In my experience as a leadership speaker and consultant, it starts with senior leaders reflecting internally — to understand their purpose, gain clarity about what they stand for and what the organization stands for — and identifying how to communicate this with the rest of your organization.

It is the strength of individuals who make an organization world class. And companies that make leadership development a strategic priority has the ability to attract and retain the best leadership talent, and move to the head of the pack.

Leadership Culture Starts at the Top

Transformational leaders understand that a culture of leadership doesn’t start with a written document, but by the behaviours they model every day. You can’t simply write down what you want your leadership culture to be and expect others to follow. Your culture is made up of the values you live daily — and those are not aspirational — they are actual.

Leaders must understand and communicate a clear vision to create an environment that attracts people who share their same values.

Leaders understand culture doesn’t start with a written document, but by behaviours they model.

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You lay the groundwork by being clear with your purpose, and by leading by example and modeling the behaviours they would like to see practiced. Only then can you begin to establish the right structures and processes to foster and reinforce the desired culture.

If you want to develop great leaders, you first need to learn to be a great leader yourself.

5 Things All Great Leaders Do to Create a Culture of Leadership

While it’s easy to assume that great leaders were born to lead — and some are — more often great leadership is a result hard work, gaining experience over time, continuously evolving, and being open to learning new skills and trying different approaches. Thankfully, most of us were not born a natural leader, we had to learn — and this willingness to grow and develop will help create a culture of leadership.

Here are 5 things that great leaders do to help create a culture of leadership:

1. Define clarity of purpose: All great leaders find their purpose. It’s clearly defined, and it is the catalyst for everything they do. Purpose helps to fuel their work ethic and drive their passion for what they do. More importantly, they create a purpose that resonates with others, and they communicate organizational values and vision in a way that brings people together to rally behind their vision, creating a strong culture of leadership.
2. Walk the talk: You must reinforce company culture and values daily and with consistency. Leadership culture is a living and breathing entity. Strong leaders understand that organizational culture is dynamic and know it’s critical to reflect a culture of leadership through their actions. If your team sees you practicing what you preach, they will be more open to buy-in. Values should be a regular touch point in decision-making to ensure they are being lived every day —  not just when it is easy or convenient. Leaders also establish a culture of leadership when they hire new people by hiring for character over competence (Read Three Critical Elements for Finding the Right People to Work in High Performance Environments) and establishing expectations clearly during onboarding, training, and coaching, and by putting people in leadership positions who share the same values and live them consistently. Read more: Why Leaders Need to Reinforce Company Culture and Values.
3. Practice self-awareness: Leaders need to be willing to change first — before organizations can change and transform. Leaders need to have the ability to be self-aware, as well as organizationally and culturally aware, of the impact of their actions and decisions. They allow others to have a voice, they are open to critique and outside ideas, and they are willing to grow individually and professionally. Read more: Leaders Need to Change First Before Organizations Change.
4. Recognize the value of people: Great leaders understand that the most valuable resource in their organization is people. They invest in people and help them develop their own leadership capacity — scaling it throughout the organization. Transformational leaders have a genuine desire to lift people up to achieve their own success.
5. Create transformative organizational change: Leaders themselves need to be transformative in order to inspire higher performance and a customer-focused culture. As discussed in, 6 Ways for Leaders to Create Organizational Change, “how you approach change is just as important as what you want to change. If you want to be a transformative leader and create long-lasting organizational change, you need to approach it in a way which minimizes negative reactions, is aligned with business strategies and corporate cultures and is inclusive in nature.”

Anyone can be in a leadership position, but this doesn’t mean they are a leader. There is a difference between managing and leading. Managers look after things/checklists (budgets, invoices, scheduling, reports) and usually do so from behind a desk.

However, people are led. Great leaders know that to connect with their teams, they need to be engaged — ready to step in and support their people, even working side by side to get the job done. Leaders take the time to build their social skills and interact with others so that there is a strong teamwork atmosphere.

Forget about looking for the secret formula or shortcuts to create a culture of leadership. You won’t find them. Start by taking a look in the mirror and reflecting on your own leadership. This is the first place to look for answers about how to create a culture of leadership.

