Several years ago my work as a customer service speaker took me to a franchised  food establishment to study their operation. At first I was impressed. They had an aggressive marketing campaign and had really streamlined their food production. Behind the scenes, they ran a great business.

With customers, they were less impressive. That day the manager was working with a new customer service representative. I watched as he trained her on the computer and telephone system. They discussed the product line and various add-ons the rep might suggest to customers. It was all perfectly innocuous.

But when an actual lady walked into the store to inquire about their products, the training took a different tone. As the lady approached the counter, the manager whispered to his employee, “Go get her!” She took the lady’s order.  The manager stood by greedily sizing up the woman. At one point he whispered to his employee,  “See if you can get her to buy more.” In fact, the customer did buy more. The moment she stepped out the door, the manager high-fived his employee. “Score!” he exclaimed.

The manager’s actions were subtle, but they revealed a lot about his attitude towards customers. They were his prey. His goal wasn’t to serve them, but to shake them down for as much money as he could. He trained his employee to “get her to buy” – essentially to manipulate her – without regards for what the customer actually needed.

While up-selling is an important part of building revenue, it can easily distract you from a more important sales tool – building goodwill. Greed is shortsighted. It might yield a bigger one-time ticket, but it prevents you from cultivating customer loyalty.

If you’re running a business, you don’t want customers. You want repeat customers, people who will consistently buy your products or services over time. If you’ve gone to the expense to market your product or service and someone walks in to do business with you, they are precious.

Encounters with customers are more than sales opportunities. They’re marketing opportunities. It’s easier (and cheaper) to bring back an old customer than it is to attract someone new. This can’t happen when you shake them down. It only works when what your selling builds them up.

To bring customers back, don’t think about building the sale. Build a relationship. Overwhelm them with hospitality and concern. Don’t sell them – serve them. Consider how you can genuinely improve their lives, without concern for the size of the ticket.

In the long run, you’ll make more friends, and make a lot more money.

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Just put up a new listing Thumbtack.com. I’d appreciate any testimonials posted on my profile. Thanks!

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When I was a kid, I used to wonder if police officers thought everyone drives the speed limit. Because whenever police officers are around, everyone does drive the speed limit. But as soon as they turn off, traffic lurches forward.

That’s the problem with the concept of management. Employees step up their performance when the boss is around, but often slack off when on they’re on their own. It’s easy to assume, therefore, that supervision is necessary. We look to leadership and management to make people comply.

I currently have 12 employees and I want more than compliance from them.  I want engagement. I want drive. I want a self-motivating staff that works just as hard when I’m not around as when I am. As their boss, I want to be unnecessary.

With an autonomous group, leaders should have little to do.

This may be possible. In his articulate TED presentation, author Daniel Pink suggests that management is a manmade institution that may not be as essential as we think. Autonomy, the act of directing one’s own life and controlling one’s work, may be enough of a motivation. (He also discusses “Mastery” and “Purpose” as two other motivations.) Management is useful for compliance, he says, but self-direction is more useful for engagement. The new model for effective work environments de-emphasizes leadership and focuses more on employees’ self-reliance.

The extreme version of this model would be a “ROWE”, or “Results Only Work Environment.” In this setting, employees are compensated purely by the work that they produce, not by the time they put in. This means the can choose to come into the office or not. They can work 40 hours or four hours. They can wear a suit or their pajamas. They direct how they get their results, as long as they get results.

This sounds fantastic. Who wouldn’t want a world that balances freedom and function?  There’s evidence that, at least in some instances, this can yield increased function.

For several years now, Dutch engineers have seen interesting results with what they call “shared space.” In many communities, they have removed stoplights and signs that direct cars, bikes and pedestrians, requiring people be more engaged as they travel the city. Unlike traditional roadways where citizens mindlessly rely on traffic laws, lights and police enforcement, residents in shared space are forced to work together to keep things moving safely. According to The Times, this change at a major intersection in the town of Drachten reduced traffic accidents from 36 in four years to just two in two years, while speeding up the time it takes for a car to pass through the intersection from 50 seconds to 30 seconds. No one is there to tell commuters what to do or how to do it. The community self-manages. The result is a successful, organic collaboration.

It would seem a key component to this self-governance is personal stakes. That doesn’t necessarily mean a reward or compensation. It means the situation must matter to all participants. In the case of shared space, people want to avoid injury. Safety is something commuters value.

