In episode 12 of the Mission-Critical Leadership Podcast, we talk about Team Dynamics and Emotional Intelligence. What are the benefits of a team with a high degree of emotional intelligence? How do we know when we have it? How do we develop it if we don’t? We dive into that and a whole lot more in this episode. Join us.
In This Episode
In this episode, we talk about the team dynamics and emotional intelligence overlap that your team needs to have. We will discuss:
The benefits of emotional intelligence in your team
5 ways to build emotional intelligence in your team
And more!
Team Dynamics and Emotional Intelligence
Recently, I had a personal value disrespected. While it looked like I was angry, I wasn’t. The problem is that disrespect and anger can present similarly. Where I failed was to make a clear expectation of my result. When that expectation wasn’t met, it wasn’t the other person’s fault. It was mine. I needed to do better. Learning how to name, identify and express emotions appropriately is part of what it means to be a mission-critical leader. Had I done better, the team would have performed better. Let’s learn about the relationship between team dynamics and emotional intelligence.
About Justin
Dr. Justin Hiebert works with mission-critical leaders to accomplish the unimaginable. Realizing that no leader has ever needed more things to do, he works with his clients to get the right things done. His clients rise above burnout, captivate their teams, and transform their communities. By engaging their hearts and minds, his clients unlock their full potential to be, do, and have it all. This affords them the ability to leave a legacy of influence and impact on the world. He is a husband, father, teacher, learner, and champion of joy. He resides in Bakersfield with his wife, four kids, two cats, and one dog. In his free time, he loves exercising, riding motorcycles, and doing anything outdoors.
The story we tell ourselves, our internal narrative about the way we are, determines the trajectory of our story.
Understanding the Programming
Early on in life, we all start to acquire an internal narrative, programming, about the way we are. This identity-shaping story becomes one of the largest determining factors in who we end up becoming. From an early age, we all start to experience those labels.
We’ve all been called things like:
worthless
good for nothing
late
nerdy
oddly small
too short
freakishly tall
too big
ugly.
The words may start off as meaningless but slowly, after hearing them enough, they become an accepted part of our worldview.
We all know the person who heard, “You’ll never amount to anything” growing up. Pretty soon, they would be saying, “I’ll never amount to anything.” In the blink of an eye, they had given up on their dreams, settled for less than they were worth, and didn’t amount to anything compared to their true potential.
It’s a heartbreaking reality for many of us.
The good news is that not only can that destructive cycle be broken, but what is true of negative stories is also true of positive ones.
Telling a Better Story
If we want to reach our dreams, we have to be willing to rewrite the story we tell ourselves.
The hard work of personal growth happens internally. Putting in the time, effort, and energy into filling our minds with good things.
It involves telling yourself:
I am competent
beautiful
loved
admirable
strong
hard-working
driven
successful
capable.
The story we tell ourselves influences the person we will ultimately become.
The Story We Tell Ourselves
I was working with a client recently on this idea and explained to him the three camps we can fall into.
1.) We have a negative story and believe it.
This is like the first example. The story we heard growing up is the story we believe. We are somehow not enough, unloved, unworthy, or pitiful.
In coaching, I see this story all the time. It’s one of the main reasons people don’t achieve the goals they start out with.
Why would a lazy, good-for-nothing, unlovable, unworthy, pitiful person try something as grandiose as starting their own business?
It probably wouldn’t work anyway.
In reality, they have everything they need and are totally capable of amazing success. The problem is not they have believed the lies.
2.) We have a positive story and believe it.
These are the fun ones. The easy ones. They already believe the right things. These people know that they are strong, competent, and capable. They are able to set goals and achieve them because they believe in their ability to accomplish hard tasks.
3.) We don’t know what to believe.
This is the place where my client found himself. The bad news was that he didn’t have a positive story about himself. However, the good news, was that he didn’t have a negative view of himself.
