Leadership – Page 2 – Craig Strachan

16 Lessons from Dr Ali Backer

Dr Ali Bacher

spoke at our Toastmasters conference in May. Here are a few lessons from him.

Return correspondence within 24 hours
Brevity – 2 pages (both speaking and writing)
Workplace structures are meaningless (my version is that titles are meaningless)
Look after quality people that make it happen
If you pay peanuts you get monkeys
Keep your door open
Promote performers
Give responsibility to people you have confidence in
Give small gestures of appreciation
Be honest – never lie
Never break your word
Always settle out of court
Never record your feelings at the time, wait until you have cooled down
To learn respect, set the example
Fly economy class with your staff!
You have a responsibility to transfer your skills
Things don’t just happen; be proactive

10 things to never say to a customer

Here is a brief extract from an interesting list of 10 things to never say to your customer. It is from”the amazing service guy”. How many of these have been said to you?

“We’d like to help, but it’s our company policy…”
“You’ll have to talk to the corporate office about that.”
“No one else has complained about…”

How many of them have you said yourself?

The full list is here.

Be afraid of our customers

Heard in a presentation by (the other) Michael Jackson

Yes, you should wake up every morning terrified with your sheets drenched in sweat, but not because you’re afraid of our competitors. Be afraid of our customers, because those are the folks who have the money. Our competitors are never going to send us money.

Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com
Remember who could be sending you money, and do everything to gain their trust, respect and business.

Are you a teacher?

We need to learn at the expense of teaching – Peter Block.

Are you teaching your clients, or are you helping them to learn?

Of course you can replace the word “client” with employee, children, students, partners, friends…

10 ways to grow your business

Advertise on company and community notice boards
Free announcements in local/community newspapers
Barter your services in exchange for free advertising
Word of mouth – tell all your friends
Business cards – never leave home without them
Be outrageous – do something so out of the ordinary that you get free publicity
Offer to write articles for local newspapers or magazines. Note that these are articles and not advertorials
Make contacts with complementary businesses to provide a stronger offering that helps you both
Be contactable make it easy for your customers to find you. Have a website, and respond to emails and phone calls
Follow through on your leads and customer queries

How much effort are you prepared to put into your passion?

I was listening to an interview with Malcolm Gladwell recently on the Radiolab podcast in which he was speaking about the performance of Jamaican athletes when he was growing up. He made a comment that part of the reason for their performance is that they trained harder than anybody else.

When Darren la Croix won the 2001 World Championship of Public Speaking, he said that he did not want any of the other competitors to be more prepared than him – he wanted to out-prepare all of them, and he won.

When I was in school, I studied music as one of my matric subjects. In my final year, I would probably practice about 2-3 hours a day, and I was a far better pianist then than I am now. It was because I was putting in the time to prepare.

Tiger Woods is such a great golfer partly because he puts in approx 6 ½ hours training every single day, as well as about 2 ½ hours in the gym . I have no doubt that if I put effort into golf every day for a few years, I would be a mighty fine golfer as well. Maybe not as good as Tiger Woods, but a lot better than I currently am.

According to Fortune Magazine,

“The evidence we have surveyed … does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts…. that nobody is great without work…There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.”

Ok, so the bottom line is that you can be excellent at just about anything that you choose, but you will need to put in the effort to get there.

How much effort are you prepared to put into your passion?

DG in the news

Hi All

The recent Toastmasters Induction Dinner has made it into the Cape Town local papers. Cape Community Newspapers ran an article which was syndicated to most of the local community newspapers.

Correction: I am the second youngest District Governor. Howard Steinberg beat me in 1980.

You can read the article below.

I hope that it brings some new members in.

15 leadership traits

Here are 15 traits of leadership to consider…

Leaders:

Learn from each other
Learn from themselves
Treat mistakes as a learning opportunity
Hold themselves accountable
Hold others accountable
Live leadership ? don?t switch it on and off
Admit their mistakes
Know their own shortcomings
Make decisions and take action
Don?t procrastinate
Listen to others
Have an open mind
Lead from the front
Get their hands dirty
Find opportunity in every situation.

What is great about this list is that all of these traits can be learned!

Which of these characteristics do you have?

Which of these characteristics do you see in others?

Radio Shack Employees laid-offs by email

Emailfired According to Manager Tools, Radio Shack recently laid off 400 employees via email. Is this a sign that we live in a time that it is acceptable to terminate employment via email, or is it a case of poor judgment?

I think the latter. How can you possibly justify such weak leadership and lack of integrity? Were they too afraid to face 400 employees and tell them that their services were no longer required, or were they too afraid to deal with the issue face-to-face?

I am sure that the author of the above cartoon was being tongue-in-cheek about our modern world, and how email has become core to our ability to communicate, but how sad it is that the author was so close to the truth.

Imagine arriving at work, switching your PC on and checking your email, only to find an email effectively telling you to clear your desk. Being laid off is a frightening experience for many people, but it does very little for your ego that they didn’t even bother saying so face to face.

I have to ask what sort of example you are setting for the employees that remain behind. What sort of respect or faith will they have in their managers (or dare I say it, leaders).

Radio Shack have broken several of the key rules of leadership, namely to act with honesty, respect and integrity towards your employees.

Be honest as to what is happening.

Treat the employees with respect, and like human beings. It is a very difficult time for them, and they need to be treated respectfully and with dignity. Explain what is happening and why. Give them an opportunity to respond, and explain what the future options are.

According to Encarta, integrity means "the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards". In other words, act professionally and treat everybody like people, and not machines.

I hope that this is a once-off occurrence, and is not an indication of things to come.

In closing, I have to wonder what poor management decisions from the past have led to Radio Shack having to lay off the employees in the first place.