John Hersey Leadership Blog

It has been found that it is impossible to keep a foundation of loyal customers without a foundation of loyal employees.  The best employees prefer to work for companies that provide the type of exceptional value that creates customer loyalty, thus, creating loyalty has become the toughest test for leadership.

Improving customer service has become the non-ending milestone for many companies, and they are right, because a company’s profitability is intimately related to its customer loyalty.  It has been measured that a happy customer gives 2.6 times more profit than a ‘neutral’ customer.

This is why customer service training programs are “in vogue”, with companies spending a lot of money and time on educating their employees on how to treat and ‘deal’ with customers.  What these companies and managers don’t get is that these trainings do not reach the core of the issue.  True change will come when they start giving their employees the same caring treatment they want to give their customers.

It is very common to see situations where employees are sent to congeniality courses to learn to be amiable and to deal with difficult clients, while they themselves are faced with situations at work that lower their self-esteem and that are not taken seriously by their managers.  Too often, employees are asked to smile and be nice while they are working extra hours due to a reduced payroll, with equipment that doesn’t work right, and supporting a product that is far from optimal.

There is a saying in Spanish that goes, ‘You can dress a monkey in silk, but it will still be a monkey’.  Instead of dealing with the real issue, managers more often than desired, try to disguise the ugly truth.  In the end, the monkey not only stays a monkey, but also now is really upset for having been messed with.

Great customer service depends on the people providing that service. They have to be willing to serve well. They have to be inspired to go beyond what is their responsibility, in other words, they have to be treated well.  When people work in a positive environment, where they feel cared for, where they feel important, where they feel the enthusiasm, they will correspond with loyalty and dedication.  No manager can force his team to be committed; this is something that is born out of pride for being a part of something good.

Employees’ commitment is so important that it can even save lives.  There was a study developed in several hospital cardiac care units.  It was demonstrated that in the units where the nurses suffered from depression, the patients died four times more than in the other units.

A company will have strong customer service if it has strong leadership, and the commitment that this leadership conveys.  A great brand has to be earned, it can’t be bought; in the end, the customers build it.

You know you are free to live and enjoy your life when you love what you do.  The moment you start doing what you love, you never work again.  Life is your game, and there are no rules, unless you allow differently.

Work is associated with struggle, obligation, and rules, things we dread, however when you do what you love, you can spend twelve hours a day doing it and you won’t feel you are working at all, in fact, you will be so energized that you will feel you can keep on going, and going, and going… just like the Energizer bunny.

In order to live your life without rules, you have to identify what you love; define what you truly love to do, how you can make a living out of it, and where you want your life to go.  Envision the perfect job to express yourself, to let your talent and personality run free.

Your job can be work or it can be your playground, where you run, jump, laugh, and express your deeper self.  In this playground you can release your full creativity and discover your best self.  You will find out how immense your power is and how joyful it is to live.

In the beginning, the most successful people in business didn’t have ‘making money’ as their main goal, in fact, people who crave money and fame are amongst the saddest and less accomplished you can find.  These people may get rich, but they are poor inside, and they often hate their lives and even themselves.  Money is not a reason for being; it is a consequence of having good reasons to live.

Money is indeed a powerful instrument and a very satisfying reward; however, it can become poisonous if it becomes your reason for acting.  As soon as we start doing what we love and get great at it, the money will come.  Once you realize you are getting well paid for doing something you would happily do for free, you know you are on the right track.

People who play the game their way always win; no matter if they are mechanics, shop keepers, maids, doctors, lawyers, or CEO’s.  A very skilled electrician who loves what he does and is always looking for ways to get better, is a stronger leader than a banker who feels trapped inside a titanium vault and almost unable to breathe.

We’ve all met taxi drivers, guards, and maids who even though they perform low-skilled and low-paying jobs are completely happy and love what they do.  They make strong contributions to their companies and to society. They know they matter, and they play their game without rules.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “If a man is called a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”  It is not about the job, but about the person doing it; there are no shortsighted jobs, only shortsighted people.

