Traffic Jams and Customer Service...

After a recent visit with family in my hometown of Sacramento, I happened to be browsing the local news magazine.  In it appeared a review of a book about traffic (Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).  The reviewer listed several factoids about traffic and being caught in a traffic jam that I think apply to managing your customers and other clients.

When you have people waiting for you to finish a step in a project, or to deliver a product, the waiting itself can have a negative impact on your customer's perception of you.  Here's what we can learn from traffic theory:

1.  Unexplained waits are longer than explained waits.  Don't leave your customer guessing about what's taking the time.  Provide a basic explanation of what you're doing, and why it will take some time.

2.  Uncertain waits are longer than known, finite waits.  Always give your customer an idea or estimate of how long it will be before you can deliver.  Even if you have to change it later, never leave your customer in an indefinite situation.  As with traffic, the wait will seem longer if they don't know what to expect.

3.  Anxiety makes the wait seem longer.  Stay in touch with your customer during the delay.  Make sure you keep them confident that you are on top of the matter, and there are no major problems other than simple time to process.

4.  Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.  Sometimes, especially with a longer wait, you need to keep your customer working on something else to give them the feeling of progress.  Ask you customer to gather some important information while waiting, or develop delivery details.  Perhaps there is draft language or designs that the customer could be looking at.

Good ideas can come from surprising places.  Who would think that traffic principles could apply to good customer management?  Two lessons here:  handle your customer waits well and you'll benefit, and look everywhere for good ideas!

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Admitting Your Mistakes...

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Great leaders are never afraid to admit their mistakes, because they realize that mistakes are inevitable.  Mistakes are only a problem when we refuse to admit them because we then cannot learn from them and will probably repeat them. 

Stephen R. Covey, famed management consultant says "Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it -- immediately."

This blogger has it right.  The strongest motivation for refusing to admit mistakes is fear.  We fear that admitting we made a mistake or we're wrong somehow means we're not smart, or competent.  The true leader understands what the great poet Alexander Pope said:  "A man should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."

Author Elliot Aronson in his book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), discusses how "cognitive dissonance" can work to convince us we're right even when we know we're wrong!  Especially our own self-image.  "If I think I'm smart and I do something stupid, I think it really wasn't that bad, or everyone does it, and I can sleep better at night without the cognitive dissonance," he says.  But, he says, if you make a serious blunder, and convince yourself otherwise, you lose the opportunity to learn.  Worse, he gives the example of going into war by mistake, but continuing to justify it anyway.  Listen to his NPR interview about cognitive dissonance and how it drives us to refuse to admit mistakes, and how to overcome it.  Read more of his writings here.  For a leader, admitting mistakes can actually pay off.  "The risk of looking foolish is miniscule compared to the goodwill earned from standing up and doing the right thing," says Inc. Magazine.  More recently, “Wrongologist” Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility in her book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.  Check out a video of her speaking on the topic.

Sarah Green in her Harvard Review article discusses how often we actually are wrong, and comes up with two resolutions I wholeheartedly support:  (1) Actively look for anomalies, and (2) Be gentle to each other — and to yourself.  And understand that, like the evolving beings we are, we learn most from our mistakes, but only when we recognize and admit them.

What do you think?  Do you have trouble admitting when you're wrong?  Or do you have a special strategy for checking yourself?  Share your "adventures in the margin of error" with us.

www.ManifestationCoaching.com

Twin Baby Boys Have a Conversation! on Shine

Twin Baby Boys Have a Conversation! on Shine

This clip reminds of me of many staff meetings I have attended!

In Faith is Freedom...

As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit. 

Emmanuel Teney







(www.ManifestationCoaching.com)

The Joy of Doing...

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The old proverb of “be careful what you wish for” has really proven true for me.  My recent promotion has me working harder than I ever imagined and still facing the possibility that I may not succeed.  When I first considered this opportunity, my stomach did a little flip of nervousness.  Yep, it would clearly be outside my comfort zone.

But throughout my life, that little stomach flip which signals the first steps outside the familiar has been a reliable guide to the best choices in my life.  I’ve discovered that, for me, that little fillip of fear says I’m stretching, trying something new for me.  And each one of those choices has led to major positive growth in my life.  Sometimes you have to be scared to go forward. Change can be scary.  There’s nothing wrong with a little fear…unless you let it get between you and your dream.

But what I really wanted to write about is a recent discovery made by one of my clients. See, Say, Do principles say that once you’ve visualized all your possibilities, chosen your path and clearly articulated it, you then have to do something. Some describe it as acting like it’s already true. However you describe it, at some point you have to act.

