Sustainable English and the Communication-friendly Environment
Featured post by Terry Kaufman from YourEnglishSuccess!
One day I went to HSBC to interview my customers and their non-native English speaking colleagues. I wanted to understand their communication case better and get greater insight into Anglophone and non-Anglophone interactions.
During one interview, I was amazed at how eloquently one individual, Mr. Boyer, clearly expressed the essence of Sustainable English:
“An environment is friendly when everyone understands the stakes, objectives, and viewpoints of others.”
As I was preparing my program and notes, I had originally defined it as:
An environment that is friendly towards non-native speakers – it consists of clear English, collaboration, and focus on mutual understanding.
Mr. Boyer expressed exactly what the communication-friendly environment has to offer, when it is implemented and fully operational.
Every native English speaker has the potential and ability to create his/her own personalized environment to accommodate non-native speakers.
Less frustration. More success.
3 Tips for Hiring the Right People—and 2 Traps To Avoid
One of the most costly mistakes for small business owners
is making a bad hiring decision. Losing the money spent on
recruiting, the time to interview the candidates, and the
time and cost spent on employee training are a few of the
major profit-squeezers that result from hiring mistakes.
Some entrepreneurs attempt to reduce risk by hiring family
or friends-which in most cases proves to be the worst
hiring mistake of all. It is difficult for most people to
accept the relationship transition from family member to
employee. Most often, those friendships will end in
resentment and disappointment. When a veteran small
business owner tells you, “Never hire family!” you can bet
he’s learned the hard way.
With a little skill and guidance, small business owners can
learn much about potential candidates by understanding
resumes. When reading resumes, there are three great
things to look for-and two traps to watch out for.
When reading a resume, the three things to look for are:
1. Industry experience
You’ll make shortcuts in new employee training if your new
hire has previous experience in your industry. You will
see a faster return on investment with your new employee
when he or she already understands what your customers
want. Prior industry experience also means he or she may
have a business following that will result in added revenue
for your business.
Shun the Status Quo to See the Possibilities to Accomplish 20 Times as Much
Organizations usually underestimate the potential value of
the most important new information, technology, and ways of
operating. This error occurs because the new information or
resource unexpectedly makes untrue what has been undeniably
true in the past.
Achieving 2,000 percent solutions is a good example of this
tendency. While hundreds of organizations routinely
develop and implement such solutions every day, the
majority of businesses, nonprofit organizations, and
governments continue to focus on how to make 4, 5, or 6
percent improvements. With the same time, effort, and
resources, these people could be accomplishing hundreds of
times more!
What is a 2,000 percent solution? It’s any way of
accomplishing 20 times more with the same time, effort, and
resources. Why would you shoot for less?
Stop Waiting for Someone to Produce You
I can remember when I would wait for opportunities to come
to me. I would stand by the idea that “whatever is supposed
to happen will happen” and then one day it occurred to me
that all I was really doing was hiding. What was behind
that hiding was, “Who do I think I am to be amazing and
fabulous, AND wealthy?” I wasn’t coded for success. I was
coded for approval.
Since I’ve been coaching other entrepreneurs on building
their own successful, sustainable businesses, I’ve seen
this same syndrome dozens if not hundreds of times.
Sometimes it’s a question of, “Will I really be able to
handle the success?” or “If I am so abundant and
successful, then I’m taking away from others.” Of course,
neither of these is true. First, you are always set up to
put systems in place that will embrace your growth rather
than stunt it and second, the more successful you are, then
the more success there is for others. There is nothing
spiritual, kind, or gracious about holding yourself back
because when you do, you are actually holding others back
as well. When you hold back your gifts, you rob the world.
Your gifts are not for you alone. When you truly use your
talents to serve others, then you are truly living your
purpose and when you profit from this-even better; you have
more to give and the success cycle fuels itself. See?
Now that we have that straight, let’s go to the deeper form
of sabotage I’ve seen in others and myself: waiting for
someone else to do it for you. That same question of, “Who
do I think I am?” can be pretty sly and sneaky by fooling
us into believing we aren’t capable, which shows itself as,
“I don’t know enough,” or “If I do this and succeed, then
people will see that I’m actually capable and no one will
take care of me. I’ll always have to do everything by
myself.” Yikes. This is also cutting off your purpose and,
I can pretty much bet on it, stunting your profit.
Why We Get Inconsistent Marketing Results
What motivates you to market your business…the REAL motivation? Is it fear of not having enough money? Imagining the ripple effect of helping your clients live more authentic, vibrant lives? Looking at the photograph of an aunt who swore you’d never amount to anything?
All potent enough motivators, for sure.
What’s interesting to notice is whether your motivation is going toward or going away energy. That’s because when we are motivated away from something, the results we get tend to be erratic; when we are motivated toward, we get consistent, escalating results. Let me explain with two examples:
Leandra Leandra doesn’t like marketing and self-promotion, but she has to bring in a certain amount of money each month from her private therapeutic practice for teens. So each month, she trudges off to networking meetings and puts up a new article on her website. Some months, she gets a lot of response; other months, nary a call.
Leadership Through Goal Setting – vs – Brute Force management
Setting goals as the way to create priorities is what
leaders do to maintain direction and focus. Unfortunately,
many managers take a tremendous amount of potential
leverage out of their organizations by not prioritizing.
Many do it by using the Brute Force style of management.
