Attention!

It was December 20 and the VP of Marketing of an e-commerce business was staring blankly at a recent post on Yelp. The post condemned the e-commerce company, claiming their customer service was “abysmal” and their products “far below par”. After several nearly sleepless nights and a tired phone call to the PR person to see what they could do about it, they resolved to carry on without doing anything about it. But the post still haunted her.

Was their decision correct? How hard should they have tried to have the post removed, or please the displeased customer?

Negative press is never easy to take. For any business owner, it can feel like a personal jab rather than a dispassionate discussion of your business. One CEO was so distraught over some negative press about her company that she spent six nights manning the phones in customer service personally. That’s heroic.

Let’s look at the other side of this coin, shall we? To do business, we must garner attention. Yes, that’s right, we have to get others to see us, to look at us, to talk to us, to exchange money and services or goods with us. Communication is the bottom line. And that takes getting the public’s attention. Without attention, our businesses wither and die.

So, if we get negative attention, is that so bad? It certainly FEELS bad. It dampens our spirits. It kills our restful nights. That is actually what it is supposed to do. Remember Robert Kennedy’s quote: ‎"One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time." That’s right. One-fifth. Twenty percent. One out of five. Ok, you get it. It’s a large percentage. If you have five people in your office, at least one of them will never like what you are doing at any given time. It’s time to face the facts and grow up a bit. Not everyone will like us all the time!

Now let’s truly reverse this look and decide that criticism is a GOOD thing. Yes. A GOOD THING. Why? Because it means you are getting enough attention that someone is spending their valuable time to criticize you. It means you are impinging on your market. Truthfully, most of our businesses are never known at all, right? We spend our days WISHING for our articles to go viral, for our products to create massive demand. If you truly want that, start facing up to the hard truth that you will have to be ready to receive some criticism. As Grant Cardone (The Turnaround King) says, “When you start taking the right amount of action and therefore creating success, criticism is often not far behind. Receiving criticism is a surefire sign that you are well on your way.” Ask any major celebrity when he started receiving criticism in full force. It is quite likely right around the time he hit it big.

Back to our VP of Marketing. What if, instead of worrying about the criticism, she marketed so hard that she got 10 positive comments for every one negative one? What if she got so many customers that the one naysayer was drowned in a sea of excitement? What if you did the same?

To overcome criticism, don’t get stuck on it. Just expand above and beyond it. Go big. Speak more. Speak louder. Sell more! And when you get a public criticism, forward it to me so I can congratulate you for getting enough attention. Here's to criticism!

Is He Coachable?

We have all worked with the guy we avoid at company Christmas parties and functions, the one who gossips about everyone, or steals others’ ideas and passes them off as his own and pretends he doesn’t. As he exits his yearly performance review, we watch carefully, hoping he has somehow come out a changed man. Over and over, we are disappointed. Why is that?

Let’s start with some basic data about leadership development. A person develops certain habits or patterns that he or she thinks help him to survive in the workplace. Those patterns are engrained early on because at some point, they worked.

Example: Joe steals some presentation data from a co-worker and gives the best presentation of his life. He gets promoted as a result. Now, he has found a reason to keep stealing data, hasn’t he? Four or five jobs later, he is still stealing others’ ideas even though it no longer works and others shun him. This is an ethical problem for him.

What can we do for this workplace problem child? How can we help him?

Remember this: In the absence of ethical behavior, no leadership development can be done. Ethical problems shut off the ability to learn. So if you have your eye on someone who “just doesn’t get it” or never changes, you have your eye on someone who needs an ethics tune-up. He just is not coachable yet.

If we drew a pyramid of important items necessary to career development, it would have a base labeled "ethics" and the upper part of the pyramid would contain all the various parts of leadership development.

A strong ethical foundation is necessary to truly develop a leader. A person who has to lead others cannot do so unless he has others’ best interests in mind. A person who has ethical trouble thinks only about himself and pits himself against everyone else. The easiest way to spot a person with ethics problems is that he chooses himself over everyone else. It’s what you are really complaining about when you complain he “doesn’t get it”.

