Accelerate Your Performance

It’s difficult to become a great organization, and even more difficult to sustain that success. This week, Dr. Pilcher explores the 5 stages of defeat as identified in Jim Collin’s book ‘How the Mighty Fall’ and what you can do as a leader to get up before you fall too far. 

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• Why do successful organizations fall?
• How can you get up before we fall too far?
• How do you lead your team to work with relentless resolve every day to achieve results, manage through difficulties and come out better at the other end?

Recommended Reading:How the Mighty Fall by: Jim Collins

Recommended Learning: Reflective Practice – Do More of What’s Working

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How can organizations set themselves apart and provide their stakeholders with unmistakable value? It all starts with effective leadership and a culture focused on purpose. Dr. KK Owen joins Dr. Janet Pilcher to discuss how she helps organizations mold a culture around unmistakable value in real life. 

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• What is ‘unmistakable value’?
• How do organization’s mold a culture around unmistakable value?
• What leadership characteristics make an effective leader? 
• How do you start a culture change?

Recommended Reading:Improve Performance with Leader Led Conversations

Recommended Learning: Executive Leader Reflection

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Are you really listening to your employees? Many employees don’t think so, in fact, more than half of employees say their company fails to act on good ideas, and a third of employees feel their ideas are ignored. Why? Because leaders demand action without input, receive feedback and avoid making changes, and lack a clear process for managing ideas. It’s crucial for leaders to let employees speak and pay ridiculous attention to what they are saying so teams are motivated to collaborate towards a solution and action plan. 

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• How can you support an employee to change their behavior? 
• Why is there a disconnect between leader and employee perceptions of quality communication?
• How does listening foster team collaboration? 
• Why do some team members have deep convictions to their ideas? 

 
 Recommended Reading: To Change Someone’s Mind, Stop Talking and Listen By Nilofer Merchant

Recommended Learning: Conduct a Listening Tour

One of a leader’s greatest responsibilities is to ensure teams are engaged and productive. People are motivated to increase productivity when leaders take time to get to know them personally, make them feel comfortable, and help remove barriers in the workplace. When we connect with employees in ways that are meaningful to them, they become more engaged, productivity and profits increase, meanwhile, turnover, absenteeism, and shrinkage decrease. 

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• How can we gather feedback from our employees?
• Is there a way to establish genuine relationships with others at work? 
• Is it important to have a good relationship with coworkers and subordinates? 
• How do I prioritize which processes in the organization need improving? 

 
 Recommended Reading: Meet 5 Critical Employee Needs w/ Leader Connection Questions

Recommended Learning: Leader Connection Questions

Thriving workplaces depend on trust to continue to grow and excel. However, most of us can recognize; trust isn’t given, its earned. Building positive relationships in the workplace lays the groundwork for trusting teams that can perform and adapt at high levels. When leaders start prioritizing trust in the workplace, their teams will follow. 

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• How do you create a trusting workplace?
• How can you build positive relationships? 
• Why should you be interested in learning more about your team members? 

Recommended Learning:Trust: Consistency of Leadership. 3 Ways to Build Trust

Recommended Tool: Emotional Bank Account: Deposits Vs. Withdrawals

Receiving feedback is an emotional experience, it’s often difficult to take in. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, we humans are quick to respond emotionally, sometimes overreacting, even to the point of denying the data is accurate. Feedback is also a powerful gift, it helps organizations understand what they are doing well, and areas in which they’re falling short. In this episode, Dr. Pilcher coaches us to work through useful feedback to honor the information that is helpful, without losing our cool. 

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• How can we use feedback to help us improve? 
• What types of feedback should you pay attention to, and what can you ignore? 
• How can you gain additional input after feedback was previously provided? 

Recommended Learning: Receiving Results

Recommended Video: Emotional Reaction to Results

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Organizations perform at different levels, some are poor, others good, and very few are excellent. What makes an organization excellent? It’s their relentless commitment to continuous improvement. Great organizations are willing to get their hands dirty and face the brutal facts to improve, even when things are going well. 

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• What is an improvement mindset, and how can I adopt one? 
• How is good the enemy of great?
• What keeps people from facing the brutal facts to create actions for change? 

Recommended Reading:Good to Great Fast Company Article By: Jim Collins

Recommended Learning:Are We Just Documenting or Improving Processes

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Is it really enough to provide good, or even, very good customer service? When your organization treats service recovery as just another refund, it misses a valuable growth opportunity. Excellent service recovery turns people with a poor experience into your biggest brand advocates. Listen now to hear the 4 steps to customer recovery. 

This episode addresses questions, such as:

• What is the difference between good service recovery and excellent service recovery?
• What steps can you take to recover from a bad customer experience? 
• How can your organization own a customer complaint, gain insight to improve, and keep its reputation intact?

Recommended Reading:Turn Those Upset Customers Around: Best Practices for Customer Service Recovery

Recommended Learning: Build A Culture Around Service

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• How can organizations recover from less than outstanding service? 
• What are the best practices of high-level service recovery?
• How can we use customer feedback as a training opportunity for the organization? 

• How can we support a low-solid performer to help them move up the performance curve? 
• How do we have difficult conversations with toxic employees?
• What can we do with low performing employees who don’t change their behavior?