Relationships | Shannon Procise

How You Can Help Your Employees Feel More Valued in Your Organization

January 19, 2021 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

Getting your employees to feel more valued in your organization isn’t very difficult or complicated. If your employees are feeling underappreciated, you should listen to their input, employ inspirational leaders, and communicate clearly. Each of these things will help your employees understand how much you appreciate their contribution to your company.

Listen to Their Input

Listening to your employees’ input is a great way for you to show them how much you value their opinions and ideas. You should solicit their opinion and utilize it as often as possible. Ask them not only about the work but also about the job itself—what’s good and bad about it and how it can be improved. Most likely, your employees have a lot of things they can offer the company and you must listen to their input. They will feel appreciated and valued in your company if you are listening to what they have to say.

Employ Inspirational Leaders

All employees need leaders they can look to for inspiration. These leaders will give them an example they can look up to and someone that can provide feedback and constructive criticism. Employees want to know both what they’re doing well and where they can improve. Getting praise from an inspirational leader that your employees admire will help them to continue to do well within the company so they can get that praise again.

Communicate Clearly

Communication is an important part of an employee/employer relationship. Your employees will feel more valued in your organization if you keep them in the loop. Communicating with employees will help them feel like an important part of the company. They’ll feel trusted because you’ve kept a high level of transparency when it comes to what’s happening within the organization. Proper transparency demands a degree of emotional intelligence on the manager’s part. They must neither be blunt nor shield their employee from the truth. It might cause a few uncomfortable conversations at first, but it’ll demonstrate that you value and trust them enough to tell them the truth.

It can be hard to know where to start helping your employees feel more valued in your organization, but several things are important to do. You should listen to their input, employ inspirational leaders, and communicate clearly. This will help your employees understand how important they are to your company.

For more help running your business, sign up for some coaching with us!

Filed Under: Relationships

What Does It Mean to Build Your Tribe?

February 27, 2020 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

An important part of any long-term business strategy is to build a loyal base, or tribe, that feels invested in the success of your brand enough to come back again and again. The pool of one-time customers available for your business is not enough to sustain it, so it’s essential to come up with ways to attract people who want to be a part of your business. This task of creating a tribe is not just about buying and selling—there’s a deeper connection that people have with brands and companies when they really allow those entities to become part of their lives. Here are a few of the best ways to establish your business within a community and construct a tribe out of it.

Establishing a Voice

What does your company stand for? Why should a customer come to you for their goods or services instead of another company? What is special or unique about your company? When you answer these questions, you can begin to establish a voice that speaks to what about your business stands above the competition. When there is a shared sense of purpose between the voice of the company and the customer, the reasons for being in business become self-evident, and you’ve begun to build a significant and sustainable tribe.

Making a Loyal Base

Remember that appreciation leads to loyalty, which is necessary for business success. The customer always has more choices than the business, meaning that if they become unsatisfied with the company, then they can simply leave the tribe and go elsewhere for their needs. Therefore, it is critical to never take your customers’ loyalty for granted. A good strategy to maintain a loyal base is to act as if you just established your business yesterday, even if it has been many years. This will keep you hungry to impress customers with your dedication to providing a great product or service and maintaining their loyalty.

Offer Incentives for Loyal Members of Your Tribe

Many businesses take the often-traveled path of focusing their marketing efforts on increasing their customer base while ignoring their pool of long-term customers. While attracting new customers is important for growth, it is equally important to retain the customers you have already in your tribe because they are its lifeblood. Offering discounts and special programs available just for long-term customers from time to time is a good idea.

Building your tribe is an important part of being successful in any business. If you take these tips to heart, you can achieve success in building a tribe around your business that means more than just dollars and cents in the long run.

For more tips on building your business, check out this article: How to Use Local Festivals to Market Your Business

Filed Under: Business, Relationships

Nail Your Short Presentation at Work with These 5 Tips

November 22, 2018 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

Making a brief presentation at work may seem like a no-brainer, but preparing one can prove to be challenging. It’s always a good idea to iron out the details of your presentation well ahead of time so you can nail it when the time comes. Here are five easy tips that can help you give an informational, inspiring and persuasive presentation in the workplace.

Keep the Audience Interested

Few things are less interesting than having to sit through a presentation that’s given in a monotone voice. Use voice inflections and intonation to emphasize important words and transitions, and pause momentarily to let important ideas sink in. If the occasion is informal or semiformal, you might address the audience directly rather than discussing the topic in third person. Use examples and details that relate to listeners so they can feel included, making references to daily life or demographics that connect with people in the audience. Also be sure to make eye contact occasionally with the audience throughout the presentation.

Resource: https://minutehack.com/guides/5-ways-to-keep-your-audience-interested

Pace Your Presentation

Rather than choosing to simply wing it and hope for the best, practice pacing your speech beforehand. Make an outline with key points and rehearse the talk smoothly from one point to the next. Keep an eye on the time to ensure your speech stays on track. A good rule of thumb for giving presentations is that every minute is roughly 125-150 words spoken, so a 5-minute speech would usually require 625 – 700 words. That being said, it’s always a good idea to plan for a few extra minutes in case audience members wish to ask questions afterward.

Resource: https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-is-a-5-minute-speech/

Incorporate a Story

Everyone loves to hear a good story, so aim to include some type of story in your talk that illustrates one of your presentation’s principles. A good choice is to draw from current events in the news that many in the audience will have heard of and perhaps identify with. You can also use personal experience or observations about the lives of others in certain situations. Using characters, real or fictitious, and a narrative format often encourages the audience to listen more attentively, and it can stoke their interest in your topic.

