Deon Barnard

Managers have the difficult task of promoting the company’s agenda while at the same time caring for the personal needs of their staff. They have to get the most productivity out of employees, for the company to earn more profits, and yet at the same time see that staff are treated fairly and are personally fulfilled at work. The ‘company’ as an entity has no emotional capacity or people skills – it exists for the purpose of making profits – or at least that’s how it’s been for a hundred years; however, more and more in recent times there is a move toward a new philosophy where people, communities and Earth itself are all equally important shareholders in the company, and the board of directors are not a pantheon of Gods anymore. The old-school manipulative techniques of “you’re fired” and “don’t challenge me – I pay your salary” don’t fly anymore; in fact you’re likely to get hauled over the coals at the CCMA (Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration) for even thinking about being so stupid. In short, the world is evolving and so must managers, supervisors, team leaders, directors and bosses. We need to understand how to get the best out of our people before we’re going to get the best out of our company. We need to start paying attention and caring.

Motivating employees is not the job of the “HR guy” or the external therapist; it’s not even the job of the manager or team leader – it’s everyone’s job. As we all start applying motivational principles at work, the motivational water table is raised and everyone benefits. Here are some tips for raising the motivational level at your workplace:

1. Have a regular “Barrel” session.

This is something I picked up from my ministry days, although few churches ever used it effectively. Imagine a wooden barrel made of staves and held together by metal bands. Imagine that some staves are short and others long, i.e. the top of the barrel is irregular. Now imagine pouring water into that barrel. If you continue to keep pouring water, after a while the water will overflow – at the shortest stave. No matter how much you keep pouring, the water level in the Barrel will never be higher than the shortest stave. Imagine the staves are critical success factors for your business and the water is the success (profits included). Have a weekly Barrel session with your team to “score” each stave of your business and then focus on improving the shortest stave – in this way you will raise the success level of your business. Let everyone get involved in the process, from the lowly receptionist to the uber-exec. Motivation starts by making people feel they’re included. PS: If you’re not sure where to start with this let me come and facilitate your first session.

2. Colorize your environment.

Nobody wants to work in a sterile, grey institution. Bring some life into the place with plants, paintings (not those sickening ‘motivational’ posters) and interesting furniture. Also, do a survey on what your employees think about their uniforms! Some corporate attire is worse than Afrikaans school uniforms. Get someone in who understands fashion and give your staff options for looking reasonable and professional at the same time. Funk up your corporate logo too.

3. Get rid of dumb incentive schemes

Incentive schemes that have your employees working twice as hard for an extra R100 at the end of the month will cause enormous dissatisfaction. Don’t link your performance management systems to financial incentives because all you’ll get in your performance interviews is everyone lying about how they’ve performed. Nobody is going to tell you what’s going wrong if they think it will impact their salary. Implement a performance management system that focuses on self development and the achieving of personal dreams, with an emphasis on coaching, and watch employee attitudes improve!

4. Communicate!

Talk to your people. Start the day with a focus session and deal with concerns as they arise. Deal with difficult situations one-on-one. If you have expectations then communicate them – only Stone Age managers think “they should know how to do that, it’s just common sense”.

5. Administrate your motivational plan properly

Many businesses administrate the more technical HR elements like salary, leave, employment records etc; but they don’t keep track of the stuff that really counts like your employees’ dreams and personal development. Managers should know where their people are ‘at’ and during regular coaching sessions should be monitoring the personal progress of each employee in their care. Keep secure records for this and please abide by the prevailing personal information security laws and standards.

6. Put the right people in the right places

Many people seem rebellious and contrary at work simply because they’re doing something that doesn’t fulfill them or suit their personality style. It is critical to get a sense of your employees’ GHAPE (gifts, heartbeat, abilities, personality and experience). In this way you will be able to assess whether you have a noisy extrovert dying behind piles of data capturing or a shy perfectionist trying in vain to motivate your sales force. PS: I can help you with this too!

