Well, good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our session today on one of the most important elements in any organization, which is effective communication. I'm Jill Berg, really happy to be here to present to you today. I love working with the Associated Equipment Distributors and all of you, so thank you for putting your time into this webinar today. I'm in the staffing employment business. I have multiple offices across several states, and I have a very large consulting practice that takes me from coast to coast, so thank you for being here. So when we think about communication, you know, it's just such a critical element. Every employee survey that I see has always ranked communication an area for improvement, but what we have to remember is that the quietest person in the back of the room also has responsibility, as does the complete extrovert. Communication is really 100% my responsibility, and so we're going to address two things today in this session, and if you have any questions while I'm going through the deck today, please look in the chat box and go ahead and write down your question, and I'll try to answer it as it's appropriate, or we'll park it to later in the presentation when we maybe get into that section. So I just want everyone to realize the responsibility that we all have when it comes to communication, and there's two critical elements, and these are the two things that we're going to address today, the first one being listening skills. We tend to want to talk more and listen less, and in the fast-paced world that we live in today where there are so many challenges and opportunities for communication, you know, we tend to fire things off the bow without maybe thinking about it as much as we could or listening and hearing the entire story, so first we're going to talk about listening skills, but the second and equally critical piece is asking questions. We can solve a tremendous amount of challenges, problems. We can resolve customer complaints, issues, interpersonal relationships with people by really asking questions, and so these are the two areas that I want to address today, and I'm going to give you some tools that hopefully will help you along this journey. So just like one domino can take out a whole row, what you say and how you say it and the body language and the voice tone around it can destroy an individual or a team or it can build up a team and an individual, and remember that the team is the organization and that becomes the culture of your organization, so I want you to think about what you say and how you say it and how you might be able to communicate differently and still accomplish the same goal. So we're going to talk about that communication starts with me. We're going to talk about our listening skills, our communication skills, and we're really going to talk about asking questions and how that's impacted by technology. So I'm going to challenge everyone, how is your image? Because your image is nonverbal. People judge someone within seven seconds based on your appearance alone, and that's a pretty quick turnaround. So I always challenge you to make sure that when you show up at the door or you're out and about within your communities that you realize that if you're wearing that logo on your shirt that people know who you are and you're representing that organization. And so first impressions really do start with us, and this goes into every day as we walk across the threshold in the front door or the back door of the shop or whatever the employee entrance is. It's really important. This is extremely basic, but we have to park our personal life at the door and make sure that we put on the fact that we are level. Emotional intelligence is really all about being able to adapt one's behavior to various circumstances and not necessarily show a tremendous amount of emotion when it's not appropriate. It's knowing how to adapt your behavior so that when things come at you that you're able to adjust and respond in a format with communication or body tone that is calming to those around you. So I think it's really important that you appreciate the people around you. We do not compliment and thank and recognize people for the great behavior that they demonstrate every day. We oftentimes tend to want to jump at someone when it's not right, but do we give them kudos when they've demonstrated core values within the organization or they've really gone above and beyond? We don't do that often enough. And remember, it's like a bank account. You have to put in more deposits than you take out in withdrawals or eventually the emotional bank account will be empty and overdrawn. So think about your internal customers, your internal communication as well as your external. So I want you to think about communication as really the drive, the motivational behavioral drive to connect. So if it's on the high side, we have a need to focus on people and to be social and talkative. If it's on the low side, it's more about the need to be introspective and reflective, more task-minded and focused on things. Neither one of these is good or bad. But as you think about this and you watch this session, think about where you fit on this continuum because if you are more reserved and serious and more of a thinking style, you may not speak as often. But when you speak, there's typically content within it. We've all been in meetings where this person over here, you know, does all the talking and many of the others are sitting in the room trying to understand what the person is going to say because the stories just go on and on and the conversation never seems to end. And so we over here have to filter it and decide what are the important takeaways. But this is key to communication and like I said at the beginning of this webinar, it doesn't matter where you sit along this bell curve. The reality is that we all need to improve our communication. Some