Finding Answers » Executive Coaching

Your Business And Social Media. Why Now And What To Do.

Erroin A. Martin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:36:50 +0000

Business owners, entrepreneurs, individual contractors… lend me your ears. I come not to bury traditional advertisement, not to honor it. It was my friend, honorable to how much I paid it, and just to me by providing clients.

If Shakespeare were alive would he write thus about traditional advertisement when compared to social media? Probably not but it allows me to have some creative fun.

All kidding aside you should lend me a few seconds to understand why you should have your business engaging in social media: it is where your customers are already and are going to if they are not there. For any business, like yours, to find leads and convert those leads into sales it all comes down to location, location, and location.

Don’t fret, yet. If your business is not engaging in this new medium you still have time.

Why Now?

There are an infinite amount of posts online that can answer that question probably better than me. They can give you some insight into why your business should be embracing social media. Here a few:

I am going to ask you why not now? Is it a fear of time-sink? Are you afraid of adopting something that leaves the impression that it changes quickly on a whim? What is it that holds you back?

Customers Need To Be Part Of The Equation

You need to answer those questions honestly to yourself. I even propose that you write those answers down – step away from them – and then comeback and read them aloud. You will find the language that you have chosen to answer the above questions will give you clues to the real reason why you have not adopted social media. Most of all it is out of fear of changing what already is perceived to be working.

Yes, I said perceived. When was the last time you calculated your margin of return on the advertising dollars you have spent? Most likely the margin has shrunk over time. So while it is working, it is not working as well as it used to. With dollars and budgets tight in any economy, you need to maximize your margin of return as much as possible.

Right there you have a major “WHY”.

Still not convinced?

I can see why. You probably run a B2B business that has a special niche and most of your clients are not in the twenties or below.

Well I’ve got some bad news for your perception – one of the fastest growing demographics (and happens to be the largest) in social media is 26 and older.[1]^{, [2], [3]}These demographic statistics includes decision makers, influencers, and buyers of your products/services. Why would you want to ignore them?

More businesses are going on social media platforms to promote their expertise, their products/services, listen to their customers, and monitor their competition. The social activity that these businesses create online feeds into increased links to their websites, increased exposure to key clients, and increased margins of return for their investment. They are gaining access, information, and clients.

What To Do

Determine which platform best suites your business model. Is it Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare, YouTube, Blogging, etc? You need to investigate which ones you are going to invest your time for your marketing efforts. Hint: It most likely will be two or three but not all of them.

Once you have discovered which platform meets your needs, then you need to create a social media plan. In this plan you want to establish:

Policies and procedures on how your business will use social media.
Measurement of specific metrics that have meaning for your business; typically this will be leads and sales.
One voice that represents your business across the platforms you have chosen. Consistency is key.
Clear timeframes for engagement and disengagement.
Long-term vision with patience. It will take time to build up your network if you are not a household name.

As with any plan you will monitor and adjust as needed to ensure that you have a successful campaign.

Business Is A Social Enterprise

One thing to keep in mind is that authenticity rules in social media. This means that you have to be social and engage. It sounds odd if you are not used to this medium but it is important to making your use of social media a success. Failure to do so will result in wasted time, energy, and money. (Yes, while it does not cost you to sign up for accounts on these platforms, someone is manning them and you are paying that someone.) Engagement is a roundabout with multiple lanes accessing it. That means traffic will be circling, entering, and exiting from a number of directions. This is atypical of traditional advertisement and can leave you with a feeling that everything is out of control. Breathe deep. It is okay. You are being social!

Fortune is merry,  and in this mood will give us anything. – Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Your business and you will find some incredibly wonderful new fans, clients, and opportunities. All of which you most likely would have spent a lot of capital to obtain or miss completely by using traditional methods. If you still have questions as to why you should be using social media for your business, contact me; I’d love to demonstrate the benefits to you!

What keeps your business from engaging in social media? What information do you need to help you make up your mind?

About the author:

Erroin A. Martin is a Business Advocate with the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, a business coaching and consultancy provider for business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs. He has fifteen years experience working within the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, natural resources, medical devices, software, technology, business services, and agriculture industries in various levels of leadership across six continents. He has led diverse teams in sales, marketing, planning, and in the Army. He currently coaches business leaders and physicians in the tools needed, like social media, to plan for their success. Learn more about the Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC at www.vongehrconsulting.com or call +1 203 433 8079. You can follow him on Twitter at @Erroin

The Von Gehr Consulting Group, LLC, was founded by Erroin A. Martin to provide business coaching, business consulting, and other services to companies both large and small. The primary goal is to have his clients be passionate about their business and reach the unachievable.

