Posted on Monday, March 18, 2019

From Interruption Marketing to Differentiating with Service with Stan Phelps

Episode 83

Stan Phelps is a Forbes contributor, TEDx speaker, and IBM Futurist who focuses on customer experience and employee engagement that can drive differentiation, increase loyalty, and create word of mouth in business. He holds a JD/MBA from Villanova University and a certificate for Achieving Breakthrough Service from Harvard Business School. In this episode, we discuss how Stan became interested in the field of customer service, how he believes marketing should focus more on the customer’s experience with your company or product, why he feels you either exceed someone’s expectations or you fall short, why he wrote his “Goldfish” book series and what they cover, the two sides of the customer experience coin, what he hopes those attending his presentation at the Smart Customer Service Conference will walk away with, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! I know you really want you and your organization to have a voice of influence, and I recognized that you’re highly focused on doing the best for the people that you serve. Well, I’ll be speaking at the Smart Customer Service Conference in Washington, DC on April 29^ththrough May 1^st 2019. If you’re listening to this episode before that conference, we highly recommend you attend. But over the next few weeks, we’re going to be featuring interviews with experts who will be speaking at that conference. And each interview will feature insights related to different aspect of customer service. So you can find out more about the Smart Customer Service Conference at smartcustomerservice.com and in our show notes at voiceofinfluence.net. Well, today, we have with us Stan Phelps. Stan Phelps is a Forbes Contributor, TEDx Speaker, and IBM Futurist focusing on customer experience and employee engagement that can drive differentiation, increase loyalty, and create word of mouth in business. He holds a JD/MBA from Villanova University and a Certificate in Achieving Breakthrough Service, which I’m curious about that, from Harvard Business School. He lives in Cary, North Carolina with his wife Jennifer and two boys, Thomas and James.

Andrea: Welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast, Stan.

Stan Phelps: Thank you for having me, Andrea.

Andrea: Well, let me just ask what’s in your bio. What is this Achieving Breakthrough Service?

Stan Phelps: Yeah, it’s a certificate that Harvard does. They offer it a couple of times a year. You get a chance to spend a week on campus with some of their top professors talking about how the ins and outs of how to achieve service that kind of catch through the noise and creates differentiation.

Andrea: Which is exactly what your area of expertise is in, I realized that. So why don’t you tell us just a little bit about what you do?

Stan Phelps: So yeah, I don’t do much.

Andrea: I believe that.

Stan Phelps: I am an author and a speaker, so I spend my time kind of looking at the future of both customer experience and employee engagement. And I’ve been fortunate enough and speaking in 16 different countries. I spend my time travelling either doing keynotes or workshops on the different areas that I write about.

Andrea: How did you get interested in this particular topic? Were you involved in customer service before?

Stan Phelps: You know, really, it’s interesting. I studied both law and business. But undergrad, I was a marketing major. I was always intrigued by marketing. And that was my first two decades working on both the agency and the brand side doing marketing. I just realized that the type of marketing that I was doing kind of the traditional tell and sell interruption marketing, I didn’t think it was going to be the marketing of the future. All I knew from my days of being a brand marketer was I was not part of the solution; I was just a huge part of the problem. Andrea, I didn’t really know that fast forward and back about 10 years ago, back in 2009, I spent about a year writing about every element of marketing trying to search for this kind of key aspects. I had, what I call my moment of truth and, decided that marketing should be more about the experience that you provide and how you do that in a very specific way that gets people to come back but also gets them talking about the experience.

Andrea: We absolutely agree with you here. So I am curious what was the actual story of your moment of truth? How did you figured that out or how did you come to that moment?

Stan Phelps: Well, I used to live in Connecticut and I was working for an agency that was a New York agency. And I happen to be in Manhattan about to go in that working event with one of my colleagues and we were in one of these rooftop bars in Manhattan. It was summer time, beautiful, and I joked, I was enjoying as you only can in Manhattan a $15 beer, if you can even enjoy that. But it was a crowded place and we’re waiting for a couple of people to show up and I noticed this older gentleman sitting right across from me. He was by himself, and everyone _____ scanned the room like he was looking for someone and, it becomes obvious to me that he was waiting for someone to show up. And like a half hour goes by and no one has showed up for this guy, so I just started a conversation with him. He started talking about the _____ you know waiting and being on time. And this guy, Andrea, told me something that changed my life. He looked at me in the eye and he said, “No one in life is ever on time.” Wait a second, I been on time before, not often, but I’ve been on time. He raised his finger to me, and you can’t see it but it gave me a kind of Dikembe finger wave and he said “No.” He goes, “In fact, on time is a myth.” He said “People in life are either early or they’re late.” I took the train home that night to Connecticut and I thought to myself I said, “That same reasoning applies in marketing in business with the customers that we serve every day. No one in business simply just meets the expectations of a customer that they serve.” In fact, I think if the only goal that you have is satisfaction or meeting expectations, I think that’s a losing battle. So people, you know, and brands in life you either exceeds someone’s expectations or you fall short. And literally, I went on a mission that next week to say, I’m going to purposely look for brands that aside to do a little something extra to go above and beyond just the transaction, to stand out and differentiate themselves. And that was the start of the journey.

Andrea: Hmmm. So when you were back in marketing and you noticed this issue of being an interruption marketing kind of a situation and you said that you realized that you were contributing to the problems instead of helping solve it, was there something about that felt personal to you? What drives you about this, like why did you end up going in this direction do you think?

Stan Phelps: Yeah, I mean, like the old school thinking was how you measure effectiveness in marketing was through the concept of impressions. How frequently did you get your brand in someone? How were you able to tell that message? Did you get any earned media? Did you look at owned media, paid media? And I just realized that “Hey, your brand is no longer what you tell people it is.” It just isn’t. It’s what somebody experiences. It’s what they feel and most importantly, it’s what they tell other people about you. I just thought that marketing, the paradigm needed to shift and I just realized that I had something to add to that conversation. And my goal was, Andrea, at the end of the day to get brands to think at least as much about the customer that they serve rather than the prospect that they’re chasing. I think, we’re so concerned with getting people in the “funnel” that we fail to understand that the best marketing that we do is the experience that we provide to the customer that we serve.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. That’s so good. OK, so you obviously have this quality, and I’m talking about you personally, of being a thought leader. You’re somebody who sees the problem and wants to help solve it from what I can tell. I mean, that’s everything that you’ve said so far. Is that a quality that you think you’ve always held? Have you always have that desire to contribute to the bigger conversation to help solve these problems and that sort of thing? Is that been something that you’ve always experienced?

Stan Phelps: Yes and no. I think I’ve always looked to see what the issue is or where I think thing should go and to try to be part of that change. But to be honest, if I learned anything through my legal education was, to be able to look at a set of facts, to be able to spot any issue, to be able to understand what maybe the overarching rule or current practice was, and to be able to maybe look at a different way going forward. But I think you’re probably giving me too much credit as a thought leader. I saw what I thought was a problem and I wanted to be just part of what I thought the solution could be.

Andrea: Well, I think maybe thought leadership is a lofty term. But at the same time when you’re a writer and a speaker, you’re certainly somebody who is contributing to that dialogue in a very important way and having influence on it.

Stan Phelps: What fascinates me and I tried to in all the books, Andrea, and there’s now eight different colors in the Goldfish series but all of them were based on the idea of looking at hundreds and hundreds of examples.

Andrea: Can you share with us for a second what is the Goldfish series? I know what it is but I don’t think the audience knows yet.

Stan Phelps: Sure. So after that moment of truth, I started to look for companies that did that little extra and so I needed a project or like a crowd sourcing name for it and so I called it the Purple Goldfish. And the Goldfish has a lot of kind of, there’s a lot of plot behind that metaphor. But just for now, it’s the idea that it’s something that small, right? And the first three books were; Purple, Green, and Gold and that was a reference to Mardi Gras because the word that I absolutely fell in love with that I felt embodied this comes from New Orleans. And so Purple, Green, Gold; and now there’s just been a series of books that I’ve tried to tackle of what I think is an emerging issue with an either _____ or the employee engagement side of the coin, which I think you can’t have one without the other.

Andrea: Right. But why is that? Why do you see that as pairing of both of those?

Stan Phelps: Well, I think we’re all of the value driven. A friend of mine _____ like the value zone is the distance between the frontline, you know the front of the brand, that person serving the customer and the customer themselves. That’s the value zone. That’s where everything is created. So you can have this lofty idea in terms of what you think the experience you should provide. But if you don’t have people that are bought into that on the frontline and that value zone then you’ll never going to be able to make that change. So what I personally found is the companies that really got it for the customer, Andrea, even got it more so for the employees. In fact, nine out of ten times they’re actually placing a greater emphasis on the employees and the culture that they want to drive than they are in the customers themselves.

Andrea: Sure. Absolutely, I mean, if the frontline folks, like you said buy in, almost embody the brand in their conversation and in the way that they serve then it totally changes the game.

Stan Phelps: Right. Yeah, so all the books in the series have kind of focused on, and some, I think, the best books in the series have touched both sides of it. So for example, I wrote the Red Goldfish is entirely about purpose or the Yellow Goldfish is all about happiness. But here’s the deal, purpose is magical because it catch across both the customer side of the equation as well as the employee side. And yellow is all about happiness, so it’s about making sure that your customers are happy but, at the same time, your employees are happy as well as the fact that you’re looking at society and should then give back to societal happiness.

Andrea: OK, let’s take a look at some more specific around differentiation for customer service. What are some different things that you talk about that are really important for somebody who wants their company or their brand to be able to have a voice of influence, to be an influence in the world and with their customer themselves?

Stan Phelps: Yeah, you know, so I’ll touch on Purple because that’s what I’m going to be talking about in DC and I hope everyone comes out for Smart Customer Service 2019. Purple is really about understanding that I think there are two sides of the coin when it comes to customer experience. The first side of the coin is all of the value that you provide. And so throughout Purple Goldfish, there are six different ways you can provide a little bit of added value. The other flip side of the coin is the concept that I call maintenance. So value is all the things that you do for your customer. Maintenance is all of the things that your business processes due to your customer. Meaning, how easy do you make it for them to be able to do business with you? And so how do you do the little things to reduce friction and improve the experience? So I think at the end of the day, there’s no big magical answer but it’s about finding the small and little things that you can do that can make a big difference. You know, this isn’t a Trojan horse, right? There’s no one big catch all. It’s a lot of little things that if you can understand your customers and what drives them and you can design these little things and you can deploy them effectively that’s going to be the key to success. It’s something I called the “3D development.”

Andrea: OK, so do you want to take that any further, that 3D development?

Stan Phelps: Yeah, I mean it’s not complicated. Again, the first ‘D’ is Discovery and understanding who you are as a brand and what your customers value the most, not to over think it, right? You want to be great to the things that your customers value the most and you want to understand where you want to be in the market place. Once you understand those two things, you can then go to the “D” of Design.” So you go from discovery first to design. And Design is thinking ways that you bring those things to life. How can you accentuate the things that matter the most to your customers and how can you do the way that reinforces who you want to aspire to be as a brand. And then third is this idea of Deploy. So how do you test, pilot, and validate those things as well as how do you make sure that your team has bought into it, that you create a process around it, and that you have the resources that you can do it again, again, and again. And what do you do once you deploy, you go right back to that first day of discovery. I say it as it’s a continuous development idea.

Andrea: Yeah that sounds great. Alright, so do you have any examples of little things that you’ve seen companies do that really make that big difference. Now, I realized that this might not be applicable to every single company that’s out there but perhaps there are some ideas that could spark other ideas.

Stan Phelps: So I’ll give you a couple on the value side of the equation. And so we spend a lot of time on this idea. One of the categories is first and last impressions and doing a little something extra to make that strong first impression. You know, there’s this idea of _____,you remember the first thing and typically the last thing we experience and maybe it peak somewhere. So like the DoubleTree hotel, they’re one of my hall of famers. That chocolate chip cookie, it’s that warm, great first impression and it’s something that they have down to a science in terms of the consistency of doing it. I think it embodies what they want to be seen as a brand. They wanted to be seen as that kind of warm, welcoming place. And so it’s very well-positioned as a great strong first impression. Another example in the value category is a category we call sampling. And so one of my favorite examples is an ice cream shop in St. Paul, Minnesota called Izzy’s Ice Cream. It’s such a simple thing but when you buy a scoop of ice cream at Izzy’s, they let you pick a second flavor for free and this small little mini scoop and they actually _____, so you can’t copy if you’re an ice cream shop. But it’s this small little mini scoop and that little mini scoop is called the Izzy.

Andrea: That’s cool!

