Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

Leadership

Why learning is your key to engagement

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“When we grow people’s experience of competence, we inevitably grow their engagement”

– Ron Friedman.

A foundational piece of the Service Profit Chain is the dream team cycle:  The seven steps that need to be in place in order for us to foster the kind of environment that ultimately will produce the best possible customer experience.

The third step of the cycle, Build Skills and Capacity, is all about the opportunities we give our people to develop and improve.

We all understand that training and development is useful when there is an obvious need to improve skills. But that is just one aspect. The other and possibly more important aspect is that personal growth and development is a key factor in securing engagement.

This is highlighted in the most recent Global Human Capital Trends 2016 Published by Deloitte University Press where 84% of executives surveyed rated learning as important or very important. This focus on learning comes as organisations see learning opportunities as a driver of engagement and strong workplace culture. Both are more than ever recognised as drivers of performance, according to the report.

“Compared to last year, companies appear to be making strides in adopting new technologies and embracing new learning models.”

That is also why in the Great Place to Work or Gallup engagement survey they ask employees if they have had the opportunity to grow and learn in the past year.

Unfortunately we see time and again that not many have had that opportunity.

It requires leadership capacity to provide learning opportunities for our people. It is not just a question of finding the budget to send them on a course. Learning and development happens mainly on the job. (Check out 70:20:10 – if you are not sure you agree).

It is by walking the precipice between our current abilities and the skills just beyond our reach that growth occurs. But that requires that you as a leader must design a path for your people that will take them out on that precipice from time to time. And that includes being there in case there is a need for a bit of hand-holding along the way.

But a first and even simpler step to ensure engagement in your team is to provide adequate feedback. Without feedback, we lack the crucial information needed in order to improve. And when we do not have a clear direction on what it is we need to do in order to succeed, it just a matter of time before we lose our engagement.

You can download your own Dream Team checklist here and benchmark yourself on how you are doing on all seven steps. The Dream Team Questions on a pdf – click here

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Dream Team Questions

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A Managers Guide to a Dream Team

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The Service Profit Chain is a well-documented concept.

Since the original research was published in 1989, hundreds of articles have promoted the original findings which essentially boil down to the fact that happy employees create happy customers – and the happier the customers you have, the more money you make –
Yes, I know that was a very simplified version.

What not so many people talk about, or even document, is that this concept of ‘happy employees’ is not so much a question of employee satisfaction but, to a much higher degree, a question of employee engagement.
So, what are the steps to producing a high level of engagement on a service team?
According to the original research in The Service Profit Chain, there 8 steps in a self-reinforcing cycle called the dream team cycle.
Look closely and you will recognize that this is exactly what the best high profile service companies do:

The Right Team
Careful selection of new recruits. Hire for attitude. Train for skills.Coach for performance and that includes dealing with the bad apples.
Continuous Improvement
Best in class training and development at all levels in the organization. Continuous improvement is considered one of the great benefits of the job. “In this job, I grow”…
Great Support Systems
Service is not just something the frontline does for our customers. Service is our culture. Employees and managers who do not have customer contact service the employees that do. (Our IT department is not the IT-Police – it is an internal service department that supports the frontline in getting the job done.)
Empowerment
The best service employees take pride in solving the problem on the spot. So the freedom to act is hugely motivating. Southwest Airlines famously tells its employees, ”You may do anything you are not uncomfortable doing to solve a passengers problem.”
Clear Expectations
In the same way that anyone who has made it to a great sports team knows what is expected of them, employees in the best service organizations also know what is expected of them. It is part of their motivation to be part of a team that is not afraid to set the bar high.
Appropriate Rewards and Recognition
Focusing on what works, celebrating success, and acknowledging each others contributions makes work meaningful.
High Levels of Satisfaction and Engagement
As a result of Steps 1-6, we generate not just higher levels of satisfaction, but also real engagement – Service work becomes fun and meaningful.

Employees Recommend New Employees
When we need to recruit new team members, our best employees recommend friends and previous colleagues from other organizations because these are the people they would like to work with. Gradually we become the preferred employer in our region – which means we get the pick of the crop.

And that takes us back to Step 1 – The Right Team.
Done consistently this 8-step cycle become a self-reinforcing process that propels our service delivery capacity to higher and higher levels – and we all know what that does for our customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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Building a great service business begins with understanding the Service Profit Chain framework. In my view, that is the foundation. Check out my free introduction here

Management Team or Just Heads of Tribe?

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Often when I work with a GM and the department heads, I will start by asking each of them to write down the name of a person on their team – just the first name that comes to mind.  Then I ask them who in the group has written the name of a person who is in this room now on their piece of paper. And invariably, it will always be only the GM who raises his hand. The GM sees the other people in the room as his team. But, the department heads seldom see each other as the team.

Department heads tend to see themselves as Indian chiefs. Each represents his or her tribe; and when they meet, it is about defending territory and resource allocation, not about collaboration.

