The Ultimate Question 2.0

By Fred Reichheld

There is one question that can help you define a great customer experience, leading to more customer loyalty and profits. Learn what it is and start using it today.

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We all want our customers to be happy. And we all know that happy customers is the only way to create long-term success in business.

The challenge is to understand how customers are feeling and how to create a customer experience that delivers more happiness and less frustration.

Traditional surveys aren’t up to the task. There are too many questions, and instead of action, they inspire paralysis by analysis.

Financial reports don’t help us either because they don’t distinguish between, as Fred Reichheld calls them, “good profits” and “bad profits.”

This book is all about asking a deceivingly simple question, calculating a score, and then taking actions to increase your score. It’s simple, and that’s why it works.

The Questions

The system that Reichheld suggests we use in order to increase customer loyalty is called the Net Promoter System (NPS for short).

The system has us ask 2 simple questions and then use the answers to create our path forward.

First, you ask the Ultimate Question, which is:

On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend us (or this product/services/brand) to a friend or a colleague?

Next, you ask a follow up question:

What is the primary reason for your score?

This open-ended follow up question allows you to hear the reasons for the score in the customers’ own words. This is important, because it avoids the leading questions that are often built into the customer loyalty questionnaires.

Promoters, Passives and Detractors

After asking the two questions, you sort people into different buckets based on their answers.

Promoters

These are people who answer the Ultimate Question with a 9 or a 10. This is a signal that their lives have been enriched by doing business with your company. They typically make repeat purchases and give your company a larger amount of their spending. They are also big word of mouth advocates and tell their friends, family and colleagues about their experience.

The goal is to have as many of our ycustomers be Promoters as possible.

Passives

These are people who answer the Ultimate Question with a 7 or 8. They are satisfied customers, but not loyal customers. The behaviours you see from these customers are different. They don’t make many referrals, and the ones they do make are not enthusiastic. If a competitor runs a promotion, they are likely to defect. These are customers that you cannot bank on sticking around for the long-run.

Detractors

These are people who answer the Ultimate Question with a 6 or below. They are the reverse of the Promoters – their lives have been diminished by doing business with your company. They are completely dissatisfied with their experience, and are likely to tell their networks about it.

Calculating Your Net Promoter Score

Now that you have figured out which buckets your customers go in, it’s time to calculate your Net Promoter Score.

This calculation is very simple as well:

NPS = % of Promoters – % of Detractors

Now that we’ve covered exactly what the Net Promoter Score is and how you calculate it, let’s move into why you should use this at your company, and exactly how to implement it.

Two reasons to use NPS

The Net Promoter System is based on two pillars – economic and inspirational.

The economic pillar of NPS is about understanding why it makes business sense to invest in customer loyalty, and what the ROI is on creating more Promoters and less Detractors. If you’re not the person in charge of the finances at your company, they you need to build the case for the person that is (usually the CFO). We’ll cover the economic reasons to use NPS in the next section.

The inspirational pillar of NPS is about helping enrich the lives of the people at our company by putting the Golden Rule at the centre of your decision making process. You’ve heard from many other books and experts how important it is to help your team find purpose in their work – treating others as you’d like to be treated as a customer is a concrete and tangible way to do it.

Good Profits/Bad Profits

At the core of the Net Promoter System is the idea that good profits are better than bad profits in the long-run, and that you use NPS to get more good, less bad.

Bad Profits

Bad profits are the ones earned at the expense of the customer. They are about extracting value from customers, not creating value for them.

They show up in many different ways. For instance, discounts, sales promotions and expensive advertising lead to a profit squeeze, which usually leads to more discounts, sales promotions and expensive advertising. It’s focussing on the wrong end of the problem.

The consequences of relying on bad profits are enormous. They blacken your reputation, and they alienate customers and employees alike. They make you vulnerable to competitors. The ultimately lead to poor results over the long run.

Good Profits

Good profits, you might have already guessed, come from loyal customers.

These customers ultimately lead to great business results over the long-run. A great example of this is Costco, which is the leader in customer-loyalty among warehouse retailers. They went from start-up to a Fortune 50 behemoth in less than 20 years. How much did they spend on advertising and marketing? Almost nothing. Their customers are so loyal that they have depended almost entirely on word-of-mouth for its growth.

Ok, but just exactly how much are they worth?

Now that we’ve covered the general, let’s get to the specific.

The first thing you need to do in order to calculate exactly what Promoters are worth to your business is to figure out the lifetime value of your average customer.

Then, using that as your baseline, calculate the same thing for your Promoters, Passives and Detractors. If you are like most businesses that go through this exercise, you’ll find that the lifetime value of Promoters are worth much more to your business.

There are many different business metrics at the heart of why this is the case:

• Retention rate. Promoters stick around at a much higher rate. This also means that your customer acquisition costs get spread out over a longer lifetime, leading to a more profitable customer.
• Pricing. Promoters are more often less price sensitive than Detractors, which means that you don’t have to rely on discounts and expensive marketing campaigns to keep them.
• Annual spend. Promoters spend more of their money with you than Detractors do.
• Cost efficiencies. You already know this intuitively – your best customers require the least amount of time and attention. So, they actually cost you less than Detractors.
• Word of mouth. Between 80 and 90 percent of positive referrals come from Promoters. So, each Promoter is not only worth the revenue you generate from them, but from the revenue you generate from the referrals they make as well. And to make this element even more powerful, the people that Promoters refer to your business are much more likely to become Promoters themselves than customers that find you through more traditional means.

