to study the different analyses to determine what the right set of goals for this worker would be. It also renders keeping track of the worker’s progress much less effort. With more precise information for less time invested, this is of course a major saving on its own. It’s of course also possible just to use the software to keep track of raw information like performance reviews and to analyze these items yourself. It goes without saying that it’s not employee performance alone that can be improved by use of performance management software. Both clients and suppliers can be analyzed using the appropriate programs, giving you even more performance appraisal tools. For example, when looking at suppliers you can demonstrate the weak points like slow delivery times, bad loss records, and so forth.

When it comes to clients this kind of software can still offer a better picture there, too, showing you just who your best seller is, their loss percentage and similar fallout, and providing a reminder of outstanding payments. This information is useful in minimizing expenses and boosting profits. In addition to this, marketing campaigns become much more effective because you’ll have a deeper insight into your ideal demographic. Performance management software lets you watch your suppliers to save money and scrutinze your market to customize your plans and boost your profits. It also makes staff performance management quicker and much more effective as well as helping encourage staff members by setting definitive goals. All in all, what a careful user can achieve using this software is incredible!

Many managers believe that, if all of their employees have decent health & safety instruction, they are suitably equipped for a crisis. The truth is though, a basic education in health & safety legislation and risk asessment just is not sufficient. You must provide your staff with an enthusiastic supervisor, the right equipment, and last but not least the chance to practice.

An individual in a supervisory job has a bigger role to play than simply general management. Your selection of supervisor needs to consider that health & safety instruction is crucial and have the ability to get everybody feeling enthusiastic about it.

As well as checking conformity with health & safety legislation, the function of a supervisor also includes maintaining staff efficiency. This is a tough role. In depth product knowledge is an essential for a supervisory job as well as a very high standard of understanding of the safety legislation, risk assessment, and emergency assistance techniques. It simply is not adequate to send any staff to a health & safety course. To effectively spot a hazard they require to put their new-found skills to the test. Employees have to know how to deal with problems and knowing what to do when the worst happens. Workers are only really prepared when everything they have learned has become automatic. Good safety equipment is every bit as essential to the your workers’ well-being as training. When they are lacking the equipment they need, or even discover that equipment is damaged when they really need them, even the most advanced instruction is not going to help them. Regular maintanence of your apparatus is a good idea. If anything won’t meet the applicable criteria, ensure that it’s fixed ASAP and return it to the right place.

Your workforce have to get appropriate health and safety training, however they must have decent apparatus, frequent practise drills, and a supervisor with the sort of enthusiasm that is contagious. If you put these ideas into practice you should find health & safety legislation will become a normal part of life in the workplace rather than an inconvenience for the workforce to remember constantly.

Success in business depends on competent people management skills. With a little effort you can gain and develop these techniques. Having a natural skill for dealing with people is an advantage, but there are some skills you can do to make this procedure easy.

Build relationships: Start by memorizing the names of the workforce. Talk to employees; look employees in the eye during a conversation. Show respect, also be attentive to everything the other person has to say, even if you don’t agree or have a different opinion. Developing listening skills is one of the best things you can do to develop your talent management skills. Encourage any comments from team members.

Live up to your word: Do not give promises you can’t keep. When you don’t deliver on what you have promised, the delicate bond of trust is violated, and without trust people won’t perform at their best. Each time you say something or give a promise, you are squandering your time unless you follow through. You will discover, if your people can’t count on your word, your team will not be available when you really need them. Feedback is essential: Feedback must be a reciprocal process. Keeping an open mind with regard to other’s ideas is an important skill in managing staff. Being approachable and receptive establishes that you value other people’s ideas, your views will be valued in the same manner. Open discussion also encourages creative trouble-shooting, innovative ways of accomplishing goals, and develops the bonds of an excellent team. If your employees have a voice, each member of staff takes ownership of the outcome of the project.