The next article in our leadership speaker series will examine the critical elements for finding the right people for your organization.

For more information about having Bill speak about this topic at your next event, visit Kickass Keynotes

It is no longer good enough for companies to provide good customers service — rather, companies need to create memorable interactions with customers that help establish a loyal relationship and promote brand advocacy.

Creating a memorable customer experience is based on the creation of an ideal experience that your customers would want to have throughout their relationship with your company. These interactions take place on a number of channels such as in person, over the phone, through email, and on social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Successful customer experiences are scalable and can be managed consistently across multiple channels. Your customer’s experience must be unique. And, for it to be successful it needs to be clearly defined so that each one of your employees understands how to deliver the experience you want to create for your customers.

Today customers demand a great customer experience and will not settle for anything less.

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10 tips to improve your customer experience

Here are 10 ways that you can improve and refine your customer experience and improve your relationship with customers:

1. Make your customer experience clear: A great customer experience must be scalable across your company, consistent, and be easily understood and implemented by your employees. Have you defined the key elements that must be delivered to every customer? Review your customer experience documents and ask your employees if they understand what is expected of them.
2. Make your customer experience simple: If your customer experience is too complex, your employees will have difficulty delivering a consistent experience. Keep it simple. Do your employees understand what is expected of them? Are there too many rules? Consider relaxing the constraints on your employees so they can focus on creating an experience that creates a positive customer outcome rather than simply following a list of rules.
3. Define customer experience by channel: Customer experiences will vary by the channel that customers use to interact with your company. In person and online experiences are different and this needs to be reflected in how companies approach their customers on each channel.  Does your ideal customer experience vary by channel? If not, clearly outline the experience you want to create for each platform and point of interaction with your customers.
4. Address the emotional need: The focus of customer experience management needs to be on addressing your customer’s emotional need. Do you understand your customer’s emotional needs? What are you doing to ensure their emotional need is addressed?
5. Make sure all levels of your organization are involved: Creating a truly great customer experience is a company-wide effort. There needs to be a consistent experience across the board. Does your company have an internal feedback process in place? How do you know your customers experience is consistent? Implement a regular review process and collect feedback about the customer experience.
6. Get your employees to buy in: If your employees do not buy in, your customers experience will suffer. If employees are not buying in, it is often a sign that your customer experience is too complex, or worse, isn’t relevant to the customer. What are you doing to ensure that your employees are buying in and creating the experience your customers want?
7. Talk to your customers: Ask your customers what they want. Be direct — ask them what your company can do to improve their experience. These conversations will help to build relationships. What can you do to better understand your customer’s emotional need? Create feedback channels that will help you capture and respond to your customer’s emotional needs.
8. Test your customer experience: Before launching any new customer experience initiatives, ask some of your customers to test drive your approach and provide feedback. You will be surprised what you will learn and uncover some of the oversights that you have missed. Plus you’ll avoid the expense of a false start that doesn’t really resonate with customers.
9. Narrow your focus: If you do not understand your ideal customer, then the experience you have created for them will be off target. Who are your customers? Do you have an ideal customer profile? What do your customers want to get out of their interaction and relationship with your company? Offer incentives to customers to get their opinion through surveys and focus groups.
10. Measure the experience: Measure, measure, measure. If you do not have the tools in place to measure your customer’s experience, then you will not have the ability to refine the experience and gain new insights. What tools are you using to measure your customers experience? Develop a system to measure your customer’s experience.

Creating a highly engaging customer experience will lead to better relationships with customers that will not only generate consistent income, but also develop brand advocates out of current customers that will help generate a new stream of business.

For more information about having Bill speak about this topic at your next event, visit Kickass Keynotes

In our last article, we discussed building your change management plan. Now let’s discuss how to continue the cycle and develop the skills of future leaders.

Maintaining Strong Leadership – Building from Within

In my experience as a leadership expert,  an organizational culture that reflects your vision and values as a leader is sustained over time only through the internal development of future leaders. Continuing the cycle of strong leaders is possible by being proactive and developing the skills of future leaders.

This is possible by embedding leadership development into your organizational culture and establishing strategies that will help identify future leaders internally, and by creating ways to develop the skills of future leaders through internal promotions, training, and leadership coaching programs.

