Open Book or Closed Book?

Are you an open book organization who shares your financial status with your employees, or are you a closed book organization?

I have worked in both.  My personal opinion is I prefer open book.  This may scare a lot of leaders, but let me share some reasons why it can be a great thing.

1 - It creates understanding.  You can teach your employees all about expenses and how it affects the companies bottom line.  This in turn makes them think about asking for unnecessary items.  For example, if they know that you are having a sluggish profit year, they may hold off asking for that new desk as they know it will affect not only the company, but their job too.  It may even affect their wage increase.

2 - It helps with sales.  If the sales force is paid on commission, bonus or your other employees get profit sharing, if they see the numbers being sluggish, they will pull together to make it work.  For example, someone in production may pay closer attention to their quality, someone order picking may catch an error and fix it before it leaves the plant, your sales force may call on that small customer to get an order that could lead to more.

3 - It develops trust.  If you can get the trust of your employees, then you keep your employees.  People naturally like to know information.  Sharing what is seemingly "intimate" financial information allows your employees to feel trusted and even empowered to make proper decisions.

4 - It creates ideas.  If your employees want more profit sharing / bonus / higher wages, they will work at creating cost saving ideas - especially if you ask them for them.  As leaders we do not always see the waste in some processes, so asking employees for their feedback can and will likely save your company thousands.

Why would you say open book is good for a company?

Still afraid to share too much?  Then start simple...tell them if you are doing ok, or having a sluggish year.  Ask them for ideas to help the bottom line.  It affects them too.

Until next time, I can be reached at tara@twinlifecoaching.ca or you can check out our website at www.twinlifecoaching.ca.

1:1 employee meetings

I have recently been having some 1:1 employee meetings with my employees.  Why?  Because I find that they are more open and honest in these meetings, and that builds trust. It is also a great way to understand their needs, express any concerns or praise too.

So, what should you discuss in these meetings?

1 - Share and chat about personal stuff to start - small talk to get them comfortable.  This is important because it shows you care, but also gives a more relaxing atmosphere to the meeting.  If you have an employee who does not want to open up, then you can start.  Be sure to not get too personal, but do you at least know their spouse's name?  The children's names?  Do they have similar pets to you, that you can share stories about?

2 - Find out their pain of the week.  By pain I mean, what has bothered them, stopped them from completing their work, or what they find is a road block to their success at work.  Then work together to find solutions that best work for your business.

3 - Review your employee's goals with them.  If you have not set goals, you should.  Then during these meetings be sure to discuss the status of the goal.  Are they meeting it?  Great!  Are they not meeting it?  Then do some work together to figure it out.  Are they always exceeding it?  Then you need to review the goal and create one that is a bit of a challenge for them to keep them interested.

4 - Whatever else comes up.  Maybe there are personnel issues you need to address.

Be sure to take a few notes.  You don't need to write a novel, but a few notes that will help remind you next time what you discussed or any action items you may have for the next meeting.

I have these meetings weekly and for 20-30 mins at a time.  I suggest this as things change daily in the business world.  If you have numerous employees then maybe you can stretch this out to every 2 weeks, but keep the communication lines open.

As always, you can check us out on line at www.twinlifecoaching.ca or contact me at tara@twinlifecoaching.ca.

Are you a leader?

I have published an article on our website that answers this question.

Check it out at https://twinlifecoaching.ca/are-you-a-leader.  If the link does not work, simply copy and paste it into your web browser.

Always here to help, so feel free to email me at tara@twinlifecoaching.ca.

Have a great day!

Types of communication

There are many different types of communication these days, especially with all the devices out there.  We can write each other, we can call each other, text, face-to-face meetings, emoji's, social media, presentations, webinars and so many others.  So what happens when something is missing?

Let's look at an example of doing a training session.

If we are in a classroom we have the opportunity to use our eyes, gestures and even how we dress to communicate, along with our words and perhaps handouts or a PowerPoint.  All of these help us express ourselves in the way we want to be understood.  We are able to not only communicate the information, but put emphasis on things, show our emotions, or even role play, when we are in person or face-to-face.

If we do the same training on a webinar, we are missing the visual cues for: eye contact, gestures and even our clothes.  What does this mean?  It means we may not be able to fully communicate points to the audience or stress a point like we would in person or show our professionalism.

Now let's say we just email the training in a PowerPoint to our employees and ask them to read it.  So much is missing in the communication.  You are not there to stress key points, your employees cannot see your gestures, emotions or even for you to have role play to practise techniques you may be trying to teach.

