Have you ever been shopping and had your mind set on buying a particular thing and the sales assistant appeared to be doing everything they could to talk you out of it?
It’s a curious thing.
It comes down to what we value.
For example, if you’re a salesperson and you want the cheapest price when you buy something, it’s highly likely that you will expect that your clients have the same value.
Often they do not.
Here’s an example from one of my colleagues.
My colleague values his time and efficiency.
He went to the hairdresser to get his haircut.
The hairdresser thought that the longer she took and the more she fussed over the cut, the happier her clients would be.
This didn’t suit my colleague. He valued his time, not the cost of the haircut or how much the hairdresser fussed.
To the hairdresser, he said, “I will pay you double if you can cut my hair in half the time?”
This shocked the hairdresser because she couldn’t comprehend that someone would pay more for less time.
So, for you this week, I encourage you to have a look at your values and see if you might be unconsciously trying to impose them on others.
Allow others to value what they value.
If you are serving customers, please take the time to listen, really listen to what they want and as best as you can, give it to them.
I have a plan for the day and often it goes by the wayside.
I intend for a task to take 30 minutes and hours later, I find I’m still doing the task.
What does it mean to focus?
According to Dictionary.com, the meaning of “focus” is “a central point, as of attraction, attention, or activity.”
According to Cham Tang, co-founder of Authentic Education, F.O.C.U.S. means to “follow one course until successful”.
I love this definition because we can use it to help ourselves defeat overwhelm and procrastination.
When we have too many things to do and feel overwhelmed about getting them finished, often we distract ourselves with meaningless tasks, like cleaning the oven, doing the washing etc. that are not priorities at that time.
If you were to F.O.C.U.S. where would you start?
What is the one thing you could follow through until it was completed?
I was always impressed with Dugnea McGrath when I worked with her and Kip. Dug had a list of things she had to do in a day and she simply started at the top of the list and worked on one item at a time until it was completed, then moved on to the next item. She didn’t leave the office until her list was complete.
Now that’s F.O.C.U.S.
Another way I trick myself into focussing is to set deadlines. For example, I always meet the deadline of sending the Weekly Thought. Sometimes it is written well in advance, other times I just make it. Knowing that it has to go out on a certain day and time helps me to focus to get it done.
What other strategies do you have?
One of my colleagues likes to work on Sunday. His wife works away from home on Sundays so he uses the quiet time to be creative as well as work on tasks that require uninterrupted attention.
We’re all different, so finding your thing is important.
Again, I ask. What’s the one course you’ll follow through to success?
“Yes, I do the same exercises every time and I find it boring. It’s the same with some yoga classes I’ve attended as well. The same thing week after week after week.”
“Hmmm. Do you think that some people might like that? They might like the security of knowing what they will be doing each time and also improving as they practise and repeat?” she enquired.
“I suppose so, but that’s not me. I need variety. In one way, that’s why I like yoga because you can do so many different poses, depending on what you feel like at the time.”
I’m the same with breakfast. I can only eat the same thing so many days in a week before I get bored and have to change that too. Ross is happy to eat cereal every day of the week.
The conversation moved on.
We’re all different. We all have different personalities and different needs and wants.
I remember doing a systems project one time with a finance team in real estate. They loved the fact that they knew what they were doing at any minute of the day on any given day. For example, at 9:00am they started the bank downloads. At 9:30am they started reconciling the entries. At 11:00am they stopped for morning tea. Every second Thursday the processed the pays etc. etc. etc.
I was impressed with how much they liked their structure and routine.
I couldn’t bear it.
How about you?
Are you a routine sort of person?
Do you like knowing what’s coming next? (The Counsellors and Advisors in the REACH profiling system.)
Or, are you like me, a Coach or a Driver, who loves spontaneity, variety and change?
Either answer is ok.
It’s about knowing yourself and the people around you and finding ways to satisfy those needs.
I realise now why I loved being on Relief Staff, 40 odd years ago. I travelled around the region and relieved in various motor registries when the permanent staff were on leave. I loved meeting new people. I loved learning about new locations and I wasn’t there long enough to get involved in the office politics and I didn’t know from one month to the next where I would be working. It could all change in an instant. (It’s also where I got a lot of my systems training and mindset from because I could go into any motor registry in New South Wales and do the job. No training required because they were all the same.)
How about you? What is your preference and what ways have you found to satisfy yourself?
It seems that recruitment and retention is the biggest challenge for businesses at the moment so I thought I would share a couple of tips with you.
REACH profiling
Skills assessment
I use the REACH profiling system because it is a comprehensive ecosystem.
Not only does it provide a number of different reports such as Personal, Communication and Leadership, we can also generate an Interview Companion.
The Interview Companion is gold. It is based on “strengths-based selection”.
In other words, we want to hire people in roles that are suited to their strengths.
We know that interview is the least reliable form of recruitment because applicants tell us what they think we want to hear.
The Interview Companion helps us to clarify the strengths we want for each role, which makes it very easy to see if the candidates’ strengths match the role.
The second tip is to assess the skills either before, during or after the interview.
If spelling, grammar and formatting skills are important, you can test that too.