of us talk too much and use too many words. Others of us only speak when we have something to say and could contribute more. So communication is all about listening and it's all about asking good questions. So I want you to think about an analogy. To me, analogies seem to speak and help us remember things. So I want you to think about the white T-shirt. Think about the front of the shirt and the back of the shirt. Think about the front of the shirt maybe as what people see, you know, those nonverbal voice tone, your body posture. Think about what they hear which are the words that you say. But then also think about what's the flip side of that. So if the front of the shirt is really about the strengths of the person, I want you to think about the back of the shirt which might be more about what do people think when you walk away. You have a conversation. They're observing you. They're looking at your body tone. They're looking at the words that you say. And then you turn around and what are they thinking about what you just said. And when you put it in those terms, it kind of gives it a different perspective because as you know, when you think about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this is someone who adapted their character and their behavior based on one situation to the next. And we certainly don't want to be hard to read and unpredictable because that becomes very difficult if you're a manager to manage people and if you're an employee that's a direct report to a manager, it becomes very difficult to know what to expect because you don't know. You're thinking one thing. They're saying something else. And so I'm going to give you a little example here and this can be an exercise that you can do offline but list some things that might be on the front of your shirt. When you think about that green bell curve that I showed you, if this would describe you for example that you're social, you might be confident, okay? So you like to engage people. You like to communicate with people. You exude a social confidence. You might also be independently confident and secure with who you are and what you know. And then I want you to put it into the perspective of that other person's perception because remember their perception is their reality. They may see this socialness as that person talks too much or that confidence of well they sure seem arrogant. So remember this is the positives and for every positive there's always a downside. You know behavior is about the bell curve. There's a positive, there's a negative. We want to focus always on the positive side but remember that the perception of those around you could be something very different. There's nothing wrong with either one of these characteristics. It's just that what do we need to do? We need to identify and understand what it is. We need to embrace who we are and then once we are able to embrace it, we can manage it and control it. So it's really about self-awareness. So when we think about communication, I'm going to really spend some time here on listening. Why listening is so important? What are the reasons behind it? It shows that we care. How many times are we not quieting our mind and our body? How many times does our sense of urgency take over because we don't want to hear the whole story? How many times do we really are pivoting on one foot, walking away and they're still talking? So it builds that relationship but the most important part is to watch closely and observe particularly in face-to-face and on the phone and phone is a little bit more difficult because all you have there are the words and the voice tone. You don't have the body language but it's important to understand intuitively what they're not saying because often what they're not saying is what you want to uncover and you do that through questioning. So I alluded to this earlier that 93% of communication is not the words that you use. It is nonverbal. So it's all about that tone. It's about the body language. Does the person have their arms crossed or are they closed? Are they looking at their phone? Are they looking at their computer or are they paying attention to what you're saying? And so when we think about listening, this statistic is quite flooring actually. In 2000, the average attention span of a human being was 12 seconds. Today, in 2015, it's 8. I'm not sure what it is today. I'm afraid to know. But the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. Now this may seem a little odd to you but if you've ever walked into some of the Asian restaurants, they always have the big fish tank up front and there's usually a goldfish or multiple fish in there. If you've ever stared at them and as they're swimming alongside of the edge of the aquarium with their one eye looking out at you, if you just stare at them, they will swim away within 9 seconds, guaranteed. I encourage you to try it sometime. You may look a little odd at the front of the restaurant but I encourage you to do it. So my challenge is we need to be better than a goldfish. Now this is difficult and depending on how urgent you are and how busy you are, like I said, quieting your mind and your body can be very, very challenging. But you have to be thinking about not necessarily what you're going to say next but what is the person really saying that maybe they're not saying or what are they saying and how am I filtering that and do I already have an opinion? Because as we communicate, we only recall about 15 to 25% of what the person says. When you walk away from this webinar today, you'll only retain 15 to 25%. But if you take away one or two things and you get the important things from the session, that will make a huge impact. So we spend a lot of our time in a day communicating. We spend about 80% of our waking hours communicating and most of it is listening. So it isn't all about talking. Communicating is really truly about listening and letting the