Stan Phelps: It’s brilliant. I mean, this is an amazing strategy for the customers that already do business with you, Andrea. On average, they only know 20 percent of what you can do for them. So with the people that are already customers with you, why wouldn’t you invest a little buck to give them a little taste of something else? So I think, unfortunately, we most often think of sampling as something we do for prospective customers. Why can’t we use it for the customers that we already have? So that’s the value side. I’ll be giving an example or two on the maintenance side of the equation and so a couple of those over there, one is convenience. So how do you do little things to be more convenient? One of my hall of famers there is that company called TD Bank. They’re on the East Coast open seven days a week. Some nights there are open till 8 o’clock at night. Even if they don’t decide to be open seven days a week or open till 8 o’clock, you can take this thing that they do. They actually open the doors of the branch, Andrea, 15 minutes before what scheduled opening is and they actually keep the doors open 15 minutes afterwards. So think about it. Each day, you might have some people four or five customers that show up before the bank officially opens, but what do they do, they open the door and greet those customers as a way of reinforcing that convenience. And we’ve all been there rushing to get to the bank before it closes; they open the door for 15 minutes for people and that scheduled in, right? That’s scheduling in a little more convenience to reinforce what they’re all about. Another great example is what we call an added service to make it easier to do a little something extra. So, Safelite, when they come and do a repair of your windshield, you know, while that Epoxy is filling that crack and setting, it takes about 10 minutes, they typically will vacuum the interior of your car. They’ll get glass cleaned or do all of your windows. Now, that was never part of the deal, but they have that little extra time and they invest that as a little extra buck. And their front line, I think each and every week, every person on the front line gets their own NPS score at Safelite.

Andrea: Nice. That’s really cool! Those are great examples. Thank you for sharing those. Alright, so Stan, why should somebody attend your specific breakout session at the Smart Customer Service Conference?

Stan Phelps: Well, I’d like to think there’s probably going to be a lot of people that already understand the importance of providing that great customer service where I would say overarching experience. My hope is that their perspective might even get slightly shifted and they’re going to walk away with kind of the recipe for being able to create signature differentiators for their brand to create that experience that people talk about, to read about, and post on Instagram about.

Andrea: Awesome! OK, so how can people find you?

Stan Phelps: A couple of ways, StanPhelpSpeaks is my personal speaking site and then I’ve got about eight other co-authors for these books, so purplegoldfish.com is kind of the Goldfish collective and the think tank.

Andrea: Perfect! Well, thank you so much for taking time to be with us here on the Voice of Influence podcast and I look forward to seeing you in DC.

Stan Phelps: Awesome, can’t wait!

Posted on Monday, March 11, 2019

How to Connect Your Life to Your Customer Service with Derrick Ricca

Episode 82

Derrick Ricca is a 25+ year veteran of the hospitality industry who has been the Senior Sales Manager for Greenleaf Hospitality Group for the past 17 years. His true passions are customer service, mentoring, coaching, and food. In this episode, Derrick discusses how he got into the hospitality field, why he believes you have to drop your ego to provide good customer service, what he feels makes the biggest difference in getting a group of people to implement and adapt to changes, how he gets a transient workforce to embrace the “environment” of the business, why he strives for a blend of work and life instead of balancing the two, what he’ll be speaking about at the Smart Customer Service Conference, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! Now, as someone who wants you and your organization to have a voice of influence, I recognized that you’re highly focused on doing the best that you can for the people that you served. So over the next few weeks, we’re going to be featuring some interviews with the experts who will be speaking at a conference that I’m going to be speaking at, it’s called Smart Customer Service in Washington, DC April 29^thto May 1^st 2019. And each of these interviews will feature insights related to a different aspects of customer service. So you can find out more the Smart Customer Service Conference at smartcustomerservice.com and in our show notes. Today, we have Derrick Ricca with this. Derrick is a 25 plus year veteran of the hospitality industry. He has been the Senior Sales Manager for Greenleaf Hospitality for the past 17 years. His true passions are customer service, mentoring, coaching, and food; not in any particular order (he says). Derrick is married with two sets of twins, which keep him actively coaching sports year round and trying his best to relearn algebra which I completely understand.

Andrea: Derrick, it’s great to have you here with us on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Derrick Ricca: Thank you so much, Andrea.

Andrea: Derrick, I have to tell you this. This is a running joke in my house. It’s not a joke though. I worked in a hotel in college for probably about a year. So whenever we go to a hotel, I tell my husband things or I would tell him things when we first got married about “Well, we probably do it this way because of this or that sort of things.” And I would share with him some of the things that I’ve learned and he kind of makes fun of me for thinking that I know what I’m talking about just because I was at the front desk of a hotel. But I think it’s a big industry. It’s an important industry. So tell me, Derrick, how did you get involved in the hospitality industry?

Derrick Ricca: Well, you know, the first thing you can do is you can tell your husband, “You probably do understand what’s going on.”

Andrea: That’s right.

Derrick Ricca: Yes, the front lines of a hotel, especially when you’re a front desk agent, that’s one of the more challenging jobs that are out there. So anytime that you see a really good front desk agent, you know, you can tell that that person has a lot of qualities that most people don’t possess. And so you should be very proud of yourself because a year of doing that is many more years in other professions.

Andrea: Thank you. I will definitely do that.

Derrick Ricca: Yeah, and I kind of back toward by accident in the hospitality. It was never really a dream or a goal of mine. And what I did growing up was I battled my dad who was in sales and said “I don’t wanna go to sales.” He said, “Hey, you’d be perfect for sales.” And I’m like “I don’t wanna do that.” And for me, it was kind of one of those things where I had started a job working for a restaurant group and doing everything but food. And then I realized that, you know, I was a big fan of food and I was a big fan of selling and I was also a big fan of really making people smile. So I put all three of those together and I ended up interviewing at this hotel. And at the time, the hotels under construction and, you know, Kalamazoo was not really anything you jump up and down about, and the owner of the hotel said “Hey, this hotel is gonna be really something special.” I trusted him and 17 years later, it is really a special hotel. It’s funny to look back on it and say “Gosh, how did I ever end up here.” But it’s been a really fun journey.

Andrea: I love what you said about; you like to make people smile. Is that something that you’ve always noticed about yourself or where did that comes from?

Derrick Ricca: I think I’ve always been a people pleaser and those types of people belong in hospitality. If you really care about people and you have a little bit of empathy that you can spread around and you enjoy interacting, you know, hospitality is such a great career. And a few don’t enjoy that then that’s the last career you should probably get into.

Andrea: Have you _____ in making people smile?

Derrick Ricca: Yeah, and that’s the whole thing is you have to really kind of have something happen in your life where you can really appreciate people going out of their way to make your life better. Because a lot of times, in hospitality situations whether you’re a restaurant or a hotel or wherever you are at, it could be a retail situation. A lot of times, you’re not comfortable in that environment. It’s not your house. It’s not somewhere you’re used to. So a lot of times, people won’t go try out new restaurants because they don’t feel comfortable there. I’m just the opposite. I’m the person that would go to any dive bar or any dive restaurant just to kind of check it out. I think for me, it’s always been one of those things where, you know, I just enjoy life. I enjoy meeting people. I enjoy having conversations. I enjoy so many different opinions and so hospitality I guess was kind of made for what I like to do. And it’s kind of one of those things where as much as I have thought it in the past, I have been told, “Derrick, you’re kind of introverted but you’re kind of extroverted,” and it’s hard to really get out of it once you’re in it because it is really enjoyable.

Andrea: Well, there’s something really special about that feeling of knowing that the other person is better off because of you.

Derrick Ricca: Yeah. You know, to be good in customer service, it takes so many different things. You have to really be able to drop your ego. And if you can do that, you can really do some magical things in customer service because customer service has gotten harder and harder over the course of time. And people, you know, always talk about going into places and just having such horrible customer service. And I agree, you go into fast food or you’re going to some of these places where the employees are hard to come by and they’re always short staff and they’re trying to get people in there. Sometimes, they’re working with the younger group that doesn’t have the experience. And it’s really hard for somebody to come out of there and say “Gosh, I really just have a great experience customer wise. So, you know, it’s something that’s always kind of needled me a little bit where I just kind of have looked at it, felt it and said “OK, I need to embrace this and I somehow need to push a better feeling to those people so that when they leave the feel good.”

Andrea: You just mentioned that you have to be able to drop your ego. What is that look like for somebody who’s in customer service to really drop their ego, what do you mean by that?

Derrick Derrick: I think that, for me, it’s one of those things where I really learned to drop my ego by coaching youth sports. I know that’s sounds really strange but, you know, I’ve been lucky. I’ve got some kids that are pretty athletic. I’ve always been able to _____ the chips are down and they need to win a game and they come in and hopefully do something good. But I learned that that’s not always the best thing to do and that sometimes you have to put some faith in some kids that may not have that much talent or what so that they can grow and develop. So it’s one of those things where there’s a person, the best thing that I can is get as much knowledge as possible and go into a situation to help the consumer or the guest or whoever it is. Not brag and boost about what I know but try to help them and figure ahead of time “OK, where is this person going and how I can help them the best way possible?” So it’s little silly things that people do that make a big influence that you don’t realize. You know, I had a consumer the other day or guest come in the hotel and he wanted to go off property and he wanted to get pizza but he was a little older and he just wasn’t sure of himself. So I walked him down there. And for me, it wasn’t a big deal. It took about 10 minutes and we had a really good conversation on the way down. I dropped him off for some pizza and it was funny he came back to the hotel and he asked, “You know, I’d like to go back there again tomorrow, would you come there and have lunch with me?” For me, it really kind of felt good like “OK.” You know, I found exactly what this guy wanted and I put him in a place where he’s happy and he wanted to share that with me. So you know, I went back the next day and made new friends. So it’s kind of cool where, again, you can drop your ego and you can look at something and you can just understand like “Hey, I just want to help this person and I want to make their day more enjoyable.”

Andrea: It sounds like good. It’s not about you.

Derrick Ricca: It was funny, I remember in college, I took a course and the professor was big on servant leadership. And I never understood really what he was talking about even while I was in the class. And then as I got into the real world, you kind of look back at things that you’ve done in your past and you say “Well, OK, now it all makes sense.” You do things sometimes and it’s not about you, it’s about the situation. So there’s a lot of times in my life where I looked back on it and I put myself in situations that don’t necessarily benefit me but they have taught me a whole _____ lessons. So today, I went to the grocery store and I decided that I wanted to make my kids a fun dinner. So I was going to make them homemade mac and cheese and they really enjoy that and it’s a special treat. So I went to the grocery store looking for some truffle oil and I find some truffle oil, and the gentleman was actually stocking in that area. I looked at the price and it’s like $20 a bottle, and he knows like I am not going to pay $20 a bottle for truffle oil. So, you know, I told him “No, thanks. I appreciate you letting me know that you guys have this. This is really not what I’m looking for.” So I went shopping around the rest of the store, and he actually came and found me and he said, “You know, I totally forgot, we have our own house olive oils that we infused of flavors and there’s a truffle one and it’s only $5.” So it’s this huge bottle of truffle oil. And I just thought it was cool that the guy understood what I was going through and I understood what I was concerned about and then helped me. Because for me, you know, like I grew up working in grocery stores. And to this day, still people think I work in grocery stores because what happen is I come home from work and typically I’m dressed up from work in a hospitality and I usually have a suit on. Every time, I go to the grocery store, I usually take my tiles and I walk to the grocery store and I get my groceries. Well, there was one time where I was in a extreme amount of hurry going through the grocery store because my wife was home and she called me with the “Oh my God, we need milk.” And when you have four young children and you get a call “Oh my God, we need milk,” that is a “911 gotta get home.” So as I’m going through the store, I’m going towards the back of the store to get milk, and of course, I ran into a little lady who is so nicely asking me to get items off the top shelves. So I slowed down for a second and I understand “OK, I should do this.” And so I helped her get _____ top shelves. Then she proceeds to ask me if I know where Marsala wine is because she was making chicken Marsela. And where the wine was in the store, it’s not easy to find. It’s not in the wine and it’s not in the vinegars, they put it somewhere else. So I walked her to get this then she says, “I need to find this.” So literally for 20 minutes, I’m helping this lady go through the store. We say good bye. She says, thank you. She was so sweet. I go back to pick up the milk. I finally get the milk, go to the front of the store and I just had milk and I was in this line waiting. And I listened to the lady and she was checking out in the line next to me and she was telling the cashier about how this wonderful man helping her and the people at this grocery store are so very nice and he is such a nice man. And so at that point, I just kind of give _____ to myself and I thought “Gosh, I’m so glad I slowed down and I’m so glad that this grocery store is benefiting through my work.”

Andrea: Yeah, exactly. They were so glad that you stopped in that day.