He was somewhere in the middle. Drifting in the open ocean with no paddle, he didn’t know which way to go. I asked him to come up with five adjectives to describe himself he knew to be true.
He couldn’t give me any.
It should be no surprise then, that goals have been hard for him. Without the confidence and clear direction of knowing what to believe, he has trouble setting and staying accountable to goals. Without knowing the truth about himself, he doesn’t know what direction to pursue.
The story we tell ourselves matters.
Get clear on what you believe, not just about the world, but about yourself.
Give yourself positive imagery to believe about yourself and put it into practice. How would you, the strong, competent, capable person you are solve this problem? Once you believe that, you’ll crush any goal in your path.
Accountability is important. Want help reaching your goals and changing the trajectory of your life? Try coaching!
In this episode, we talk about the essential skills of a business owner.
Welcome to this week’s Mastermind training! As a new entrepreneur or business owner, maybe you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed. Life can seem overcomplicated. There are staffing needs, finances, marketing, taxes, sales, family, COVID protocols, and a whole host of other things that need to be looked after.
How can you make it through and not just survive, but thrive?
By making sure you have the essential skills of a business owner. You do this, by making sure you’re focused on the right thing.
Developing a skillset
In this episode, Scott Thor, Juanita Webb, and Justin Hiebert sit down and talk about the essentials skills of a business owner.
You’ll discover what you need to know about:
Task Management
People skills
Networking
How to spend your time
Where to look for new ideas
Understanding business structure
How to develop strong relationships.
These are skills that we’ve used, utilized, and developed over our years in business. If you feel like shortening your learning curve by decades, be sure to give this podcast a listen.
About Justin
If you’re new to the podcast, welcome!
My name is Justin, and I’m an Elite-Mindset and success coach. Throughout my career, I’ve been a pastor, educator, and serial entrepreneur. I help entrepreneurs, business owners, and world-changers attain elite mental performance through burnout prevention, habits, and compounding daily wins.
About the Mastermind
The Bakersfield Mastermind is a collaboration between Dr.’s Scott Thor and Juanita Web.
In this episode of the Bakersfield Business Mastermind, we talk about your HR needs in 2021.
Join Dr.’s Juanita Webb, Scott Thor, and Justin Hiebert as we discuss the changing landscape of Human Resources, California compliance, and employee engagement in 2021 and beyond.
Dr. Juanita Webb
Dr. Juanita Webb is the founder and president of J. Webb Consulting, a professional human resource consulting firm, and is a certified HR professional (both CA and Federal), along with numerous other affiliations and designations. She is highly skilled in executive coaching, investigations, HR best practices, training, strategic planning, conflict resolution, and succession planning. Licensed in California as a private investigator/qualified manager, Juanita conducts training and investigations and is often retained as an expert witness regarding harassment/discrimination/retaliation issues. In addition, Dr. Webb advises organizations regarding drug and alcohol testing policies and issues.
Questions?
Do you know your biggest HR needs in 2021? If you don’t reach out to Juanita Webb or Justin Hiebert to talk about what you need to do to stay in compliance.
Connect with Justin and the #NextSteps Community
Please be sure to like, share, leave a comment, and turn on notifications to keep aware of upcoming events, live streams, and new video releases.
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Years ago, I worked in a local print and ship store. When I was hired, part of my training included some of the standard customer service training. This included ideas like, “service with a smile.”
As you can imagine, during the holiday rush to ship packages the lines are long. Additionally, nerves are frayed, anger is simmering, and spending additional money to send gifts (at an often higher price than anticipated) is often met with some resistance.
Despite all of our marketing campaigns to let people know the last day they could send packages and still have them arrive before Christmas, it never failed that we were swamped on Christmas eve.
Suddenly, it’s six pm, and right before we close a customer would come in wanting to ship gifts to their family.
“I’d like it there overnight.”
After calculating the size of the box, the need to package everything, additional insurance, and the overnight charge, the expense was usually well over $100.
At this point, one of two responses would usually happen.