I would love to hear stories of your motivational journey at work. What’s working for you? What’s de-motivating your staff? The more feedback I get the more useful I can be in my upcoming articles.

A moment of truth is that moment when a customer steps into the reception, hears the company’s greeting over the phone or opens a letter or email from the company. It’s that first impression. It’s that gut feel that says, “These guys suck” or “How dare they?” or “Wow, that person was helpful!” or “Sheesh, this place is a dump”.

It can take days, weeks or months to reverse the effects of a negative or traumatic moment of truth in a customer’s mind. Things that can have an impact on the moment of truth are:

• The upkeep of your premises
• The air conditioning
• The music / noise
• A receptionists bearing and attitude
• A salesperson’s genuineness and helpfulness
• The personal interaction between staff
• The first words spoken to the customer
• Eye contact
• A smile

The truth is that the average customer assesses all these things in an instant and unconsciously determines whether the company is worth their business or not. All too often a company has a worthy product or service but small and important ‘moment of truth’ factors are overlooked and customers are lost to the competition.

A great little acronym that should be pasted onto everyone’s desk pad, keyboard, notice board and coffee mug is E.P.R.

EPR is the CPR of customer service. Using this technique will resuscitate good customer relations and go a long way to ensuring positive moments of truth for the customer. EPR stands for Empathy, Procedure and Resolution. Let’s take a look at these concepts.

1. Empathy

Empathy is not sympathy. In the world of business it would not be very helpful to literally cry in sympathy of the customer’s dilemma. What customers want is someone who will listen, understand and take action on their behalf. Customers want to know that the person they’re dealing with is being sincere and honest with them. A customer wants to know that they have been heard and that their situation is thoroughly understood. Empathy is about being on their ’side’ and looking out for their interests. I have seldom seen empathetic customer service in this country, most customer facing staff I have met are too busy protecting and defending themselves to be on the customer’s side or see anything from the customer’s perspective. “The system is slow today – it’s not my fault”. “It’s not my department – ask someone else.” “It’s not MY fault you didn’t check your documentation!” “Well you don’t have to get upset about it”. We cannot have empathy while we’re being defensive. Customer service is about the customer not you. Good ways to start empathetic communication are, “I understand” or “I see what you mean” or “I see you point”.

2. Procedure

Learn your ‘procedure manual’ in detail then pack it away and use your brain! It is critical that customer facing staff know exactly what the correct procedure is for all anticipated circumstances, and it is equally critical that when unforeseen circumstances arise, that they have enough general knowledge, skill and common sense to deal with anything. I have called call centers of large service providers and had an agent rattle off something like “Good day, my name is Joe Soap, how may I be of excellent service to you?” Then when I explain my situation I get silence… then, “please hold” and transferred to the agent sitting next to them. Yeah, truly excellent service there Joe! The problem is that Joe neither understands the services his company offers nor how to deal with tricky issues not covered by the rule book.

A classic example is cream soda floats. Huh? Yes, cream soda floats! Next time you go to a restaurant try and order a cream soda float. Last time I went somewhere and ordered this heavenly beverage I got a blank stare and the following conversation ensued:

“Uh… a cream soda?”

“No, a cream soda float.”

“Float?”

“Yes.”

“Uh… I don’t think we have cream soda floats…”

“(sigh) Do you have cream soda?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have ice cream?”

“Yes.”

“So can I have a cream soda please!? Large.”

“Uh… can I just check something”…

At which point she hurries off to the kitchen to check with her manager if she can take a cream soda float order. She probably gets a slap across the head from her slightly less retarded manager and scurries back to say that they do in fact have cream sodas. What was the problem? You guessed it – it wasn’t on the menu (AKA procedure manual). The issue was the waitress didn’t know what to charge for it, and she would rather bring me something I didn’t want than apply her mind to adding the cost of the cream soda to the cost of a scoop of ice cream. This is the kind of customer service I get on a daily basis. I want to scream and jump up and down and put them all in a training room to sort their brains out!