Derrick Ricca: Yes. You know, it’s one of those things where I’ve run into people that I’ve worked with before and not knowing walking in the _____ or department store and they’re in front of me and they don’t hold the door. And working in hospitality, I didn’t kind of get after a little bit like “Hey dude!” And then they kind of understand and get through it but those one of those things where when you’re in hospitality it’s ingrained in you. And when somebody, like today, where the guy understood what I was feeling and was able to solve my solution. For me, it was a big deal like I thank him a lot and he said, “No, you don’t need to thank me.” I was like, “No, I do because that was really, really cool!”

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. That’s great. I love the story. So what exactly do you do? What’s your role or your job, your position that you do at the hotel?

Derrick Ricca: So my job is basically to fill the medium space in the hotel guest rooms. You know, we have 40 guest rooms and we’ve got about 50000 square feet of meeting space. Typically a hotel that size has about 20000 square feet of meeting space. So having that much more meeting space is something that obviously needs to be filled. So my job is to get people to stay in the hotel to have meetings, holiday parties do all that. And for us, it’s been a lot easier, I mean, when I first started there, it was not easy. And as time has going on, we just continually added better people. And last year, for the second time in the last five years, we won Renaissance National Hotel of the Year.

Andrea: Wow, congratulations! That’s really great!

Derrick Ricca: Thank you.

Andrea: You know, that’s an interesting point that you bring about that the people kind of change at a slow pace too. I’m assuming this based on what you just said but maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong. Is it hard to make big changes with like a current group of people and getting everybody to buy in to those things or that sort of thing? Does it help to just kind of waited out overtime and start to replace people or what kinds of things made those people better and better as you went along?

Derrick Ricca: You know, I think it’s a combination of a lot of things. I think it’s getting a very good leadership group in and that makes the biggest difference where you have leaders that are compassionate and they’re trigging people with empathy, authentic, and they have high levels of integrity. And then it’s also one of those things where a few people that don’t fit and they’re not on the right seat on the bus, you either reorganize them or you find a new place for them. And we have a ton of employees that have been there for a long time and it’s a test on it to just really what a great organization we work for, but it’s really when you look at everything in how it works. We have managers that are leading by example. We have people that truly care. It’s just makes a big difference when you get good people and they’re all working together. You know, with hospitality, you have a very transient workforce. So for us, we’re in a college town, we have a lot of college employees and they don’t always stick around for more than two or three years. Some of them do and we have a number of them that we’ve promoted from within. So it’s a thousand little things. There’s no silver bullet and it’s not necessarily, you’re right, it’s not one big sweeping0 change. It’s so many little things.

Andrea: How do you help the transient workforce to embrace the DNA of your hotel and sort of be the kind of person that you want serving your guest, how do you do that?

Derrick Ricca: I think it starts off when we train our associate. You know, we put a little extra TLC into it. They have days amount of training before they even get out on the floor and engage with a customer or guest. I think they see a lot and they observe a lot and they see people doing things. I mean, that’s part of the big thing with customer service is. You have to actually see it in action. You can’t just teach it and expect people to do it. I think it’s basically, and I hate this word, I hate the word culture, because it’s so overused and sometimes misused. But it’s more of like an environment I think. And I think once people understand the environment of what we’re trying to do and you enjoy it and you’re working for the other people that you work with, I think that’s what changes that. I mean for me, you know, I’m the floor frontline service all the time and so I enjoy it because I love to be out there and I love to interact with our operations team. We have so many good people but it makes it fun like you enjoy when the hotel is really busy.

Andrea: You enjoy when it’s busy because why exactly?

Derrick Ricca: Yeah, you get certain energy from it. I mean, you’re working hard. It’s fast paced. It’s not stagnant. It’s always moving and it’s not predictable. It’s not easy, but you get this feeling of like, gosh, it’s really, really cool. You see so many people and you’re interacting and there’s so much going on and there’s so many moving pieces. And sometimes, you’re wondering like “How, did just happen, like how did we transition from a five person group to an 800 person group, like how does that physically happened?” It’s a fun environment to be in because it is a fast paced moving organism basically. It’s never boring. So I think that being on your toes and always having to be up on a stage performing for all of these people, you know, you really have to put your game on and pull up your boots and work hard.

Andrea: I like the way that you put that, the idea of being on stage. Is that something that you talk about the team that you have? How do you help them to think about that in terms of like you know when you’re with people on stage? How does that go for you?

Derrick Ricca: You know, we had that kind of discussion before where people were always watching. And it’s really kind of cool because what we’ve done is we’ve used tons of metrics but we’ve also taken in customer cards. So we get so many customers comments and we go through them and understand them so that it makes us better. Because there were things we’ve done in the past that have just been cleaned out stupid and you learned not to do those anymore. And then you talked to the guests more and they tell you “Hey, here’s really what we want.” And so for us that helped us become better customer ambassadors because we can do small things to make their stay better.

Andrea: Sure. That makes a lot of sense. OK, I know that you’ve mentioned your kids before and coaching, do you ever bring in your personal experience at home to be able to relate to how you want to do and you want your team to do customer service at work?

Derrick: Oh God yeah. You know, a lot of people say, you know don’t bring your home life to your work and vice versa. For me, I’ve never been one of those people that says, “Oh you gotta have this work-life balance. You have to do things a certain way.” For me, it’s always kind of work out where it’s been great. You know, if you work in a safe work environment where you have that feeling and it’s like “Gosh, I really belong working here,” it makes work a lot easier. But I’ve always been the type of person that says, instead of having work-life balance, why don’t you have a blend of work life. I’m not saying that you always have to bring your home life into work but I think sometimes it is good. I mean, there are times where I’ve had really good things happen to me outside of work and I bring that feeling into work and it just helps you perform in a better level. Now, you look at the opposite side of the road, of course, if you’re going through rough times, it’s hard when you have to go to work. But for us and to myself, I work with such a good team. But I’ve gone through some difficult times in my life and I’ve brought it to work and I’ve been helped out. And so, I think if you have that greater understanding of what you’re trying to do and those people around you have that, it makes it a lot easier. So yeah, I would say if you are doing while things are happy and things are good, bring those to work and share it with the people that you work with, your guest, your customers, or whoever you’re coming with, you know, who will appreciate that. It’s one of those things where people call my voicemail and leave a message and say “I really like your voicemail message,” and I laugh about it because I recorded it like six years ago and while I was recording it, one of my cube mates was trying to make me laugh so I’m kind of giggling on the message. And I never really listened to the message and I went back and listened to it and I was like “Oh, it makes sense.”

Andrea: Do you have any particular insights that have really hit you from home that you bring to work then? You want to share any of those?

Derrick Ricca: For me, I’m lucky because I was blessed with, you know, marrying somebody that really made my life better. And so I think having that support system at home has really helped me out a lot and I’ve been able to, as I said, dropped my ego with my wife and I’ve learned a lot from her. You know, there were times in the past where I may have offering a certain way and she’s able to kind of say, you know, you should do this or do that. Or it’s things that I can watch that she’s done and see how she’s handled things and then kind of applied that to my own life. So you know, I think about times in which she’s had to do things and she’s been immersed in all kinds of drama and she’s chosen not to go through and respond like I would. I would immediately say, “This is stupid,” or whatever the case was. You know, I’ve been able to really kind of look back and say “OK, now I understand why she didn’t do that.” And so it has helped me know when to just stop talking. But she also too is one of the other people that has helped me as far understanding when you’re having something good, share it. And when something’s bad, you can’t let it negatively influence you or really kind of change your mood. And it’s hard when you have two sets of twins that are all strong willed and they’re loud and they never stop, it’s sometimes is you get through the day and you just take the deepest breath possible. But sometimes you just have to understand like “Hey, this is the time in our lives. We’ll get through it and you have to just kind of enjoy it.”

Andrea: Love that! OK, Derrick, let’s talk about your session at Smart Customer Service, what are you talking about there?

Derrick: So each year, I’ve always have a fun topics. And my thing is, it’s always been important to me to go to these conferences and provide people to take something home with them. Because there are so many times where you go to conferences and you sit there and you go to breakout sessions and you listen and it’s good information but it’s not really applicable. You can’t physically or mentally take it home with you or make changes. So every year, I try to figure out something where somebody can look at it and have a little bit of inspiration to go into their work environment and make it better. So this year, really more the discussion is talking about how do you fix customer service and how do you provide good levels of customer service without really truly focusing on customer service? And what I mean by that is what are the ways that you set yourself off to provide better customer service to your guests, and a lot of it has to do with things that you don’t really think about. In our case, we have so many different things that have happened over the course of time that had been changed. One of the big things right now is technology, and technology is pushing, pushing all the time and that’s a big focal point, and it should be a big focal point of every single customer. I don’t care every single industry; I don’t care what customer you serve or what you’re doing. And so for us, there’s time where we have to look as an organization and say “OK, this is not about our guest or a customer, this is about us and how we do things. We need to change it so that we’re more customer centric and how do we do that?” So the best example is I actually went to a customer service conference about three or four years ago and I thought to myself “Gosh, do you what’d be easy right now is the hotel that I was at in DC and I won’t way which one it was, their customer service was lacking and ______.” And I was challenged because I needed some help and I didn’t know where to turn to. And I thought “Gosh, how great would this be if I could just text the front desk and they could then respond to it.” I didn’t want to call and feel stupid about my question, especially somebody that works in a hotel that should know all the answers. I brought that back to our hotel as well where a lot of our travelers, you know, the first thing they do when they check is they have their phones in their hands. And then the second thing they do is have their phone in their hands. So as soon as they unpack, they’re on their phones. So it’s a lot easier for them to just text, “Hey, I need some more towels or how do I turn the air up in the room?” So for us that’s a win-win situation if we can figure out how to incorporate that for our guest.

Andrea: Sure. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea there. I think the session will be very interesting. You bring a lot of great experience to this conversation and I thank you for being here on the Voice of Influence podcast and I look forward to seeing you in Washington, DC.

Derrick Ricca: Yeah. I think you will have a very enjoyable time. It’s a good group, and every year I’ve gone, I’ve picked up some things and brought them home and I think it has helped out in my journey in customer service. So it’s a great conference.

Andrea: Awesome! Alright, if you would like to learn more about the Customer Service Conference, you can go to our website www.voiceofinfluene.net.

Derrick Ricca: OK!

Andrea: Thanks Derrick!

Posted on Thursday, March 7, 2019

How to Write with the Voice of Your Brand with Leslie O’Flahavan

Episode 81

As Founder of E-WRITE, Leslie O’Flahavan, is a problem solver for work-related writing challenges who has helped thousands of people learn how to write well. She helps customer service agents write on-brand emails, chat, and social media posts. In this episode, Leslie discusses what led her to create her business back in 1996, why she’s so passionate about helping customer services representatives, the top skills she helped several major airlines incorporate into their customer service writings, how personal connections with your customers offset repeat complaints about the same issue, what a “brand voice” is and how she helps customer service agents write in that voice, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! Now, as someone who wants to have a voice of influence or you want your organization to have a voice of influence, I know that you’re pretty highly focused on doing what’s best for the people that you serve. And so in the next few weeks, we’re going to be featuring some interviews with experts who are going to be speaking at a conference that I’m going to be speaking at in Washington D.C. It’s called the Smart Customer Service conference. And it’s from April 29^th through May 1^st 2019. So if you are in that area, or if you are in industry where customers service is important to your business then that would be a fantastic conference to come to. But even if you’re not, we have some really interesting interviews coming up for you. And the one today is going to be a blast. So today I have with me, Leslie O’Flahavan. Leslie has helped thousands of people learned to write well. That’s right, we’re going to be talking about writing. As founder of E-WRITE, she is a problem solver for work-related writing challenges. She helps customer service agents write on brand, email, chat, and social media post. And Leslie has worked with several international airlines to update their style of communicating with customer. She has done so many things. She’s also an instructor for Lynda.com.

Andrea: So Leslie, is it great to have you with us here on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, thanks very much! I’m really excited to speak with you and thanks for inviting me.

Andrea: Well, I’m curious. How did you get started with teaching people about writing? Is this something that you have always been particularly good at and then you wanted to teach or how did this go for you?

Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, I tell the story quickly and in reverse chronological order. So my business is called E-WRITE and you can guess when I founded it by the name. I founded it back in the e-hyphen era. I founded it in 1996 and this is when email was just becoming a common way people communicated at work. And I thought “Well, shoot, that’s gonna change everything. People who have not been writing email to each other, now they’re gonna be writing email to each other. They’re gonna need help writing it well.” And that was a little wrong and a little bit early because, you know, it was so trivial and mundane in 1996 when I started the business. People didn’t really want any help learning how to write email well. But what they did want was help learning how to write with web content. So, I launched the business in 1996, as I said, and started offering customized onsite writing workshops for people who wanted to learn web content, e-newsletters, and all other kinds of online writing because it really was quite new to them. Before I started E-WRITE, I was a college writing instructor for nine years. Before that, I was a high school English teacher. Shout out to all the English teachers out there, and I did that for nine years.

