All right, welcome, everyone, to today's webinar. Our speaker is Christine Corelli from Christine Corelli and Associates. Before I turn it over to Christine, I'd like to thank everyone who is live with us. And you may submit any questions through the Q&A tab on the bottom of your screen. Of course, this webinar will be recorded and you could rewatch on our learning site. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Christine. Hello, everybody. Hope you're all having a great day. And our topic is, are you a boss or a leader? And this is for those of you who do not know me, this is just a little bit about me. I'm an author of six business books, and I've worked with numerous manufacturers and dealer organizations. It's my pleasure to be with you today. Now, if there was one word that captures the essence of what is occurring, and I'm sure you'll all agree, is change. Everything has changed around us. We don't know what's going to happen with the economy. There's a great deal of uncertainty. And certainly, there are challenges with the changes that have occurred. The challenge is that they're unprecedented. And we also have radical change. We have more people working from home. Contactless trends and actions, in-demand labor, customers as co-producers, because they're also doing their own order entry. Employees now have the power, not employers. Labor participation is at record lows. And shortages, of course, which has caused problems for all of us. And then I'll tell you this, folks. Google knows everything about you and your company. All right. So the challenges for business today, it's tough. It's complex. It's complicated. It's always been competitive. But today, competition is fierce in business. True or false? Let's do a little leadership IQ demonstration. Do you agree? Everything starts and stops with leadership. Would that be true or false? The answer, of course, is true. I'm a firm believer that everything starts with leadership. Based on my experience, there is a need for dynamic leadership. But the interesting thing is if you ask somebody to do a word association test for the word leader or leadership, they come up with all different things. And sometimes they forget one of the most important things, which is passion. And there is a tremendous need. Now, based on my business experience and 29 years, folks, there are five critical success factors for business growth and profitability. And number one, everything starts and stops with leadership. I've identified the five critical success factors as dynamic leadership on both the business side, the people's side. It's really important to run a great organization. Then you need a superior sales force with great relationship building skills. The next is a reputation for exceptional customer service. Because if you don't deliver exceptional service, there's no way customers will do business with you. So it's really important to have that reputation. A high-performance culture, because sales cannot be superior and customer service unless you have the culture that goes with it. And then, of course, execution, doing what you plan on doing. Now, what we're going to cover today is the difference between a boss, a manager, supervisor, and leader, what great leaders have in common, three most important characteristics, how to build a chain of trust, a few tips on employee motivation, critical communication skills, and best practices for leaders from top-performing businesses. Let me say right here that leadership in and of itself should be a full-day class. And it also should be ongoing. I have many clients who have ongoing leadership development, and it's a different skill once a month that we provide. So what I did today is I gave you some key areas that I believe are very important. But if you'd like to type in specifically what you'd like to learn, I can see it in the chat. OK, true or false, folks, there's a big difference between a boss and a leader. Of course, true. All right. A boss is somebody who tells people what to do and just leads the charge. Do what I do and do as I say and don't question it. But a leader is much different. A leader works beside the people. A leader helps their people. A leader develops their people. And another difference is, think about it, you're appointed to be a boss, but you choose to be a leader. A manager is someone who directs and decides and interacts with people to accomplish goals. They manage people and projects, and they oversee reps, agents, employees, and they are accountable to executives or senior leaders. A supervisor oversees a team of employees and makes sure things get done according to the standards set by the company. All right. Now, a leader, folks, supports, empowers, inspires, builds leaders, influences people, and influences human behavior to obtain results. Interesting. The best managers and supervisors are both. They demonstrate dynamic leadership as they are managing. All right. As I go through these, ask yourself this question. How well do you do things? As I mentioned them, how well do you do these things? And if I say something, well, I already know I'm already doing that. My question to you will always be, how well are you doing it? And how can you do it even better? So the critical leadership competencies are business acumen, communication and influencing skills, critical thinking, problem solving, being a team player, knowing how to coach people for high performance, change management, how to introduce and implement change, and empathy. Now, empathy is really, really important. And there's so much empathy training happening today. What is it? It's a soft skill. It's a skill that can bring people together