other person engage so that we together can come up with solutions and be more effective as an organization. So how many of you take notes when you're talking to a customer or you're talking to an internal person? Do you walk around with maybe a phone with a note application on it or a little notepad so that if somebody says something, you need to follow up and you write it down because remember, out of sight, out of mind. Our minds, we've got a lot of things coming at us, a lot of stimulation, e-mails, customers, phone calls, the workload every day. So make sure that if there's something that needs your follow-up that you jot it down and delay responding until necessary. And then the last piece is verifying what you've heard. So I'm going to demonstrate for you some listening skills today. This is really critical. We all have our filter and our perception of what we think we hear. And so when someone comes to us, we want to make sure that we verify and validate what they said so that we don't misunderstand. How often internally do you have to fix things because someone didn't ask the right questions or they didn't write it down or they didn't verify it. They didn't do a synthesis or a verbal summary of what the person told them. And so the first one is parenting. So let's say that you're a manager, a service manager or a foreman within your shop and it's a busy day and one of your technicians comes up to you and says, I just got a call from the school. I need to go pick up my son. He's sick. He can't stay in school. He needs to be taken to the clinic. Unfortunately, my wife is in training all day today and can't do it so I need to leave now. So the supervisor would parent back the exact words that he said, exactly the way that he said it. Now why would a person do that? Well, two reasons. One is when there's a lot of details that you need to make sure that you have at your disposal for future such as, you know, part number, description, dates, times, those types of facts and information. Or the other piece would be if you maybe want to watch the body language as you give it back to them in the exact language they gave it because you may wonder if this has occurred before and it's occurring again. You know, you want to watch the body language of that other person to validate, you know, that this is really the reality. So the second area is what we call paraphrasing and that would sound something like this. So you took a call from the school. You need to pick up your son and take him to the clinic. You know, you need to leave now, you know, see you tomorrow. Okay, you're just paraphrasing. You're shortening the story. You're just giving the highlights of the story. And the last one is empathizing. And empathizing is a really critical piece. It's not sympathizing but it's putting some emotion into the conversation and it might sound something like this. I'm sorry that your son is sick. Send me a text after you get him settled in back at home and you've taken him to the clinic. Let me know how he's doing. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Okay, a very different conversation. When do you empathize? When do you use this technique? You use it when there's emotion and when it's personal. And in this case, it could have been both. It certainly was personal and a sick child, depending on the age of the child and depending on the circumstances, you know, it could be emotional. So I think it's really important that you understand when do you use parroting, when do you paraphrase and when do you empathize. So often we don't follow these steps and we don't know when to use it and we end up, you know, not doing any of it and not verifying anything in which case there's misunderstanding. And if you conclude with see you tomorrow, that assumes that you expect him back to work tomorrow and he expects to be there and if he can't, that there's more communication. So, you know, a great quote by Christopher Morley, there's only one rule for being a good talker and that's learning to listen. The best conversationalists are the ones who ask great questions and then listen. So as we think about positive communication, it's not about speaking, it's really about listening. When we're all busy and we have a coworker walk in and interrupt us or a customer come in and interrupt us, maybe we're putting in a parts order or something, we have to stop and quiet our mind and set that to the side and focus on that customer. We need to make sure that our rate of speech is mirroring the customer's. You know, sometimes we speak and guess up to 200, 300 miles an hour in our speech and people can't absorb that. So if your customer is more deliberate and methodical in their speech, we need to slow down. Some people speak so quickly that you can't even understand them and if it's on the phone, they don't enunciate those critical words, the T's, the B's, the D's. You know, my name is Jill. Nobody understands when I give that on the phone. Carol, Joe, no, it's Jack and Jill. Oh, okay. You know, so you have to make sure that you're very, very clear and repeating phone numbers. There is, I get messages all the time on my phone. This is Jim and I don't know if it's Jim or Kim or Tim because the J is difficult and they leave me a phone number and they rattle it off and I know how many Jim's or Kim's or Kim's. I mean, it's probably, you know, dozens and I can't pick up on the phone number and they don't tell me the company and so I don't have a clue who is calling and are they an applicant? Are they a customer? Who might it be? So make sure, you know, particularly face-to-face and when there's a lot of noise in the background, you know, control your volume. Particularly if you're in a public area because particularly on a cell phone, we can, people tend to talk louder on a cell phone. I'm not sure the reason behind it other than they might be hard of hearing or they're used to old cell phones that flip