It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. – Harry Truman

It’s hard not to care who gets the credit. And even though it takes everyone’s concentrated efforts to get the job done, you need to feel positive about your work even on those occasions when just a few get the credit that perhaps the whole team deserved.

Together Everybody Achieves More

A good team leader will make sure to credit the whole team. When announcing results of a team’s efforts, the leader will emphasize how hard the team worked together, and what each employee contributed to the bigger effort. Don’t worry about team members who didn’t work as hard as they might have or that others might have wanted them to–they will be penalized when they are not picked for a new team. It doesn’t matter once the team’s work is done; it matters for the next time around.

How do you make it known who gets credit when credit is due?

Credit Given When Credit is Due is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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Stay engaged with your team and it’s leaders. The big picture and strategy is the common objective.

I think when Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great” he was expressing his belief that establishing trust in any relationship is the place to start. Getting others to trust you stems from your trust in them. This is a foundation of a good team. You can build on loyalty and trust and get spectacular dividends. Treat your colleagues to reflect your belief in them and their talents. Never miss an opportunity to tell them how great they are, and after a while, they’ll not only beleive it (becasue they are great), they’ll prove themselves great.

Pay close attention to your actions. Attitude reflects leadership.

Keep the team spirit high. You’re the catalyst in this equation. It is your task to bring out the greatness in others by treating them as valued players in your mission. Inspire them by your example, and they will in turn inspire others. It’s a winning formula.

How are you maintaining trust within your team?

Trust Your Team is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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Let your team use it’s unique attributes, not just it’s traditionally trained skills

Let your team feel pride in their work by allowing them to be unique. Don’t always send them off to repeat someone else’s success. They should be able to experiment, innovate, and create success of their own.

Breeding this kind of atmosphere entices the best people to come to work. Most creative thinkers don’t want to do the same-old, same-old their entire career. They didn’t spend four or more years in college, accumulating tens of thousands of dollars to be a mimic. Almost everyone dreams of putting his or her unique stamp on the world, and this alone creates the motivation for success. So give your highly motivated industrious team the time they need to come up with something great.

How are you inspiring your team to innovate?

Inspire Your Team to Innovate is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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Encourage Your Team with Passion and Sincerity.

While encouraging employees to be committed is important, the encouragement will fail it it’s simply “rah-rah” blather. Experienced employees see through this rhetoric in seconds. Instead, encouragement must also include a crystal-clear explanation of the company’s adopted strategy, as well as answers to all the employee questions. And this approach is even more important if the work on the table is a one-off project, the kind of job that is successfully done when the people involved are fully aware of the goals and how to achieve them. If you offer them substantive and valuable encouragement, commitment is sure to follow.

How do you encourage your team to be fully engaged?

Encourage Your Team with Passion is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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If you ever took formal driving lessons, especially learning to drive a motorcycle, you are taught to always look for an escape route. If you come around a corner and there is a log across the road, where can you head the car or bike to escape a collision with the log. If you are driving down a two-lane highway and an oncoming car has poorly judged the distance needed to pass, where is your opening to avoid a head-on collision?

You will also need to plan an escape route in case your business doesn’t work out and you have to call it quits, at least for a while. The best way to have a financial escape route is to have a backup…a savings account or reserve of some kind, an asset you could sell if you absolutely had to, a line of credit, or even a business relationship strong enough to help you in a pinch. Look for your financial escape routes so you can follow your passion and feel more secure about taking well-thought-out business risks.

If we keep in mind that when it comes to money, most people want to play it safe and feel secure. So passion does not direct them. Fear does. Don’t be afraid to apply this theory to your own career path. As you work your way up, the ins and outs of business will unfold around you as well as many nuanced real-life situations that you won’t encounter in a classroom.

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Ben Affleck plays a character named “Jim Young.” He delivers this pep talk to the new recruits in this movie about a group of stockbrokers working out of a strip mall “boiler room” in Long Island. He’s all fiery and passionate, and Seth Davis (played by Giovanni Ribisi) is hooked. He doesn’t know yet that the firm, JT Marlin, is a “pump and dump” operation. All he knows is that he might become a millionaire overnight.

Young’s ‘inspirational’ message offers a lot of truth. When you’re cold calling, someone is always going to close the deal. Make sure the person is you, and not the prospect on the other end of the line. You must be relentless to avoid being on the receiving end of a “thanks, but no thanks” sign off.

Of course, this is where we part company from the high-pressure, fast-talking sales techniques on display in his boiler room. For one thing, not many sales close on the first approach. The first chat is your opportunity to tip the balance, with you in control making the right points and asking the right questions. You begin to build rapport with the prospect as you explain how the solution you’re offering is the best one for his situation. And you hope that future meetings will build on that rapport and turn into trust.

If You Are Drowning And I Throw You A Life Jacket… Will You Catch It? is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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The best-case scenario is that not only will you have a loyal customer, but you will also have a customer who relates his or her experience to someone else. What could be better than to earn great buzz about your company after you took care of someone when something went wrong?

Make customer service your number one priority. Often people just want to be heard or have something fixed. Remember: they wanted your product or service to begin with, and they still want it…they just want it a particular way!

Most successful businesses realize that every department that deals with the outside world is an offshoot of customer service. Sales, marketing, shipping, and even accounting need to put on their best business face with every interaction. This way, you can turn lots of disasters into opportunities.

Turn Every Disaster Into an Opportunity is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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Taking risks isn’t easy. We often have to conquer our fear or insecurities. We have to be ready and eager to jump from the familiar to the unknown. Getting there is often downright scary: What if it doesn’t work out? What if I fail?