and make people feel included. And to become more empathetic, you simply put yourself in another's position and strive to internalize what people must be feeling. Now, some people have this, they're just automatically that way. And other people really have to learn how to put themselves in the shoes of someone else and learn how to do it. All right. Here are the essential leadership skills based on my experience. And just in your head, rate yourself from poor to five excellent. Now, first of all, if you rate yourself poor, there's no way you'd have your job. So I hope it's three to five. Number one, create the vision. All right. Now, if you're not the head of a company, you still need to create a vision for your department or a vision for your team. A smart strategy. You set goals and you lead people to accomplishment. That is really important. You have to get them to share that vision by communicating it effectively, which is number two. And I believe that every person needs improvement in the area of communication. Number three is to initiate and implement change necessary for business growth and productivity, profitability, et cetera. And number four is to motivate their team and keep them motivated, which is why you need to bring a lot of energy to your team each day. Number five is execution. Do you do what you say you're going to do? Do you implement the skills that you learn? So that is really important. All right. Implementing change is the most difficult job of a leader. True or false? I usually ask that question in my sessions. Most people think implementing change is the hardest thing. False. Based on extensive research that goes on year after year, the most difficult job is motivating employees, keeping them motivated. Especially in today's world. And it was extremely difficult when COVID hit all of us and turned our world upside down and our companies upside down, and everyone had all this stress and anxiety and worrying and sanitizing and all that other good stuff. But keeping people motivated is the most difficult because you might be the most inspiring leader, people may love you, and you may have great performers. But the thing is, is that human nature is such that it falls off. It falls off. So you have to keep them motivated every single day. Now, what do you think are the most important characteristics of dynamic leaders and which are generally true for you? And that is, oh, just look at all these things. There's so many that are listed. I should have given you a shorter list. And by the way, you will be getting this presentation. It will be online. And of course, you will be able to listen to the recording. All right. So those are the characteristics. Now, what is most important to employees based on 25 years of extensive research that is ongoing? Interesting. What employees really care about is whether you are trustful of them, that you can trust them. They can trust you. And so trustful is really important. Can they trust you? Do you do what you say you're going to do? Do we ever give lip service? I certainly hope not. Can they trust that if you don't know something, you'll say you don't know something? Supportive, supportive. They want to feel that they are supported by you. True story. One of my clients, a young man was given the position of being a salesman in a dealership. And a person came in who had been a longtime customer of this dealership and stormed in. And the young man said, good morning. How can I help you today? And he said, I want to see the boss and walked right past him. The boss came out and stood next to the young man but took care of the customer, answered his questions, resolved his problem. Wrong. He should have said, he should have said, this is my new salesperson and he is perfectly capable of handling you and resolving your problems. I assure you he can. And then he should have just stood by to help, but he didn't. And so what do you think that salesman felt like? What do you think he felt like? He did not feel good. OK. The other thing is that you demonstrate the values, that you demonstrate the values. And I hope that you have written values. And a lot of times when I do seminars, I see people turn to themselves and say, do we have a value statement? Do we have written values? But they want you to demonstrate the values that are so important to them. OK. How do you build what I call a chain of trust with people? Be honest, be what I call a straight shooter. In other words, people never have to guess what you're thinking. People never have to wonder whether they're getting the truth. Be a straight shooter and develop a reputation for that. They'll respect you for it. And be transparent. That's really big today. Transparency is so very important. Be genuine. Demonstrate your core values. Do what you're saying you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. And follow up. Follow up. Because that shows people that you're right on top of everything. Never betray confidence. Be consistent. Be fair, above all things. And, of course, transparent. I mentioned that twice. And admit it if you made a mistake. That's how you build a chain of trust. Now, I know we have a parts and service manager on this call. So I've worked a great deal with parts and service managers and enjoyed it very much, by the way. They have to be technically adept. They have to be very patient, confident. They have to have great interpersonal skills. They have to be demanding about the best workmanship and customer service. And they have to know how to sell exceptionally well. Of course, many parts and service departments have people who do that job. But if not, and you're a smaller dealer, you