Leadership Through Trust

Team members look towards a “People Manager” and not a Task Manager. Though Leadership can take various forms based on the situation the team and leader is in as discussed in my earlier post, the basis of any leadership is Trust. Leadership involves people and people work on trust. Though there are numerous definition on trust and “the right thing to do” to create trust, both in print and online, I have summarized the key 3 traits of creating a trust bond between leader and his team as under. I look forward for leaders with these traits and I, as a people manager, have implemented these to garner trust.

1.       Believe in the Team- Quoting Marissa Mayer on choosing a leader “..work for someone who believes in you- because when they believe in you, they'll invest in you”, leaders must bring in the thought that he/she believes in the team. Belief is trust which is expressed by investing the energy for the team and motivating them to do what otherwise seems impossible.

2.       Be Open, Honest and Democratic- When a leader opens up, the team is enthralled. Successful leaders have always shared ups and downs with the team which brings in the oneness. A closed door leader creates an environment of team working in silos which is eating into most corporates. A leader who lies, will be lonely.  The trust factor is lost and camaraderie vanishes. A democratic leader appreciates everyone in open and corrects individuals in isolation. This creates the bond and opens up the team to take on challenges.

3.       Take the Blame and not Expose the Team – Throwing a team member under the bus is the last thing a true leader can imagine. There are outcomes which may not be in the best interest. Rather than exposing the weak link and walking out of the mess, a leader must take the hit. When team members see that you are willing to take the blame for the good of the team, they start to trust you.  As leader you need to accept the responsibility for both the good and the bad.

Leaders are not born but developed. Today’s team members are tomorrow’s leaders. Set the example for leadership through trust and this will create a team prepared to face challenges and on high motivation levels to drive for results. 

Secret Wishlist from a Salesman to a Customer

Salesmen have all the rules and customers have none. Well at least not on record. Here I pen my secret wish list of an ideal customer I am yet to meet- in the form of a virtual letter. :)

Dear Customer,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to meet up with you. Even as I write this letter to you in anticipation for a favorable outcome; I have a few points to make which could make our transaction easier.

I am a well-oiled selling machine with a smile so charming I should have sold tooth paste instead. Call it your bad luck, I have been taught, trained and hammered with techniques which will ensure your order comes to me. And I have a long mental checklist of what to do and what not to. Hence, as a professional, I too have some expectations from you -as a customer. Why is that I have rules and you have none! If you are the king, well it’s me who has to make you feel so. Anyways to earn the King title I request you behave like one. Win my heart and I will do anything to get you the best deal and service thereafter.

My submissions for you to be a Good Customer are:

1.Please honor the time of appointment- Yours and my time are precious and please don’t feel amused to see me sit outside your cabin reading those outdated magazines.

2. You have a Need and I have the Solution- Please treat me as a solution provider. Your need is well analyzed and my product should do the work. Else be specific on what you need. I am not here to be a Sherlock Holmes.

3. Let me Talk- My sales pitch is different. Listen to what I say.  Let me explain the value proposition. There are numerous products out there in the market. Let me explain the value I can deliver.

4.You have Googled- Google has made everyone intelligent. You have a list of negative remarks on my product. Please note throwing negative remarks will not make me succumb. Please read all those positive reviews too. That should help you understand the product better.

5. You Behave To Be Price Sensitive- How come budgets are cut only when it comes to negotiations. Please share with me your budget; I will pitch in the right product which will not burn your pockets.

6.Veiled Threat to Speak to my Manager- Please don’t use that on me. It will not help. I am empowered to give you the best deal. Talking to managers usually end up in me deciding what is right for you and the company I represent.

7.Aggression is the short cut for a price cut- Well no. Aggression will lead you to incur higher medical bills but no price reduction from me. I will ensure to keep you calm, but if aggression is a tactic, I am out of the game.  Reading point 5 once again will help.

8.Read Points 1-7 once again- Last but not the least, please read the 7 points. You will love following what I have said. You will not only get the right product at the right price but also a friend for life who will go to any extent to support you, at any cost.

Yours Truly, 

The Salesman

When To Say- No- To A Customer

With over a decade of experience in automobile retails, I have had my share of situations which are exciting and pleasant, stressful, embarrassing and sometimes irritating. As I gathered years of experience, I got the most valuable skill which any one in Sales should have which is "Saying No To A Customer".