We all feel uncertain about our jobs from time to time, but if this uncertainty becomes the rule of our everyday life, if work has become work, we have lost our passion and we should look for something else.  Life is too short to settle for it. Life is meant to be lived, not to be worked. Life is meant to be a game without rules.

The meaning of our life is closely related to the personal purpose we discover in it, most certainly one larger than oneself.

In the course of our life, we never stop looking for who we truly are, for our reason for being; it is our way of being the leaders of what we may become.  We are as big inside as our world is outside, and we look without end for the next frontier on self-improvement and self-knowledge.  The more we dig inside ourselves, the more we grow.

Developing your personal purpose involves a journey of discovery and learning. It is not a problem or situation you have to solve.  It can take you many years and countless hours of reflection to define what is truly valuable and significant in your life, however, one thing is certain, your purpose in life is tied to your vision and values.

In order to advance in your search for your purpose you have to ask lots of questions:

-    What’s in my dream list?

-    What does this list say about my inner desires and purpose?

-    What activities and work energize and excite me?

-    When am I my best self, most happy and alive?

-    What are my special talents and strengths?

-    How do I want to be remembered when I die?

-    What would I like to tell about my life when I’m older?

-    What would I like my family, friends, colleagues, and partners to say about me after I’m gone?

-    Did I contribute to society?

No dream should stay unaccomplished, no book unwritten, no love concealed, no bright idea discarded.  If anything, we all should live determined to find our purpose; this should be our strongest motivator to be our best and never give up.

It is not easy to state your purpose; after all, how easy is it to put in words your deepest inner beliefs and thoughts?  It can be truly frustrating; however, it is worth it.  Once you get there, you will have more clarity and will feel stronger emotions and passion for your purpose.

Once you know what your purpose in life is, use affirmations to strengthen it in order to center on realizing your reason for living.  Use quotes that inspire you and energize you, and consider these too:

-    Support it with your work
Does your work support your purpose?  If not, try to find ways to fit your purpose within your job before you decide to leave it.  Talk to your manager about aligning your purpose with your responsibilities; make a list of the positive good things your work offers you and review it regularly.  Stay in the loop about opportunities to practice your purpose within the organization and your team.  Once you start looking for the good things, you will find a huge amount of them all around you.

-    Support it with your family
Talk to your family and write a list of family values and mission.  Everyone has to contribute with their idea of the perfect future for the family.  Find common ground and a comprehensive view of what you want your family life to be.

-    It is not about setting goals
It is a common confusion to think of goal setting as the tool for envisioning your best life and identifying your purpose, however, goals are merely stages in the journey.  In order to make your purpose a reality and to advance towards your dream you have to set goals and reach them, but these goals are a means, not an end.  Goals have a beginning and a conclusion, while the process to find your purpose never ends.

-    Be authentic
Your purpose must be yours, do not let external influences manipulate it.  It is about what you wish, not what others think you should do or be.  Forget about impressing anyone, you are the only one who should be positively affected by it.  Keep it to yourself.

-    It is a process without end
You whole life you must work to refine the expression of your values, vision, and purpose.  It never stops, like the need for food; it is something you require, something you live on.

-    Spend time alone
Learn to meditate.  Get some time to be alone, to be still, to reflect and to look for spiritual connection.  During this time, between 30 to 45 minutes, you will clarify your values, mission, and vision, because you will be listening to your inner self.

Feedback is vital for learning and improving, as much in business as in life.  As one very successful business author once said, “The major difference between the most and least successful executives is the latter’s lack of awareness.  Successful executives are critical of their own performance.  Unsuccessful executives are critical of the performance of others.”

Many managers are not aware of the kind of suffering and problems they create around them and for their employees until they really cause irreparable harm.  The most foolish managers are the ones that lack effective personal feedback practices and completely reject having someone tell them how to be, act, and manage people better.  Their motto simply is: “My way, or no way”. If someone doesn’t like their way of doing things, they can leave.

