Become Your Company’s Most Valuable Team Player

Africa Print News — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 14:13:41 +0000

John Tschohl of the Service Quality Institute outlines what is required to be your company’s most valuable team player.

Basketball courts were a hotbed of excitement in the United States during March Madness as 68 men’s college basketball teams competed for the national championship in seven rounds of a single-elimination tournament. By the time the teams had been whittled down to the Final Four in late March, what made things even more exciting was those teams were underdogs that had overtaken top-seeded teams in historic upsets.

As an employee, you can learn a lot about growing and winning by studying athletes — how they train and how they perform. One of the most important things you will learn from them is that, no matter where you come from or what the odds are, you can rise to the top. What does matter is your commitment to doing whatever it takes to succeed.

What drives athletes to succeed? What steps do they take to achieve their goals? How can you achieve similar success in your job? Moving up in any career, whether it’s on a basketball court or in an office, takes dedication, focus and skill.

If you want to be your company’s most valuable player, take these steps:

Don’t be afraid to fail. You will learn more from your failures than you will from your successes. In order to learn from failure, however, you must analyse your shortcomings. Then you must address them and move forward. Self-imposed limitations are the biggest barriers to success. If a football kicker misses three out of five kicks during a game and wants to improve, he analyses what he did wrong and then continues to practice in order to do better.

Conduct a self-assessment. Look at yourself and your skill set. Honestly scrutinise your attitude, your work ethic, and your skills. A good self-assessment will allow you to measure your progress and move forward. It will also help you become more proactive with your career and set you apart from other employees.

Seek constructive feedback. Athletic coaches give their players feedback during practices and games. Players might not ask for it, but they get it. As an employee who wants to improve your performance, it’s critical that you ask for feedback from your superiors who are, in essence, your coaches and from your co-workers. Ask them what you are doing well and what you need to do better. Use that feedback to develop a plan of action.

Believe in yourself. Success begins in your mind. Nothing will happen until you make it happen. Realise that you can do anything you set your mind to do. Praise yourself to yourself. Positive personal affirmations help you develop new beliefs that can eventually become second nature. Pat yourself on the back when you take a step forward, and then take another step forward.

Set goals. Envision what you want to achieve and what you want to become. Your goals should be realistic, specific and measurable. They should include a time frame that will keep you focused. There’s a saying: if you can dream it, you can do it. Create a blueprint for your life, and your career, and set benchmarks so you can track your progress in achieving your goals.

Focus. Don’t left life distract you from achieving your goals. Your job affects everything you do, including your personal life, so it’s critical that you are successful.

Be positive and passionate. Don’t give up. If you do, you will become stagnant and you will not move ahead, whether that means getting a raise or being promoted. Being positive and passionate includes being a good member of your team and doing whatever you can to ensure each player is successful.

Never stop learning. If you fail to learn, you fail to grow. Learning can involve taking an online class, reading a book on personal development every month, attending seminars and lectures in your field, and taking advantage of tuition reimbursement opportunities.

Become indispensable. Make a difference; do more than is expected of you. Think outside the box. Execute your dreams. Hard work and creative drive separates extraordinary employees from mediocre ones. Create value for your company, and you will become its most valuable player.

SERVICE QUALITY INSTITUTE
www.customer-service.com

A Competitive Advantage Goes To Leaders That Get It Right

Africa Print News — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 14:33:57 +0000

John Tschohl of the Service Quality Institute discusses leadership using four people who went through personal and financial difficulties but kept on looking forward to accomplishing their goals and making a difference. Their financial status is in the billions for each of them but, their goal was to ‘make a difference’ in people’s lives.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to a single mother, Ellison was raised by his aunt and uncle in Chicago. After his aunt died, Ellison dropped out of college and moved to California to work odd jobs for the next eight years. He founded software development company Oracle in 1977, which is now one of the largest technology companies in the world.

Leonardo Del Vecchio

Del Vecchio, one of five children, was eventually sent to an orphanage because his widowed mother couldn’t care for him. He would later work in a factory making moulds of auto parts and eyeglass frames. At the age of 23, Del Vecchio opened his own moulding shop, which expanded to become the world’s largest maker of sunglasses and prescription eyewear, including the brands Ray-Ban and Oakley.

John Paul DeJoria

Before the age of 10, Dejoria, a first-generation American, sold Christmas cards and newspapers to help support his family. He was eventually sent to live in a foster home and even spent some time in a gang before joining the military. With a small loan, DeJoria created John Paul Mitchell Systems and sold the shampoo door-to-door while living in his car. He later started Patron Tequila, and now invests in other industries.

Howard Schultz – Starbucks

In an interview with British tabloid The Mirror, Schultz said, ‘Growing up in a housing project, I always felt like I was living on the other side of the tracks. I wanted to climb over that fence and achieve something beyond what people were saying was possible.’

Schultz ended up winning a football scholarship to the University of Northern Michigan and went to work for Xerox after graduation. He then took over a coffee shop called Starbucks, which at the time had only 60 shops. Schultz became the company’s CEO in 1987 and grew the coffee chain to more than 16,000 outlets worldwide.

Being a leader in customer service (working hard to serve others), generating excitement, innovation, and a focus on continuous improvement, like I teach, creates a culture that’s hard to build otherwise. According to Marc Cuban, ‘It’s not about money or connections. It’s the willingness to out-work and outlearn everyone.’

Hard work is the great equaliser. Making a meaningful difference in other people’s lives requires significant effort. Hard work can always be your difference. Because how hard you work is the one thing you can always control.

Great leaders know that service is what your customer says it is. Here are five questions to ask yourself about your customer’s perception of your company:

1. What business are we in? Usually you conclude that you are in the business of providing customers with a variety of ‘services’. Make a list. Many firms still do not realise that they are in the service business.

2. Do we have customer needs and wants at heart? Identify all market segments and all customer groups. It is important to determine needs and wants of all customers.

3. Are we listening? Set up the systems for listening to customers. The way to find out what they want is to make it easy for them to communicate with you.

4. Do we communicate? Be proactive and try to eliminate problems before they happen. Having a strategy based on delight or ‘wow’ is not likely to pay as well as a strategy that eliminates disappointment first.

5. Are we using speed? Are you eliminating friction so it is easy for customer to do business with you and want to come back?