Communication Archives - Time For. . .

Serve Us With A Smile

12th July 2018

Sometimes what we don’t say, says so much more than what is said. Precisely the situation I was in last night at one of our local restaurants. I go there because the food is excellent, and I can sit quietly between training sessions (when I need to have a break before starting work in the evening). As I was saying, ‘the food is excellent’. And this is what I said to the bar manager when he asked, “how was your meal sir?”. But what I didn’t say was what was foremost in my head. I wasn’t in the frame of mind to give him some feedback, so I just kept my thoughts to myself, remained polite and went on my way (like what so many would do in the same situation!).

The food was excellent, but the waitress was terrible. Not for the first time I hasten to add (hmm, is that quick enough?). I ate at the same place a few weeks ago, with the same waitress serving me, and had exactly the same experience (in fact worse!). I said to myself on that occasion, that I wouldn’t be back. But last night I thought, ‘you know its normally pretty good, and last time was probably just someone having a bad night’. I came in and asked for a table for one. There was only one other sitting at the time. I was spoken to in a way that made me feel that it was a nuisance that a table was going to need to be set up for me at that time (it was dinner time btw). I was given a menu. I made my choice and placed the menu back on the table (an indication that I was ready!). The waitress saw me do this. She then proceeded to pass my table 11 times (yes, I counted) without asking me for an order. Granted, two of those occasions was to serve the other table, the other 9 were just trips backward and forward doing stuff (although a few of these were not actually doing anything other than making me feel ignored!). On pass number 12 I asked if she was ready to take my order (seems the wrong way round!). All of this appears to be a bit petty on my part, doesn’t it? But the whole time, from start to finish (c.90 mins later when I left, after my meal), this young lady had a face on her like thunder. As she did the time before. The impression it left with me was immense, to the point that I am writing about it. Do I blame her? OK, yes in part. She is responsible for how she is perceived by the world around her. But what about the person who hired her, the person who trained her, the people working in more senior positions within the establishment? They can all see what we the customers see and ultimately feel. Their product and their brand is evaporating in front of them. That is it for me now. I aint going back.

So here is the message. If you are in a customer facing, service sector role, then a big part of your job description is not just to perform tasks, but it is to do so in a friendly, efficient and approachable (which means smiling as well, or at the very least not being a bear with a sore head) manner. This is part of your job description. If you aint doing it, then you aint doing what you are being paid to do! If this is something you are unable to do, then it doesn’t make you a bad person, it just means you are in the wrong job. Customer service is a performance. A customer doesn’t care about what’s going on in your personal life. The customer is coming into your workplace as part of their personal life in order to have an experience that makes them happy and/or feels as if they are being looked after and cared about. The food, in my example above, is only part of the product. The service is every bit as much a part of the product. If both don’t happen to be collectively good, then one will impact upon the other. Customer Service is the product. So, when you are at work in this type of environment you need to put on your happy face, Service with a smile!

Beware – The Time Terrorist

23rd February 2017

When it comes to work-related difficulties with a team member, more often than not, the person falls into one of two camps. Firstly, you may have someone who is trying really hard to perform at the level required, but for some reason they just aren’t able to deliver. They are not a bad person – they may just need more coaching, or, ultimately, they may just not be suited to that role. Within this broad category, granted there can be a vast range of potential challenges. And then, secondly, there are those who, just by their very nature, go to extraordinary lengths to be obstructive against what the business requires of them. They seem to lose sight of the fact that they are paid to be productive; not to spend their time plotting against their manager’s requests or business goals. It’s this latter group that I want to focus on here. Thankfully they don’t occur that often, but when they do – oh my word, they can cause a whole team to go totally off the rails.

“My boss calls them, Time Terrorists”, a team manager recently told me. “They take up so much managerial effort that you are disabled from giving other, more valuable and more deserved members of your team a fair apportionment of your quality time.” My reply was, “Well your boss describes them perfectly. That just sums it up in so many ways.” So let’s now explore, briefly, what we mean.