As a motivational business speaker, I’ve identified other non-monetary values that matter to employees. My surveys of work environments consistently reveal that people want praise. They want interesting work. They want personal growth. And they want to be part of something that has social significance. (This ties in with Pink’s thoughts on “purpose.”) And once people’s basic needs are met, they’re willing to forgo additional compensation in order to honor these higher values.

We can all think of jobs that don’t pay well, but still attract dedicated, intelligent people. Teachers, social workers and countless other underpaid professionals work very hard – often without a lot of direct supervision. They do this by choice because there’s a cause to which they feel connected. Their jobs allow them to work on something that matters to them.  Those inspired by their work don’t need a lot of management. They don’t need help with compliance. They need the freedom to follow their passion.

When people become ineffective in these fields, often it’s because they’ve lost that meaningful connection to their work; it no longer matters. They’re just plodding along and not yielding results. Traditionally, management then steps in to force compliance.

But “forcing” requires time, energy and reliance on management. I’m too busy to “force” anyone to do something. I don’t’ want to push and shove. Even though I’m a motivational speaker, I don’t want to motivate. I want to employ people who motivate themselves. I’m happy to train them. I’ll answer questions and provide resources. I’ll support them. But I shouldn’t have to compel them.

Instead of redirecting an uninspired employee, reconnect them to a work-related cause that matters to them. Relight their fire. Get them to a place of actually caring about their results. That will help them function in a more autonomous environment and free up management’s time.

The best employees are independent. The best leaders are unnecessary. If the employee can’t function without management, then perhaps it’s time to make them available to another workplace.

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Motiving Employees With Thoughtful Delegation

Angela giggled as she joined me onstage during my keynote on motivating employees. She was a petite thirty-something and I asked her to pull on a 3X Large t-shirt over her outfit.  She almost disappeared in the loose garment. The audience laughed at this ridiculous image.

“Is there a manufacturing flaw with this shirt?” I asked the crowd. They shook their heads. “Is there a problem with Angela’s body?” Her colleagues resisted the temptation to joke and again said no. “Then what’s the problem with the outfit?” It was obvious; the shirt simply didn’t fit.  We could have anticipated this problem simply by looking at the shirt’s size in advance.

I use the example of the oversized shirt to make a point regarding motivating employees.  The shirt undoubtedly revealed that one size does not fit all.  The same applies when motivating employees on the job.  When employees seem unmotivated, the problem is often not due to lack of drive, but rather the result of being tasked with responsibilities and duties that just don’t suit the individual or their skill set.  Good delegation in the workplace requires careful consideration of team members as individuals, and not a “one size fits all” group. You have a better chance of keeping their fire lit if you can match employees with assignments that fit their unique sensibilities.

Fortunately, just like we have sizes for clothing, we have a reliable indicator to determine suitable tasks for people. This indicator is the individual’s values.

What does each employee care about? Ambition? Interesting work? Praise? We can’t motivate people by what we think their values are. It’s easy to be mistaken.

I was once hired by a chain of restaurants to help their managers boost employee performance. They attributed their employees’ low morale to a lack of funds to pay them well. Their assumption was that what the employees valued most was salary. I surveyed the employees and discovered that salary was actually the fourth highest value. The top value they indicated was praise for their work. They didn’t need raises; they needed a pat on the back. When managers focused on improving the work environment and regularly expressed gratitude, morale went up – along with sales.

But it’s not enough to learn what your team wants. The real trick is to identify employees’ values on an individual level. Most people want praise, interesting work and a high salary. But everyone prioritizes these values differently. The key to motivating employees is to identify what each individual most wants and create an opportunity for them to get it from their job.

It’s also useful to know what values your work environment can and cannot honor.  If you have a small business, you may not be able to accommodate someone who wants a lot of money. If you need someone to work an assembly line, it may not be appropriate to hire someone who values human interaction. Just because someone has a great personality, doesn’t mean they’re the right fit for the job. People do better and last longer when their job aligns with their values.

One great exercise I like to do when interviewing candidates for my own business is to conduct an activity I call “Ideal World.” I ask applicants to draw a picture of a perfect world that is entirely of their creation.  Anything is possible in this world, as long as it reflects their vision of perfection. If they want, people can fly. If they choose, there is no crime.  In their world, they decide what’s possible and what isn’t. I also ask them to draw an “underworld” – everything they’d reject from their ideal world.