Andrea: That’s great!

Leslie O’Flahavan: So that’s a brief history of my life as a writing instructor.

Andrea: Love that you taught school. I was a music teacher as well. OK, so that’s your brief history as a writing instructor. So you were teaching for a very long time and then you turn that into a business where you’re helping businesses with this. What do you do with that now? What are you doing with your business now in terms of teaching people how to write?

Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, my business is like a nice big dining room table with many, many strong legs under, and that’s one reason that I’ve been able to stay in business for all these years. You know, essentially, I’m a writing instructor. I developed writing curriculum and I deliver it. But it’s way more complicated than that and way more broad. For many years, I did offer web-writing courses for corporations, for associations. I live in the Washington D.C. area, so there’s a lot of headquarters of nonprofit here and _____ agencies. But somewhere around 2001, I started to learn more and more about the work life of people who had been answering 1-800 phone numbers in the customer services role. You know, many companies employed them in a hundreds or even thousands customer service agents or customer service reps, and their writing life was getting more and more complicated. And it continuous to be quite complicated because, you know, back in the days, they answered phone calls and postal mail and then they added emails and then they added life check and they added social media and then they added text. And now they’re doing all those channels supported by a_____, so it’s really, really complicated. And there’s a workforce, they’re not the most writerly. It’s not like sitting down with a bunch of PR professionals or with a bunch of marketers. These are not the most writerly people and they needed help. They work in a factory of writing. So for about the last 15 years or so, I’ve offered a lot of writing training, custom curriculum, training delivery, and other types of support to large customer service organizations. And as you mentioned in my intro, since maybe 2012, I’ve worked with, I think 10 or 11 big airlines to help them update the way they communicate with customers and enable their frontlines customer service agents, even their reservation agents to write better.

Andrea: Hmmm. Just briefly, I really want to get how you help write to customers in their company’s brand voice. But what are just like some of the maybe top three or five things that you actually helped those airlines to incorporate into their writing?

Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, one is the skill of responding with empathy and replacing knee-jerk insincere sympathy with empathy. So for an airplane when a person emails in and says “I am so angry, I have to sit at Baltimore airport for six hours for weather delay and when I looked out the window, the weather looked fine to me.” That’s an angry email from a customer. Most airlines are built to respond, “We regret any inconvenience this delay may have caused,” which is just passive-aggressive nonsense. So one thing I do is train the frontline agents and gain support from their managers to have them respond with empathy and, if necessary, to apologize because airlines really needn’t apologize for the weather. But what they can say is “Thank you for contacting us. I do understand that travel is stressful and sitting at the Baltimore airport for many hours must have been especially tiresome.” That’s empathy. That’s I see your way. And customers appreciate this. It doesn’t make the weather delay go away but it does make the airline sincere. Not only sound sincere, that is a sincere behavior.

Andrea: Sure.

Leslie O’Flahavan: Shall I give you another one?

Andrea: If you’d like, that’d be great.

Leslie O’Flahavan: Sure! Well, lots of big customer service organizations airlines or other ways rely on formed letters or formed answers even if it’s not a full letter, they rely in formed answers or prewritten content. One thing I do is help the frontline customer service reps learn how to customize those contents. So for example, if you have a little snippet of prewritten content that says when you’re open, when your stores are open, you don’t need to customize that if you’re open Monday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. till 9:00 p.m. that should be prewritten. But I help them learn how to add a little bit of personal information such as, “So we hope you’ll come in this weekend.” So the prewritten content doesn’t come across as robotic.

Andrea: Hmmm. I love that! And it really does kind of speak to the personality. All of a sudden, it’s not just a corporation and it’s not just a company, there’s an actual person behind that and you’re actually connecting with that person.

Leslie O’Flahavan. Indeed. That’s it and that’s what customers crave from a practical point of view that personal connection offsets repeat complaints about the same issue. Because when you’re a customer and you don’t feel anyone’s paying attention to you, you’re going to make a lot of noise, repeated amount a lot of noise and that’s expensive for company.

Andrea: So what is the company’s brand voice? Let’s talk about this a little bit. Let’s talk about first of all what a brand voice is, especially in terms of writing.

Leslie O’Flahavan: OK. Well, a brand voice is set of writing choices that support the personality your brand conveys through many means, through its logo, typography, mascot, or advertising campaigns. Brands have personalities and personalities have a voice. And the definition of what your brand voice might be or what the writing choices you might make to sustain that brand voice. This is information that is very commonly understood from marketing and PR and graphic designers, and all that community in any company. But it’s information that’s rarely shared with people who work in customer service and they’re expected to kind of soldier on without it or to write the customers with not much awareness that they’re sustaining the brand voice. So a lot of my work involves taking the brand voice guidance that’s already in the big company and basically showing it to the customer service management. We have just never seen it before. It’s the bad byproduct of a siload organization. They have often just never seen it before. So sometimes, I’ll ask “Can I see the brand voice guidance that your marketing team gives to your ad agency?” And they’ll retrieve it and I’ll say, “Let’s figure out how are we gonna use this for the person with the headset on who’s answering the phone or the person who is answering your support Twitter handle. You know, how is this person going to be able to read this guidance and make it real in their own life?”

Andrea: Oh yeah absolutely.

Leslie O’Flahavan: We want customers to have the same experience with your brand personality after they have a problem or when they have a question. If they did before the spent the money with you back when they were falling in love with you. And that’s why it’s so important that the people who provide support help service whatever you want to call it. They’re aware of the writing craft that goes into sustaining that brand voice and they know how to make those same writing choices.

Andrea: So how do you actually translate the document that you got from the marketing team and help the customer service agent to actually be able to write in that. And whether that be the really big companies or even small companies, how do you translate that for them?

Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, sometimes I do within the form of customized onsite training or online training. Sometimes, with the customer service management support, I will write a customer service brand voice guide, a separate reference work. But mostly, I plant the idea and support the behavior change that enables people to write in their company’s brand voice. Because remember when customers write for help that’s usually emotionally neutral, but when they write to complain, the people who answers those complaints day in and day out, often become very protective of the company. They can sometimes become defensive, because all day, every day, people are complaining at them and it’s painful.

Andrea: And it can feel personal.

Leslie O’Flahavan: And it can feel personal, and defensive writing is rarely in a brand voice. Because the more you’re trying to protect your company or insist on a policy or reject the fourth request for a refund, the more you’re trying to say no essentially, the more difficult it is to use that kind of candid a flirty language that we use in marketing. It’s hard work. It’s hard work. But I forgot to say something that’s really at my core and that it sustains me as we do this hard work is, I believe workplace writing is a learned skill. While I completely accept and recognize that there’s some kind of gift involved with poetry, fiction, writing drama, or reading a play; I believe that for most people, being able to perform competently as a writer at work is something they can learn. And I believe it’s not almost a civil right issue, to me, it is a civil right issue. If you hire somebody to do this hard job and this person who’s a customer service rep is probably not bringing down the big box either. If you’re the employer, you’re obliged to provide the training they need to do job well. Power to the people!

Andrea: Absolutely. I mean, there’s so much to that. I mean for so long, it felt like customer meant sort of like the dark people in the basement that have to deal with all of the yucky stuff. And we just want you to get it done as fast as you can. We don’t have to make this go away. I don’t even want to know that it’s there. But those people are the most powerful people in the company and they don’t even realize that there’s some definite contradiction there in between what they’re actually doing for the company and the amount of respect and support that they receive.

Leslie O’Flahavan: That’s really true and really wise observation. And perversely, social media has kind of blurred the lines between marketing and customer care in a way that some companies are managing very well and some aren’t. But it doesn’t really matter in the sense that all of these customer communications are coming in through, for example, Twitter. So, some very big companies separate the functions of handling customers’ complaints or questions about purchases or about subscriptions or about account information. They _____ separately from their marketing in social channels and some smaller companies can’t do that. So the person who is pushing an offer for 15 percent off coupon or something is the same a person who’s answering questions about why, what to do, how to reload the app when it’s not working.

Andrea: Right, right.

Leslie O’Flahavan: And I think that’s actually giving the leaders a little bit more respect and the customer service rep are less like the people in the basement with the headsets on and they very gently chained the ankles to the desk, you know.

Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. And I know that there are lots of really great companies that are thinking progressively on that and doing some really good work and obviously hiring people to come in and help with this sort of thing. So do you have any tips for writing in a brand voice? For example, if a company’s brand is based on prestige and needing to establish trust with their customer that sort of thing, what kind of things do you suggest that they do or don’t do in order to write in that voice?

Leslie O’Flahavan: Let’s take an easier example because when you’re thinking of a prestige brand like a five star hotel or something like that?

Andrea: Sure. You can take whatever example you want to take.

Leslie O’Flahavan: OK. Yeah, let me think about that. Writing in a brand voice has to do with some very easy to describe writing behaviors and some that are more difficult. So for example, is usually branded language, so part of writing in a brand voice is using the very terms that your company uses for such things that people can purchase elsewhere. So for example in an airline, do you call it a flat bed seat when it’s in first class or do you call it lie flat feet. So one part of writing in a brand voice is keeping everybody up to date on the term that we use and making sure they use it. Another part of writing in a brand voice is choosing a level of formality and sustaining it through all your writing choices. So if you’re talking about clothing _____,you’ll notice that a lot of their writing, even the writing in some channels that we would consider kind of playful like Twitter, they’re rather formal. They don’t use a lot of contractions. They don’t use as wide a range of emojis this kind of thing. They stay kind of formal because they’re close are kind of formal. A lot of times when answering completely casual company will write “Oh no!” Well, a form of company whose brand voice is formal doesn’t do that. They’ll say “We’re sorry to hear that.” Or “This is not good to hear,” these kinds of things. So the first thing is choosing and using the language our brand users, another writing choice is the level of formality in the word you choose or in the structures such as contractions or full form of the word. Another is the kind of extent of the irreverence you use or the snark or the mock or all of that. In contemporary customer service writing, there’s a lot of irreverence and snarky writing and a lot of brands are built on snarks. So we have to approve of it because if the brand voice before you purchase is snarky one or sarcastic one then it make sense that the brand voice app you purchased will be the same. But kind of how much of the brand voice is snarky, that’s an issue or reverent. I put snarky at one and in reverent at the other. And then I think another quality of brand voice is, I don’t know, how much of the responsibility for the service breakdown are you willing to shoulder? And that’s come out in your writing. Some companies by brand are extremely reluctant to shoulder much of their responsibility for the breakdown and others are quite willing to shoulder responsibility for the breakdown. So once that they’re unwilling, they might write things such as “We’re sorry to hear this, please contact us with full details of where you purchased the product and what kind of damage you observed in the packaging.” But if they’re kind of less standoffish, they might be willing to write something like “Oh no, we hate to hear this happen again.” Which comes across a schedule but it’s actually a different feature of the brand voice.

Andrea: Hmmm yeah. These are all really fantastic tips and examples. I know that you’ve already mentioned that you care in a sense because it’s almost a matter of justice for you or taking care of these front line people, why do care about these topics so much?

Leslie O’Flahavan: That’s the Adam and Eve of questions isn’t it?

Andrea: Yeah.

Leslie O’Flahavan: Well, life work has been to help people write better. So that’s kind of simple. You know, I’ve been working in this field a long time and it means a lot to me for that reason. I think, I’ve seen people grow a lot and that’s very meaningful to me. Sometimes I help cause that growth, sometimes I was just at their shoulder while it happened. I do think that having me around helps people believe they can grow and be better writers. I also think that when you’re at work, some of the widest range of skills you have to come up with are ones you exercise in writing, and you’re rarely notified beforehand that you’ll need them. So if you’re a salesman or a saleswoman, you know you have to be able to give pitch and use it powerfully, you know that. But did you also know that you might have to write a blog post about a new offering that your company had, maybe not. But nobody says to you, “I just want you to get ready. You may have to write a blog post.” Nobody says that, they say, “Next Tuesday, we need you to do a blog post.” It’s kind of like being the person who picks up the golf balls at the driving range, you know, there’s just all of these things coming at you. All of these writing responsibilities even something as mundane as a substantive email to your boss is a challenging writing responsibility. So I believe people deserve the support to accommodate these changing demands.

Andrea: Absolutely! OK, Leslie, you are doing a session with another colleague, Smart Customer Service conference here in April 2019, can you tell us just a little bit about it?