The only way we’re going to find out is to risk it! If we’re having trouble making the change, we need to look within ourselves to see what is causing our resistance. Overcome it. This is part of having the will to take risks…over coming fear to make that jump into the unknown.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot

The Noble Prize-winning writer T.S. Eliot was talking about symbolism in poetry he wrote the above-mentioned line, but it applies to every aspect of life. Indeed, the quote has been adopted as the slogan for numerous societies and organizations. Before he achieved international fame as a poet, playwright, and essayist,Eliot worked in a bank. By choosing the path of writing…at best, a chancy economic future over a salaried position at an institution…he was clearly willing to risk going too far to see just how far he could go.

Ready, set, go. . . make that same leap into the unknown!!

God bless. ~ Geoff Snyder

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Many people desire to make more of their business life, whether it’s getting a promotion, finding a better job, or simply having the opportunity to take time off for a once-in-a-lifetime extended vacation. But we often miss these chances because we unintentionally hold ourselves back from success. For example, if you are stuck in a dead-end job, you’ve got to find a way to get out of it. If you stay in that position, you will never move up to the next level professionally, and you’ll miss out on longer vacation time, more money, and even more job flexibility.

Over one hundred years ago, British writer James Allen skillfully remarked in his essay, From Poverty to Power, “To know that justice, harmony, and love are supreme in the universe is likewise to know that all adverse and painful conditions are the result of our own disobedience.” Positive, lasting change starts by knowing who we are and taking ownership for the dissatisfying aspects of our lives. We can’t rely on others, to improve out station. We must learn to act now.

Change is your career can require looking deep within yourself to find out how you can best succeed. Spend some time each day reflecting on where you want your career or business to head. You will find that your dreams and goals will begin to take shape. It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to be easy, but it will work.

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While trouble my seen more innocuous than failure, a leader may look at them in the same light. But just like failure, you can’t have success without some trouble along the way.

We witness sports teams deal with trouble, or inconveniences, all season long. The Boston Red Sox (but for the record…I am a Detroit Tigers fan) had their share of trouble in the 2007 season. One of their star players, Manny Ramirez, was sidelined with a muscle injury for about three weeks during the summer. A young player by the name of Jacoby Ellsbury, was brought up from a minor league team to play while Ramirez recovered. Ellsbury proved to be such a good player that the manager, Terry Francona, found a way to keep him in the line-up even after Ramirez returned from his injury. Ellsbury went on to play throughout the rest of the season, which culminated in a World Series Championship for the Red Sox.

For leaders, trouble may come in the form of a manufacturing glitch, an unexpected time delay, or an act of God like a fire or flood…or perhaps a disgruntled employee. The key to your success will be how you deal with these inconveniences. For example, use the manufacturing glitch as a chance to strengthen your relationship with your key manufacturer or to find a new manufacturer.

Show your business acumen by responding well to so-called “trouble.”

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According to John Wooden, famed basketball coach for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), resting on your “high horse” is a recipe for disaster. He made it a personal priority to review every detail after each game in order to continue improving as head coach. Wooden was just as interested in improving his performance when he was winning as when he was losing. His outstanding results prove his theory correct. The same thing applies to the business world. when it comes to high-performing companies…there is always room for improvement. While most good companies operate at a three or four sigma, the goal should be to be great…to be a six sigma organization filled with level 5 leaders. Six sigma requires a company to benchmark itself to the competition, analyze processes to pinpoint problems in order to come up with solutions, and reduce the amount of customer complaints. This will result in everything from better customer satisfaction indexes to increased market share. From the amount of time it takes to deliver an invoice, product or sale, return a phone call to client, or ship a container half-way around the world, time is money, and seconds can cost millions of dollars in profit.

To find out where the problems are…to see with both eyes, if you will…is the goal even if you’re already meeting great expectations. When you stop trying to improve, you do a disservice to yourself. Focus on what you can do to learn from yesterday and apply it today. Living in your glory is like seeing with only one eye, because remember: Even if you’ve just landed a big account or just won a championship game, there is still room to be better.

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General Patton wanted no part of bad strategy. When he was told to stand by and not advance, he sharpen and polish his troops by sending out small battle groups to keep the enemy guessing and on their toes.

When it comes down to being successful in business, a leader should make sure his or her “troops” have what they need to execute the grand plan, or that plan can quickly become a disaster. Whether you are selling automobiles to customers in a retail setting or delivering parts to an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, how well you perform the task will indicate your level of success. On the flip side, great plans are ruined when the execution suffers. Bottom line…grandiose strategy plans won’t sell more cars, but solid customer service will. Listen to your customers, as for they are always telling you a story on how to keep them satisfied.

With that said, all of this reminds me of something Tom Peters wrote in A Passion for Excellence. In this book, he states that “Customers love being appreciated and hate supervisors who pull the disappearing act.” Heck, who doesn’t for that matter? Peters also stated, “Bad leaders are invisible, while good leaders demonstrate MBWA,” an acronym that he coined which means: “Managing By Walking Around.”

If you want to be informed about your company and provide useful direction to employees and managers, you need to get out of your office and change your focus from analyzing yesterday’s trends to witnessing the daily operation of your organization. By asking questions in the face of the day-to-day operations, you will get answers to problems you didn’t even know existed. By listening to other people within your team, you can give real input into the processes of your organization. By talking to customers, you’ll know if the business is hitting its target or just missing. Talking to a customer is much more valuable than looking at the results or marketing surveys.

So, the next time you want information…take a walk. Good things are sure to happen!

Managing By Walking Around is a post from: Geoff Snyder's Leadership and Team Collaboration Blog - Freedom to Think and Dream Big

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