Some time ago, we attended an in-house training course at one of our customers' premises in Heidenheim. In-house training always means staying overnight at the customer's premises in the respective seminar hotel.
When we entered our rooms in Heidenheim, we were really surprised. Whereas in many seminar hotels we are greeted by a small packet of gummy bears or a piece of chocolate on the bedside table, things were different in Heidenheim:
Waiting for us, neatly arranged on the welcome letter, was a bag of fizzy drink "for a sparkling start to the day," a packet of glucose "to boost your energy," a tin of sweets "to keep your voice in good shape during the seminar," and a chocolate bar for the break. And that wasn't all: in addition to the invitation to "end the busy day with a beer at the hotel bar," there was also a voucher for a glass of beer at the bar.
Boom. We were lost in thought for two or three minutes and were very pleased with this "personal welcome." This seminar hotel deviated from the norm, had something different—and that made it special for me as a guest or customer.
But why are we telling you all this? After all, this blog is about leadership and influencing people. It's simple!
How do you deal with your employees? Do you – figuratively speaking – carelessly place a small packet of gummy bears on your employees' bedside tables (if at all), or do you really think deeply and carefully about how you could make your employees happy? Don't think that I'm addicted to harmony. Of course, you should continue to demand results and continuously develop your employees. The question is simply how much or what kind of thought you put into your employees and from what perspective you view them.
Surprise your team members by showing them that you know their values and strengths and can take these into account in your everyday work, or fill out the leadership guidelines for your most important employees and keep these in mind in your future leadership activities.
Now you're probably wondering why you should do that?
Because your employees are the most important thing you have in a business context. Period. Your employees contribute significantly to your success or failure as leader, i.e., to your results. Agree? So you should also continuously develop your employees and treat them with care. At Leading Simple, we responsibility to mean: the results of the employees are the results of leader. Again: the results your employees achieve are your results as leader, because you are responsibility these people. That's it.
In our work, we see every day that the perspective from which leader view leader is also very important. If, as leader , I leader say that I am surrounded by "idiots," then at some point this will become true. We always ask managers the following question: Are your employees the cause or the solution to your problems? If your automatic response is the former, you should think about the whole thing again in depth and analyze what advantages it could have if you were to see your employees as the solution to your problems in the future.
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You can only truly develop your employees if you are interested in people and know their values and strengths, and if you take this into account and develop it further in your day-to-day work. The most effective way to do this is to always see a little more in your employees (in terms of potential, strengths, and opportunities) than is currently there—that is the Champions League of human development.
That's why you're not really happy.
Why success and fulfillment have nothing to do with each other.