Leslie O’Flahavan: Sure! I’ll be glad to. I’m speaking with Jeff Toister who is a close friend of mine and a much admired colleague in the customer service. I think over the last five years Jeff has run a survey at least three times to find out what are customers’ expectations for email response time. So, let’s say you have an insurance policy, you have an insurance policy and you have a question about it and you email in to your insurance company asking the question, how soon do you expect an answer. And it won’t be any surprise to anybody that people are expecting answers from companies via email really quickly, much more quickly than they used to. I believed Jeff did his survey for the first time in 2012 or 2013 and I think response time has shown by half. So he’ll talk about the results of his survey and the insights he has _____ from it. And I will talk about how to answer that quickly without using formed letters all the time or without sounding like a robot or a company that just doesn’t care. That’s what we’ll be doing.

Andrea: It sounds very exciting and it sounds interesting as well. Thank you so much for being here on the Voice of Influence podcast. We will have links to the Smart Customer Service conference in the show notes. But also, I know that you offer some things as well, can you tell us just a little bit about that then, Leslie?

Leslie O’Flahavan: Sure! I’d be glad to connect with anyone who’s listening on Twitter. And I’m proud to say that there’s no photos of eggs Benedict in my Twitter. It’s all about writing. So I’m at LeslieO. I’m not Leslie zero, I’m Leslie O, and of course, I blog at Writing Matters at my website ewriteonline.com. And I am really open to conversations about what’s bugging you as you write or how you’ve grown. In fact, I’m the person who wants to hear how happy you are with something you wrote, because I’ll be happy too. That kind of joy carries over. So if you have questions about how to respond to your customers or you want to show me something you’re using in a newsletter or another publication and just get my feedback, _____.

Andrea: Oh that sounds great! And you truly are a joy, Leslie. Thank you for being here.

Leslie O’Flahavan: It’s my pleasure! Thank you for listening as we were talking before it’s an honor to be listened to. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the great questions.

Posted on Monday, February 25, 2019

How to Build a Culture of Respect with Kristie Rogers

Episode 80

Kristie Rogers is an Assistant Professor of Management at Marquette University. Her research focuses on how people define themselves and experience respect at work. Kristie’s research has been published in top-tier management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review. In episode 75 of the Voice of Influence podcast, I talked about an article Kristie wrote in the Harvard Business review and I’m delighted to have her on the show today so can take a deeper dive into her work. In this episode, Kristie talks about how she conducts her research in a qualitative way and what that means, why she’s passionate about sharing the work experiences of people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to do so, the personal reason for why she chose to focus her research on the topic of respect in the workplace, her thoughts the definitions of owed and earned respect, how an employee feeling both types of respects benefits the employer as well as the employee, the detrimental effects to violations of respect in the workplace, the connection between respect and the employee feeling their voice matters, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Kristie Rogers and she is an Assistant Professor of Management at Marquette University. Her research focuses on how people define themselves and experience respect at work. Kristie’s research is published in top-tier management journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review, which is where I found Kristie. She wrote the article last summer, Do Your Employees Feel Respected?

Andrea: So Kristie, I’m so thrilled to have you today on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Kristie Mae Rogers: Oh thank you, Andrea, I’m happy to be here.

Andrea: This is going to be fun. I already talked a little bit about your article in a podcast episode just a couple of weeks ago in episode #75. So this is going to be a much deeper dive and we get to speak with the actual author of the article so that’s exciting. So, Kristie, first of all, can you tell us a little bit about what you do? What is that mean to focus on and help people to find themselves and experience respect at work?

Kristie Mae Rogers: Certainly. I’m a professor and I teach, of course, in the college of business and do research and organization related to topics like respect, identity, how people connect with their organizations and positive organizational behavioral topics more broadly. My research is primarily qualitative, meaning that I collect data largely through interviews and observation to see important phenomena through the eyes of the people living it. So, I love getting out into organizational settings into different companies and trying to walk beside and understands those experiences. I’m especially passionate about sharing the work experiences of those who may not, otherwise, have a voice to do so and may have really unique experiences that we can learn a lot from.

Andrea: OK, what do you mean by that, the last statement that you made about sharing the work experiences with people who have, otherwise, the voice to do so, what does that mean?

Kristie Mae Rogers: Yeah, so as I said, I’m a management researcher, and business school research tends to be in very traditional context. So 9 to 5 jobs professionals, occupations that are studied quite often and there’s a lot to learn from left conventional settings and from the people who maybe don’t have as much power in the organizations but tends not to be the focus of research. So that’s somewhere that is particularly interesting to me to capture those experiences that may not, otherwise, be shared.

Andrea: I’m really curious. I mean, this all relates back to your article and the research that you did specifically on respects here, but why did you decide to research this topic of respect? Why these people and why…do you have a personal stake on this or if you have a personal kind of connection to you at all?

Kristie Mae Rogers: I do. So before I pursued my Ph.D., I worked as a stage manager on remote broadcast for sports productions, so ESPN, ABC Sports. And I remember having experiences that should have been very similar, like games that were roughly the same time of day had about the same profile of the teams; the scores weren’t even that different. And the experience itself, the way it felt, and how the crew gelled was extremely different across these experiences. And I asked the sideline reporter; I said “What is the difference here?” And he said “Respect plays such a huge ball, and without it, you can see broadcast fell apart, you can see some of those mistakes on air. But when it’s there, it’s completely different and a far more pleasant experience.” So then when I got into the Ph.D. program, I came across an interesting puzzle in management research that aligned with my firsthand experiences and others I’ve heard. So Christine Porath has surveyed tens of thousands of employees around the world and finds that respect is the number one thing that employee’s desire from their leaders. And Christine is an stability and instability expert. I’ve looked deeper into this research and found that although other service indicate this is so important, we also see that a vast majority of people do not feel adequately respected at work. So I asked myself, how can this be? This is free to give and it’s invaluable to those who receive it. There has to be more going on here.

Andrea: That’s great! That’s so interesting! I love hearing the background of why you decided to pursue this. So alright, so you decided to pursue this, and would you share with us a little bit about your hypothesis and how you were approaching your research for this article, in particular, and kind of a general description of what you did?

Kristie Mae Rogers: Uh-hmmm, sure. I didn’t go in with a hypothesis because this was qualitative inductive research. I was looking to build theory more than draw on what we already knew. So I was looking to fill some gaps by taking a really deep dive. And my main research question going into this was, how do employees experience respect and why does it matter? So interestingly, as I got into this study which I’ll tell you more about certainly, I never directly ask about respect. I was never the one to bring it up in the conversations. I asked interview questions that I thought might lead there but I didn’t want to prime them with respect or shape their experience in any way. So I think it really speaks to how important it was to the employees to think that I didn’t even ask directly about this and this is what I received back.

Andrea: Hmmm, great. Keep going, keep going.

Kristie Mae Rogers: Alright. I’ll tell you a little bit more just about the context why I chose it and how I ended up doing the research that I did. So the setting for my research is a company called Televerde. They do business to business marketing for high tech firms largely lead generation and those types of outbound calls. So I was working on my Ph.D. at Arizona State and the W.P. Carey School of Business had an awards luncheon where they recognized local businesses who were doing great things. Honestly, I was unsure about whether or not I should attend this, “Was it the things I should be doing on that day?” And I couldn’t be happier that I did because this was my initial exposure to Televerde. So this company won an award for the most innovative business model and they employ inmates inside the female state prison in Arizona. And seeing of the accompanying video of the women working inside of call centers that are in the prison making very technical phone calls and doing sophisticated work, the women talked about how life-changing experience was on the video. The CEO accepted the award that day and he said, these women are just like any of the women in your lives that they’ve made a wrong turn and they deserve a chance to succeed. And he was emotional and he was passionate and I was just in awe of what they’re doing. So I left telling my Ph.D. advisor, “This is exactly where I want to study, Respect, and pursue my dissertation research here.” So there were many hurdles that came with that. It’s quite difficult to do research in a prison but the company was receptive and so I’m so grateful for that. Also, I got to be there and watch newcomers adjust to the job. I followed those women through their program over the course of about 15 months, but I tracked quite closely the women starting the job and their experience over their first six to nine months working there.

Andrea: What kind of things did you see that indicated that respect was such an important piece of their own success, their success as an agent and their success as just a developing person?

Kristie Mae Rogers: So, I definitely saw both pieces, and many of the outcomes that I observed revolved around either individual or employee wellbeing or around their performance at work, and those two certainly tied together. But I think it helps first to get into what respect is and that helps understand what drove those outcomes.

Andrea: Sure!

Kristie Mae Rogers: I think one of the reasons there is confusion around respect is that it’s used to mean different things. So although the word respect is used often, when you dig into the literature on respect and the experiences that people have around it, there are really two types and they’re very different. So, owed respect is a type of respect that’s given equally to every member of a group of an organization. It isn’t based on anything unique to a person. It can’t be earned, it can’t be lost. This is important because an employee perceives their owed respect as signaling whether or not they belong in that company, in that organization and if they are included by others.

Andrea: Can I ask real quick? What is owed respect kind of look like?

Kristie Mae Rogers: So owed respect is something you would see that is directed to everyone in the company or there would be norms around this that are not specific to the person. So it might be policies that are very supportive and taken to account that these people are valuable and signals that in some way. So to give you an example at Televerde when I started observing the women, I watched them go through two weeks of intense classroom training where they earned community college business credits through the course of this. And they were educated in business and organizational structure and technology, the things they certainly needed to know for the job. But there was also this granting of responsibility and were willing to invest in you and help you get going with your education. It was an opportunity and a chance that the employee may not received before. There is also can be something far more subtle that you see employees greet one another when they see each other in the hallway, just a general signaling of value and worth to others in the organization.

Andrea: OK that makes sense. So I’ve heard you say something along the lines of a regard and kind of honoring each other and that sort of thing. That makes sense to me that people need that in order to feel that they belong and that they are a part of the group, that they’re a part of the company, really.

Kristie Mae Rogers: Yeah.

Andrea: Alright, so take us into earned respect, what is this?

Kristie Mae Rogers: So earned respect is based on behaviors or attributes of an individual. So this acknowledges of someone’s uniqueness, their performance in positive ways and lets the person know that he or she is positively regarded by others speaking to their need for status essentially or to feel that others value your skill set. So this is the type of respect that you earned by performing well and by meeting or exceeding the standards of the organization has played out for you or for your role, but this can also be about attributes. So at Televerde during the training period, the women had done personality profiles to understand who they were in this sitting and when the trainers help them make sense of it, they would say, “You know, OK, you are very extroverted and you have really high attention to detail and here how’s that gonna serve you really in the role that you’re starting.” So recognizing that they are unique individuals and there isn’t just one mold that they needed to fit was very powerful. But then also knowing that there was a very clear standard that they needed to meet and it was a high standards, and when they meet that they were recognized for doing so. Their accomplishments were celebrated and they weren’t left wondering “What is my performance compared to the person next to me? Is this good enough?” There were very clear markings of what was expected and how you were doing relative to that.

Andrea: By taking these assessments or doing this personality training, they’re understanding themselves more as an individual and yet, this is a job that in many cases or in many situations, companies work at their call centers as a situation where you’re supposed to fit into a mold or there is a sense of, “This is what we’re trying to accomplish. There’s a common goal with every call,” or that sort of thing. So how do you see these two things coming together? I think that they do and I think it’s beautiful, but what’s your take on the idea that they are individuals and yet being able to be that individual even though the goal still the same for everybody?

Kristie Mae Rogers: Yes and especially given this type of work, I think that’s a wonderful question. All employees want to feel that they belong to something but also feel that they are unique within that setting as well, not just an interchangeable part of the whole. And at Televerde, they’re very clear that they didn’t have scripts for the calls and they wanted these women to be incredibly knowledgeable and to have the agency to drive the conversation. And I think by empowering them to interject themselves into what could, otherwise, feel very robotic, it was humanizing for them and helped them see that “Oh OK, I can be me and I can be this professional.” And putting those two things together, potentially for the first time, was very powerful to how they saw themselves and envision who they would be going forward with their careers.

Andrea: OK, so it’s so clear to me how this is so good for the individual, for the employee, how is this good for the company?

Kristie Mae Rogers: So there are a couple of ways that I think this is great news for all companies. The first is, the better you understand respect, the better you can see that this isn’t just something that’s nice to have, it’s something you need to have if you want your employees to be performing at their very best. But because they feel that they are valued and that they are in a situation where they can become the best version of themselves, they’re willing to engage and to invest more. When they could strike that great balance of owed respect, the sense that everyone here is valued and worthy of being here but then also receiving their earned respect for the things that they were doing really well, it created the perfect recipe for performance. They felt safe enough to take chances and to try things out but they also knew that when they did things well, it was recognized and that reinforce those behaviors. I think it’s especially important if you want to retain employees to help them see that this is a place where you can continue to grow and that we value you for who you are. And regardless of the setting, I think that’s incredibly beneficial to both the company and the employees.