Even if you can’t come up with an exact figure around how much a Promoter is worth to your business right now, you can estimate. For instance, a bank that worked with Bain & Co on a Net Promoter project calculated that they are worth $9,500 more to the bank than a Detractor.

On the other hand, Detractors are responsible for 80 to 90 percent of negative word of mouth, and actually have a negative lifetime value to your company. You can see why you’ll want to figure out how to not acquire these people as customers in the first place.

8 Principles of using NPS systematically

If you are going to use NPS in your business, there are principles that the authors have learned through hundreds of successful implementations that you’ll want to keep in mind.

Principle 1: Ask the Ultimate Question and very little else

The tendency of most people who use NPS for the first time is to want to add in a bunch of other questions. If you do want more detail after you’ve asked the Ultimate Question and one follow up (which should focus on having the person explain their score, or suggesting improvements that would make it more likely for people to recommend), the appropriate action to take is to call the person and interview them.

Principle 2: Choose a scale and stick to it

The 0 to 10 scale has many advantages. It makes intuitive sense, most of the world uses it as a measuring stick (like in hospitals asking about the severity of pain), and makes it easy to spot differences in behavior that a 5 point scale would miss.

Principle 3: Avoid confusion between internal scores (‘bottom-up’ or ‘touchpoint’) and external scores (top-down, benchmark or ‘relationship’ scores)

Larger companies will sometimes have external firms to do random checks on customers to produce a score that can be compared to customers of a competitor. These are helpful to benchmark performance, but they are not the same thing as the scores generated after specific touchpoints, like asking the question to a customer soon after they purchase. These touchpoint surveys are where you’ll find the “golden nuggets” you need to fine tune every part of your customer experience.

Principle 4: Aim for high response rates from the right customers

It would be great to get feedback from all customers, but you should begin with the customers you care most about – your core or target customers. The goal of NPS is to predict hard, quantifiable behaviors, and for that you need large sample sizes.

Reichheld suggests that if your survey response rates are lower than 65 percent, your process needs to improve. There’s a good reason for this. There’s a tendency for people to assume that the distribution of non-responders are like the distribution of responders. However, that’s not true. Non-responders tend to be Passives or Detractors, so a low response rate will almost certainly show you a better NPS score than you really have.

Principle 5: Report and discuss NPS data as frequently as financial data

If you only measure and discuss your NPS scores once a year or quarter, nobody will pay attention to it except when the results come out. Which, of course, is not often enough to drive the changes in your business that will lead to more Promoters and less Detractors.

Principle 6: Learn faster and improve accountability with more granular data

There are two things you can do to create more granular data.

First, you can ask the Ultimate Question at each customer touchpoint. For instance, after a customer service call, you could ask the customer whether or not you resolved their problem, and then the Ultimate Question.

Second, and this follows from the first, you should empower everybody in the organization that touches the customer to collect the information and insights needed to change internal behaviors.

Then, you hold the people responsible for those interactions for increasing the NPS associated with those interactions.

Principle 7: Audit to Ensure Accuracy and Freedom from Bias

The closer you get to granular insight and accountability, the more bias will creep into the process. Every time I buy a car I’m reminded by the sales rep that “anything less than a perfect score on the customer satisfaction report is considered a failure, so please give me a perfect score.”

There are multiple sources of bias which you’ll need to fight against, but one of the easiest ways to do that is to use a software system and email deployments to collect the information. If you do need to use phone calls to collect the information, using a third-party to do them will help eliminate most of the bias.

Principle 8: Validate that Scores Link to Behaviours

Finally, the entire purpose of the NPS process is to ensure that you are generating more of the customer loyalty-type behaviors that drive business results – referrals, buying more and taking time to give constructive feedback.

For instance, check in periodically with the people who are giving you 9s and 10s on the surveys to ensure that they are making referrals, buying more and giving you constructive feedback. If they are not, you need to revise the way you gather feedback until you are seeing the scores and expected behaviors lining up.

Closing the Loop with Customers

Finally, in order to make NPS a successful part of your daily workflow, you need to close the loop with customers.

Closing the loop on the front line level means following up with as many Detractors as possible to identify any insights you can gain into why their experience was a negative one. Once you’ve pooled the insights, make decisions on what needs to change and make sure all front-line staff are notified of those changes.

Closing the loop for mid-level managers means using feedback from your Promoters to create products and services that are designed to attract and retain more Promoters.

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Fierce Conversations

By: Susan Scott

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Far too often in business and life things are left unsaid.

We tell ourselves that we do it to preserve the peace in our relationships. But in reality, we are afraid of what might happen when we have those fierce conversations.

The predictable end result of those undiscussibless is the deterioration of the most relationships in our lives.

In Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott gives us 7 principles and 3 tools that we can use to get back into action, and finally have some real talk in the most important areas of our lives.

What Is a “Fierce” Conversation?

Before we get into the principles and tools, let’s define what a fierce conversation actually is.

Scott tells us that a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real. It’s about moral courage, making real requests, and taking action.

There are 4 purposes to having one – to (1) interrogate reality, (2) provoke learning, (3) tackle tough challenges, and (4) enrich relationships.

With that definition and goals in mind, let’s get started.

Principle #1: Master the Courage to Interrogate Reality

There’s no way around it – having fierce conversations takes courage.

But here’s the reality – most people want to hear the truth, even if they don’t like what they hear. We respond deeply to people who level with us.

Know that when you bring up an issue that everybody else has been thinking about but sweeping under the rug, most people will be relieved that somebody is finally dealing with it.