[1] Social Demographics – Who Is Using Which Sites? – Flowtown

[2] Dispelling The Youth Myth – Web Business

[3] 35 Crucial SEO, Twitter & Social Media Statistics For Business People – SEOptimise

9 Leadership Podcasts You Must Listen To

Erroin A. Martin — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:38:28 +0000

I have mentioned before that leadership is highly sought after by organizations of many different stripes. As a species we are drawn to organize ourselves in groups with named and un-named leaders. No matter how much we cry for individualism, we look for strong leaders for guidance, inspiration, and to challenge us.

Where Does Your Compass Point?

Since there is so much data out there on leadership, I thought I would do the helpful thing and give you a round up of different leadership podcasts.

The Leadership Podcasts

Project Leadership Podcasts – A podcast for project managers, R. Camper Bull interviews thought leaders on the latest tools and skills a certified project manager (PMP) must possess.

EMS Leadership – Part of the EMS Radio, these podcasts address the various trends and issues for leaders in the EMS field. Items discussed are Six Sigma in the management of EMS teams and who are the customers for an EMS team.

UC Berkley Organizational Leadership – Can’t get to a business class on leadership? Why not drop in at UC Berkley and skip the quizzes through this podcast!

CEO Exchange – PBS sponsored podcast of interviews with leading CEOs. Learn from the successful captains of industry!

Harvard Business Review IdeaCast – A weekly podcast that discusses the latest business trends. This podcast discusses lessons learned for leadership successes and failures. It does not focus only on leadership, but on business as a whole.

21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – John Maxwell’s podcast on the different laws from his best selling books.

World Business News – By the BBC these podcasts deal with current events.

London Business School – A podcast that discusses leadership and current business trends that can impact a leader’s decisions.

What Great Bosses Know – This podcasts interviews managers and business leaders on practical skills they learned to become great bosses.

There are many more podcasts out there. Just like there are probably so many books on leadership that they could build a ladder from the Earth to the Moon.

What leadership podcasts do you listen to?

About the author:

15 Rules To Be A Successful Leader

Erroin A. Martin — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:09:44 +0000

Leadership. It means different things to different people. It is the most sought after trait that employers look for. It is a topic that has countless tomes written about it. Yet in the end there are fifteen simple rules a leader should abide by to be successful.

Here are the rules:

I lead by the rules.

Leaders only hire top talent.

Leaders put the right people in the right positions.

Leaders tell people what needs to get done and why.

Leaders delegate and then let their people get the job done.

Leaders train their people.

Leaders listen – to their people, their customers, and everyone that impacts their decisions.

Leaders remove barriers, frustrations, and obstacles to allow their people to succeed.

Leaders inspect what they expect.

Leaders promote their people publicly and privately.

Leaders lead by example.

Leaders hire slow and fire fast.

Leaders inspire a vision for success.

Leaders make decisions – especially the tough ones. That is why they get paid the big bucks.

Leaders hold the highest standards of excellence for themselves and their team.

Leaders coach.

Like many things in life, the process, the steps, the skills, and the rules all seem so simple to follow. If it were easy then there would not be so many books, classes, seminars, and leadership experts. Why people fail at the above is that they forget to be successful you have to practice the fundamentals everyday.

What rules would you add?

About the author:

What Is Leadership In Social Media?

Erroin A. Martin — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:28:21 +0000

Author’s note: What originally sparked this article were two posts. One was on the nature of intent by Amber Naslund, and the other on measuring social media. This month has been a focus on leadership on the Finding Answers Blog. In business, as in every other factor of life, leadership is sought after. It is almost like a quest for a holy grail to understand it, replicate it, and define it. I initially thought about how one may measure it in social media. That spawned this blog post. As you will read, the leadership grail defies being found even in social media. I look forward to your comments!

A Twitter Toast

How do you define leadership in social media?

How do you measure leadership in social media?

Why would you want to?

I ask these questions because in the rush to embrace social media leadership has not been adequately discussed. Instead there is talk about personalities, brand awareness, followers, and impact. Granted those are components of leadership but in the end they are measurements used by businesses to track conversions and the overall important purchase. So, what is leadership in the social media realm?

Personality

An argument can be made that leadership in social media is akin to a cult of personality. The true measurement of worth and power is in the numbers behind one’s network. People choose to follow this person because they seem to have a power over them, an attraction per se, that says, “Follow me.” They tend to have a personality that screams popularity.

