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Delivering the Tough Message – Necessary Update

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article on Delivering the Tough Message and I used real life examples to explain the 5 Rules of Delivering the Tough Message.  Today I want to post an update to that article.  Why an update?  Well, I heard first hand disturbing story from a company that messed up on the key rules.  Unfortunately this was one of the companies from the first article.

Delivering the Tough Message

The current economic climate is tough, that's not news.  In these tough times we see more and more companies making cuts and reductions in headcount.  Reducing headcount is a difficult business decision but it is an even more difficult message to deliver from one person to another.  Yet it is a fact of business and something all managers and organisations should be very capable of doing effectively.

Two recent situations and one past experience remind me of how not to deliver a tough message and what the people involved could've done better.

Presenting Pt 3 – Ditch the Slides

You’ve been asked to deliver a presentation.  What’s the first thing you do?

Open PowerPoint, choose your template and look at the first slide.  You take a moment and then enter your name on the first slide and perhaps a title.  You pause for another moment and maybe add a slide with the title ‘Agenda’.  Then there is of course there is the final slide, you add that too.  All along you want your presentation to stand out, to be great, to be memorable.  If you really do want your presentation to stand out and be memorable you need to ditch the slides.

How To Be Successful

In most walks of life people want to be successful or have some degree of success.  Pretty much everyone has success in varying forms whether that is personally, professionally, privately or publically.  But what makes someone successful, more importantly what makes someone more successful in a specific field or discipline than someone else?

Customer Service the City Inn Way – Follow-up

A few weeks ago I shared a personal customer service experience I’d had at the City Inn hotel in Birmingham.  Recently I went back to the hotel and this is the update.

The hotel was busy, it appeared there was at least one function and the hotel looked full.  Despite this the service from every member of staff I encountered was excellent – professional, courteous, efficient and human (they took time to talk to us).

The hotel manager had left a personal handwritten note in our room thanking us for returning and adding his number should we have any questions or issues.  We had none.

The hotel and its staff exceeded our expectations and made us feel valued.  We will recommend the hotel to anyone and I would certainly recommend the hotel chain.

It was a great example of recovering from a poor customer service situation, starting from a negative point, and turning it round so that we left as promoters of the hotel and the hotel group.

Thanks to Stephen and the team at City Inn Birmingham.

Presenting Pt 2 – Acronyms, Abbreviations and Terminology (maybe not that bad after all)

Acronyms, abbreviations and terminology – none of these are inventions of modern life; they’ve been around as long as the spoken word.  Why do we use them?  Well we use acronyms to help us remember terms, abbreviations for convenience so we don’t need to keep repeating a string of words and terminology is useful when talking about subjects in a specific field or discipline.  But how about using them in presentations?

Most books or training sessions tell you never to use terminology, always avoid jargon, cut out all acronyms and explain all abbreviations.  Often this is good sound advice and it is advice I would also give unless…

MBTI – Getting It Right

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a very powerful tool that is very flexible and robust and can truly help to move individuals and organisations. Yet too often I come across poor implementation, execution and rollout of MBTI that at best achieves nothing or at worst leaves the client confused or taking inappropriate actions.

Customer Service – Doing It The City Inn Way

There has been more written about customer service than just about any other business topic, so I’m not about to re-write or re-hash customer service words of wisdom that you have all heard many times. Instead I’m going to tell you about a personal experience I had recently which reminded me of some key lessons for customer service. This experience happened at the City Inn hotel in Birmingham.

Get Ready For Next Week - Choosing Your State

Here’s a quick exercise for you.

Partner up with someone, a friend or a colleague.  You are both going to tell a real story and read each other’s mind!  The story is simply a short 60-90 second story on how you arrived here today, your journey.

When telling your story I want you to pick a playing card in your mind without telling your partner what the card is.  You both do this.

Next I want you to tell your story in the style of that playing card, Ace is high and is positive, upbeat, confident, etc., 2 is downbeat, low, uncertain.  All others playing cards are somewhere in between with the appropriate styles.  Now tell you story in the style of the playing card you chose.  All your partner needs to do is guess what playing card you have in mind.  Once you’ve done this one way, switch over and let your partner tell their story while you guess their card.

How did you do?  Did you guess their card or at least guess just one card out?  Easy isn’t it.

Easy to guess the card and read other peoples state and even easier to choose your state at will.  In fact you were so good at choosing your state your partner guessed it within 60 seconds.

As you prepare for next week take time to consider the optimum state you want to be in the key meetings, projects, conversations, emails, commute, etc. next week.  Which playing card do you want to act out for each of these?  Once you have it, do it.

Be Your Own Superbrand – Leadership

We know that superbrands have three common traits – clarity of vision, consistency in what they do and finally leadership.  Take a moment now to consider what leadership is and to do this think of the following:

Which global organisation do you consider to be a leader?

Who did you think of?  Why them?  In what way(s) do they lead?  Ask others the same thing and see if they come out with the same things?

I would guess that with such a simply question you get many different answers.  There’s no surprise there, but did you argue with anyone?  Did anyone come up with an organisation in the same business area that was different from yours?  Can they both be leaders in the same field?