Likeability

Listen and Involve

August 22, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

All too often, leaders live in a culture of telling. They see their role as instructing others what to do, to plow through by compliance. But true leadership is eliciting commitment.

People want their thinking to count. If there’s a better way to carry out a task, they want to be able to identify it and put it into action. They’re more spurred to prevail at a challenge if they have a commitment to their work by their own volition. Hence, leaders should engage their people in choosing the goals the group needs to accomplish.

Idea for Impact: Leaders who play a participative management style derive enormous rewards in efficiency and work quality. Find opportunities to have direct conversations with individual employees and teams about what can be done to improve effectiveness.

Is The Customer Always Right?

July 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

No matter how finicky or rude a customer is, many businesses make employees treat bad customers with unquestioned respect or risk reprobation—even getting sacked.

Per the well-worn business adage, is “the customer is always right?” No, they’re not. Sometimes they’re wrong, and they need to be told so.

Your goal should be to do business with people that you enjoy doing business with. Some customers simply aren’t good customers. They don’t follow directions and complain irrationally. They have unreasonable expectations, and they treat your people rudely.

Idea for Impact: A prudent maxim is, “the customer is usually right.” Put the customer first, but don’t get mistreated by them. Putting the customer first doesn’t mean putting employees second. As a business, you must let customers be wrong with respect and dignity; but employees should be authorized to caution some customers, “After due consideration, we believe your actions are unacceptable. Persist, and we’d choose to lose your business.” Some bad customers are just bad for your business.

Almost always, though, unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning; they can especially offer an honest assessment of the expectations you’re setting. Customer satisfaction with a transaction depends on their expectations going into it.

Don’t Manage with Fear

June 16, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The ability to rouse fear has forever been an essential tool of management. Fear can be an effective mobilization tool in the short term. But fear breeds complicity, not commitment.

Instead of fear-based tactics, try soft power. Build trust and gain influence using these methods.

Develop an inspiring vision. Work hard to follow through on implementing that vision and celebrate even little accomplishments along the way.
Communicate expectations. Ask, “How can I help you do your job better?” Follow up. No need to keep everything too close to the vest. You needn’t tell everything you know, but what you say and do has to be true.
Solve problems quickly. Push for results. Set aside some time for review and create options or actions that are apt for your team’s situation. Be tough where you must be, kind where you can be.

Idea for Impact: Don’t take the fear approach with employees. With motivation, fear works—up to a point. Understand how your people view your leadership style and ensure your behavior doesn’t cross the line between pushing them hard and pushing them away.

You Always Have to Say ‘Good’

June 9, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“How are you?” is usually meant less as an actual question and more a greeting-on-autopilot—a casual call-and-response.

The unwritten rule of conversation is that you’re expected to reply with nothing more than a declaration of utter satisfaction with life.

People aren’t usually interested in hearing the real answer. Responding with a “Well, to be honest, I’ve been kind of down today. Had a bad day at work” could be a faux pas. You aren’t supposed to burden every interlocutor with your situation, particularly with people who aren’t close.

So “how are you?” isn’t a bad thing to say at all—most of the time. But, there’re occasions, readable with empathic awareness, when you shouldn’t ask someone how their day is going unless you’re going to listen to their response with genuine respect and interest.

Idea for Impact: Showing that you care about people can do wonders, but if you don’t care, don’t feign that you do—people can see through it.

What Most People Get Wrong About Focus

May 5, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Choose Wonder Over Worry (2018) self-help author Amber Rae recalls novelist Elizabeth Gilbert’s interaction with a wise older lady who was helping Gilbert with her struggles as a writer:

Lady: “What are you willing to give up in order to have the life you keep saying you want?”

Gilbert: “You’re right—I need to start saying no to things I don’t want to do.”

Lady: “No, it’s much harder than that. You need to learn to start saying no to things you _do_ want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life, and you don’t have time and energy for everything.”

This anecdote is such a powerful illustration of how saying ‘no’ is so much easier when you’re clear about your priorities.

That’s what focus really is—saying ‘no’ to things you’d like to do so that you can free up your time to focus on the pursuits that truly matter—even tasks you have to do, even if they don’t energize and excite you.

Idea for Impact: Setting boundaries isn’t always easy, but it’s essential to establish an overall sense of well-being. Every ‘no’ is a ‘yes’ to something else.

Don’t find any excuse to say ‘yes’ to what shouldn’t be done.
Don’t find any reason to say ‘no’ to what should be done.

A Short Course on: How to Find the Right Relationship

March 28, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Know yourself—what you want and what you don’t want. Having clear goals can help save you from being caught up in the moment and disregarding what it is you really want and need.
Have good boundaries—they’re how you should take care of your needs. Identify what’s healthy and what crosses that line.
Appreciate your value, and expect respect. Faults become thick when respect wears away. Assess concord in how you both approach openness, sincerity, and conflict resolution.
Get out there and meet a wide range of people. Be persistent in your search for the right relationship. Give people a fair chance. No one can be perfect. So, think about how you’ll work around their imperfections.
Don’t put people in a box, especially when there isn’t actually a box that characterizes who they are. Let yourself and the other person be who you each are. Don’t deny their individuality; be open to being surprised.

Let Go of Toxic Friendships

March 21, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Friendships are an integral ingredient of happiness, and they often help you feel better—but not always. Some friendships are just bad for you.

Occasionally, you can fall into the trap of hanging onto unhealthy relationships because they’re familiar—even when you’re constantly let down. Worse yet, ‘ambivalent relationships’ can cause you more anxiety than being with people you actively dislike.

It takes two to define a friendship. Relationships are grounded in social exchange, and with unbalanced friendships, the other draws more from the “friendship bank” over time than they care to put into it. If you’ve set clear expectations and boundaries, and the other isn’t consistently sticking to them, perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your relationship.

What you get out of your friendships ultimately affects your physical and emotional health. It pays to focus your attention on strengthening healthy relationships and letting go of toxic friendships.

Luckily, most friendships are not too difficult to escape. Downgrade the friendship. Make yourself less accessible. If the relationship isn’t very close, merely drift apart.

When to Send Customers Gifts

November 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Gifts are crucial marketing tools, which can help customers remember you throughout the year, not just during the holidays:

Send a gift after a sale. Saying thank-you does more than complete the sale—it helps build the relationship.
Send gifts after receiving referrals. One of the most rewarding compliments a salesperson can receive is a referral. Send a thank-you soon after getting a referral.
Commemorate anniversaries. Observe the day you signed your first contract with a customer, making it a special date to celebrate each year.
Remember birthdays. Send customers some birthday cheer, not just a card. Be creative and personalize the gift—send tickets to a sports event that the entire family can enjoy, for instance.

Idea for Impact: Business gifts can help solidify sales relationships and earn even more business. Pay attention to the things your customers enjoy and show your appreciation. As long as your gifts don’t seem patently insincere, they’re likely to welcome them.

Let’s Hope She Gets Thrown in the Pokey

November 16, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

The Elizabeth Holmes-Theranos criminal trial hasn’t been without its share of theatrics.

Yes, Holmes’s massive fraud is obvious. She entranced (read WSJ reporter John Carreyrou’s excellent chronicle, Bad Blood (2018; my summary)) journalists, investors, politicians, and business partners into believing her fantasy science. She may even be responsible for negligent homicide if people died because of her company’s fake test results.

Then again, these sorts of cases generally hang on subtle distinctions between hyperbole and outright dishonesty and whether such deceit was deliberate.

Holmes’s lawyers will argue that she was merely an ambitious entrepreneur who failed to realize her vision but wasn’t a fraudster. Her lawyers will make a case that she is not to be blamed because people took her puffery and exaggeration as factually accurate. At what point do her wishfulness and enthusiasm go from optimism to intentional fraud? That’ll be the critical question.

At any rate, the Theranos verdict is unlikely to deter others from the swagger, self-assurance, hustle, and the “fake it till you make it” ethos that is so endemic to start-up culture. Investors will never cease looking at people and ideas rather than the viability of their work.

Idea for Impact: Don’t be so swayed by story-telling that has a way of making people less objectively observant. Assemble the facts, and ask yourself what truth the facts bear out. Never let yourself be sidetracked by what you wish to believe.

Buy Yourself Time

September 30, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The secret of “thinking on the spot” is to be prepared. Occasionally, though, when you’re put on the spot, the unanticipated questions and requests for your time and money can leave you feeling tongue-tied and wanting to head for the door.

To put your best response forward and prevent getting forced into some commitment that you might regret later, see if you can buy yourself some time.

When someone says something that you don’t agree with, and you can’t speak up at that moment, you can declare that you need to get educated on the subject before chatting about it further. Bonus: Conversations are often easier when you think through the nuances and get prepared to assert your positions.
When someone asks you to do something that you aren’t sure you want to do, buy yourself time by saying you must check on something or consult somebody before making a commitment. Bonus: Taking time before you say no can soften the news of your rejection.

Buy yourself more time and speak up later on your own terms. Even if you end up disagreeing with your interlocutor or declining her request, she’ll feel appreciated knowing you’ve given her opinion or request some thought.

Idea for Impact: Buying time—and sometimes stalling—is your prerogative. It shows consideration for others—and for yourself. It’s is a way of respecting your own wants and needs.

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