Leadership, Leadership, Leadership

Leadership is the "Big Word" in management circles these days.  Although this term may be "hackneyed" because of the many books, articles, and courses dealing with this subject, Leadership is the most important competency needed in all organizations today.  It always was needed, but was not recognized or adequately emphasized.

Although there are natural personal traits that give a person leadership ability (the "Trait Theory"), leadership skills can be learned.  Leadership is all about attitude and behavior.   For those who haven't been blessed with the natural ability it will be hard work to attain the skills.  But it can be done.  William James, a noted Psychologist (1842 - 1910) said so:

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind."  William James

 

Management and Leadership augment each other but they are not the same.  Management is process and procedure oriented.  It involves mainly administrative skills.  Leadership, on the other hand, is mainly human relations and behavior oriented.  The diagram below illustrates this relationship in an over-simplified way:

If you aspire to be a great leader, you will become a serious student of human behavior.  You will develop the emotional intelligence (EQ) skills required to be successful.

What Ever Happened to Customer Service?

As more and more companies merge into larger corporate entities customer service becomes less personal unless a great effort is made to "keep in touch" with the customer. Also, because of increasing size, it seems that there are many more layers of management separating the customer from the major decision-makers. How many times have you heard the frustrating reply to your request for something that goes something like this: "I'm sorry, but company policy forbids it," or some such other remark indicating to you that the person on the other end of the telephone just doesn't care?

Computer systems seem to often aggravate the customer service problem. The software is often designed by "geeks" who haven't a clue as to what the customer wants or needs. When implemented and customers complain that the system is very user unfriendly, all you get is "I'm sorry, but the system won't allow this [or that].... blah, blah, blah! So the customer goes away frustrated and no longer does business with the company. Enough of these kinds of situations lead to a decline in business and the senior managers wonder why. There's no effective link between those who have the authority to "fix" the customer service problems and those "front-line" customer service representatives who just don't take enough initiative to pass the information up the organization where something can be done.

Okay.... I've identified the problem. Now what's the solution? Here's one suggestion: make sure that you can get customer feedback -- lots of it and often. Make sure that customers have a clear line of communication to someone in your organization who can compile and organize the complaints into logical groupings that help identify solutions. Use customer surveys, focus-group contacts of regular customers, or make random phone surveys. Losing touch with your customers is a dangerous