phones maybe didn't have as good a reception but keep the volume down and move away from where the excitement is happening in your organization and maybe pull them into a back hallway or something. And lastly, please don't talk with food in your mouth on the phone or in person. This is just really, really a pet peeve. Okay, so we're gonna kind of change gears away from listening. Now we're gonna talk a lot about questioning because we can all improve our questions and we're gonna talk about different types of questions but most importantly, how you can actually apply this within your world. We've all heard that a closed-ended question is a yes or no question. Well, yes it is but it's also about facts and figures. And many people believe that if they're clarifying information or figures or part numbers or dates or times that that is more of an open-ended question. That too is a closed-ended question. So, you know, will you be available at this time if I reach out to call you or can you give me a call at the end of the day and I'll give you a status update? You know, do you know what might be wrong with this piece of equipment? You know, do you is a little bit more open but closed-ended questions have their purpose and they're very, very important to use but don't use them as your only source of communication. We have to move into the W questions. More open-ended questions, the who, what, when, where, how questions. Try to stay away from why questions because why questions, particularly in interpersonal relationships, can put the other person on the defensive. You know, if you're a parent and you have young children or adult children, it doesn't really matter. You know, and if you say to them, well, why did you do that? Or why did you let that happen? Instead of saying, you know, well, tell me about what happened or describe to me what occurred or, you know, what made you think that that might be a good choice? That's a very different question than why did you do that because the why will come up with a defensive excuse and that's behavior that we want to train out of, not into. So when we think about these questions, the who, what, when, where questions, they require a lot more than a yes or no. They're really about gaining information and getting thoughts, the feelings, the opinions of the person around you and making sure that we are getting clarity within that conversation. So we have these questions. I want to give you some examples. So if someone comes to the shop foreman or the service manager, they've got a JCB backhoe in, the customer called in a work order for a fuel pump replacement and the tech has replaced the fuel pump and the filters and the fuel just isn't getting to the injectors. And the tech comes to the service manager and says, you know, I've troubleshot this. I've had it on diagnostics. I just don't understand, you know, why we are still getting that missing. It just isn't running like it should. What should I do? What is the natural tendency for every service manager to do? Well, let me come and take a look at it with you. And I'm not saying that that's the wrong approach. That might be the right approach, but depending on the length of time that service manager has been there, and obviously if they're new, this might be more common. An experienced service tech would certainly probably know how to troubleshoot this. This is just an example for purposes of demonstration. But if the service manager asks more questions, the idea is to bring that technician who maybe needs more training and mentoring and coaching, to bring that technician into part of the problem solving and the clarifying. So if the technician said, well, tell me more. Explain to me what you're experiencing. Have you discussed this with anyone else? What have they suggested you do? What do you think the solution might be? Okay, now you're engaging him so that you've started to start the dialogue and you get that other person thinking so instead of them putting the monkey on your back and you always having to take the monkey if you're the one getting the monkey, that instead you keep the monkey on their back until you need to share the monkey. So I look at it as more of a sharing. So we go from the clarifying questions to probing questions and these are deep, deep questions. These really drill down deep. What seems to be the issue? Tell me what you've tried thus far. What else should we consider? What do you think is the next step? Describe how you suggest we move forward. Explain what is holding you back, okay? Sometimes it's just, I think I know what I should do, but I'm not sure. So when someone says, well, I think this is what we should do but I'm just not sure, if the service manager said, well, tell me what's holding you back from trying that. All right, it's probably all about taking the risk and that's how you empower and build people and you think about this, whether it's an external customer, it's an internal customer, it's a direct report, it's a manager. If we clarify and we get more questions out there, my favorite questions are deep investigative questions. It's share with me, tell me more, describe, explain. Those are probably my four biggest go-tos. And so instead of saying, we tend to use the word, well, what do you mean by that? Or what does that mean? Or if you take out the what or the why and you say, tell me more. Tell me, can you explain that to me, please? Describe what you're observing. Now you get a much deeper conversation. This works extremely well in sales. It works extremely well in overcoming objections. It works great in customer service. It works great in calming and deescalating difficult conversations. And so it's a technique that if you learn I challenge you, clip this slide, put it up by your phone and when someone has an issue or a problem, figure out which one of these questions works for you. And you fill in the blanks with whatever the task is at