Question to consider: what reality at home or work most needs interrogating?

Principle 2: Come Out from Behind Yourself into the Conversation and Make It Real

As Scott points out, you cannot be the person you want to be, or have the life you want, unless your actions represent an authentic expression of who you really are.

“Being authentic” isn’t a personality trait, it’s a choice. And until you choose to show yourself to the people in your life, you will never have the conversations you want or need in order to get there.

Here’s a question to ask yourself to determine whether or not you are being authentic in your relationships:

Are you sharing your dark days with the people who are closest to you? We all have them.

Question to consider: Where and with who am I failing to show up authentically?

Principle 3: Be Here, Prepared to Be Nowhere Else

There is a basic human need for people to be known.

Joseph Pine articulates this perfectly in his book The Experience Economy:

The experience of being understood, versus interpreted, is so compelling, you can charge admission.

Knowing this, our goal in any conversation needs to be to help the other person feel understood and known.

Even better, you should set time aside specifically for that goal to be met. Not as an add-on to your performance or project review, but with the sole purpose of talking the other person about whatever they deem the most important.

You’ll do that by using a tool called Mineral Rights, which we’ll cover in the tools section of the summary.

Question to consider: Who would benefit from my undivided attention?

Principle 4: Tackle Your Toughest Challenge Today

One of the greatest gifts that fierce conversations will give you is the ability to tackle your toughest challenges. No longer will you punt them down the road to deal with later, when you “have more time.”

There’s a saying that a problem named is a problem solved.

So before you’ll be able to get any use out of the tools we’ll cover in the tools section, you need to have the ability to identify the issues that need to be resolved with them.

If you need to confront someone’s behavior, do not begin by asking that person how things are going or by complimenting him or her.

As Scott says, don’t surround your message with pillows. Come straight at the issue and get right to the point.

We’ll cover exactly how to do this in the tools section.

Question to consider: What conversation am I dodging?

Principle 5: Obey Your Instincts

Scott suggests that the most valuable things any of us can do is to find a way to say the things that can’t be said.

These are the thoughts that go running through our head all day while we are interacting with people.

For instance, your spouse tells you they are thinking one thing, but everything in your being tells you that they are thinking something else.

An easy way to bring this up is to say something like “Would you like to hear something I’m feeling right now?” Then, if they agree, share your thoughts.

It’s an ingenious way to get a real issue on the table without feeling awkward doing it.

Question to consider: What messages have been beckoning me?

Principle 6: Take Responsibility for Your Emotional Wake

As a leader, there are no trivial comments.

There are most certainly things you’ve said in the past that have had a devastating impact on someone who was looking for your approval without you even knowing it.

Sometimes even innocent questions like “how’s that project going” can send your team members scurrying off, reprioritizing work schedules, and starting fires without you knowing it.

The principle here is to take 100% responsibility for the impact your words have on other people, and consider your words thoughtfully before you speak.

Question to consider: To whom do I need to apologize? Who deserves my praise?

Principle 7: Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting

Scott jokes that CEOs are the most likely people to die with their mouth open.

Leaders are often taught to communicate until their people are sick of hearing the message. And then, communicate more.

But as Scott points out, the best leaders talk with people, not at them. Communication is not just about talking, it’s about listening too.

The best way to get another person to start talking is be silent. Most people are very uncomfortable with silence, and so will speak in order to break it.

Question to consider: What beneficial results might occur if I said less, listened more, and provided silence in which to think about what has (and has not) been said?

The Tools

Now that we’ve covered the principles, it’s time to move on to the tools you can use to put them into action.

Tool #1: Mineral Rights

One of the greatest gifts we can give to the people in our lives – at home and at work – is the purity of our attention.

Scott calls this tool Mineral Rights, which is a metaphor for drilling deep below the surface.

When you first bring this up, you and the person you want to meet with might feel awkward. To help ease the tension, here’s a script you can use to set up the meeting.

Rewrite it in your own words if that makes you feel more comfortable.

“When we meet tomorrow, I want to explore with you whatever you feel most deserves our attention, so I will begin our conversation by asking, “What is the most important thing you and I should be talking about?” I will rely on you to tell me. If the thought of bringing up an issue makes you anxious, that’s a signal you need to bring it up. I am not going to preempt your agenda with my own. If I need to talk with you about something else, I’ll tag it onto the end or plan another conversation with you.”

To get greater clarity on the things that are on the mind of the people who are most important to you (you can do this with yourself, too), ask your partner to take the following steps.

Step 1: Have them identify their most pressing issue.

Step 2: Ask them to clarify the issue. What’s going on? How long has it been an issue?

Step 3: Ask them to determine the current impact. How is it impacting them? What results are being produced (or not) because of it? How is it impacting others? What emotions are they feeling about the issue?

Step 4: Ask them to determine the future implications. If nothing changes, what might happen? What’s at stake here for them? For others? When they consider those possibilities, what emotions come up?

Step 5: Have them examine their personal contribution to this issue.

Step 6: Have them describe the ideal outcome. What difference will having the issue resolved make? What results will they enjoy? What are their emotions when they imagine the ideal outcome?

Step 7: Have them commit to action. What is the most potent step they could take to move this issue toward resolution? What’s getting in their way from doing it? When will they take the first step?

Because having a conversation this deep is new for most people, there are some common mistakes that might show up. Try to avoid them.

Doing most of the talking. Don’t do that.

Taking the problem away from someone. Some people are very skilled at handing back problems. Don’t let that happen.

Not inquiring about feelings. If you don’t check in with their emotions, nothing much will change. People make decisions to change emotionally, not rationally.