I have a ton of followers and I am dog! Follow me @KooikerExpress

I follow some people on Twitter and have a few Facebook friends that have a tremendous amount of connections. A lot. They are so popular that they complain about the chore it is to “shed” or “thin the heard” monthly. (Oh! the humanity of it all!) Yet, they do not lead all of those that follow/friend them. They tend to struggle to get their pet causes of the ground, increase fan page membership, or even get online petitions signed.

In all those numbers that are associated with their networks, these people do not seem to have the power to leverage it. Instead they are great at connecting others and ideas through them.

What is lacking is their ability to project an authenticity behind their personality that makes you feel truly connected to them. If you are intellectually honest with yourself is it really possible for a person to have a deep connection with 35,000+ followers/friends?

Influence

I have heard of leadership described as getting others to do what they normally would not do on their own. In other words: influencing others. It seems that personality alone cannot define leadership in social media. Influence then must come into play.

Savvy businesspeople look for those individuals, causes, and beliefs that have a powerful influence on their customers. These forces can be the tipping point that will help a customer purchase or not. Businesses that engage in social media search far and wide for people that have influence. They woo them, engage them, and do everything they can to have this person comment, write, or apostatize about their products/services. These businesspeople understand the power of influence and how it can affect their bottom line.

Who has influence on this equation?

Yet… influence only goes so far. For example, certain individuals who are heavy users of social media influence me1. Their power of influence is limited to very specific subjects and only because I have found their information to be consistently valuable. They do not, on the other hand, influence what I purchase when it comes to electronics or other areas of my life. These individuals have an influence on a specific niche or subject matter that they have made themselves experts of.

When you look at influencers in the real world, they too tend to have an impact on specific areas that they have honed their knowledge base in. These individuals tend to be in roles that allow them to maximize their effectiveness with leaders, followers, and all the in betweens. Sometimes they are personalities and leaders themselves. Most of the time these influencers are behind the scenes making the day-to-day world work.

Impact

If a leader is not just a personality or a person of influence then they must be people who leave their marks. In social media a leader must be someone of impact. That makes sense because leaders tend to impact the lives of those they lead, whether intentionally or not.

There are plenty of examples of people making an impact in social media. Think of when Bill Gates joined Twitter, when Kevin Smith complained about Southwest Airlines booting him off the plane, when the Iranian Reform movement posted the violence by the regime on YouTube, or when your co-worker revealed too much online. All of those items had impact. They made you stand up and notice or judge positively/negatively.

Upon deeper reflection most items that have impact do not lead. Alone they are moments in time that can create an echo across social networks. “Hey look at this!” “Did you see what she did?” While a leader must have an impact, as a stand-alone concept it is not enough to lead others in real life or in social media.

Measuring Leadership In Social Media

Go ahead and measure my leadership!

I recently read an interesting post about measuring on a longitude scale social media. The basic concept is: measuring sentiment, trends, tastes, and attitudes compared to your efforts to respond, change, or influence them over time. In essence measuring the impact/ROI of a PR/media campaign.

Take that approach and apply it to leadership. Look at individuals and groups that get ahead of an issue or subject and how they shape the debate or perceptions over time. I am talking about measuring their personality, influence, and impact in the social media realm; measuring their leadership.

Currently we have farms upon farms of servers capturing and holding all this information we are posting, liking, sharing, and tweeting. If we can identify intent and the unintended consequences of specific actions taken in social media, there is much we can learn about the nature of leadership in that realm. Questions like:

Who moved you to join the protest?
When you asked your friends to support cause x,y,z what did you expect?
How were you able to get everyone to storm the coliseum?

A business would want to measure the impact of leadership in social media to determine if it is getting a return on its investment in messaging. Governments and non-profits would want to measure leadership to know if they are shaping opinion or completely going against the majority. Individuals would want to know if they are leaders, could be leaders, or are merely followers. There are plenty of reasons to measure leadership in social media.

The most important is to learn about the nature of leadership itself.

Definition of Social Media Leadership

Since I have yet to find a definition, I am going to take a stab it myself.

Does social media defy leadership?

To be a leader in social media one must also have all the traits of a leader in real life. You must have an authentic personality that attracts others to you. Even tyrants are well liked. You have to be able to influence others. People feel best following when they choose to; as opposed to being told to. You have to make an impact. People do not follow wallflowers, no matter how talented they may be.

These traits are just the beginning. Bad leadership is easily defined. You and I both know it when we see it. Good and/or great leadership… well… that is where passionate debate comes into play. Currently as it stands leadership in social media is evolving.

Lingering Questions

There is so much talk about how new social media is as a medium. It is not anything really new. People have been networking, joining societies/groups, and finding ways to communicate about their ideas (sometimes over sharing) since the beginning of the species.

