Top Performance Read online

  In managing people, trust and honesty are commodities we can take to the marketplace and cash in at any time. Top Performers in management learn to create trust in others by complete honesty in all dealings. The second characteristic these super-successful salespeople possessed in spades, according to the Forum Report, was plain, old-fashioned courtesy. These salespeople are just as nice and courteous to the switchboard operator and file clerk as they are to the office manager and accountant. They are as pleasant with the shipping clerk and service personnel as they are with the president of the company. The reason is simple: They clearly understand that the sales process is not complete—and future sales are in jeopardy—until the current sales order has been delivered, installed, serviced, and paid for and the customer is satisfied. For this reason they know they need the cooperation, effort, and goodwill of the entire team back at the home office.

  In any business or family where two or more people are involved, there is always going to be a certain amount of discussion and conflict about who does what. One of the best opportunities for teaching trust and honesty is in the area of responsibility, or doing what needs to be done. Unfortunately, in most businesses and homes the battle cry is, “That’s not my job!” Top Performers, however, are loyal to those with whom they work and live and show this loyalty by doing what they are supposed to do, when they are supposed to do it. They give strong verbal support and never say negative or unkind things about their associates. They clearly understand that when you’re slinging mud, you’re not doing anything but losing ground. Top Performers also are willing to go the extra mile and do the extras, because they instinctively know that the more successful their company or department is, the more likely they are to move ahead in their own careers.

  Burke Marketing Research, Inc., asked executives in one hundred of the nation’s one thousand largest companies, “What employee behavior disturbs you the most?” The result was “a hit parade of things that stick in the boss’s craw, the kind of behavior that hits a nerve,” said Marc Silbert, whose temporary personnel agency commissioned the survey. “They can blind employers to employees’ good qualities. They become beyond redemption,” he said. Liars, goof-offs, egomaniacs, laggards, rebels, whiners, airheads, and sloths—these are eight banes of a boss’s existence, according to the survey, with liars topping the list. “If a company believes that an employee lacks integrity, all positive qualities—ranging from skill and experience to productivity and intelligence—become meaningless,” said Silbert, who currently serves as a consultant to Robert Half International, Inc., which operates eight employment divisions, including Accountemps, Office Team, and Affiliates Legal Staffing, with over 330 offices worldwide. Loyalty to those with whom we live and work is a prerequisite to Top Performance.

  Be Loyal to Your Organization

  When I say that loyalty to your organization is important, I do not mean you should accept every thought that comes from upper management as if it had come down from the mountain on tablets. No one expects you to leap with joy when the commission structure has been changed so that there is more for the company and less for you. You are not expected to thank ownership when the working hours are changed and you are allowed to work more hours for the same or less pay. Loyalty to your organization means handling these aggravations in the proper manner.

  Let’s take a “negative break” and talk about how not to handle these situations. You do not complain about your areas of concern over coffee with a coworker who has no authority to change the situation. You do not identify internal problems externally—meaning to someone outside your organization. The person who takes either of these avenues becomes a cancer to the organization. As you know, a cancer is a cell that lives within the body independently of the other cells of the body, and unless it is removed, it will eventually lead to the death of the body. There are few diseases that will affect your organization in a more deadly manner or will creep up on the company with less notice than lack of loyalty. I have already mentioned that I feel very strongly about the importance of due process, but if there were ever a reason for dismissal without due process, it would be a lack of loyalty.

  How, then, should the loyal employee manage the situation? The proper method of handling any situation that concerns you is to take the “problem identified” to someone who has the authority to handle the situation. Present it and several “potential solutions” for consideration. If after a realistic amount of time, the company takes action on your recommendations or another satisfactory solution, you should congratulate yourself for working from within the organization to make it stronger.

  However, if after a realistic amount of time, the company fails to take action to change the situation, you now have two options: (1) shut up; (2) move on. There are no other options! If you continue to identify a problem over which no action is going to be taken, then the cancer grows and you are beating your head against the proverbial brick wall. I believe that ulcers, serious headaches, burnout, stress, and even heart problems often begin in this manner. Dr. David Schwartz, in his book The Magic of Thinking Big, says that over 80 percent of our hospital beds are filled with people with “EII,” or Emotionally Induced Illness. This does not mean that the people are not sick, just that their illnesses began in their minds.

  You owe it to yourself—as well as to your organization—to either support what is happening or find another company to work for. Now some of you are saying that good jobs are not that easy to come by, and I agree. Neither is the human body that easy to come by—at least, spare parts are in great demand! The answer is simple but not easy: Get with the program or find another program to get with!

