Smile

smile

/smīl/

verb

1. form one's features into a pleased, kind, or amused expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed.

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I stopped at a convenience store just down the street from the golf course where I would be speaking at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon.  I was a little behind schedule, but needed to stop for some aspirin due to a piercing headache.  I never expected I would find a line six people deep at this time of day.

I’ve been working on being more patient with some success, but given the circumstances there was a good chance I wasn’t going to pass this test.  There was a young girl checking people out and another employee standing beside her watching and giving her instructions.

Why don’t they open another register?

Why doesn’t he grab the reins for a minute until they get caught up?

Before I had a chance to get too frustrated, he turned to the line and addressed everyone:

“Hey, can you believe this is her first day?  She is doing an incredible

job handling all the new things she is learning, don’t you think?”

He was grinning from ear-to-ear and his sincere delight in her almost required that you join him in celebrating her.  Almost on cue, everyone in line, including me, told her that the wait was no problem and that she was doing a great job.

Not only had he diffused the situation, but also honored her in the process and completely changed my mood.

How did he do that?

There are any number of other things he could have done that would have expedited the line and gotten us all out of there a few seconds quicker, but he chose a different way.  He not only encouraged her, but invited all of us to do the same.  As a result of that smile and those thoughtful words, he triggered all manner of good things in each of us.  

Showing others kindness:

1. Causes increased levels of dopamine in the brain that makes us feel better.
2. Produces the hormone oxytocin which causes the release of nitric oxide in your blood vessels which reduces blood pressure.
3. Reduces levels of free radicals and inflammation in the cardiovascular system and thus slows aging at its source.

And if that weren’t enough, he also invited us to join him in fulfilling the role that God placed each of us here for; making Him better known by the way we care for others.

It is unlikely he was thinking of any of that.  As a great leader he simply cared about how all of this would make her feel… the lasting impact of this incident.  The fear and concern on her face replaced by a big smile told him that he had hit his mark.

Consider

• How would you have responded to that situation as a leader?
• Is there someone you need to honor and encourage where you are currently doing otherwise?
• How can you encourage this in your organization’s culture?

Enrich

“All organizations exist to make people’s lives better… Every organization must contribute in some way to a better world for some group of people, because if it doesn’t, it will, and should, go out of business.” 

Patrick Lencioni

It is rare that I meet with a business leader where this idea from Lencioni doesn’t enter the conversation.  I describe it as the proverbial “perfect storm” for high integrity leaders.  Not only are you hard-wired to help others (when you help others the mesolimbic pathway allows for dopamine to reward you with good feelings), but it is an imperative of the gospel and simply good business.  Getting our teams to focus on changing other’s lives is a “win” by any measure.

When Ron Johnson, the designer for the Apple Store, started formulating the concept for the first of 300 stores around the world, he decided they needed a simple “purpose statement” to rally around.  He came up with “enrich lives”…

“Apple is about creating products that change others people’s lives, right? So for the Apple Store mission, we came up with one simple phrase: ‘Enrich lives.’ The entire store, and the experience of the store, would be designed to enrich not only the lives of the customers, but the employees as well.”

— Ron Johnson

Put on simple cards that employees were encouraged to carry around, that simple two-word statement, became the filter they made every decision through.  It defined nearly everything they did.  

Enrich lives.

Here are a few examples:

• Selling - Don’t sell to clients, enrich their lives.  The sales will follow from a very loyal customer base that will tell others about you.
• Time - Have enough staff so the customer will have as much time as they desire from an employee.  Show you value them and their time by offering yours.
• Smiles - Hire joyful, engaging staff, that are genuinely interested in others.  They will set and define the culture.
• Genius - Celebrate support.  People weren’t that excited about manning a help desk, but being a “genius” at the “genius bar” was very attractive.
• Engagement - Interaction by employees with clients is not measured by length of time, but by the quality of the engagement.  Your team will focus on what you measure.
• Benefits - Do not focus on features, but how the customer’s life will be enriched by the product (you see this in their television ads as well).
• Clutter - Clutter causes the brain to use unnecessary energy and makes making clear decisions difficult.  The stores are incredibly stripped down and simple.
• Multi-Sensory - they let the customers try on the products, touch and feel all of them, before they buy.  The stores are clean, bright, open, and simple.

I am especially convicted and challenged when people who don’t share my fundamental beliefs, seem to realize them better than I do.

What is the purpose of your business, organization, or family?

Is everyone on those “teams” aware of what it is?

Is it the filtering mechanism for everything you do?

What needs to change in order to realize some of the impact and success that Apple Stores experience?

Outsource

“When internal leaders outsourced the work, they made the mistake of outsourcing the leadership of the work as well.”

— Harvard Business Review

I have seen lots of lists of the things that a company should never outsource. The three that seem to show up the most often are:

• Creating culture
• Crafting vision
• Providing leadership

With the right people in the room and an articulated process led by trained facilitators, the essential boundaries of core values and mission statement can be drawn out from a leadership team to help define their culture. Mission statements and core values become the litmus test for hiring, firing, rewarding, and virtually every decision a company makes.

An inspired vision can be cast that both inspires and motivates a team to reach for more. This is not something an outsider can craft and design, but merely cultivate from the team.  A well defined vision (a clear picture of the future) provides the destination from where you can craft powerful strategic initiatives and action steps to make sure it is realized.  With our clients, we commit to work for as long as it takes to get them in a strong rhythm for execution of those plans and any other issues that incidentally occur.

But we’ve had to face a sobering reality.

• We can walk a company toward crazy clarity, but we can’t make them live there.

• We can define the clear boundaries of values and mission, but we can’t control their decision-making.

• We can define a process for articulating strategic initiatives and action steps. We can even offer to help assist the team in creating them, but we can’t actually write them.

• We can establish a meeting rhythm and even attend the meetings (which we do), but we can’t force them to meet.

At the end of the day, company leadership is going to make sure all this happens or not. It doesn’t matter how powerful, comprehensive, or well-defined the processes are, success will still be contingent on the endorsement and support of your leadership. That cannot be outsourced.

We’re humbled and overwhelmed by the success we’ve seen our clients find. To see a company move from...

Owner to team led
Lack of clarity to clear vision
Uncertainty to defined and articulated culture
“Tyranny of the urgent” to execution on key strategic initiatives
From discouragement to hope

...has been incredibly rewarding.

But we’re a coaching organization, not a consulting one. We don’t roll in with large teams in suits, with six and seven figure price tags. We provide the coaching and establish the tools for your ongoing success.

Our coaching imperative means that...

• We don’t catch fish for you, but teach you to fish.
• We work to develop independence, not dependence.
• Breed an ownership mindset among the entire leadership team.

But we can’t fulfill the role of leadership for someone else’s company. Only you can do that. Thankfully, except for the very rarest of exceptions, we get the appropriate support and endorsement from leadership, the team takes their appointed seats around the conference table, a regular meeting rhythm is developed, the strategic plans get executed, and they find a newly inspired future.

• Is your conference table full of leaders, life, and execution? (or is it as empty as the one pictured above)

• What would it look like if you offered the essential leadership to ensure success? 

Are you ready to...

• Establish a leadership team?

• Create a defining culture and craft an inspired vision?

• Determine strategic initiatives, action steps, and a meeting rhythm to make sure they are accomplished?