Perhaps you need someone who can get their way around Excel. Ask them to complete a couple of tasks in Excel. You’ll soon see how well they can use it, as well as how they interpret instructions.
It’s okay to assess the candidate’s skills, if it’s important to you that they come with skills.
Some companies are happy to train and they need to test for attitude and aptitude. One way to test attitude is to invite the candidate to come to work with you for a few hours or a day. They get paid, it’s not for free, however it gives you an opportunity to see whether they have initiative.
It allows you to see how they communicate with and relate to team members and customers.
Determining the assessments and criteria can be quite easy if you have taken the time to be clear on what you want from the role and have worked out the K.E.S.A.Q. required for the role.
Knowledge
Experience
Skills
Attitude
Qualifications
And the third and final tip is “don’t be desperate”. When you’re desperate, you’ll most likely hire the wrong person and then end up having to do it all over again within a few months.
You might be thinking, “Yes, of course, you should smile”.
And I agree. It’s nice when people smile at us first or return a smile.
What do you do at the gym and other similar places where people are doing their own thing and sometimes your eyes happen to meet?
Do you smile?
I’m usually the first one to smile or wave.
In fact, years ago, Ross and I were driving home one afternoon, and as we came around a corner, I waved at some of the neighbours on their veranda.
“Do you know them?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you waving?”
“Because I’m having a game. Every time I drive past and see them, I wave. I’m waiting to see how long it takes them to wave back.”
“Whatever”, he sighed.
It took a couple of weeks but they did eventually wave and smile. I didn’t get to speak to them, ever, but we had a good waving and smiling relationship.
So, back to the gym.
I don’t know what to do.
Sometimes I smile at people and they seem to look right through me and that triggers my fear of rejection, so then I look down and tell myself not to smile at anyone.
And I can’t help it.
I smile or at least I want to. My mouth sort of half turns up, as if I’m going to smile but I can’t give a full smile though, until I get some sort of sign that it might be welcome. So I suppose I end up looking a bit goofy.
Occasionally someone smiles back, but not very often.
What do you do?
In situations like this, it can become awkward.
And to get more complicated, some days people return a smile and on other days they do not.
I find it really uncomfortable to not smile.
For me, smiling and saying “hello” is a friendly gesture.
I like to acknowledge people; let them know I’ve seen them, they’re important.
When we travelled in the motorhome, we were surprised and delighted at how “friendly” people from Tasmania were; even the young kids would walk past, look up at us, smile and say “hello”.
When we travelled back and stayed on the south coast of NSW, it was a totally different experience. We kept looking at people to smile and say “hello” but the majority of people just looked away before our eyes could meet.
So back to my question, should I smile?
Do you smile or are you the type of person who prefers not to make eye contact?
The past few Weekly Thoughts have focused on mindset and leadership.
This week we need to talk about systems.
I’ve been working with a couple of clients the past few weeks, helping with recruitment and creating new finance systems. It’s been a big reminder to me of the value of having systems and processes that others can follow when key people are absent.
Let me give you some examples.
Client #1 – a key support team member resigned after having worked with the company for 3 years. A team of sales professionals relied on the support and whilst they are actively recruiting for a replacement, the sales team now find themselves having to complete the administrative tasks as well as focus on sales.
Client #2 – it’s the end of the school holidays and a long term employee wanted to take a week’s leave to enjoy with her children. The employee works in the finance team. Obviously not everyone in the team has the same permissions to access the company finances so the employee ended up logging in just about every day to complete some tasks.
These companies represent most of the companies I work with.
Most are small, family owned businesses, unlike the then NSW Department of Motor Transport, where I was employed as a 17 year old typist.
After a few years working in the one motor registry, I transferred to what was known as “Relief Staff”. This meant that I travelled around NSW, relieving workers who were on holiday or sick leave.
Every motor registry had the same systems and processes so I could turn up at any registry and do the work.
I was shocked when I left the government to work in small business. “Where’s the relief staff?” I would ask. “What do you mean my work will be waiting for me when I get back?”
This never happened in the motor registry. The relief staff did the work and for the most part, when we finished each day and balanced the cash register, we went home and forgot about work until it was time to do it all over again the next day.
This doesn’t happen in small business.
There isn’t the luxury of extra staff because there aren’t enough offices or roles to keep someone employed relieving for 11 months of the year.
So, talking systems, processes and procedures, the best ones are those that are documented in such a way that anyone could follow the procedure and get the desired outcome, even if they have never done it before. They might be slower at first, but at least they could finish the task.
What are your systems, processes and procedures like?
Are you using looms or other screen capture applications to show people what they need to do?
Are you using programs like otter.ai to transcribe an audio or video recording?
Are you using document management systems like TKO to keep all of your procedures in one place, that’s available 24×7?
Are you automating your processes or still wasting time doing things manually?
It’s time to talk systems and if you’re interested to follow the method I use when I consult with systems clients, you can purchase a copy of my book The Loyal Lieutenant: How The Second-In- Command Brings The CEO’s Vision To Life by going to https://shirleydalton.com/books or you can search Amazon for an electronic copy.
It’s time to talk to systems.
Let 2024 be the year you get yourself, your team, your work and your business systemised, so you too can go on leave and fully rest and recharge without thinking about work.
