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Do you have what it takes to be world famous?

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Can you be world famous in your work?  The video below has been watched more than 700,000 times – this flight attendant took something usually dull and made it interesting.

A mentor (The World Famous Paul Martinelli) pointed me to this video and reminded me about Southwest Airlines and the FISH! philosophy.  Why would people want to fly on a budget airline with no assigned seats?

What can you do to create an organization that inspires passion to work there?

What can you do to create an organization where customers are excited about engagement in something that is almost always boring?

Here are the core tenets of the FISH! philosophy
1. Be Present
2. Make their day
3. Play
4. Choose your attitude

1. Be Present –
Most of us are SO distracted by tons of interruptions that we don’t take the time to “be present” and connect to others.
2. Make their day – 
Can you engage people in a way that is special for them?  What can you do to blow people away?
Can you find a way to make dead fish interesting?  Can you find a way to make the airline briefing interesting?  People take vacation photos and shoot home movies of this stuff for a reason.  
If they can do it with that stuff, you can do it in your world.  make it happen!
3. Play  – 
Whatever you do, have a great time doing it!
Can you have fun doing your stuff?  Do you enjoy you?  Do you enjoy your co-workers?  If not, what will it take for you to make it happen?
4. Choose your attitude
How do you show up?  You can’t control what happens to you, but you can choose how you respond to it.  Choose your attitude.  You have that power.
Joe Girard says that every day people around you are buying a ticket to the “you” show.  Would you buy a ticket to the you show?  If not, neither will they!
If a fishmonger in Seattle can engage and energize people around dead fish, you can make your connection with others powerful.
Do it!  Become world famous!

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Why should you respect all people? You never know!

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When you’re meeting people, are you doing it to see what you can get from them?

Are you making value judgments about whether they are able to help you, and then brushing people off who are not “important enough”?

I believe that “Because people matter, we must lead them well.”
This means that there are at least two reasons to connect with others:

  1. People matter – Intrinsically, people are important – regardless of the role or job function that they hold.  We need to treat all people with respect, just because people matter.
  2. You never know who they know!  Bob Burg says that every person you met knows about 250 other people, and you don’t know who they know – and what opportunities may come from those connections!
Last night I attended an event and met lots of people.  It was terrific.  Toward the end of the night I was chatting with one of the attendees and one of the workers at the event.  We were having a good conversation, and the other attendee excused herself.  I was left chatting with someone who was clearly not in the target market for my services.

In my continuing conversation about leadership with this gentleman, he mentions a 20+ year personal relationship he has had with one of the top leaders in one of the most profitable businesses in the US.

I don’t see myself targeting this leader as a sales prospect, but it reminded me again that you never know!

Respecting others – even those who can’t obviously help you – is a part of “Raising Your Game”

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Why should I follow your lead? 3 questions YOU need to answer!

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Why do people follow you? Is it because of your position? Your experience? Your knowledge? Your relationships? Your tenure?

Whatever the reason that they follow you today, you’ll get more from your team if you can answer yes to the following three questions:

Do you care for me?
Can you help me?
Can I trust you?

Do you care for me?
It’s an old saw, but it’s true “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Really – if you don’t genuinely care about the people you lead, you will NEVER get their best. You can’t fake this. People can see a hypocrite a mile away, and they will see right through you.

Start to see them as people – just like you – and enter into what matters to them. Time and again I interview people about their “good boss” experiences. Do you know what I hear *every* time? “My boss cared about me. S/he would always ask about how things are going in my personal life.”

Can you help me?
What if I really care, but I can’t *do* anything about it? Understanding their situation is comforting at one level, but to really go deeper you’ve got to be able to *do* something about it. Your followers need to know that you care and have the capacity to make a difference for them.

Can I trust you?
I recently read that the trait that consistently appeared in the lives of the most successful salespeople was integrity. Integrity – it’s a word we don’t use often these days – mostly because it’s so relatively uncommon. If you want to have significant influence in the lives of your followers, they have to know that your “yes means yes, and your no means no” – that “you do the same things when people are looking – and when no one is looking”

If you can answer “yes” to these three questions, your influence – your leadership will expand. You’ll go from getting the minimum from your team to getting their commitment and passion to support your initiatives.

Saying Yes to these questions is a key part of “Raising your game”

How to prepare to fix it when you're wrong….

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I recently attended a discussion led by Steve Gladis addressing the idea that we need to have a framework for “Tough Talks” – conversations to resolve relational conflicts.

Our cultural struggle with this negatively impacts business to the tune of billions of dollars a year, and leads to dramatic frustration and stress just tiptoe-ing around the elephant in the room.

Painfully, today I had a reminder of how easy it is to make a mistake.   I mis-communicated with two colleagues – I made an honest mistake, and ended up wasting their time.