Promote communication: Good communication is fundamental to dealing with employees effectively. Maintaining an open door policy, listen intently to other people’s views, retain an open mind, and encourage all your staff to express their opinions. Encourage staff not just to communicate with you, but with each other. The sharing of thoughts is critical in the creative process, when the staff communicate effectively, it is simple to find any issues before they present as a problem, and corrective measures can be applied before things get out of hand. Acquiring these skills will take some time, even so the rewards are worth it. By promoting a good team dynamic and listening to what your employees have to offer, a flourishing business will be yours.

With preparations for the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics in full swing, the city is in a mad rush to get things going. Organizing an event of such magnitude is not an easy task, and London is trying its best to rise to the occasion. The honourable Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, on his latest visit to New York, has made a stupendous effort to unveil some of the business opportunities presented by the Games to a number of giant corporations, agencies and groups in the US. The idea behind his trip is to get these groups over to the UK, involve them in the setting up of the games, and help make them a success. A number of business opportunities exist at the Games. Setting up logistics, catering and transportation are the basic tasks. To ensure that London is equal to the task, the city is being transformed into a business magnet, with uninterrupted transport links, thousands of new homes and offices and other infrastructure. All this has naturally been good for the commercial side of London, new businesses are showing more interest in real estate and office design and relocation specialist firms such as Claremont Group Interiors are showing marked increase in inquiries. CompeteFor, a contract management agency has been given the task of managing the contracts for all the myriad activities taking place at the Games. The construction work for the Olympic Village /Park is under way in East London. The residential housing, nearly ten thousand in number, is being complemented by top notch research facilities, a large amount of office space and a commercial shopping center. All this is apart from the top-class sporting facilities coming up as part of the Games infrastructure, where games and cultural activities are to be held. The Park is slated to be the largest in Europe once completed and the mayor is keen to see it succeed. He believes this is an ideal opportunity for US businesses to step in and establish them in the UK market.

It’s belief in numerous businesses that, by offering each staff member training in safety in the workplace, they are suitably prepared to manage a crisis. In reality though, basic instruction in health and safety regulatory affairs simply is not enough. You must provide your staff with adequate supervision, the right equipment, and the chance to practice. Each team must have a capable supervisor to oversee the work area, but this person must also perform another role. A supervisor must be a good communicator and think that training is fundamental.

In addition to encouraging compliance with health and safety regulations, a supervisor’s job also includes maintaining staff performance levels. Naturally it isn’t easy to accomplish all this at once. An accomplished supervisor needs to possess a comprehensive understanding of the industry and manufacturing procedures in addition to a high standard of knowledge of current regulations regarding safety, risk assessment and first aid. Just providing basic training in health and safety isn’t sufficient for your employees. Your employees have to have practical experience of risk assessment and the recognition of hazards. Employees have to know the best method of dealing with hazards as well as how best to act when something goes wrong. Employees are only properly prepared when everything has become routine.

Safety equipment is just as vital to the your employees’ well being as the instruction itself. If employees discover they are lacking the gear that is necessary, or even discover that they’re not functioning correctly in a crisis, even the most advanced training will not help them.

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You must inspect often to ensure you have all the necessary supplies and also that it is functioning correctly. If something is in poor order, ensure it is fixed or call out a maintenance engineer as a matter of urgency.

Appropriate health and safety education is essential to the health of your workers, however they must have the proper equipment, frequent practises, and a knowledgeable supervisor who gets the workforce to feel enthusiastic about being safe at work. And then observing health and safety legislation will soon become part of your employee’s working habits and no longer something for the workforce to remember.

“Hearing ‘reflective back talk’ from friends, colleagues, spouses, and significant others allows us to “true” ourselves in relation to their perceptions. With this input we can integrate our internal conversations with data from the external world to enrich the process of knowing ourselves better.” Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith, Learning to Lead

An elderly gentleman went to the doctor and with a complaint about a gas problem. “But,” he told the doctor, “it really doesn’t bother me too much. When I pass gas they never smell and are always silent. As a matter of fact, I’ve passed gas at least 10 times since I’ve been here in your office. You didn’t know I was doing it because they don’t smell and are silent.”

