Tag Archives: business coaching

Give hope and show you care

We’ve been talking about ways for better employee engagement, retention and how to deal with the great resignation and ghosting that is so prevalent today. The employees today want more than just to have a job. They want to be seen as individuals with a purpose, be known, heard and even loved.

Let me ask you a question: “Does everyone have a dream or goal for their life?” — the answer is definitely “Yes!” We have created a benefit for your employees that will show that you really care for them personally which will create more hope and commitment and loyalty within your company.

The Dream Employee

We work with companies who hire us to come in and implement a process with their team members called “The Dream Employee.” The Dream Employee is basically the concept of finding out for each one of your team members what their dream, goal or aspiration is for their life. If you can find out what really motivates them and have a conversation with them about how you can support, encourage and help them to achieve their goal, this in turn helps them see the connection between their work or job and the contribution they are making in your business with what they are after. By figuring out what really motivates them internally in their personal life and showing them the connection between their work and their goals, we find that we’re able to transform whole cultures, have greater employee engagement, and improve the feelings and emotions of people. They bring their best self to work.

Goodwill

When you start talking about the one, two or three things that they are most motivated about personally, you’re depositing goodwill into them. In doing so, when they come to work on Monday morning, they come with batteries! Meaning – they come to work ready to go because they understand the connection, they feel your support, and they know that you know what is really important to them in their life. This could be a myriad of different things — maybe it’s putting braces on their daughter’s teeth, it could be getting a second car, a dream vacation to Italy, learning a new language, finishing a college degree, getting their GED, learning woodworking or painting, or maybe running their first half marathon. It could be any number of things — the list of people’s dreams and goals are endless!!

But what we’re saying is, if you invest time systematically into what’s most important to them, then ultimately they’ll start to see the connection between their life and their work. They know you care! So then when you speak about what’s most important to you or what the vision or mission of the company is, they will respond to that in a much more positive and open way.

The other benefit of this is when you do have to have those difficult conversations about their performance or attitude or about something that went wrong or needs correcting, you have made positive deposits into their life by supporting their goal. This helps those difficult conversations go much better and there’s a lot less negative pushback because they know that you really care about what they really care about.

Celebrate the Wins

This also creates a whole culture of amazing momentum. It’s a culture where as people are achieving things personally, we all celebrate (just like when the company wins)! We celebrate them as individuals as they accomplish whatever goals they have; doing so builds unity, collaboration and a winning attitude in your business.

We get great pleasure doing this with companies. If you are interested in learning more about The Dream Employee, reach out to us today. We’d love to talk to you about it. We can also introduce you to other companies that are doing this and having great success. Make it a great day!

by Scott Ballard , April 29, 2022

Why are business owners lonely?

Something I’ve discovered over 13 years of coaching business owners, entrepreneurs and CEO’s is that no matter how successful these people are, they are lonely.

In fact, the more successful they are, the lonelier they become.

If you step back and think about it, it makes total sense.

Nobody understands their problems.

Nobody understands the decisions, the choices, or the sacrifices that they make on a daily basis.

Nobody understands the responsibilities that they have for hundreds and thousands of people, their jobs and their livelihoods.

Nobody really listens.

Everybody that comes to them wants something from them.

It’s lonely at the top.

I know that.

I know you and I understand.

I’m here to listen, to learn and ask you the really hard questions.

Remember, you don’t have to be alone. At Confidence Coach we are here to offer business owners a place to reconnect and rebuild their confidence; which leads to their better future in the days and years ahead. Reach out today and schedule a free call if you’d like to talk. We are here to help and encourage you.

by Scott Ballard , August 9, 2020

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

Find the “Why” of Your Employees

Everybody’s looking for an edge in business. One way to have the advantage over everyone else is to find the “why” of your employees, team, managers, and leadership. Use this to show them how to connect the “why” for them personally to the “why” for the company. If you can do this, then you’ve really got something special! We call this an unfair advantage in the marketplace because your people are internally motivated; with their big “why” being the secret sauce. This is an advantage over your competitors.

Finding the “why” of your employees is critically important in order to get the most leverage out of your people’s talent and ability as they help grow the company. It doesn’t matter how many employees you have (10 or 10,000). You create an ecosystem that can provide you with long-term internally motivated employees by finding their why.

Most people come to work because they have goals and dreams in their life that they want to achieve. By finding the why and connecting their why with their job or work that they do in your company, you show them how one supports the other. This is just one of the things that we do when we introduce The Dream Employee into a company. As you help your employees to achieve their personal goals and aspirations, this creates a better work environment because they know you care about them.

Why are they working at your company? Why are they doing the work that they’re doing? What is the purpose of their job? Are they clear about it being a vehicle for them to achieve the things that they want to achieve in their life? Have you helped them draw the connection between their job and their big “why”?

This is an area where you have to start asking these questions — even in the interviewing process when you’re on-boarding somebody. Why are you here? How do you see this job as a fit in achieving your personal goals in life? What part does it play? Do you understand how your job can help you achieve your hopes and dreams and the big “why” of your life? When you know their “why”, you can then support them in it.

So “why” is a simple question that can dramatically improve your employee engagement with all your employees. It’s a conversation that you’ll always find fruitful in managing, supporting and leading your team. If they understand their “why” then you can communicate better what the company’s “why” is and then you can correlate and connect the two of those together. When people get clear about their “why”, they gain confidence. They get committed to the task. They have a sense of courage that takes them to a new level of performance.

We look forward to hearing what you’re finding when you’re asking “why” questions. Let us know because we’d love to talk to you about it.

by Scott Ballard , July 28, 2019

Greatest Untapped Resource

Did you realize that your greatest untapped resource or asset in your business or organization is your employee? How are you taking care of them and letting them know that they matter and are of vital importance to your business?

The Dream Employee program that we implement can be a benefit to your organization. It shows the employee how much you really care about them because it’s all about helping the employee to achieve their hopes, dreams and aspirations.

When an employee sees that you really care about what’s important to them outside of work, they begin to see the connection between the work that they’re doing and achieving their own dreams and goals. This is a way to help them understand that their job is a vehicle to achieve their own personal goals. By your encouraging and supporting them in achieving their goals, they come to work ready to go because they are in the process of achieving. They come to work with their batteries fully charged! There is connection and purpose between their work and their personal achievements. This is a win for the company and a win for them too.

So, the greatest untapped resource for pretty much every business is the employee. We go into companies and help them to see this and show them what role the company can play in helping their employees achieve their own personal dreams, goals and aspirations. This in turn, helps the company be successful going forward because you have happier and well-cared for employees.

If you’d like to talk about how we help people implement this into their business, reach out and schedule a free appointment today at Confidence Coach.

by Scott Ballard , July 21, 2019