need to know how to sell. OK, why do I talk so much about values? Because your values should drive everything you do. It demonstrates your character. It influences people to follow your lead because people will respect you. It helps to build trust and likability. And it establishes your reputation in business. All right. What are the three most powerful characteristics of great leaders? Number one, I said this before, they have a great vision. They have a vision and they know where they're going. But the key thing, folks, is they have the ability to influence others to go with them. That is one of the biggest jobs of managers. And a lot of people are the best technicians or they're great at something. Or they have a lot of business acumen and they're put into positions of management, but they've never been trained on how to manage people. So that is really very, very important. And it's important that that person gets a course in management or leadership, even if it's just one-on-one coaching. So that's what's important. OK, I'm sure you'll agree with this. How do great leaders think? Well, first of all, no brainer. They think positively. There's and here's something I say in every single program I do. For every problem, there's a solution. Not always a perfect solution, but certainly a way to improve things, a way to make things better. And that's how they approach things. And again, there should be a whole course on problem solving. Great leaders see things not only through their own eyes. They're empathetic. If there's conflict, they're able to see both sides. All right. Great leaders think and view each day as an opportunity to help people, to teach people and coach people. All right. And they understand that their two greatest assets are their people. And if you've hired the right people, the combined brainpower of their people. So they can give you suggestions. They can give you ideas. They can tell you how to solve problems. They can tell you how to improve productivity. And so those are two of the greatest assets your organization can have. All right. How do leaders get things done and meet their goals. All right. They stay focused on the goals and they never lose sight of them. They challenge their people to be great. They challenge their people that they can get the numbers up or meet the goals, whatever it may be. And they inspire a shared vision. They inspire with people, people, you know, to have their same vision. How do leaders make people want to follow their lead? They encourage the heart of their employees. I'm sure you're saying to yourself, well, how do you encourage the heart of their employees? I worked with a very big, very successful dealer in Idaho, believe it or not. And yeah, was great, beautiful. And he said, I never heard that before, encourage the heart of their employees. Well, how would you encourage the heart? So in our management training program, we tell them to encourage the heart of their employees by showing an interest in them, caring about their personal life and their wellbeing by asking them questions. How is your family? How was your vacation? Oh, your son got married. How was the wedding? All right. And again, to give them some personal attention because some of the comments that I hear from people is my boss doesn't have any time for me. He has no time. You're lucky you got in to see him because I can't. So make sure, and I'm going to give you a solution for, I don't have any time to meet with my people, but encourage the heart of your employees. And by the way, I encourage you to type in anything that you want to learn so that I make sure that I cover it in this program. All right. Now, what would your opinion be? What do you think is the most effective leadership style? All right. There are many leadership style analyses and consultant opinions, but I like this leadership style, these that you see here. Number one would be a transformational leader, such as someone can come in as a new president or a change management specialist or a consultant and transform the entire organization or a service manager. A new service manager could come in and change the way they do everything. A creative experimental risk taker, like Richard Branson, maybe. A charismatic domineering battler, maybe Elon Musk. And I never said, by the way, I don't like these people. I like all of them. All right. But domineering battler, a relentless pursuer of performance. Now, you may not remember Jack Welch, the head of GE. He had a reputation for being a relentless pursuer of performance. He drove people. And I did some work with GE in the very early part of my business consulting and training career. And I had people of the highest caliber come into my room and I was talking with some of them. And I said, wow, you people, you know, from what I understand, you're all really top performers and you have great accomplishments and you're all smart. And the woman said to me, you won't be able to survive at GE if you can't run fast with the rest of the pack. Okay. And so a relentless pursuer of performance. A servant leader. Someone who feels I'm here to help people. I am here to develop and grow people. Or a situational leader such as Ken Blanchard, who is a person who wrote a book on you lead and you manage by the situation and the individual person. Now, when I ask people, who do you think is the best? I'm sorry. What do you think is the best style? They usually say situational leadership. Here is what is really, really interesting based on extensive research. Style doesn't matter. It's the character of the individual leader that matters most. That matters most. So you need to have the type of character, folks, where