“I see,” the doctor replied as he examined him. When he was finished, he wrote a prescription and handed it to his patient. Take these pills three times a day and come back to see me next week,” he instructed.

The next week the gentleman was back. “Doctor,” he exclaimed, “I don’t know what medication you gave me, but now my gas… although still silent… stinks terribly!”

The doctor retorted, “Good! Now that we’ve cleared up your sinuses, let’s work on your hearing.”

An extremely useful step in our leadership development is seeing myself as others see me. So I need to understand their perceptions of my behavior. My effectiveness in leading, relating to, or working with others is highly dependent on their perceptions of me. I may not agree with what they see, but their perception is our reality. Those around me have an opinion of who they think the real me is. Their perceived “truth” becomes the way they treat me. Their perception forms their part of the reality of our relationship.

The discussion of perceptions is often a thorny one as we work with individuals, teams, and organizations to improve their effectiveness. For example, we tend to define levels of service or quality through our own eyes and values. That may not be the way our customers or partners define it. There is no objective definition. There is only the reality that I see, you see, he sees, or she sees. Our personal perception is our personal reality. There’s no accounting for taste. Everyone forms his or her own opinion no matter how wrong we may think it is. If we’re going to improve the service or quality delivered, we need to first understand how those we’re serving, or producing for, perceive service or quality.

Like beauty, service, quality, honesty, or integrity, leadership is in the eye of the beholder. I judge myself by my intentions. Others judge me by my actions. My intentions and the actions that others see may be miles apart. Unless I know that, I am unlikely to change my actions or try to get others to see me differently. I can become trapped in their reality and get very frustrated when they don’t respond to me as I’d like.

Getting feedback from others on our personal behavior is tough. It often hurts. The truth may set me free, but it will likely make me miserable first. When we get feedback, we nod our head to the positive and supportive statements that agree with our own views. However, when it comes to our weaknesses or improvement areas we take those to heart and sometimes dwell far too heavily on them. We can get ten rave reviews for work we’ve done and one critical comment. That one comment hurts. If we’re not careful, it can fester into doubts and a loss of confidence. As a result, the truth that may set us free of our less productive habits becomes the truth we prefer not to hear. That’s human nature. What stunts our personal growth and gets us stuck in a rut is when we refuse to hear any more of it. As a parent, boss, or appointed leader of some type, it’s too easy to hide behind our position and avoid feedback.

The wider the gap between our own perceptions of areas to improve and the feedback we’re getting the more we may experience the “SARAH process.” This approach comes from grief counseling. The first letter of each stage spell “SARAH.” The stages are Shock, Anger, Resentment, Acceptance, and Help. When I get open and honest feedback on how others perceive me, I may be shocked, angry, and resentful. But unless I accept that as their perceptions of the real me (their reality of me), I’ll never progress to the final stage of self-help or seeking help from others in taking action on the feedback and making the changes called for.

Human nature seems to endow us with the ability to size up everybody but ourselves. As painful as it may be, feedback is a big contributor to our leadership development. Feedback is often a key element in personal learning and improvement. It helps us to size up and see ourselves as others see us. We may not agree with the perceptions of others, but unless we know how we’re perceived, we stand little chance of improving our relationships and effectiveness with them. Feedback also gives us another opportunity to reflect on our behavior from the view point of others. It provides outside perspectives on the exploration of our inner space.
Not all feedback is valid and helpful. Ultimately I have to decide what fits and what doesn’t. I have to choose the feedback that rings true to me. According to an ancient story, a man once approached Buddha and began to call him ugly names, Buddha listened quietly until the man ran out of insults and had to pause for breath. “If you offer something to a person and that person refuses it, to whom does it belong?” asked Buddha. “It belongs, I suppose, to the one who offered it,” the man said. Then Buddha said, “The abuse and vile names you offer me, I refuse to accept.” The man turned and walked away.

