Category Archives: Business Savvy

Build a Team of Leaders

Building A Team

One of the most effective team leadership outcomes you can facilitate is for everyone on the team to end up thinking and acting like a leader. It may seem counterintuitive, especially if you’re focused on making your mark by asserting your own unique version of leadership. Therein lies the paradox that alludes many leaders: Your ultimate success will be based on the success of those on the team you lead, not on your solo contribution.

But why should you have to foster a leadership spirit in your team? What keeps people from exercising leadership on their own? I once heard John Lachs, a Vanderbilt University philosophy professor, explain it by describing how passivity creeps into organizations, sapping them of leadership, energy, and ultimately, performance.

Dr. Lachs told the all-too-familiar story of trying to return an item to a retail store, only to be stymied by a passive clerk who cited the rules and regulations restricting her ability to help him. She missed a great opportunity to be exceptional at her job by making a positive difference to a customer. She could have solved another person’s problem, represented her organization well, and made a good impression on her supervisors. Still, accomplishing all of that would have required more effort and responsibility on her part. It would have required she act like a leader by taking ownership of finding a solution. She would have had to take the customer’s request to a higher level and lobbied on his behalf. Instead, she took the easy way out by telling Dr. Lachs she could not accept his return.

If you’re not vigilant, that passivity may show up on your team. Despite what we might like to think, we’re all vulnerable to the temptation to operate more as a dispassionate role or title than as an engaged human. That’s because professional roles are circumscribed, neat, and we can often hide behind them, just as Dr. Lach’s clerk did. Interacting as our real selves requires more from us. It demands we invest ourselves emotionally and take responsibility for outcomes, without any clear indication that we will benefit from doing so. No wonder, “that’s not in my job description,” slips out so easily when one is grousing about having to do too much.

Obviously, you want your team to resist the siren’s call of passivity. These are the behaviors and attitudes you want to foster:

  • Take responsibility.
  • Take obligations seriously.
  • Try to outperform your colleagues.
  • Reach beyond your role.
  • Embody this statement: “I’m ready to serve and will do the absolute best I can.”

Just how do you foster these behaviors and attitudes? Here are some ideas:

  • Make your expectations known.
  • Model these same behaviors and attitudes.
  • Recognize and call them out when you see them in others.

Make it clear that you value leadership and expect it from your team. If they are up to the challenge, you will see the effects in their overall performance, and, instead of your raising the bar for them, they may just start raising the bar for you!

 

About Dr. Debra Fish

Dr. Fish is a consulting psychologist whose writing and work focus exclusively on helping individuals and teams lead more effectively. Her firm, Fish Executive Leadership Group, LLC, counts among its clients everything from Fortune 50 corporations to small, privately-held professional service firms.

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Photo credit: iStock_team meeting_rawpixel.jpeg

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How Can I Run My Business With All These Distractions?

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Sondra’s business grew rapidly in the past 18 months as she expanded product lines. Then she added three new employees last quarter when she opened a second store.

With two retail locations and a constantly expanding line of products, Sondra can’t keep up with all the details. She is constantly bombarded with employee requests for time off from work and yesterday several employees came to work with ripped jeans and t-shirts which is not the image Sondra wants to present to her customers. The employees say they thought the dress code was casual.  This morning she spent an hour sorting out a dispute between two employees.

Now it seems one of the new employees at the new store is not working out and should probably be fired, but  Sondra needs time to read the store manager’s notes to verify the grounds for terminating employment. Then she needs to hire a replacement.

Sondra’s been delaying taking action because she hates these administrative tasks. But she also knows her business is getting stuck because she’s stuck making up the rules as she goes.  She knows she can’t procrastinate any longer. She considers hiring an HR consultant to fix all these HR issues. Then she realizes that hiring a consultant would be a waste of money if she doesn’t first decide what she wants, so she wades into the details that will fix her employee problems:

  • Step one is to revise the job description for her store employees to ensure the next employee has the qualifications she needs.
  • Step two is to create a list of what constitutes proper attire in the work place.
  • Step three is to create a time table for each work day so that employees know when each work shift begins and ends and the consequences of showing up late (or not at all).

Then Sondra asks her store managers to review the new rules. Based on their suggestions, she decides to add a dispute resolution process to make sure future employee disputes don’t escalate. Now that all the basic details have been hashed out over several weeks, Sondra can hire an HR consultant to actually create an employee handbook for her business.

Every small business begins as Sondra’s did, with informal employee and HR policies. As the business grows and adds employees, it is necessary to create administrative structure to ensure the whole business runs smoothly. Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor assists business owners in creating HR policies appropriate to their company size so that business owners like Sondra are free to actually run their businesses.

About Norma Shirk

Norma started her company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, to help employers create human resources policies for their employees and employee benefit programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to have structure without bureaucracy. Visit Norma’s website: www.complianceriskadvisor.com/.

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Building a Following: Attraction Rather Than Promotion

Bates Nursery 1

David Bates is a nurseryman who grew up in a family business, Bates Nursery and Garden Center, begun in 1932 by a savvy woman, his grandmother, Bessie Bates.  He is also my husband of 30 years so this interview was convenient. I am awed by the way he made something where there was nothing and I thought you might benefit from how David embraced technology to expand his customer base with social media, and writing a weekly newsletter that is received by over 11,000 readers.

David had about 2,500 subscribers prior to 2009 and wrote only sporadically.  During a rough patch, after he had sold the business and then had to take it back, there were limited financial resources for conventional advertising.  He began looking for ways to expand his customer base.  The fact that customers tend to age, and with many of his customers in their early 60’s, it became apparent that there was a need to attract new and younger customers for the long haul.

Conventional at first, the newsletter featured only garden tips.  David needed wider parameters than exclusively writing gardening tips for the weekly newsletter. “Seasonal reminders are a good thing but I needed more content and began to inject more of myself into the newsletter, making it more personal.“  The newsletter has proven to be worth the effort, based on the response he gets from customers.  “I write them as though I am writing to one person.  When people receive it, my hope is they feel as though they are getting a personal note from me to them.  Consequently, I think people feel more comfortable with me and respond the way one friend does to another.  I am a person who has gone through a lot of bumps in life; the things I write about along those lines tend to be the posts I get the most response from.  They often don’t have anything to do with gardening.“

More on David’s writing process and social media in my next post.

About Renee Bates

Renee is an artist focused on growing a newfound ability to express herself through oil painting, recently leaving her role as executive director of the non-profit Greenways for Nashville to pursue art and product development. Renee likes being in nature, hiking, birding, and working in the garden. Married to David Bates of Bates Nursery and Garden Center, she appreciates that the legacy of the 3rd generation business was begun in 1932 at the height of the depression by a savvy woman, Bessie Bates.

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Flying Solo:  Pros and Cons of Being Self-Employed

Flying Solo

I am self-employed.  Notwithstanding a part-time hourly gig, I am entirely responsible for my work product, time management, working conditions, clientele and income.  In the past, I spent years working in a corporate environment; a place I learned is not for me.  But being my own boss is not without challenges, either.  Thankfully, I have my supportive HerSavvy friends to help me over the rough spots and to celebrate my victories big and small.  In fact many of us are self-employed, leading one Savvy gal to refer to us as her “advisory board.”  I LOVE IT!!!!  Indeed there is a veritable font of knowledge flowing through this group so I decided to ask the question: What are the pros and cons of being your own boss?  And being the generous women they are, they gladly opened up and shared some of their lessons learned.  So, in no particular order, here are some answers from our HerSavvy Advisory Board:

“For what it’s worth, I love being self-employed because I have complete and utter creative and aesthetic control over my products and how they are presented, marketed and packaged. There’s no group that has to sign off on my new collection or the colors of my logo. I also enjoy being able to accept challenges and quickly modify offerings/policy based on client feedback. What I often struggle with is switching between the creative (right brained) responsibilities and the business/analytical (left brained) tasks. I find that to be most effective, I often need a bit of space between the two.”

“What I like – no issues with changing schedules as needed.  What I don’t like – being all things – custodian, bookkeeper, office manager, marketer etc…until and unless you have funds to outsource all this, it is a lot of work to wear all these hats.”

“Practically, my biggest hurdle to overcome was technical support.  I had resources to address all the legal consulting issues specific to my profession.  It was having/maintaining the technical tools that was tough. In a broader sense, I had to critically analyze my greatest weakness(es) and find outside resources to bolster my practice.  It takes a critical, objective eye and the willingness to admit that ‘you can’t do it all.’  That can be very difficult for some people. For me the biggest pros were not bowing to bureaucratic requirements that got in the way of serving my clients and freedom to set my own hours, focus on the type of law I wanted to practice, etc.  I also had greater freedom about setting my rates and even accepting consideration other than money.”

“Pro: You are your own boss.  Con: You are your own boss.  But expanding on the Pro side, you have flexibility with your time.  Even though all of us that are self-employed put in many hours each week we can take the time to go to that special family event or take our vacations on our schedule and not someone else’s.   And on the Con side being your own boss means you wear many different hats and that can be stressful and very tiresome at time.”

“Pro: Flexible schedule.  Con: Having to keep a watch on every piece of the business (i.e., billing, scheduling, business filings, etc.); not having anyone else to help manage those things.”

“Pro: I absolutely love the ‘Flexibility’ of being self-employed!  Con: The need to continuously look for the next job!”

“I thrive on the accountability of it. You do good work for a client you get rewarded; there are not as many variables between you and the work you do, unlike in a large corporate firm where the performance or needs of partners. etc., may affect you. I like control so this allows me maximum control over my work and reward. On the other side it is occasionally lonely. While your employees may be friends with each other, as their boss I could not have the same level of camaraderie. This is especially true in a small environment when you have 2/3 people working for you.”

So, there you have it, straight from the mouths of the most successful, motivated, intelligent, passionate, creative and amazing women I have ever known.  If you are self-employed, let us know your pros and cons and how you keep it all together.  Stay Savvy, my friends!

About Barbara Dab:

Barbara Dab is a journalist, broadcast radio personality, producer and award-winning public relations consultant. She currently hosts two radio shows locally in Nashville, TN. Check out her website athttp://www.zoneabouttown.com.

Barbara is also creator of The Peretz Project: Stories from the Shoah: Next Generation. Check it out at http://www.theperetzproject.com If you, or someone you know, is the child of survivors of the Shoah, The Holocaust, and would like to tell your story please leave a comment and Barbara will contact you.

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Volunteer Service: What Makes Sense?

Volunteer

For many of us volunteer service, whether it’s for a nonprofit or a professional or civic association, is a natural evolution of our professional career and personal passions.  If you’re good at what you do (and I suspect you are!) you may have many opportunities to serve.  How do you choose?  Here’s the process I use, in this order.

Is it in your company’s best interest?  If this opportunity furthers your company’s visibility and credibility and fits the corporate culture, then this is probably a yes.  The benefit doesn’t have to be direct (lead to business) so don’t focus solely on that.  Start first with company fit as there is very little volunteer service that doesn’t impact job hours.  Unless you’re the CEO, you’ll usually want to get a higher-up’s buy in.

Does it speak to you personally?  Ideally, the closer it aligns with your passions the more rewarding, and successful, your experience will be.  Service, of any kind, must be genuine.  A few years ago, I joined a small non-profit board because a trusted colleague asked and because I thought I could help, not because of any passion for the work.  My service lasted one year, with little reward and not much effective service.  Don’t waste their time or yours unless you have great interest.

Can I commit the time and effort for what they need?  First, get a clear picture of what this is.  There’s a great article that my colleague Jeff Jowdy wrote that outlines some solid questions.  Ask these and any that help define your obligations.  And, this is important, if you can’t commit, DON’T DO IT.  Recently I was given an incredible opportunity to serve my profession on their state licensing board.  It passed the first two questions with flying colors yet it was clear to me I did not have the time.  I made the tough decision to resign from another commitment (finding a replacement first so as not to leave a hole).  This was truly a tough choice but doing otherwise would have been a misstep.

This is my process.  Do you have any other questions you ask yourself when called on to serve?  Let HerSavvy know!

About Laura Reinbold, PE

Ms. Reinbold explores ways shecan help build our communities, from the geoprofessional side of the engineering profession.

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Going Natural, Part II

Linda SackLast month we delved into the world of wearing our natural hair color.  One native Nashvillian set herself apart with her beautiful silver hair.   She entered a contest for a skin care line who wanted a representative who was over 40.  Tish Hooker, later becoming known simply as Tish, was a beautiful 45 year-old who had stopped coloring her hair at 42.  From the prominent Fort family of Nashville, I knew her from local media and she wore the prettiest salt and pepper hair I had seen.  In the 80’s, I recall discovering her picture in a Germaine Monteil cosmetics advertisement in a national magazine, Vogue, Elle, or Glamour.

Wearing a full-length gown, I thought how beautiful she was. Today she is still strikingly beautiful.  Tish recalls shocking people with her silver hair when everyone else was coloring their hair.  You can read about how she took a gamble with her life and wound up in New York, and other multi-faceted life experiences in this 1984 article in The Spokesman – Review.

Since writing this, I have asked other friends who have gone natural about their reasons.  Kate Stephenson, an attorney with the best hair around, says her motivation was that she was tired of paying so much to having her hair colored and when she realized underneath was white and that it might be interesting, she stopped coloring at about age 45.  Having begun seeing white hair in her 20’s, she colored her hair for many years.  Using blonde at the end, she simply stopped coloring her short hair and it easily grew out.  Not remembering reactions of other people at the time, she gets lots of compliments on her short white hair today and has no regrets at all. Kate says to anyone thinking about doing it, “Go for it. Natural is good. We are what we are.”

Photo: Linda Sack and her lovely natural hair color.

About Renee Bates

Renee is the executive director of the non-profit, Greenways for Nashville, a member based organization. In addition to growing private support for the trails and green spaces, she enjoys oil painting, hiking, nature and working in the garden. Renee is married to David Bates of Bates Nursery and Garden Center, a 3rd generation business begun in 1932 by a savvy woman, Bessie Bates.

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Biting the Elephant

I love project management: Planning towards a defined goal using the budget, schedule and resources available.  And I’m good at it.  People have always complimented me on my ability to get things done.  For me, it’s not rocket science.  In fact, it’s not that difficult.  I call it “Biting the Elephant.”

Elephant

When faced with a large project or personal mountain ahead of me, from winning a large geoprofessional job to planning a conference, I break it down into manageable tasks.  Simply, I make a plan.

The more I plan, I find, the easier it is to “git ‘er done.”  Frankly, the plan may change (and usually does) but that’s not important.  Wrapping my brain around what steps it takes to succeed gets me halfway there.  Then, I just have to do it or pull in the resources needed for what I can’t accomplish.  That’s called follow-through and it’s critical to Biting the Elephant.  Great plans are wonderful but they mean nothing without action.  Like Nike:  Just Do It.

So, when faced with what seems like an insurmountable task, take a breath, make a plan, see it through and enjoy seeing your hard work realized.

About Laura Reinbold, PE

Ms. Reinbold explores ways http://www.ttlusa.com can help build our communities, from the geoprofessional side of the engineering profession.

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Going Natural

Kate Stephenson and Mark BatesIt is being discussed more and more.  Women in their 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s are deciding to cut the hair color and return to their ever lightening roots.  I’m curious, so I’ve asked some friends who have stopped coloring to share their experience with me.

Linda had been coloring her hair from her 20’s.  Because it grew so fast, she would have a color line within a week or so, and needed to color every 2 weeks.  About 6 years ago she decided to stop and go back to her own hair color, which she calls silver, or platinum.  When I asked her why, she said it was because of the pain it was causing…the physical pain from the chemicals, and the emotional pain, being so tired of feeling self-conscious when the gray would start growing out.  “At the time I was dating someone who was not in favor of the silver.  Soon after the relationship ended, I chopped off all of the color damaged, dead hair and took it as short as I could,” adding that it was a bit of a shock, even to her.  When I asked her if she saw any downside to going natural she offered, “After I started growing the silver out I’ve had nothing but compliments. The only reason that someone would not get compliments is if they didn’t style their hair.“

When I asked her what advice she would give to anyone thinking about taking the plunge she said, “If they had darker hair, I would encourage them to start by going with some highlights, blonde goes to silver easier– because when you go from dark to silver, it is too difficult, and with highlights you won’t have that nasty skunk line.  Get as close to platinum as possible.  Otherwise, chop it all off.  It felt amazing.”

Because Linda has beautiful olive skin, hazel eyes and looks much younger than her years, when she was coloring her hair blonde she got hit on often by younger men, fifteen to twenty years younger.  Now that she has gone silver, that doesn’t happen anymore.  She is grateful.  The younger men were not always the most tactful and it would often be hurtful when they found out her age.

“I didn’t feel natural, or pretty, coloring my hair.  I am so grateful that I listened to my intuition, and not my ex-boyfriend.”  Linda adds that just a little bit of platinum highlight keeps it light around her face.  She shares that her hair is much healthier and thicker, another reason to be very happy about the decision to go natural.

When I asked Linda how her business life has been affected she dropped her voice to that solid, personal truth telling tone, “I feel embracing my natural hair color and doing what I wanted to do has brought me in line with being authentically who I am.  This has made me feel more comfortable and has led me to coming into my own.  People see my natural hair and expect me to be a more real person, or maybe I am a more real person.“  Linda Sack is a licensed message therapist and came to that profession after she made the decision to stop coloring her hair, leaving a corporate career behind, and feels that massage therapy is perfect for her.

My lovely friend Marilyn Shriver, who colored for over 25 years, and has the most beautiful white hair now, says, “What kept me coloring was that someone told me that if I let my hair go natural, because I was fair, I would disappear from the neck up.”   This turned out to be mis-information.  She says, “I get more compliments on my hair since I stopped coloring it.  My obsession with hair has diminished.  The hair is much better hair and I have accepted that I am the age that I am.  Everybody’s aging at the same rate.”

So, I am thinking about it more.  The first reason is because my hair is thinning from the chemicals.  Another, besides embracing the real, I’d like to simplify my life and spend time doing the things I enjoy most.

This is part one of a two-part article.  Come back next month as I continue the exploration of going natural with a native Nashvillian who was selected from a group of 7,000 women to represent a world wide cosmetic company, not entirely because of her beautiful platinum locks, but she wouldn’t have gotten the job without them.

About Renee Bates

Renee is the executive director of the non-profit, Greenways for Nashville, a member based organization. In addition to growing private support for the trails and green spaces, she enjoys oil painting, hiking, nature and working in the garden. Renee is married to David Bates of Bates Nursery and Garden Center, a 3rd generation business begun in 1932 by a savvy woman, Bessie Bates.

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Photo Credit: Nfocus Magazine; Kate Stephenson & Mark Bates attend Authors in the Round Dinner, Humanities Tennessee

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Are You A Leader Or A Boss?

Leader or Boss

It’s an important distinction. Just because you’re a boss doesn’t mean you’re an effective leader. And, just because you’re not a boss does not mean you’re not a leader.  Bosses get things done, but they sometimes focus too much on the tactical. Effective leaders get important things done and done well. Their accomplishments continue to reap benefits in the long term and for a greater number of people.

Here are 5 questions you can use to gauge where you fall in the leader vs. boss balance:

  • Do you focus more on whether individuals are hitting performance goals or on what big adjustment you can make next to unleash their full potential?
  • Do you spend more time thinking about how to turn around employee-related problems, or on creating ways for your employees to take pride of ownership in what they produce?
  • Do you spend more time critiquing what your employees are doing, or critiquing how you’re helping them?
  • Do you pay attention to your employees’ aspirations only during their annual reviews, or do you attend to them throughout the year?
  • Do you tell your employees what initiatives they should undertake or do you enlist their help in fleshing out what their roles should be considering your department’s strategic objectives?

Obviously, if you’re in a leadership position, you probably do a little of all of the above.  But if most of your time and energy are spent on activities in the first half of each of those questions, then you are missing tremendous opportunities to make a difference with effective leadership. By seeing broad possibilities and appreciating the talent around you, you can help your organization

About Dr. Debra Fish

Dr. Fish is a consulting psychologist whose writing and work focus exclusively on helping individuals and teams lead more effectively. Her firm, Fish Executive Leadership Group, LLC, counts among its clients everything from Fortune 50 corporations to small, privately-held professional service firms.

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Effective Leadership – Building Trust

Effective Leadership-BuildingTrust

It’s a basic necessity for good relationships, so it makes sense that trust is a key contributor to a leader’s effectiveness.  Think about it… Would you follow someone you don’t trust? The trust that is critical to being an effective leader involves much more than honesty, though. Leaders usually act a little shocked—act as if their character has been assaulted—when I ask whether people trust them. They hear the question as something akin to, “Do you lie to people?” I ask leaders whether they are trusted so that they will focus on the following key questions. The answers to which all need to be, “Yes.”

Do people trust that:

  • You have their best interests at heart?
  • You will follow through on your commitments?
  • You know what you’re doing?
  • You will make sound decisions?
  • You’ll keep your cool?
  • You’ll be honest with them?

Recent psychological research provides a key pointer toward what leaders can do to earn the trust of the people who work with them: people begin to trust you when they see you demonstrate self-control, i.e. avoid doing what is not beneficial and do more of what is, even if there will be a little pain involved. People look for clues about your trustworthiness in all that you say and do. If you tell everyone you are on a diet, but snack on the office goodies routinely, people will file that away as evidence that you either don’t mean what you say or you don’t have the strength to make hard choices…neither behavior being very leader-like, of course.  Imagine if you also then tiptoe around a difficult team member who is not carrying her weight on projects. Once again, others will conclude you can’t make tough decisions for the ultimate benefit of the team.

Earning trust can take time, but it’s possible to speed things along a bit if you put your mind to it. If you’re in leadership, and wondering what proactive steps you can take to earn others’ trust sooner rather than later, try out some of these:

  • Seek out information that can answer questions or ease concerns your team has expressed and pass that information along to them.
  • Start and end meetings on time, and if you must deviate from the stated agenda, make it clear why.
  • Take advantage of opportunities to advocate for your employees with others in the company.
  • Pay close attention to what you tell people you will do—even the trivial things—and do them or tell them why you can’t.
  • Keep a lid on your emotions when reacting to news, situations, etc. Besides not throwing tantrums in the office, we’re talking about keeping your less-measured editorial comments about people or events to yourself.
  • Admit when you don’t know something and demonstrate a commitment to learn it.

Obviously, none of this is rocket science; you just have to decide you’re going to take these steps. After all, building trust is as simple as staying away from the cookies when you’re on a diet.

About Dr. Debra Fish

Dr. Fish is a consulting psychologist whose writing and work focus exclusively on helping individuals and teams lead more effectively. Her firm, Fish Executive Leadership Group, LLC, counts among its clients everything from Fortune 50 corporations to small, privately-held professional service firms.

Like what you’ve read? Feel free to share, but please… Give HerSavvy credit. Thanks!

 

 

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