Delivering unclear messages, unclear coaching, and unclear instructions. Your goal should be to deliver no coaching or messages because you are trying to get them to solve the problem for themselves. But if you absolutely must, do it clearly and succinctly.

Canceling the meeting. Don’t do it.

Allowing interruptions. Turn off everything that might distract you from the conversation. Close your door, put away your phone, and shut down your computer. Whatever you need to do.

Running out of time. Every Mineral Rights conversation concludes with clarity about the next most important step. If that next step needs to be another conversation, schedule it.

Assuming your one-to-ones are effective.

Tool #2: Preparing an Issue For Discussion

Sometimes there are issues that you’ll want to resolve as a group, or where you need the input of the group to resolve it.

Preparing for these types of meetings in the following way allows you to accurately and clearly state the issue, and makes good use of everybody’s time.

Even better, put this into a document that you can distribute before the meeting so people can come prepared.

Step 1: State the issue.

Get to the heart of the problem in no more than one or two sentences. Is it a concern, challenge, opportunity or recurring problem that is becoming more troublesome?

Step 2: Communicate the significance

You job here is to determine what’s at stake. Is it a gain/loss in revenue? Gaining/losing a new customer? Gaining/losing an employee?

Step 3: Communicate your ideal outcome

What specific results do you want?

Step 4: Give relevant background information

Using bullet points, give the information that you feel will be helpful for the group considering the resolution of the issue. How, when and why the issue began is a good place to start.

Step 5: Tell them what you have done up to this point…

Tell them what you’ve done so far, and what options you are considering.

Step 6: Tell them what help you are looking for

Tell them the result you are looking for. For instance, are you looking for alternative solutions because you don’t like the ones you’ve come up with? Or are you hoping they’ll give you feedback on what you plan on doing?

Tool #3: The Confrontation Model

Finally, we end with the confrontation tool, which will allow you to confront tough issues with courage, compassion, and skill.

The best part about this tool is that you’ll find that you are finally having these conversations because you have a strategy for them.

Part I : The Opening Statement

The first sixty seconds are crucial to a confrontational conversation. That’s why it’s critical that you script it beforehand, and practice saying it out loud.

Here’s what you should include:

Name the issue. If there is more than one, ask yourself what’s at the core of all of them.

Select a specific example that illustrates the behavior or situation you want to change. Be specific and succinct. If you don’t do this, the conversation will have no teeth.

Describe your emotions about this issue. Telling the other person how you are feeling creates intimacy and is disarming.

Clarify what is at stake. It’s critical that the other person understands why this issue is important. Scott suggests that we use the words “at stake”, and that we speak calmly and quietly – even if we are angry.

Identify your contribution to this problem. You may realize, for instance, that your contribution to the problem is not communicating clear expectations from the outset of the relationship or project.

Indicate your wish to resolve the issue. You are not firing or breaking up with anybody – it’s important that they hear you say that.

Invite your partner to respond. You want to be clear that you want to understand the issue from their point of view. This is your invitation for them to join the conversation.

Part II: Interaction:

This is a conversation, so the next step is to get a clear understanding of their side of the story.

1. Inquire into your partner’s views. When it’s appropriate, paraphrase their words so you are clear on what they are trying to communicate. Make sure your partner knows that you fully understand and acknowledge his or her position and interests.

Part III: Resolution

Finally, the goal of these conversations is to come to a resolution.

Where are we now? Ask whether there is anything that has been left unsaid, and cover what is needed for resolution.

Make a new agreement and determine how you will hold each other responsible for keeping it.

Conclusion

The Upside of Stress

By: Kelly McGonigal

Periodically, I share a favorite book review from Readitfor.me.

There is never enough time to read all the latest books – this tool is a great way to learn and to stay on top of the latest topics and new ideas.

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Here is a summary of the Book
The Upside of Stress
 by Kelly McGonigal

Book Review by Readitfor.me

As it turns out, whether or not stress is harmful has a lot to do with how you view it.

Read on to learn how to change your mindset about stress.

Stress is bad for you, right?

As Kelly McGonigal tells us in this fascinating book, the research that scientists have done on stress tell a slightly different story.

As it turns out, whether or not stress is harmful has a lot to do with how you view it.

Consider the following research findings comparing people who view stress as harmful to people who view stress an enhancing.

People who believe stress is enhancing are less depressed and more satisfied with their lives than people who view stress as harmful. They have more energy and less health issues. They are more productive at work and are happier doing it. They also have a greater confidence in their ability to cope with challenges, and even find meaning in difficult circumstances.

That’s a pretty long list of benefits just for changing your mind about what stress means to you.

Join us for the next 12 minutes as we explore what stress actually is, and how you can completely change your relationship with it.

You might even learn how to harness the stress in your life to create a more meaningful, fulfilling life.

Let’s get started.

What is stress?

We first need to start with an understanding of what stress actually is. When you are feeling stress, your body releases cortisol and adrenaline.

From an evolutionary perspective, this stress response is designed to help you. But – like stress in general – it is more feared than appreciated. We’ve come to associate stress as toxic a state which we should try to minimize as much as possible.

But, as we’ll describe as we work our way through this book, your stress response is a resource to rely on rather than an enemy to eliminate.

How stress got a bad name

We won’t spend much time on this section. Basically, a scientist by the name of Hans Selye did a lot of stress research in the 1930s and 40s that showed that stress caused negative physical reactions.

He became known as the Grandfather of Stress, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize ten times, and devoted his life to spreading the word about his research, leading us all to believe that stress is toxic.

