Does Your Business Deliver Fast Food or a Gourmet Experience?

I had just finished delivering a leadership accountability seminar at a prestigious private golf club. As I was rushing out to my next stop, I passed through the dining room and saw they were serving these unbelievable burgers. The chef stood proudly behind the table, in full uniform. I told him how good they looked, and I wished I had time to eat one.

“No problem,” he said, “Let me grab you a take-out container.” And he proceeds to pack up a burger for me, with all the toppings, which I thoroughly enjoyed eating while I travelled to my next destination.

I just happened to be going to another golf club, though this was a public course. After playing nine holes, my friend and I are driving to the 10th tee and we see this kid standing outside, ripping apart piles of frozen burgers and slapping them onto a grill (except for the ones he dropped through the grate first). What made the burgers even less appetizing is that he was sniffling, as if he had a cold.

My friend ordered a burger and asked if I wanted one.

Did I want one? I thought back to the burger I’d eaten from the other club, and said no, thanks. They were both burgers, but at the first club, the burger was not only stupendous, so was the service.

So which one of these clubs is your firm? Which burger are you serving? In my many years of working in professional services firms, I’ve been inside many different businesses. Some of them look like a first-class chef, and some of them look like a kid in a dirty apron. And many fall somewhere in between.

If you’re not setting up and empowering your people to deliver a first-class gourmet experience to your clients, I guarantee this is what’s stopping or blocking you from being successful and profitable.

Do you know the impression your staff is making on your guests/clients? Are you empowering them to go above and beyond? Are you tolerating less than tolerable service? What are your standards for service? As the leader, CEO or managing partner of a professional services firm, you are accountable for maintaining these standards. The buck starts with you.

If you’re ready to reveal your “dirty apron kids” and develop your “top hat chefs,” Alan Dobzinski facilitates interactive workshops and seminars that will bring everyone on board with your vision of gourmet service. Contact him today for more information.

If You Want People to Be Accountable, Don’t Ride the Bicycle For Them

As a default mechanism leaders want to tell people what to do and how to do it. Coaching, on the other hand, is about listening, asking questions and patiently guiding people to discover the answers for themselves.

It’s a lot like teaching a child to ride a bike. Your daughter says, “I want to ride a two-wheeler.” It’s her goal. You’re there to help her achieve her goal. So you take the training wheels off. You find a flat, soft surface, such as a lawn. You demonstrate bike riding. You stand next to her, hold the saddle, and point her in the right direction. You run alongside for a while. But she’s the one pedaling. Otherwise, she’d never learn to ride.

Likewise, you must let your team members learn, and ride—and fall off—on their own.
One of the mistakes parents (and leaders) make is holding on to the saddle too long.

As part of your leadership accountability, your job is to help each person on your team to take personal responsibility for his or her behaviors, actions and results. Your responsibility is to guide and assist them in working toward their professional goals, and to eliminate the barriers to achieving those goals. You’re there to empower them. You’re not there to do it for them.

You can’t empower people by telling them what to do. And that’s the real essence of coaching – empowerment. To empower is to give people power and authority, or remind them of their power and authority.

To enable is traditionally defined as “to provide someone with the resources, authority, or opportunity to do something; to make something possible or feasible.”

Some leaders enable people to remain dependent or lackadaisical. If, for instance, someone handles a project poorly, and you re-do it yourself, you’re enabling that person to remain unskilled. Instead of empowering them to grow, learn, or develop, you’ve done their work for them, and actually hindered their progress.

As part of your commitment to empower, not enable, you’ll want to include this concept in your Upfront Agreement. The Upfront Agreement is a pact established at the beginning of a relationship that you design together with each team member, outlining your commitments, responsibilities and preferences for how you’ll work together.

As part of that Upfront Agreement, you might say: I’m not going to make decisions for you. I’m going to coach you to make your own decisions. I’m going to help you achieve your goals, and to do that, I’ll be asking you questions and supporting you along the way. I won’t ride the bicycle for you. I will run along side of you and help and support and guide you. I expect you to make mistakes. I look forward to discussing those mistakes, and learning from them together.

Has a CEO, senior partner or managing partner ever said anything like that to you? How would your work life had been different if they had? You can choose to be that sort of leader.

The material in this article was adapted from my book, The Accountability Factor: The Buck Starts Here. You can get your own copy at: http://accountabilityexperts.com/resources/alans-book-accountability-factor/

Leadership Accountability Requires Care, Not Control

People control in various ways. They don’t always rant and rave. They’re not always openly abusive or angry. In fact, whispers can be quite controlling.

The best way to recognize controlling behavior is by your own response to experiencing it.

For example, in a meeting, does the other person do all the talking? Often that’s the best clue: one-way communication. If you’re told what to do—or telling others what to do—chances are you’re in a controlling and ineffective environment. And chances are, high turnover will result.

Some workplace situations require this style—for example, a controlling command style is highly effective in the military, in a busy restaurant, or in a hospital emergency.  Control even has its place in the business world, e.g., in a desperate turnaround situation when a company is fighting for its life.

The problem arises when the command style is used in an ordinary corporate setting. When leaders treat every problem as if it’s a crisis, and treat their team members like soldiers, people eventually get “combat fatigue” and burn out.

Here are the three primary problems with the control style in the business setting:

1) Controlling leaders don’t capitalize on people’s strengths

Mark was the managing partner of a mid-size law firm that had been experiencing high turnover among its associates. Mark hired me to help him become a more effective leader and improve his relationships within his firm.

When I spent a day with Mark at his firm, I observed his coaching session with Colleen, one of his associates. One of the things I noticed was that he jumped in and directed the conversation even when Colleen was trying to make suggestions.