Excerpted from Jim’s fourth bestseller, Growing the Distance: Timeless Principles for Personal, Career, and Family Success. View the book’s unique format and content, Introduction and Chapter One, and feedback showing why nearly 100,000 copies are now in print at http://www.growingthedistance.com Jim’s new companion book to Growing the Distance is The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. Jim Clemmer is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams, and personal growth. His web site is http://www.clemmer.net/articles

“A good leader needs to have a compass in his head and a bar of steel in his heart.” -Robert Townsend

Wouldn’t life be easy if our teams were focused on the same things? Our schools would run better. Our businesses would be more efficient. Well, even our personal relationships, would operate much smoother. If you follow my premise, what would happen if a leader was self-less instead of self-centered? Would organizations be better?

Let’s review the easy one –religious institutions. Assumption one is that a preacher should be God-centered. Albert Einstein once said, “God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.” Clearly, it is not a God problem, but a man problem. Many religious leaders of today do not promote the development of their laymen leaders. Power is usually centralized. Governing boards such as trustees and deacons are dismantled. I feel this strategy is to maintain control and neutral the impacts of difficult people.

Miller, the author of The Empowered Leader, argues that understanding politics is important, even for spiritual leaders. Miller also feels that a leader must be an effective politician because this leader must be able to bargain or cut side deals. The author’s major issue is that the leader shouldn’t abuse his power.

Likewise, business leaders and nonprofit organizational leaders struggle with politics and the issues of power. Let’s talk politics. Draft, an organizational behavior guru, defines politics as either a self-serving behavior or a natural organizational phenomenon. In Draft’s political model, he describes an organization with separate groups fighting for power. Look at the daily list of scandals by organizational leaders. What would happen if these fallen leaders cared more about the organization than themselves? Can these fallen leaders be persuaded that their “heavy hitting” politics didn’t save them from destruction? Are you on an upward climb on the corporate leader? Do you want to be power broker? I would caution you not to forget your customers and your employees. Think about them and the many advantages of becoming a self-less leader. Put your followers first and forget about the politics. Start today, and your people will follow.

References:

Daft, R. (1995). Organization Theory and Design. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

Miller, C. (1995). The Empowered Leader. United States of America: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Daryl D. Green has published over 100 articles in the field of decision-making (personal and organizational), leadership, and organizational behavior. Mr. Green is also the author of two acclaimed books, Awakening the Talents Within and My Cup Runneth Over. He is a columnist, lecturer, professor, and management consultant. Mr. Green has a BS in engineering and a MA in organizational management. Currently, he is pursuing a doctoral degree in strategic leadership. For more information, please email Mr. Green at pmla@att.net or visit his website at http://www.darylgreen.org

The annual performance appraisal is an opportunity to enhance
employee performance and create greater success for the company
and the individual. My intent is to explore how coaching skills
can be used in creating a good performance appraisal experience
for both the employee and the supervisor and how to keep good
performance going throughout the year. As a manager for 18 years
my experience was that performance appraisals were a tense time
for the employee and the supervisor. In either position, for me
it often felt uncomfortable, so how do we reframe it so that it
is a good experience for both?

Start with vision:

It’s important to start with vision: the company’s and the
employee’s. What is the company vision? The company vision
should be compelling and known by staff. When staff don’t know
the owner’s vision for the company it is hard for them to help
move it forward. Having a clear and compelling vision that
employees can buy into provides a foundation for success.

But what drives the individual isn’t the bosses vision, the
company’s vision, but their own compelling vision.