Leadership itself is not new either. What is new is the combination of the new technological communication platforms and the users’ interactions with them. Both are rapidly evolving. They keep changing faster than previously known mediums. That means that the concept of leadership will change as well.

So my questions to you from above still remain. I have given my humble attempt to define leadership in social media.

What is your definition?
Who do you identify as leaders in social media and why?
How do you measure the impact of leadership in social media?
What would you do with the information if you could measure leadership?

About the author:

1 Users of social media that influence me are: Shelly Kramer @ShellyKramer and V3 Integrated Marketing; Erika Napoletano @RedHeadWriting; Amber Naslund @ambercadabra; Molly Cantrell-Kraig @mckra1g; Writing staff at the Social Media Examiner

Your Team Stinks! Can You Turn It Around?

Erroin A. Martin — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:58:57 +0000

You have been promoted. On your way towards your new team your boss has given you a review of their capabilities. They are bad. Not just bad… really horrible. Dead last in all measures and getting worse. You could describe them as the Detroit Lions of your company: perennial underachievers. Now it is your turn to turn them around and prove that you are worthy of the job.

You have options that sit on a spectrum. On one side of the spectrum is fire everyone and start over. On the other side is to keep everyone and try to coach/lead them to success. You will most likely fall somewhere in between. Any actions you take when a team is that bad must be seen as drastic and swift.

Do not make it a habit.

A losing team is like a habit that is easy to slide into. They always have a rational explanation as to why they lost. First there was the quota, the company was unfair and set it too high. Second, the marketing materials just could not adequately answer every question our customers’ had. Third, the leadership kept changing and we could not get into a groove. Fourth, there was a natural unexpected catastrophe. Fifth… well, you get the picture. It becomes easy to come up with the many reasons as to why “we as a team stink”: it is never our fault.

Punishment is not for the benefit of the sinner but for the salvation of his comrades. — George Patton

You, as the new leader, need to break that mentality quickly and with shock. Deciding to fire or reassign someone from the team can do this. Now, no one who has a conscience likes to fire anyone. You are going to disrupt someone’s life drastically and their loved ones. This should be a decision that should be thought through thoroughly. Conversely, reassigning someone who is a poor performer or negative spirit to another team can be considered “sweeping the problem under the rug.” You could be just delaying the inevitable of this person getting fired anyway.

This decision is going to be a difficult one for you. It should be. You need to measure your decision against the following criteria:

What is my intent and what can be the unintended consequences?
How will the organization benefit from my actions?
How will the team benefit from the changes I will make?
When is the best time to release this shock?

Keep in my mind that while you are answering the criteria above the clock is running and all eyes are on you. Your boss, peers, and company are looking for you to make a change. Your team is anxious and also looking for the next excuse to hang their losing ways on. Once you have your answers be decisive and act.

I’m intense, competitive, focused, blunt, and tough, yes. That’s fair. I’m guilty. — Lou Gerstner

How would these leaders turn failure around?

A great movie that demonstrates a leader quickly coming in and establishing a new tone to a losing team is called, Twelve O’clock High. The leader, played by Gregory Peck, takes over a bombing squadron during WW II that has the highest casualty rate and cannot follow through on their missions. He starts with shock to break the losing mentality the squadron was having by getting rid off and holding accountable individuals who perpetuated it. He kicks one bad apple out of the unit and demotes another. The rest of the unit sees both actions as swift accountable actions. Excuses were quickly quelled. Of course he goes on to make other changes and turns the team around.

You wanted to be a leader. This is what leaders do: make difficult decisions. Firing or reassigning people are difficult decisions but they need to be done. Along with inspiring, holding high standards that make your team reach, coaching for excellence, and providing a vision for success also comes discipline. Are you sure you still want the job?

What other turn around films would you recommend? What other criteria do you use?

About the author:

Can You Define Bad Leadership?

Erroin A. Martin — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:41:18 +0000

In the search to define leadership it seems that everyone can define what a poor leader looks like. They are called tyrants, micromanagers, egomaniacs, manipulative, and self-interested jerks. You and I can agree that when we see a bad leader we know it. We try as hard as heck to get away from them. The reality though is that what you and I may see as a bad/horrible leader is the ideal to aspire to for someone else. Scary as it may sound… it is true.

He was a great leader.

Let me throw a name out there: William Jefferson Clinton. Depending on where you lean politically will determine how you feel about his leadership. The same would be true if I give you the names Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter. One thing that you cannot deny is that they were all leaders.

Think about why you like them as a leader. Are they great at execution? Are they great at inspiring others?