hand. But start your questions with more broad, higher level, open-ended, and you will be amazed at the level of communication that you're getting from that other person. As opposed to just gathering facts and information and you taking on the monkey. So one more piece on questioning that I want to address. And that is so often we tend to want to direct and tell. We tend to say, well, try this or do this or go check with so and so. Or we need to do this. Or handing out work orders in the shop in the morning and so and so you take this and so and so you do this. It's a non-collaborative approach. It's very much a directing. And again, I'm not advocating that we don't do that. I'm just suggesting that again, let's improve communication with more collaboration and more engagement and more influence and asking the same questions and giving the direction the same way, but maybe using more influence. Instead of just telling and directing, maybe asking more of those questions. So where are we at from yesterday on the job that you were working on yesterday? Tell me about the timeframe that you think is realistic to get it done today. Which of these work orders might work for you today? In addition, think about that other person when you bring them in versus just doling them out and that tech is standing there with his eyes rolled back in his head because he's thinking I'm not done with my projects from two days ago, let alone yesterday. And now I'm getting more dumped on me. And think about a technician who works at a steady consistent pace that needs to check step one to step two to step three to step four. And you start overloading them and hyper stimulating them with more and more and more. What will that tend to do? That tends to stress them because they feel like what you're saying to them is you have to speed up. That's the subliminal message that they're getting and that puts stress on them. And so there might be a different way. How do we sell it and influence them where they give us the result of what they think is possible and you guide that conversation by asking questions. When is a realistic timeframe? Now they're gonna want to possibly extend that because remember their target is perfection and they don't want someone to be critical of their work or have to redo it and have the service manager down their neck because they ran 50% or 80% over on the job or whatever, pick a number. So really we have to do better. It doesn't matter whether you're in the accounting department you're in the sales department. We all need to ask better questions. We need to drill down further. We need to try to get more clarity. Once we've asked these questions then the next step is always to say so based on what I've heard I just want to clarify so that we're all on the same page. You and I or if it's a group. So here's our plan and you reiterate the plan in a paraphrased manner. Now if there are a lot of takeaways that are specific where it's a specific customer that needs to be contacted there's a part that needs to be ordered. There's a lot of moving pieces within that discussion that morning meeting. That lean stand up meeting. Then the service manager or the foreman or someone may want to jot down and specifically parrot back all of those specific items that need to be reiterated. So Jake you take this item. Jason you take this item. Thank you for doing that. I'll follow up with you later today. So really really important when we're thinking about communication it's really all about making sure that we ask those yes or no questions, gather the information, the facts and the information that we need that we probe to get their buy-in shift that we start to understand what is it that what's inside of their head so that we're asking those who, what, when, where that are really more open-ended than the yes or no but they are basically trying to gather and probe for the facts and information and understand the situation. Once we understand the situation now we want to engage that other person into the communication piece of helping them be part of the solution as opposed to us taking on the monkey, putting the monkey on our back and then we get distracted with 50 things and we're not able to follow through to completion but instead using that other person so that other person feels like they've been engaged in the process. If you do this and you utilize this in your organization and you really make a concerted effort to train your people this way and you incorporate into your own behaviors you will find that you will get much more done in your organization and people will be a lot more inspired and happy to work for you and get you what you need because the way you say it and what you say and how you say it becomes really critical. So we're about halfway through. I don't see any questions here but feel free if you do have any to jot them down. So I want to talk a little bit about different methods of communication as it relates to technology. So the phone, whether it's a landline phone in your office or whether it's a cell phone, remember, again, if our physical appearance is judged in seven seconds, our telephone is within 10. You know, how many times have you gotten someone on the phone and they don't give you a clear description of who they are or the reason they're calling and it takes you a little bit to kind of reset and clear your head from what you were thinking about or working on and get into the conversation. So make sure that you always are ready. When you pick up that phone that you've cleared you have to kind of take a deep breath and clear and pretend that that caller is across from you. So, you know, if that's maybe to unfurl the brow and to change your facial expression, you know, you may need to do that. I don't know how many times I call into a control room or a service department within a plant or a dealership and I'm looking for someone and they may not be available and, you