Continuing the cycle of strong future leaders is possible by being proactive, developing skills

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How to Identify Future Leaders

Identifying future leaders is the key to maintaining strong leadership at all levels in your organization. The question most companies are pondering internally is, “What should I be looking for in a potential leader?”

Here are five important ways to measure the potential of a future leader:

1. Emotional intelligence: Team members that are emotionally intelligent are more self-aware. They have a desire to achieve, are continuously looking to become better people and professionals, and understand how to build strong relationships with the people around them.
2. Innovation: Innovation is a key factor that creates organizational sustainability. Look for team members who are adept at problem solving and are always looking for new ways and approaches to do things.
3. Internal drive to achieve: People who have the drive to succeed make themselves known, and leaders need to pay attention to them. People who are always looking for new ways to evolve, add new skills, take on increased responsibility and develop personally and professionally have the potential to be leaders.
4. People management: Understanding people, how to relate to them on a personal and emotional level, and the ability to get people to work together toward a common goal is an essential leadership trait.
5. Perseverance: Does the person handle setbacks well? Do they learn from those setbacks and recover quickly? Are they cool under pressure? The ability to work through difficult times is a vital skill for a future leader to possess.

Ways to Develop the Skills of Future Leaders in your Organization

Once you identify potential leaders in your organization, it is important that you begin to groom them for advancement internally. How you develop the skills of future leaders can be accomplished through:

• Mentorship programs: Pair future leaders with a senior manager, create a clear mentorship program, and establish the goals and objectives of the program.
• Leadership coaching: Offer future leaders the opportunity to get leadership coaching, leadership consulting, and professional development.
• Job rotations and shadowing: Future leaders need to have experience in all areas of the organization. Set up job rotations and job shadowing of executive positions to prepare team members who have leadership potential.
• Regular feedback: Consistent feedback is essential. Establish regular communication and report progress to team members who are part of the leadership development program.
• Present new challenges and special projects: Challenge your future leaders by offering new tasks and special projects that give them more responsibility. How they fare will be a good indicator of their future performance when put in a leadership position.
• Allow them to fail: Future leaders need to be challenged to see how they react in difficult situations. You need to challenge them and allow them to fail strategically to enhance their growth.

Not everyone has what it takes to be a successful leader, and when you identify leadership qualities in a person, you need to develop these skills to continue the cycle of effective leadership in your organization. Strong leadership and organizational culture is developed over time through continuous growth and professional development at all levels of your organization.

This completes the six part leadership consulting series. Please contact me if you would like the full series as a single white paper.

For more information about having Bill speak about this topic at your next event, visit Kickass Keynotes.

Encourage your team to take customer service from bland and boring to knock-your-socks-off spectacular, and you can stand back and watch the amazing results achieved!

1. Engage your customers. Step into their shoes. Understand where they’re coming from. Listen. Empathize. Often customers only want to be heard. They may not even expect a problem to be resolved, but they want to know that your team cares about their problem. When your team does that, you’ve taken a long stride in turning customers into raving fans who’ll return to your company often and encourage others to do the same.

2. Create a positive, lasting customer experience. Walk through your company to see how customers perceive their experience in dealing with you from start to finish. This may be physically or virtually depending on your service channels. Did their phone call get answered promptly and courteously? Was the web experience clear and easy to follow? Where the floors clean? Were they greeted with a smile and a friendly hello when they walked in the door? If someone didn’t have an answer to a question or a need, were they quick to search for an answer?

Consider each element of the interaction a customer experiences when they do business with you, then work to build a positive experience that meets them at the door and walks them through their entire visit and beyond. Then chose 1 or 2 specific elements you can do better than anyone else. They will become your point of differentiation.

Consider each element of the interaction a customer experiences when they do business with you

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3. Get out of the proverbial box. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is one definition of insanity. Customers love to be surprised and the best way to do that is do things a little differently. Do something unusual and extraordinary and your customers will keep coming back just to see what you’ll do next.

4. Indulge your customers. Let them know that you’ll go out of your way to ensure there are “wowed”! Offer a little more than the “other guy”. Your customers will notice. Wouldn’t you?