In your quest to become a leader you have an ideal in your mind of what makes a great leader. Perhaps some of the names above are those you use as a reference, perhaps not. Yet, when someone quizzes you about leadership there is an ideal that you see in your mind. The question you have to answer is: Who is it?

Think about the person you have in your mind. Think about why you like them as a leader. Are they great at execution? Are they great at inspiring others? Do they make you feel empowered to achieve anything? Do they spark an inner fire that burns intensely for success? What is it that they do for you?

Follow me gents!

Once you have all of those positive traits in your mind think about how they can be construed in a negative light. That sounds a bit odd for a request, but there is a method to the madness. What you aspire to, what moves you, and what gives you the goose bumps when you think about this ideal leader can be considered wrong by someone else. For example, if organizational skills and the ability to think creatively out of the box to solve huge problems were something that appeals to you in a leader, then would you be willing to follow Napoleon? If you like the charismatic inspiration that a great orator can bring to you and the ability of this leader to inspire a purpose in you, then are you willing to follow Julius Caesar? If you rally to overcoming huge odds and respect the authority that a disciplined leader brings, then are you willing to follow George S. Patton?

They are called tyrants, micromanagers, egomaniacs, manipulative, and self-interested jerks.

The purpose of this piece is not to equate a moral relativism to leadership. While many skills can be used for both good and evil, there are simply some leaders that are pure evil.

The point being is that these leaders could be described as tyrants, manipulative, micromanagers, egomaniacs, and self-interested jerks. If you are going to be a leader you will encompass some of these bad traits to those that do not agree with you or refuse to be led by you.

If you are worried about how others are going to think about you… then you should not step into the leadership position that might become available. You will fail to be decisive.

You will fail to have a vision and articulate it. You will fail to inspire because you will not believe in the cause. You will be the worse form of leader… the panderer.

So look back at all the names of leaders mentioned in this article and add the ones you have in your mind. Think long and hard about what they all have in common, both positive and negative. Then ask yourself this one question: Am I willing to be judged as they are?

Your answer will determine if you are ready to become a leader.

Are you willing to answer the call?

About the author:

Case Study On Peer Leadership: Intent Matters

Erroin A. Martin — Wed, 19 May 2010 04:06:00 +0000

Below is a case study in leadership. It deals with a leader promoted from amongst their peers and a unique situation they, as the new leader, were faced with in their first fifteen days in their position. The question I put before you is what impact did you think this leader had and what would you have done differently?

The Leader and Her Team

I am your new team leader!

Jill was a new leader recently promoted amongst her peers to a new position and team created by her company. Given the success she had with her sales and retaining a client that almost walked out, Jill was an indispensable asset to her company. They had made the new position to keep her and not lose her talent to the competition. To everyone around Jill her star was on definitely shining bright.

Jill always showed up to work early and left late. She always returned emails, voice-mails, and any other requests promptly. While she had a family, she was the first to travel if the client needed. Jill was considered by some in the organization as being the example of where they wanted to go in hiring new account managers. She was well liked and seen as the “go-to” person in the organization.

The new team that Jill was handed brought together peers from different departments she had worked with in meeting her client’s needs. Each one had a different manager and set of goals in their old positions. This team – called an Account Group – was created to bring together the different resources for the one client Jill had retained: Bigum, Inc.

Jill had on her team an account manager (the group she rose from) named Steve, a logistics specialist named Jackson, a finance/payments manger in Rose, a sales force representative named Mary, and creative services manager named Barry.

Wanting to set a new tone and get off on the best foot with her new team, Jill held an Expectations Meeting. This meeting was to layout her expectations for the team, her vision for their success, and set down the basic standards she would hold everyone to. Jill felt that it was a success as this was something that was not done before at her company. She hard started a new path for success!

Jill concluded her first week with her entire team showing up for meetings on time, returning client requests faster than before, and everyone positive about the future of their team. It seemed to Jill that everything was going the way she had hoped it would.

The Problem

The following two weeks Jill ran into her first problem. It started on Monday. Steve showed up late for work. While he was only a few minutes late, he seemed to have dragged himself into the office. Having worked side-by-side with Steve, she knew that he liked to blow off steam on the weekends. This past weekend was a big sport one, so she figured that he had hung out with his mates a little too long. Yet once he got settled into his desk he was afire.

Steve ended Monday by closing a big deal in Jill’s presence at a client’s office. Both feeling tired from the pressure cooker negotiations they went through to get the deal closed,

I could give a rat's @$%!

Jill told Steve that it was okay to just head home as opposed to going back to the office. Steve, excited, quickly exited. Jill, figured that she could catch Steve on email with any lingering questions she might have.