The problem is that all of his research was performed on rats, and in situations that bear little resemblance to everyday human stress.

This is what a typical day looked like for one of Selye’s lab rats. You’d start off with unpredictable, uncontrollable shocks. Then you’d get thrown in a bucket of water and forced to swim until you started to drown. Then, finally, you’d get put into an overcrowded cage with other rats where you would fight over an inadequate supply of food.

That, McGonigal rightly points out, isn’t stress – that’s the Hunger Games for rodents.

Nonetheless, Selye made the leap from rats to humans, and from torture to every day stress, and voila – we all developed a negative view about stress.

So now you have a negative mindset about stress

In recent surveys, the American Psychological Association has found that most people in America perceive their personal levels of stress as unhealthy.

These people believe that experiencing stress:

• depletes their health and vitality
• debilitates their performance and productivity
• inhibits their learning and growth
• is negative and should be avoided.

People who have this mindset about stress are much more likely to say that they cope with stress by trying to avoid it. They are more likely to:

• Try to distract themselves from the cause of the stress instead of dealing with it.
• Focus on getting rid of their feelings of stress instead of taking steps to address its source.
• Turn to alcohol or other substances or addiction to escape the stress.
• Withdraw their energy and attention from whatever relationship, role or goal is causing the stress.

Obviously, this reinforces the belief that stress is bad and should be avoided at all costs.

But as we turn our attention towards the benefits of embracing stress, we’ll find a much different story emerges.

Changing from a negative mindset to a positive one

As it turns out, you have a choice about how you respond to stress. Victor Frankl described this as the space between stimulus and response.

A minority of people in the general population believe that stress enhances their lives. These people believe that experiencing stress:

• enhances their performance and productivity
• improves their health and vitality
• facilitates their learning and growth
• is positive and should be utilized.

Where people with a negative mindset towards stress try to cope with stress, people with a positive mindset towards stress try to use it to their advantage. They are much more likely to:

• Accept the fact that the stressful event has occurred and is real.
• Plan a strategy for dealing with the source of stress.
• Seek information, help, or advice.
• Take steps to overcome, remove, or change the source of stress.
• Try to make the best of the situation by viewing it in a more positive way or by using it as an opportunity to grow.

So, just by creating a positive mindset about stress, you can turn self-doubt into confidence, fear into courage, and isolation into connection.

All without getting rid of the stress.

Which begs the question, how do you change your mind about stress?

The insight from the research is that you get what you expect. If you expect stress to be a negative experience, that’s exactly what you will get. If you expect it to be a positive experience, that’s exactly what you’ll get.

There is evidence for this in a lot of different areas of your life. For instance, how you think about getting older has some serious consequences for you later in life. People who have a positive view of aging add an average of 8 years to their life, and have an 80% lower risk of a heart attack.

Your mindset not only helps you in the moment, but also influences you to make better decisions in the future, leading to better outcomes. It’s as though mindset matters twice.

Now let’s turn our attention to the three different ways that your new positive mindset about stress will help you lead a more productive and fulfilling life.

Stress helps you engage

In this section we’ll focus on how you can transform a threat into a challenge.

Our common reaction to stress is to avoid it, and the most common advice you get when do deal with stress in the moment is to “calm down.” Basically, you should find a way to get rid of the stress.

However, viewing the stress response as a resource can transform the physiology of fear into the biology of courage. The stress response does a number of things that will help you perform well under pressure.

It focuses your attention, heightens your senses, increases your motivation, and mobilizes energy. This is true even when the stress doesn’t feel helpful, which is the case when people experience anxiety.

When you start to feel your heart pounding or your breath quickening, remember that this is your body’s way of trying to give you more energy. When you start to feel tension in your body, remember that the stress response gives you access to your strength. Are your palms sweaty? Good, that means you are close to something that you want. Do you have butterflies in your stomach? Embrace them – it’s your guts way of saying that this is something that matters.

If you take the traditional advice and try to calm down, you are preventing yourself from accessing the energy, strength and drive that the stress gives you. So, instead of trying to take a deep breathe to try and calm down, take a deep breath and sense the energy that’s available to you.

Then, use it. Ask yourself what action you can take that is consistent with your goal in this moment.

Connect: How tending and befriending transforms stress

In this section we’ll focus on how you can activate your “tend-and-befriend” response to better deal with stress.

From an evolutionary perspective, we have this “tend-and-befriend” response to make sure we protect our offspring. Rather than get paralyzed with fear (and let our offspring get eaten by that lion), we spring into action.

It does so because it increases activity in three systems in your brain.

First, it activates the social caregiving system, which is regulated by oxytocin. When this happens you feel more empathy, connection and trust.

Second, it activates the reward system, which releases the neurotransmitter dopamine. When this happens you feel more optimistic about your ability to do something meaningful, and it primes your brain for physical action, ensuring that you don’t freeze under pressure.

And third, it activates the attunement system, which releases to neurotransmitter serotonin. When this happens, your perception, intuition and self-control are all enhanced to ensure that the actions you take have the biggest positive impact.

In other words, as McGonigal points out, the tend-and-befriend response makes you social, brave and smart. Which is a much better response than trying to avoid dealing with whatever is causing you stress.

So, when you are feeling overwhelmed, look for opportunities to do something for somebody else that goes beyond your regular responsibilities.

Fair warning – your brain is going to tell you that you don’t have the time or energy to do it. But that’s exactly why you should. The good news is that small gestures work just as well as grand gestures to activate this response, so just get into action rather than waiting for the perfect moment to do something big.