5. Get excited! Customers appreciate service delivered with excitement and enthusiasm. They’ll rave about how much fun it is to do business with your company. And who will they be raving to? Friends, family and anyone else who’ll listen. When your people are excited about serving customers — customers feel appreciated. In turn, they’ll reward your company with continued business and extravagant praise for everything you do.

Customer service goes far beyond a one-time visit or experience. Customer service that turns average, ho-hum customers into raving fans can only be accomplished by a team full of customer-oriented, customer-focused people driven to impress and inspire customers with their level of concern. Build such a team in your company, and you’ll amaze yourselves at the level of customer loyalty you create!

For more information about having Bill speak about creating an exceptional customer experience at your next event, visit Kickass Keynotes, Satisfied Customers Are Killing Your Business.

Well, to a certain degree they all are — the problem is trying to create the definitive list. Lists aren’t bad, but too often they are linked to tick boxes which suggest people can tick them off as complete. And employee engagement is never complete.

Employee Engagement Is An Ongoing Challenge For Organizational Leaders

Consider this scenario: 3 of 4 employees are not engaged and 1 is actively disengaged. Too many employees are just there for the paycheck and perform at a level that allows them to get by while doing less than their best. Many employees also underperform because they are disinterested or not challenged in their current role.

To change this situation and get the most out of employees, company leaders can forget about lists and remind themselves that engagement is an emotional reaction to the work environment.

Understanding the core emotional drivers that engage your employees is the key to achieving a high-performance culture. It is only when companies can make the emotional connection with employees that they are able to shift from having satisfied employees to engaged employees and see a measurable increase in productivity, profit, and sales.

Leaders can forget about lists, themselves engagement is an emotional reaction to the work environment

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Emotional Drivers Of Employee Engagement

So let’s talk about some of the emotional drivers that foster employee engagement. Dare I say it — here are eight emotional drivers — in no particular order — that leaders need to leverage to develop engaged employees:

1. Pride: Employees are more willing to engage when they are proud of what they do and believe that what they do plays an important role in company success. If they work for a company that has a good reputation based on trust and integrity and they feel the job they do offers value to their customers — then they feel valued and enjoy a sense of pride and willingness to contribute. Is their job something that makes them proud to tell their friends? How do your employees feel about being associated with your organization? Do they take pride in working for your company? Is your organization making a contribution?
2. Recognition: Everyone likes a kind word and to be recognized for having done a good job. By customers, by supervisors, and by colleagues — it doesn’t matter, we all feel good when someone says something nice about our work. So take an interest in your employees and recognize their efforts. Show your appreciation when it is warranted and show that you care for their well-being. Make sure that when customers say good things about their experience that it gets passed on to everyone who helped make that experience great — not just those people on the front line who get praised directly. When was the last time you recognized an employee for a job well done? How do you recognize your employees? Is recognition built in as an intentional part of your culture?
3. Stimulating Work: Employees are more engaged when they are in a position that is stimulating and challenges them on a daily basis. Challenge your employees by offering projects that help them grow and develop their skills. Are your employee’s skills and abilities a good match for the role they perform? A bored employee is a disengaged employee.
4. Personal Development: In addition to having stimulating work, employees want to feel they are growing in their job. If an employee knows that 5 years from now they will be in the same position without the opportunity to grow, it will be difficult for them to engage and perform at a high level. Give your employee the opportunity to grow and develop their skills year over year through training, coaching and internal growth programs. What opportunities do you make available to your employees to expand their role and capabilities? Do they see this job as a stepping stone to other opportunities within the organization or are they locked in a dead end?
5. Clarity: Employees are more engaged when they have clarity around the vision and mission of the organization and understand their role and see the connection between their job and how it influences company performance. Provide clear expectations and role responsibilities so your employees understand how their work contributes to company goals. Do your employees know how they fit into the big picture and the impact they have on overall performance? Do they understand what outstanding performance looks like in their role?
6. Positive Work Environment: Employees perform better in positive work environments. Being surrounded by positive, supportive co-workers significantly impacts a person’s willingness to engage. Creating personal relationships within the organization also builds emotional bonds and creates a stronger sense of team and commitment than when people see the work environment as simply a place where they go to work. Does your company have a positive work environment that produces engaged and productive employees? Do you have planned activities that build a team environment based on personal connections with co-workers? If not, what can you do to improve your work environment?
7. Relationship with Manager: Even within a positive work environment, a manager can make or break an employee’s willingness to be engaged. A bad manager can destroy a good work environment — while a great manager can make a bad work environment bearable. Better yet — great managers in great work environments trump all. Great managers who build strong relationships with their employees create positive work environments. Do your managers listen to feedback from their staff and build personal connections with each as individuals? Do your managers have good relationships with your frontline staff? What can you do to improve your employee’s relationship with their managers?
8. A Voice: Employees are more willing to engage if they are given a voice and are given a platform to be heard, especially when it comes to strategy and issues within their department. Do you allow your employees to have a voice and provide feedback related to their role with the company?

If you pay attention to these emotional drivers, you will find that all the lists are covered. Organizations that are committed to engaged employees understand that it is an ongoing process which is never complete. Hopefully thinking about these emotional drivers will keep you driving in the right direction — but never feel you are ready to tick the box on the list of drivers.

Leaders that focus on creating a culture that incorporates these emotional drivers will not only improve their organizational culture, but also their employee’s overall attitude, commitment, and performance.

For more information about having Bill speak about this topic at your next event, visit Kickass Keynotes.

Dithering about decisions or not being willing to make the difficult decisions causes employees to question your leadership skills and impacts your ability to execute your vision. Therefore, leaders need to develop leadership traits and take actions that will evoke action and engage employees.

Courageous leadership traits

There are a number of common traits that courageous leader possess. It is these traits that make them transformational leaders and put them in a position to inspire their employees to engage in the vision and culture they have created for the company.

To be a courageous leader you need to:

• Make tough decisions. Are you a little gun shy when the going gets tough?
• Anticipate potential issues and deal with them quickly and efficiently. Do you wait for issues to arise before addressing them?
• Take risks in the appropriate situations. How often do the risky decisions you make yield positive results?
• Own the mistakes you make and take ownership when things do not go as planned. Do you get caught in the blame game?
• Be innovative and entertain new ideas. When was the last time you tried a new strategy?
• Be a lifelong learner. Are you part of a mentorship program? Are you receiving professional coaching? What are you doing to continue to develop as a leader?

Courageous leaders set the tone for organizational performance

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5 ways courageous leadership impact engagement and action

Courageous leadership elevates companies. It puts them in a position to grow your collective consciousness and is the spark that ignites employee engagement and action. To be a courageous leader you need to:

1. Set the tone:
   Courageous leaders make an impression and set the tone for the direction of the company. Tell your employees what you expect and the actions you want them to execute. What tone are you conveying to your employees?
2. Set clear expectations:
   Have confidence in your vision and clearly communicate your expectations for each level of your company. This makes it easier for them to achieve the results you want. Do your employees understand what is expected of them and have a clear vision of what success looks like in their role?
3. Ask for a commitment from your employees:
   Ask your employees to commit to your vision. When they commit, they are agreeing to take the actions you ask of them to execute your vision. Are your employees committed to your direction? Is there resistance among the ranks?
4. Be visible:
   Create personalized connections with your employees at all levels. Encourage them as individuals to buy into your vision and make the necessary steps to create change. When was the last time you had a one on one conversation with your front line employees?
5. Listen:
   Courageous leaders are willing to listen to feedback from their management team. Employees that feel like they have input and can voice concerns will be more engaged in their role with the company. How often do you listen to your team or consider other perspectives?

Courageous leadership provide employees with a sense of belonging that is absent in most companies. Employees want to feel that what they do makes a difference. When leaders have the courage to be open, honest, and strong in their approach to leadership, they create an environment that evokes action and promotes employee engagement.

For more information about having Bill speak about this topic at your next event, visit Kickass Keynotes

Check out Sometimes Truth is Stranger than Fiction and Is Your Customer Focused Language Important? for more about interesting customer service experiences.

One thing that is no surprise is that industry-leading organizations are often recognized for providing great service and creating memorable customer experiences. They put the time and resources into ensuring they have knowledgeable team members who are friendly and ready to help. Plus, they are skilled at providing great after-sale service to further the relationship customers have with their organization/brand.

What is the key to their success in providing a great customer experience? Great leadership.

Great leadership helps establish great customer service. Effective leadership inspires engaged teams, and engaged teams create memorable customer experiences that drive loyalty and repeat purchase.

Weak leadership has a negative trickle-down effect on customer loyalty

There is no question that leadership sets the tone of everything that happens. Weak leadership has a trickle-down effect on your team and organizational culture. When there is a disconnect between leadership and people in the organization — especially those who are in direct contact with customers — it usually results in a negative impact on customer experience.

Weak leadership’s impact on customer experience has this trickle-down effect:

1. Weak leadership is demotivating and leads to lower employee engagement: When leaders don’t inspire their teams, people are disengaged and more likely to just go through the motions and put in minimal effort.
2. Lower employee engagement leads to lower quality customer experience: When your team is not engaged and only putting in minimal effort, the quality of your customer service will suffer.
3. Low quality customer experience impacts customer loyalty: When your quality of customer experience suffers, your customer loyalty will be impacted.

When customers have a negative experience or even an experience that falls short of their expectations, it can result in lost sales, negative reviews, and the inability to nurture long term relationships with your customers.

Effective leadership inspires your team

Having an organization of engaged employees will have a direct impact on your ability to provide great service to your customers, and this starts with leadership. A transformative leader has the ability to engage and inspire, create a positive organizational culture, and positively impact a person’s passion for the organization where they work. Check out 8 Emotional Drivers of Employee Engagement for more on how to engage your team.

When people buy in and are happy with their positions, they become inspired and more willing to go the extra mile to create a memorable customer experience. This creates a win-win situation. Your organization has happy and engaged team members, and your customers are receiving a great experience when they engage with your organization.

Inspired people create great customer experiences

An inspired team who work hard to create great customer experiences not only has a positive impact on your bottom line today, it also plants the seeds for success in the future.

When customers have memorable experiences, they will be more likely to:

• Become loyal to your brand
• Become repeat customers
• Become brand champions and promote your organization organically

These are three very important customer service goals that all organizations are striving to achieve and help to create customer experience that drives results.

For more information about having Bill speak about how leadership can impact customer loyalty at your next event, visit Kickass Keynotes.

Some people come to work every day, do their job and then go home. Their heart isn’t really in it, but they need the money, so they see their job simply as a means to an end — money. As a result, they do the bare minimum to get by, and their work — and your customer service — suffers.

So how do you inspire your team to deliver superior results? Here are five ways to ignite the passion in your team.

1. Passion Starts With You
To inspire passion in others; you must first be passionate yourself. People follow someone who is passionate versus someone who is just going through the motions. First, believe in what you’re doing and that conviction will spread. You can’t ignite passion with a wet match.

2. Understanding Your People
It’s impossible to know how to motivate people until you know what motivates them. You can’t expect that everybody is motivated by the same things. You can’t expect that the same things will always motivate the same people. So, learn about your staff as individuals so you can become a better leader. Ask them about special talents, hobbies, and goals. Then tailor your behaviours accordingly

Try to incorporate some of this extra talent into worthwhile projects in the office. People who feel appreciated and acknowledged are happier and more likely to stay motivated. They will feel proud of what they do and work harder because their heart is fully committed.

It’s impossible to know how to motivate people until you know what motivates them

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3. A Positive Work Environment
Nobody likes to go to work and face an endless stream of tedious tasks, day in and day out, with no inspiration in sight. Most people want to do the best job they can and are practically begging for somebody to bring back the spark.

Creating a positive “buzz” in the office radiates energy and makes people enjoy coming to work. Banish negativity and you’ll increase productivity and motivation at the same time.

If it’s appropriate, encourage your team to personalize their work environment to reflect the team personality. If you have a few teams, you may even encourage some friendly rivalry.

Having fun at work makes it a happier place to be and keeps the team motivated if they see that you care about their happiness as well. Taking your job seriously is not the same as taking yourself seriously. Have some fun in the way you deliver exceptional customer service. Customers like dealing with happy motivated people.

4. Ongoing Training & Coaching
The best leaders regularly provide their teams with opportunities to improve skills, maintain team spirit and provide input into aspects of training and the working environment where they see opportunities for improvement.

It’s very important that your team is fully prepared and able to deal with any issues that customers may have. If their training is insufficient, they may feel inadequate. This can cause problems in the level of service and allow negativity to creep in. Encourage an open door policy with the team so they feel that they can ask for training or coaching without feeling stupid or inadequate.

5. Encourage A Level Of Autonomy
Nobody likes the feeling that a boss is looking over their shoulder all the time. While you have the responsibility for the work that’s being done, allow people to do their job and don’t micromanage them all the time. Give them the opportunity to take ownership of a project and receive the accolades of doing a great job.

They will develop a better sense of self-worth and will work hard because they want you to know that they are reliable and will get the job done. People get a chance to shine if they can roll up their sleeves and work hard to achieve the assigned tasks — and receive the corresponding praise and recognition for a job well done.

Employee satisfaction is a rational response to pay, benefits and scheduling, but employee engagement is an emotional connection with the organization and its values.

These are just five of the many ways you can ignite the emotional passion in your team and help them take responsibility for their actions. You’ll encourage them to feel a sense of pride and confidence in what they do. They will feel appreciated because they can perform their roles in a more capable manner.

Leaders know an inspired, passionate person can achieve great things.

Click here to find out how Bill can ignite passion in your team. For more information about having Bill speak about this topic at your next event, visit Kickass Keynotes

As I have discussed in previous posts such as How To Get Your Team To Buy Into Organizational Change and How Transformative Leaders Make Organizational Change Stick, leaders themselves need to be transformative in order to inspire higher performance that creates customer-focused cultures and create long-term, profitable relationships with customers. However, the process of getting to this point is often a difficult one.

6 Ways to Create Transformative Organizational Change

Here are 6 ways you can create organizational change that will stick for the long term and be the transformational leader that you envision yourself being;

1. Create clarity by linking change to business strategies: The question “why” is perhaps one of the most powerful questions when it comes to organizational change. Expect to be asked why change is necessary, and be ready with an answer. Your team will be more open to change when it is tied directly to current business strategies and their personal success. Providing this type of clarity will put your team at ease, aid understanding, and help get them on board with the changes to come. From a business strategy perspective, it is also important to clarify the team responsible for leading change and to define roles, structures, and decision making protocols.
2. Be realistic and give time for change to take place: Change will not happen overnight. It takes time for people to internalize change, accept it and then get on board from a personal and professional perspective. It is also important to account for current projects and strategies and address how change will impact these initiatives.
3. Address current organizational culture: Any change made internally has a direct impact on organizational culture. How new directives impact culture needs to be part of the change conversation you have with your team. Organizational culture has a lot of power and impact on change, and you cannot afford to overlook this or you will have difficulty with employee engagement and getting people to buy into your new vision.
4. Be willing to change yourself: Real transformative change is possible when leaders are on board. You can’t fake it — your team will see right through you, risking disengagement from the change process. You need to be open and be willing to change your mindset, behaviour and style to model change for the organization. Actions speak louder than words.
5. Understand the human dynamics of the situation: It is natural for people to have an emotional reaction to change, especially if it impacts their role in your organization. They need to know how any changes will affect them personally. This is why leaders need to be in tune with the emotional dynamics that come with proposed change. It is important that you craft your message and design your actions in a manner that minimizes negative emotional reactions, and have a plan in place to address issues when they arise — and they will arise.
6. Open and engaging communication: If you keep things close to the vest, people may question your motives and reasons for a change. Be transparent and communicate why change is necessary, addressing how it will positively impact your team and their ability to achieve their objectives. Open dialogues help put people at ease, especially when change is on the horizon. Remember, even positive change is a threat to the status quo and can make people feel uneasy with their job and role in the organization.

How you approach change is just as important as what you want to change in your organization

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How you approach change is just as important as what you want to change in your organization. If you want to be a transformative leader and create long lasting organizational change, you need to approach it in a way which minimizes negative reactions, is aligned with business strategies and corporate cultures, and is inclusive in nature.

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DOWNLOAD ARTICLE: 6 Ways for Leaders to Create Organizational Change