people look up to you, they admire you, they enjoy working for you, and they want to feel that you are leading them to achieve great results. So that's really interesting. Now, let's talk a little bit about servant leadership. Because I'd like you to know about it. Servant leadership is really a philosophy instead of practices that enriches the lives of individuals and builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world. Well, that's the wave of today. And again, it doesn't matter what style you use, although I think a charismatic battler is not so great. And by the way, you don't have to have charisma. Like Ronald Reagan, he had charisma. We won't talk about any political leaders, by the way, other than that. But you are there to serve people. You are there to oversee it. But you don't have to be charismatic. You just have to be all the things we talked about. Their attitude is, I'm here to help. And they will say, I didn't do it. My team did it. Okay, true or false, it's the job of every employee to come to work motivated to perform. True or false? It's false. Whose job is it? Well, keep this in mind. Leadership is not about sorry, I hit something here. Okay, getting people to do their job. It's about getting people to do their best. It's about bringing out the best in them. It's about aligning them with the company's priorities and goals and making them proud of themselves and of your company. Okay, so whose job is it? It is your job. And that's why I say, and I did mention this a little earlier, it is your job. And I always say you need to bring a lot of energy to your team. So as a leader, you need to have a good, good, take good care of yourself, you need to get a lot of sleep, you need to be able to understand people. And you need to be able to do the things that keep them motivated. And one of them is the energy that you exude when you're with your team. So, and again, here's another program that should be an entire course. Okay, how do we motivate our team? All right. So if they are working amongst an underperformer, or someone who's not a good manager, or someone who's just not good, or they're negative, eliminate them. If they're bad apples and spread negativity and cause problems, that's going to demotivate people, appreciate them and thank them constantly. The last words you should say to every employee that says good night to you is, hey, thanks for a good job today. Or good night, thanks for a good job. Or thanks for all your hard work. Or hey, thanks for fixing that equipment the right way. I was really worried about it. Have a good night. So thank them all the time. And give your team credit for their accomplishments. Involve them. Do you know that involving your employees and asking them questions and opinions is motivating in and of itself. And so that is really important. And establish a relaxed culture, where every once in a while you do have fun. That's important to do. And I know a lot of companies now that the nasty COVID is going away, hopefully, that they're having picnics again, and barbecues outside, and happy hour even. So, excuse me, that's fun too. Okay, show them you care about them in their personal lives. And recent research shows you that they really care. Know that you care about them if you ask them about their personal lives. Train and develop them. And reward them. All right, let's think about, let's be empathetic here and think about what every employee wants. And certainly, we can't give it all to them. But again, the employee is the one who has the power. So we'll go through this quickly. I want an interesting and challenging job. I want to be appreciated for my hard work. I want to feel my opinion counts. I want job security. I want to know what's going on in the company. I want respect. I want the tools and training to do my job well. I want to come to work in an environment where I enjoy coming to work every day. I want a great boss. And you know, one of the top reasons that people leave their companies, yes, I know they want to change their lifestyle. That's what's been going on lately. They want more free time, more life balance. But a lot of them leave because they don't like their boss. So it's important to be a great boss. And of course, they want benefits. They want to work from home. And some people will not work for you unless they can work from home. Or at least work from home at least three days a week. And I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But they want flexibility in their schedule and flex hours whenever possible. They want to work in a clean, healthy environment. I know a lot of dealers would put on their websites all the things that they used to do to sanitize equipment and the work area, et cetera, et cetera. So that is very, very important. And of course, they want reward and recognition. Now, folks, I know you know, we all know that employee motivation involves a great deal more. But if I could tell you how to keep employees motivated in a nutshell, of course, it would be to be a great boss leader. But it would be to make your people feel they're working with you and not for you. And so that's why it's important to use the word we when you talk to your people. We. All right. So the other thing is the company culture. If you do not have a good culture, if people don't enjoy coming to work each day, if there's conflict that exists, whether it's conflict on the way things should be done or conflict between two people, conflict between two departments where they are competitive, conflict between branches where they don't share best practices. So that is not going to be great. So how do you create a culture for high