First of all, as a manager you only have so much time to devote to getting the job done. Even if you take work home and graft all weekend, there are only limited hours in any week when you can interact directly with your people, and therefore coach them, assist with technical queries, encourage and motivate them etc. etc. It’s challenging enough trying to fit all of this around your other responsibilities, including the tasks handed down to you from your own boss. And then, BANG!, someone in your team, not for the first, or even the second time, starts going ‘full steam’ down a road whereby they are requiring so much more of your attention than either they warrant, or is proportionate to the issue raised. All of a sudden, all of that valuable quality team time disappears down a sink hole, from which there appears to be no escape.

It may be a fairly straight forward change in someone’s duties that has resulted in them becoming, once again, awkward. You end up having to manage the person’s expectations, take time to try and enable them to see that the change is not as bad as they are perceiving, and deal with fallout as it creeps across other team members. It sucks you up. And not just during work time! You go home and you spend time reflecting over what is going on. It frustrates you that there could be lots of positive things happening for others in the team, had the Time Terrorist not decided to once again push things beyond what would be normally acceptable. I am, most definitely, not saying that an employee should never raise concerns, or challenge their boss or the business. In many respects that’s part of the manager’s role to deal with such occurrences. But in reality these instances are rare per capita.

Call me old fashioned, but we get paid to work because our employer needs a job done. We don’t get paid to create a conveyor belt, taking people off on unproductive tangents, and creating even more work for someone else. Then in doing so, the very reason for our jobs existing in the first place is still sitting in the backlog, and adding even more pressure on our team mates as they are left making up the shortfall created by the “It’s all about me” campaign.

So what can be done about it? Well let’s first consider the perspective from someone who is on the verge of being a Time Terrorist themselves. Think about why are they at work, and what are they expected to achieve. Think about the impact on all of those around them. It’s not just the management or the business that will suffer, but also those team members who are supposedly their colleagues. Are they really being fair to everyone, and are they really doing themselves any justice? They need to get some perspective. Rise above it, and take one for the team. Tomorrow someone else may be getting asked to do something that will make their life easier. After all, they are here to work – so get on with it! It’s not supposed to be ‘full on’ fun, or filled with personal preferences. If it was, it would be called ‘leisure’ and they wouldn’t be getting paid for it! Now that would be something to moan about!

What about if you are the manager? OK, you need to be fair to all of your team, and balance that against what the business needs you to deliver. At times certain team members will warrant more of your attention than others. Your team is full of people, and they all have ups and downs along the road of life. So think long and hard. Is this really a ‘Time Terrorist’ you are dealing with, or is it just someone having a bad day? If it is the latter, then part of your role is to manage what’s in front of you. You have to be as supportive as the business allows you to be, and as considerate as the situation requires. Conversely, a ‘Time Terrorist’ is someone whose very character and regular approach (i.e. poor attitude) to their workplace, creates issues that vacuum up your time to the detriment of others and the business. Quite frankly, someone like this is of little value, if any at all, in your team. They are holding you all back, and it needs to be dealt with. The person should be made aware of their impact upon those around them, and they need to be given ample opportunity to develop their energy in more positive and productive ways. Ultimately, having tried as much as is ‘more than reasonable’ to improve the situation, if they can’t do this, then you may find yourself needing to raise the temperature somewhat. As managers we never want to go that far, but when faced with such scenarios, and in order to be fair to the business, and the rest of the team, you have no choice. In fact, if you don’t deal with it, it could be construed that you are inadvertently discriminating against the good people, as they struggle to get your time. Not that any of them would ever complain – they are too busy working on the backlog, and focusing on what they are getting paid to do! But they are the ones who really are deserving of your time and attention – BOOM!

