Is it about you?
I spent a long time talking with a CEO this week about him. We talked about who he was, what was important to him, how he showed up in personality profiles. We didn't spend much time talking about how that worked with his people or with customers.
We do that with our products or our services, too. We talk about our stuff without knowing much about the audience. Then we can't figure out why one customer loves us and the next can't wait to get us out of the room. What's up with THEM?
Yes, it is critical that as leaders, we know ourselves. That might be described as step one. However, if we stop there, we miss the juice. The next step is how that resonates with the customer. Do we really understand how we come across? Do we do any research, ask for any feedback or evaluation? How many times have you listened to someone's presentation, and been turned off by their demeanor, felt bored or irrelevant to the conversation? Yet, the speaker thought they gave a great presentation.
Where do you get CONSISTENT feedback about how you are showing up? Do you have feedback partners within your organization? Do you have feedback partners outside-customers, vendors, peers?
What product or service does the customer really want? How do you find out? Do you ask them? Do the people within your organization have a template for what to say about your products and what to ask the customer? Do you do market research?
There is so much noise out there and everyone is working so hard to be heard, we can't take it for granted that what we did last year will get us heard now.
I challenge you to get feedback from 3 customers/clients this week on what you should stop doing, what you should start doing, and what you should keep doing.
Let me know how it works out.
Personal Mastery
How well do you know yourself? Can you predict or understand the behavior of other Members of your team?
I was talking with a CEO who is working with a new assessment tool for leadership style. If you have done personality assessments before, you may have discovered characteristics about yourself that may be a challenge to your success in your job. When you examine them carefully, you may find that this is the reason you struggle with parts of your responsibilities.
Well, my friend is very self aware. She knew most of what she heard in the personality assessment to be accurate. However, there was one thing new that she learned- that she was extremely focused when she had a goal. Not reasonably focused, not balanced, extremely focused. She had always thought that most people were that way, at least the people on her team. For her, once she set a goal, other things dropped out of her line of sight. Some of the members of her team didn't react that way, and had questions or comments that to her felt like they didn't get the goal. Now she understands that they don't immediately organize around goals, so she needs to give them time to process what they will have to do differently. Now, she can gauge the reaction and modify her communication style if she needs to. By using an assessment tool, the team can have a conversation around differences that are non-judgmental...leaders just have different styles that are neither better nor worse than the others around the table.
When we get a reaction that puzzles us from the people around us, do we examine what our part was in creating the dynamic? By working with personality profiles, we can open a discussion with our team about who each of us is and how that helps or hurts our organization. In other settings, we can stop the conversation and check in with others on what they are hearing and how it affects them. Ultimately, the more we know ourselves, and pay attention to how we affect the people around us, the better leader we can be for our families, our companies and the community.