Another workshop has come and gone, with one of our favorite speakers to – date!  Read some of our attendee’s top takeaways below.

• When doing surveys ask if they had the desired effect. “What does our company mean to you?”  Customer survey including a question to see if you’ve achieved the effect.
• Plant the seed of what you want in what you ask customers.
• “Hello, I can help you.”
• Call the office the support center.
• Determine how to embrace technology to grow the company. Implement technology into your business to not get left behind.  Technology is going to continue to disrupt, be on the cutting edge.  Don’t ignore it, don’t get left behind – stay ahead.  Technology changes won’t slow down.
• Turn skeptical to wow.
• Incorporate a leadership hallway – have a hallway full of leadership photos from all their other branches.  Picture walls connect teams that don’t always see each other.
• Strategy is how you compete & win.
• Put white boards in offices to get needs, wants, and questions.
• When drawing pictures of their jobs, more than half the room did not include their customer.
• Juggler vs. Magician. Jugglers show off their skills – “look how busy.” Magicians hide their skills and focus on the effect with flawless execution.
• Be so good that your job looks easy and nobody knows how much went into it. Create magic.
• Perception vs. Reality. Have to have both, but perception is promotable – needs to be backed up with reality.
• Effects are not results, effects are the perceived impact. Effect is the reason people do business with us.  Begin with the effect in mind.  Effects are about others and not me!
• Find subtleties in your work to communicate effect.
• Every day create a way for every employee to feel valued & valuable. Recognize employees at all levels.  Involve frontline staff with rewards programs.
• Perfect & clearly define our value proposition statement.
• Start-Stop-Continue form – take leadership team through this worksheet. Use this with team members who are stuck in the weeds.  Use in monthly leadership meetings.
• Think from the point of view of the customer/employee. Not what I do – how do they feel?
• Determine top results to prove your effect. Look at other metrics on customer & employee effects.  Market penetration, promotions, NPS score for members/clients, quantify social media buzz, employee retention, referral rate, comment card.
• Best collaboration starts with independent (quiet) self-thoughts first.
• Use @ symbol in email body to make/highlight directives to a person – causes email to rise to the top of inbox in Outlook.
• Good is not good enough. Be great.  Greatness is a journey & not a destination.
• Know your audience and know their audience.
• TeamStrength Toolkit – do one per month/quarter.
• Collaborative debate then consensus.
• People don’t care how hard you work. Nobody cares how busy you are.  They care about results.
• Everyone can be a leader. All employees are leaders.  Frontline just as important as CEO.
• Be passionate about what you do. Life is too short to work.
• I need to spend more time with team in 1-1 setting discussing goals, values, mission, etc.
• If you master your perception and build your reality, then your effect on people you work with will prosper.
• Customers are ‘partners.’ View them as an extension of the team.
• Make everyone I interact with feel like the most important person in the room.
• What’s most important is who you are in the present moment.
• Focus on more than just results.
• Leadership development is about perspective.
• Focus on your intended audience when coming up with a plan/strategy.
• Profit is not our goal. Leadership is our goal.
• Create a task force to feed up information.
• Start with effect and work backwards to determine best methods/results.
• Dig deeper to really find out what our customers want.
• Know who you are and what you do exceptionally well.
• Have the right people in the right place who are *passionate* about what they do.
• Implement a monthly task where team can learn a new skill, read, etc.   This will allow for growth and better relationships.
• Changing the way we look at problem solving – we have to consider the final emotion/effect. Become a magician!
• The greatest challenges and risks yield the greatest results. Accelerate, grow, adapt.
• Measure employee success/empowerment by their initiative to take on new work.