* Employees can embrace the company vision but…

* True success comes from within and from personal vision

* Personal vision should be compelling and tie into the company
vision

* Do you know your employees dreams and visions for their lives
and career

Take time to create a vision:

If the employee hasn’t thought about their vision, take the
time to create a vision with them. Does their vision, their
passion tie into the company vision? Can you as the supervisor
help the employee to achieve their vision? What if their vision
is your job? Well, that’s great. As supervisors, managers and
leaders part of our role is mentoring and developing our
employees. It’s great to have employees that are motivated to
learn and grow. It’s also great to have employees that know your
job and can do it competently.

Compelling visions are personal, written in the present tense,
as if…they are happening now, and point to an exciting future.
Encourage your staff to write their own compelling vision and
share it with you.

Our current appraisal framework:

Often the manager talks about issues that the employee didn’t
know was coming. Today we are talking about how to reframe the
experience for both the employee and the manager. With the
manager as a coach and partner committed to the employee’s
success the environment can shift. The goal is to reframe the
experience, creating a positive, goal oriented environment that
thrives on success and enhancing performance. In working with
many groups of people solving problems, when they focused on
what was going well and built upon it they were more successful
than when they worked on what the problems were that they were
having and what they needed to improve. In focusing on
solutions, they ultimately identified the things that needed
improvement as well.

It’s important to recognize your feelings about performance
appraisals and to imagine the employee’s perspective.

* History of being an uncomfortable experience

* Reframe the experience & create a positive, goal oriented
environment that thrives on success, enhancing performance

* An opportunity to tune into the person and find out what is
going on with them

* Create a plan for the upcoming year.

* Most individuals (most employees) want to be successful

Use Coaching Skills to develop success and excellence:

Where are we at now? After you have created a compelling
vision, find out where we are at right now, using five key
coaching questions you can quickly get to where the employee is
at. In these questions you have the opportunity to create
powerful positive energy, find out what the gaps are and what
the resources needed are. In talking about what would be ideal
you are also focusing a bit back on the vision, but you are also
pointing in the direction that you need to go- so how do we get
there?

* When meeting with a staff member:

o Be present

o Tune into them and tune out everything else

o See their greatness

* Use Five Coaching Questions:

o What’s going right?

o What makes it right?

o What is it that would be ideal

o What’s not quite right yet?

o What resources do you need?

As the supervisor, I see my role as one of supporting my staff
so that they can do their job, I’m their coach, their success
partner and the person that is helping to get them the resources
they need to do their job. As the director of an outdoor center,
my job was to get the clients there, but it was also to make
sure that our resources were there for the client, we had the
infrastructure we needed to provide the service- the ropes
course, trained staff, food for meals…..

Create a plan for excellent performance:

You, the supervisor become the partner or the coach - coaching
for success. In creating a plan focused on success for the
employee, the manager begins to shift the paradigm to one of
employee and coach/partner. As supervisors, our role is build
successful teams and we have to have successful team members in
order to do that. If we focus on creating success we are more
likely to create it. Focus on the positive, the solutions.
What’s going right, how do we create more of it? In working with
teams I have found that when I focus on what they are doing well
and how we do more of it - we build on our success.

When we create goals that are SMART, we can measure them, and
track their progress. If goals are soft, not measurable it
becomes difficult to progress the plan or give any feedback. So,
how do we make them measurable? Measurable is countable, how
many, when, who?

Goal Planning

* Goals tie into the company vision and the employees vision.

* Goals Point to an exciting future.

* They are positive, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant
and time bounded

Tips for setting goals

 Start with the RESULT in mind.

 Set SMART goals.

 Make it easy to see the next steps.

SMART Goals

SMART Goals have certain attributes that make them measurable.
When you can measure the goal you then know if you are attaining
it. Goals should be results or outcome oriented and not process
oriented.

* Specific: o Has clear deliverables or results

* Measurable: o Can be counted: how many? How much? Who?

* Attainable: o Can be attained at least 80%

* Relevant: o Important to the people you serve, your future
viability and relevant to your vision and values.

* Time-Bounded: o Think big, but it’s a 12 month plan, an
annual plan.

For example: My partner works for a yacht club, maintaining
their fleet of boats, so he might have a goal of refurbishing 3
boats this winter, including hull, topsides, interior and
undersides.

Another example could be:

A sales staff might have a sales goal such as increasing
personal sales by 20% during the year.

Or The CEO might have a goal of hire 4 new staff.

Annual goals are typically big. It’s important to break them
down into smaller steps. Refurbishing three sailboats is big, 1
boat per month over the course of the winter becomes more
manageable.

But the sales goal - can also be the foundation for creating a
plan to accomplish the goal. How are you going to accomplish it?

* Certain number of cold calls

* A systematic follow-up plan for each lead

* Direct mail, advertising - what are the specifics that are
going to create the success?

Build in Accountability:

Building in accountability in your annual success plans is the
key to success. How many performance appraisals have you had or
have you done, that didn’t get looked at until the next year?

You need to meet with people regularly and reviewing the goals.
It’s unfair to come at a staff person at the end of the year and
say you didn’t accomplish what we outlined in your plan. Yes,
you can accomplish some things just by writing down the goal,
but the level of accomplishment is usually lower than what we
want in our companies.

* The key to success is building in accountability through
regular meetings, weekly or monthly

* We often fall short on keeping a plan alive

* Regular meetings that keep focus on the plan and keep it
moving forward.

* Celebrate success, write down accomplishments, build on
success

Monthly accountability:

Meet with staff at least monthly and review the plan. Bringing
out the plan and talking about it, keeps it alive. If it is
never mentioned it gives staff the impression that it wasn’t
that important and they don’t need to work on the goals
outlined. Remember the goals outlined are focused on creating
better results for the company. You want that. Focus on the
plan. At the monthly meeting spend time to:

* Review the vision

* Review the accomplishments (What’s going right?)

* Review the goals

* Score each goal - give it a percentage 60%; 85%

* When a goal is falling short use coaching skills to help
figure out what the problem is and how to change it.

* Does the leadership need to shift to provide more
supervision, training, direction….?

You are looking for success of at least 80%. If the person is
in their own way, do they need to make a shift in their
feelings, beliefs, paradigm, to move forward and get themselves
out of the way. Are they choosing not to make the necessary
shift. It’s an opportunity to talk about choices that we make.
We each operate from a place of personal responsibility. We are
responsible for ourselves, our actions.

* Measurable goals can be scored

* Score the goals each month

* If the goal is below 80% talk about what’s in the way? Is the
individual in their own way?

* Go back to the five coaching questions:

Create a partnership:

The monthly review of the PLAN gives you the opportunity to
really check-in with staff and support them in developing
success. It also prevents the annual performance review dread.
They know you are invested in their success as well as that of
the company. This is powerful. It develops you as a leader and
partner of the staff member and lets you know where the focus
needs to be. It also creates a regular stream of
communication-both ways that can only improve results. Use the
five coaching questions:

* What’s going right?

* What makes it right?

* What’s the ideal, the vision?

* What’s not quite right now?

* What are the resources needed?

Coach them to succeed.

Handling poor performance: I believe that coaching skills can
help you as a supervisor create better success. When there is
poor performance the coaching questions give you an opportunity
to build success. But you have also built a framework for having
real conversations. We are all adults, and we each have personal
responsibility and make choices about our behavior. If you do
you discipline or progressive discipline in your organization
you need to have a clear policy on it and employees need to be
informed of the policy. They also need to know the expectations
and job responsibilities. And with that foundation believe you
can have real conversations about their behavior and choices and
the position it puts you in. Your behavior as a supervisor is a
consequence of their behavior.

I’ve had this conversation with staff in a union shop, in a
supervisory session that involved poor performance. It went
something like: Fred, you have great skills and talents that we
see here, and you also know why we’re here - you didn’t show up
for work and you didn’t call, it’s considered a no show/no call.
It puts me in a position where I have to take action, and if it
continues then I have to continue taking actions. You are
responsible for you and you are making choices for how you
handle your position.