My client Ben learned how that works in his own life, and I was gratified to see the See, Say, Do principles demonstrated again.  Ben is working to build his private practice. Since he graduated from school and got his license, he’d been working out of his house, seeing clients in his home office.  But growing his practice was a struggle for Ben. He wasn’t satisfied with the slow pace of growth, and the low fees he was generating.  He was still living mostly off his savings, and getting really worried about whether he would have to rethink the idea of being in private practice.

Then Ben came to me for help making a decision.  He’d come across an office for rent in a good neighborhood, and for a really reasonable rate. It was just the right size with lots of windows. After visiting the office with him, I had to agree that it was perfect. His problem?  He wasn’t sure he could make the commitment to the regular rent payment.

We broke it down.  How many clients would he need on a regular basis at what hourly rate to cover the rent? The answer was “more clients than he had.” At first glance, it appeared he couldn’t swing the deal.  But he didn’t want to give up.  So we talked about it some more. He didn’t have a full client load, so he wouldn’t be using the office every day. That was part of the problem.  But perhaps it could be part of the solution instead.

Realizing that many people trying to build a new practice were in the same position as Ben, we considered the possibility of renting the office out on his days with no clients.  No deposits, no commitments longer than a month.  That way, as Ben’s client list grew, he could gradually reclaim more of his office time.

At last, despite some misgivings, Ben decided to take the plunge and signed the rental agreement and dipped into his savings yet again for the deposit he was required to make. He promptly placed ads on craigslist and bulletin boards at his former school.  Amazingly, within days he got a call from another practitioner looking for part-time office space, Ben made his first deal, and settled in to building his practice.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.  Ben didn’t change his advertising budget or strategy, though we discussed it.  He sent out an announcement about the new office to his email list.  He ordered business cards with his new office address and started handing them out everywhere he went. Within three weeks, he had added three clients to his practice, all at higher rates than his existing clients. He doesn’t fill his office fill time yet, but he will soon.

What happened? A scary rental agreement and some business cards.  Not much right?  The real change, though, was in Ben’s head.  For Ben, getting an office made his business real to him! As a result, his new enthusiasm and confidence generated new business.  Ben felt more like a businessman, and his practice showed the difference.  Having a physical focus for his business created the business for real in his head, and the physical world followed his lead.

You can’t truly make revolutionary choices in your life until you’ve explored your choices.  Once you’ve made your choice, you need to think about it and fully clothe the idea or dream until you know all its smallest details.  But seeing and saying your dream isn’t everything.  No matter how small the effort, you’ve got to do something.  Something.  Not necessarily something big, just something.

Despite all Ben’s plans to revamp his marketing strategies, to create a great web site, and to begin publishing a newsletter or blog, Ben turned made the difference without any of those things.  He moved his practice from his home office to a small rented office.  One small do turned the corner for Ben.

When the time comes, don’t stop just because what you’re doing is a little scary and don’t stop just because it doesn’t seem enough. It’s the doing that matters. 

Ask Ben.

www.ManifestationCoaching.com

Avoiding discouragement....

(www.ManifestationCoaching.com)

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated my blog, and I hope you won’t think I’ve lost interest.  I’ve been really busy since the beginning of the year because I’ve been promoted to the head of our District’s human resources division.  I work in the public sector where career advancement can seem glacial compared to the private for-profit employers where I’ve spent most of my working life.  I’ve been there six years already, and finally am moving up.  But it’s a place where people make careers and don’t want to leave.  (I hope as head of HR to continue that tradition.)  And realistically, as you rise within an organization, the opportunities become fewer as you funnel your way to the top.

When I mentioned to a friend that I was officially “the boss” now, she said “Wow, that took forever.  Weren’t you discouraged?” And upon reflection, I realized that despite setbacks, I had simply refused to become discouraged.  That got me thinking. How did I do that?  When I was younger, I couldn’t just refuse to get discouraged.  I remember feeling discouraged and depressed and defeated.  So how did I get to this place of power; the power to refuse to accept discouragement?

Admittedly, some of the progress must be attributed to my increased age.  There’s nothing like a little time behind the wheel to give you a better sense of yourself and the world around you.  But that’s only a little help.  More importantly, I finally learned a few lessons.  Lessons that can be learned at any age, and the earlier the better.