performance? Set the higher standards. Don't settle for mediocre performance. Direct people to check and double check their work. And again, values come in here. So and again, how to create a high performance culture has to do with values. It has to do with standards, etc., etc. I'm going to talk more about that when I get to best practices. All right. What do we do about the younger generation? They want a boss. This is the ideal boss. They want the state of the art technology because they're so adept at it. They want you to ask for their opinions as if they've been working for the company forever. They want to feel the same. They want to be treated the same. And it's important for you to tell older employees that have been there for a long time to befriend and talk to the younger people that you are hiring. All right. And respectful. And that mentors and trains them. Mentors and trains them. And if you recognize that some of these young people are emerging leaders, that you tell them that and you train them for leadership and let them know that they are being considered. So that's just one thing. And again, the younger generation, it's so hard to prove that to them. And they want more free time. They're more concerned with life balance and having fun. And sometimes they're not even as concerned about money. All you have to do is, I don't know where you folks live, but I live in Chicago and everywhere there are signs in the suburbs as well. Help wanted, help wanted, help wanted. I know some companies that are paying people a huge amount of money so that they don't leave or to get them to hire. Now, I don't know if anyone is new to leadership, but if you are, make sure that you establish your authority and your expectations. That you avoid making drastic changes at first. Because if you do, you'll turn their world upside down. Avoid micromanaging. Rather, coach and develop people. And remind, if there's a problem with old friendships, you have to remind the individual, hey, I'm a boss now. I'm a leader. And I'm accountable to people. I need your help with this. I need your support. So that is also very, very important to say that. And I want to share this story with you. I was at a big sales meeting. And lots of people, but the atmosphere was strange. If you have been around salespeople, you will know that they're very chatty. They're friendly. They talk to each other. They're so happy to see each other because they rarely do. Especially if it's an international company or a national company or it's branches that just get together. So I thought, that's really strange. And so I mentioned it to the person who hired me. Wow, it's so quiet in here. And they said, he said to me, well, that's because there's a new manager that just came on board. Actually, the new president. I said manager, but I meant president. So a new president came in and they had no idea if he was going to hire independent contractors or what was going to happen. And so the tone was very low. And so he was going to get up to speak. And then I, lucky person, was going to get up and be the motivational speaker for sales. Oh, lucky me. Well, here's what happened. The president of the company kicked off the meeting and said, I suppose you're all wondering what I'm going to do as the new president of your company. In the next three months, I'm going to be speaking to each and every one of you to tell me what you would do if you were the new president of the company. And he went, he won them over and got a round of applause and they loved him immediately. So that was a really good to somebody who was new in their job role. And also I wanted, because communication is so very important. Great leaders communicate exceptionally well. So I wanted to include some communication skills. Okay. Common causes of ineffective communication are lack of respect by either party, condescending messages, as if they're superior or more knowledgeable to others, intimidation, or ignored emotions. Lack of confidence. Right here, I'll say again, critical communication skills are really like a full day, if not a three day or three hour program. All right, but I am giving you some key things that will help. Lack of confidence. If you're uncomfortable speaking in public, if you have an assumption that the listener receives the message and understands it, and I'll tell you how to avoid that. To failure to get on the listener's level of understanding. All right, people not understanding what you say. That's why anytime that you communicate and you're giving directions or instructions, always say, do you have any questions? Have I made it clear for you? Would you like me to go over it again? All right, so always ask. All right, here's 10 tips for great communication. Always think straight, talk straight. In other words, think before you speak and then be a straight shooter. Develop a reputation for that. Use a formal and informal approach. And you know where you need to have a formal approach and an informal approach with your people or even with customers. Apply the C's, which are confident, caring, concise, where you don't go on and on, and always ask questions. The mistake that a lot of leaders make is they give direction or they tell what is needed and then they forget to say, okay, so can I rely on you? Or they say, I'm going to rely on you. Always explain why you do things the way you do them because if you don't, you're going to have some trouble. Okay, make sure you listen to words, feelings, and emotions and demonstrate that you are listening by saying yes, uh-huh and we've had to learn to do that because so many meetings are remote these days. But always demonstrate you're