Tag Archive for: employees

You Are Rude, Don’t Blame Your Job

In this always-on fast-paced world we are all super connected to our technology.  We want to be on top of the latest email, tweet or Facbook post.  We want to appear cool and suave by responding quickly with some witty retort.  We want to feel important. But have you ever wondered how you really appear to others?  Have you ever thought that you might come off as selfish and self-important?  You should!  Are you innately rude?  You just might be.

Before going any further I have a confession to make: I “was” one of those people who had her phone physically connected to her body.  I even slept with the darn thing.  Every buzz or vibration was checked quicker than a cowboy could pull his six-shooter from his holster.  I prided myself in how quickly I got back to people regardless of the day of the week or the time of day.  When meeting with people I sometimes was only half there.  I was focused on that darn phone. I didn’t stop “being on” even when dinning with family or being invited to dinner parties.  Christmas get togethers also didn’t get my full attention.  I was “always” on.

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Image compliments of www.zazzle.com

Then one day it struck me that I was being really rude.  I mean really rude.  I wasn’t raised that way and I like to think that normally my manners are pretty good.  It is actually important to me.  So, how do I justify this behaviour?  Well, I take full responsibility and admit to liking the feeling of “feeling important.”  Really though, I wasn’t important.  Instead, I taught people that it was o.k. to infringe on my personal time and that I was at their beck and call 24/7.  I taught people that it was acceptable to take advantage of me.  This wasn’t fair to my family, my friends or even to me.

I wish my epiphany had resulted in my own self-awareness, but I can’t claim that.  Two things happened in one day that hit me like a hammer.  Two separate meetings taught me important lessons.

The first meeting was with a Vice-President that I reported to at the time.  When meeting with him you couldn’t help but feel like the center of attention.  After all, he stopped what he was doing.  He physically got up from his desk and sat at the meeting table with you in his office.  I am sure that he did this intentionally.  First and foremost he was moving away from any distractions on his desk.  Secondly he was moving away from the telephone on his desk.  His attention was 100% focused on you, the person he was meeting with, not anything else.  Even when his mobile rang, he ignored it.  The first time it happened I said it was ok for him to answer.  His response:  “No, it is not.  I am meeting with you.  You scheduled this time to meet with me and I agreed.  This is your time.  If there is a crisis or an emergency, someone will come to get me.”  I always left his meetings feeling respected and full of purpose.  Sure, we didn’t always agree on everything, but nonetheless I felt respected.

The second meeting was with another member of the executive team.  In this case we were meeting about an important strategic issue that needed a timely solution.  During the meeting the executive member answered no less than four calls, made three unrelated calls, accepted non emergency interruptions from colleagues and checked Facebook – which he said he “had to do.” Rather than feel respected I was frustrated when I left the meeting.  We had accomplished nothing.  He asked me to come back a couple of hours later.  I had to reschedule my afternoon to accommodate.  When I returned the next time, it was pretty much the same scenario.  Another hour passed and we accomplished nothing again.  I was asked to return later yet again.  It was the same thing.  In the end it took six hours of meetings to accomplish what could have been accomplished in 45 minutes.  It was not only a colossal waste of time, but it was indicative of how that individual thought of people.  It became very clear, very quickly that this was his M.O.  He did this to everyone.  

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Image compliments of business-technology.co.uk

So this was my epiphany.  I experienced what it is like to be treated respectfully.  I experienced what is like to be treated without respect.  One person valued both me and my time.  One person did not.

The real question however is whether or not you are respecting your colleagues, family and friends?  What about yourself?

Communicating in the age of mistrust

Perhaps the fact that organizations like Edleman’s looks at and measures trust is only a small indication of a bigger issue – people no longer trust.

In the age of social media there are many ways for people to unite over a cause and to share information – right or wrong.  Chances are however, that if you or I tell a friend something that we have learned, they will believe you or me before they will believe the corporate world, politicians or big industry in general.

In listening to the many commentaries today on the anniversary of 9/11 it is clear that people have many theories as to what happened that day and afterwards.  Knowing who to believe however comes down to who we trust.  In my opinion, social media has played a big role in our evolution of disbelief.  For those of who communicate or execute marketing strategies for a living, this is a tremendous challenge.  We have to build trust with our stakeholders, communities and customers.