Grow: how adversity makes you stronger

In this last section we’ll focus on how stress can actually help you learn and grow.

As McGonigal points out, the idea that we grow through adversity is not new. It’s embodied in the teachings of every major religion.

The science shows that plenty good can come from stressful or traumatic experiences. Here is a partial list of some of the positive changes that are commonly reported in cases of hardship, loss or trauma:

• A sense of personal strength;
• Increased appreciation for life;
• Spiritual growth;
• Enhanced social connections and relationships with others;
• Identifying new possibilities and life directions.

The important part, McGonigal explains, is that the good that comes from difficult experiences isn’t from the event itself – it comes from you.

What it requires is for you to look back on the difficult experiences from your past, and to reflect on the positive changes that came from them. Then, when you are faced with future stressful situations, you’ll be able to recall how you were able to overcome them in the past to help you overcome them in the moment.

This creates a growth-mindset towards adversity.

Conclusion

Periodically, I share a favorite book review from Readitfor.me.

There is never enough time to read all the latest books – this tool is a great way to learn and to stay on top of the latest topics and new ideas.

The Readitfor.me tool has grown into a great resource for both personal and team growth, offering book summaries, micro courses and master classes. Check out this link: Readitfor.me. See how these tools can help build you personal and Team Strength.

Here is a summary of the Book
The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin.

There are many arguments for having a place for everything and keeping everything in its place.

Read on to learn how to use your mind – the most powerful tool you have – to focus on the work that’s most important to your success.

The Organized Mind 

by Daniel Levitin

There’s an old saying that problems arrive at your office door on two feet. Would your business be stronger and potentially grow faster if solutions, rather than problems, routinely arrived at your door? The answer is almost certainly yes. Plus, one of the biggest factors limiting value in many companies is management teams that can’t or won’t make important decisions without the owner. While there are undoubtedly strategic problems or decisions that only the owner/CEO can resolve, those should be the exception rather than the rule. A healthy organization cannot depend on owners to handle day-to-day, week-to-week problems, and challenges. Eventually, this dependency will slow your company’s growth. Worse, reliance on owners also makes it harder if not impossible to achieve successful exits.

Sometimes the root cause is employees who lack the experience and knowledge to make decisions and solve problems. Better hiring and training solves that issue. However, often the underlying cause is employees expecting owners to provide most if not all the solutions. (Ask yourself—are your employees avoiding making decisions and solving problems because of lack of skill or lack of will?) If your employees are just expecting you to make the decisions and solve the problems, then it’s time to change the environment. There are four simple, easy-to-learn questions that you can employ in discussions with your employees to facilitate this change.

The Four Questions

Imagine that an employee brings you a problem and nothing else. This habit means he or she expects you to solve the problem. If the problem is a crisis or highly time-sensitive, then address it and later debrief the situation with the employee. However, most issues are not so severe nor so immediate, therefore, once the problem and its two feet are in front of you, ask the first question:

QUESTION 1:
“(Employee Name), how do you recommend we resolve this?”

The first few times you pose this question, your people probably will not have a recommended solution; they are accustomed to you handling these matters. Whenever possible, send them away with instructions to come back by a specific deadline with a proposed solution. Do not accept responsibility for solving the issue or challenge, as that perpetuates a lack of accountability and ownership of the issue at hand. Soon, your higher performers will start providing recommended solutions when introducing problems. They will learn that not only do you require it but also that they relish the opportunity to contribute. Other employees may noticeably struggle with doing what you ask of them. Both responses reveal essential information about each employee’s skills, training, and confidence levels.

Once your people start offering recommended solutions, you will have to evaluate the merits of their ideas. Sometimes their recommendations will be suitable and effective, occasionally even better than whatever your solution might have been. In those cases, you’ve uncovered in that employee a great resource to tap into going forward. Other times, the proposed solution will be unsound or ineffective. If this occurs, you and your company still benefit because you have gained valuable insight into this person’s need for further training and development.

Once an employee has provided a recommended solution, proceed to the second question.

QUESTION 2:
“(Employee Name), what process did you follow to come up with your recommendation?”

Now that your team is proposing solutions introduce the second question. This question is just as important as the first because it reveals how thoroughly your employee has examined, researched, and evaluated the issue at hand. Did the employee shoot from the hip, or did the person exhibit a capacity for higher analysis and thinking? Of the four questions, the first question only tells you whether or not the employee can solve one particular issue. This second question tells you how well that employee can address multiple issues, both present, and future.

If the person’s answer indicates a well-thought process and approach, praise and encourage this person to keep at it. Offer any coaching ideas you may have. If this person’s response indicates a limited or flawed process, address that in the employee’s development and training going forward.

QUESTION 3:
“(Employee Name), I am curious—why did you bring this matter to me?”

The third question has the most potential to surprise you. With time, you likely will hear all kinds of answers, any of which can reveal much about this person’s perspective of himself or herself, of you, and about your organization. For example, you may hear something like, “Well, you’ve always handled these matters before…” If that is the answer, then you have just created an opportunity to bring desired change into the business. Alternatively, you may hear something like, “Well, I was not sure who else to bring this to…” Such a response uncovers a need for greater organizational clarity around roles and responsibilities. Do not be surprised if you even hear something like, “Well, I know I am supposed to bring this matter to (Joe), but frankly (Joe) just messes these things up, so I am bringing it to you instead…” Answers to this question can be painful but offer valuable insight into potentially deep-seated issues.