In fact, when I asked him to repeat back some of those suggestions later, Mark couldn’t recall much of what Colleen had contributed.

Like Mark, many leaders are confident, dynamic and intelligent people. They know a lot. They’re busy. They’re aware of the issues and they’re eager to tell their people how to fix the problems.

Yet even leaders with the best of intentions can inadvertently control a meeting and make people feel intimidated, reluctant to speak up or to regret doing so. Unfortunately, their desire to control does not capitalize on their team members’ strengths. It just makes them more dependent. In essence, controlling behavior wastes company resources.

2) Controlling leaders don’t develop talent for the future

Let’s assume for a moment that you can actually have a good relationship with your people while using a controlling style. For argument’s sake, let’s say that they don’t rebel, they don’t ignore you, and they don’t resign.

What will you have a year from now, or two years from now? You’ll have the same team you have right now. They’ll have the exact same skills and abilities—no better. When you control people, you inhibit—even prohibit—their growth and development.

3) Controlling leaders contribute to high turnover

Naturally, talented people want to use their talents. Naturally, intelligent people want to use their brains. Therefore, controlling leaders fail to attract and retain the most talented people.

“Oh, he’s so controlling!” is one of the most common complaints people make about leaders. That’s never a compliment. No one wishes a leader was more controlling.

The caring solution for leadership accountability

What’s the opposite of command and control leadership? Caring. Learning to care, not control, is the second step of the A-C-C Model of Accountability.

Stay with me. This is not “touchy-feely.” It’s simple human caring, and it’s something all people need in order to achieve the goals you want them to achieve. And here’s the most compelling thing about caring: it works.

In their “Firms of Endearment” study, Raj Sisodia (professor of marketing at Bentley College), Jag Sheth (Emory University) and writer David Wolfe sought a correlation between people skills and profits. They began their research with several hundred top firms and examined such measures as: How did each company treat their suppliers, the environment, and their communities? How successful were their CEOs at inspiring their people?

After completing detailed case studies on 60 of these firms, they came up with a list of 35 companies that had the best records. In looking at financial performance, the researchers found that the “firms of endearment” companies (among them, Whole Foods, Costco, Toyota, Best Buy and JetBlue) returned 758% over a 10-year period, versus 128% for the S&P 500. In each case, the researchers reported that the “firms of endearment” companies were led by “CEOs who inspire respect, loyalty, and even affection, rather than fear.”

Think about your own situation. Do you inspire fear or respect? Do you truly care about your people?

When you care about your employees, you hold them accountable with love. It’s being tough-minded and open-hearted at the same time. It’s caring about who your team members are as people. It’s about supporting them as people. It’s about appreciating their strengths, their good will, and their desire to achieve and grow and produce.

But love? Am I really telling you to love your team? Well, yes. I am.

What if you don’t even like them? It may seem esoteric, but try this and see what happens. When you look for the good in people, and open your heart to them, your feelings may change. When you commit to loving them, even if you don’t like them, you may find yourself genuinely feeling more compassionate and more appreciative.

Of course, your kindness may also change them, and change your relationship with them. Love is to people what water is to plants. Love makes people grow, and it makes them healthier. Therefore, even if you don’t like someone, if you make an attempt to love them, that attempt is likely to change you, that other person, and your relationship.

Which of course, is good for business. Kindness works. Caring pays off. Love becomes profitable.

This article was adapted from my book, The Accountability Factor: The Buck Starts Here. You can get your own copy at: http://accountabilityexperts.com/resources/alans-book-accountability-factor/

Leadership Accountability Starts With A-C-C

You can’t change other people, you can only change yourself. And a small change in your behavior will make a big difference in your results.

In order to practice leadership accountability and create a Want-To culture, there are three choices you need to make:

1. Will I choose to lead by attacking or approaching?
2. Will I motivate people by controlling them or caring for them?
3. Will my communication style confuse or clarify?

These three choices form the Approach–Care–Clarify, or “ACC” Model of Accountability:

A: Approach, Don’t Attack

When talking with your staff about what could or should be done, keep in mind the golden rule of accountability: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.

You see, it’s about what they need. When you approach rather than attack, you encourage employees to be honest with you, to tell you what they need in order to do their best. Approach honestly. Discuss openly. Plan accordingly.

B: Care, Don’t Control

Discover the best that each person has to offer, and capitalize on those strengths. Praise your staff for what they’re doing well, so that they know they’re making a positive contribution. Demonstrate that you’re looking out for their personal and professional well-being. Go to bat for people, even supporting them in confrontations with other leaders.

Will you lose control this way? Not really. By relinquishing control up front and focusing instead on expressing care and concern for your employees, you’ll gain more control over yourself—and the accountability process.

C: Clarify, Don’t Confuse

Establish and maintain open, honest, and regularly scheduled two-way discussions with your employees. Don’t assume that you know what’s on their minds. Don’t assume that they can read yours. Keep people in the loop by sharing news, plans and ideas. Share your grand plan, too, so that everyone understands what the work is really all about. When employees know what they’re working toward, they will tend to commit to that vision and work with you to achieve it.

Approach–Care–Clarify A+C+C = Accountability!

When you approach, care and clarify, you begin making the shift from a “Have-To” mentality to a “Want-To” mentality. Learn the ACC Model and you’ll be well on your way to a climate of accountability.

The ACC model is more about who you need to be as a person, and less about the nuts and bolts accountability strategies you’ll use in a coach approach to leadership and accountability. We’ll cover both topics over time. Coming up next, I’ll be presenting more detailed articles about each step in the ACC model.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in learning more leadership tools and accountability strategies for building a climate of accountability in your workplace, you can check out my book, The Accountability Factor: The Buck Starts Here: http://accountabilityexperts.com/resources/alans-book-accountability-factor/