Resource: https://blog.slideshare.net/how-to-tell-great-stories-during-presentations

Use Humor

Like smiling, humor is a universal element that everyone can relate to. Many successful speakers start a presentation with a humorous anecdote or a comical remark about the context for the presentation. Use lighthearted humor rather than a sarcastic tone. However be sure to avoid slapstick comedy, which can dilute the seriousness of your topic and cause the audience to feel more entertained than educated. Self-deprecating humor is another easy way to start the presentation and often helps to put the speaker on par with the audience.

Resource: https://totalcommunicator.com/vol2_2/funnymeeting.html

A short talk can feel like it is over much too soon for audiences who enjoy and appreciate what they hear. Practice beforehand and give listeners fun and interesting things to consider. By following these steps you can ensure that your talk will not only be interesting to hear but also have the desired impact on your audience.

If you feel a little lost on or anxious about leading or running a business, then let Shannon Gronich help you out!

Filed Under: Business, Coaching, entrepreneurs, Events, Relationships

4 Hiring Principles Necessary to Build a Motivated Team

September 8, 2018 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

The research is clear; high performing employees are the most motivated employees and out produce average employees by 4 to 1! What fundamental principles are necessary to build an effective hiring process that will staff your organization with high performers and motivated teams? The highest performing organizations have cracked this code and here is how they do it.

Determine What Capabilities Will Drive Your Company’s Success

Think about those brands that you admire. What is it that they are very good at doing? Walmart differentiates itself by their expertise in supply chain management while Nordstrom is known for their customer service. How does your company differentiate itself from the competition? What qualities do you admire in the employees you already have, and what are you going to be looking for in the new hires?

Determine What Skills are Aligned with Your Organizational Skills

Personal competencies are a person’s ability, skill, character, and knowledge that develop through life experiences. Personal competencies account for nearly 90% of successful performance on the job. A partial list of the 67 personal competencies from the Lominger organization include:

Action Oriented
Business Acumen
Organizational Agility
Customer Focus
Timely Decision Making

Determine What Technical Skills are Required for a Specific Role

Technical competencies represent the skills and knowledge necessary to perform in a specific job role. The majority of hiring is done with a focus on technical competencies. It is important to note, however, that technical skills only account for 10% of successful job performance.

Establish Objectives for Interview and Screening Processes

First off, you need to have great managers.If you don’t have great managers, you will never have a high performing, highly motivated team. Period.

Most hiring managers make hiring decisions based on:

Their “gut”
The similarity in personalities with the candidate
The degree to which they “like” the candidate

Pre-employment evaluations combined with structured interview processes are critical to the screening process as they remove the subjective human biases of the interviewers while screening all candidates using a common methodology.

High performers have the personal and technical competencies that align with the desired organizational capabilities of the company. If the screening process is built with these principles in mind, the result will be a highly successful organization. For more hiring techniques and advice, check out my blog!

Filed Under: Business, Coaching, entrepreneurs, Relationships Tagged With: business, coaching, entrepreneurs, motivation, relationship, team building

How To Increase Office Morale Without Breaking The Bank

June 9, 2018 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

Increasing the morale of your business is an important goal to set because it can have a host of other positive benefits for the company. Being a great leader in the office has a lot to do with encouraging input from your employees on how they feel and how the office works. Many times this means providing incentives and other sorts of fun activities for employees to feel motivated by. And while you want to do best to keep their morale up, you also have to keep the budget in mind. Fortunately, you don’t need to destroy your business’s budget to create a more friendly vibe in the workplace.

Offer Refreshments

While you don’t want employees lounging on the couch and eating snacks all day, you can provide them with some complimentary refreshments. You could purchase bagels from the store and have them ready to toast in the office kitchen with spread prepared to go, or you might bring in tacos from an affordable restaurant for lunch every other week. Another option is to stock the break room with beverages and snacks. If you want to let them pick, you could always purchase used vending machines for discounted prices, or you could look into coffee that’s for sale in bulk quantities.

Host Events

You want to encourage employees to work together professionally, but encouraging them to socialize can have tremendous benefits. Employees who feel more comfortable with each other often make better team members. You could host events in the office space to reduce the cost. Also, some local activities, such as paint nights or escape rooms, may offer discounts for large groups. If you want to include food at the event, host a potluck. Asking everyone to bring in a dish also allows your employees to show off their culinary style.

Procure Updated Equipment

Imagine that it took your computer the better part of an hour to load in the morning or that the copier broke every time you needed to make handouts for presentations. Looking into companies that offer corporate discounts can help you to save on the price. Also, you may want to look into having older equipment repaired. While the end goal is likely to replace the machines, doing so might not be possible at this moment.

Let Them Work from Home

Instead of having to pay for office snacks and even utilities, why not let your employees work from home? Introducing a virtual office policy can boost your team’s morale as well as offer other benefits. Employees who have the opportunity to telecommute report substantially higher job satisfaction and quit at half of the usual rate. Plus, many studies have shown that people who work from home tend to be more productive than those who spend their 9 to 5 in an office. According to DavinciVirtual.com, there are three types of telework: full-time, part-time, and situational. Depending on how many days your employees work from home, you could save more than $1000 per employee per year.

Provide Positive Feedback

It’s true that offering criticism of your employees is sometimes necessary as you need to let your employees know where room for improvement exists. However, when you constantly criticize your employees or do so negatively, they are likely to start thinking that they aren’t doing any of the tasks correctly. According to LiveChatInc.com, letting employees know when they succeed is an essential part of acting as a good boss. But if you do have to give some critique, do it well. This strategy will cost you no money whatsoever to implement.

As you begin to think of ways to increase morale, you may see a significant price sticker attached to the plans. Fortunately, you can motivate your employees and make them feel happier at work without spending too much.

Filed Under: Business, Relationships Tagged With: coworkers, morale, office