Productivity Hacks

Every company has people in management that use certain types of leadership styles. Depending on how your personality clicks with the leadership style used, you can either prosper in your position or despise going into work. There are six leadership styles that you can find in the workplace. Leaders can adopt one or a combination of all styles to best suit the company’s and person’s needs.

You may see your boss using the visionary leadership style. This style works well with new companies or ones needing a new direction. Visionaries see all employees working as a team to meet the same goal and company dreams. They visualize what needs to be done by having an innovative spirit and love of experimentation. This leadership style believes productivity relies on taking taking risks, but at the calculated level. Visionary leaders do not concern themselves with the day-to-day activities of how the group will achieve the visualized goals.

The second type of leadership style you may find in the workplace is known as the commanding style. Think of a military leader and strict disciplinarian, and you can better understand this type of leadership. If your boss barks out orders and does not concern him or herself with your response or ability to do the task, they are using the commanding style. Criticism is common and positive feedback almost nonexistent. Common results of working with this type of leader are poor productivity, lack of morale and minimal, if any, job satisfaction among employees.

Another leadership style involves coaching. If you thrive in dealing with bosses who like working with you on a one-to-one basis, this leadership style is for you. Coaching styles work best with employees who the initiative to work up the corporate level while improving individual skill sets. This style concentrates on helping employees reach their potential by improving performance, productivity, communications and working on goal setting. Coaches believe that when employee goals align with company goals, great things can happen. On the negative side, the coaching leadership style can be perceived as micromanaging employees. This can come across as not trusting the employee’s judgment and capabilities.

You will see the democratic leadership style in use when your boss thrives in creating a group of people with a variety of skills and knowledge that can be used to the group’s advantage. He or she will work with the collective wisdom of the group to meet goals. This style believes that goals are achieved by building consensus among the group. On the negative side, this style is not appropriate in times of crisis. Crisis warrants quick decisions, and this leadership style does not fit that bill.

The affiliate leadership style feeds off team work by creating group harmony. Goals are achieved by increasing communication among group members. Leaders are comfortable giving praise for a job or idea well done. This leadership style increases employee morale, restores trust in an organization and helps form a bond among team members. Since this leadership style depends upon praising so much, poor behavior can not be dealt with properly. Mediocrity can come across as being acceptable.

The sixth leadership style you can find in your workplace is known as pacesetting. If your boss sets very high performance standards and appears obsessed about getting things done quicker and more efficiently, he or she is probably using this style of leadership. Everyone is expected to perform at the same level. When used extensively, this style can undercut employee morale and negatively affect the work environment.

Many times, management personnel can adopt one or a combination of all leadership styles to best suit the company’s and person’s needs.

Finding the right leadership styles can make or break a company!

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Ten Best Exercises to Build Teamwork & Increase Worker’s Productivity and Communication

Even the most successful companies with highly trained professionals working for them find the need to reinforce their workforce by having them take part in team building exercises. Any business large or small can strengthen their workforce’s motivation, morale, personal communication, productivity and communication skills, without having to spend huge amounts of money on costly seminars. Weekly team meetings or company outings gives businesses the perfect opportunity to exercise their workers’ team building skills, which take almost no time at all to execute. The following ten low costs simple exercises can help business build stronger teams, which would increase a workforce’s productivity.

Coin Logo (10-15 Min exercise)

This exercise allows group members to bond and allows them to get a bit more personal. All members participating in this communication exercise become self-aware and begin to understand their colleauges’ awareness as well.

Objective: Each participant prepares a logo using coins and other materials.

Prepare: Ask all the participants to remove the contents from their pockets wallets and purses and place the objects in front of them. Workers with few or no coins can borrow ones from others. The leader should break large groups into teams.

Action: The coordinator keeps time and asks each participant or group to design a personal logo that shows who they are, using only the items in front of them. Pens, notebooks and other materials can also be used along with the coins in the logo’s creation. The participants have only one minute to do this task. After the leader calls time, each member explains their logo to the group. Each participant should briefly state the meaning of their logo and what it represents.

Variations: Do the exercise in groups. Have each group choose a leader and at the end of the exercise the leader discusses the group’s logo and its meaning.

Picture Pieces Game (30 Min exercise)

This exercise demands participants to work as a team and teaches them how to solve productivity problems together. Each person is important in the overall result, and the results reflect the team’s overall work.

Objective: Create a picture five times larger than its original size using just a piece of a puzzle.

Prepare: Leader cuts a well-known cartoon or picture with a lot of detail into equal squares for each participant. Pass writing materials, paper, and utensils to everyone in the group.

Action: ive each participant one piece of the puzzle (cut picture) and have them create a copy that is 5-times larger than the one they have. Each participant will not know how their contribution will affect the overall result until they put the pieces together. Once the groups make their enlargements, have everyone put the pieces together and try to figure out the identity of the original picture.

The Take Away Game (5-10 min exercise)

This exercise requires teams to plan and control the outcome of a fairly simple productivity game. Participants play the game and in each turn, understand its principles, and form more efficient ways to play to win.

Objective: The last team or participant to remove the last of 15 coins from the table wins.