Andrea: I do too. It’s great to hear it from a researcher. I think you mentioned something about the Televerde employees connecting to the values of the company, at some point I think I heard you say something about that. How did you see that happening and what difference do you think that that made in their sense of respect?

Kristie Mae Rogers: Yeah. So the values were something a source of pride for Televerde and something they shared with employees on day one. Having someone come in to the training session and say, here is this value and here’s what this really means, and to even give examples of here’s how this come to life in my day-to-day work from several people who would they would see at high levels of the organization. But many of them who have jobs with any large organization in the past would say, “I’ve heard this before; our company have values, they have missions but I have to be skeptical. I have to question whether or not this is real.” So on day one, they heard about this and it was their initial exposure but this really came to life through interactions with leaders but then even more so through their peers. So they would say to me that something becomes real when we hear it from someone in ‘orange’ or who had been an ‘orange’ because they understand the position I’m in right now and I know that they’ll give me the real story. So, Televerde did a great job of closing the loop on that, you know, bringing women back who had been released and were successful in their careers and talking about their transitions and the hard part and the great part, giving them mentors who had more experience than knowledge but were similar to them and that who they felt were credible source of information. Once they got to that point that they said “I’m getting the same story from several sources,” they seemed more willing to engage and to be vulnerable and that’s when they really felt that they could give their all to this job and see where it took them. Many of the women has helped them developed professional skill set, a resume. They had transition workshops that helped them gain all the skills both for life and for work that they would need upon release and it dramatically reduce recidivism rate. The recidivism rate is typically about 66% for this population, and at the time that I was doing the research with Televerde, it was s11% of the women who had gone through their programs and who had worked for their company.

Andrea: Oh that’s fantastic! This is what it means to have a real cultural, you know, to be integrated into the culture and to really have it make a difference. It doesn’t really just to say something to say you value something or to say that these things matter. It doesn’t make as much difference until it envelops you. That’s the picture I was having when you were describing women coming back and saying “Now, this is how it changed me.” And it just sounded like you know like when you’re really enveloped into a culture that truly believes on these things and does these things that you’d say they value, it’s just so significant in terms of what you can really believe and putting forth all that effort in making that change. That’s fantastic! So how do you see this really applying to other kind of business situations across other call centers, but also other customer service or other situations where maybe the executive or the managers don’t even realize that they’re not being respectful or that they’re not communicating that respect? How can they do a better job?

Kristie Mae Rogers: Yeah and this was a large motivation for me in writing the Harvard Business Review article. I wanted to get this idea out there for people who could really use them, and especially speaking to managers, and those on leadership roles to help them see that they might be buffered from this need. So if you are in a leadership position, if you’re in a managerial role and people likely treat you quite well day to day. And if that need is meet for you, you’re unlikely to be sensitive to that need in others. So my hope is that this would be eye-opening for many people that this is what others are grappling with when they’re at work, “Am I really valued here? Where those cues coming from?” And certainly the sense that avoiding at all cost, the no news is good news that people need to hear that they are valued and that the work they’re doing is meeting or exceeding expectations and that recognition goes along way. Now, violations of respect on the other hand, can have really detrimental effects. The experiments show when people feel disrespected, they can’t be as attentive to the work they’re doing and either intentionally or unintentionally decreased their effort and their performance. So understanding the flipside of this is also very important as well. But my hope is that this balance between owed and earned is on the radar for more leaders because of this research. And this is a tricky balance, owed respect is all about treating everyone equally and earned respect is about equity, giving people what they’ve earned. And keeping both of those in play in ways that they don’t undermine one another is critical and may not be an explicit task for a leader or a manager but something they should be attentive to in an ongoing way.

Andrea: OK, so one more question for you and I’d like your take on how respect plays into whether or not somebody has a voice and whether or not they feel like they matter. So do you see these two things as being equal or what is the relationship between having a voice and respect?

Kristie Mae Rogers: So, when someone feels respected, when they feel that they are valued that’s when they mostly to utilize their voice thinking that what they have to say will be valued as well. If the power distance status differences are really clear in the organization and there’s not the sense that everyone here is valued from the lowest to the highest level of the organization, in a basic, way that everyone is treated with worth, why would you take the risk of exercising your voice if you don’t believe you’ll be heard. So I see respect as something that leads in a positive way to utilizing voice constructively.

Andrea: I would certainly agree. Alright, Kristie this has been great. I really appreciate you taking time to share your research and your perspective on this with our audience because it’s such an important thing for us to take into consideration. I think just like we talked about privilege and being you know not realizing how it’s difficult for somebody else to go through their lives or experience the things that they experienced because we’d haven’t had to experience them herself we’re just totally ignorant to that. It sounds like it’s very similar to what you’re describing here about respect and the varying levels of hierarchy in an organization. And so we all need to be more empathetic to everybody else’s perception and their need. I think that that’s what influences about as well, is like really having that sense or what is the perception not just what am I saying, “How am I being proceed. Do they really feel respected?” So this is fantastic. I appreciate also the difference between owed and earned respect and having that framework to think through this in the future. So thank you so much, Kristy. I appreciate you being here on the Voice of Influence podcast

Kristie Mae Rogers: Yes absolutely, and thank you for doing this.

Posted on Monday, January 14, 2019

Creating High Performing Service Agents, with Alan Stein Jr.

Episode 74

Alan Stein Jr. is a coach, speaker, and author with an expertise in improving organizational performance, cohesion, and accountability. He spent more than 15 years working with highest-performing basketball players on the planet; including NBA superstar, Kevin Durant. Alan now travels the world teaching organizations how to utilize the same strategies in business that elite athletes use to perform at a world-class level. Alan has a brand-new book called Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from the Best of the Best.

In this episode, Alan discusses the work he did with high-performing basketball players and how that’s translated to the work he does with worldwide organizations, how an experience with Kobe Bryant taught him about the importance of mastering basic skills no matter what industry you’re in, why building relationships are the foundation of successful athletes and businesses, the main basic skill that will help you improve any relationship, how to determine your identity as a business, the benefits of collectively creating standards as a group instead of passing down rules from the top of the organization, and more! Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today I have with me Alan Stein, Jr., who is a coach, speaker, and author with an expertise in improving organizational performance, cohesion and accountability. He spent 15 plus years working with the highest performing basketball players on the planet, including NBA superstar, Kevin Durant, which I’m excited to hear about in a little bit.

He now travels the world teaching organizations how to utilize the same strategies in business that elite athletes use to perform at a world class level. Alan has a brand new book out called Raise Your Game: High-Performance Secrets from theBest of the Best.

Andrea: So good to have you on the podcast with me today, Alan.

Alan Stein Jr.: Hey, I’m equally thrilled. This is going to be fun.

Andrea: Alright, so now coming from a family who loves basketball, I have to ask you, what kind of work did you do with these highest performing basketball players in the world?

Alan Stein Jr.: I was actually a performance coach, which most people would probably know as strength and conditioning coach. So I’ve focused on helping players improve their athleticism, their mind-body connection, their movement efficiency; and help them bulletproof their bodies so they’d be resilient to injury.

And I did that mostly at the youth and high school level, but was able to work with some pretty good players that ended up being really, really excellent players as they got older. So I really enjoyed working with, working alongside and serving the basketball community for almost two decades.

Andrea: Okay. So what led you to write this particular book about Raising your Game and high performance strategies? What kind of brought you to this point?

Alan Stein Jr.: Sure. Well, about two years ago I decided that I was ready to take everything that I was learning through the world’s best players and coaches of the things they were teaching me on leadership and team cohesion and accountability and winning mindsets and creating championship level culture. And to take all of that, pivot and apply that to the business world and show folks in business how to utilize those same strategies and mindsets.

When I made that decision to kind of change my audience, I quickly came up with a professional bucket list item of writing a book and I did it for a couple of reasons. One, I’ve always felt that I’ve had a book inside of me. I’ve been a voracious reader for my entire adult life and I know I’ve read so many books, countless books that have had a really profound impact on me, in my life and in my perspective. So the thought that I might be able to pen something that could offer that to someone else, you know, was something I was interested in pursuing.

But equally important as I entered the world of being a professional speaker in the business world, writing the book actually forced me to curate all of my content and look back over 20 years and really put pen to paper and write down all of the lessons I’d learned, you know, all of the stories that I’d seen and I’d heard, you know, action steps, everything and really organize that material. And that’s what, you know, writing the book did for me.

Funny enough, I’m very proud of the book. I’m excited to get it in the hands of some readers. But even if I decided not to publish the book, the process of writing, it was still worth every ounce of effort because it really forced me to get organized and get clear on my message, which I use now as a professional speaker.

Andrea: Oh yeah, I can completely understand that. So what would you say the core of your message really is?

Alan Stein Jr.: Well, the core of my message whether I’m speaking or in the book is that the basics work, they always have and they always will. And if you want to be elite in any area of your life, you have to commit to doing the basics and in understanding that just because something is basic, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. A lot of people think those are synonyms and they’re not.

You know, the principles in this book are incredibly basic. However, implementing them with consistency in everything you do in your life is definitely not easy. It’s not easy for me. It’s not easy for you and it’s not easy for any of your listeners because if it was easy, we’d all already be doing that stuff. So it’s making sure that people understand that there’s a difference between basic and easy.

And you know, the high performing basketball players that I’ve been around, they never get bored with the basics. You know, they still take 10 to 15 to 20 minutes every single day to work on basic footwork and basic offensive moves and things that middle school age players do routinely because they know that the basics are the foundation and their fundamentals are the foundation of everything else that they do.

Andrea: You know, I know you tell this story about Kobe Bryant. Could you share that just real quickly with us because I think it really applies to what you’re talking about right now?

Alan Stein Jr.: Absolutely. Well, it’s hard to believe it’s already been a decade. But back in 2007, Nike flew me out to Los Angeles to be the performance coach for the first ever Kobe Bryant Skills Academy. Nike brought in the top high school and college players from around the country for an intense 3-day mini camp with the best player in the world.

And I know you and your family follows basketball but if any of your listeners don’t, let me just tell you that in 2007, Kobe was the best player in the game. I mean, Michael Jordan knew everybody’s heard of. He’d already retired a couple of times at that point. And Lebron James was great, let’s not get it twisted, but he was still climbing that mountain. I mean, Kobe was the best player. And you know, I, like your family, have lived in a basketball bubble my entire life, so I had heard this urban legend of how insanely intense Kobe’s individual workouts were.

Well, now that I was on camp staff, you know, I figured this was my chance and this was my shot. So at my earliest opportunity, I walked right up to Kobe and asked if I could watch one of his workouts. And he was incredibly gracious and kind and said, “Sure man, no problem. I’m going tomorrow at 4:00,” and I quickly got confused because the nerd that I am, I was studying the camp schedule and it said that the first workout with the kids was the next day at 3:30, and he noticed the confused look on my face and quickly clarified that with a wink and said, “Yeah, that’s 4:00 a.m.”

Andrea: That’s awesome!

Alan Stein Jr.: Well, Andrea, I know as you can appreciate and so can your listeners, yeah. There’s not really an excuse on why you can’t be somewhere at 4:00 in the morning, at least not an excuse that somebody like Kobe Bryant is going to accept. So I basically committed myself to being there. And I just figured, if I’m going to be there anyway, you know, I might as well try and impress Kobe. I might as well leave my mark and show him how serious of a trainer I was.

So I made the plan to beat him to the gym. So I set my alarm for 3:00 a.m. When the alarm goes off, I jumped up, I quickly get myself together and I hopped in the cab. Remember, this is 2007. This is pre Uber and ore Lifts. So I got in an old fashioned yellow taxi and I get out of the taxi, it was 3:30 in the morning.

Of course, it was pitch black outside, and yet from the parking lot I can see that the gym light is already on, and I can even hear a ball bouncing and sneakers squeaking. I walked in the side door; Kobe was already in a full sweat. He was going through an intense warm-up with his trainer before his scheduled workout started at 4:00.

Now, out of professional courtesy and because I was thankful to be there, I didn’t say anything to him and I didn’t say anything to his trainer, I just sat down to watch. And for the first 45 minutes I was really surprised. For the first 45 minutes I watched the best player in the world do the most basic footwork and offensive moves. He was doing pivoting drills that I had done with middle school age players.

Now this is Kobe Bryant, so he was doing everything with an unparalleled level of focus and intensity and everything with surgical precision, but the stuff he was doing was very, very basic. The whole workout lasted a couple of hours. And again, when it was over, I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t say anything to his trainer, I quietly left. But my curiosity as a young coach got the best of me because later that day I had to know.

So I went up to him again and said politely, “Kobe, I don’t understand you’re the best player in the world, you know, why are you doing such basic drills?” And that was again when he was incredibly gracious but said very seriously, “Why do you think I’m the best player in the world, because I never get bored with the basics.” And that was a pivotal and for me a life-changing lesson and that was what I had said earlier, that just because something’s basic, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy.