know, they say, can I have them call you back? Can I go, absolutely, that would be great. And, you know, it's two to three, five, 10 seconds while they look for a piece of paper and a pencil. And, you know, that's something that should always be on you or with you. I know when you're walking around sometimes and you're working off your cell phone, that's difficult. So how do you, you know, if you can really multitask, sometimes, you know, you can just jot down a quick email to that person to call and get the number. What you do, you restate the number to make sure you have it correctly. Make sure that you are the one that is getting the information if you're the message taker. What about voicemail? You know, update your greeting as necessary. Not everyone has voicemail. I know there's some shared voicemail boxes in some situations, but update your greeting. And please, no cutesy greetings. This is really, we see this a lot with applicants, particularly college graduates that are going to work. They're used to the fraternity or the sorority or the, you know, the life, college life. And the real world is different. And you might, you know, they might answer their phone, yeah, this is Bill's Bar and Grill. You know, if you want to party, you know, come on over. That's probably not appropriate when you're looking for work. You know, also that some of them have very interesting email addresses that maybe speak to their nickname or whatever. You know, probably want to lose that and get a Gmail account with something that's a little more professional. But make sure that you speak slowly and clearly. You know, this is Jill Berg with SurAnn Staffing. You know, please leave me a message. Thank you. I mean, you know, slow it down. Just remember, you need to when you're on the phone and you don't have that person live, you have to slow it down and keep your greeting short. Doesn't have to be a big, I'm so glad you called. You know, I can't wait to call you back. You know, it's none of that. But please do tell them how to reach a live person. Now we get into when we're leaving outgoing messages, don't just say this is Jill Berg, call me. Please give your phone number and what do you do? You reiterate that phone number. I know when I'm making reservations in a restaurant for a party of a number of people and I have to leave a message, I always give them my name, the number and the party, my phone number and I reiterate it and I say it very, very slowly. My number is 701-412-2900 and I leave punctuation between every number and you'd be amazed at how many times when the head waiter or the hostess calls me back and says thank you for your message, I received it and by the way, thank you for repeating your number. I wish more people would do that. So just some tips, basic, basic communication. Email, we don't really use the phone like we used to. So email really is probably the go-to for many of you but please don't use email to avoid conflict and personal contact. Oftentimes when there's someone who is maybe not the happiest person in the world at the moment and something wasn't done right or the wrong part was ordered, we tend to want to use email instead of walking over and having that face-to-face conversation. Whenever there's a customer problem or complaint, email is probably your last resort. Your first is face-to-face. It's depending on the difficulty or the complexity of the concern. The second one would typically be phone and the last would be email because there's too much that you can't say in an email and unless you cushion that email with the right words, it can be more offensive than helpful because when there's a problem and I get an email back and I deal with this all the time and I get, well, we were really busy. Sorry, we missed that. That's not solving my problem as a customer. That's making an excuse. So always try to think about the solution before you have that contact. No excuses. It's an excuse-free zone. So when you send email, make sure the subject line grabs their attention and it might say something like service order problem resolution. You want it to grab their attention. It isn't just hello. If I get an email and I'm looking at it on my phone and someone says hello, I assume it's a spam email and I'm probably going to delete it particularly if it has a link attached to it unless I specifically know that person. So make sure that you are communicating in the subject line and putting the most important facts first. If there's a lot of information, don't put it in a paragraph form. Bullet it so that it becomes very, very simple to read for the recipient because no one wants to read the story and have to sort out the facts and the information in the paragraph that runs on with spelling errors and poor grammar and all of that. So bullet longer discussions that are more complex. The other thing is, and this will depend on your company policy, but try not to break email chains between the original and the response because if every time you start a new email because you don't want to look up the old one and there's multiple people involved, maybe you forward it on to the parts manager. Now the parts manager is talking to the customer and he gets this new email from the parts manager, may not recall exactly what the original communication had to do now. He's got to go dig it up. This is where things don't get done and it really costs a lot of productivity within organizations. So try not to break those chains or don't just go out and find an email from Jill Berg and just tag on to that email because it happened to be in your box and not tie it to the email that had the question that I was really asking. So there's a lot of etiquette that is important in communicating and it's really putting yourself in the other person's world. Remember, it's not our world, it's their world. If we think about their world, we have to accomplish what we have to accomplish in our