Note that it is important you preface your query with “I am curious…” or a similar phrase. It softens the question. You don’t want to come across as difficult to approach or closed off to your team’s needs.

QUESTION 4:
“(Employee Name), going forward, who do you feel should have the authority to handle this issue/situation/area?”

The fourth and final question opens the door for your people to tell you how they think your organization should be structured and how responsibilities should be delegated. There are only four possible answers. Each answer reveals something important about this person and your team. The four possible answers are:

• The employee asks for future authority to handle this matter
• The employee says you should continue to handle this issue
• The employee names somebody else in the organization, presumably because that person is most qualified in the employee’s eyes
• The employee says he or she does not know

Just like with the previous three questions, the employee’s answer gives insight into how the employee perceives the organization and what aspirations he or she has going forward. Your higher performing people who are eager to advance will likely nominate themselves (response A) to handle this issue and others like it in the future. You must then evaluate whether or not that person is ready for such responsibilities. How that employee has answered the three prior questions will help you make this decision. If he or she is ready for this responsibility, award it to them. Congratulations—you have just eliminated one source of problems coming to you on two feet. If he or she feels ready to handle the responsibility, but you disagree, then this event has opened the way for a frank discussion with this person about what he or she needs to do to earn the desired level of responsibility.

Employees who are unwilling or believe they are unready to handle this responsibility will typically answer the fourth question with response B (you should continue to be responsible) or response C (they nominate a co-worker.) The employee may be right, and if so move forward with their answer. Even in this situation, you and the organization have benefited from the four-question process because you’re now in clear and strong alignment with this employee on this issue. In other situations, you may disagree—you may see that this person could and should take on this responsibility. If that is the case, you now have a clear opportunity to coach the person and build up his or her skills and/or confidence in this area.

Lastly, if the employee has responded to the fourth question with the uncertainty of response D (he or she does not know), you may wish to determine if his or her answer is motivated by disinterest, inexperience, or hesitation to provide an opinion. The ambiguity of response D offers yet another opportunity to discuss the employee’s perceptions of your company and his or her role within it.

Conclusion

We recommend you print the four questions on a laminated card and discreetly place that card on your desk. Until you know the four questions from memory, the card will serve as your cheat sheet when a problem walks into your office. Within a few short months, you may see your culture and team change from one that brings you problems to one that brings solutions. Make your cheat sheet and start asking the four questions today.

At NAVIX, we know that a company is only as good as its leaders. Look at a company with sustained high performance, and you will find an effective leadership team that can devise and implement solutions, not just deliver problems. These four simple questions are but one tool we’ve developed to help you build a strong leadership team.

Contact us to discuss your exit goals and see how we can help you build a team that delivers them.

“The only meaningful measure of a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.”

Each month I share a favorite book review from Readitfor.me.

There is never enough time to read all the latest books – this tool is a great way to learn and to stay on top of the latest topics and new ideas.

If you are like my clients, you work hard learning how to grow your company or organization. You invest the time and money to improve your team for better results and increased value.

How successful is your team? Are you leading your team to success?

Read on.

Extreme Ownership

by Jocko Willink Leif Babin

Readitfor.me   Review:

“So, there I was.…”

According to the authors of Extreme Ownership, this is how every story told by a Navy SEAL starts off.

“So there I was, pinned down by heavy fire, with only two rounds left in my rifle”. You know, the type of stories that probably would have turned out differently if you or I were the protagonist.

So here I am, trying to boil down some of the best leadership advice I’ve read in a long time into something you can read over your morning coffee. (Luckily, this is about as difficult as things get over here).

As Jocko Willink and Leif Babin tell us, “The only meaningful measure of a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.” So get ready to take a good hard look at yourself as a leader, and prepare to start thinking differently about how you control your destiny.

Principle #1: Extreme Ownership

Principle #2: There are no bad teams, only bad leaders

Principle #3: You have to believe if you want to win

Principle #4: Check your ego

Principle #5: Cover and Move.

Principle #6: Keep things simple

Principle #7: Leaders need to prioritize and execute.

Principle #8: Decentralized Command

“A great organization must not only accommodate the fact that each employee is different, it must capitalist on this difference”. So decrees Markus Buckingham co-author of “First, Break all the Rules”.

Book Review:

Now, Discover Your Strengths

by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.

Together with his co-author Donald O Clifton, he claims that rather than focus on addressing the weaknesses of our teams, we need to exploit their talents and turn them into strengths that we can exploit. Here’s their reasons behind this conviction.

Lesson #1: The Structure of Strength

Only 20% of employees working in large organizations feel their strengths are being utilized every day. Even more concerning is that, the longer they stay with a company the more entrenched this feeling becomes. This goes back to what Buckingham stated in his earlier book. Organizations are built on two false premises:

We can all become competent in anything, and our growth potential is our biggest weakness.

Strengths = Talent + knowledge + skill
 
Although it’s possible to develop strength without full knowledge or skill,its never possible to fully possess a strength without talent.

If you know me, then you know how important I think it is for people to know their “Why”. This is the book that started me on that journey. I am happy to share this book summary with you:
 

Have you ever wondered how great leaders become great? What is the “secret sauce” they have that makes them stand-out and command the attention and respect of thousands, no, millions of followers? What is it that great business leaders have that creates the Midas touch and turns everything into gold?

This review shares the secrets of how great leaders inspire everyone to take action and with the help of Simon Sinek, understand why we should “Start with WHY”.

