Dave Anderson's Blog, page 17

What Makes Great Salespeople Great? – Interview with author & Sales Gravy CEO Jeb Blount with Dave Anderson on IMPACT Talk Radio

Dave Anderson interviews Jeb Blount. Topic:  What Makes Great Sales People Great? (30 minutes)

Jeb Blount is the CEO of Sales Gravy (www.salesgravy.com) and the best selling author of Fanatical Prospecting along with 6 other best sellers.

All past and current podcasts also available on iTunes. (Over 5 Million downloads to date!)

Please rate us on iTunes as well!

Other resources -free PDF downloads of character-based interview questions are available at Overwhelmedmanagersguide.com.

Listen Here:

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/www.toginet.com/podcasts/impacttalkradio/ImpactTalkRadioLIVE_2016-04-27.mp3

Or download the podcast by clicking here and listen later!

Stop Reacting! Start Leading!

Listen to IMPACT Talk Radio today for no fluff, straight talking solutions designed to IMPACT high IMPACT leaders who want to lead high IMPACT Teams. Every show goes beyond theory and gets into HOW to make an IMPACT that matters.

Coachability: A Window To Character

Sometimes I witness something that makes my blood boil.  I see a kid dismiss a coach’s advice during a game.  They give the coach that “whatever” look or in some cases even verbalize their bad attitude.

I want to jump out of the stands and shake them.  I want to say, “Who are you to question someone who played the game you’re playing and has been teaching the game to hundred’s before you!”

What arrogance!  What stupidity!  It’s just dumb kids though right?

Unfortunately, I have seen the same attitude in adults at work, in ministry, and in other areas of life.

The willingness and the ability to be coached by someone else is an important indicator of someone’s character.  Whether someone is coming in at an entry level or at a higher leadership level in an organization, I believe someone’s ability to accept and grow from criticism is a key indicator of their character.

In past blogs, I have defined character as:  Our habitual way of operating.  Our character is made up of our habits.  HOW we are regularly, is WHO we are.

HOW someone accepts coaching tells us something about WHO they are.  I submit that if someone habitually reacts poorly to coaching, I am dealing with a deep-seated pride issue.

Pride issues usually manifest themselves in arrogance or low self-esteem.  They are opposite sides of the same coin.  Both sides distort a person’s perception of reality and their ability to accept coaching.

Arrogance:

When a person’s pride stems from arrogance, I have seen it displayed in several ways:

Indifference:  Their attitude communicates that they don’t care.
Anger:  Their reaction to even the most well-intentioned criticism is to fight back.
Subversion:  They spend time trying to get others to see their way is best and undermine the feedback of the coach.

No matter how it appears, a leader must address the behaviors head on.  I ran into this enough times in my time in the corporate world to know that when the arrogance of an individual prevents them from being coached, I had to act.

These conversations could be heated.  But, I knew after pointing out the actions and attitudes of the offending party, it was on their shoulders to change.  If they were unwilling to change, I would ask them to leave the organization.

Low Self Esteem:

A person with low self-esteem has pride issues as well.  In this case, a person is unwilling to be coached because of fear.  They believe that being shown they are wrong, means they have less worth.

This could stem from their childhood self esteem issues or events in their adult lives.  I am not going to diagnose why people have these self-esteem issues here.  But, if low self-esteem is the reason someone won’t be coached, it must be addressed by the leader.

How To Coach Coachability

Meet Privately:  Most admonishments should be handled in private.  I’ve found people more willing to set aside their pride, in a one on one confrontation.
Come Prepared:  I make a list of situations where coaching was offered and the objective results of their resistance to the coaching. (i.e. continued low sales, high turnover of employees under them…)
Share Perceptions:  I take time to point out how they are perceived by me and by others as a result of their lack of coachability.
Give Perspective:  My approach usually includes the facts that professional athletes all have coaches.  They all need and utilize the outside point of view of an experienced coach to help them continue to grow.

Avoiding Coachability Issues

It may sound too simplistic.  Do not hire people who are not coachable.

Even for a CEO position, coachability is critical.  One person, no matter their success in the past, does not have all the answers.  If a CEO is unwilling to hear the coaching of board members or even subordinates, hiring them is a mistake.

Someone with a high level of skill but the unwillingness to be coached will bring down a team.  I’ve seen it in professional sports, on my kids’ sports teams and at work.

Ask these questions when hiring:

Question:  Tell me about a time your boss surprised you with some negative feedback on your performance.
Question:  Tell me about a time when your team spoke up against a strategy you had developed for them to implement.

Whether hiring for the front lines or for leadership, these two questions give me insight into the character of the person I am hiring.

How did they respond to the feedback?  Did they adapt?

Or do they spend their time telling you how unfair the feedback was?  Do they rationalize away the feedback and refuse to own it?

The Bottom Line:

Someone’s ability to receive coaching and make changes as a result of feedback illuminates their character.  Are they humble enough to change or do they have pride issues that will prevent them from growing?

I must consistently ask myself am I coachable.  When I get feedback from my boss, my peers, my employees, or my family what is my first reaction?  Do I think of all the ways they are wrong or the ways the feedback is unfair?  Or do I look for the truth in their words and decide to adapt?

Question:

When athletes aren’t coachable most of us find that unacceptable.  Why do we sometimes act like a petulant youth or professional athlete when getting coached?

