Improve My Business

To close out this relationship themed month on our blog I want to talk about online relationship building, and before you ask, no I am not going to talk about online dating sights. By now everyone knows that your business needs a website, and if you are reading this blog chances are you are relatively tech savvy and have a nice website set up. What is the purpose of your website? Does it give information? Is it simply a place to list your phone number where prospective clients can find you? Or is it a community? Are you using your website as simply an informational tool or are you using it to build relationships with clients and prospective clients? This is what I mean when I say I want to talk about online relationship building.

When the internet first came around it was a great source for easily search-able information, and this is still true. Now days most any question can be answered if you know how and where to look on the internet. However, this is not the only use for the internet, like anything else it grows and evolves. Recently we have seen the rise of social networking and what is being called Web 2.o. The importance of these new innovations from a business standpoint is that they are shifting the way our customers use the internet, and therefore we need to shift the way we use the internet.

Web 2.0 is changing the internet from a simple search-able database of information into a forum for creating community and fostering relationships, and as business people who realize the importance of relationships this is great for us. People are no longer content to simply find information posted on your website, they want interaction, both with you and with other customers. We need to  make sure that we are tapping into this new way of building relationships and using it to reach a new customer base that we may have never thought of before.

To me it makes sense to think of the new internet as one big trade-show. At a trade-show you can have your booth and just put on information for people to come by and pick up and look through, or you can stand at your booth and invite people in, engage people in conversation, and start building a relationship with that person. The growth of web 2.0 has given us the opportunity to stand out front of our online booths and interact with the people coming in, not just let them pick up information and leave. As anyone who has worked at trade shows will tell you, it is the interaction more then the information that is valuable, and this is becoming true on the internet as well.

One final point that I think a lot of people forget is that the rules and tips for building personal relationships apply just as much on the internet as they do in person. This means that whatever you do to start building your relationship presence on the internet you need to make sure it is honest and genuine or you won’t get the desired response.

So I encourage all of us to start thinking about how we can increase our presence on the internet not just from an information stand point, but from a relationship standpoint. That is part of what we are trying to do with our blogs at McDCG. We want to use these blogs to not only provide information, but also start growing a community. This is why we always encourage you to leave comments and start discussions. So how is your business using the internet? Leave us some comments so we can all see what you have done and learn together.

Technorati Tags: blogging, Business, Business Relationships, communication, twitter

This week I want to continue our relationship theme and talk about how we relate to the people we work with. Whether they are employees, bosses, or partners, at some point in time we all have to work with other people, which is sometimes a great experience but can also be a total disaster. If you are like most of the people I know you have had both kinds of experience, sometimes you really click with a co-worker and your collaborative productivity is great while other times you just don’t seem to mesh and you spend as much time trying to get on the same page as you do actually working. Have you ever wondered why this is?

One way to start to figure out why we have such different experiences with different people is to look at Myers Briggs personality type profiles. If you are not familiar with the Myers Briggs questionnaire and personality types you can find more information here. Basically what Myers Briggs does is go through a series of questions designed to assess your personality. By personality I mean your personal strengths, weaknesses, motivating factors and, perhaps most importantly, communication style.

Myers Briggs testing has been successfully used in the workplace for quite some time to improve teamwork and understanding with in a department or organization. Typically each member fills out the questionnaire then the facilitator will go through the results with everyone, thus you and your team gain a better understanding not only of your own type, but everyone else’s too. Through this process it often becomes clear why you click so well with one coworker but struggle to communicate with another.

Perhaps you will discover, as Mary did when she did her first Myers Briggs test, that you are a big picture person while your boss is much more detail oriented. This can be incredibly valuable information, now you know how your boss thinks and can anticipate what they will be looking for when you present something to them, in this case a higher level of detail. The boss on the other hand can understand that perhaps it is not due to laziness or lack of skill that work and reports aren’t meeting his satisfaction as much as because employees have a different view of what is necessary. This mutual understanding of how the other person operates can make everything in the office run more smoothly. In this example the employee now knows to cover things in more detail and the boss now knows that they need to be specific in asking for detail because not everyone is going to just assume it is necessary like he does.

This is just one example of how a Myers Briggs test can improve workplace productivity. If you find you are constantly butting heads or disagreeing with someone in your office place, chances are it’s because of some personality difference. Once you can understand these differences you can learn to work around them. This is the true power of Myers Briggs, it allows you to understand personalities and like anything else, the problems caused by personality differences can’t be addressed until the cause of the problems is understood. Think of Myers Briggs as root cause analysis for work relationships.

Technorati Tags: Business Relationships, communication, Myers Briggs

There are several key differences between being a manager and a leader. For people running their own business or acting as parts of a management structure in a larger business it is important to recognize the differences between managing and leading and use these different methods appropriately. The biggest difference between managing and leading is that managers push groups to achieve specific goals while leaders pull groups in a general direction, letting the group decide on the specific goals.

When you are managing a group you are looked at for direction and answers, you are the driving force or push behind your team. Managers are focused on individual contributions and making sure that everyone on the team is doing exactly what they need to be doing to achieve the specified goal. At critical junctures in the process the team will defer to the manager to steer them in the right direction. All major decisions are made by the manager of a team.

Leaders on the other hand let the team make their own decisions. Instead of pushing the team into specific solutions, a leader pulls the team toward the goal, letting the team figure out the best way to get there. As a leader your role is not to provide the answers but to facilitate the team in coming up with their own answers. Leaders are more concerned with the overall functioning of the team and the relations between team members then the individual tasks of each member of the team.

