The Manage 2 Win Blog
Opinions and thoughts on entrepreneurship, business, leadership, company culture, hiring, and management, by our team at Manage 2 Win.
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Opinions and thoughts on entrepreneurship, business, leadership, company culture, hiring, and management, by our team at Manage 2 Win.
Subscribe to our blog posts via email or RSS:
Good People Are in Short Supply!
The war for talent is real. It is global. It is getting progressively worse each year.
Here are 5 key benefits that interns bring your organization…
As we take a break to reflect and recharge, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate our most popular episodes ever on The Manage 2 Win Podcast.
Here are 5 tactics utilized by the Zen Master, Phil Jackson to become one of the greatest winners and leaders of our lifetime. You can pick up on these methods of managing to become a more effective leader for your team.
It’s my birthday today, so I’m posting what I want to… Consider this question: What if we focus our energy and resources on where we agree, rather than what we disagree about? Could this be THE key to peacefully healing our families and nation? It’s what I call, “Together we will.”
We have carefully curated our favorite, most listened episodes from 2022, with stories ranging from hiring and sales to anarchy and empowerment.
How are you doing on your priorities? Could you improve in 2023?
According to Malcolm Gladwell, the "tipping point" is
"that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire."
One of the reasons I wrote my first book, Success With People, is because of the realization that I had leadership tendencies rather than true leadership skills.
Years ago, I was speaking with a coworker about a particular manager. The coworker commented that the manager really felt he was a leader. After further consideration, we realized he was more of a competitor than a leader…
One important aspect of effective leadership is to make certain you and your people are focusing on key priorities each day. You can’t do that unless you are communicating with your team and hearing from them regularly.
The solution? A daily huddle.
Ask yourself, what are your biggest problems - employee or Client issues? Why do you have these problems?
Regardless of what they are, I’m willing to bet your problems are occurring because the experience your employees have working for you or the experience your Clients have buying and receiving services from you is not meeting or exceeding their expectations.
Years ago we worked with LaRae Que, a former FBI agent and author of the book, SECRETS of a Strong Mind (2nd edition): : How to Build Inner Strength to Overcome Life's Obstacles.
LaRae spent twenty years as an undercover and counterintelligence agent for the FBI and served as an FBI spokesperson in Northern California for four years. During her time as a counterintelligence agent, her primary goal was to identify foreign agents operating in the United States, find out what they were doing, stop them, assess their potential as an asset, and persuade them to work for the U.S. government.
Too often people get promoted into leadership without any training. Then they struggle or fail. It’s not really fair. They were good or even superstar employees previously. Why not train them on the essentials of being a great leader so they can thrive?
Join me, Adam Goller (oversees 450 people), Laura Berman Fortgang (as seen on Oprah), Bruce Eckfeldt (super entrepreneur and coach), and Jeffrey Tebele (guru of tech company - RCS Professional Services) as we explain how to fully engage your employees onsite and remote… ESPECIALLY your people working REMOTELY!
Do you have leaders with one of these three issues?
Leadership attributes, but poor habits and processes.
Individual superstar, but limited skills guiding a team, or
Average / low performance individually and/or of their team.
If you answered “Yes” that you or one of your leaders has one or more of these issues, then your leaders do NOT know the essentials of leadership.
Here is one way to start.
The mission of Yoko Co. is: Do Good. Better.
Does that honestly describe what you are doing today professionally and personally?
Yoko Co. is a digital marketing and creativity SWAT team. They reached 127 million people in 2020. Chris Yoko, the CEO, has worked with some of the planet’s largest and most impactful brands, such as Ritz Carlton, Pampers, and Living Social. He’s equally adept at positively impacting smaller brands, like FHI360, Life Sherpa, and Genomic Health.
It’s awesome! But that’s not why I’m mentioning him and Yoko Co…
What if you could follow a system to change a significant habit and OTHER PEOPLE would notice a difference in as little as 1-2 weeks?
Here’s a conversation overflowing with advice on how to have awesome team bonding events, get to know job candidates at a deeper level, and have more effective performance improvement plans (“PIP”). We use Manage 2 Win Talent Assessments as a tool. However, there’s a lot of valuable insights here separate of our assessments.
Check these two podcasts I recently did with some amazing leaders on hiring.
Polish My Pitch with Chala Dincoy is a great example for you to consider how to improve how you introduce your services to someone new.
The second is an interview with Dr. Katrina Burris on her MKB podcast discussing the challenges of hiring and how to be your best at it.
It’s been four years since we launched Dave's Charm School’s online platform and many people have benefited from the courses, not least of which is the Communications 101 course covering active listening, body language, communicating respectfully, and more.
One of the lessons in the course is titled “Email, IM, Texting Standards” and includes my Dirty Dozen Email Rules. These rules are incredibly helpful for any executive, manager, or front-line employee that wants to present themselves professionally and communicate effectively via email.
Every rule may not apply to you, but most of them probably do. Feel free to copy and edit my list to create your own list that works at your company.
Whether we agree politically or not, I encourage you to vote on November 3rd. Our freedoms depend on our responsibility. A core responsibility of every citizen is to educate ourselves on the candidates and issues, and regularly vote.
NOT voting creates the possibility someday of not being allowed to vote and losing other freedoms.
We just launched our latest course, Solving NOT Selling, in Dave’s Charm School.
This 14-lesson course is designed for service technicians who are uncomfortable discussing unexpected problems that cost a Client additional money.
However, everyone in your organization needs the skills and habits to discuss difficult topics.
Although this training is focused on service techs, we encourage everyone in your company to complete this course. This includes owners, CEOs, executives, receptionists, maintenance workers, and warehouse staff. Everyone means ALL your people.
Do you want to have a strong team? Teach them how to disagree productively.
A good starting point is to first evaluate how you and your team argue with others.
There are different ways people disagree, argue, or debate. Typically, some disagreeable situations are more emotional than others. Disagreement is not bad. However, the way people disagree can be unproductive and/or hurtful.
Decades ago I took a Dale Carnegie course. It was 13 weeks straight, three hours one night each week. It was fabulous because the instructor, Alan, was awesome.
Every week we meet new people. Alan taught a story metaphor to systematically start a comfortable conversation with a person you’ve never met before. This simple framework helps you bond with people and learn about them. It also sets the stage to ask additional questions as you engage them in sincere conversation.
Back in 2007 the The Wall Street Journal published an article titled Too Many Companies Lack Succession Plans, Wasting Time, Talent.
In the article, Carol Hymowitz discussed the importance of succession plans and how “Only about half of public and private corporate boards have CEO-succession plans in place… This is the case even at giant global companies that have thousands of employees and spend millions each year to recruit and train talent.”
Carol’s article primarily focuses on large companies, but succession plans are just as important for SMBs (more on that below).
Does you have a succession plan?
Have you ever wondered why someone behaved the way they did?
The answer is a combination of “how” they are acting based on their most intense natural behaviors, and “why” they are motivated to behave that way based on their most intense driving forces.
Your business is only as strong as your relationship with your employees. If management isn’t developing a culture of connection, loyalty and trust tend to fall by the wayside.
This is a horror story of one company who accidentally let the leash out too far on some employees they thought they could trust.
This crisis will end. All of them do.
What are you doing today for your organization to rise out of COVID-19 with a stronger, more enduring competitive advantage?
the following is an excerpt from the second course of our new Hire the Best training, coming soon
You may have heard the term, “Talent Acquisition is War,” or seen a headline with the words “The War for Talent.” That kind of rhetoric sounds like hiring managers are setting up bunkers at job fairs, dressed in full camouflage, ready to fight for resumes with company branded t-shirt launchers and notepad covers.
It’s silly.
Back in 2007 I was speaking at an Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) group meeting in San Antonio, Texas, when a question came up about employee recognition. How effective is cash?
I responded cash works with some people, but at least 75% of employees do not prefer cash. You see, giving someone cash is really easy. There’s hardly any effort or thought required. At most it’s a trip to the bank and an accounting entry. When a gift takes so little of time and effort to give, it becomes meaningless.
There are so many other ways to motivate and recognize people that are better than cash.
The last time the San Francisco 49ers were in the Super Bowl was 1994. 26 years ago.
I stopped watching them shortly thereafter.
Last season the team lost 3 of 4 preseason games and then went 4-12 in the 2018-2019 season. Who could believe these guys would be Super Bowl contenders this year?
If you stop and think about your leadership and business, are you a “Super Bowl” contender in your market?
If not, what can you learn from the San Francisco 49ers, who wallowed in mediocrity and failure for much of the past 23 years before thinking outside the box and totally changing the team’s culture?
the following is a sneak preview excerpt from our updated Hire the Best training, coming soon
John and his wife met a nice woman at church. Let’s call her Margaret. As they got to know each other, John and his wife developed a casual friendship with Margaret. They would exchange hellos, talk about their week, and share stories about their kids. They liked Margaret. She seemed sensible, funny, and rational.
John’s company had less than 20 employees. A few months after meeting Margaret, there was an opening in his business at a time when Margaret was looking for a new job. After a couple of coffee meetings, he decided to hire her.