The good news is that ethical troubles can be fixed! Please do not waste your time trying to develop a leader when his ethics are all a mess, though. Handle the ethical problems first.

Tips for handling ethical problems:

1. Don't go it alone. If you approach someone complaining about his self-centered attitude, you will end up on the wrong end of the battle and you could be the one in trouble. Instead, start documenting the problem behavior with very specific examples. Write the examples down and submit them to your HR person. If you do not have an HR person, see the article entitled "The Real Purpose of HR" (in my section on Biznik) and give a copy to the person in charge of hiring.

2. Keep help in mind. Remember that a person with ethical problems is going to be very defensive, so tread lightly and keep your intentions good. Expect to be seen as a troublemaker, at least at first.

If you have trouble or your first encounter is like taming a dragon, call on a professional coach or HR person who can dig in deep and get to the root of the matter in a helpful and thoughtful way. Then, when the person is really ready, give him a development plan that will allow him to soar.

You Want It, You Got It

Influence is the power to affect people or events, the capacity to be compelling. With influence, you can achieve your goals and win in your business. Without it, you will be frustrated and upset, tired and apathetic about how the world affects you. In short, influence is the bridge between where you are now and the life of your dreams.

Think for a moment about something you got that you had wanted for a long time. Think of another example of something you achieved that you had wanted for a long time. What do these two things have in common? You had to communicate and influence to get them. None of us can achieve anything in life without communication and influence.

Think now of something that you would like to have. Why haven’t you gotten it yet? What if you knew the right person or event to influence? What if you knew the key to influencing any person to achieve any outcome you wanted? How valuable would this information be to you? Read on to discover the factors of influence.

First, let’s start with some basics of communication. As much as you might not like to hear it, other people are different from you. Their perceptions are not the same as yours. As a result, you have to make a concerted effort to understand them and their points of view. Without this basic knowledge, you will get nowhere in influencing others. Others know if you are spending the time and effort to understand them. Take the time. Make the effort. This is the most basic first step of influence.

If you are uncertain about how to do this, try first by asking some basic questions of the person in the area you are discussing. For example, if you are attempting to influence your boss to give you a promotion, ask some questions about the budget and the future outlook of the company. Find out what he thinks about the company and the outlook for the next year. With this step, simply try to achieve understanding. Do not ask for anything yet.

After you have taken some time to understand the person you are trying to influence, try next to develop some admiration for the person. Find something you can like about him or her. Expand on that as much as possible. If your boss loves the same type of music you do, get the idea that you really agree on this topic and expand on it as much as possible. A quick warning: you will occasionally run across someone who does not respond well to admiration. Although this is more difficult, it can be overcome with some customized help. If you have encountered this situation, get some help from HR or a coach.

Keep in mind that the development of admiration starts first with you. It has to be genuine and you have to develop it yourself. If you find that you have a hard time creating admiration for others, you may also have a hard time influencing others. If this is the case for you, seek out some help for your critical nature. This cynicism could be your downfall. If on the other hand, you find it easy to create admiration for others, you are well on your way to getting whatever you want.

Your next step is to achieve certainty about what you want. Again, this is an internal step. Set your mind about what you want. Any doubt you have will show up in your communication to others. Root it out. Once your mind is set, start getting agreement from others about what you want. Say it is true. Explain how it can be true. Remind yourself and others daily that it is true. Spread the word about it. If you are going for a promotion, start acting as though you already have that position. Yes, you should use some caution on this that you don’t step on any toes. The most important part is the mental step of internal certainty. If you can follow this with a skillful use of communication to get others to subtly see you as already in possession of what you want, you are home free.

To sum it up, influence starts with you and your mental state. How much do you like others? Can you listen to them? Can you understand other viewpoints? Can you make up your own mind that you will achieve something? If so, you are well on your way to influencing others. Start close to home and you will find it easier and easier to expand your sphere of influence.

http://www.becoachable.com