Two Different Cultures:  Taking Responsibility and Being held Responsible –

They key to understanding why department heads end up as heads of a tribe and not as the team we dream about has to do with how we work with responsibility.
If we spend our time at management meetings trying to identify who was responsible for ‘That’ when something goes wrong, then each department head learns that the only way you can play that game and not get hurt is to create clear boundaries. ‘This is what I am responsible for – and that is what you are responsible for. Just make sure you don’t cross that line.’
The savviest department heads also learn not to stick their necks out and take on more responsibility than they need to.

Responsibility means trouble.

So, over time leaders  (and their teams)  become more and more passive and reactive.

But, we all know that being passive/reactive is not what gets us raving customer reviews. In order to rise to the top in our category, we need to be proactive. Managers and their teams need to take initiatives and anticipate needs in order to delight customers.

But, they will only do that if:
a) it is accepted that boundaries between departments are soft and
b) that we do not ‘punish people’ for taking initiative even when they are not successful.
That means a different culture.

Taking Responsibility

The alternative to being held responsible is to develop and encourage a culture where we take responsibility.

But that is a completely different culture; because, if you think about it, no department is an island. The boundaries we have created between departments are, in reality, just here for our own sake so that we can organize stuff in a meaningful way. From the customer’s viewpoint, these boundaries should be invisible.
The customer is looking for a total experience – the whole.
And because no department is an island, when something goes wrong, in most cases it goes wrong for a number of reasons – not just for one reason.

So, the question we need to always ask ourselves when something goes wrong is: “What could WE have done to prevent this happening?” Then, maybe department head A immediately jumps in and says: “That was my fault. I screwed up, and I will do my best not to make that mistake again.”  Case closed and we can move on to the next item on the agenda.

If that does not happen, we need to analyze what happened, not to place the blame, but to learn how we could have prevented this… most probably, with better collaboration at some level.
Because – if you remember – the definition of a team is:

A group of people with a common goal and who feel mutually responsible for reaching that goal.

Feedback Drives our Behavior.

Everything that we do is based on our previous experiences or our beliefs about what an experience will be. So, as the leader, your feedback to your team governs their behavior, and over time they become a reflection of your feedback.

And, they will either become a team or they will default to heads of tribe – it’s up to you.

 

Building a great service business begins with understanding the Service Profit Chain framework. In my view, that is the foundation. Check out my free introduction here:

What makes a leader better?

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Silo organisation

In a recent article in Straegy+Business I came across the following paragraph:

The fact is that giving people bigger jobs with fancier titles and larger salaries won’t make them better. More complex assignments will. Just look at the leaders of ANZ, the global banking group headquartered in Melbourne. Each time an employee identified as having high potential is promoted, the company makes sure it’s not to the same job on a larger scale (in terms of budget and resources) but to an entirely new set of challenges—maybe it’s relocating to a new country, shifting from a staff to a line role, or moving from a turnaround situation to launching a new business unit.

 

It made me think: so how good are we at  doing exactly that in the hospitality industry?

In my experience we don’t do it very much. A really good waiter gets promoted to head waiter and then on to restaurant manager. A good chef becomes sous-chef  and eventually maybe head-chef.  

And then we wonder why we have silo-thinking.

10 leadership traits that people adore

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Great Boss?

Many books have been written about what leadership is – but what is it from a followers perspective?
This is what respondents reply when asked to list the characteristics of leaders they admire:

  1. Has a clear vision of how people’s work meets the leader’s expectations.
  2. Provides timely, clear, constructive feedback.
  3. Expresses appreciation and gives credit where credit is due.
  4. Actively listens and answers questions.
  5. Treats others with respect and kindness.
  6. Consistently fair in their treatment of others.
  7. Trains, develops, and grows their people.
  8. Willing to jump in and help out when things become difficult.
  9. Has an open door policy and is available.
  10. Supportive and protective of their people when things go wrong.

 
Source: SmartBlog on Leadership

So, all you need to do now, is rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 according to how well you doing on each of those points – and if you are honest with yourself you will have a very practical and workable t-do list on what needs working on.

If you are courageous you could even ask one or two close collaborators that are not afraid to give you honest replies to review the evaluation you made of yourself and give you some honest feedback.

Welcome back from summer…

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It time to roll up our sleves and get cracking again…

As Joyce Hostyn writes on her blog :

“Beauty is an outcome of a focus on the human side of business. Of a deep understanding of people’s dreams, desires and search for meaning. Of a pursuit of a higher purpose.”

Watch her inspiring presentation here:

Ready? Let go to work…

A culture of doing stuff

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Dialog drives culture-2

“Only the leader can set the tone of the dialogue in the organization. Dialogue is the core of culture and the basic unit of work. How people talk to each other absolutely determines how well the organization will function. Is the dialogue stilted,politicized, fragmented and but covering ? Or is it candid and reality-based, raising the right questions, debating them, and finding realistic solutions. If it’s the former as it is in all too many companies, reality will never come to the surface.

You cannot have an execution culture without robust dialogue, one that brings reality to the surface through openness, candor and informality.”

Execution, the Discipline of Getting Things Done, Larry Bossidy (CEO Honeywell Int’l) and Ram Charan with Charles Buck.