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What does it require to be an inspirational leader?

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

The concept of being inspirational may feel overwhelming to some. We tend to associate inspirational with icons of business like Richard Branson or monumental politicians such as Churchill or Kennedy.

But if you did the little exercise I invited you to try out last week, trying to identify leaders who in your career have been inspirational. I am sure you came up with a few even if you have not been fortunate enough to work for someone in the Branson category. Leaders with a lot less punch than Branson can still come across as very inspirational.

So, is the ability to be inspirational something we are born with or is it a learned skill? Maybe a bit of both. It is probably true that for some people, this comes more naturally than to others. But there is also lots of evidence that becoming more inspirational can be learned.

It begins with awareness. Awareness precedes change.

If we can identify the gap between our current skill level and the results we would like to see, then we have the best possible starting point for learning.

So, looking at what it takes to become inspirational, we can start with the very basics. Two things need to be in place for you to come across as inspirational and followership to occur as a consequence.

1) You need to be there.
2) You need to know where you want to go.

Yes, the first step is presence.

Only if you are fully present can you hope to be an inspiration to anybody. If you are distant, unfocused, distracted, frustrated or otherwise multitasking. You not only don’t have the necessary connection with the people, you are also undermining whatever trust there was between you.

No trust, no followership. David Maister has written extensively on how we compute trust in others. You can find more here.

What now?

Try and observe yourself over the next few days as you interact with your team. At the end of the day, rewind the day and think about the encounters you had. Were you fully present? Yes or no? Presence is a bit like pregnancy in that you cannot be somewhat present. Either you are there or you are not.

If you can identify situations when you were not fully there, ask yourself why. Was it your mood, external interference or what? Did you forget to reset you mind and body as you drifted from one meeting to the next? Was half of you still arguing a point in the previous meeting as you started the new one? If you are unsure how to reset your body/mind to a more present state, check out my friend Anouk Brack. She and her colleagues do a great job teaching this stuff.

Once you have mastered being present – it’s time to get clear about where are you going. Sometimes we call that vision/ mission work, but again that can become awfully theoretical and highbrow. I like to ask myself the question: So what are we trying to create?

Think of yourself having a coaching conversation with me. What would you answer be if I asked you: So if we were having this conversation one year from now and you were to look back on the past 12 months, what would have happened in your (department, company, team) for you to feel that you had made some real progress?

If you can answer that, gather your team and have a conversation about how they feel about this and what they think it is going to take from all of you to get here.

Now you have taken a first important step to becoming much more of an inspiration to your followers. At the same time, this is also a first step to creating the Dream Team that is the foundation of implementing the Service Profit Chain.

Let me know how it works or if you have any questions.

And if you have not yet downloaded my e-book on engagement, you might find some ideas in that to swell. You will find it HERE.

Enter your email address below and download the ebook now!

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This post is one of a series where we are exploring the notion of leadership and how this is different from management. Our starting point is the Service Profit Chain and the understating that the management part of our job will only take us so far. If we really want to create an organisation that is capable of delivering outstanding customer experiences, we need to develop an organisation that delivers outstanding employee experiences – and that requires leadership. You can check out other articles of the series below:

Are you an inspiring leader to work for?

Are you an inspiring leader to work for?

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

As I promised last week, this is the first in a very practical series of blog posts focusing on practical aspects of leadership: Why is it important? What does it mean and how can you do it?

If you did not read last week’s post, you might want to read that first – you will find it here.

I have over time become aware that many of you find that the management part of your job is pretty clear and relatively straight forward but as for the leadership aspect, it sometimes feels fluffy.

So let’s take the fluffiness out of leadership and make it very practical and hands on.

Over the next month, we are going to cover three main leadership themes: Inspiring others, Leading my team and Developing my people.

So starting with inspiration, we need to understand why being an inspiration to your followers is an all important part of your leadership skills.

Below is a graph that illustrates how the hierarchy of employee’s needs looks.

At the bottom, we have the foundational stuff. Without that being in place, we don’t even get basic satisfaction. This is more or less all basic management stuff that you are probably (hopefully) already doing. The next level, on the other hand, is where your leadership skills start to make a difference and what drives engagement. Finally, we have the top layer – Inspiration which is driven by the style of leadership you are providing.

