August 2019 « Confidence Coach

How Do Your Employees REALLY Feel About Your Business?

Have you ever thought about how your employees REALLY feel about your business? It may be that you haven’t thought about this or don’t think it’s important. Then again, maybe it’s a question you are afraid to ask!

Do you really know how your employees feel about your business? About working there? What does working there feel like to them?

I know some of you are thinking — I don’t really want to know; and that’s very real and understandable. However, everyone needs to think about this. How your employees feel about your business is what they’re going to reflect to your paying customers and to each other.

How your employees feel can create a culture that is really positive, collaborative and progressive, Or, how they feel can create a culture that is filled with negativity, backbiting and all kinds of other problems. These negative kinds of things can, and will, slow down the progress and growth of your business.

The Survey Solution

You may ask what can be done to help people like you with this challenge? At Confidence Coach, we come in as a third party and send out an anonymous survey to find out how your employees feel about your business. We ask them their opinion on how it’s running, how they feel about their managers, and maybe what they think of the systems you have in place. We do this anonymously so that they feel protected and can be totally honest. They know we won’t reveal their names.

We create the survey (with your input) and use questions in such a way to really find out what and how they’re thinking. Then we’re able to provide that information to you as the owner or CEO of the business. This will help you get a feeling of where your company culture is. It will help you know how employees are interacting, and how that’s being projected to your customers. This is incredibly valuable information.

We have a lot of success stories of people who have used this tool to help figure out what is going on in their company with their employees. It’s a secret weapon we provide for people on a quarterly basis. This gives ongoing information so you can make good decisions and can understand what’s happening in your culture.

We spend a lot of money as business owners and CEOs to figure out who our paying customer is. We are always trying to get to know their likes and dislikes, what’s going on with them and how we can serve them better. But most of us are missing a great opportunity if we are don’t know what our “first customers” (our employees) are thinking and feeling. The Survey Solution is a great tool for this.

If you’re interested, please reach out and schedule a free consultation to talk more about this. Also, you can check out a video on YouTube where I talked more about The Survey Solution.

by Scott Ballard , August 25, 2019

Find Your Purpose

I recently asked a client a question to help him find his purpose, stimulate his thinking, create value and to help bring transformation to him as a business owner.

(Think of your own business and put yourself in his shoes with these same questions.)

What’s One Activity that Keeps You Interested?

The questions that I asked him was: “What’s the one activity in your business that if you could do it everyday would keep you curious, passionate, interested, and it would also be something that you could do for the long term?” He told me what he really loves to do best is solve problems.

After he gave me his answer, I then asked him what percentage of his time is he actually doing this activity in his business.

He then realized the amount of time was not nearly as much as he would like it to be!

Does this sound like you too?

What’s in the Way?

My next questions to him were:

What’s in the way?
What are the things that are pulling you away from that one thing that really excites you about what you do in the business?

Take Inventory

We then had a discussion about all the things that were a distraction and keeping him away from what he loved to do. We listed all these things out and then looked at seeing who else in his company could do these jobs or tasks. This way he would have more time to really solve problems for their best customers.

Delegate What You Can

We put together a delegation plan and he’s implementing that now. It’s amazing, when you compound it over a week, month, year, or even the next three years, he’ll be able to buy back time. This will not only move the company 10x forward, but it will also increase his internal motivations and excitement. This also helps him not to feel tired and burned out because he’s doing what he’s passionate about; doing what he loves to do and being the best at in his business.

Go Full Circle – Back to the Beginning

After all, that’s why we start a business. We find something we love or some activity that we are passionate about. For our client, we just took it full circle back to the beginning to a really exciting time. This created transformation and better results by changing his thinking and attitude. It gave him a way of looking at a bigger future for himself and the company.

You can do this too! If you want help, reach out to us at confidencecoach.org or go to our website and schedule free a coaching appointment. We’d love to show you some of the breakthrough processes that we have. Let us help you get your true purpose back!

by Scott Ballard , August 18, 2019

Playing the Long Game

The expression “playing the long game” seems to be counterintuitive in today’s instant gratification world, but we need to think of our business, employees, and customers in the sense of a lifetime. We all need to play the long game.

So here’s my question to you:

What’s the long game for your business? Where do you want to be ten years from now?

What’s the long game for your employees? How will they be positively contributing ten years from now? How do you help them to achieve their own dreams, goals and aspirations so that they are happy, engaged and your biggest company cheerleader?

What’s the long game for your customers? How will their needs change ten years from now?

Focusing on the long game brings in a bit of double vision. Here’s what I mean:

Having a successful business today is important, of course, but it has to be coupled with your plans for a successful business ten years from now.

The long game is what all successful long-term businesses do well.

So what is your long game?

Schedule a free coaching session if you want help figuring it out.

by Scott Ballard , August 11, 2019

Give Them Clarity and Vision for the Future

One of the areas where employees feel uncertain (which makes them not perform at their highest level) is when they lack clarity and a long-term vision from the owner or CEO. An effective way for you as the business owner to lead your team and employees is to share with them your vision for the future.

We’ve been helping our clients to have what we call a “clarity” talk. So, if you haven’t let your employees know your vision in the last six months — now’s the time.

Here’s how you can give a clarity talk. Get your group or team together. In about 15 or 20 minutes: give them the long vision of what you’re seeing and what your plans are; what the strategy is; where you’re going; what’s happening in the industry.

They need to hear this from you at least a couple of times a year. By doing this, you will find that all the uncertainty about the future and all the negativity that is coming at them (fear via social media, the news or maybe something happening in their own life), will be dispelled a little bit. They begin to realize that you’re actually thinking, planning, and strategizing about the long-term future of your company as it goes forward. This helps bring clarity to them. Which in turn brings confidence and courage; and a willingness to invest even deeper into the work that they’re doing in your business.

We suggest that you focus on giving a message of clarity that comes directly from you about the business and about their long-term future. A lot of your employees are looking at the company as their future vehicle to get them where they want to go. But if they don’t hear it from you on a consistent basis, their minds can wander. They can think that another company is a better opportunity because there’s more clarity about where they’re going, what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and who’s doing what.

The “clarity” talk also works well in conjunction with The Dream Employee program where you invest in and help your employees achieve their hopes, dreams and aspirations. Your employees really feel cared for. They know where the company is going; and they also know that you want to help them achieve things in their life personally too. It’s a win-win situation!

So that’s our tip for today. Bring clarity and leadership to your company by giving them this clarity/vision talk on a regular basis. Once again, if you found this valuable, let us know. If you’d like to know more about how to prepare a clarity talk or how The Dream Employee program works, schedule a free consultation.

by Scott Ballard , August 4, 2019