How to define Brute Force management? It’s the “just keep
working harder, working longer, and working smarter and
everything will be OK.”
It’s the “just do what I tell you to do when I tell you to
do it.”
I had a Brute Force boss whose standard answer to “What’s
the most important thing?” was “Everything’s the most
important thing.” We were in a crisis mode and there was a
lot to get done, but what that “Everything is important”
direction led to was a lot of counterproductive behavior
-.do what you’re told to do, and then ask “What’s next?”
After a year of that no leverage management style he was
fired – but not until some very good people had left the
organization.
Managers that take the “everything is Number 1″ approach
are often rewarded for being tough, no nonsense, aggressive
problem solvers. The fact that they created many of the
problems they then solved seems to go unnoticed. Instead of
leadership, they use the brute force approach to getting
things done. That often works in a crisis situation, but
when everything becomes a crisis, those managers lose their
effectiveness and their people become cynical about how
they are treated. Brute force managers rarely have goals
they share with people, and even more rarely do they have
their people participate in any meaningful way in setting
goals and priorities. To many of them, sharing information
and open communication are threats to their control. Many
of them are quite happy with a compliance level workforce -
the “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it” people. There
is no leverage in the Brute Force management style.
How do effective leaders create priorities that maximize
their own effectiveness and the effectiveness of their
organization?
Avoid mistakes when outsourcing Sales and Telemarketing
Hiring a service provider to prospect for you or sell your
product or service can be a very effective solution.
However, you can also waste valuable time, money, and have
the reputation of your company tarnished very quickly.
There are a few good, professional, and legitimate service
providers with solid business models and there are those
that do not. Be very careful. The purpose of this article
is to educate you and help you develop an understanding of
what to expect in the outsourced Sales and Telemarketing
industry in order to make a wise decision.
Beware of 100% pay for performance arrangements. Don’t give
in to the NO RISK temptation. When providers are
compensated for quantity instead of quality, you can
imagine what happens – the quality of each lead drops, as
quantities rise – and your in-house sales team has to work
twice as hard to weed out the “garbage leads”. These type
of arrangements fail the majority of the time due to
constant turnover, recruiting, poor management,
re-training, and re-ramping. No real momentum or business
continuity is ever established. Finally and most
importantly, your companies reputation will be adversely
effected due to the lack of professionalism.
Realistic Expectations. Many sub par providers of this
service will tell you just about anything you need to hear
to make the sale. They make a living turning over clients
with cheap rates and small tests. Why? Because they gain
more sales. Your provider should want to know your business
in detail and listen to your objectives. An honest provider
will tell you what is realistic within a certain amount of
hours. There are many variables, so its not feasible for
any provider to tell you exactly what to expect. However,
they should give you a realistic depiction of ramp times
and potential production. They should come up with a
customized strategy recommendation for success. A good
provider should be focused on how to maintain a long term
partnership.
High Performance Teams: 9 Essential Ingredients for Team Building
“Nothing is so infectious as example.” Francois de La Rochefoucauld
In conducting team building training and management skills
training all over the world since 1995, I’ve discovered
there are nine essential ingredients that consistently crop
up in creating high performance teams. Listed below are the
top nine beginning with communication.
High Performance Teams: 9 Things a Leader Can Do To
Energize and Motivate Employees To Extraordinary
Performance:
1) Communication: Open, honest communication between team
members and the team leader about an organization’s vision
and clearly defined goals. Not to mention a team leader
needs training in people skills and how to manage people
effectively. Most team leaders are promoted based on their
“hard skills” or technical skills, but it doesn’t mean they
can create high performance teams. They must become
effective at communicating, listening and resolving
conflict. And everyone on the team needs training in
conflict resolution and how to be an effective
communicator. Each team member has been raised differently
from childhood in terms of what’s acceptable communication.
So training helps to keep the team leader and team members
on the same page. The key is in becoming tactfully direct.
2) High performance teams possess purpose and direction.
They have clearly defined goals, objectives and
responsibilities. When I go into an organization and
conduct team building training, team leaders tell me all
the time how important it is for teams to understand their
roles, expectations, and responsibilities. Team members
want to know what specific goals and objectives they’re
being evaluated on. Make sure the performance objectives
are measurable, quantifiable, and in writing for
accountability. Have goals and objectives for the team as a
whole as well as for each team member and include everyone
on these goals. For example, if team members are in sales,
a goal states in writing that each of them are to develop
ten new accounts representing gross sales of at least
$20,000 by December 31 of this year.
Avoid the Top Five Resume Mistakes
Over the years as a recruiter and resume coach, I’ve seen
the consequences of poorly written resumes. Unfortunately,
most people don’t seek professional career help until they
experience the frustration of a long and fruitless job
search. It’s surprising how many of their problems can be
traced to the top five resume mistakes.
#1 No resume focus.
The most effective resumes leave no doubt as to the job
seeker’s career objective. A one-size-fits-all resume
gives the impression that the job seeker is uncertain of
his career goal. An employer once told me that if a
candidate is interested in two completely different
positions, he must not be very good at either. If you have
more than one career objective, you need more than one
resume.
#2 Lack of marketing strategy.
Job seekers rarely see their search for what it is-a sales
campaign. Think of your resume as marketing material
designed to create a powerful first impression and win a
multitude of job interviews. A resume coach can help you
translate your career history into an effective marketing
piece by selling toward the reader’s buying motives:
solving problems, saving money, or increasing profits.