There are, as you can see on the graphic, two aspects to Inspiration. There is the Vision/Mission for your company, department or whatever. That should answer the question: Are we trying to achieve something that is meaningful? And secondly it is about you. Are you the sort of person that inspires followership?

So why is this important?

Well if you are the sort of persona that likes the fluffy soft to be backed up by hard facts then take a look at the graph below.

At the end of the day, this is about productivity. People who are inspired produce twice as much as people who are just satisfied with their job. If you check out the Gallup engagement scores, you will see that around 63% of employees are not particularly engaged in the job. So from a leadership point of view, there is plenty of room for improvement in most places.

This is a pet subject of mine as you may have noticed. When we are talking Service Profit Chain implementation, employee satisfaction as such is not particularly interesting. What counts at the end of the day is enthusiasm and engagement.

But productivity is just one aspect of why being inspirational. The other aspect is linked to rapidly changing demographics – all the indicators are clear, within a few years we are going to be scrambling to find the employees we need.

In Northern Europe especially, the stats are clear. Soon we will see that for every four people that leave the industry (pension, age etc), only one new young person signs up. That is a disaster waiting to happen.

So you basically have two choices. Try and automate like crazy – but that does not provide especially breathtaking service experiences, nor are they easy to differentiate from the other offerings out there. Or you can choose to create a place to work that stands head and shoulders above everyone else in your region and therefore become the employer of first choice. Too bad for the rest but you will do fine.

So hopefully you now see my point – focusing on what it will take to provide an inspirational environment for your people is a strategic issue and you need to get better at it than your closet competitor. Or if you look at it from a career point of view, managers who understand how to do this are going to be in high demand.

So what does it take to become inspirational? That is the theme for next week’s blog post.

In the mean time, I would like you to reflect a bit on what bosses you have had in your career that you found inspirational and what was it they did? And of course, the opposite. Who were the absolute joy killers and what was it they did that would instantly makes us feel disengaged and lethargic?

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Enthusiasm is a function of your leadership.

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Helping organisations implement the Service Profit Chain is what I do and have done for the past 17 years. So over time, I notice that certain patterns repeat themselves.

The basic premise of the Service Profit Chain is that the key to profit and growth is to cultivate customer loyalty. Customer loyalty occurs when guests are very satisfied. So invariably the question is: How satisfied do our customers need to be before the loyalty effect starts kicking in?

It varies a bit depending on a number of factors but for now, let’s just use the ultra simple way of looking at it.

The research is pretty clear.

Basic satisfaction does not create loyalty. What we are really looking for is customer enthusiasm. The challenge, however, is that when we get it right. When we deliver exactly the right ‘product’ at the right price on time and in the quality that was agreed, we only get to 3 or 3.5 in satisfaction. And it does not get us anywhere near generating any form of loyalty.

So doing it right is just the first step. To that we need to add the emotional component. When our frontline staff makes an emotional connection with the guest, loyalty is generated.

Now, we cannot put a clause in the employment contract with our frontline staff that they must develop emotional connections. It does not work that way. We and our staff create emotional connections, go the extra mile, display empathy, etc. when we feel like it.

So who on our team can do this?

Our most loyal and engaged employees do this. They do it because they feel like it, not because they are told to do it.

And fundamentally, they do it because they enjoy their job. Loyalty and engagement is a consequence of high levels of satisfaction. The obvious question then is how satisfied do they need to be in order for loyalty and engagement to occur?

Again the challenge is that when we provide a good job, at fair wages, breaks, vacation and a nice canteen. Then we only achieve a level of satisfaction of 3 or 3.5 at the best. Well organised and structured jobs provide the baseline. If we want more, we need to provide what is essential to an emotional connection. They need to ‘feel’ enthusiastic about their job, the people they work with, and the company they work for.

Simple to describe, not so easy to do.

The issue in a nut shell, seen from my point of view having now worked with hundreds of managers in service organisations, is that their main focus is on the management part of their job. This is what gets measured especially short term and this is more tangible in the form of check lists, planning, controlling etc.

