Idea #1: Inspire and Unite Your Team!
How to Ignite Passion…
By having fun!
Alfie, one of 2009’s “Michigan 50 Companies to Watch”, transformed both their branding and corporate culture in the autumn of 2008. The entire team came together to create the new mission statement and to determine their core values: integrity, effective communication, creative vision, attitude, excellence, and customer delight.
Last August, Bonnie Alfonzo, Alfie’s President and CEO, awarded $500 cash to the winner of Alfie Idol; the company’s first annual talent competition. The only requirement — incorporate the Alfie mission and values.
It was a amazing to see the team bring down the house with tunes such as Call Me, Sweet Caroline, and Tomorrow, just to name a few.
For the grand finale the entire team preformed Summer Lovin’ from Grease. Everyone had a blast!
Watch this and get inspired!
Keep in mind… just a few months ago this was an very shy production team.
1 comment February 8, 2010
Idea #5: Inspire and Unite Your Team!
How to keep your team engaged…
| With WOW! Wednesdays…
The Alfie team gathers weekly for Wow Wednesday which is a 15 to 20 minute team huddle. Each week a different team member chooses one of their core values and highlights its purpose. “There is no restrictive format; we encourage everyone to express their thoughts about the value they have chosen in a way that reflects their personal style. These conversations help keep our culture alive in a couple of ways. First, we review both positive and not-so-great examples the team demonstrated the value over the past week. We refer to the latter as an ‘OUCH’ – Our Unusual Challenge. With this format we focus on situations that will provide our clients with an even-more-phenomenal customer experience. And by encouraging each team member to express themselves in their own way, we build trust and empower each member of the team,” explains Tricia Bowman, member of team expedite. Check out the great promotional products Alfie offers by clicking here.
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Add comment February 8, 2010
The Power of 5: Core Values – Inspire Unity and Create Focus
Define Your Values
This process can be used for a company, a team or an individual (or even a family).
1. Gather your team and determine the five (5) words that best describe how you will behave with each other, customers, and key business partners.
Determining a team’s core values may seem simple, but it’s not easy. Why? Because we are complex human beings, who have unique backgrounds and experiences. These differences are incredibly valuable and by working together we can identify and prioritize the values that reflect what is most important to you, your team or your company.
By involving your team they will help every member:
- Understand the “why?” behind the final outcome
- Buy-in faster and fully support the final decisions
- Hold each other accountable
- Begin to engage by “thinking” and saying “I can make a difference by…”
2. Define what each of values means. This is a productive team building exercise. Select a core group of team members to write a short definition for each of the values. Keep it shot and easy to remember.
Need Help?
Need help facilitating a “Power of 5 Values” session. Aha! Leadership will help your team unite and determine their values in only 90 minutes! It’s a powerful team-building exercise!
- “I watched you bring 18 people (that never, ever agree on anything) together and actually accomplish this goal in such a short period of time. We all left motivated, high-fiving and on the same page. Absolutely amazing!”
- “By including everyone in the decision making process makes everyone feel responsible for passing on the feelings and attitudes.”
- “I saw for the first time that when inspired we can all be productive and constructive.”
- “Since we worked together, I completely understand why and how these values were created.”
- “My Aha was the realization that although we are all different, we can come together and agree.”
- “My Aha was realizing that we are all able to work as a team to come up with our company values.”
- “Thank you for including me. For the first time in a long time. I feel important.”
Next week, we will see how various Michigan Companies bring their values to life.
Add comment January 21, 2010
Use the “Power of 5” to Turbo Charge Your Year!
The number one question I get from leaders is: “How do I ‘make’ my people accountable?”
The answer: Set SMART Goals.
Year after year, we make New Year’s resolutions with the best intentions. According to experts, nearly 97 percent of us fail to turn these intentions into results. I believe the same mindset holds true for leaders. Year after year, we intend to set goals for our business and suddenly January 5th is here and we have a critical fire to put out…
What do the 3% of us do differently? Why do they always seem to achieve more year after year.
The answer: They set SMART goals for themselves and their teams.
Dan Mulhern, Michigan’s First Gentleman recently conducted a survey of 365 leaders and found:
- Only 19% believed in annual goal setting and do it religiously.
- Nearly 80% believe goal setting has value but sometimes or seldom do it.
- Only 30% of the leader’s surveyed plan to write down goals for 2010.
- Only 40% say it is essential to have periodic review of goals.
Goal setting isn’t easy but it’s essential to driving results. As leaders we must push ourselves and our teams by setting SMART goals. This is the key to driving accountability!
Why is this important? If you don’t invest the time to clearly define what you want the team to achieve, then how in the world do you expect your team to invest the effort required to achieve it?
Bottom line: It’s impossible to achieve results when you don’t write down clear goals and it’s impossible to hold yourself and others accountable to vague visions.
Hummm… maybe that’s precisely why we don’t do it…?
5 Easy Steps to Setting Goals
1. Make a list of all of the things that you feel are critical to accomplish this year.
2. Circle the “Power 5” – Using the 80/20 rule, identify those things that will drive 80% of the results for your business.
Don’t focus on the same old goals that you choose every year. Take some time, think about it and identify the 5 activities that will drive the highest impact for your organization in 2010.
3. Create SMART goals using the “Power 5” activities that you identified above.
Define what it means to win. Be specific.
Answer two key questions:
How will you know when this is accomplished?
How will I measure this?
4. Break the “Power 5” into tasks and assign an owner and due date to each task.
5. Communicate the “Power 5” to your team and schedule a monthly accountability session to review progress.
Links to Aha! Leadership Resources:
Company Cascading Goals Worksheet
Action Plan Worksheet for tracking large goals
Department Goal Summary Worksheet
“Nothing can stop a man with the right mental attitude of achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help a man with the wrong mental attitude.” Thomas Jefferson
“The thing always happens that you really believe in and the thing you really believe in always happens.” Frank Lloyd Wright
Add comment January 5, 2010
Do as I say… not as I do…
They desperately seek your approval. They’re watching everything you do. They’re listening to every word you say. Not only are they watching and listening – they’re acting on it. They’re doing the things you do. They’re saying the things you say.
Who are “they”?
They’re your team members. “They”‘ could also be your kids if that’s what you were thinking!Someone I respect greatly, very simply stated, “People follow their leaders.” Your actions dictate what’s acceptable and what’s expected from your team. Whether you do it consciously or unconsciously, you’re creating your team’s culture. Whether you want to or not, right now, you’re leading by example.
Your language becomes their language. Your actions become their actions.
- Blow off their emails and phone calls – they’ll do the same with your clients’ emails and phone calls.
- Gossip and speak poorly about other team members and clients – they’ll do the same.
- Create obstacles for others to get some of your time – they’ll do the same when it comes to their time.
Here’s the good news: the same is true for the good stuff.
- Take a vested interest in their success – they’ll do the same for your clients and other team members.
- Stay upbeat and positive – they’ll do the same.
- Speak highly of your internal and external clients – they’ll do the same.
- Seek to understand before seeking to be understood – they’ll do the same.
Make them feel important, appreciated, valued, and liked – they’ll make your clients feel important, appreciated, valued, and liked.
Get it?
The bottom line is a “Do as I say – not as I do” approach may work short-term, but will never work in the long run. You can’t constantly beat on your folks and expect them to hug your clients. What we’re talking about here is conditioning. Just as you’re conditioning others, the people you’ve been watching your whole life helped condition you.
Here’s how you begin to fix it:
- Accept responsibility for your team’s behavior.
- Identify the specific behaviors you want to change within the team and write them down.
- Take a good, hard look inside and pinpoint the instances where you’ve exhibited those behaviors. Write them down.
- Create a pattern interrupt – something to stop the behavior when you catch yourself doing it. This is something meant to change your physiology: clapping your hands, pumping your fist, a chant, etc. Write it down.
- Insert a replacement habit – the way you expect yourself and others to react. Write it down.
Lastly, while you need to take responsibility, you can’t blame yourself for the individual behavior of every team member. They’ve had years of prior conditioning before you.
Bottom line: don’t underestimate your influence in helping them change.
Add comment December 7, 2009
Awesomely Simple
Check out this link awesomely_simple to watch an overview of John Spence’s book Awesomely Simple. In it he discusses the importance of Mission/Values/Goals, How to hire successfully and much more.
Add comment November 30, 2009
Hiring RED Flags
Here are some hiring Red Flags from Mel Kleiman’s book Hire Tough, Manage Easy. What are some of the Red Flags you have seen?
- Poor personal appearance
- Lack of interest and enthusiasm
- Overemphasis on money
- Condemnation of past employers
- Late for interview
- Asks no questions about the position
- Vague response to questions
- Overly aggressive, conceited, superiority or know-it-all complex
- Inability to express oneself clearly
- Lack of planning for career
- Lack of confidence and poise
- Unwilling to start at the bottom, expects too much too soon
- Makes excuses
- Wants job for only a short time
- No interest in company or industry
Do you agree with these Red flags? What are some other ones to look out for?
Add comment November 11, 2009
T-Shirts Launch, Leaders Inspire
This Week’s Guest Author is Nancy Ortberg
Consultant, coach, and columnist Nancy Ortberg offers an insightful look at the qualities, attributes, and practices that turn ordinary leaders into extraordinary ones! Her unique perspective on vision casting; managing tensions; nurturing healthy conflict; motivating others; and fostering creativity, passion, and trust will bring out the best in even the most seasoned leaders.
The following is an excerpt from Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands: Lessons in Non-Linear Leadership by Nancy Ortberg.
Continue Reading Add comment November 3, 2009
Mind Your Environment – Create a Healthy Team Environment
FOSTER THE CLIMATE
In the workplace, leaders are environmental caretakers. They preside over the climate of a team, and their positive influence can make the office a healthy and inviting place. On the other hand, if leaders ignore the team environment, then the workplace can become toxic and hazardous to all who inhabit it.
| 3 Ways to Create a Healthy Team Environment | |
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1. Encourage a Spirit of Togetherness
The true measure of a successful leader is not getting people to work. Nor is it getting people to work hard. The true measure of a successful leader is getting people to work hard together.
Leaders have to create an environment in which people see themselves as a single unit, the team, rather than as a collection of individuals. Building a team culture means stressing that mutual success matters far more than personal brilliance. For a leader, the goal is to instill an attitude of “we” rather than “me.”
2. Paint the Big Picture When people don’t understand how their work matters to the team, they fall into mindless routine, and they deny putting their heart into what they do. Leaders have to guard against a purposeless environment by building bridges between what and why. By helping people see their contributions to the team’s goals, leaders ennoble them with a sense of meaning. 3. Learn from the Customer When an organization doesn’t understand its customer, then the team environment becomes wasteful and inefficient. Efforts go into products that sit on shelves. Time and energy are sunk into marketing services nobody wants. Eventually, the team tires of doing unproductive work, and its morale nosedives. Leaders foster a team environment in which the customer experience is a primary consideration. They refuse to allow their teams to guess at what customers need. Instead, leaders teach teams the discipline of consulting customers regularly. By allowing customers to define success, a team learns where to focus its attention and is able to position itself to excel. This Week’s Guest Author is John Maxwell John C. Maxwell is an internationally respected leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold more than 18 million books. Dr. Maxwell is the founder of EQUIP, a non-profit organization that has trained more than 5 million leaders in 126 countries worldwide. He is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week best-selling author. To read this entire article click here http://www.giantimpact.com/articles/read/creating_a_healthy_team_environment/
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Add comment October 20, 2009