Discouragement:  

 1. to deprive of the will to persist in something 

 2. to inhibit; prevent: this solution discourages rust  

3. to oppose by expressing disapproval
  

No matter how well-intentioned and detailed our resolutions may be, most of us will stop pursuing them before we get to our goal.  Why?  What is the powerful enemy to our achievement?  In a single word: discouragement.  It robs us of our destiny. 

The foundational principle of See, Say, Do is that you have the power to make change in your life.  That you don’t have to wait for some charitable soul to come along and rescue you.  But if you have the power to make change, you also have the power to block it.  And that’s what is really happening when we allow ourselves to become discouraged.  So what is discouragement, and how can we avoid it? 

Deprive the Will to Persist...

Here’s the only place in my See, Say, Do principles that depends on willpower.  The will to persist. Sometimes, when the will to persist vanishes, we know that we didn’t really want what we were pursuing.  But when you are chasing your life’s dream, you can’t stop with every little setback.  You have to keep going.  So why do we stop?  Most people’s reasons boil down to one simple thing…we stop believing it’s possible to achieve the dream.  Few people can be satisfied chasing the impossible dream for long.

Too often we assume that everything will happen according to our own timetable.  But that can be a challenge if there are others involved.  For example, if you're working on a team project, your timetable isn't the only one to consider.  Others have demands and priorities and you'll all have to fit together to get the task accomplished.  Or, you may feel that you're fully ready and prepared for the new challenge, but you may be incorrect. Or maybe you underestimated how long completion will take.  No matter what the cause, the first challenge comes when change doesn't occur when we expect it. 

We assume that this means we are failing.  Then what happens?  We lose faith in ourselves.  Losing faith means we can't see any reason to continue.  We lose the will to persist.

The solution?  Insist.  Insist on believing you can achieve. Insist on continuing the chase.  Accept that sometimes progress will be quicker than other times, and that occasionally there may even be setbacks.  But insist on continuing, no matter what tries to hold you back. 

To Inhibit... 

Have you ever heard yourself say something like: "I couldn't do that, that's just not for me."  Or "I can't do it that way."  Or worse, "I can't do it until/unless [fill in blank]."  Each of these phrases is a life inhibiter.  Each takes the abundant universe and carves away its most precious gifts.  Say those things, or anything like them, and you cut out a wide swath of potential choices and strategies.  Why?  Because you place burdens on your choices even before you can consider them. 

There's an old folk tale involving a storekeeper and two villagers.  The storekeeper needed to get some supplies to the next village.  He offered a small sum to the first villager to take the load.  The first villager looked at the load and thought "that's way too heavy to carry to the next village no matter what he pays!"  He declined the job.  The storekeeper made the same offer to a second villager.  The second one looked at the load and asked himself "how can I get that load delivered since its obviously too heavy to carry?"  Once the question was asked, the answer was obvious. 

The second villager bargained for a slightly higher sum, and used the difference to rent a pack mule for the journey. 

The first villager lost the opportunity because he was caught in life inhibiting thoughts.

Another example:  A recent client complained that he didn’t have enough time for his family.  When we looked at his normal schedule, it was filled with work, gym, sports events with the guys, business dinners, even self-improvement classes, but little of it was dedicated to his family. 

When we discussed the packed schedule, my client had strong justifications for each appointment.  There was a reason why he needed to keep each and every one of those appointments.  But each one was a blocker, an inhibitor, to reaching the goal my client said he wanted.  Each of those appointments took away time that could have been spent with family.

 After initial resistance, my client finally was able to see how everything was connected, and developed a new understanding of the relative importance of his schedule.  He was able finally to attach the proper importance to different events and meetings and make more time for his family. 

To Oppose...

On my web site, I discuss that many people will seem to take delight in assuring you of your ultimate failure and therefore foolishness to try and make positive change in your life.  From well-intentioned parents who wish you’d get a real job, to an otherwise loving spouse who fears you are over-reaching yourself.  And of course, the jealous co-worker who envies anything someone else has.   

Each of those can waylay your progress until you learn how to deal with them.  But the most powerful distraction from your dreams is you.

You would never actually oppose yourself would you?  Seems like a silly question.  But how often have you feared that you weren't good enough, or good looking enough, or smart enough, or whatever enough?  It all comes down to deserving.  Do you feel you deserve your goal?  Do you know you deserve your goal?  Do you accept yourself and your limitations as valuable and worthwhile?  They are, of course.  No, you're not perfect, but no one else is either.  

Once you've learned to accept and cherish yourself, weaknesses and all, you will stop opposing your own progress.  Then you can focus on dealing with external opposition.