It is also what stands out very clearly when it is not done. Not doing the management part of your job quickly gets you into trouble – so we do that first.

When it comes to the leadership component, two obstacles are common.

There is a time issue and there is lack of understanding about what leadership means in practical day to day things they must do. They often understand the need but many of them don’t actually know what it means in practical behaviour terms. What must I actually do?

So when time is scarce and you are unsure what it is you should be doing, the result is simple: It does not get done.

And the end result is what you can read loud and clear in the yearly Gallup engagement surveys, that year after year show us that around 60+ % of the workforce are not particularly engaged in their job. What a waste.

For the next few weeks I have therefore decided I would like to focus on the leadership component. To try and demystify it and translate what may seem fluffy to some people into practical steps that can relatively easily be integrated into your busy day.

If you would like to brush up on the principles of the Service Profit Chain, we have a free e-learning module that you can take it HERE.

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What is your declaration of incompetence?

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Learning

Learning and development is a key component in our overall wellbeing.

In order for you to learn – there needs to be a gap: A gap between your desired results/performance and your current ability. This was the topic of last week’s post where you can find a more detailed explanation.

You may of course not be getting the results you hoped for despite the fact that you have the ability. I.e. you know what to do but you are not doing it. That is not a learning challenge but a motivational challenge – the cure for that could be a bit of coaching but that is topic for another day.

We can look at our roles from two perspectives. There is a management perspective and a leadership perspective. Identifying the gap from a management perspective is often quite easy. In our roles as managers, there are typically some quite explicit expectations that have measurable metrics attached to them.

But the other part of our job – the leadership aspect does not come with the same set of quantifiable metrics. So how can we identify the gaps here?

One way of doing it is to use the DAC framework developed by Center for Creative Leadership. I wrote about that in a previous post that you will find here.

So to what extent do you feel that there is direction, alignment and commitment on the team that you are leading?

Take look at the matrix below and ask you self that hard questions on each of these. Where is my team and where would I like them to be?

	Happening	Not Happening
Direction	– There is a clear vision of a desired future that everyone buys into. – Team members are individually clear on what the team is trying to achieve as a whole.	– No agreement on priorities – Team members feel they are bingo pulled in multiple directions. – There is lots of activity but not much progress.
Alignment	– Roles and goals are clear individually. – There is a clear understanding of how each and everyone contributes to the larger picture. – There is a sense that this is a well coordinated and synchronised effort.	– Deadlines are missed. Rework required and lots of errors resulting in double work. – People feel disconnected from each other. – Internal competition and blame games are the norm.
Commitment	– Team members go the extra mile. – There is a sense of mutual understating and trust. – There are visibly high levels of engagement.	– Only the easy things get done. – Team members are questioning what is in it for them. – Individuals avoid taking ownership and responsibility.

Is there a gap?

So back to the learning – for learning to happen you must declare your incompetence. “I would like to achieve xyz but actually I don’t quite know how to get there.”

How does that feel? Scary, intriguing, motivating? Whatever you are feeling, what is important is that you are slightly out of your comfort zone – because that is where learning, growth and development actually take place. So if it feels a bit uncomfortable – great, you are on track.
There is a great learning opportunity.

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If you have the curiosity to take a deeper dive into the subject of how we produce engagement on our teams, you are welcome to download my ebook Understanding Engagement.

Enter your email below and download the ebook now!

In this brief e-book, we will look at how the lack of engagement is to a large extent a function of leadership. And that if we really want to change the engagement levels on our teams, we will need to make radical shift in how we understand the world of work. The shift is all about moving from a transactional mindset to a transformational mindset. We will look into what that means, how it can help you as a manager and why it is so important.

What is the gap between your capability and your desired results?

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Capability Result gap

The research is pretty clear – personal growth and development are key factors in creating engagement on the job.

If we are lucky, we have a job situation where continuous learning and development is built into the culture. But in my experience, this is definitely not always the case.

So if no one else is looking out for your growth and development then maybe you should take it into your own hands – if not you, who else?

In order for us to develop and grow as human beings – and managers – some forms of learning probably need to take place.

But what does it mean to learn?

One definition that I like is this one:

“To learn is to increase your capacity to accomplish the results that you desire.”