You know, here you are, you’re talking about a multi-time all star, a champion, a multimillionaire many times over. Somebody in the conversation is one of the greatest players ever. And in NBA off season, he was still getting up incredibly early to go in and continue to master the basics. And I think there’s an important lesson that if somebody that’s in the upper 10th of one percent and his craft can commit to the basics then all of us should be doing the same thing.

You know, in the world of sports, I actually find it a little bit comical, you know at the time of this recording, we’re in primetime NFL season and inevitably when an NFL team loses two or three games in a row at one of the post game press conferences, the coach will say something to the effect of, you know, “On Monday at practice we’re gonna get back to the basics.”

And I’m certainly not implying that I know anything more than an NFL head coach. But I always laugh because I’m thinking, why did you ever leave them in the first place? If your answer to solving your problem is to get back to the basics then, hey, don’t ever leave the basics. Make them a foundational principle that you live by every day and that’s something in my own life, in my own business, you know, I certainly try to adhere too is never getting bored with the basics.

Andrea: Alan, why do you think that people do get bored, or why do they stray away from the basics?

Alan Stein Jr.:One, the basics are usually mundane and they’re routine and they’re monotonous and they’re boring. But you have to fall in love with that process if you want to get the outcome that you desire. The other thing and, you know, I’m not one of those guys that likes to blame technology. I think technology can be an amazing tool for us, but I do think technology in general with social media and everything going on online, it makes it much easier for us to be distracted.

We get distracted by the things that are hot, flashy, sexy and new. And we skip over the things that are tried and true that we know work and all of us, at some point, fall victim to that. But I think if you can have the discipline to figure out whatever it is that you’re trying to improve, whether you’re trying to personally improve your level of fitness, you’re trying to grow your business, or you’re trying to lead others more effectively, whatever it is you’re trying to improve, actually look at what are the basics of that. What are the foundational principles that are needed to improve this and then make sure that you’re working on those every day.

And like I said earlier, it doesn’t mean that Kobe has to be doing basic footwork for seven hours a day, he just needs to do it for 10, 15, 20 minutes a day, but it’s the consistency of doing it every single day that adds up over time.

Andrea: Do you feel like there’s a way to kind of generalize the basics? So, you know somebody who’s in one area of business versus somebody who’s in another area of business. You know, somebody who’s in customer service on the front lines versus an executive who is trying to determine the strategy of the customer service for example, do you see that there are similarities in the basics of what they need to focus on? Are there a lot differences? How do you kind of talk to that?

Alan Stein Jr.: More often than not, there’ll be similarities and really in any area of business and even in sport, if you look at coaches and the teams, you know, relationships are the foundation of everything that we’re trying to build. I mean, if you look at a business, for example, there’s two crucial relationships that determine how successful your business will be and how sustainable those results will be.

One relationship is with the folks that you work with, those of your colleagues and your coworkers. You know all the way from the top to the bottom of the org chart, everybody that’s within the organization you’d want to consider a teammate. And your relationship with each of the people in that group is vital to your success. Then of course, the other relationship is with your customers or your clients, the people that you serve. And clearly the more quality your relationship with those that you serve and those that you work with, the better your culture and the better your business will be. And I found that one of the foundational basics of improving any relationship is the ability to listen, to actively listen.

If you want to improve any relationship in your life immediately, whether you’re a parent and you want to improve the relationship with your children or your spouse or you’re in business and you want to improve your relationship with your customers and clients or coworkers and colleagues, all you have to do is improve your ability to actively listen.

Now, of course I say that in a very matter of fact tone, because improving the skill of listening is very basic, but doing so is definitely not easy. It takes a ton of practice, but practicing the skill of active listening is one of the best investments you can make. You know, if you want to be a great leader, actively listen. If you want to be great at customer service, the best tool, the number one tool you have in customer service is the ability to listen and then ask insightful questions as a followup.

You know, most of the times, especially in customer service, people just want to be heard. You know, if you allow them to vent their frustrations or whatever was bothering them or the issue they’re having, that in and of itself if you listen with an empathetic ear, usually you’ll start to inch towards a resolution. And then if you can ask insightful questions and then you’re able to come up with a resolution by working with them instead of talking at them, then you’ve really created something special. So active listening is something that all of us need to consider as one of the basics for whatever it is that we’re trying to do.

Andrea: Do you have an idea of a drill per se or a way to practice that particular basic of listening?

Alan Stein Jr.: I do. And it’s one that’s served me well over the years, because in full transparency many years ago I was a less than mediocre active listener and once that was brought to my attention…

Andrea: Less than mediocre is a pretty good description.

Alan Stein Jr.:Yeah.

Andrea: Not for you but just an interesting description.

Alan Stein Jr.: Yeah, I was going to say crappy, but I just decided to go with less than mediocre. And once that was brought to my attention then I realized there was something that I really needed to work on because the relationships in my life, you know, as a father, as a business owner, as a professional speaker, I mean these relationships are really important to me. And once I knew that improving my ability to listen would actually nourish those relationships then it was something I took a lot of pride in improving.

And what I do and still continue to do, although now, it’s so much more natural. In the beginning it was somewhat robotic enforced, which I think happens a lot when we’re trying to master a new skill, and it’s called a list back. And when you list back, you when you wait for an appropriate break in the conversation because clearly if you interrupt someone while they’re talking then you’re not active listening.

When there’s an appropriate break, you list back in their words the exact way they said it what they just said. And you do that for a couple of reasons. One, to make sure that you have the correct information, to make sure that you heard them correctly. It’s common for any of us in any conversation to get distracted or space out for 20 to 30 seconds. Well, if the speaker shared something incredibly important in those 20 to 30 seconds, you missed it. So a list back will help make sure that it’s more accurate. But a list back also shows the person that you were actively listening and that unconsciously tells them that you care about them, that you value what they had to say, that they’re important to you.

So a perfect example would be something to the effect of, “Andrea, I want to make sure I heard you correctly; you said A B C and D, is that right?” And then that’s your chance to either correct me and say, “No, Alan, I must have misspoke because I said A, B, C, and E.” So either way I’m going to make sure I have the correct information or you’re going to say “Yes, Alan, that’s exactly what I said.” And unconsciously you’re going to smile internally because you’re going to think, “Man, Alan really cares about me. He’s listening to what I have to say. He values what I have to say and he’s treating me as if I’m important.” And that’s the glue that binds any relationship. So by organically doing these list backs, you really improve your ability to actively listen.

Andrea: That’s great tip. Okay, so let’s go in a little bit different direction right now. One of the things that you say is that identity drives standards. Standards need accountability. Accountability creates culture and culture produces long term sustainable results. I’d love to hear about how you get from identity to sustainable results, but let’s start with this. What is identity?

Alan Stein Jr.: Identity – and we could do this personally or we could do it organizationally, so let’s tackle it from a team standpoint. Let’s tackle it from the business perspective.

Andrea: That’d be great.

Alan Stein Jr.: It’s a series of these questions and there’s no right or wrong to these questions and this certainly isn’t a completely comprehensive list. But ultimately you want to figure out why you’re is in existence as a business, like what do we do? What problem do we solve? Who do we solve it for? Why does everyone on our team, why are they going to make personal sacrifices to pour into something bigger than themselves? What’s their reason for doing that? What is our purpose and vision as a business? And once you can kind of collectively answer that, that is your identity. This is who we are. This is the problem we solve. This is the target audience that we solve it for. This is why we’re in business. This is how we’re going to turn a profit, and that is your identity.

And it’s incredibly important to get clarity on that and to make sure that everyone in the organization from the founder and CEO all the way down to whoever would be considered the lowest on the org chart understands and can buy in and believe in to that identity. And what I found is interesting, I mean if you have a, let’s say, you have a small business now that has 30 folks on the team and you ask every one of them those questions and get them to write it down, I guarantee you’ll see some differences.

You’ll see some people that believe your business is in existence for different reasons than other people do. And it’s not about whether someone’s right or wrong or someone’s good or bad, but in order for a team to be successful, everybody’s got to be swimming in the same direction. So if we have three people that think the business exists because of this and another five think it’s because of this, and you know, I’m the CEO and founder and I know it’s for this, that’s why I founded the company, we need everybody on the same page. So it’s okay for people to have different perspectives and different advantage points and use different terminology, but everybody needs to know to their core what is the identity of this business.

Andrea: Have you found that when you talk to owners, for example, or founders, that if they have a different kind of identity that they’re seeing or mission or even if they’ve communicated it if it’s different than what the rest of the company or somebody else in the company is seeing, is there a way to kind of reconcile that? Have you found a really good way to collaboratively come to consensus on that?

Alan Stein Jr.: Yeah, your number one tool would be going back to actively listen because when you actively listen, you’re looking at life through an empathetic and humble lens that you’re willing to say, “You know, I may have started this company with this mission and this vision and this purpose in mind, but I’m still open to hearing the perspectives of everybody else.” And this is where it’s really important to get the perspective of people in different departments.

You know, if you’re in the marketing department, you need to break down the barriers to talk to the folks in the customer service department or the folks in the sales department or the folks, you know, in R&D, like the more we can get everyone on the same page, the better. And you need to be open to hearing their feedback, but it doesn’t mean that you have to go with it.

I mean, as a leader, you have to be decisive. And if you feel adamantly that the identity of the business is this and yet everybody else feels that something else then your job as a leader is to get rid of the ambiguity and speak with great clarity on why you feel so strongly that this is what it is and get everybody on board and make sure that it’s explained with great clarity. You know, lots of times that’s where the issue is, it’s the communication. Like I know every morning when I wake up that I created this business for this. But if I’m not consistently with great repetition, communicating that to everybody else then it’s going to get foggy.

So again, we don’t want to think in terms of right or wrong or good or bad. We want to think in terms of let’s all agree on what the North Star is and then let’s get everybody moving in alignment and harmony towards that North Star. And I’m a big believer that open, effective communication can resolve almost every problem within an organization

Andrea: And yet, it’s so common that we’re afraid of that open and honest communication. Why do you think that is?

Alan Stein Jr.: Well, again, it goes back to the difference between basic and easy. I mean, you and I being open and honest and transparent and empathetic with each other is very, very basic. But that’s not easy to do because we’re human beings we’re rot with emotions and tempers and all sorts of things. You know, one, I think it comes down to terminology. Most people have a negative connotation of the word confrontation that if I know that I have to confront you about something, that that’s going to be uncomfortable for me and it’s going to be uncomfortable for you. And most human beings do everything they can to run from and resist discomfort.

Well, if we can kind of flip the switch on and say, well, confrontation is really nothing more than meeting the truth head on. It’s two people that care enough about each other to speak openly and transparently with each other so that they can come to some type of resolution. And that takes a level of respect. It takes professional courtesy and I think just being able to flip that where I say, “Hey, you know, I need to confront Andrea about something.” This has nothing to do with whether or not I like her or not. This has to do with there’s a certain behavior that I believe needs to change in our organization and we need to confront it head on and we need to discuss it.” And we can do that in a very respectable and professional way.

So no one needs to raise their voice, no one needs to use foul language, we just simply need to be able to speak from the heart and talk about this issue and let’s both be committed regardless of which side of the fence we’re on, let’s both be committed to resolving this. And if groups would be much more open to that, you’d see a lot of these problems go away. And really this is a way of describing accountability and I know we’re not at that level yet because we haven’t even talked about standards. But accountability, we have to realize that it’s something that you do for someone, it’s not something you do to them. That when you get everyone in the organization to realize when someone holds them accountable, that’s a good thing because it means that person cares then we’re in business.

Because usually people look at that the other way, they think if Andrea is holding me accountable, why is she always busting my chops? Why is she always nitpicking? Why does she care if I’m three minutes late? Why does she care if I send out an email that’s grammatically incorrect? Why don’t she just leave me alone and stay in her lane instead of saying, “Man, thank you Andrea. You’re right, that email, I should have spelled check it before I send it out. That was not a great representation of us or our business. I appreciate you caring enough to call me on that.”

Andrea: Alright. So you said that there was something in between identity and accountability and that standards, so let’s go back there and explain that briefly.

Alan Stein Jr.: Sure. The old school level of leadership and management is top down, which means I’m the founder, I’m the CEO, I’m the top of the org chart; I’m going to come up with a list of rules and everybody below me is going to follow them and if they don’t, they will leave. Instead of rules being passed from the top down, I like the idea of a group collectively creating standards and standards are basically the code which the organization will live by in order to uphold the identity that we already talked about.