  A Final Word on Loyalty

  We began this chapter with a quote from Elbert Hubbard, and now let’s close with some wise words from the same man:

  If you work for a man, in heaven’s name, work for him. If he pays you wages which supply you bread and butter, work for him; speak well of him; stand by him and stand by the institution he represents. If put to a pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify, condemn, and eternally disparage—resign your position, and when you are outside, damn to your heart’s content, but as long as you are part of the institution do not condemn it. If you do that, you are loosening the tendrils that are holding you to the institution and at the first high wind that comes along, you will be uprooted and blown away, and probably will never know the reason why.

  Krish Dhanam’s grouping of the following words sums up the message:

  Plan with attitude,

  Prepare with aptitude,

  Participate with servitude,

  Receive with gratitude,

  and this should be enough to

  Separate you from the multitudes.

  PERFORMANCE PRINCIPLES

  * * *

  Loyalty begins with loyalty to self.

  You cannot consistently perform in a manner that is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.

  Make every effort to be perceived as the most capable, not the most visible.

  The greatest enemy of excellence is good.

  If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

  Support your organization or go to work for an organization you can support.

  “People Just Don’t Care …”

  One learns people through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.

  Mark Twain

  Unfortunately, as managers of people we often feel like the speaker who was met with less than a resounding welcome and said, “In the words of Willie J. Shakespeare, it’s nice to be among friends … even if they are somebody else’s.” So many times managers and their employees almost seem to work at developing an adversarial relationship. Instead, we have to be like the small boy who was confronted by the three big bullies, any one of whom could have obliterated him. (They even gave some indication they were going to do exactly that.) Like a lot of us, the little guy wasn’t too well qualified
to fight, but like all successful managers, he was qualified to think. (In this case, his physical well-being depended on it!) With this in mind, the little guy backed up dramatically, drew a line in the dirt with the toe of his shoe, looked the leader of the group in the eye, and said, “Now you just step across that line.” Well, as you might imagine, the big bully confidently—even arrogantly—stepped across the line. The small boy then smiled broadly and exclaimed, “Now we are both on the same side!” If we are going to be successful in managing people, we have got to remember that managers and the people they manage are on the same side.

  As I mentioned earlier, Sir Edmund Hillary and his native guide, Tenzing, were the first people to make the historic climb of Mount Everest in 1953. Coming down from the mountain peak, Sir Edmund suddenly lost his footing. Tenzing held the line taut and kept them both from falling by digging his ax into the ice. Later Tenzing refused any special credit for saving Sir Edmund Hillary’s life; he considered it a routine part of the job. As he put it, “Mountain climbers always help each other.” Can we, as managers, afford to be any different? Aren’t we obligated to work with our people to direct their energies and help them to develop their skills and talents to the fullest?

  Your Billion-Dollar Asset

  It is my firm conviction that if you could take only one thought or one idea out of Top Performance, it would be the thought I will share with you now. If you would really be an expert in the “people business” (that determines 85 percent of your success), then you should look into this statement: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care … about them!

  Chances are great you have heard that phrase before, and as an achiever, you really don’t need to be told … but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded. You see, whether we are talking about parents, brothers and sisters, children, spouses, friends, associates, coworkers, employees, or employers—people don’t care whether you are a Phi Beta Kappa from MIT or if you got your Ph.D. from Harvard. They don’t care if you have twenty years of experience (or one year of experience repeated twenty times), sold more units for more dollar volume than anyone else ever has, or set every record the company keeps … until they know how much you care about them.

  Anyone can do a job; anyone can do a good job. But it’s not until there is love in a person’s heart for a job that the results are something that others will call great! Love is caring—caring enough to invest your life, to give it your all, to stick it out, to do the best you possibly can.

  Love comes forth to contribute, to invest, to help, to be a loyal part of an effort or enterprise. Love will draw out from a person the very best he can do, which is often more than he himself or anyone else thought he could do. Love motivates one’s entire potential for that individual’s total success. But love also serves to inspire others to motivate the ones who follow them.

  * * *

  People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care … about them!

  * * *

  Now serving and giving part of ourselves is not a popular practice in our society today, but think with me for just a second. When you come in at the end of the day and your spouse greets you at the door, chattering like a magpie about something in which you are totally disinterested and you stop and give him or her your undivided attention, aren’t you giving your loved one a part of your life? Aren’t you giving up a little of yourself?