No manager can build an organization or team that is different from him or her.  If there is a resistance to feedback within the organization, managers must look at themselves and their views on personal feedback.  If you, as manager, don’t seek regular feedback about your actions, behaviors, and style, your team will mirror your values.  The worst part is that managers who reject personal feedback, normally enforce it for everyone else.

That’s the difference between two equally committed-to-improvement organizations, but one with strong and valuable performance information and exact measures, and another one with very frail measurement systems.  The difference is that both understand the theory, but only one applies it.  Within the organization with a frail system, employees avoid talking about the serious issues with their managers.  The staff’s communication level usually depends on the manager’s mood, and although these managers may say they wish to create a learning organization, they avoid learning how the people around them perceive them.

Yes, personal feedback can be harsh; it can be truly painful, however, in the level, frequency, and sensitivity that we open up, or shut out, to it personally as managers, our team and organization will welcome it or reject it too.  This is the key to identify if an organization has the potential to grow and improve, or is destined to disappear.

To most observers, the transformation that a motivational speaker can effect on a person seems like an apotheosis — something divine, unaccomplishable by mere mortals.  Top executives of major corporations think of a motivational speaker as able to read people and coax or cajole them to perform better in their chosen fields — and thereby improve the effectiveness of their company as a whole — but no one seems to be able to pin down how this change occurs.

An effective leadership speaker will cause people who listen to speak in terms of ‘waking up’, or the speaker having ‘reached into my soul’, and inspire the speakers to ‘put their all’ into their endeavors.  Such a consultant will put forth workshops and presentations that change those who experience them on a profound mental and emotional level.

When an assignment is completed effectively, efficiently, and profitably, it is because the motivational factors behind that assignment have been properly evoked.  This can and does happen by accident or coincidence, but it is the job of the professional motivator to ensure that it can happen on demand.

Quite often, a company’s managers create a negative emotional atmosphere within their workplace for reasons that vary from personal failures to a perceived prejudice on the part of their superiors.  These negative vibes create a motivational vacuum that is all but invisible to upper management, but can ruin a company’s effectiveness.  The motivational consultant’s job is to overcome these unknown emotional hurdles and achieve an upbeat atmosphere capable of effective work.

The motivational speaker isn’t teaching his listeners anything that they don’t already know.  Rather, his goal is to ‘retune’ his audience to be more attentive to their latent talents and ingrained abilities.  By offering a variety of methods to develop and measure one’s inner spirit, and thus enhance one’s overall level of motivation, a leadership speaker can inspire a person to view — and tackle — his problems from a different perspective.

The most effective motivational speakers are able to get an audience of thousands to stop focusing on their problems and start focusing on their opportunities; to see the nadirs of their lives as the prequels to the zeniths which will follow.  This causes the audience to view ‘tomorrow’ as a source of hope and success rather than dismay and drudgery.

Such leaders never trivialize or deny the problems facing their audiences, but re-frame them as prospects for positive change.   By making this change in the minds of the audience, the motivational speaker changes very little in the listeners — but he creates the ability in each individual for that person to change himself…and therein lies the true miracle.

In today’s uncertain economy many businesses and organizations are facing change as they have never known.  Change is always intimidating, but to some, it can cause discouragement, disinterest, depression and even complete apathy.  For an organization facing these problems among their employees, a simple remedy can often be found through a motivational speaker who can breathe that essential spark of life back into employees, managers and in fact, the total business.

And now comes the question.  Do you search out a speaker who can motivate your employees or a speaker who can inspire them, and is there a difference?  Many would agree that the two are one and the same, but still others remain steadfast in their beliefs that there is a marked difference in the two.

Let’s start first with definitions.  The dictionary defines to motivate as, “to provide with a motive or motives; incite; impel” and to inspire as, “to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence.”