world, but if we view it and filter it through their perspective and their world, things will always go so much better. Please put your contact information in the signature line. It is so frustrating when you get an email. It could be a client you work with all the time or a customer or an internal person, but you may not have their direct line committed, their internal extension committed in your mind because we have everything on speed dial or on our phones and so you have to look it up. You have to go out and find it. It would be so much easier if it were right there and you could just pick up the phone and call them. So just some little pieces and then remember that email is admissible as evidence. Email is critical, so make sure that your email is used for work. I think we're all grownups and we all understand that, but it's not private. Even when you delete it, it's still out there and can still be retrieved. Unless it's someone you know really well, try to avoid a lot of abbreviations. One thing if it's an abbreviation that's typically used in your industry, JCB, Cedar Rapids, CR, whatever, but if it's lingo that's used, that's fine, but try not to use a lot of, by the way, talk to you later, those K-LOLs, those types of things and emoticons. Sometimes when there's a difficult conversation, I get an email with a kind of a sad face or a smiley face and unless I have a pretty strong relationship with that person, I'm a little bit apprehensive about what is it they're really saying here. I know they're trying to soften the tone, but remember your email, when it comes out under the company domain, it's a reflection not only of the company, but of you. All right, let's jump over to social media. Who's using social media? Well, everyone. Grandma uses social media, everyone uses social media, 7 or 8 out of 10 Americans are using social media. When you travel around the world, everyone's using social media. They might call it something different in China, it's WeChat, in U.S. it's Facebook, but there's so much social media bombarding us all the time and just again, to be professional and to think about when I'm posting pictures because employers are looking at that. When we're looking for internal opportunities for staff, perhaps high potential, if your friend happens to be a co-worker and you're posting things that are maybe on the edge a little bit, that's noticed. Keep in mind that that's another reflection of you and how many times can that tweet take down a CEO or a senior level exec or someone in a position or someone that's upwardly mobile, can they not get the promotion because of things that they might have promoted on social media. So just be aware that it's not just a company's Facebook account that reflects the company. Your logo on your shirt that represents your company is also going to be out there for the public if they know you. So there's a lot of social media means, make sure that you realize that this is a huge game changer and it's a way for your company and for you to really communicate the positive things about your job and your organization. This is one of the big misses in the recruiting arena that really has to do with communication. It is a game changer when it comes to attracting millennials and even Gen Z as they start to come into the workforce because they look for jobs very differently. The days of classified is dead. The days of posting a job and praying that someone will apply is almost dead. I think they're probably needing resuscitation because it's close to being obsolete. But social media is really the key. And so remember that transparency into the organization, the communication of what the organization puts out from a marketing perspective, the announcements, the fun that the organization has. It's not just the kegerator in the break room that's important or the 4 o'clock Fridays or whatever. That's not really what attracts. It's that what is the culture of collaboration and communication that speaks to me because the culture that millennials are looking for, I call it the three C's, is culture, communication and collaboration. And when you're interviewing them, they're going to ask questions around how does the team interact, what is the communication like and what is the culture of your organization. Now they may not be able to describe what all of that means but those are words that they've heard over and over and so you will tend to hear that quite a bit. So make sure that you think about communication not only face to face but phone, email as well as social media. There's many, many different forms of communication today. We have communication coming at us from all directions and managing it can be very stimulating or it can be non-stimulating depending on how much you like it or don't like it. But remember, there is a cultural shift that's happening and we have to figure out how do we use communication in our organizations not only to understand our people but to extend out and relay that marketing perspective to that this is a great place to work and we want to attract the right talent. And once we get them there, what we say and do and the messages that we relay definitely will inspire them and engage them and hopefully keep them within your organization versus losing that valued person after you've trained them up in whatever area whether it's parts, service, accounting, finance, sales, whatever department it's in. So communication really is the key and I hope today that you have picked up a couple of tidbits around that. Lastly, we're going to talk about how do we de-escalate negative communication. If I ask for a show of hands and I ask how many of you have had to deal with a situation where someone maybe wasn't as happy as you wish they were, it wasn't a smiley face, I'm sure all of us would raise our hand. So I'm going to give you a scenario and I've role-played this scenario live before and it's been kind of fun. And this