Now what?  How do I fix it?  I can’t replace their time, but I need to make amends. Dr. Gladis offered a framework to address when others let us down, and two words stuck with to me:
“Humility” and “initiative”

Humility – How can I demonstrate humility?  Clearly this was my fault, even though I didn’t intend to do it – that’s really not the point.  From their perspective, the outcome is as if I did it on purpose.

First I can acknowledge my fault to myself.  I can admit that I did it.

Then I can be ready to admit it to them.  Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself, it mostly means just thinking of yourself less often.  If I’m going to think about their perspective, I can be ready to admit fault.

Initiative – What will I do about it?   In this case, I was intentional to reach out to each of them to admit my mistake, to identify with the frustration and wasted time I caused, and then in writing, specifically asked each of them to forgive me.

As a leader, humility and initiative are key parts of Raising Your Game.

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GAS LEAK! How to get people to evacuate – or not!

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This morning I had an interesting experience.  I heard the telltale deep rumble of a very large diesel engine in the neighborhood and looked to see what I could see.  I observed a firetruck slowly backing down my street.  This is not an every day occurrence.  I was intrigued.

Firefighter #1
I went to the door to find a firefighter walking door to door.  He politely explained that there was a large gas leak in my neighborhood, and that the fire chief had asked for everyone to evacuate for safety reasons.

Since I’m none too keen on being in the middle of a gas explosion, I was happy to do just that.  He told me that there was a bus coming and if I wanted to get on it, they could get me to safety, or I could drive out of the neighborhood if I preferred doing that.  I was happy to go along with his plan.

I went back inside, grabbed my essentials for the day, and headed out in my car.

Firefighter #2
As I pulled away from the house I very quickly came to the place where the street was completely blocked by a fire engine sitting next to a parked car.  There was a firefighter in the street talking to some pedestrians.  I waited for him to finish, then watched as he carefully avoided eye contact with me and walked away.

I got out of my car and politely asked if I could please get by.  He said.  “Everyone needs to evacuate the neighborhood immediately.” He also said “There’s nothing but firetrucks behind me.  If I move, you won’t get past them.  Start walking.”

I said “But I have work to do today.”
“and I have lives to save.” he retorted.

I appealed with “I’m in the danger zone now, right?”  He indicated that was true, and that I needed to leave.  I said – I want to leave.  Again, very disrespectfully, he gruffly replied “Start walking.”  He then turned away from me and slowly walked to the chief’s car.  I guess he showed me who had more positional power in this situation.

I have nothing but respect for the fact that firefighters will walk into a burning building to save lives.  I’m glad that they were looking out for my safety and protecting my neighbors.

Angry after being disrespected and thwarted, I got in my car, I backed up, turned around, and drove to the other end of the street where polite and helpful firefighters and police officers let me drive away.

What was my attitude and response to firefighter #1?
What was my attitude and response to firefighter #2?

Was the goal achieved of safe evacuation?  Who was more effective?

When you’re working with people, are you firefighter #1 or firefighter #2?

You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.  Learning to influence without offense is a key part of Raising Your Game.

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Top 10 skills needed to deliver tech projects. Which ones are you missing?

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In the Feb 2011 PM Journal, Starkweather and Stevenson published a study examining the core skills judged to be critical to project success.
 
I was fascinated to see the results, particularly when it came to quantifying what IT executives value in terms of technical project managers.  
 
While job boards typically list qualifications like PMP, technical skills like that finished DEAD LAST at 15th!
 
The top 10 skills recognized by IT leaders as critical to project success are:

1. Leadership (94.8 out of 100)
2. Ability to communicate at multiple levels (93.5)
3. Verbal skills (87.2)
4. Written skills (87.1)
5. Attitude (85.3)
6. Ability to deal with ambiguity and change (82.9)
7. Work History (68.9)
8. Experience (67.1)
9. Ability to Escalate (66.3)
10. Cultural fit (57.2)

top 10 skills for technical project managers chart
 
My question to you is this – as the size and importance of your projects increases, what are you doing to increase capacity of your leaders?  Of the top 10, only attitude, work, history, and experience are not things you can teach.
 
That means that 7 of the top 10 skills are teachable.  
When was the last time you sought training in these areas for yourself?  
What about for your team?
 
As Jim Rohn said 
“The cost is not the price of the [training.] 
The cost is what it costs if you don’t buy it.”
 
Technical people tend to think in terms of technical skills training.  That’s necessary to success, but not sufficient.  Technical skills came in 11th!
 
As you plan your professional development, take a look at how to “Raise Your Game” when it comes to these critical “soft” skills.  


We offer seminars and classes, and would be happy to help!

 

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BrightHill Group
240-668-4799

PO Box 1561
Harrisburg NC 28075

info@BrightHillGroup.com