After a few minutes I ask them to describe what they drew. Often their description will reveal a lot about their value system. This exercise may be a bit unusual, but it’s certainly more productive than the typical, “Tell me about yourself.”

Take the time to size up your employees. If you can figure out what they desire most and delegate accordingly, you won’t have to encourage them. If anything, you’ll have to hold them back.

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Motivational Speaker Scott Greenberg Speaks to Faculty and Students at Penn State University on Ethical Leadership

On Tuesday, March 1st, Motivational Speaker Scott Greenberg spoke to faculty advisors and students at Penn State University during lunchtime seminars and workshops on topics designed to educate and inspire staff and students at the school. The two topics Greenberg spoke on were “Facilitating Ethical Leadership” and “Thriving During Times of Change and Transition”

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Many college students struggle with their personal ambition and desire to do the right thing and often it appears that these things are at odds.

Los Angeles, CA (Vocus/PRWEB) March 22, 2011

On Tuesday, March 1st, Motivational Speaker Scott Greenberg spoke to faculty advisors and students at Penn State University during lunchtime seminars and workshops on topics designed to educate and inspire staff and students at the school. The two topics Greenberg spoke on were “Facilitating Ethical Leadership” and “Thriving During Times of Change and Transition”

The first discussion of the day, designed for the faculty advisors of student organizations at Penn State University, involved the topic “Facilitating Ethical Leadership”. Greenberg spoke specifically on how to teach the ethics of leadership to students. He used examples such as “The Integrity Gap” which demonstrates the difference between values (our beliefs about what is right) and ethics (our actual behaviors). This example showed how integrity involves the extent to which our ethics align with our values.

Greenberg closed his session with faculty advisors by conducting an activity called “Your Ideal World” which showed participants how to identify the values of their colleagues so they could better understand how to motivate them and meet their needs. They were also presented with ethical dilemmas to learn how and why they respond in the manner they do.

Greenberg’s second discussion of the day was targeted to Penn State students and was entitled “Survival of the Finest: Thriving During Times of Change & Transition.” This workshop was designed to inspire students in their new role and show them how their success in school will be dependent on their confidence, competence and ability to adapt to change. Greenberg spoke specifically on the “sandbags” of life that drag people down and the easiest way to overcome that is to serve others.

“Speaking to the faculty advisors and students at Penn State was great, particularly since I had the opportunity to speak on one of my favorite topics, ethical leadership,” said Motivational Speaker Scott Greenberg. “It’s a topic I think college students need to understand before they embark on their careers. Many college students struggle with their personal ambition and desire to do the right thing and often it appears that these things are at odds. My job as a motivational speaker is to help them see that the two can complement each other and don’t need to be at odds.”

The Penn State speaking event was sponsored by the office for student activities. http://www.sa.psu.edu/

About Scott Greenberg

Greenberg is a professional motivational speaker specializing in resilience, peak performance, and emotional intelligence. His personal battle with cancer and inspiration from his “Schindler’s List” holocaust surviving Grandmother are the basis for some of his motivational stories. Since 1993, Scott has spoken to a variety of organizations looking to improve their leadership, customer service and work environment. Clients include Nike, Cargill International, the United Nations and the U.S. Department of the Interior. Scott has written three books on leadership and is a contributing author to “Chicken Soup for the College Soul.” For more information about Scott Greenberg, visit http://www.scottgreenberg.com or call 1-800-450-0432 (or outside the U.S. 1-818-785-5202).

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The traditional organizational chart of a company resembles a pyramid. At the apex of the pyramid is the head of the organization – the President, CEO, Owner, etc. Below this leader are various levels of officers such as vice-presidents, department heads, managers, etc. At the bottom of the pyramid are front line employees. Each level reports to the one above it, working at the pleasure of superiors.

Over the years management experts have advocated inverting this pyramid. Rather than passing on commands, the leader in this case passes on support and empowerment. Robert Greenleaf, who researched management, development and education for AT&T for 40 years wrote in his famous 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader:

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.“

“The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?“

(http://www.greenleaf.org/whatissl/ )

In my customer service programs, I discuss how flipping the pyramid allows customers to be top, rather than the CEO. I share stories of how I practice this in my own business. I own a retail store with ten employees. They’re trained to understand that they do not work for me, but for our customers. If neither my manager nor myself are available and they don’t know what to do, their decision should be based on what will please the customer and win their repeated business. In fact, when I call into my store, if the person who answers is with a customer, they’re to say goodbye and hang up on me. I don’t want them serving me when they can be serving my customers.

