Old Chinese Proverb

I came across this Chinese proverb. It speaks of what servant leadership is.

Go in search of your people,
Love Them; Learn from Them;
Plan with Them; Serve Them.
Begin with what they have;
Build on what They know.
But of the best leaders,
when their task is accomplished,
and their work is done,
The people all remark:
"We have done it ourselves."

Author unknown

Glossy Business

High expectations are abound in today’s business world. That is one of the reason many companies adapt to the flashiness and make them self appear to be much more than they are. It is what I call “Business Pretense”

One of the ways I most often find this evident is in company’s websites. When looking for products or services smiley fake faces and promising slogans abound. But when it comes to delivery smiley faces and promising slogans don’t deliver. People do!

This website click here is dedicated to selling high resolution pictures to incorporate in to websites or print for product labels and packages. Over 60,000 of the pictures are of people with “smiles”. The subscription cost to obtain pictures is $99.95 per month or $449.95 per year.

Just about everybody can come up with fancy slogans. Sometimes when I drive along the highway I read slogans on commercial vehicles and can’t help but smile. Here are few slogans:

Let Us Take The Load Off Your Mind"
You can do it! We can help
We're number two. We try harder
Finger-lickin' good
You deserve a break today

And a few famous slogans: "Best customer service you will find" and "We put our customers first".

One of my criteria for product and service purchases is personal service and attention to detail. It is rare in today’s business world. Here are a few companies I’ve had personal involvement with and stand out.

Westjet Airlines is great! First and foremost for the excellent personal service they provide. It is evident on their website; they have pictures of actual people working for the company. When flying with them the staff is courteous, friendly and most of all they are humorist. Westjet is currently running a promotion with a great marketing touch! Check it out!

About 2 years ago I sign up for a company tour at http://www.1800gotjunk.com/ headquartered in Vancouver BC Canada. Brian Scudamore the founder and CEO was personally available for questions. The atmosphere was great and personable. Training and team collaboration is evident at its headquarters. Pictures of real people and biographies of the executive team on their website. Great company!

Recently I was browsing http://www.dell.ca/. Dell has a good reputation. I notice pictures and biographies of the executive team on the website. It is rare to find biographies on website, especially from the executives. It is personable to do business with Dell!

There are prevailing fears in people to be personable! I will write more about fears in people and how they are manifested in businesses in an upcoming blog post.

Here is a marketing pitch. The first person to post a comment on my blog with the company name corresponding to the first five slogans above I will give a $10.00 Tim Horton’s gift certificate. This is to see how well slogans work.

Value Selling

One of the challenges in businesses is value selling. At its best most businesses know how to sell and market products and services around price (if any marketing is done at all). Most consumers and end-users have a buying criteria base on price. It is a two fold scenario. If businesses promote themselves as price selling that is what they will be known for.

It is a challenge to market products and services base on value. It is multifaceted scenario (more on this on a upcoming blog)

“Ours is a society where people know the price of everything, but the value of nothing – where people have a great deal to live on, but very little to live for” Randy Alcorn

Toastmasters

I joined Toastmasters almost 5 months ago. I had often read about Toastmasters International. Last year in October I read “Dig Your Well before You're Thirsty” by Harvey Mackay. He did mention Toastmasters and within two week my Fiancée out of the blue said I should join Toastmasters and the third source (also during the same time) was a posting on my mentor’s blog (CEO Blog – Time Leadership by Jim Estill) also mentioned Toastmasters. Perhaps it was a sign for me to take action and join.

It’s been a great experience and highly recommended to anyone interested on improving their communication skills and leadership abilities. It’s also been a great opportunity for networking and supporting others to become competent communicators and leaders.

Here are a few of the Toastmasters promises you will be asked to adhere to if you join.