A lead or a prospect is as valuable as a precious stone for a sales man and the Customer- A God. The salesman is on the lookout for that "Win-Win" situation which will break the lead into a customer. But not always. There are situations, where in, saying No will be good for both parties involved. I have summarized the situations broadly into 2 as under:

Customer with an impossibly high expectation and demands- We as salesmen are bought up with the thought customers are always right. But when a customer becomes demanding in terms of product, specifications, deadlines or delivery which by  all means a company cannot honor, take the call to say a polite No. Be polite and also ensure to explain the reason. From my experience, 50% of customers would agree to your terms once regret is expressed. However, as a salesman you need to introspect.

·      Why did the customer expect so high? 

·      Have you at any stage over committed yourself during your frenzied sales pitch?

·      Take corrective steps immediately to avoid a recurrence.

      Customer on a high price negotiation which affects profits- A sales materializes when customer sees value in the product or business proposition. However, most of the time price negotiations take much time in a sales process which according to me is due to customer not finding value but has a need. At times negotiations will turn to worse when customer demands more price reductions, or freebies, which will affect the profits. Businesses employ salesmen for generating profits. If the very profit seems badly affected, take the call once again to say No. Saying No in this context saves yours and customers time, reduces the stress on the salesman (which,for a rookie, will be on all time high) and will actually give you an opportunity to get back to the customer at a later stage. However, walking out from a price negotiation is tricky. Situations for heavy negotiations could be

·        Either the customer is genuinely cash strapped and needs your help or

·        Is bargaining just to squeeze the best deal.

It’s depends on the judgment of the salesman to find which category the customer falls. A genuine customer if supported will give more business at a later stage. However, the latter can be just ignored with the No. The points for introspection are

·         Has the salesman at any point try to sell on price and not on value?

·         Has he/she shown the option that prices can drop if escalated?

·         Has he/she shown desperation for the deal?

Selling is probably the oldest profession known to mankind. It can be made stress free by understanding, creating and delivering value. But it’s easier said than done and negotiation pitfalls can create undue pressure on the salesman’s life. Make sales simple. Say the No at the appropriate time but politely. Even though the walk back to the office will be painful, rest assured the head is held high and all likely the customer will still get back to you at a later stage.

Customer Service and Barking Dogs

Barking Dogs Seldom Bite is an idiom we all are so familiar with. I remember having heard an extension to this- "I know, you know, but does the dog know" Well for all the humor, the statement carries, the concept of barking dogs not knowing it won’t bite and customer service has a link. A link so decisive it can create customer loyalty.

A complaining customer barks. And ask any customer service executive, especially associated with aviation and telecommunications, and they would vehemently, agree to this. Purchase of a product or service involves emotions. Marketeers employ various mechanisms to trigger the emotion to purchase their product or service. And the same emotions come to play during a complaint phase.

The biggest threat to big and small organizations today is customer migrating to competition. As per Accenture global customer satisfaction report 2008-Price is not the main reason for customer churn, it is actually due to the overall poor quality of customer service.

So if an organization takes complaints lightly, it is looking down the barrel of a gun. There are numerous facts and figures given online which talks about how existing customers can deliver more than acquiring new, and how retaining existing customers who are acquired with much difficulty is profitable to the organization. Hence customer loyalty and customer complaints are closely linked. As per statistics gathered the facts and figures on customer complaints are as under: (Source http://ianhoughton.com/statistics)

F    1. For every customer complaint there are 26 other unhappy customers who have remained silent
2. 991% of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with you again.

3    3. 70% of complaining customers will do business with you again if you resolve the complaint in their favor

Hence when a customer complains it’s a wakeup call for the organizations. From point number 1 it is important to note that only 1 in 26 customers complain. Hence this one “barking” customer is an asset. This customer is the pointer to know things are not in place as it is supposed to be for an organization and an interesting observation I have made is:

“Customers complain because they want to be associated with that particular service provider. Others simply churn”

There lies the underlying fact. Hence the angry customer however loud he/she be is venting their emotions but unknowingly has the confidence of a resolution from the organization.

Don’t let them down. Treat this customer well, listen, don’t argue and then organizations will see this “barking dog” evolve into a loyal customer. The one’s that bite were those customers who churned out, silently.

Disclaimer: Thoughts and observations shared are strictly personal.