Clearly each of these styles has its place and it is important as a team lead to recognize when you need to manage your team and when you need to lead them. Typically as employees grow more accustomed to the business they need less management and more leading. As an employee grows comfortable with her daily tasks she no longer needs someone looking over her shoulder, however she does need someone motivating her and this is where a great leader will excel. On the other side new employees don’t need motivation and leadership as much as they need someone there telling them how to do their new job.

This is not to say that only new employees need management, or that experienced employees will always excel with great leadership. As a team lead it is up to you to figure out what the members of your team need from you, and typically this means walking a line somewhere in between managing and leading. At times it will be important to be the task master and manage the members of your team, however if you default to this mode you will stifle the creativity of your team members and will not be allowing them to achieve their best. So at time is it important to take on the role of the leader and let the team figure out the solution, again though it is important to not go too far in this direction. If left completely to their own devices employees may wind up off track or pursuing ideas that are not practical for the current situation, it is your job to step in and make sure this doesn’t happen.

I encourage you to take a look at your current management practices and skills and see where you fall, are you more of a manager or a leader, and then examine the effects this may be having on your team. Considering trying the opposite approach from how you typically interact with your team and see how they respond. It may be that some of your employees have been waiting for an opportunity to be more creative, or have needed more direction in the workplace. The important thing to remember is that, as a team lead, you need to always be monitoring your team members and tailoring your interactions with them to help them achieve their best. This is the true goal of any leader, whether she is managing or leading, she is always trying to bring out the best in those around her.

Technorati Tags: Business, communication, leadership, problem solving

My last blog post was about the importance of follow through in regards to our strategic plans, in this post I want to talk about another area of our business where follow through is incredibly important, or maybe I should say follow up. Follow up is just follow through for marketing. By now everyone has heard that it takes six touches to make and the value of constant contact, but for some of us we still don’t do as much as we could to stay in touch with our clients and potential clients. I am not going to go on and on about the importance of following up, we’ve all heard it before, instead I am going to focus on some tips for making it happen.

1. Make it a priority. This sounds simple enough but can go a long way to actually making us better about following up  with contacts. Too often we forget just how important following up with both clients and potential clients really is, it becomes         one of those things that we do when we have time or can get around to it, but by then it’s usually too late. The truth about        following up, is that timeliness is of the utmost importance, so if you want to be better about following up, you have to make it a priority.
2. Put it on your calendar. This goes hand in hand with making follow up a priority; scheduling time to follow up with specific     contacts on your calendar will make sure you remember to do it. Next time you go to a networking event, before you go add  some time into your calendar for the week after the event to follow up with the people you meet there. If someone tells you to contact them in a month, put that on your calendar, if someone says they will contact you in a month put that on your         calendar too, that way if they forget you can send them a friendly reminder. The more specific you can be in calendaring          your follow up the better it will be, I even go so far as to put individual follow up calls into my calendar.
3. View every follow up as an opportunity. I find myself from time to time dreading following up with someone for one                 reason or another, but the main thing we have to remember is that every follow up is an opportunity to further that person along the road to becoming a client. There are dangers in not having this attitude too. Have you ever just gone through the motions of following up without adding any personal touch to your message? You wind up coming across as a robot. If you view every follow up as an opportunity you will avoid robot syndrome because you will care about every person you are contacting. You will automatically include those personal touches that communicate to your potential clients that you remember them and care about their problems, which will go a long way towards building trust and converting people to clients.

I have found that for me at least adopting these strategies and mindsets, while they may seem simple, can really make a difference in whether or not I follow through on my follow ups. Give them a shot and let me know if they help you, or share the tips you use to make sure you follow up with all your contacts.

Technorati Tags: communication, follow up, managing your time

Workplace Gripes -

We all have them. Some complaints have to do with the physical environment: office temperature, temperamental copy machines, noise from other cubicles. Other gripes are with the hours, schedule or traffic, but most complaints have to do with other employees. Here are some suggestions on how to cope with a few of the most annoying workplace peeves.

Micromanagement - We’ve all had to deal with micromanagers at one time or another. Managers who tell you what to do, how and when to do it, and then check in repeatedly to “see how it’s going” and offer their critiques before you’ve had a chance to find your groove. This article has some fair tips on the subject.

You may not be able to change the micromanager’s habits, but perhaps you can change the way you work so their oversight doesn’t feel like such an insult to your abilities.

People who don’t take vacations/consistently work late - I share the sentiment of this retired worker whose peeve is people who spend too much time at the job, needlessly. Read what he has to say. I’ll add in people who come to work sick, or encourage others to come to work sick, they fit into the same category.

Interruptions - They are unavoidable, but when it’s always the same people causing the interruptions by popping in while you’re busy, instant messaging you non-stop without getting to the point, or just talking too loudly on the phone, the best thing to do is bring it to their attention (but not when you are steaming mad about it). If that doesn’t work, take it to your boss as a last resort. Be sure to give them fair time to change their behavior before you go for outside help.

Needless meetings - As long as the boss finds them important, you’ll just have to deal with it.  The best thing to do is try to get something out of it. Bring your own questions or issues to the table. You may not get a resolution, but participating will get you some bonus points and at least make the meeting more interesting for you.

Finger pointing and lack of accountability - Yes, we all know at least one person who can’t help but point the finger when something goes wrong - maybe we’re even guilty of succumbing to our inner child on this once or twice. We know it gets us nowhere, so why do so many people spend their careers becoming pros at it? …and, how do they keep getting away with it? The best way to overcome this is to accept your own accountability. A great guide for learning how to accept personal accountability is: “The Power of Personal Accountability” by Mark Samuel & Sophie Cliche.

Do you have any workplace gripes to add?  Or maybe, you have some solutions that have worked for you in the past? We’d love to hear about them! Please share by commenting below.

Technorati Tags: communication, workplace issues