Think about that for a moment.

What does it take for us to learn then?

For learning actually to happen, there must be a gap between your current capability and the results that you desire.

This makes it all a bit trickier. Because that means that in order for learning to actually take place, you will need to:

have an awareness of the the gap
be willing to declare your incompetence (at least to yourself)
commit to learning

So your first step here is to start the search for appropriate gaps between current capability and desired performance.

There are several ways to start thinking about this. But let’s start with the very big picture – and draw a 2×2 matrix.

On one axis, we have you as an individual versus the organisation; On the other, we have the internal vs the external perspective.

learning

This then gives us four large areas to choose from:

1) My internal drive, attitudes and motivation. How I choose to see and understand the world – This will, to a very large extent, determine how the world responds to me.

2) How I relate and connect to people around me – Strong interpersonal dynamic is a key to succeeding in any kind of managerial role.

3) My knowledge of an ability to shape the culture that I am part of – Culture eats strategy for breakfast remember.

4) My understating of an ability to influence the myriad of external stakeholders , customers, supplier, partners etc.

So take a moment now to reflect.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your achievements in each of these four overall areas? Where do you see a gap between your current capability and the results that you desire?

I leave you with these thoughts for now – next week, we will continue our exploration of how we can take responsibility for our own growth and development.

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If you have the curiosity to take a deeper dive into the subject of how we produce engagement on our teams, you are welcome to download my ebook Understanding Engagement.

Enter your email below and download the ebook now!

[Guest post] Soft power is the driver of engagement.

July 28, 2017By Mike Hohnen

engagement

Managing people has changed considerably over time. Basically we are moving from hard to soft .

Professor Joseph S. Nye, Jr. at Havard Kennedy School was one of the first to talk about soft power and leadership.

To distinguish soft power from hard power in leadership, he compared the two as follows:

Type of Power

Behaviors

Sources

Examples

Soft

Attract and co-opt

– Inherent qualities- Communications

– Charisma- Persuasion

– Leading by examples

Hard

Threaten and induce

– Threats, intimidation- Payment, rewards

– Hire, fire, demote- Promotions, compensations

Looking at the Service Profit Chain, we know there is a connection between employee engagement and customer loyalty, and thus revenue. What do you think motivates you to work? Where does engagement come from? Is it the pay and other material benefits? Or is it because you love your job, your workplace, or you team?

Motivation comes in two basic forms: intrinsic and extrinsic. While extrinsic motivation is all about external rewards, intrinsic motivation refers to the joy and the fulfillment you have from doing something.

“Intrinsic motivation occurs when we act without any obvious external rewards. We simply enjoy an activity or see it as an opportunity to explore, learn, and actualize our potentials.”
(Coon & Mitterer, 2010)

Numerous researches have shown that intrinsic motivation plays an important part in employee engagement. Whether or not your intrinsic needs are met depends a lot on the leadership style of your line supervisor.

Let’s think about yourself in these two scenarios:

Your job pays well but you just hate your bossy manager who is always commanding and threatening to fire anyone who disagrees with him. You are always so stressed and you count down every second till the day ends.
Your boss is thoughtful and understanding and he just inspires you. And you believe in what you are doing even it pays a bit less and you feel you have a sense of belonging in your workplace and your team.

In which case do you think you will choose to commit? I think the answer is obvious.

Leading with soft power, managers will be able to not just to inspire and motivate their team members, but also to influence their behaviours and boost team performance.

On this blog, we have often discussed the need to shift our mindset from transactional to transformational. At the basic level, this is a shift from hard to soft power.

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him; worst when they despise him.” Lao-Tsu

To learn more about employee engagement and transformational leadership, you can download Mike’s ebook Understanding Engagement. The ebook provides a very different approach to and perspective on leadership that I think you will need to rethink about how you are leading and managing your team.

Enter your email below and download the ebook now!

Leaders found less than proficient at leading others…

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Leader

Would it be fair to say that an important part of leadership has got to be the ability to lead others?

Yet, in a survey published by Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), only 45% of leaders are rated ‘proficient’ at this by their boss.

Wait a minute, are you saying that more than half of the European leaders out there are not considered very good at leading other people by their boss?

