Tag: Soft Skills

How to Change Your Company Culture Even When You’re Not The CEO

Do you feel like your place of work is in need of a culture change? If you’re not in a leadership role, it may feel as though you don’t feel like you have the voice to make a change. However, there are a few things you can do to try and shift the culture at your place of work.

Remain Patient and Persistent

When you’re trying to change the culture in your workplace it’s important to remain patient. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a night. Once you realize there’s a cultural problem, the first course of action is to diagnose the problem.

Finding the root of the problem will allow you to take steps to make improvements. Since leaders in the workplace may be too busy to notice small everyday issues, you can help point them towards those problems.

You may have to get creative to show there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

Let Your Voice Be Heard 

Use the tools at your disposal to make it clear there’s a culture problem. The best way to showcase a problem is to prove that business is being negatively affected by culture. Use reports and statistics available to you to prove that the business is suffering because of the negative culture.

You could also use statistics to prove a positive change in culture can increase employee productivity. Most leaders are too busy to prioritize implementing a positive culture. However, you can help make them realize just how important it is.

Communication is Key

As with almost everything else in the workplace, communication is key. Be informative, helpful and solution-oriented every step of the way. You will get more followers and believers by being communitive and goal driven.

It’s important to have a plan when implementing trying to have a culture change. The best way to implement this plan is with proper communication thru and thru. Even though it may seem like you don’t have a voice, with proper communication, everyone has a voice.

You Can Make A Difference

You don’t have to be a boss to make a difference in your workplace. With proper communication, you can help implement a culture change.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

Great Mentors Do More Than Giving Advice- They Ask These Questions

Being a good mentor is very important, but the question of how you become a good mentor is always up for debate. It’s about being so much more than just someone that tells you how they achieved success. One of the most common and important characteristics of all good mentors seems to be their ability to ask insightful and meaningful questions.

Asking questions to your protege’ will allow you to be more insightful and offer better solutions tailored to their specific situation. You will begin to build a genuine relationship with this person where trust can be established and a mutual partnership will grow. Here are some of the questions all the good mentors ask.

1. What Are You Reading?

Finding out about your mentee’s reading habits, interests, hobbies, and other personal questions will help you build a lasting relationship. This will also give you insight into their lives and the way they respond to situations. When your protege knows you are someone they can trust, they will open up to you more allowing you to help them in the best way possible.

2. What Obstacles Are You Facing?

Mentors can provide valuable insight to overcoming obstacles when they understand just want their understudy is going through. Sometimes, the person may not have even thought about their obstacles and need to be prompted to dig deep. This will also give you an opportunity to find their strengths and weaknesses.

3. What Options Have You Come Up With?

Pointing out the exact solution to your protege’s problems isn’t always the best way to go about things. You should allow your mentee to come up with potential solutions to their obstacles. There will be a time when you need to fill in the gaps to trigger a solution, but doing all the work for them will not help them grow.

4. What Do You Want To Be Different In 3 to 5 Years?

This is a great question to help your understudy look forward to the future while determining what they can course correct now to get there. A 3 to a 5-year window is perfect since it’s not so far in the future that they get distracted by how much can change by then.

5. Tell Me More

While this technically isn’t a question, this bold statement will prompt your mentee to provide more information on their opinion or the conclusion they came up with. Biases or blind spots that they couldn’t see before will become more obvious. You as a mentor can help expand their mind around the situation and find new ways to help.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

Tell Your Company’s Story To Recruit The Right Talent

It can be difficult for small business owners to sell potential employees on the company. While brands such as Google and Amazon have recruits lining up off of name-power alone, your small business will not have that luxury. Being able to sell your company and its culture will go a long way to attracting top recruits to your business.

Let Them In On Your Culture

One of the most important things to remember as a business owner or a leader is why. Why do you wake up every morning excited to provide whatever service it is you provide to your customers? You should be able to easily explain to potential recruits why you and your employees strive to give 100% every day.

While you should be selling the positive values of your workspace environment, there is no need to lie or exaggerate to make yourself look better. Find out what makes your business great and come up with a concise and informative pitch using that information. Lying and exaggerating is just going to hurt your reputation and cause newcomers to be unhappy when they discover all that glitters isn’t gold.

Sell Recruits On Your Employees

The best way to give potential recruits a peek into the culture of your workplace is by your employees. After all, no one knows better about how awesome it is to work for you than the people who do.

Create a recruiting campaign based around the positive culture at your business and use your employees to do so.

You can use quotes, photos, videos or testimonials to try and sell potential employees. Recruits are more likely to trust the people that work for you than you yourself. Showcase why people love working for your company by actually using the people who love working for your company.

Show Them the Benefits

Try not to be obtuse to the fact that while a positive work environment is great, it’s still a job at the end of the day. And what’s the reason most of us seek out jobs in the first place? We simply need a paycheck and the benefits that the job provides.

Don’t be afraid to showcase your benefits during a recruiting campaign. For many people looking for a job, it could be the deciding factor between choosing you and someone else. Let future employees in on what they could be gaining by working for you.

Sell New Recruits on You

More importantly, sell potential recruits on working for you. Make your workplace an inviting one, and people will come.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.

Strong Leaders Know How to Serve Their Team

Traditional leadership and servant leadership are different. A traditional leader exists to sit at the top of the pyramid and hand orders down the line. A servant leader flips the pyramid upside down by sharing their power with the team. They put the needs of the team above their own so that everyone on the team can advance.

Characteristics of a Bad Leader

You’ve no doubt had a bad leader. There are certain characteristics that these types of leaders exhibit. For example, a bad leader gives the answer, “I’m the boss, that’s why” as the only reason for making a change. A servant leader would never say that.

Other things that a bad leader tends to do is play favorites. They obviously give preference to certain people on the team. Also, they will tell you that their door is always open, but it never seems like they are available to you.

Characteristics of Servant Leaders

On the flip side, servant leaders are counter-cultural to the stereotypical boss type. These men and women spend their time finding ways to take care of the team through servanthood.

Some of the characteristics of a servant leader include:

• Readily listening to the ideas of others
• Be a team player
• Lead by example
• Follow through with the things they say

These leaders are inspirational to the team and have a greater ability to partner with them. More is accomplished when teams work together with a leader that comes alongside them and gets in the trenches.

Servant Leaders Make it a Priority to Have an Open Door Policy

Probably one of the things that is most important for servant leaders is to have a “door is always open” policy. So many people will say that this is the case, but the team can’t get face time with them. When a leader actually makes it a priority to talk to those under them, they will know how to serve them better.

If you are a leader, strive to be a servant to others. That is the best way to run a company and be successful.

We would love to hear your comments. Please email or call today!

Gary Brunson
gary@myclearfocus.com

Debra Rider
debra@myclearfocus.com

574.361.2674

Sustainable Growth & Profit Consultant, Coach, Mentor and Counselor/Therapist for Business Owners and Professional.