Crimson Tide Movie- Conflict of Leadership Theories

Defining leadership is difficult. One size fits all approach in leadership is in effective as the elements involved are both internal and external on which most of the leaders find difficult to control. Leadership is an art as much as it’s a science. I am posting this long post to distinguish the behavior of 2 defined leadership theories when in crisis.

Crimson Tide is a captivating movie set in the backdrop of an eminent nuclear crisis between nations and a drama that unravels on board a US nuclear submarine. An intense movie played by Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington, I observed a conflict of leadership theories. This movie by far being a thriller is a text book on leadership. The traits, of the theory, as exhibited by the characters are discussed in this post.

The leadership theories discussed are:

1. Situational Leadership and
2. Contingency Leadership

What is Situational & Contingency Theories?

There have been efforts to classify leadership in various ways forms like Behavioral, Classical, Situational, Contingency, Contemporary etc. Even though Classical, Behavioral and other forms of leadership can be differentiated, there has been no clear demarcation between Situation and Contingency theories. On the retrospect, a closer analysis of these theories, there are commonalities the main one being extension of behavioral group of leadership models. Furthermore the Situational and Contingency theories focuses on the various *situations* which leaders may find themselves in.

Situational: This theory focuses on the use of a leader’s personal skills and natural ability to lead in a situation. A relationship is shared between the leader and the follower based on 4 individual styles. The theory states that instead of using just one style, successful leadersshould change their leadership styles based on the maturity of the people they're leading and the details of the task. The words “should change” highlights an important facet of this theory which is “Being Flexible”

The simple matrix below shows the leadership style against the maturity of the follower involved.

(Ref: The Hersey and Blanchard‟ Situational Leadership Theory”)

Contingency: Amongst the various contingency (dependent) theories, I am referring to the Fred Fiedler's contingency model. This model contains the relationship between leadership style and the favorable-ness of the situation. Situational favorable-ness was described in terms of three empirically derived dimensions:

1. Leader-Member relationship
2. Task-Structure
3. Leader-Position (Position-Power)

Situations are favorable to the leader if all three of these dimensions are high. The table below simplifies the contingency model.

Ref:http://jasonmatthews.hubpages.com/hub/Leadership-Theories-Three-Types-of-Contingency-and-Situational-Theories

The table above shows how these three variables can interact to form eight different possible situations (also known as octants) and which leadership styles are best for each situation. Unlike other contingency theories, Fielder's approach believes that leaders, by-and-large, have a set leadership style. In other words, if a leader is task oriented, he or she will always be task-oriented and cannot quickly change styles to adapt to a changing situation. This means in this model of leadership styles are “Relatively Inflexible”

Crimson Tide-Analysis of the characters and leadership theory exhibited:
Capt. Ramsey was among the very few commanders remaining in the Navy with experience in combat. Capt. Ramsey did not have an active family life. The leadership theory I saw from the behavior of the character as Contingency with primary focus on Task and not Relationship.

Lt. Commander Ron Hunter-Highly educated family man but no combat experience. He is working for the first time, as an Executive office, with Capt. Ramsey. Believes in Situational Leadership

Initial Interactions: The initial interaction had the nuances of 2 distinct styles of leaderships. From conversations starting at the 23 minute of the movie between the CO with XO the difference of opinion and body language is evident. Capt. Ramsey was task oriented and implied he found his new XO as indecisive.

As the crisis sets in the submarine the difference of opinions emerge. The CO being a task oriented leader is now trending in the 5, 6, 7 octants in the Eight Octant Continuum shared above.

Ramsey’s Approach:

Hunters Approach:

At extreme crisis situation: When the crisis is at the extreme, the actions of the gentlemen involved are as under. The XO demonstrates the flexibility of leadership which is consistent with Situational Leadership. His belief is applied:

Capt. Ramsey demonstrates his Task Motivated Leadership in a context which required Relationship orientation.

Summary: At the end of the movie, the decision of Lt. Commander Hunter was right and Capt. Ramsey’s was wrong. However as I conclude this post, I am faced with a dilemma on who’s leadership approach was correct in the crisis depicted in Crimson Tide. In Leadership there is nothing right or wrong. Lt.Commander Hunter is into relationship motivated approach with his subordinates. Capt.Ramsey with his task orientated approach finds himself in the wrong situation as per the contingency theory. In the final stages, where in Leader-Member relation was poor, with Task and Power high, a Relationship Motivated leader was the need.