Yes exactly.

That is, if not shocking, then at least seriously thought provoking.

But the sad fact is that it correlates very well with the Gallup surveys that say that 60+% of our workforce are not particularly engaged in their job (and 23% are actively disengaged.) Engagement is, to a very large extent, a function of leadership.

These are depressing stats and to me, it just confirms that there is a serious challenge out there to improve our leadership capacity.

CCL recommends 3 ways to improve that situation:

Challenging assignments that offer opportunities to practice new skills in the workplace;
Relationships with other people who can provide feedback and support, including bosses and trusted colleagues; and
Coursework and training focused on leadership competencies needed by your organisation.

In all immodesty, this is exactly the way we do it and have been doing it on our GROW leadership program for some years now. We combine all there elements in one program.

You (and maybe your boss) define a challenging assignment that you would like to work on over the next 12 weeks. We prefer wicked problem to puzzles.

We use the Action Learning format for our work, which means you will be working in different constellations with your colleagues, sometimes the full set (a class), on other occasions, in table teams of five and most of the time, more intensely, in small triads that are supported by your coach.

The curriculum or course work is mainly introduced on a 3 day workshop that starts the 12 week course. We kick-off the leadership course with this workshop that introduces participants to a number of practical approaches on how to lead others, that they can pick and choose from – depending on the challenge they are working on.

The driving design principle is to take participants through as many interactions of the learning circle as possible.

If you are interested in learning more about how that works, you can watch a brief video below – and if you have the curiosity to take a deeper dive into the subject of how we produce engagement on our teams, you are welcome to download my ebook Understanding Engagement.

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This is the 15th article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

ETC is at the heart of your employee experience.

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

ETC

What kind of employee experience are we delivering? That has been the theme of my blog posts over the past 3-4 weeks.

A few years ago, MIT Sloan Management Review ran an article entitled “Designing the soft side of customer service”. In it the authors argue that regardless of whether we are talking a pizza delivery or a complex consulting agreement, emotions are lurking under the surface and that our job is to make those feelings positive.

If we are aiming to create the optimal customer experience, we will need to start off by examining the kind of employee experience that is going to be the foundation of the customer experience.

A miserable employee is not going to provide your customer with a breathtakingly positive emotional experience – no matter how much you train them.

But this is not just about the full employee journey: recruitment to exit-interview. As managers, we need to focus on the day to day experience as well.

We have looked at endings, consequences and psychological safety in previous posts, so this week let’s take a look at what else we can learn from the field of behavioural science that can help us understand what drives a great employee or customer experience.

You need to focus on the “ETCs”.

Emotions influence what we remember. Emotionally charged episodes are easy to recall. “Experiences” that triggered no emotional reaction, positive or negative, are quickly forgotten.
Basically our emotions are triggered when something turns out better or worse than we expected. And the corresponding emotional response is then either positive or negative. A good manager does her best to manage the emotions of her team – and sprinkles the day with a few unexpected positive surprises as well. Positive surprises are anything from throwing a pizza and beer party to celebrate a win, to the simplest little gests of encouragement during the day.

Trust is the basic psychological variable that is essential to any form of relationship. No trust, no relationship. If we want engagement, there needs to be trust. And trust is the mirror of how we show up on a day to day basis as human beings. Are we reliable? Do we do what we said we would do? Do we care for and stand up for our team?

Control over one’s environment and knowledge of how events are going to unfold are fundamental psychological needs. But control is also linked to trust. In a high trust environment, the need for control is less. There is one more aspect of control when we are talking employees and that is the sense that I have some degree of control over how I do my job. This is one of the foundational cornerstones of employee engagement.

Every situation in the day that involves uncertainty either in outcome or in process will cause our team members to experience a loss of control – and that closes the loop back to emotions because a sense of loss of control creates some very negative emotions.

So there it is, as a manager, I need to manage the emotions, trust and sense of control of my team if I want to make sure that they are in the best possible shape to create a fabulous customer experiences.

It sounds complicated, but it does not need to be – In our next manager’s toolbox workinar*, we will talk about some simple tools and tips that can help you do a much better job at this.

* I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

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This is the 14th article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series: