Self Leadership Coaching Blog

Should is a signpost to our mental maps. When you say, “I should do this or I shouldn’t do that”, you are telling yourself and those who are listening about your personal ‘rules of behaviour’.

What is more interesting however are the ‘unsaid shoulds’.  When we get angry or upset it is most probably because somebody else has not complied with our ‘shoulds‘ or ‘shouldn’ts‘.

For example; if somebody pushes in front of you in a queue, do you feel angry? You do? Well that is because you (and me for that matter) believe that they shouldn’t push in.

Customer service is all about anticipating the expectation of should and shouldn’t. Last weekend I was taking my wife and children to see Barney (the pink dinosaur who dances!) at the Singapore Expo. Well firstly the car park was a nightmare, not enough spaces and people parking illegally and blocking traffic.  I could feel my stress levels rising as I knew I should get the kids to the show on time and that the expo SHOULD have provided enough parking.

I chose to drop my family at the entrance and go and find another car park, so after jogging back to the venue I was just in time for the show to start. My wife asked me to find two seat boosters for the kids and so I hurriedly set off in search of these only to be told by expo staff that they had run out of boosters and that I SHOULD have been there earlier!
Now I am not proud of my response to this situation because I raised my voice and told the girl that I had paid for the most expensive seats to see the damn dinosaur and I damn well think they SHOULD provide enough boosters!  In defense of the Singapore Expo or the organisers of Barney and Friends we were recompensed with two buckets of popcorn but it is another example of reacting to a ‘should’.

I have just stayed at an excellent hotel (The Grand Millennium Bangkok, Thailand) where my every need was anticipated. On check-in I was asked, “Should I need a wake up call and should I need a car to take me to the airport.” This hotel continued to impress me and I was reminded of how wonderful life is when the world meets or exceeds your mental maps.

The reason I was in Bangkok was to conduct a 3-day leadership program for senior managers and during that training I emphasised using the phrase, “what’s important to you about that?” This question uncovers a person’s values including their – ‘shoulds’. Knowing your own and other people’s mental map results in effective communication reduced conflict and increased influence.

So shouldn’t you get better at your shoulds?

What’s your worst customer service experience?

I bet you have a story about receiving lousy customer service, I know I have a few. On the flipside – do you have a story about giving lousy customer service? Ouch, this is more difficult to contemplate because we naturally see the world from our own point of view.

Whatever work you do, you have customers – whether they pay you directly or not. If you work in an organisation you will have internal as well as external customers.

The word customer contains the word custom which means habit. So a customer is someone who buys or interacts with you more than once, and this suggests some kind of relationship. Just like other relationships, customer service can be good or bad depending on the mindset you bring to it.

When I was about 12 years old I started working in my father’s hardware store. I was an enthusiastic young man and began to learn about the products, becoming knowledgeable and therefore important (in my mind). One day I got into an argument with a customer about the ‘proper’ definition of a product, my father stepped in, agreed with the customer and sold the product. I was furious because I knew I was right and confronted my father about this. His response was, “Son, I know you were right, but do you want to be right or do you want to be rich?”

The famous sales trainer Zig Ziglar said it this way:
“If you help enough other people get what they want, you can have anything you want.”

With this frame of mind we can prosper by meeting and exceeding the customer’s expectations.

When I speak about leadership at a conference or workshop, I often talk about my children, Tasha (3 1/2) and Nathan (22 months). This is for a couple of reasons, firstly and selfishly because I am a proud father, secondly because it builds rapport with the audience and thirdly and most importantly because they are good examples of leadership and influence principles. In this blog post I wanted to share 3 such leadership principles.

1. Modeling Behaviour

Every parent knows that children are great mimics, they watch you like a hawk and duplicate your behaviour. This can be amusing, as when Tasha first started painting her nails after watching my wife or Nathan picking up my tennis racket and saying, “like daddy.” The dark side of this modeling is when children mimic the aggressive behaviour of adults, which was demonstrated by  Dr. Albert Bandura with the Bobo Doll experiment and is evidenced in war torn areas of the world where children carry weapons.

Adults to0 model behaviour which is why the leaders of any team or organisation must “walk the talk”, they must be the model for the behaviours they wish to see duplicated. Talk is cheap – action is real.

2. Validation

Both Tasha and Nathan like to clap themselves when they do something right and they both beam when Zurina and I give them praise. As a leadership consultant I know how important it is that I continue to praise even moderately good performance as research by Dr Ethna Reid shows that teachers who get the best results, validate regularly. Successful teachers also alternate between teaching and questioning (testing) for comprehension.

In leadership and management in a hectic paced world it is all too easy to criticise poor performance and to tell rather than ask. In our leadership for managers program, we emphasise and rehearse the arts of validation and asking good questions.

3. Story Telling

Children love stories and interpret our cultural moral code from those stories. Tasha knows who are the good princesses (coutesy of Disney) and who is the evil queen, Nathan is learning from Thomas the Tank Engine that when you break the rules you go off the rails, he even exclaims very loudly “oh no!” when this happens.

Effective leaders also tell stories that let their followers know what the vision and culture of the organisation is. These stories get retold and strongly influence the behaviour of the team or workforce. When I was teaching coaching skills at Singapore Airlines I noticed how they regularly used stories of  exemplary customer service to validate and reinforce the behaviour of going the extra mile service (GEMS).

Perhaps you have other Leadership Principles you have learned from children – feel free to share.