Ending a Conflict Fast

My headache began as soon as she started to speak. She and her counterpart were having issues – AGAIN! The crazy thing was both these people were talented and were great individual contributors.

But when I put them together, it was like oil and water. On this day, I had had it. I wanted the middle school style of drama to end and professionalism to reign. It was time for me to step in and end the insanity.

The Phone Calls

I began by listening to the woman who called me that day. I worked hard to understand her point of view. By the time she was done venting and blaming her counterpart, I was on her side.

When I called him, he groaned and told me his side of the story. He convinced me that he was the reasonable one, and that I did not need to be involved. He was a salesman and did a good job selling me on his side of the story.

The one thing both stories had in common was the communication between the two had all been done via email, text or on the phone. None of it was face to face.

That night I slept on it. When I woke up, I knew one thing for certain. The truth was somewhere in the middle.

Ending This Conflict – Fast

Once I got my workout in and ate breakfast, I sent a message to both of them. We were meeting at 2:00pm that day at a local coffee joint. I was not going to let this issue fester any longer. We were going to pop this pimple today. The only way to end the conflict was to force the two of them to meet face to face.

When everyone was face to face, I told each person to share the story they had told me about the issue. The only guideline I set was there would be no interruptions until the other person finished.

When both people had finished it was clear that we had a communication issue not a motives issue. Because of the poor communications, they both began to ascribe negative motives to each other. From there everything went downhill.

With a thirty minute face to face meeting, we had a revised plan and a cohesive duo ready to take on the world. An issue that had been growing for over a week, was handled in a half an hour.

Ending All Conflicts – Fast

The fastest way to end a conflict is to get face to face with the other person. Studies have shown that over 50% of all emails are misinterpreted. Most are misinterpreted because emails and text messages do not involve tone of voice or body language.

The reason many people continue in the cycle of email and text arguments stem from an issue of fear or pride. They either fear a face to face discussion or their pride won’t allow them to put themselves in a position to be wrong. Therefore they continue fighting over email.

My #2 viewed blog of all time is on this issue. You can read it by clicking on the title below:

The Four Word Response to an Angry Email

Most conflicts will not end until everyone gets in the same room together. If my people will not do it themselves, then I have to force the issue. This is a great lesson to teach your children as well.

If there is a conflict with a teacher or a coach, the child needs to get face to face with that adult and settle things. They need to do that with their friends as well. (So do their parents!)

The Bottom Line:

The fastest way to end a conflict with someone is to be in the same room with them. The ability to hear their tone of voice, see their body language and interpret their words accurately can only happen in this setting.

Before an issue escalates and becomes a series of misunderstandings spawned from incomplete and inadequate communication, the adults in the room need to step in and call a meeting.

Hopefully, the adults will be the individuals involved. But if not, then the leader needs to step in and force the teammates or the family members to get face to face and find a solution. The sooner the meeting happens the sooner everyone can move forward.

It is truly the difference between days and weeks of back and forth miscommunications or an inconvenient thirty minutes that ends the conflict before it goes too far.

Question:

When have you allowed a conflict to fester instead of meeting with someone face to face?

The REAL Difference Between Leading and Managing

Sometimes the tyranny of the urgent dominates a leader’s efforts. If that is the norm and you are not developing your people, you may be managing just fine, but you are not leading.

You can be a good manager without being a good leader. You can’t be a good leader without being a good manager.

Don’t get me wrong. Management skills are important for all leaders to develop. They are the price of admission into leadership.

But the thing that separates the leader from the manager is the leader develops her people.

The Tyranny of the Urgent

Leadership is pretty simple, but it is not easy. Leadership is about people. The hard thing is email, conference calls, webinars, reports, bosses, other departments and many more things can distract us from our number one calling – our people.

These are all urgent demands that will swallow up our time if we allow it to happen. The urgent will always be there calling out to people who want to lead. If we answer that call to the detriment of developing people, the tyranny of the urgent rules our days, and our people suffer.

We Make Time for Things We Prioritize

When someone says they ran out of time, they are truly saying they had other priorities. Priorities are the issue for many people who are barely managing instead of confidently leading.

Are my people truly a priority? Do I truly believe their growth should be on the top of my annual list of goals?

If they are not, then I doubt any of us will find the time in our crazy daily schedules to help others become better.

Carve Out People Time

If we believe that people are a top priority for us as leaders, then the next step is to carve out time everyday to be with our people. The best way for a overwhelmed manager to insure she is focused on developing people is to schedule time in her calendar every day to speak with her people.

8:00am – 9:00am or 2:00pm – 3:00pm? The time of day does not matter. What matters is we give our people the time of day. We let others know they are important by spending time with them and caring about their growth.

It is the Duty of a leader to add value to others. I cannot do that from behind a computer screen.  Besides leadership by email is an oxymoron. Read more about this style of leadership by clicking on the blog title below:

I Can’t Lead Without Leaving My Office

The Bottom Line:

I can be a good manager and not develop my people. I cannot be a good leader and do the same. People make us leaders not our skills in managing resources or creating Power Point presentations.

The REAL difference between a manager and a leader is a leader is not just good at managing processes and resources. She is also focused on developing her people and cares about seeing them grow.

Without people development, a good manager has missed taking the most crucial step towards becoming a leader – people. The people are the leader’s number one priority. A leader who develops her people, will always out perform a manager who only develops processes.

Question:

Who’s growth did you invest in today? This week?