On Tuesday, Steve showed up late from work again. This time he was almost a half-hour late. While he was not dragging himself through the doors of the office, he was not exactly giving the feeling of being thrilled to be there. Later in the day Jill had not received any replies from the two emails she sent late on Monday night. Both were important to making sure that Rose had all the necessary information to bill the client. When Jill dropped by Steve’s office to get the figures verbally, Steve was nowhere to be found.

On Wednesday, Steve was early in the office, even earlier than Jill. She found two scraps of paper on her desk with the information she had requested on Monday evening. Jill did not have time in the morning to chat with Steve, due to meetings she had on her calendar. Jill decided she would invite him to lunch. Seeing that Steve had an open slot on his electronic calendar, Jill blocked out lunch for a meeting with her.

Later that morning Jill received a call from the VP of Marketing from Bigum, Inc. It seems the VP was in town and wanted to have lunch with Jill. Excellent! She thought, this would be a great time to get Steve in front of his new account. Instead of three for lunch, there was only two. When Steve did not show, Jill called his cell phone and left a voicemail. The lunch went off without a hitch, but Jill would have to wait to transfer the VP to Steve. Jill did not hear back from Steve all afternoon.

Thursday took Jill away from the office, yet she sent emails and left voicemails for Steve to get in contact with her. None of them were returned.

Friday, Jill caught Steve in the parking lot as they were both entering the building. She informed him that at three p.m. they would have a meeting together in the small conference room.

The Meeting

This record shows that you've missed some meetings.

Steve came to the conference room with a notepad and pen. Upon sitting Jill asked him if he knew why he was in the meeting, to which he professed being a bit clueless. Jill reviewed the team’s standards for excellence and the specific actions Steve had done the days earlier.

When Jill asked Steve about being late on Tuesday, he told her that he was getting over a sickness. When she asked about not being in the office most of Wednesday, Steve told her that he had “a personal matter” to attend to and did not feel it was appropriate to discuss it in the office. When Jill asked about why Steve had not returned the emails or voicemails, he told her that his inbox was swamped still from his transition to the new team and that her voicemails did not sound like they were urgent requiring an immediate response.

Jill told Steve that his behavior over the past week went against the team standards. She let him know that she was concerned about this week becoming a trend and that this meeting was to stop it in its tracks. Jill also let Steve know that the content and nature of their meeting would be summarized in an email later in the day for both of their benefits.

The meeting ended cordially and Steve finished his afternoon making client phone calls. Jill typed up the notes of the meeting and sent them to Steve by email. Prior to hitting the send button Jill tagged the email so that she would be notified when Steve had opened it.

The following Monday, Steve showed up for work a few minutes late and the email about Friday’s meeting, along with others, had not been opened at all.

What Would You Have Done? What do you think Jill’s intent was? What unintended consequences did her actions have? What did she do right?

About the author:

3 Teams New Leaders Can Inherit – How You Can Succeed

Erroin A. Martin — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:15:17 +0000

You have just been touched. Your boss has come down, placing their hand on your shoulder, and anointed you the next leader within the organization. You are to be given a team to inspire, manage, and lead into the growing future of your company. Congratulations! Do you know what team you are getting?

It is an important question that you need to answer before you take the promotion. The type of team you get will determine the type of leadership you need to provide. Each one has pluses and minuses that you need to be aware of.

The Team In Crisis

You have been chosen to take over a team that is falling apart. The last leader either quit or was fired. Dysfunction reigns supreme!

You Are To Blame! No! You Are!

The great thing about stepping into this position is that any change you bring will most likely be good. It will seem to be too easy to turn things around building upon easy results. Yes, while no one really wants to jump feet first into confrontation, taking over a dysfunctional team can build a strong reputation for a new leader.

Conversely a dysfunctional team can destroy you. Victories will come easy at first because this team needs them and desires them. Yet, without a clear-cut plan to turn the team around, those victories will only serve to shore-up the already entrenched habits that are making the team fail. A leader who does not possess the will to be decisive and believe in a vision for success will be eaten alive by the dysfunctional team.

The Successful Team

The previous leader has moved onto bigger and better things. You have been brought in to lead a high functioning smooth operating dynamic team of successful people. Unlike the dysfunctional team, this is a group that does it right all the time and has luck on their side.

We Are That Good!

The beauty of leading a team like this is that everyone is proactive and working together for results. As a new leader, you cannot ask for an easier assignment. You simply have to build upon the team’s strengths and tweak their weaknesses. You are like the pilot of a ship charted on the right course: you just have to keep the bearing.