People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

Those are the 12 words Steve Cunningham, Readitfor.me Founder, chose to summarize Simon Sinek’s Start With Why (click here to read/listen to or watch the full summary you’ll need to create a free account first).

Steve goes on to share:

The message of this book is easy to understand, and incredibly difficult to put into practice. And I don’t know that it’s something you can ever “get right”.
 
I’ve struggled with this question for a long time. I’ve explored both ends of the spectrum, from “we do business book summaries” to “we’re transforming lives”, and everything in between.
 
To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever be done struggling with that question. But I know this – our business is better off for the journey, and I think yours will be too.
 

Here’s a quote from the summary:

At some point today or tomorrow, close your door for 10 minutes, grab a blank piece of paper, and see if you can answer those questions. And if you feel inspired, hit reply on this email and share your why with me. I’d love to hear from you.

Do you allow yourself to know and feel what excites you, what motivates you? Can you articulate it? Do the people in your organization know it? How about your customers?

Good companies and organizations are led by authentic people. They know who they are. They know their purpose (their “why”), their talents, their passions, their values, their strengths and weaknesses. Authentic leadership commands attention, inspires people, wins their trust and makes followers want to work with them.

What is your WHY?

You can see a TED Talk clip of Simon Sinek: What is Your WHY?

When you know your WHY- you get better results.

Tim Kinane

Call 772-210-4499  or email to set up a time to talk about tools and strategies to lead to better results.

Please share this summary with a friend/colleague. If you want know more, you can read the full summary of this book here today (you’ll need to create a free account first):  https://readitfor.me/timothy-kinane

The emergence of .com job-search resources has helped create a fluid workforce capable of constantly searching for that next perfect opportunity.  According to the International Management Association, average churn rates have jumped by more than 14 percent in just the last decade– and that number continues to climb.  Employers can combat this trend– while saving both time and money– enlisting online assessments to accurately pre-qualify new job applicants.

Simply put, quality, science-supported online assessments can ensure that a company minimizes employee related expenses while optimizing its greatest potential resource– human performance.

Want to improve your hiring numbers and reduce the cost? Get started now on your Team Strength- call 772-210-4499 or email for more information or to set up and an account.

Click here to view Hiring and Selection Data and source information.

Optimizing your business’s greatest potential resource– human performance.

A success story by Dr. Jack Mitchell

Mike K was spending thousands and thousands of dollars in his Call- Center business due to turnover. It seemed that as soon as he hired someone, someone else left. The cost of recruiting, spending time reading resumes, interviewing, plus the loss of someone actually “in the seat” making calls was costing him a small fortune.

After a consultation with Mike, together we put into place a custom process using assessments and our Team Strength Chart. These tools helped Mike to identify the “ideal” Profile for him to use when hiring. The next step in the process was to train his managers and supervisors how best to supervise their staff.

The Call-center business usually requires someone who can do repetitive work day in and day out. It takes a special personality to perform in such a manner. With the new custom assessment program, Mike and his team were able to stop the turnover rate caused by hiring people who needed a different type of job. Now they can identity the correct applicants, minimizing employee related expenses while optimizing the company’s greatest potential resource– human performance.

Mike’s new plan included the next critical step of training management personnel. Getting the most out of these types of associates requires a different management style than other types of personality styles. (In our language, for example, managing a High S is quite different from managing a Low S.) This plan puts in place the most effective training customized to the correct audience.

Mike’s turnover cost significantly decreased, and his bottom-line significantly improved having the right people in the right job with the right management style being employed.

“Working with PPI and their Team Strength Chart and assessment tools have definitely helped me understand the value of personality assessments, and know how best to manage different personality styles within my company.”
Thank you 
Mike K. West Palm Beach, Fl

Today, we have the scientific tools and experience to really help business owners succeed.

Contact us to learn how you can minimizes employee related expenses while optimizing your company’s greatest potential resource.

If you are having any turnover issue, contact PPI at 772 210 4499, www.ppidisc.com or email for more information or to set up an account.

Today I read a summary of the book Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan.

What would your life be like if you could come to work every day and worked on something that lit a fire in your heart? What if everybody you worked with had the same desire and passion as you? What if the work you did, day in and day out, had an impact not only in your workplace, but left a proverbial dent in the universe?

A tribe is nothing new, every organization has tribes. Logan explores how a tribe is at a specific level based on how the people in the tribe interact with one another. There are 5 stages of tribes.

Which stage is your tribe at?

Stage 1  Tribes, which account for 2% of the world’s corporate tribes, is a group of people who think that “life sucks”.

Stage 2  Tribes, which account for 25% of the world’s corporate tribes, is a group of people who think that “my life sucks”, and in particular, because I have to be at work with you idiots.

Stage 3 Tribes, which account for 49% of the world’s corporate tribes, is a group of people who walk around thinking – and sometimes saying – “I’m great”. These people and tribes have a lot of energy, but none of it being directed to a common goal.

Stage 4 Tribes, which account 22% of the world’s corporate tribes, is a group of people united by the language like “We are great, and they are not”.

Stage 5 Lastly, stage 5 tribes, which account for 2% of the world’s corporate tribes, is a group of people united by a vision of changing the world, where there is no talk of competition, only of changing the world.

The first step, as the authors notes, is always to understand which stage your tribe is in, because their experience shows that you’ll only be successful by moving up the ladder one stage at a time.

If you want know more, you can read a summary of this book here today (you’ll need to create a free account first):  https://readitfor.me/timothy-kinane

Which stage would you like your tribe to be at?

Call 772-210-4499  or email to set up a time to talk about tools and strategies to lead your tribe.