So do we want a leadership speaker to motivate or inspire? A simple analogy may help us understand the difference.  If you have an old clunker that you’ve ignored, chances are it will often fail to start when you want to go somewhere.  Sure, you can get it to go by pushing it down the driveway, but the next time you go to start it, you will likely need to give it that same push.  On the other hand, if you had kept it well maintained, it would more than likely start up right away for you every time.

The same is very similar when motivating or inspiring people.  If they have been motivated, they will be eager to move forward….for a while.  But eventually the momentum will slow and you will need to “push” them to get them going again, and if you stop pushing chances are they will stop altogether.

A person who has been inspired, on the other hand, is like the old clunker that has been well maintained.  An inspired person sees the vision and understands the expectations and as a result has a desire to keep going and working until the desired goals have been reached.  Rather than needing that little push every so often, they are self-propelled to complete the task.

Another example might be the person who attends a sales promotion meeting, gets all fired up at the time, buys the kit and materials, and then a few days later loses interest in the whole idea.  This person was obviously motivated but definitely not inspired!

It would appear then, that the fundamental difference between motivating someone and inspiring them is found in the long term effect.  Motivation seems to be a fleeting thing where inspiration is more long lasting.  True inspiration can actually last a lifetime.   Most of us can remember way back in our lives a time when a teacher, relative or parent so inspired us that it changed our way of doing things forever.  True inspiration then, provides a lasting motivation that comes from within, bringing with it the determination to wake up every day and take action towards our goals.

Until not so long ago, James Brandon always had an excuse to skip classes.  We all know he is not the only one; skipping classes is a habit the majority of students have, although it is not a very healthy one.  However, in James’ case, he discovered something shocking the last time he did it.

This is what happened:  the professor had given the class an assignment they were supposed to deliver the next day, but James had just received the latest video game in the mail, and he was so excited about telling his friends that he already mastered “The Death Raiders” that he spent the whole day playing it and neglected the paper.  The next day, he continued playing. The thought ‘class paper’ never crossed his mind, even though this particular professor was the one he admired the most. He loved the way he taught class and considered the work he assigned the most valuable for his career until now.

Once the excitement for the game started diminishing, about two hours before class and as James started thinking about what he had done, how he had neglected his work and how he was going to face his ‘hero’, his conscience started punishing him.  The feeling of not having done the assignment started to swallow him like a whale swallows schools of fish; if you are not the fastest swimmer, you won’t escape.  And that’s exactly what happened to James; he was eaten by the shame of letting his favorite professor down, he was blinded with shame and couldn’t find a way out, so, he skipped class.

However, once he decided not to go to class, and for the rest of the week, his shame for doing so was greater than the one he felt for not doing the paper, and this is when it hit him:  if shame is so powerful as to make him do things he later regrets so strongly, maybe if he could channel this force appropriately. He could reach his biggest potential.  Perhaps shame could make him work on the things he had been putting off; perhaps it could motivate him.

James decided he would never miss a class again, and ever since, he has been working on determining what things make him feel a lot of shame and how to get the best out of them.

Shame is an external motivator; it depends on what others think of you, and it makes you run from what you see as shameful.  If James hadn’t been so fond of his professor and his opinion was not so important to him, he wouldn’t have minded going to class without the paper.

Thus, ask yourself, what types of people and events produce shame?  Is shame so powerful as to use it to motivate?  Is it correct to shame others in order to make them react positively?

One thing is certain; shame can be a very strong self-motivator.  Just as it did for James, it can turn your life around, set your priorities straight, and honor your existence and those around you, turning you into the better version of yourself.

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As we all know, not only crazy people talk to themselves.  We all spend the whole day talking to ourselves, even if we don’t realize it.  Self-talk is like having a radio in our heads. We hear it wherever we are, and more often than desired, this voice is a non-stop reminder of how unlucky, bad, or silly we are.  This character in our heads is an expert in getting us down through pessimism and criticism.

This voice can make us feel worthless and can leave us without control over our lives.  It can convince you to not go for that one chance with that girl or boy, not to apply for your dream job, or not bother to make that positive change your life needs so much.  Our inner critic feeds on the fear and the doubt it produces in us, but it is up to us to let it take control.  We can easily control the radio in our heads to play the stations that work for us instead of against us.