So we would collectively discuss what standards do we need to live by every single day in order to make our identity come true. And if you have a small business, you have 15, 20 people, you can literally put everybody in the same room and discuss and come up with your standards. If you have a bigger organization, you have a thousand people that’s probably not doable. But that’s when you can get representation from each of the departments. Let me get someone from sales, someone from customer service, someone from marketing, someone from R&D and make sure that each group is represented and put those people in a room and say, “Okay, what are the standards that we need to live up to to make our identity happen?”

And I use being prompt just as an example because it’s one that people can easily visualize. Let’s say that in this meeting, Andrea, you raise your hand and say, “Hey, I think it’s really important that everybody is on time for all of our company functions, meetings and events because being on time shows that you respect the other person. So I think being on time should be one of our standards.” And we all look around the room and, you know, “Does anyone think it’s not important to be on time?” Nope, nobody says anything. “Okay then being on time is one of our standards.”

And now, we have a standard that being prompt is important to us and we’ve all agreed that we’re going to live up to these standards, which means when we hold a company function or we have a Monday morning meeting and you show up 3 minutes late, it is crystal clear, it is in black and white that you just violated one of our standards. You just violated one of the standards necessary for us to live out our identity. So you should actually expect now that someone is going to hold you accountable for that.

And again, once we’ve created this level of accountability where it’s not just vertical but it’s horizontal and everyone knows that if they violate any of the standards that we’ve all agreed to, that someone’s going to hold them accountable now you’ve got the makings of a winning culture.

Andrea: And then that culture then can produce those long term sustainable results that you’re talking about, right?

Alan Stein Jr.: Absolutely, and culture is really how well your organization holds each other accountable to the standards that you created to uphold your identity. That’s where the success flow comes together. You know, people sometimes think culture is a variety of different things. It’s kind of the window dressing. You know, we have casual jeans Friday, and that’s part of our culture. We put a ping pong table in the break room, that’s part of our culture. We want to be young and hip. That’s not culture. Those are some nice accouterments that you can add if that’s what your people want.

Your culture is how well everybody holds each other accountable to the standards that you agreed upon to uphold your identity. And what epitomizes your culture is how the organization behaves when the CEO or I say the head coach is not there. How does the team behave when the manager is not there or when one of the directors or supervisors is not there? If you have a winning culture, it’s business as usual. Everybody’s in their role. They’re fulfilling their role. They’re starring in their role, you know there’s active communication and everybody’s holding each other accountable and everything’s fine.

If you have a dysfunctional culture, that’s when the whole house crumbles if the person in charge is not there, so that’s really what will determine your sustainable long term results is how well you’re able to thrive in this culture where you don’t have to have the head honcho there looking over everybody’s shoulder. Everyone’s going to do what’s right all the time because that’s the way the company is built.

Andrea: Yeah, I love this, I guess you call it the success flow. I really love that. I love how it flows. I love that it starts with identity because I’m absolutely in agreement with you on that. You know, I wish that we had more time to dig even more into that book. There’s so much to look at, but hopefully the listener will go ahead and purchase that book and possibly even have you come speak at their organization. So tell us how can they get a hold of you or how can they find your book?

Alan Stein Jr.: Oh, I appreciate that very much and I would love that as well. If someone’s interested in the book, you can go to raiseyourgamebook.com. And if they’re interested in my speaking or anything else I have going on or social media, I’m at Alan Stein, Jr.on Instagram and in Linkedin and alansteinjr.com is the website.

But, you know, I’m not trying to push a book or even promote my speaking, I just love sharing and connecting with people. So if you heard this interview and something resonated, you know, drop me a line on Instagram or Linkedin, or shoot me a message, it would be great to connect.

Andrea: Well, thank you for your focused and intense Voice of Influence, Alan. It’s great to have you here today.

Alan Stein Jr.: My pleasure!

Posted on Monday, September 17, 2018

What to Say to People Who Are Angry with You with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 65

As a voice of influence, I’m sure you’ve experienced your fair share of negative people or trolls. They often seem angry for no reason, don’t respond to logic, and only hoping to bring others down.

In this episode, I’m offering an explanation for a reason as to why they seem so irrationally angry and a few ways that you can respond to this situation that will be beneficial to both of you.

Take a listen to the episode below!

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Think of a time that somebody was really rude to you, mean, or whatever. You’re in the moment and somebody is just cutting you down, or perhaps it’s happened online. A lot of times, people call them trolls. Perhaps they’re attacking your business or they’re attacking your world view or that sort of thing.

What is your response? How do you handle negativity? What do you do with those kinds of issues that come up? That’s a question that somebody else’s asked me a few times. So I wanted to address this on the podcast because I have a very specific point of view on this.

When somebody is really upset and they take it out on you and you just feel like they are being irrational or unreasonable or just ______ mean, maybe they don’t even realize that you’re a human being.

If you’re a business owner or you’re in a position of leadership, which I’m guessing you are of some kind, you’re in some kind of position of leadership, a lot of times people look at leaders as though they are not human. Almost like a person who is in leadership or who has power of some kind is to be feared, is to be thwarted. It’s just like they’re the enemy not the helper, not the influencer that you want to be.

You want to be seen as an influencer who’s making a difference and gently _____ helping people to think through your problems so they can come to good solutions, you know, things like this. But a lot of times, when you’re in a position of leadership, that’s not how you view it. A lot of times people are intimidated by you or just generally feel like it’s not fair that you have what you have.

That’s just really frustrating especially when you worked really hard for it. When you know the blood, sweat, and tears has gone into the point of you getting to where you are today. And that’s really hard to deal with somebody who comes to you an acts like that.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I want to just yell right back or get into a debate. A lot of times this can happen on Twitter or Facebook, you know, people are commenting about something or another and they just start into this Facebook shouting at or this Twitter shouting at. It’s understandable, I get it. But at the same time, it’s not particularly effective.

I think it’s really important that we think about what’s effective and what’s not. I think it’s also really important to realize that there’s so much more going on in people when they are having that kind of reaction to you.

So from this counseling, this ministry background that I have, I’m going to bring that to the table here, this discussion about what to do with the trolls.

So online, it’s interesting but if you engage online in conversation with somebody who is spiteful or who is trying to kind of get at you and they’re upset and they want you upset. To interact on that platform is not a wise option.

There are times when we can invite them into a conversation or talk on the phone especially if it has to do with a business or somebody being really upset with illegitimate concern that maybe they’re not handling it the right way but you really do want to know what you can do to make things better, then I would really encourage you to conversation as soon as you can.

So when you’re online and somebody is attacking you, you do want to address that you can either just totally ignore it and not pay attention and not feed that, or you can address it and you can say, you know, I really do want to address this, I’m going to take it to conversation as quickly as possible.

So what that that means getting on the phone with somebody or getting into instant messenger whatever it might mean but bring that to conversation where it’s one-on-one and taking it out of the public view is so important. Because a lot of times a lot get lost in translation and I’m sure you probably experience that yourself.

So take it to the conversation as soon as possible. If this happens in person, if you’re in a group that sort of thing, pull that person aside, bring it out of the public view and bring it into a conversation as soon as possible.

Now, what do we do with it when that happens? When we do have somebody in conversation with us, what can we do next?

I want to tell you a little story and this happened, gosh, it’s been almost 10 years ago now, but not quite, maybe eight years ago and my daughter was 3 years old. I remember she was just a cute little thing like everybody would just say, “Oh my goodness, she’s so cute. She’s so articulate.” You know all these things, she’s just the cutest little thing, cutest little button, but she has a little temper of her own.

So this one particular day, I asked my daughter to go brush her teeth. And literally that is all I asked. I told her it was time to get ready for bath and brush her teeth. She looked at me and she got so upset, like she started yelling and you could see the escalation in her energy and in her voice.

This had happened before so I had previously been studying and trying to figure out what in the world, why a simple request or command evoked such a response from here? This is just out of control, I just didn’t like that.

I was a teacher. I was a mom; I knew how to handle this. I thought that I just couldn’t get it under control where I wasn’t also escalating. Or it was just getting to the point where she would get in big trouble after a simple command and that just seems silly.

In this moment, she was really escalating. And it came to a point when I thought to myself, “Now is the time to try out what you’ve just been studying, what you know about yourself, what you know, Andrea. This is it. This is the time.” So here she is kind of starting to throw this fit.

And instead of getting angry at her and putting my foot down and telling her to get her tail to the bathroom and brush those teeth otherwise this, this, or that; I knelt down on the floor and I opened my arms and invited her in. It was the craziest thing but my daughter saw me do that and as I did that she came to me gently with tears in her eyes and then she started crying in my arms.

I didn’t know what she was upset about and I’m not sure I’d still know why she was so sad. But I do know that that moment in time solidified this belief that I have that sad is under angry.

So whenever you see somebody who is angry and they’re coming at you, if you want to address that anger and escalate the situation, you can. But most likely that’s exactly what will happen the situation when we escalate. However, if you start to address the sadness that’s underneath the anger and get curious about it, “What is going on that this person is so angry? They’re so sad.”

So when you see somebody yelling or just really complaining with all their hearts, you can look at them and say to yourself, this is sadness. I see all this anger and that’s what I see, I see sadness. So why are they sad? So that’s where you’re going to start.

If you really believe that sad is under angry, I invite you to try it out and just experiment it a few times because you’re going to be shocked. If you believe that sad is under angry then what you do is instead of letting that conversation escalate, you get down on your knees and open your arms and invite them in.

Now, how do you do this with somebody who’s not a 3-year-old daughter? Well, you stay curious. So instead of getting defensive and letting yourself feel attacked, instead of feeling like you have to hit back or prove them wrong, what you do is you realize that that’s one level of the conversation. And you’re going to take it to totally different level, deeper level.

So that means that you’re going to let that stuff go. Everything that they just said on the top, you’re going to let that go. You’re not going to address that right now. Maybe you will when you come back to it but not right now. So you let that go and then you get really curious and you say, “Tell me more about that. I wanna understand. Explain to me what’s going on.” Or “This reaction I can tell that this is really, really hard for you.”

When you just say something like that, this is something that allows the other person to open up because when they hear that they really care and that you recognize what they’re experiencing, they’re very likely to open up to you if you’re sincere.

So you to start to hear more and you stay curious, you stay there and you keep asking those questions or giving those responses like “Look, wow, I didn’t realize that was so hard for you.” Or “I didn’t realize that this was going on.” And give them those opportunities to just keep talking until they got it out.

Once, they have it out then you have the opportunity to respond with grace. So you then can say “Wow! OK so what I’m hearing is that you really would like this but this is what happened and so you’re upset,” or “Whatever it might be, it’s really hard to help you through that conversation right here in this moment.”

But in general, the rule is to stay curious and remember that sad is under angry. So look for the sadness and address the sadness and get clear on that because it’s not because you’re trying to manipulate somebody, it’s not because you’re just trying what you want, but this is a chance for you as an influencer to really show love and leadership.

You do that by not responding in kind. You do that by realizing that you have a vision that sees beyond the surface level anger that’s out of control, and that you’re willing to go there and to take the time to be without somebody as they are expressing their frustration. And then you come back with your response, then you come back with some logic.

But if you don’t address that hurt first, they’re not going to hear any of your logic. It’s just doesn’t matter. No reasoning makes sense to somebody that is upset. It doesn’t matter because they’re brain is in that place where it’s in that fight or flight or it’s in that positioning so that limbic system has really taken over and it’s saying “I have to figure this out. I have to express this or I have to deal this in this way.” That is not the rational brains. You have to calm that down first. You have to help them to calm that down and that’s something that not a lot of people realized they need to do.

So as a voice of influence, realize that sad is under angry. Whenever you’re dealing with the trolls per se, whenever you’re dealing with those folks who are maybe irrationally upset, they’re rude, you’re dealing with this just kind of out of the ordinary sad kind of situation with this, remember that sad is under angry.

Remember this image of a mom leaning down and getting on her knees and opening up her arms because that’s exactly what you can do in a conversation with I don’t care who it is. Every single person has the same brain. We all need to be able to calm down before we can truly address the issues at hand.

So as you move forward, remember that sad is under angry. Treat others with compassion, treat the trolls with compassion and you’re going to be astounded at the kind of impact that you can have.

So get down on your knees, open those arms, and make your voice matter more!

Voice of Influence

Message-Driven Leadership

Tag Archives: customer service

From Interruption Marketing to Differentiating with Service with Stan Phelps

Episode 83

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

How to Connect Your Life to Your Customer Service with Derrick Ricca

Episode 82

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

How to Write with the Voice of Your Brand with Leslie O’Flahavan

Episode 81

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

How to Build a Culture of Respect with Kristie Rogers

Episode 80

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Creating High Performing Service Agents, with Alan Stein Jr.

Episode 74

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

What to Say to People Who Are Angry with You with Andrea Joy Wenburg

Episode 65

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript