The Truest Way to Build Your Credibility

How many promises have you made that you haven’t kept? How many times have you let yourself off the hook?

Every time you commit to an action and do not act, you lose credibility. Every time you end a conversation with “I’ll call you next week for lunch” and you don’t call, you lose credibility. Every time you agree to champion a task for your company and you drop the ball, you lose credibility.

The consequences of lost credibility are significant at both an individual and an organizational level. Humans are generalizers by nature; I’m convinced it goes back to our cave man days. Each time one of your employees or partners makes a promise to do something and fails to deliver, it’s not just that person whose credibility suffers. By extension, your organization also runs a risk of losing credibility.

This problem can seem insurmountable, but it isn’t. You can improve your credibility and, by extension, your company’s, by changing your own behavior. Now that I think about it, any change you want must begin with you (Gandhi said as much, more eloquently).

You can start today. Just for today, keep whatever commitments you made. If you vowed to exercise and eat right, do it. Just for today. If you promised Mary in accounting that you would have your expense reports done by close of business today, do it. Just this once. See how it feels at the end of the day to have lived credibly.

Build on small achievements until you are consistently credible, both in the commitments you make to yourself and those you make to others. Don’t get crazy and try to change everything at once. Start small. Meet a commitment every day. Pat yourself on the back when you do. Kick yourself in the behind when you don’t. Rectify your lapse immediately.

Then, and only then, can you ask others in your organization (or in your personal life, for that matter) to keep their commitments.

Annual Employee Reviews: So 20th Century

Remember when correspondence took a couple of weeks? Now it happens in seconds. Remember the glory days of printed newsletters: the writing, the printing, the stuffing, the stamping, the mailing? Pretty much gone. And how about returning phone calls “as soon as possible”? Now, it’s within a specific number of hours (if you’re savvy).

Yet companies that practice business at 21^st century speed are still doing annual employee evaluations. You really have to wonder why. The data on young employees show that their strong preference is to receive regular and rapid feedback on their performance. So why are managers waiting a year? How is this a good business practice?

The Millenials have it right on this issue: annual emploee reviews are worthless. Baby Boomers like me can tell war stories all day about enduring employee evaluations from both sides of the desk. As employees, here’s what we were thinking during the evaluations:

1. I hate this.

2. Why didn’t my supervisor tell me I screwed up on that project six months ago?

3. I wonder if that mistake is going to cost me a raise.

4. How much raise will I get, anyway?

5. I hate this.

As managers and executives, here’s our thought process:

1. I hate this.

2. I can’t remember anything this employee did all year.

3. This evaluation form is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. How can I assign a number to someone’s work for a whole year? Should I use decimals?

4. What if I give him a bad evaluation? Will he quit?

5. Seriously. I’m going to speak to our HR director as soon as this evaluation is over.

6. I hate this.

None of this is productive. It’s a much better use of time to evaluate employees by project or task. Debrief after every major effort. Tell the employee straight up what you think they did well and what might have gone better. And if you’re really brave (and, again, savvy), you’ll ask them what they think of your performance. Then, together, line up your mutual expectations for the next project.

If you think you don’t have time to evaluate employees after a project or task, think how much time it takes to recruit, hire, and train a new one after the old one quits because she wasn’t getting the right feedback at the right time.

We're Not Crazy After All

Affirmation is a wonderful thing. The 5/28/10 edition of the New York Times, in which Stephen Sadove, chairman and CEO of Saks Inc. (yes, the Saks), is interviewed, did just that for all of us who understand that culture is the foundation of business success.

Mr. Sadove cites the need to build relationships with a diverse set of people as a guiding principle in his philosophy of running Saks. Further, he says he now spends more time working on people issues than on any other part of the business. He says: “I tend to care a lot about the people and the relationships that they have, how the team is operating, the culture.”

CEOs, leaders, and managers, ask yourselves: How much time am I working on the business (cultural and other non-billable matters) rather than in the business (billable work)?

Sadove says: “Culture drives innovation and whatever else you’re trying to drive within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results.” He notes that Wall Street never asks him about the culture of Saks, about leadership, about the ideas that drive the numbers and the results. He’s working hard to teach people that, while numbers are certainly important, they’re not the critical success factor. Only culture serves that role over the long term.

Now, ask yourselves another question: What do I spend most of the time discussing with my partners and colleagues: quarterly revenue or corporate culture?

When asked about Saks’ hiring practices, Sadove stays with the cultural theme when he says”…you want somebody who has the intellectual capacity, strategic thinking and the skill sets. But I’m looking for a cultural fit with me. How collaborative are they? How inclusive are they? How willing are they to listen to lots of different points of view? Do they have diverse interests?”

And one more time, ask yourselves a question: “Which is more important in hiring: grade point average or attitude?”

It’s by asking questions like these – and acting on the answers – that sucessful corporate cultures are created.

Customer Service Is All About Your Employees

Steve Wynn, owner of Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas, knows a little something about customer service. I know, because whenever I go to Vegas, I stay at the Wynn. I stay there mostly because of the terrific customer service the hotel offers. From the moment I step inside the lobby to the moment the doorman helps me into a cab to the airport, my experience is sheer perfection.

It’s taken me several visits to the Wynn to figure out an important aspect of great customer service. But first, the obvious:

1. Great customer service costs money. You can’t give great service if you’ve cut into the muscle of your organization. In the Wynn’s case, you have to have enough people polishing the marble, vacuuming the carpet, and changing the flowers every morning, or the entire environment will suffer.
2. Great service requires training. You have to teach employees to smile, look customers in the eye, and respond promptly to requests. Wynn’s got that training down to a science.
3. Great service has to be recognized and rewarded. This, of course, is the case with any behavior you want to encourage.

But Wynn demonstrates a third element, and it’s both less obvious and more magical than the first two. Wynn’s stellar service is a function of authenticity, where employees willingly and without inducement say great things about where they work. Wynn employees talk openly about how much they appreciate Steve Wynn’s efforts to negotiate a tough economy without laying people off. They say how great he is work for. They say it’s a privilege to be employed by Wynn Resorts.

At least from this outsider’s perspective, it looks like Steve Wynn is working hard every day to give his employees the respect, dignity, and optimism they deserve. It’s just not possible to script the positive comments they make. Clearly, they are speaking from the heart.

If you want delighted customers, make sure you have delighted employees.

Emotional Solutions

New York Times columnist David Brooks sparked interesting thoughts this week. In his May 25 column, he says:

“People are born with natural desires to be admired and to be worthy of admiration. They are born with moral emotions, a sense of fair play and benevolence. They are also born with darker passions, like self-love and tribalism, which mar rationalist enterprises. We are emotional creatures first and foremost, and politics should not forget that.”

In the last sentence above, we could easily substitute “business” for “politics”. It would still be true. We are emotional creatures first and foremost, and business must not forget that. When things aren’t going right internally, look first at the emotions involved. Very likely, that’s where the problem lies. And very likely, if you address the emotions, you will find the solution.

When in Doubt, Pick Up the Phone

Email is easy and fast. It’s also incomplete and leaves room for plenty of unanswered questions and misunderstanding. A couple of times recently, I’ve experienced the conflict that goes with deciding how to follow up with people.

In one instance, I had submitted an application to a speaker’s bureau. Weeks later, I had heard nothing from them. After a short, typical conversation in my head about not being good enough to belong to this bureau, I decided to end the masochism and pick up the phone. As it turned out, the president of the company had begun the review process of my application, but had not yet completed it. Our conversation was upbeat and encouraging, and so very simple.

Another time, I was struggling with content for an upcoming presentation on leadership and management for lawyers. When I realized I would not be the best choice to address certain aspects of management because I have never run a law firm, I faced the same method-of-contact dilemma. Email surely would have been easier. I could have backed out of the session gracefully and left the relationship intact. But I really wanted to address the leadership issue in law firms, so I picked up the phone and had a conversation with my contact. In the course of the conversation, we realized the conference attendees would benefit from a team teaching format that involved a managing partner and me working together. Our conversation created a better program that would not have been possible by email.

No doubt: it’s much easier to send an email than to have to deal with a conversation. But it’s in those very conversations – those dialogues – that some of our best outcomes can occur.

Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do

For those of you who immediately recalled the Neil Sedaka song when you read the title of this post, I am truly sorry. It’s just the best way to frame a conversation about firing clients.

Such a heavy word, firing. I prefer to think of it as moving on, acting in everyone’s best interests, similar to ending a personal relationship. Who hasn’t heard “It’s not you, it’s me” at some point? Personally or professionally, it seems, the sentiment is applicable.

However you choose to phrase it, moving away from a client relationship is scary, gut-wrenching work. Who in her right mind would risk walking away from steady (although not lucrative), known (although not challenging), comfortable (although not inspiring) work — particularly in times like these?

If a particular client’s face pops into your head as you read this, here are some of the questions to ask yourself:

1. Is the client best served by your working at a level below your capabilities?
2. Are you willing to continue working at a level that does not challenge you?
3. How is your decreasing passion for the work affecting your client’s interests?
4. How is your client’s behavior affecting you and your team?
5. Are you willing to wait it out in the hope that things will magically improve?
6. Would a conversation with your client change anything?
7. What opportunities are you missing by pouring energy into this client?

Putting yourself through a questioning exercise like this one is useful, whether you are determined to leave your client or are trying to find reasons to stay. Asking hard questions brings clarity to your thought process, removing some of the more emotional (and less useful) noise in your head. Finally, it helps move you closer to answering an important question:

What makes you happy?