There is a way to change the station to a more positive one every time the negative tries to take control.  Follow these 3 simple steps, and turn the voice in your head into your biggest admirer:

1.    First, be aware of that negative voice talking to you and what it is saying.  Observe the self-talk inside your head, truly listen to it; commonly we don’t pay attention to our thoughts, they just come and go automatically, and equally control our lives.  You must gain awareness of what that voice is saying. Is it saying the same thing over and over again?  How is it making you feel?  Most of us don’t focus consciously on what our inner voice is saying; we simply accept its judgment as the truth, and this is where many of us get stuck, sometimes for our whole lives.  Negative self-talk is, in most cases, only trying to deceive us with feelings of fear and doubt. What it says is not true. Learn to recognize who truly is in control of your life.

2.    Second, assess your inner voice.  Learn to recognize the forms it takes: maybe it gets nervous, mad, or frightened?  Maybe there is a hint of a positive voice trying to gain strength over the negative one; if there is, you should be proud.  Try to focus and listen to that background positive chat more and more every time you hear it. With practice, you will eventually hear it all the time.  The most important thing is that you are aware that your inner critic is just a habit of your mind and that you can easily change the station to listen to a different tune, one that makes you feel good, energized, and proud about yourself and your life.

3.    Now, after consciously recognizing, listening, and evaluating your inner critic, you can start replacing negative talk with positive one.  Give the good talk space to speak, and encourage it through positive affirmations, until you feel the change inside yourself.  Affirmations are very powerful; these energize you and prompt you to act positively.  If you feel resistance, try this:  As soon as you identify the negative talk nagging you with something like “I can’t do anything right”, instantly change that into a positive affirmation, like “Everything I do turns out right”.  This is a very powerful exercise because it allows you to assess how each statement makes you feel, and you will want to continue giving yourself bigger doses of positive talk every time.

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Failure is often the result of little persistence.  Strong health, permanent happiness, substantial wealth, effective teamwork, or wild success, are not easy goals to achieve, even when you avidly devour hundreds of books on these topics.  The majority of sudden success stories have years of history of trials and errors behind them, and almost all natural talent has long hours of disciplined work supporting it, in fact, this is why it looks so natural.

The secret to success is to learn its systems, habits, and principles, the ones that are acquired through discipline and endless persistence.  As the saying goes, ‘Practice makes the master’.

It is a common mistake to think that successful people were born brain privileged.  The conclusion that many arrive to is that they were born from parents with superior genes, thus they were born with great talent, high intelligence, and natural gifts.  However, we know there are people who are extremely talented, almost geniuses, but never developed their capabilities or made something worthy with them; you may even know some individuals like this yourself.  Some people simply give up at the doors of success, and they repeat the same story over and over again only to get discouraged every time they are about to reach their dreams.

Several studies have shown that Nobel Prize winners have an average intelligence, as well as superior levels of tenacity and persistence.  These leaders hang in there while their colleagues move on to pursue more promising research routes.  They are live proof of this unequivocal truth: No one is a loser until he quits trying.

It is not easy to stick to your beliefs and efforts in the face of a long and bumpy journey; the secret is to break your big task into smaller and manageable ones, helping you stay focused and active until you reach a new milestone.

It is like Thomas Edison said after his factory and all his life work were eaten by fire on December 1914, “There is great value in disaster.  All our mistakes are burned up.  Thank God we can start anew.”  Less than a month later, Edison presented the first phonograph.

So, no, don’t take this article’s title literally, don’t pray for disaster in your life; this would just be a sign of ungratefulness. The goal was to grab your attention intensely to be able to communicate such an important message, however, consciously and regularly ask for opportunities to test your faith in yourself and in your persistence, because this is when you will really discover what you are capable of, it will make you grow, it will make you a leader, and a part of history.

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