To attend club meeting regularly
To prepare all of my speeches and leadership assignments to the best of my ability, basing them on projects in the Competent Communication manual, the Advanced Communication manuals or the Competent Leadership manuals
To prepare for and fulfill meeting assignments
To provide fellow members with helpful, constructive evaluations
To help the club maintain the positive, friendly environment necessary for all members to learn and grow

And if you want to know the rest you will need to join!

The membership fee is very reasonable! You will pay a onetime fee for joining of $60.00 and $72.00 per year.

I’ve set a goal to obtain my DTM in four years. Again if you want to know what a DTM is do yourself a favor and join!

Helping Clients Succeed

Mahan Khalsa in his book Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play helps readers see what helping clients should look like. His advice is practical but not easy to practice.

I remember when I first started selling to businesses. All I could think of how great my products were. It didn’t work well convincing people to buy and I wasted much effort.

The software industry (my background) does not have a reputable selling model as do many other industries. We love our solutions and think wonders of how it will solve problems for our prospects. We are so interested in selling our solutions that we forget to find out what the problems our clients are having to begin with. Sales and selling carries a lot of negative baggage in our industry.

Second, a great selling model requires work and effort. There is no such thing as ‘come up with a great selling model’ and on we go. It is hard work but at the same time very rewarding!

I will quote from Mahan’s book here....I can’t say it any better:

“Helping clients succeed is not a euphemism for sales or selling. It is a paradigm, a mental model, a frame of reference, a methodology for two or more companies to work together for mutual success and satisfaction”

"Individuals and organizations changing their paradigm from selling to succeeding—from dysfunctional practices to mutual success and satisfaction—bring new skill sets to the business development dialogue. Those with a high emotional quotient will be rewarded with superior information about true needs, resources, and decision criteria. With an applied intelligence quotient, they will build better business cases for proposed interventions, make astute systemic connections, and push innovation and creative thinking to new levels. Conversely those wed to twentieth-century selling models will be penalized with inferior communication, wasted efforts, and less probability of finding meaningful, relevant solutions." Mahan Khalsa

“Business development dialogue” is practical. A good way to start!

I highly recommend the book but he is not presenting an easy "quick fix" solution to selling. If that is what you are looking for don't read it.

Collaboration is Innovation

Team collaborating is innovation! We are all creative and diverse beings. Innovative ideas come out of creativity and one of the challenges is that it can bring disruption and division. Often teams don’t stay together long enough to learn to disagree.

At this point everybody parts ways, not necessarily physically but mentally. Usually this is done in the form of politeness. Everybody pretends to get along well but differences exist.

Leaders know that disagreeing is good, as a matter fact it is healthy but most people do it poorly and perhaps it is because often the outcome is uncertain. It feels too risky.

“A true measure of a team's capacity to innovate is the number of failures it is willing to accept to birth the true innovation” Susan DeGenring

Goals for my blog

As I started to prepare for this blog I decided to do it all the way. "Whole hog plus the posted" as Michael Gerber would say it (one of my favorite authors).

So I set out to write down some goals, which are:
1- Post once a week or more often
2- Use quotes in blog postings
3- Write from my own experiences
4- Interact with other blogs
5- Interact with books I read
6- Write on leadership and management

My first goal is the most important and the rest will happen as I go along! Too often I see abandon websites and blogs. Perhaps it is because of the work involved and dedication required.

Leadership

The art of leadership is of great importance to me. I make it and ongoing study and most of all I learn about leadership experientially

There is no one best style of leadership. Every system or organization is inherently different even though on the outset it may look the same. The best an effective leader can do is influence the thinking of his/her colleagues/followers so that in turn they can become leaders.

Paradoxically it can be said that leaders are both born and made. It seems that certain leaders are born with extraordinary leadership ability and at other times clear indications exists that an individuals ability to lead was mostly accomplished by training and experiences.

Ultimately good leadership is becoming more conscious the way we think about our circumstances and the world. Being a truly effective leader is not easy.

In this work (blog) I will delve in to leadership issues, styles and potential on ongoing basis