listening, especially with customers and with employees. And sometimes it's hard because you're looking at what the technicians are doing. You're looking to see what's going on. You're looking to make sure a customer is being taken care of. So when you need to listen to something really important, block out all thoughts and focus on where you are right at that time. Make eye contact and nod your head. And paraphrase, let me be sure I understand you and repeat it back. There've been many times when I have not repeated back and I regretted it later. Again, at least listen and demonstrate you're listening and learn to communicate with people on all levels. Apply structured communication, especially during meetings. Some people wing it at meetings. Other people will have a meeting and start it by saying, what's the most important thing we need to talk about today? And they won't have this huge list. Short meetings are what keeps people happy. And ask questions to avoid miscommunication. What are you going to do if you need to make a change? So the best way to communicate that is this way. Here's the decision I've made and explain why you made that decision. People wanna know why and they also wanna know why you do things the way you do, which is why it's always important, especially for new hires. Talk about the benefits for them. If we change this process, things will be smoother, it'll be more streamlined and that is gonna be very helpful for all of us. So I'm gonna ask for your acceptance and I wanna ask how you think that we can make this change go smoothly, all right? I know a major equipment manufacturer who actually has a change center in their headquarters. All right, and remind them I'm here to help you, all right? And this is why you need to explain why. I just thought this is so funny, whoops. Okay, when commuting the change, again, talk about the benefits and remind them you're there to help. Now, let's talk about some best practices. Again, and I have a reputation sometimes for putting too much in one program, but I'm trying to give you everything I have in one hour that might make a difference in your company, in a leadership role. And by the way, if you send me an email, I'm also going, I'll give you that at the end of the program. I'm going to give you some great articles that will talk about leadership and communication, et cetera. All right, so that will help as well. Okay, do we have a Q&A or do we have a question? Oh, I have it. How do we approach grumpy employees that try to avoid everything? I'm cheerful and always smiling, but it's hard to approach a grumpy employee. Oh, maybe, I'm sorry, maybe you didn't want me to read that in front of everybody. So I apologize. Okay, first of all, you need to talk to them about why they are so grumpy. We don't like grumpy people here. Negativity doesn't exist on this team and you need to change that behavior. And if you see someone coming in and you avoid them, we don't do this that way, do this that way. We don't do that here either. So, and say, from here on, I want to see you smile. I want to see you smile at companies, okay? So customers, I said companies and I meant customers. So that is really very, very important to do. All right, so I hope I answered that question for you. No negativity on our team, okay? And by the way, there's enough grumpy people in this world in case you haven't noticed. So we don't need more of them in our companies. You know, and it's very hard, easy to be negative these days. Okay, here's some best practices. Establish accountability. But here's where I see some business leaders fail. They don't write down specifically what they want their people to be accountable for. So it's going to be different for an office or for a sales team and for parts and service. So it's going to be a different list. So establish what you want people to be accountable for, make sure they know it. Demand the demonstration of values because value should drive all you do. Talk up, teamwork, service excellence, and be relentless about it. Be relentless about the highest level of customer service. Oh, practice proactive complaint prevention. Okay, I think that's really important. So how do we do that? How do we do that? Document your complaints and identify the root cause. And I'll talk more about that in a minute. And how could we have prevented that from happening? And then if it's, you know, if it's something so small, everything happens in companies that way, but you still have to do it. Let executives and managers review it. And then executives should use it in their strategic planning and identify three areas for improvement. Weekly meetings to discuss instances of great service complaints and how we could have prevented. For example, don't suggest the warranty until you're sure it applies. Okay, keep the equipment in the warehouse in impeccable condition. All right, a best practice is also including everyone on your team when you talk to them. Make sure they're all listening and not drifting off and not looking at their cell phones. These are very important. High levels of employee involvement are also very good best practices. Okay, guiding principles that are established. That's how you create a great culture. So you might say, we will display a sense of urgency by practicing the five-minute rule. Okay, no customer should ever have to wait more than five minutes for someone to give them their attention. When servicing equipment, we will ask, would you like me to call to keep you informed or do you want me to call when I see we're finished? We will make every effort to say yes before we say no. We will be accountable for health and safety of others. We will