probably for a dealership could be a real story. So if a customer walked in with a non-smiley face and said, you've had my equipment for three days. The service manager told me it'd be done today. It's not done today and now I'm told that the costs are 50% over and I've got work scheduled for that unit tomorrow and this has cost me revenue and now not only more in the cost of repair but lost revenue. What are you going to do about it? I expect an answer today. So they're not going to give it to you probably in sound bites like that. They're going to give it to you more in a story. There's going to be emotion there. So you need to make eye contact. You need to listen. The first thing you need to do then is say, thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing. You do not say, I understand your situation because that may just escalate the conversation. No, you don't understand. You're not the guy with the broken down piece of equipment and you're not the guy that's losing revenue because it's not working for me tomorrow and you're not the guy that's got the 50% overrun. So don't tell me you understand, you don't understand. So what you want to say is you want to acknowledge it. You want to say, I hear you or thank you for sharing. Very neutral responses. Then you start asking questions. You start saying, so when you brought the equipment in, if it wasn't me that you talked to, who did you speak to? So when you brought it in, let me pull up the work order. You start asking questions. What was your expectation? What is a realistic timeline for this? We want to immediately go into all the reasons why it's running over and it's more expensive. We immediately go to telling. Instead of backing off and asking more questions about the expectations, what a potential solution might be. What might be a satisfactory solution for you? Do I have a rental available? If this is a good customer, what would be an amicable solution for both parties? Let me talk to my service tech. Let me gather more information. Let me see, maybe we can figure out something to get it to you sooner. You want to start asking questions, but you want to put yourself in their place. You always apologize. Say, I'm really sorry that these unforeseen things have occurred, but we are here to find a solution for you. You start with asking questions because you want to de-escalate all the things because they're going to give you. If you ask, explain, tell me more. What was your expectation? Did you receive a price quote? If you did, what has changed? Have you been communicated to, to uncover what's changed? You want to ask all of those questions to make sure that you've covered everything, that we aren't missing something. That's how we improve. I'm sorry, you repeat back once you've had the discussion. Based on what we've discussed, I see we do have a rental that we possibly could loan you for tomorrow. It looks like the piece will be ready by the end of the day tomorrow. Is that a solution that works for you? If so, let's get it put together. Again, you want to repeat back. You want to gain their buy-in-ship. Again, I apologize. This is just the way life goes. You've been in the business a long time as we have. We certainly know that unforeseen things happen. Our job is to make sure that you're satisfied. Is this a solution? Again, reiterate, is this a solution that works for you? When you solve that problem and you come to a mutual solution, the next thing that will happen is if typically, if you have truly found a solution that works, this will bring that customer closer to your organization and closer to you and will give you trust and credibility. If we hear the story and we go right into excuses and present or I'm short-staffed and we had two techs call in sick today, the customer does not really care. Again, that's your world. That's not their world. When you're thinking about communication, I want you to really challenge yourself to think about what are they really saying, what are they not telling me and what is their world about right now. How do I ask who, what, when, where, how, explain, tell me more, describe, share with me, those kinds of questions, those deep questions that get them talking because the more they talk, chances are the more it will de-escalate the situation because you're going to have an opportunity then to find solutions which is why you're asking the questions, to identify those solutions. If you handle it properly, I guarantee that that relationship typically, not always, but typically will improve and it will build customer loyalty. It's when we make excuses, we blame, we throw the service tech under the bus, we throw somebody else under the bus, that's when it doesn't feel like you care about their world. I challenge you to listen and to communicate and to really truly ask better questions, deeper questions, investigative questions, probing questions that really get to the source of the problem and if it's an internal person or an external person, a vendor, regardless of who the communication is with, that you really truly think about it and engage them to be part of the collaborative solution and not just taking on those issues and challenges yourself and wearing that monkey but engaging others to help them be part of the solution and the problem. So we're a few minutes ahead of schedule here today which is great. That's not typical for me by the way so you can be grateful for that. Are there any questions? Anyone that has a question that they'd like to ask, I'm happy to field a response. Okay. Well, thank you for your time and attention. I've given you my contact information there and I know this will be posted as a webinar through the AED. So if there are no questions, I will sign off. Thank you so much.

communication

organizations

listening skills

asking questions

problem-solving

building relationships

closed-ended questions

open-ended questions

de-escalation