entreQuest has worked alongside a lot of CEO's, Presidents, COO's, and many a manager to grow their companies. After all, it's what we do day in and day out.
So add up all those days over the years and we've learned a considerable amount about best practices for bettering a business. One of these lessons is that providing your clients with a remarkable experience begins with providing your employees with a remarkable experience. Investing in the relationships with your company's people spawns investments in their relationships with your company's clients. Plus, efforts from the top are the most influential when setting the tone of a satisfying work environment.
Without further adieu, here are five of eQ's favorite ideas for leaders to personally promote the growth of their organizations by reinvesting in their relationships with their team members.
1. Thank-You Notes – How do you feel when you get a handwritten letter with something meaningful it? It’s touching to say the least. When it comes from the leader of the company you work for, it’s all the more special. Documenting your thoughts to a member of your staff in your own penmanship magnifies your appreciation. Thank-you notes needn’t be longer than three sentences. One simple statement recognizing an action or attitude that represents the mission and values of your company fosters a sound sense of mutual loyalty to your team.
2. Emo Emails – No, this is not Internet updates about teenage punk rock bands. These are quick emails designed to motivate on an emotional level. As a leader, you likely find quotes from figureheads or hear stories about triumphs that you automatically connect to your career and your aspirations for both personal and organizational growth. Share what piece of inspiration you discovered with your team in a quick, casual email that relates it to the mission you are all trying to achieve together.
3. Community Organizing – It worked for Obama’s career growth, right? Getting involved in your community outside your direct line of business demonstrates the seriousness of your corporate mission to your team, your clients, and all other neighbors in your network. Events can be as large as sending a delegation from your staff to a distant area in the world that is in great need of volunteers but they can also be just as significant on the small scale of instituting a give-back day where your team carries out work through a local non-profit. You can also present opportunities for team members to give their time, talent, or financial contributions to programs and charities that match the mantra of your organization. Your business will get back what it gives and then some.
4. Decentralize the Goal – Where many a neon Post-It Note all over your team members’ desks might work well as small reminders for the individual, one bigger message posted in a communal area can serve as a vivid reminder for the whole team. Have a bold visual with symbolism unique to your company created to constantly broadcast your company’s progress towards its growth goals. Hearing about the numbers during a meeting or scanning them on a spreadsheet might bring your team up to speed, but facing an actual measurement showing the gap between where your revenue is and where it needs to ultimately be might speed them up. If you’re all in it together to make a goal, field that goal in a good position.
5. Conduct Crash Courses – Instituting a professional training program works well for improving the team’s performance in the main demands of their daily jobs but what about the little details your staff demonstrates deficiencies in? As a leader, you may have noticed or you may have been informed about certain words that everyone spells differently. Perhaps there is a political or economical concept that is highly important to your business’ industry but is hard for many people to understand. There might be an operational procedure or an office environment issue requiring further explanation for better efficiency. Whatever issue may require discussion, find five minutes to call your team together in a casual way and talk to them in your own words about it. Ensure them that you will follow-up with a brief list of notes so that they can focus on listening as you speak without the distraction of having to jot everything down. Personally taking the lead on spreading small solutions creates big results in levels of trust, unity among the team, and growth as a business.
Joe Mechlinski is the President of entreQuest and has partnered with countless leaders to effectively improve their team's performance, their clients' experience, and their company's profits.
