Contagious leadership is a style that is taught through example, and there are big opportunities out there, in very simple and everyday activities, to shape and strengthen it within yourself and others in your company.
Here we offer you 5 significant ways in which you can celebrate all kinds of success, big or small, in a meaningful and open manner to make contagious leadership stick within your organization:
Go public
Recognizing people for their good work is always effective no matter how it is done; however, if done in a public way, it will produce a massive impact, and its value will last longer.
Do it immediately
The most important thing for an employee is to celebrate his or her successes. The sooner you praise their achievements, the bigger the impact this will produce on them and on everyone else within the company.
On the contrary, the longer you wait, the more the person will grasp that you are being insincere in your spotlighting, involved recognition, and vibrant communication efforts.
Be precise
Don’t just come out and say, “Well done, Amy!” Specify what was it that the person did that was so outstanding, special, and worthy of praise.
For example, something along the lines of, “You did an amazing job solving the situation, Amy. The customers truly felt tended to and are very excited about working with us again in the near future. This kind of response is what will get us far ahead. Thank you for caring so much”, would work wonders.
Focus on the strengths
If you want to take someone down and annul every possibility of taking advantage of that person’s qualities, nag them incessantly by pointing out what’s being done wrong or is missing.
In contrast, if you are truly committed to excellence and to seeing the positive in everyone and in everything, focus on the strengths people have and on how you can potentiate them in benefit of your company and that person’s life.
Announce all accomplishments
Any successful action, no matter how small, is a good excuse to celebrate.
Celebrate good habits and qualities, instead of celebrating numbers:
>Send handwritten “God job!” notes regularly to your employees’ homes. You have no idea how such a note from the CEO will make an employee feel. Everyone will know about it in less than 24 hours.
Give this a try: Take a pen right now and spend 10 minutes handwriting five praising notes for five people in your team. Tell them why you value them, and be specific.
Next week, write one note per day; the following week, write two daily notes, and start paying attention to what happens and how things begin to change.
Even without feedback, you will see the difference.
> Honor even the smallest accomplishment, and involve the highest levels of the organization in the celebration.
>Establish a ‘Contagious Leader of the Month’ program. Everyone votes, and the winner gets to participate in a contagious leadership lunch with the CEO.
>Create a ‘Contagious Leadership Wall of Fame’, showing pictures of all these leaders doing what they do best and with a legend explaining why each one of them is being honored in such a way.
There are endless ways to celebrate success. A good leadership speaker can guide you in the process of discovering what works best for your company; nevertheless, it is just a matter of envisioning your organization and getting creative; it is all about having lots of fun and becoming highly productive.
One of the easiest ways to promote a contagious leadership culture in your company is to be constantly aware of the obstacles that hinder it.
Intelligent leaders work on eradicating the conducts and actions that discourage the behaviors of contagious leaders in order to make the good arise by itself.
Here are 4 wise and simple strategies to stop energizing the contained and to start turning your company’s ways into contagious leadership ones:
Stop praising erroneous behaviors.
True contagious leaders are congruent; constantly, in every decision they make.
Let’s say a director whose style emulates that of a tyrant, who cares only about the bottom line, who is three-times divorced because work is his religion and expects it to be everyone else’s, gets promoted to vice-president. What do you think is being praised here?
Make it right to be a contagious leader.
In order to develop contagious leaders you have to commit to doing it.
Just decide that contagious leadership is the right way to go, decide that it is ok to be a leader instead of just a manager, and embody that decision every single day and in every single thing you do.
Before you know it, your behavior will become… contagious.
Get personally involved in the process.
Developing a contagious leadership culture project cannot be delegated; you have to be deeply involved in the process if success is your goal, even though this may not be your only role.
In order for such an initiative to work, you must be a contagious leader yourself, you have to honor and reward contagious leadership behaviors and examples, and you should teach others to become such powerful leaders.
This is basic, because the contagious leadership approach implies a big cultural change for the majority of companies, and it doesn’t work hands-off, as management does.
Select a CLO- Contagious Leadership Officer
Give a hand-picked someone¾as advised by in the lines of a leadership speaker and advisor¾ a meaningful title, a big office, a lot of money, and unlimited authority to put into action, measure, and honor success all the way through your organization.
Contagious Leaders know that they have to help their teams find passion, energy and excitement for the vision. People get excited by people who are excited. So, find ways to get excited and you’ll see the excitement around you change. It really is that simple.
Passion Counts, it sells, it inspires and people respond to passion. So, if you are not naturally passionate how does an aspiring leader get passionate. The 3 E’s of a Passionate Leader are:
It was one of those typically spectacular sunny March afternoons in Fountain Hills, Arizona. Tops were down on many cars and the golf courses were buzzing with activity. It seemed as though everyone was outside. Everyone, that is with the exception of seventeen business leaders engaged in an enthusiastic leadership conversation at the home of Bob Ditta, former President of Dental Services Group.
George Obst and Bob Ditta, former Chairman and President of Dental Services Group
George Obst, DSG former Chairman, and Ditta were there to contribute to The Leaders Institute, a collaboration between the Fountain Hills Chamber of Commerce and John Hersey International. It’s mission is to provide business leaders with an opportunity to tune into a high level leadership conversation by exposing them to a variety of businesses and business leaders. The opportunity today was for these local leaders to learn from two leaders that led their team to purchase the Dental Services Group business and then grow that business, in a highly competitive category of 14,000 Dental Labs serving 118,000 Dentist, to double it’s size in fourteen years, without acquisition.
When Obst and Ditta, along with two other DSG executives, purchased the business through a leveraged buyout, it consisted of 34 Dental Labs across the United States doing approximately $30 Million in annual revenue. When the group sold DSG in 2005 it’s revenue’s were in the $60 million range.
This Livingroom Leadership session covered topics like:
the 4 original partners are as different, behaviorally speaking, as different could be. How were they able to allow those differences and still run a successful company. George Obst offered that the solution was a clear delineation of responsibilities, largely tied to the individuals strengths. Ditta added that there was a remarkable consistency in values. Each of the partners was committed to growing the business through employee relations and development. Unlike many of their competitors, DSG took on training, at all levels, like no other company. The strategy was to help the employees learn more and achieve higher levels of knowledge and competence in their jobs. The belief was that it would actually lead to significantly lower turnover levels, more loyalty and thereby increased customer support and service. It worked!
Creating Your Own ceremonies. Each year DSG spent gobs of money to put on it’s annual leadership meeting in Scottsdale (where else?). The teams would arrive with great expectation, primarily for the awards dinner. A pretty extravagant affair for nearly 300, the recognition awards always stole the show. Obst and Ditta agree that “recognition has always and will always be the key to motivation and employee loyalty.” Obstencouraged all the Leaders Institute participants to create ceremonies, even if they were solo-preneurs.
Performance accountability and reviews. Everyone at DSG, from the person working on a bench crafting, grinding and polishing the caps ordered by our dentists, to the Chairman and President, had annual goals. And, the leadership team, some 65 strong were trained to manage to those goals. Every employee had an annual review and the subject of goals was always discussed. As Bob Ditta put it, “Goals don’t lie. You either achieved the goal or you didn’t. If you didn’t, the why is relatively unimportant. How we can do better next quarter or next year is the key.”
Educational goals. Everyone in the company had to have an educational goal. What were they going to do to get better at their job? DSG was willing to invest in these classes and seminars because, in keeping with the values of the 4 partners, training and development would pay dividends way beyond the cost.
Listening. Listen to your customer, listen to your prospects, lost customers and employees. Then have a system in place where what you have heard can be acted upon. This is the bullet to excel, be the best. You will hear and observe everything you need to dramatically improve on a regular basis.
Dental Services Group implemented strategies that were way ahead of the competition, at the time. We look at these strategies as sound, basic leadership habits that work every time. Well, I don’t know about every time, but these sure did work for George and Bob and Dental Services Group.
Working harder and longer and demanding more of our people is not always effective leadership. Sometimes Contagious Leaders know to practice doing less to achieve more.
The “Why We Can’t ” Conversation is all around us. We must create a supportive environment to exercise the “How We Will” muscle.
“Why We Can’t” is an attitude that exists in every profession, every organization. Our job as Contagious Leaders is to make ourselves so fit that it does not get through to reduce the effectiveness of our organization. We must stay in the “How We Will” conversation all the time by surrounding ourselves with “How We Will” thinkers, doers, believers. Otherwise, our “How We Will” muscle atrophies, we become weak and we revert to the “Why We Can’t” conversation.
The good news is that with some time the “Why We Can’t” conversation just doesn’t stop by anymore. Defeated and deflated it just goes away leaving us and our teams to achieve greatness.
We have an epidemic of people beginning a conversation with “why they cannot” do or accomplish whatever it is they are being asked to do or accomplish. Contagious Leaders focus conversations on “How We Will” not :Why They Can’t”. “Why We Can’t” is a deadly attitude that kills creativity, innovation and contribution from the best employees while driving the weakest for cover behind the noble claims “proving it (the task) is impossible is my job and it’s for the good of the company”.
As Leaders our most important job is to stamp our WWC wherever we find it and not allow the WWC conversation. Here are some tips for stamping out the deadly “Why We Can’t” conversation:
When someone begins a conversation with “Well, why we can’t is ….” we must stop that conversation in its tracks. Tell your team “we are not going down that road. Today, we are going to focus our attention on “HOW WE WILL”, not “Why We Can’t.”
Watch your own conversations and your tendency to focus on “Why We Can’t”
Acknowledge that a particular project may be a challenge while encouraging your team to focus its energy on “How We Will”.
Practice Involved Recognition — acknowledge those on your team who focus on “How We Will”, particularly when they are surrounded with “Why We Can’t.
We have to believe in our How We Will focus. We worked with one company that so believed in this approach that they rose from a ranking of 22 of 28 regions in their company to #2 in 12 months, just by shifting their conversation from WWC to “How We Will”.
As for our leaders they must also root out the proponents of WWC and mentor them. If they wont let go of the WWC conversation we must help them find a new home, someplace more suitable for a WWC attitude.
Nothing stops an organizations forward movement faster or more solidly than a “Why We Can’t” attitude. Allowing the conversation to take place is the same as agreeing with it– agreeing with it will ruin your company, your organization — even your town.
Contagious Leaders see their primary role as providing clarity in an increasingly unclear world. These leaders practice being clear in vision, setting expectations and demonstrating desired behaviors.
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