Morning Minute 1/28/25:
“Is Your Team Like the Human Body?”
Consider this…
A properly functioning human body needs water and nutrients for energy and cell reproduction. It requires physical activity for fitness, balance, and coordination. Plus, the body requires both knowledge and understanding, for performance and safety.
Our minds help our bodies develop the good habits, honesty, and discipline required to positively improve and maintain our happiness and our performance. Or, our minds succumb to bad habits, laziness, and dishonesty. These negatively reduce our ability to perform, to improve, and may destroy our relationships with others.
Our body has a brain, the leader, giving direction to other parts of the body. The brain is responsible for the coordination and performance of the other body parts. It uses the nervous system to transmit instructions. Those parts include the muscles for activity and performance, the skeleton for support, and the digestive system to process food for energy. They include the heart to send the necessary nutrients to the cells, and the lungs to process the oxygen to live. Your brain coordinates all the activities of the rest of the body.
Your team requires the proper people, processes, and tools to function at peak performance. To be successful, team members must have continuous training, coupled with both positive direction and a coordination of their efforts. They require good habits, discipline, and honesty to produce winning outcomes.
Your team has a brain. That’s you, the leader! The leader is responsible for the coordination and performance of each team member, their individual efforts, and their success as a team. Thus, to create successful outcomes, each team member must do their job, and support their other team members. Inasmuch as the body’s different systems work together to function effectively, your people must do the same.
As infants and small children, we are totally dependent on our parents. The same is true as you begin to build your team. Team members need knowledge via training, skills by practicing, and discipline by doing the right things at the right time. As children get older they learn from each other by both practice and training. The same is true for your team. By requiring cross-training for team members, they learn from each other. And, by practicing what they learn, team members become more productive.
As older adults, parts of the human body tend to atrophy, becoming harder to use. The same is true of your team’s abilities. As older skills become outdated, new skills and processes are required to meet new challenges. That is why the leader’s commitment to excellence and continuous improvement will guide the team’s efforts to be more, to do more, and to create better outcomes.
Remember, just like the brain guides the human body, you, the leader, must successfully guide your team.
And, remember to be the change…you want to create.
“Your Team IS Like the Human Body!”
That’s today’s Morning Minute!
Morning Minute 1/31/25:
“Is Your Phone Friend or Foe?”
Has this happened to you recently?
Rrrrring! Rrrrring! You answer the phone on the second ring, identifying yourself. You waited through 7 seconds of dead silence. Then, after you heard an electronic click, the caller said: “Hello? Hello?” You either answered this interruption or you hung up.
What was wrong with this call. First, there was 7 seconds of dead silence. This is very disrespectful Then there was a click indicating this was an electronic device. Then the caller said, “Hello?” instead of identifying who they were and whom they represented. This phone process reduced the probability of a successful call down to less than 5%.
Here are 2 indisputable facts. 1st: A phone call is absolutely the best way to share and receive information. 2nd: By its very nature, a phone call is an interruption of someone’s time. The process the caller uses will determine the success or failure of the call.
Having run a call center for many years, I have taught, and currently teach, the proper use of the phone. The person calling must know prior to dialing whom they are calling and why. Taking time before dialing to see whom you’re calling and the reason for the call, greatly increases the probability of a successful contact. Because the automatic dialer gave the caller no time to review the pertinent data, there was a 7 second delay in the caller’s response. For that reason, I strongly discourage using automatic dialers.
After that short review, which can take as little as 5-7 seconds, the caller clicks on the phone number, initiating the call. When the person answers, the caller shares their name and whom they represent. Then they take the “curse” off the call. For instance, “This is Larry from ABC company calling for Cindy Smith. Did I catch you at an OK time?” You shared your name, whom you represent, and whom you wish to speak with. Then, you let the person know that you respect their time by sharing a way for them to disengage without just hanging up.
The person you called will answer in 1 of 3 ways. If they answer “Yes,” you have received permission to continue. If they ask “What’s this about?” you just received permission to continue as well. If they answer “No,” then you ask when would be a better time to call them back. If given a time, confirm it indicating that you will call back then. If they decline to give a callback time, share that you respect the fact that they are busy, and you only want to briefly share some information. They will either say, “OK,” sharing a callback time or they will hang up. By understanding that there are only 3 possible responses to your question, you will be ready to answer each.
Remember that the phone is the best possible communication tool in your toolkit. Properly used, a phone call allows for quick, accurate information sharing, saving both parties time and frustration. In a future message we will discuss incoming phone calls.
“Is Your Phone Friend or Foe?”
That is today’s Morning Minute.