Building trust however is difficult when you learn about companies that hire people to spread positive word of mouth messages on social networking sites.  The term wombagging has evolved out of this very practice.  According to Basil Phillips although there are a number of wombagging methods, most of them involve some degree of dishonesty.

As someone who has been in the communications and marketing industry for nearly 20 years, the challenge to build and maintain trust is more of a challenge than ever.  Having an authentic voice without spin may be the goal, but even when this is executed to perfection, there will be those that refuse to trust and refuse to believe.  What impact will they have on the rest of your audience?

Social Media Expert? I think Not!

Over that last little while there has been somewhat of a debate that has emerged.  The debate centers around people who call themselves Social Media (SM) experts.  Just over the last 24 hours, a very detailed discussion has been taking place on Social Media Marketing on LinkedIn.  This is a fascinating group with great discussions.  I encourage you to check it out.

In the end, I don’t believe that there are SM experts!  This is to new a game and everyone is playing it differently.  Because Starbucks and Best Buy were successful doing it “their” way, does not mean that you and your organization should follow the same path.

Let’s remember what the purpose of SM is – it is about building relationships.  You have to be genuine and build relationships your way.  To do so the same way that another organization has will be proof positive that you are not genuine.

So, please remember to think about how you want to build relationships and what steps you would like to take to do it “your way.”

Trust…the continuing saga

Why is it that we cannot trust?  What has happened in our culture and/or society that encourages us to trust only after we have tested and tested our relationships?

Clearly there has been something that has transpired that has caused a dramatic shift for people.  We see this with the rise and evolution with Social Media.  People clearly have found a voice and a way to speak up and out.

While thinking about this very post, I received an email of an upcoming audio conference.  Guess what the topic was?  Smart Trust: The Ultimate Skill that Separates Managers from Leaders.

So, not only are we researching and benchmarking trust with employees, employers and consumers, there are now designated learning opportunities to engage in trust, or in this case Smart Trust.  (Isn’t it interesting how everything these days has to be “smart”?  Smart meters, smart technology, smart cities….)

I would encourage people to think about trust and what it means to them.  What can you do as an individual to inspire trust and demonstrate trust.  Remember you have to give to receive.

My next posting will be one in a series on thinking about being a social organization versus just looking at Social Media in isolation.

Trust…From the Employer Perspective

Being able to trust, or not trust, is not just an issue for the employee or the consumer.  We know for a fact that as employers we have a few trust issues ourselves!

In fact, there is a fair amount of research to demonstrate that like employees, employers fall short in this area. According to Charlie Taylor and a study conducted in 2008 where 1,390 employers were surveyed, 83% of employers confirmed that they checked Facebook to see if an employee was really sick.  This same survey revealed that 67% of employers disciplined employees as a result of what they saw on Facebook.

The question is, just how many employers even allow their employees to use social networking sites?  According to Adam Ostrow and a survey of 1,400 Chief Information Officers with 100 employees or more, 54% of employers completely block access to social networking sites. I would argue that this is not very progressive thinking.

I would challenge employers to think differently about Social Media and social networking sites.  For those that think that employees will waste time or release confidential information, I hate to break it to you, but they don’t need social networking for that.  These employees will have already figured out a way to do this!

So, instead let’s take the positive approach and realize that:
1) Social Media is not a fad.  It is however, a fundamental shift in the way that we communicate.
2) As more people become mobile communicators, we need adjust the way we communicate.
3) A whole new generation is coming into the workforce using Social Media for communication.  Are you just going to ignore these employees?  You are if you aren’t employing Social Media.
4) Establish guidelines to help employees understand the do’s and don’ts of using Social Media.
5) Realize the tremendous potential for collaborating and sharing information.
6)  You need to take a leadership role!

In my next posting, I will cover some additional information about trust, or the lack of trust.

Two-way dialogue, the New Paradigm

Let me start off by saying that I truly believe that this is the first time in history when there really is the possibility of having a two-way dialogue.  On the one hand, technology has developed to the point where we actually have tools that enable not just word-of-mouth, but world-of-mouth.  On the other hand, we seem to be in an age when people want to speak out and they want to be engaged.

You may have heard this term – world-of-mouth – being used more and more in reference to Social Media.  When you stop and think about what these words mean, they really do have a big impact.  In a previous posting I mentioned the letter to the editor.  Sure, that was an interesting tool and you could potentially have hundreds or even thousands reading your letter on the day that it was published in the paper.  With Social Media however, your “letter” can be forwarded, re-posted, and more importantly other people can comment in real-time and a conversation can emerge.  Rather than a one-time event, depending on the topic, the interest and even the passion of people, this “letter” could become a cause that thousands support.

To emphasis my point, let’s take a real life case.  Back in August of this year (2010) Tanner Bawn, a 10 year old from Vancouver, who has muscular dystrophy and is immobile without his electric wheelchair, travelled to New York with his aunt.  According to an August 5, 2010, Globe and Mail post, when Tanner and his companions arrived in New York, his wheelchair was damaged beyond repair.  This trip was part of a wish request that the terminally ill boy made.  Unfortunately Air Canada was not immediately forthcoming to replace the chair.  In fact, according to the article, it was going to take several days before they could get a loaner.  For Tanner’s aunt, this was unacceptable.  She knew in order to get results, she would have to take action.  She went to Twitter and told her story.  A quick Google search for the terms “Air Canada” and “Twitter” and “wheelchair” bring up 112,000 results and if you read the various articles and postings, there are numerous comments within each.  This was a public relations nightmare for the airline.  Not only did traditional media pick this story up, but it went viral in the Social Media world.  (For those not familiar with the term viral, think of how a cold spreads when just one individual coughs in public – it isviral.)

If this were five years ago, or even 10 would this have occurred? In all honestly, likely not. We didn’t have the tools and perhaps not the wherewithal either. This is just one example where world-of-mouth occurred and forced an action to take place. Again, this information lives on. Unlike the old letter to the editor, in this new world of marketing and communications, opinions, posts and public relations nightmares live on and on in the digital world. Case in point, one Google search today brought me the full picture of what happened to Tanner almost two months ago in just .19 seconds.
Just think about what world-of-mouth can do to your business, your charity event, or quite frankly to your personal brand when you act or react to each and every event in your day!

In my next posting I will continue to talk about the impact of Social Media and world-of-mouth. In particular, I will review what research is telling us about trust.

Traditional Marketing and Communications

To fully appreciate the power of Social Media, we first need to review where we have been and where we are now.

Traditional marketing and communications have been rooted in some very simple principles – message generation, control and what I like to call “telling.”

Let’s look at each piece.  Whether you are creating a marketing campaign for the public or an internal communication for employees, you always start with the question:  what are we trying to achieve?  Is it increased revenues?  Increased awareness?  Increased sales?  Or, is it to influence certain behaviours?  Once we know what we are trying to achieve, and know what message will help us achieve our objective, we then decide what tool(s) we are going to use to reach our audience(s).

If you are launching a campaign, you will be very specific in knowing what medium you are using to reach and “tell” your audience what you need them to know in order to influence their behaviour.

If you want to share organizational changes or an announcement of some important initiative with employees, you will determine what is the best way to share that information and when.

Regardless of the audience, your marketing and/or communications department will want to have a very tight reign on the development, execution and even measurement of the effectiveness of said activity.  In other words, they want to control the message and hopefully control the resulting behaviour.

So, regardless of whether or not it is the campaign or the employee communication, as marketers/communicators  we are “telling” people what they should do, think or believe.

To make a long story short, traditional marketing and communications is ALL about having control and “telling” people something.  There has not been any real true two-way dialogue.

Let’s not kid ourselves here please.  We all know that Best Practices cite that marketing and communications is all about two-way dialogue, but in all honesty how was this done before?  How could it be done?  If you see an ad, how do you generate a dialogue that involves the company and other people?  Sure, you could buy their product and maybe tell a friend.  Or, you could send them a letter, but how does that really generate two-way dialogue?  If you get a memo from the president of your company, how do you get more information?  Can you ask someone in the company in another location?  I suppose, but not easily.

Enter Social Media….I would dare say that this is the first time in history that real dialogue can occur and is occurring.

In my next posting I will speak more about this two-way dialogue and how it can impact you.

Delving into Social Media?

Thinking about your company taking the plunge and getting to Social Media? Are you wondering where to start and which tools should you use? Do you have questions about whether or not you can trust your employees?

You can take solace in the fact that you are not alone. Many communications and marketing professionals ask these questions every day.

Through this blog I will share with you some of the experiences that I have had over the course of my marketing and communications career and also some new experiences that I encounter.

My next posting will look first at traditional marketing and communications and the impact that they have had.