The first person would say something like, “That’s what I get for waiting. Let’s do it.”
The second person would berate me for being a victim-preying, money stealing, Christmas-ruining, greedy, evil-minded cashier.
And if I was really lucky, I would hear about how much more educated, rich, or important they were than me.
Three Steps Towards Better Service With a Smile
Providing great customer service is never an option. It can, and should, always be done. Even in the midst of the difficult and unreasonable customers (here’s looking at you, Karen), our obligation as success-oriented individuals extends into the way we interact with others.
Service humanizes relationships between the customer and the company … Service is your company’s ability to maximize customer satisfaction.*
Marcus Whitney’s six core business value is about the service we provide our customers. Whether you are trying to solve a product issue or a customer problem, world-class customer service is a must.
This is even more true today as the world deals with the economic hardships of COVID. How a business responds to its customers is more important than ever.
The idea behind providing service with a smile is about much more than a physical action. It is about an attitude and a mindset to help you solve and resolve a situation.
Here are three core concepts to take with you on your customer “service with a smile” journey. More than that, think of these as a good-better-best situation where each of the below points builds on the previous.
1.) The Customer is Always Right … Except when they aren’t.
Dealing with an irate customer can be difficult. The person standing before me, cursing me out on Christmas Eve is but a tame example in many people’s books.
And we’ve often been led to believe that the customer is always right. Which is true.
Except for when it isn’t.
I am (nor have I ever been) any of those things that the customer accused me of. In fact, I love Christmas. I geek out over it more than almost anyone else and would love to have it go on even longer.
For reference, we started singing and listening to Christmas songs in October this year.
So how do we understand this rule? By separating the customer from the problem.
Where the customer is always right is specifically in regards to an issue or a problem that needs to be resolved. In my case, it was the need to get the gifts to their family safely, quickly, and for an agreeable price.
Overnight is $109. Two-day shipping is $79 and will get there the day after Christmas. Standard shipping is saying three to five days and is $29. All of these come with tracking and insurance. Which option would you prefer?
If I can give them options, and let them know they have choices in the matter, we can find a solution that works for everyone. Many times, they’d opt for the two-day shipping and the out of, “I sent it but the crazy shipping company can’t get it to you on time sweetie.”
I can live with that.
2.) Am I Doing My Best To Engage This Person and Solve Their Problem?
Going beyond a simple problem-solution type of answer, we can also look at the person and see the need, fear, or worry they are bringing to the situation.
More than giving them a list of shipping options, I can also say something like:
I see that Christmas is really important to you and that you really love your family. I’d like to help make Christmas special and get your gifts there as quickly as possible. Let me see what I can do.
Now, instead of just three choices, I’ve affirmed their humanity, the fear they carry of ruining Christmas and honored a core aspect of their identity.
Think of the difference in the answer to these questions:
Did I solve the problem? It’s a yes or no answer, with very little insight.
Did I do my best to engage this person in solving the problem? Now there is tremendous potential for reflection, growth, and future action.
3.) Go Beyond Your Customer and Into the Community
The final step in the service with a smile growth journey is to think beyond the walls of your business and the experience in the community. The exponential growth of sites like Google Reviews and Yelp show just how damaging a bad review can be.
More than solving the problem, more than honoring them think about what it means to be a part of the community.
How does your customer service change if you think about the businesses on either side of you? What about those that haven’t heard of you yet but would be likely to buy from you? How does your response change if you had to publicize it to your email list?
When we think about larger implications, especially those of how we want to be perceived and received in the community, it can change our responses.
Go beyond solving the problem. Go beyond doing your personal best. Instead, strive to make the entire community better through the experience.
That’s world-class customer service.
Eight Core Concepts
This list is updated as the blog series continues. Click on any live link to go to that post in the series.
* Whitney, Marcus. Create and Orchestrate: The Path to Claiming Your Creative Power from an Unlikely Entrepreneur (p. 86-87). Creative Power. Kindle Edition.