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for all of these.  It is about choosing the right one to ensure you communicate exactly what you want to.  If role play for practise is not important, then perhaps a webinar will do.  If feedback or interaction is important, but you have people all across the country, then a webinar may be perfect.  If you have no key points but important information to pass on, then maybe just an email will work.

Ask yourself: what is the best way to communicate this so that my trainees understand what it is and will be able to use the information properly?

As you can see, we communicate in a lot more ways than just words too.  Gestures and eye contact are visual clues for the other parties to receive infomration you are trying to share.  Clothes can show people how serious or professional we expect to be.  Written words or pictures can help with providing examples, definitions or to add to a presentation to help keep attention.  Face - to - Face allows us to role play (as with training), see facial expressions, show emotions or to ask for feedback.  You need to remember all types of communication and pick the best ones for what you are trying to communicate.

If you have any questions or wish a coaching session, please feel free to reach out to me at tara@twinlifecoaching.ca or check out our website at www.twinlifecoaching.ca.

Until next time!

The Riddle

So, did you have some fun trying to figure out the riddle from the other day?

Still don't know?  Then try this:  Ask up to 10 open questions (without asking What happened) and see where you get.

The answer, if you are the one asking, is that the men jumped out of a plane and one of their parachutes in their backpacks did not open.

Did you guess this in the 10 closed questions?  Probably not, but I bet you can now ask your co-workers again and they will ask the right open questions to get a quick answer.

This is fun and can be done in any leadership training.  You can even change up the story...just don't let them ask you "What happened?"

Until next time you can find me at www.twinlifecoaching.ca or email at tara@twinlifecoaching.ca

Closed and Open Questions

When communicating there are 2 types of questions that need to be used, depending on the situation.
Closed questions are those that have the answer "yes" or "no".  An example may be: Is this due tomorrow?  The answer is Yes.  Another example may be: Will you be in tomorrow?  The answer is No.  Basically these questions are asked when you are looking for a very matter of fact answer.  These types of questions are appropriate in job interviews when confirming experience.  For example, if you are hiring a customer service rep, you may ask if they have telephone experience.  Once the answer Yes or No is given, you can move on to other questions or end the interview if you need someone with that experience and they answer No.

Open questions are ones where you are wanting or allowing more information to be provided.  These questions start with: Who? What? Where? Why? When? or How?  For example in interviewing for your customer service rep, you may ask How long have you worked in a field where you were answering the phone?  This gives you a lot more information than the closed question above and allows them to feel comfortable with providing more information.

In my Train-The-Trainer Leadership certificate, we were asked to solve a riddle.  Using only 10 closed questions, figure out what happened.  Remember I can only answer "yes" or "no" and nothing else.

2 men were on the top of a mountain.  One of them was dead.  Both had backpacks, one was full and one was empty.  What happened?

Try this with some co-workers and stay tuned for the second part in a couple of days.

You can reach me via email at tara@twinlifecoaching.ca or feel free to check out our website too at www.twinlifecoaching.ca.

Till next time!

Tara

Communicate to be Understood

Today I want to focus on your communication, not those of others.  We want to be understood in the way we expect to be, but this does not always happen.  Why?  Because we may not be clear in our words, use words that could have different meanings to different people, or even have visual signals that show something different.

If you want to be understood, be sure you are being clear.  This means that when we are going to be in the 5km race I discussed in an earlier post, we are clear on what our participation means.  I am not a runner, so I am there as a vendor to raise money for the charity.  If we take an example of a manager asking an employee to complete a task, we may say I need this done for tomorrow.  What we really mean is I need it done by lunch tomorrow for a meeting in the afternoon, but we were rushing to give the employee instructions.  We will be disappointed in our employee tomorrow when it is not done on time, but this could be entirely our fault, not our employees.  If we are not clear in the timeline expectation, our employee may prioritize their work to ensure yours is done by end of day tomorrow.  Being clear with your words and expectations is very important, as is deadlines.  We want our team to succeed as much as we want to succeed.  Remember, they are your back up crew.  They are your team, so ensure they are given the communication you want them to hear.

One way to ensure you know they are understanding what you are trying to say is to ask a question.  For example: How will you prioritize your work to ensure I can get that report by tomorrow at noon?  This open question allows for more conversation and clarity to your expectation.

If you are struggling with an employee getting work done on time, accurately, etc, then first ask yourself if they truly know what the expectation is.  I was in a training one time where they explained that a leader may be on a path and believe that their employees are on the same path.  However, one little miscommunication could mean that you are on the path heading North and your employee is headed South.

We will chat more about open questions in a future blog, as these can be key to clear understanding.

As always, feel free to check out our website at www.twinlifecoaching.ca or to email me at tara@twinlifecoaching.ca.