Communicate – It’s Really That Simple

12th November 2016

As managers and project team leaders we reside over complex tasks and scenarios that need a considerable amount of thought, planning and ultimately, effective delivery. Despite all of this effort however, sometimes; somewhere; somehow; something goes wrong. And when it does, you need to get it fixed. But that is just the beginning, as you also (arguably more importantly) need to explore how to avoid a recurrence. Or indeed, many recurrences – hence why arguably more important.

So following on from the ‘incident’, you then investigate more thoroughly what went wrong so that it doesn’t happen again. Surprisingly, a huge percentage of the time when mishaps do occur they are caused, quite simply, due to poor communication, misdirected communication, or worse still, no communication at all. If you think about any failures in task delivery you have been involved with, I bet that the majority of time communication has been at the heart of what went wrong. Either that, or, at the very least, better or faster communication could have prevented or reduced the impact on those affected.

As a leader you should encourage (not strong enough Neil – this stuff is important. OK change ‘encourage‘ to ‘insist‘) your team to communicate everything they come across that could impact, not only upon their own responsibilities, but those around them and the project goals overall. And when they do come across things you need to be receptive to them telling you about it, as opposed to you creating an environment whereby they are apprehensive about doing so. Getting the communication right, at every level, means that life becomes so much simpler, as many avoidable mishaps are dealt with before they actually become a ‘mishap’ in the first place.

I once had someone in my own business saying to me; “Neil, all of this communication is wasted energy. Nothing bad ever happens!” “And why the blazes do you think that is?” was my response.

That Awkward Silence

11th April 2016

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where conversations just don’t happen, or if they do they quickly dry up? It might be during a networking event, or that uneasy silence that may occur when people are joining each other for the first time on a course or for a meeting. It may even be at a social event (e.g. a wedding) where you are seated next to people that you don’t know. It can become quite awkward as no-one is choosing to, or feels able to, engage with those around them. But there is no need for you to feel or behave like this. There is a straightforward technique that can be used whereby you can take the lead, and engage well with those around you.

It’s so very simple. All you need to do is ask questions. And a good way to phrase these questions is to use a style that enables the person you are speaking with to give you an ‘open’ reply, as opposed to a ‘closed’ single word (‘yes’ or ‘no’) answer. This ‘open’ questioning technique can be particularly powerful and involves using words such as ‘how’, ‘what’ or ‘why’. Another style that can work well in these scenarios would be a sentence that starts with, ‘Tell me more about…’

This questioning technique is good for starting conversations, developing rapport and finding out about others. It also helps ensure that you don’t commit the sin of talking too much about yourself (or if you do, it’s only once the other person has talked about themselves for a while).

So here is an example. You are sitting in a meeting room and other attendees are just arriving. You don’t know anyone who is coming in, and one of them sits next to yourself. OK – no need to panic. Allow them to settle, and then, simply introduce yourself.

‘Good morning, I’m John from Smith & Co. What’s your name?’

‘Hi, I’m Mark’

‘Hi Mark. So what is it that you do?’

‘I am in the health and safety division’

‘Brilliant. How long have you been working there?’

‘Over, 10 years. I have been involved with a few projects such as this one’

‘Excellent. So what do you feel are the main health and safety challenges for this project?’

and so on…

The important thing to remember is, that as soon as you see an opportunity to adopt this technique, then just go for it. Don’t leave it too long to engage or it will become awkward. And for goodness sake don’t wait for the other person to make that first move. They are possibly as unsettled about the situation as you are, and almost certainly; they won’t have read this post. The more you ask, the less you need to speak about yourself, and the more time you can spend listening to the other person. And who knows, you might just find out something interesting or useful. Resist the temptation to talk about yourself – after all you already know all about you – and you won’t learn anything new if you do all the talking. After a while, however, if the other person has any level of self-awareness, they will begin to ask you questions. It would be rude of them not to. Quickly answer their questions and whilst doing so look for opportunities to ask them more.

Serve Us With A Smile

Beware – The Time Terrorist

Communicate – It’s Really That Simple

That Awkward Silence

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