Or, if you are not careful, you fall into a caretaker mentality and not offer any real leadership at all. The glue that held the successful team together dissipates allowing for individual goals, egos, and unproductive desires to tear the team apart. This happens because you – the new leader – do not provide leadership. The best example is seen in sports teams time and again. A successful coach of a championship team moves on and their successor runs the team into the ground in a few seasons. Why? The new coach does not provide leadership to keep the team focused on a common vision. Do not be that guy!

The Expansion Team

Your company is growing by leaps and bounds! They need you to form a new team for the IDon’tKnowWhere District. You get to pick your team as opposed to having one handed to you. This is a rare opportunity that you can use to truly set your leadership apart!

We Are Heading Into Uncharted Territory

You do not have to inherit a history; you get to create a legacy in building your team. Each member you choose is picked by you and immediately loyal to your vision since there is none other to follow. You get to make your mark on the foundation of success.

The bad news is that there is no history to build upon. You are charting a new path and each failure is yours to own outright. While each successful team member you choose is a testament to your leadership, so is each dysfunctional member you hire. The heat is really on here. Your company created this expansion and wants results. The pressure to get it right is worse than inheriting a team because each decision you make is magnified.

Successful Leadership No Matter What Team You Get

Any of the three types of teams you step into are stones for success or pitfalls for failure. The key to making them stones of success is to have a plan, a vision, a method, and be decisive.

Having A Plan. Whether you operate in 30-60-90 day intervals when it comes to planning, or longer, you have to know where you want your team to be at the end of a specific time period. With the expansion team, you might want to be fully staffed in ninety days. With your successful team, you might want to have conducted a capabilities review within sixty days. Lastly. with your dysfunctional team you may want to have reassigned a few bad apples within fifteen days. These are all examples of plans that can be executed to make any team you take over a success.
Having A Vision. People, no matter what their backgrounds are, rally around visions. Your job as a leader is to get your team to rally around one that inspires them to improve each day. Regardless of the type of team you take over, it must have a vision or it will have no reason to follow your plan or follow you. Get your team to invest in a vision of success and you more than 50% of the way to being a great leader.
Have A Method. In a previous posting, I talked about having a method to making decisions. The same applies with the three teams you can inherit with the addition to
I am in charge. Follow me!

having a method that describes your leadership. I worked for a leader whom I admire to this day. His method was to hire, train, motivate, and promote (either up or out of the organization.) His teams are always successful and never the same. He hires talent that he knows will work hard and that he can train. He trains his team to execute the fundamentals every day and strive for improvement. He motivates his team to exceed the standards he has laid down. He promotes the members of his team to everyone around him, always placing them as the centerpiece of his team’s success. If there is a bad apple… he gets them quickly out of the organization. This leader has taken over bad teams, successful teams, and launched expansion teams. He has never failed to achieve success.
Be Decisive. You are the leader. Time to step up and make decisions. Teams that are failing look for leaders that can make decisions to turn them around. This can mean letting people go or changing direction completely. Either way it has to be decisive. Teams that are successful got that way by following the decisions of their leaders. Those leaders were decisive. You have to be too or you will inject doubt into the team. Expansion teams have no history to build upon. They are looking for you to guide them and chart the new territory you’ve entered into. This is not a time to second-guess or it could lead to confusion. Evaluate the information that you have and make a decision.

Congratulations on your promotion to being a leader. Whether you posted for the position or you were chosen, you better know what type of team you are getting into before you take charge. A failure to know what you are getting into can lead you to failure. When you fail as a leader it has an effect that reaches across multiple lives. Are you sure you still want that promotion?

What other teams do new leaders get promoted into that I might have missed?

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4 Steps For New Leaders To Be Successful

Erroin A. Martin — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:30:01 +0000

Newly minted leaders always worry about getting it right. What I mean is that they worry about getting it right in how their teams, peers, and higher-ups look at them. That can create a sense of worry that leads to paralysis, making it harder for the new leader to make even easy decisions. The first rule the new leader should follow is this:

Get over yourself. You cannot please everyone.

Where Does Your Compass Point?

Easier said than done. As human beings, we all want to be liked. Even the callous amongst us still want to be liked. That desire to be liked can lead a new leader to become indecisive and weak.

Part of this indecision comes the newly minted leader not being ready to assume their new position. They have not thought out a plan on how their leadership will be nor do they have a vision of what they want their legacy to be as well. Instead they look at the affirmation from those around them to validate their leadership.

This causes a host of problems, as the new leader becomes a follower to the desires of those around them. Instead of forming opinion and rallying the troops behind a mission, this leader is trying to manage an ever-increasing host of interests that will tear them apart.