be accountable to ensure our rental equipment is running well, clean, and ready to rent. All right, when you wanna see the root cause of a problem, here's what you do. You have to peel the onion and ask, why do we have this problem? Why did this problem occur? Now, I'm gonna give you a perfect example. You have a problem. You have an employee who had a great resume but they're not performing well. And who's at fault? Is it the employee? No, it is your hiring process that you need to improve upon and you need to vet people more carefully. So that's what we call peeling the onion. Why did that happen? And why did that happen? And why did that happen? And sometimes if someone makes a mistake, they might say to you, well, I didn't understand it. So what's the root cause? The person who was giving the instructions didn't make sure everyone understood it. All right, meetings to discuss hits, runs, and misses is what I call, where things went great. Here's where we made a run, is what we did, what we were supposed to do. And here's where we really dropped the ball. Okay, I know one corporation does this where they have those weekly meetings. And even if they have conferences, they grade each other on what was a hit, what was a run, what was a miss. Create a great place to come to work each day. Okay, and that is being very strict about the standards that you expect. Okay, now I know that everyone is so busy, busy, busy. Okay, we all are. And so I had to come up with a solution. So I think I did by saying, can you find 20 minutes a day to talk to your employees one-on-one? Now, I don't mean talking to one employee for 20 minutes. I mean, five minutes here, five minutes there, five minutes here, five minutes there. Because if you are an executive or a manager, they wanna know what you're thinking and they know you care about them. So try to find a solution that every day that you talk to somebody and help them with that situation. Okay, nip problems in the bud as they're not gonna go away. Build on your strengths and best practices. Adopt best practices from top performing companies and teams, but discover your own best practices and build upon them. Are you new to your leadership role? Here's what I need from you. I have people to answer to now. We need to be accountable for, tell me how we can improve our team's performance. Let me know if you need help. So those are some communication skills that are important. Now, when the going gets tough, be firm, confront the person in private. If there's a conflict or an issue or unacceptable behavior, be clear on what you want to tolerate. And if somebody missed a deadline, make sure you say when you need it. All right, so here's a few things. And I would think that in this industry that you don't really need help on telling people if they did not do things right, but some people are not comfortable. And even people in HR sometimes are not comfortable talking to an employee. So these are some things that you have to say. This work is unacceptable. That behavior is unacceptable on our team. I won't tolerate any disrespect and it's unprofessional to lose your temper at work. Temper at work. I don't think I can ever be a broadcaster. Okay, so we have a few minutes. And before I go on, what questions do you have? You can either unmute or you can type it in to the Q&A. And I know it delivered a lot of information very, very fast. Okay, what's next? What are you going to do differently? Of all the things I talked about, especially the five essential facets of leadership excellence, whether it's sharing your vision, whether it's communicating your vision, all of those different things that are so critical to being a great leader, what will you do differently and what skill will you try to improve upon? Will you strive for continuous personal development as a leader? Because I'm a firm believer, no matter how good you are, or how experienced you are, you can always be better. You can always learn something. You can always take a good hard look inside yourself and ask yourself, where do I really need the help? And you certainly don't have to go back to your job after this and say, hey, I just took this course and here's what we're going to do next. Just do it over time. Share the vision, communicate with it, be the best boss that you can be. Best boss that you can be. And by all means, involve people that are working remotely by including them on virtual meetings, et cetera. So it's always, what are you going to do differently? And knowing what we should do and doing it are two very different things. So you have to be great at execution. Now, if you'd like to look at my website, this is what it is. And if you'd like to send me an email to get those articles that I said I would send to you on communication, et cetera, also on leadership, et cetera, I'd be happy to do that for you. And that is my phone number if you need to contact me and of course my email. And I do want to thank you for your participation in this program. If you'd like to speak to me, you can send me an email and I'll communicate with you that way or give you a call if there's something I did not address or something that you'd like me to spend a little more time on or elaborate on a little bit more. It would be my pleasure. And I want to thank you so very much for your participation. I do hope that you found value in our time together. You were great. Thank you so very much. And I wish you great success, not only in business and in your job role, but in your personal life as well.

dynamic leadership

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superior sales force

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