  When you have been dealing with people—not always successfully—all day, what you really want is a few minutes of peace and quiet in front of the evening news or with the newspaper. Just as you settle down, your children, whom you dearly love but want to love from a distance for the next few minutes, come climbing on you as if you were a jungle gym. At this point, when you either turn off the TV or put the newspaper down so that you can give them your love and undivided attention, you are investing a part of your life in theirs and giving up part of yourself. When you are dead tired because it’s been “one of those days,” and an employee needs an empathetic ear and counseling, and you take the time to listen, aren’t you giving up some of yourself?

  If you would be an expert in the people business, read the Performance Principle at the end of this chapter, brand the words on your heart, and live them every day of your life.

  PERFORMANCE PRINCIPLES

  * * *

  People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care … about them.

  PART 2

  The Science of Top Performance

  Science is organized knowledge.

  Herbert Spencer

  “But I Thought You Said …”

  Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

  James Thurber

  Every manager has heard about the importance of communication. Yet we all need to be reminded occasionally just how important it is, and we need some specific suggestions on what we can do to be more effective. We also need to remember that miscommunication, poor communication, or no communication can create incredible problems.

  In this chapter we will examine some of the problem areas that inhibit communication, review some of the rules for better communication, and take a closer look at specific situations, such as public speaking and meetings, in order to maximize effective communication. Finally, we’ll see how communication plays a part in creating a work environment that is conducive to productivity.

  According to the Harvard Business Review, the most promotable quality an executive, manager, salesperson, or anyone can possess is the ability to communicate. Alan Loy McGinnis, in his excellent book Bringing Out the Best in People, tells why:

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  In the corporate world, miscommunication can have a disastrous effect on productivity. Any time you think, They probably know, let that be a red flag to remind yourself that they probably don’t know—and seize the opportunity to remind them of what they should know.

  According to AT&T, the lion’s share of time spent in any office is spent communicating: listening, talking, chasing down stray facts, dealing with mail, etc. Were you to keep a log, you’d be appalled at how little time you have for actually producing work (par for senior executives is about 15 percent of the workday).

  In addition, communication can be very difficult, and it takes a constant concise effort to make sure you are understood. Communication should be as crisp and to the point as the sign I saw on a newly restored home when I was in Chattanooga recently. It read, “Trespassers Will Be Shot—Survivors Will Be Shot Again.” To be effective communicators, we should always be just that clear, though not necessarily that threatening.

  As Easy as EBP

  The problems in communication in the management area, and in society for that matter, are so great that we at Ziglar Training Systems have developed a seminar for companies and individuals called Effective Business Presentations, which has enabled men and women from all walks of life to dramatically improve their communication skills. Our corporate staff spends two days coaching and videotaping their presentations. The participants are amazed and delighted at the remarkable difference in their first presentation and the one at the end of the second day.

  Seeing yourself as others see (and hear) you is important, so participants are videotaped a dozen times, given private coaching sessions, and instructed in twelve vital skill areas. Effective Business Presentations is an extremely strong skill builder because approximately 30 percent of the time is spent on instruction, while 70 percent of the time is spent on practicing skills each individual needs and can use immediately upon returning to the job. Now this is beginning to sound a little bit like a commercial because it is … a commercial for gaining communication skills! Let me give you a sample of some communication skills and ideas from our seminar that you can use immediately.

  Did You Know That … ? />
  You have about four minutes to be either received or rejected when you first meet someone. You gather 87 percent of your total lifetime information by sight; 7 percent by hearing; 3.5 percent by smell; 1.5 percent by touch; 1 percent by taste. So when you encounter a prospect or an employee, what they see is vitally important. Listeners need visual stimulation—a point of activity to focus on. Gestures, body language, and facial animation, in addition to other visual stimuli, are crucial. The average person speaks at about 150 words per minute but thinks at about 600 words per minute—or about four times faster. You may think your mind wanders, but in fact it often is galloping ahead of you like a runaway racehorse. As a communicator you must do everything possible to hold the listener’s attention, including keeping your thoughts in order and paced with your speaking.

  The Dazzling Dozen

  You can become a more effective communicator by becoming aware of what we call the twelve vital skill areas of communication. These areas are appearance, posture, gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, voice, padding, involvement, handling of questions, humor, introducing others, and visual aids.

  Appearance means your clothes, plus the way you groom, the way you carry yourself, and your accessories. Your appearance makes a statement about you; it tells others what you think of yourself. Does it add to or detract from the message you wish to communicate? What does your appearance say?