For an inverted pyramid to work, however, there must be considerable training and intelligent “service” from leadership. Empowerment is not enough. Smart hiring, monitoring, feedback are essential for organizational success.

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Last month my family and I traveled to Jamaica and visited the SOS Children’s Village in Barrett Town. We delivered supplies, faced painted and spent time with the children. It was an incredible experience. As discussed on their website, “SOS Children’s Villages focuses on family-based, long-term care of children who can no longer grow up with their biological families.” Please consider making a donation. Here’s short video of our visit:

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By nature, you already have everything you need to excel at being you. The problem is, most people try to be someone they’re not. In the process, they neglect the very qualities that make them special. Be authentic – always – and your life will be extraordinary.

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I began my career as a youth speaker. While I do many programs now for professionals, I still enjoy presenting motivational school assemblies and keynotes at student leadership conferences. Youth speakers aren’t cheap, however, and I’m often asked if it’s really worth the money and class time to bring in a motivational speaker for teens.

Youth Speaker Scott Greenberg

I understand why some would ask. So many motivational speakers spend too much time entertaining and not enough on substance. The reality is that anybody can be a speaker. And many people who really want to be entertainers use motivational speaking as their outlet. They throw in a perfunctory message to justify an hour of jokes.

To connect with teenagers, a youth speaker does have to be animated and funny. This is especially true at the beginning of the presentation when the young audience is still sizing up the speaker. They assume they’re being pulled out of class to listen to some yahoo telling them to just say no. They must be won over quickly, and humor is the easiest way to do that.

But the purpose of the humor should be to get their attention so the speaker can deliver an important message. That message should be the real meat of the program. There must be depth. It’s great if the kids have a good time, but they should leave the presentation in deep thought, applying the speaker’s concepts to their own lives.

For this reason, it’s critical that teachers reinforce the message. Back in class there should be follow-up discussion. Students must reflect on the program and make it applicable to their lives.

Skeptics say that the value of motivational presentations is short lived.  But you could say the same thing about the value of food. The benefits may seem temporary, but they’re essential to our survival.

Over the years I’ve had students share a risk they took, a goal they achieved or a girl they asked out because of the courage they felt after hearing a presentation. I’ve had suicidal teens and cutters reach out for help. While I aspire to get better, I believe whole-heartedly in my work and that of my colleagues. Students need positive messages from a variety of adults. For some young people, the right youth speaker may be able to connect in a way other adults have not.

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The job of a motivational speaker is pretty self-explanatory. Motivational speakers are supposed to motivate.  This means giving people a stronger sense of their feelings in an effort to mobilize them (or more accurately, help them self-mobilize). If my audience members feel good but don’t do anything, then I haven’t done my job.

While good feelings can lead to action, so can bad. Guilt, fear and pain have led many a person to change their life. That being said, you won’t find too many motivational speakers who purposely subject their audience to pain (though I’ve seen a few do it unintentionally). Most attempt to inspire with promises of a pleasurable result. But an understanding of how suffering consumes people may give insight into how to better serve them.

Are pleasure and pain opposites? It might be more correct to say that they’re two ends of a spectrum, with the lack of either in between. The absence of one in no way promises the presence of the other. They also don’t balance each other. It takes a lot of pain to yield even a little gain. Suffering tends to linger while pleasure lasts only a moment.

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was known for his pessimistic view of the human condition. In his collection of essays, The World As Will and Representation, Volume 2, he described how much more we feel suffering than its absence:

“We feel pain, but not painlessness; care, but not freedom from care; fear, but not safety and security. We feel the desire as we feel hunger and thirst; but as soon as it has been satisfied, it is like the mouthful of food which has been taken, and which ceases to exist for our feelings the moment it is swallowed.”

In sales they always say, “find the pain.” Maybe motivational speakers and leaders should do the same. Everyone has goals, but they also have problems. Most emotional time is spent focused on these problems. By easing this stress first, perhaps we can then give people the emotional freedom to pursue pleasurable desires.

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