And in having these conversations - it’s important to remember
that our goal is success and the employee’s goal is to be
successful also. Employee retention is important to everyone.

* Go back to the coaching questions - it gets them talking
about what is going right, what their vision for success is and
what is in their way.

* Help staff to identify limiting behaviors, how they are in
their own way, and shift their paradigms to get out of the way.

To create the success you want; Keep focused on your goals

Staying focused on your goals and those of your employees keeps
the momentum going. As the supervisor you can create a positive
and encouraging environment and create a performance culture.

Copyright © 2006, Donna Price www.businessbuildersintensive.com
mail@businessbuildersintensive.com

Ask most people why they are in business and they will give you any number of reasons. Things such as wanting to improve the lives of others; make the world a better place; provide for their family; have more free time; the list goes on and on.

Fact is business is about making money, which means the bottom line is the bottom line. Many business owners, managers and sales people seem to forget this. If you don’t have a strong bottom line you cannot continue to do business for very long. And if you can’t continue to do business you cannot achieve the other primary reasons you do what you do. The way you get a sturdy bottom line is to understand some basic truths about business.

A few fundamentals to running a successful business are to know what your product or service is, who your customer is, who you are, what drives you in business, and what trends are impacting the economy and marketplace.

Many people run their business without these key ingredients. Sure, a company can survive, but is survival all you are seeking? Don’t you want more? As previously mentioned, most people are in business to design a certain lifestyle for themselves and their families. Many are in business to create an experience for their customers. Still others are in business to improve the quality of their community. Unfortunately, many miss the mark by a long shot.

Think about why you are in business. What is it that drives you? Wouldn’t it be great to thrive beyond your wildest dreams and be a contributor to many of the causes you believe in due to the success of your business and professional life?

Regardless of where you are in business, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been running your company for some time; whether you work for yourself or for someone else there are essential pieces of information that are key to your success. First, in order to thrive you absolutely must know who you are. Not only who you are in the business, but in life in general. You also have to know what you believe in, what your values are, and what drives and motivates you.

Another key aspect of succeeding in business is to understand the needs and wants of your customers. Until you determine exactly who your customers are, you will have a difficult time satisfying what they want and need. That is why it is so important to determine what drives you. If you understand what drives you, what your values are, your beliefs, your dreams and goals, and what your ultimate purpose is, it will be so much easier to figure out who you want to do business with.

As has often been the belief and practice of many business owners, sales professionals, and managers, when asked who their market is, they respond with, “Everyone!” Fact is, if everyone is your market, ultimately no one is your market.

It’s incredible how many people have never taken the time to determine who they would ideally like to do business with. The more clarity you have, the simpler your process of doing business becomes. Do not confuse easy with simple. Running a business is not necessarily easy and yet, the process can be simple when you gain massive amounts of clarity.

Additionally, your existing and potential customers will have a much easier time distinguishing you from your competitors. With a new competitor cropping up on what seems like every street corner, make the decision making process for your clients as simple as possible. By gaining clarity through self-evaluation and customer evaluation, you attract more of your ideal clients. As you attract more of who you want to do business with you can focus more on the business of providing a great experience to your customers.

Copyright: © 2004 by Dr. Scott Kiser

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About The Author

Dr. Scott Kiser has been practicing general dentistry in Salt Lake City, Utah for over 20 years. Consumer Research Council of America selected him as Utah’s Top Cosmetic Dentist of 2003 - 04. Currently, Dr. Kiser is co-authoring the book “Why Be Different, Success Secrets to Sell the Unsellable” (Maxwell Publishing) scheduled for release in January, 2005. Visit www.greatsmilesutah.com to sign up for a FREE monthly online newsletter or for more information on Dr. Kiser and all of his services.

Skiserdds@aol.com