3. Resolution

The ultimate goal of customer service is to resolve the customer. Not necessarily the problem, but the customer himself (or herself). Sometimes you can resolve the customer by resolving their particular request or problem and sometimes you have to adjust the need, expectation or problem because the customer actually needs something else – they just don’t know it yet. Often a customer knows that they’re frustrated or exasperated but are not sure what particular service or product will meet the need. It is the job of the customer service agent to deal with the emotional need first and then help the customer identify the solution. Sometimes the solution is not something your company can provide, in which case pointing the customer in the right direction is resolving them. Every customer should be a fresh case of, “how can I resolve you?”

Want to improve your customer service? Check out the training link.

Personality profiling has recently become popular again with generation Y moving into the workplace. Generation X had a natural distaste for anything that they perceived to be “boxing” them into a particular mould. (I’ll be writing a few articles on the generations soon). Anyway, you just need to get on Facebook to find any number of “profiling tools” that claim to reveal what kind of person, lover, parent, friend, etc… you are. I have been fairly impressed with some of them and fairly appalled by others. The reality is that any type of profiling can be harmful if used incorrectly. Some people “wield” their profiling tools like weapons and end up destroying the self esteem of the gullible or leading people onto paths that are not suited to them. Personality profiling should never be used to make the trainer or facilitator feel somehow powerful and in control, or to convince people that they have no choice and are merely hapless consequences of their genetics or some “mystical” force in the universe.

Having said all that may lead you to believe that I’m against profiling… quite the opposite! The foundation of all my training for over 15 years has been personality profiling. I believe that, if used correctly and maturely, such tools can be of enormous benefit to people. I have personally tested thousands of people in many countries and have learned a great deal about how personality traits impact our everyday lives. Understanding your personality traits helps you understand many other things about your life like:

• Why people react to you the way they do
• Why you “get along” with some people easily and judge others harshly before they’ve even had a conversation with you
• Why you sometimes feel like you have a “split” personality and seem to want contradictory things
• Why you married someone that seems entirely opposite to you (and probably is)
• Why you have that particular response to things over and over again
• Why you are drawn to a particular career choice

And the list goes on…

Understanding these things is an enormous catalyst for healing relationships, working in teams, making intelligent career choices and making peace with yourself, among other things.

When assessing your personality it is important to use a tested and accurate tool with a knowledgeable and wise facilitator. Don’t believe the results of all the free quizzes and horoscopes you find on the web or in magazines – this will have a negative effect on your life and leave you confused about who you really are.

I use the four-quadrant system that was originally conceived by Hippocrates over 2000 years ago and has been refined and perfected ever since. The “D.I.S.C.” test is a remake of the same system and is currently doing the rounds in corporate companies around the world quite successfully. Another system I have great respect for is the Myers Briggs profile which effectively determines which side of the scale you tend to fall on four scales: Extroversion/Introversion; Sensing/Intuition; Thinking/Feeling and Judgement/Perception. My critique of that particular system is that there are too many potential results. It then becomes too easy to score differently each time you do the test and therefore diminishes the validity of the results, (although mine has always been constant).

I take a simpler approach. Rather than doing a test and getting a very particular profile “set in stone” on a piece of paper, my test produces a graph with a “pattern”. The pattern indicates which traits you demonstrate more than others, and then we have some fun conversations and activities around the results. My test looks at three scales being: Introversion vs. Extroversion; Thinking vs. Emotion and Tasks vs. People. The point of the exercise is not to tell you that you can’t change or be whatever you want to be, but rather to help you realize how you’ve got to where you are and what natural strengths you have and what potential blind spots you need to be aware of in the future.

Here is a very simple list of the four “Styles” and some of their key traits. You will find things you can relate to in all four quadrants but will more than likely realize that most of your behavioural traits lie in one or two of the styles.