Teamwork | Teik Oh

Get Your Team Motivated!

Apr 12 2016

Running a business as an entrepreneur – even if you’re a “sole-preneur” – involves working with others at some stage.

You either have to work with employees, or with contractors, VA’s, or others helping you to deliver your product or service and to serve your customer. You need to have them committed to your purpose and principles in order for you to provide the kind of quality and service that you want to provide to your customer. Believe me, if their heart isn’t in it, your customer will “feel” the lack of commitment. It will show in your turnaround times, in the design of your product or service, and in the overall culture in the workplace.

So, if your team seems to lack motivation, what can you do?

Well it starts with you, as the leader. You need to be absolutely clear about your business vision and purpose – the “why” of your being in business.

Then, I believe you can use three actions to motivate your team:-

Align
Build Trust
Be consistent and deliberate.

Watch this video about how to put these actions into place.

Many studies have shown an engaged team out-produces an unengaged team. You need to bring people with you on your exciting journey and all it takes is a few simple, but deliberate and consistent steps.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments on the blog – get over to teikoh.com and post your comments. What have you done to motivate your team? What results have you seen?

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Comment 13

Systems for Resilience

Dec 22 2015

Last week, I wrote the first of a two-part article called “How to create a resilient business” and I promised the second part this week which will be called “Creating a resilient climate in your business”.

This isn’t it!

So, those of you who were looking forward to continuing reading about how to create a resilient climate in your business – well you’ll have to wait and come back to the blog huh? Got you!

No, seriously I will be publishing the second part next week but I thought I’d interrupt the flow with an on-topic real life story.

Something happened to someone close to me (not me, so I won’t share it with you) that meant I suddenly had to take time off work, several weeks in fact, and without a great deal of warning. In many, less resilient businesses this could have been catastrophic to the conduct and flow of the business, let alone your income. You could be going along nicely, or at least coasting, when – WHAM! – a crisis happens and you find that you have a choice as a small business owner. You can do what’s right and take time off to look after the personal crisis or you can carry on working in the business and cause whatever damage to your personal life and relationships.

Before you answer that your business is your livelihood and you would need to look for a compromise, let me remind you of two facts that I’m sure I share with you – first, some crises cannot be compromised, second you started the business to achieve a good life/work balance. Right?

So having to suddenly take 6 weeks off – and doing so successfully – what lessons have been learned by me that you can benefit from in crisis proofing your resilient business? Read More

Comment 13

Teamwork needs Agreement!

Sep 22 2015

The more I help clients grow their businesses, the more I see how “teamwork” is not a natural thang!

Sure people like to belong, and people like to help in a common endeavour, but people are different and they have different values, habits and personalities. Ask your team to define “a job well done” and you will get a variety of different answers.

This may not sound like a significant problem, but what if their different definitions of a job well done mean that they approach the joint task differently? To you, it might be okay to call out at team meetings discussing how to do something, and voice your ideas. To someone else, they might want to think through the problem and think that your calling out is just self-aggrandisement, and just plain rude. There may be a raft of other differences that can cause team members to be frustrated at each other and the way the team works.

In a more formal structure, I have helped clients create team “charters” which outline what the team was formed to do, its objectives and scope, and its authority in doing the task. Read More

Comment 13

Customer Service in frontline staff

Aug 11 2015

As your business grows, you no longer have the only contact with your customers. More and more, that front-facing position is being filled by your frontline staff – your sales people, your front of house reception, your people who meet and greet and deal with customers day to day.

The customer service instincts that you displayed now have to be passed on to your frontline staff. So how do you breed that customer-service mentality into your team?

The principles are actually quite simple – ensure your team is vision-driven, build strong teamwork, create vision-centric KPI’s and provide rewards for doing the right things, as explained in this video.

Some key steps include:-

1. Ensure customer service starts with understanding your “brand”.

Your frontline staff need to understand what your “brand” is, as reinforced by your business vision statement. What does achieving your vision mean to your customer? What values will your staff need to uphold in front of the customer to ensure that the vision comes alive? What indications does your vision statement give them on how they should deal with a complaint? Are they empowered to make decisions about customer-service as long as their decisions align with the indicators in the vision?

2. Reinforce good teamwork

Remove any barriers to teamwork and create a structure that shares knowledge about clients and about service. Provide systems that give frontline staff all they know about customer preferences. Allow staff to hand over to someone else in the team more appropriate for the task or the customer.

3. Negotiate and implement KPI’s that measure attainment of the vision in customer-service

Remove Key Performance Indicators that measure output (how many customers served) and instead implement KPI’s that reinforce vision-centric outcomes (how many customers received what they asked for, how many customers received more than they asked for).

4. Reward vision-centric outcomes

Stop paying bonuses for income generated from customers. Instead create rewards that that actually reward behaviours that produce outcomes described by the vision and brand. Instead of awarding an award for the highest sales every month, how about awarding the person who satisfied customers? High sales may be one-off, satisfied customers come back again and again.

Get over to the Resources section of https://teikoh.com to see what other models, worksheets and templates can help you grow your business the right way.

Comment 13

The difference between Leadership and Management

May 22 2015

Your business needs both leaders and managers.

At different times, you need leadership that says “up and at ’em, follow me!” and you need management that says “let’s make sure we have enough resources”. The best situation is that both leadership and management come from the same people but they bring out what is required for any given situation.

Neither are characteristics you are born with – both leadership and management can be developed.

But, what is the difference between leadership and management?

How can you develop both leadership qualities and management qualities in your people?

Comment 13

Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

The SMART Marketing Workbook: Companion to “SMART Marketing”, this workbook sets out the SMART Marketing process in 7 workshops for you and your staff to complete questionnaires and templates that at the end, form the marketing plan you need to sell your REAL product to your REAL customer! View now...

Category - Teamwork

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Get Your Team Motivated!

Or why not get a free Business Health Checklist? Click here and I will send you the link to download an Entrepreneur’s Business Health Checklist that will assess the 6 Key Result Areas of your business.

Systems for Resilience

Teamwork needs Agreement!

Customer Service in frontline staff

The difference between Leadership and Management