It’s all about the conversations

When you’re managing or leading a team, it’s all about the conversations.

Some of my closest peers use the term ‘high frequency and high quality’ to describe the vital role of conversations with Team Members and that’s such a great way to put it.

The challenge for Team Leaders is that they either don’t know about the many different kinds of conversations at their disposal or they haven’t grown confident in the use of the conversations.

Some Team Leaders will tell you they don’t have time to have conversations with their Team Members which is a different challenge altogether.

There are many conversations in the Team Leader’s repertoire

Every Team Leader has a repertoire of conversations to choose from and use at the appropriate times and for the appropriate purposes.

In no particular order we share a few of these conversations here:

Praise
Gratitude
Monthly Team Reviews
Sincere & specific conversations about what went ‘right’
Sincere & specific conversations about ‘what did not go right’
Performance reviews
Manager as ‘boss’
Manager as ‘person
Transactional coaching
Individual monthly reviews
Poor performance
Personal advice (when asked for)
Manager as ‘Leader’

There’s a lot to talk about.

So how can a Team Leader talk like a Leader?

The simple advice is actually quite practical and links specifically back to the organizational or departmental Vision, Mission & Values.

Senior management wants the essence of the organization to cascade throughout every department and level.

So it can befrustrating for a CEO or VP of Customer Experience (etc.) to find that the folks answering the phone or serving at the Counter don’t have a basic understanding organizational goals, vision, mission and values.

While it’s to be expected that the senior folks incorporate organizational essence into their daily work, it often fails to appear in the conversations that take place between Team Leaders and the Frontline.

Vision, Mission & Values – this isn’t purely theoretical stuff

When we teach the Vision, we help people understand that this is a point in time in the future (as in our organization aims to become…).

Of course this is highly simplified for this article but still very clear.

In a recent class one of the students wanted to use Korean Airlines as a case study and here is their Vision:

To be a Respected Leader in the World Airline Community

While the calibre of the Vision Statement is open for discussion, we decided that this indeed represented a point of time in the future – a point in time when all the dreams of Korean Air would come true.

When we teach the Mission, we help people to understand that this is what we do ‘every day’.

For example, if we are a Call Centre, we may seek to listen and solve the enquiries of our Customers in a positive manner – and that’s something we do every day – not just on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

We then went to the Mission Statement for Korean Air which is:

Excellence in Flight

While the calibre of the Mission Statement is open for discussion, we decided that excellence in flight was something that was supposed to happen ‘every day’.

We then went to Zappos to visit a few of their well-known Core Values – 3 of which are listed below:

Core values are supposed to guide our behaviour at work and when well designed they can be very inspirational.

So what do we mean by the Language of Leadership?

Cindy – I really liked the way you incorporated empathy into your email to Mr. Lawrence. That supports our mission to provide excellent service ‘every day’.

Tom – one of our core values is Teamwork – and by staying back last night to help Tanya finish her report on time you helped bring that value to life. Thanks Tom.

Alex, for the next Guest who checks in, be sure to remember to ask them if they have their loyalty card so that they can enjoy the additional benefits of staying with us – that supports our vision to be the most trusted provider of hospitality solutions for our Guests.

It’s a terrific moment when Team Leaders begin to speak like leaders.

In closing

Managing people well involves having a lot of different types of timely and effective conversations with them.

And every potential conversation in the repertoire has its own purpose.

But to speak like a leader, just look to your organizational and departmental vision, mission and values and aim to bring them to life in your conversations with others.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

The ability to carry on a conversation in a service setting is a fine art. A great conversation evokes the right Customer emotions.

(The sign in the photo is German word for dishwasher).

This past Christmas, the dishwasher at my mother-in-law’s house in Germany broke down.

So we spent a few days visiting appliance dealers.

I grew up in the U.S. and have lived the last 17 years in Asia, so my expectations of sales & service finesse at big box appliance stores is low.

In the big box appliance store in Germany they evoked my emotions with a great conversation

In the store a young lady approached us to see if she could help.

When she heard my American-accented German she switched immediately to English.

As I stood there silently analyzing the interaction, I realized that her competence went well beyond knowing her products & services.

It was marked by her ability to carry on a conversation with us.

Full and complete sentences, clarity, responding to input, articulating responses, a calm unrushed demeanor – wow.

I left the experience knowing more about dishwashers than I had expected. And we knew which dishwasher was going to be ‘right’ for Mama.

It was so easy and my expectations were far exceeded.

The fact that the conversation was not held in her mother tongue was just an added bonus.

After years of working overseas, I don’t accept that someone can’t carry on a conversation because it is not in their mother tongue.

The German apprenticeship system

As we left the store I turned to my partner and asked – “so why is it that here in Germany, pretty much every time we interact with a retail staff, a restaurant staff or a hotel staff that the experience is so, well, competent?”

And the answer was – the German apprenticeship system.

It seems that in Germany, before you can work as a hairdresser, waiter, retail clerk etc. you complete a formal apprenticeship program.

This means that you study and do on the job training for some period of time before you are considered ‘competent’ to do the job. The time-frame for an apprenticeship typically runs 2.5 – 3.5 years.

So for most jobs this means that it is not just a job but a profession.

My mind goes immediately here to the Contact Centre industry where Agents are likely trained for 2 – 4 weeks, thrown on the phone and never trained again.

I’m not an expert in the German apprenticeship system – and I’m reading up on it all the time.

But each year I spend on average 3 – 4 months in Germany, and the retail and call centre experiences that I have there are in stark contrast to the experiences that I have back in Asia.

Something is definitely different and it shouldn’t be chalked up so easily to cultural differences.

Here is an interesting article on The Atlantic (2014) called, “Why Germany is So Much Better at Training Its Workers” which compares and contrasts the German and U.S. systems for workforce development.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-germany-is-so-much-better-at-training-its-workers/381550/

Competence in the service industry – the ability to carry on a conversation

Farmers grow things, tailors make clothes, bakers make bread – but in service we produce conversations.

When I run courses in quality or service, I remind the Frontliners that every day they produce conversations.

That’s their product, their output – that’s what they’re paid to do.

So in the same way we expect the tailor to make a nice fitting suit, or the hairstylist to give us a terrific cut, it’s valid and reasonable to expect a high quality of conversational ability from a Frontliner.

In Asia, many organizations believe these conversations should be highly scripted, or the staff is trained to adhere to a strict list of compliance behaviors in the hopes that these will magically coalesce together to create a conversation.

But that’s rarely the case.

And to be fair to the Frontliners – faced with the prospect of either going off-script or missing out on their compliance measurements – they retreat into polite silence – or act at best as ‘Google on 2 legs’ simply answering questions.

Times are changing

Sure – a lot is going digital.

But human interaction through voice, face to face – and even channels such as email and social media – are more complex and important to the overall experience.

The young lady in the big box store in Wiesbaden taught me that competence is beautiful – and that in service – the ability to carry on a conversation is where the power to create a great experience lies.