How Can You Avoid This Trap?

Have a plan. Build out your transition into a 30-60-90 day period. Establish easy wins within the first thirty days to build confidence in your decision-making and trust from your team. Use these early victories to build up deposits in your relationship account.

Have a vision. Know what type of leader you want to be and be remembered as when you move on. Does it align with your team and your company? If it does not, then you need to know why and make sure that you are not setting yourself up for failure. If it does, then implement it and get as many people as possible to sign on to it. HINT: The vision is not really about you, it is about them.

Have a method. Do not just make decisions from the seat of your pants without having a method to evaluate all the information you have at the time. It is okay to wait if you have the time before making a decision. As the old proverb goes, “Patience is a virtue.” This time can give you valuable information that can be useful in making a decision. Just realize that in the end, you will never have all the information at your disposal.

Be decisive. People may not like your decision, they may not agree with it, but they will respect when you make a decision. Why? It means that a stand has been taken and they can respond to it or follow it. Either way they have to do something! When leaders are indecisive it causes confusion and inaction. It essentially creates a vacuum that will either allow events or someone else to make the decision. If you have a plan, a vision, and a method for decision-making then you will not have a problem being decisive. Yes, you might bruise some egos and not make someone happy. That comes with being a leader and making decisions.

You got promoted into the position you are in for a reason: you have demonstrated the skills needed to be a leader in your organization. If you look back at your career, you made plans, you built trust, and at times you made unpopular but the right decisions. There is nothing different now in becoming a leader.

What steps would you take to avoid the leadership traps?

About the author:

Coaching Builds on Strengths, Addresses Weaknesses of Newly Promoted Managers

Erroin A. Martin — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:10:38 +0000

This article originally appeared in Best Practices in Compensation & Benefits, a publication of Business & Legal Reports (BLR). BLR has been helping HR, Compensation, Safety and Environmental professionals with legal compliance and professional support resources for over 30 years. For more information, visit www.blr.com or hr.blr.com.

Business Coaching Is A Relationship With Many Benefits

The skills that make an employee a star in your organization are not necessarily the same skills that will help him or her excel if promoted to a management position. That’s why it is important to provide coaching to newly promoted managers, says Erroin A. Martin.

Benefits of Coaching

A coach can help new managers build on their existing strengths, identify and address their weaknesses, develop new skills they need to be successful, cut through cultural barriers, and adjust more quickly to their new role, says Martin, business advocate, Von Gehr Consulting Group LLC (www.vongehrconsulting.com).

Coaching can accomplish those types of results in ways that mentoring and traditional training cannot, according to Martin. For example, when an informal mentoring relationship exists, mentors might avoid addressing certain issues because they feel that it is a supervisor’s responsibility to do so, he says. And trainers might not have the resources to follow up with each individual or to customize training to his or her particular needs.

Business coaches, however, create a specific plan tailored to the individual and hold him or her accountable for achieving identified goals within a certain time frame, Martin explains, adding that coaches address any potential shortfalls on a proactive—rather than a reactive—basis. They help the newly promoted manager “tackle the most glaring weaknesses first” and facilitate an easier transition by mapping out goals to be accomplished within the first 30, 60, and 90 days, for example.

Three Key Elements

Before any coaching experience can be successful, however, Martin says three key elements must exist:

1. ‑An openness to coaching. Individuals being coached must “recognize that they’re ready to be coached,” he says. Otherwise, an adversarial relationship will develop.

2. ‑A good match. “The personalities of the coach and coachee have to match,” he says.

3. ‑A shared goal. “They have to commit to an agreed-upon plan,” Martin explains.

Ideally, coaching for newly promoted managers should begin before the promotion takes effect, or at least within the first 90 days, explains Martin. The first of 10 to 15 1-hour coaching sessions typically takes place in person, and the coaching relationship usually lasts “a little under 7 months,” depending on the individual and his or her particular situation. In his experience, about 65 percent of coaching sessions are face-to-face, while 20 percent take place over the phone, and 15 percent are held via Web conferencing, he says.

Selecting a Coach

When selecting a coach, HR professionals (or employees who are hiring a coach on their own) need to understand what the coach can—and cannot—do for them or the company, according to Martin.

Coaches Provide Direction & A Plan

He recommends inquiring about the coach’s background and experience and looking for a coach who has been certified through the International Coach Federation (www.coachfederation.org) or other reputable organization.

However, he cautions against making a selection based on certification alone. Although certification is important, Martin says a coach also needs to understand the company’s business model and market.