I trust in relationship motivated leadership and the approach of Lt. Commander Hunter is my choice. Open for discussions!

Source: Secondary research from online resources and offline readings.Also,watching the movie couple of times!Disclaimer:Crimson Tide Movie and the clips of the movie showed belong to the copyright holdersSources of images other than the movie clips are given under the images & belong to the copyright holdersOpinions and thoughts are strictly personal

Paste Option Button Missing in MS Applications during Ctrl+V- Solved

Hasnt this happened to most of us when we use the MS Office Applications, Excel and Word? We do the Ctrl+V on the document and find that the formating is not what we wanted and the ever resourceful Paste option button is missing!!

This problem occured to me and for what reason, no idea, but let me tell you how to fix it...i.e. how to get the Paste Option Button Back. For that go to the File Tab and  then Options from the MS Application you are using:

The Options opens a new box in which you have to click Advanced, Scroll to Cut, Copy and Paste and tick the Show Paste Option button. The image is as under:

And that sorts the problem! Thanks for reading. 

Has Social Media Made Us Too Sensitive?

As I write this post, the memories of the Finnair and various other companies' PR mess in past few weeks is fresh in my mind. And it is with this foundation that I wish to start my new post on have we become insensitive?

It was in November 2001, Manix launched its advertisement called Harbor for its lubricating gel targeting the French market.

In what is seen as a serene, innocent picture, on closer examination, the details sink in. This advertisement, however, went on to win several awards including 18th Annual London International Advertising Awards.

Social media was in its nascent stage with Wikipedia taking baby steps that year and MySpace, LinkedIn Facebook etc launching within couple of years later. Hence this advertisement never got its chance to be shared, liked, tweeted, pasted to a wall or tagged.

Now fast forward the time period to October 2011.

10 years after the Manix promo, Chapstic rolled out an advertisement campaign " “Where Do Lost Chapsticks Go?” with the picture of a young woman’s behind (in jeans) as she bends over the couch allegedly searching for her Chapstick.

Underneath, the text is “Be heard at Facebook.com/Chapstick”

A blogger sees the image, takes offense, and writes about it on the Facebook. And Chapstick deletes her comments, which set off chain of events leading to the company apologizing and earning itself the dubious position of top 5 (or 3) Social Media disasters.

The point I wish to discuss is not on ethics behind deleting a social media post, but on the insensitivity part. Several people wrote on the Chapstic wall criticizing this campaign. The question is why have we become so insensitive. In which case, to me, the Manix advertisement was far more provocative than Chapstic.

So I leave this post with some open questions to deliberate upon-

1. Has Social Media opened up a Pandora box filled with criticism and insensitivity giving PR nightmares?
2. Or is Social Media right, in the sense of being democratic, for people to air their views?
3. Or have we become too sensitive?

My view- We, including me, have become too sensitive!

Thanks for reading this post and look forward for your views on this subject.

Disclaimer-Views and opinions expressed in the post are strictly personal. All products and logos are property of their respective manufacturer

Social Media Faux Pas- The Finnair story

Finnair has a very creative social media team and as an Indian, still remember the flash dance in a flight leaving for Delhi to celebrate the Indian Republic Day. This was 2 years back and the video has garnered over 5,235,462 views, 16,771 likes and over 6000 comments at the time of this post. This also meant Finnair flew straight into the Indian hearts with no big budget marketing spend. But what happened on social media is a lesson for all companies.

In the wake of Malaysian Airlines MH17 tragedy, many airlines had apparently announced that they were not flying over Ukraine on their social media account. FlightRadar24, a live flight tracker website, was prompted to respond otherwise especially to Finnair who claimed not flying over Ukraine. On being pointed out of the error, Finnair twitter account issued a further denial on the social networking site basis the..umm..shape of the earth. This communication could have been avoided. Social media went berserk and ensured Finnair posted an apology. Which they did, but in Finnish and later in English.

Learning:

1. Companies beware of what you post online
2. Double check the data prior to posting
3. Avoid baseless denial
4. Do not let things go out of control
5. Have an attitude to apologize but make it fast
6. Respect the power of Social Media

Sharing the timeline of the incident. Timeline courtesy- Twitter.com

(Disclaimer- Views and opinions expressed in the post are strictly personal)

Views are personal