Prepare: Gather 15 coins, including pennies and place them on a table. Create teams with two participants in each group

Action: Toss a coin to see which team goes first. The winner tosses a coin again, and if they answer heads or tails correctly, they get to remove 2 coins from the table of 15. The toss is then passed to the next team. The team that removes the last coin wins.

Variations: Increase the number of coins or allow teams that guess wrong to put back coins they have removed from the table.

The Paper Tower (5 min exercise)

This exercise reinforces participants’ planning, timing and reaction tools and asks them to think about their overall performance and how it could be improved.

Objective: To create a stable structure using only the materials at hand.

Prepare: Obtain a single sheet paper for each participant.

Action: Distribute one single sheet of paper for each person and ask them to build a tall structure using just the paper. Inform them that they only have 5 minutes to do the exercise. When the leader calls time, have the participants discuss: the details of each structure and how they planned it, who ran out of time and how improvements could be made the next time around.

Eye Contact (5 min exercise)

This simple exercise builds trust among coworkers through eye contact. It helps people overcome shyness and increases respect among workers.

Objective: Maintain eye contact with someone for more than 60 seconds without looking away or fidgeting.

Prepare: Group the participants into pairs and have them face each other.

Action: Ask participants to remove any eyeglasses and to stare directly in the eyes of the other in front of them. Even though they may laugh at first or feel uncomfortable, ask them not to look away or fidget while doing the exercise. As the group becomes comfortable with the task, increase the time a bit.

Willow in the Wind (20 min exercise)

This is another fun-trust building game that works well when workers pair up with someone they know. Participants build trust as they move from being trusted to a trustee.

Objective: Participants who are not in the center of the group must support another worker and not allow them to fall or touch the ground.

Prepare: Place workers in groups of 4 or five. Discuss with the non-willows how to support and to pass around safely each willow, by instructing each non-willow to place one foot in front of the other, to stretch out their arms and to lock their elbows.

Action: Each group chooses a willow, who will stand in an upright position in the center of the group with their eyes closed and feet together. They then do some trust leans and as they lean against others, Non-willows pass around the willow. Afterwards, other co-workers in the group take turns being the center willow.

Paper and Straws Game (15 min exercise)

This game builds workers’ planning and productivity skills as they work together in a small group to solve an easy problem. The workers also learn to communicate with one another as the game progresses.

Objective: Push balls into high-scoring sections without removing the ones already in the section.

Prepare: Gather up some drinking straws and paper. Draw a big circle on a large paper and after draw smaller circles within the larger circle. Assign each circle a score with the smallest circle in the middle having the highest score. Tape the big paper with the circles to a lengthy desk. Group workers around the table and give each participant a straw.

Action: The leader wads up small balls of paper and throws then into the circle. Players must blow into their straws to high scoring section without removing balls that are already there. Players should form an attack plan by moving around the table and have two people blow at the same time to make the highest possible score.

Create an Original Problem Solving Activity (One-hour exercise)

This is a group problem solving exercise that builds worker productivity, creativity and trust. Workers will also need to communicate and manage their time as this hour-long game winds down.

Objective: Have the entire group come up with a new problem solving exercise invented entirely by them. The participants must invent an original and never played before exercise.

Prepare: Divide participants into groups of 4 to 5 people.

Action: The leader explains to the group that he scheduled one hour to do a problem solving exercise, but unfortunately, he does not know of one. The leader instructs each group to invent a new exercise themselves. As the hour winds down each group needs to present their exercise to their co-workers who will vote on which one is most original.

The Egg Drop (2 hour exercise)

This is a potentially messy communication and productivity team-building game. It rewards workers in the end for doing excellent work.

Objective: Participants build an egg platform that will support an egg from breaking in an eight-foot drop.

Prepare: Gather a bunch of material and some tools for building a platform. Pillows, hammers, screws, whatever is accessible will work. Also, have an eight foot ladder available. Separate the group into two large teams.

Action: Each group builds a structure that will support an egg dropped from eight feet from breaking. After the construction, each team will present their package in 30 seconds, explaining the structure’s originality and how it works. Finally, a designated group member climbs the eight-foot ladder, drops the egg, and sees if it works.

Sneak a Peek Game (10 min exercise)

This is a simple problem solving game and helps to build both analytical skills and communication skills among workers. Team members also learn how to trust their own instincts as the game progresses.

Objective: Teams must build the same structure as the leader by using only their memory.

Prepare: Find some children’s building blocks and divide the workers into teams of four participants.

Action: The leader builds a unique structure with some of the blocks far away from the group. The leader allows one participant from each group to take a look at his structure for 10 seconds to memorize it. They then return to their group, and the team has twenty-five seconds to try to recreate the leader’s design from the memory of their colleague. If the group has not effectively recreated the leader’s design after one minute, a different member from the group can take a ten-second look at the instructor’s design. This process repeats until one team successfully recreates the leader’s sculpture.

Comparing these simple exercises to the advantages each game produces, gives business easy options should they choose to integrate some of these tasks into their weekly meetings. These team-building exercises can only strengthen the workforce, adding more efficient production within the group, which increases the overall success of the business.

Next week: Build Teamwork & Increase Productivity with These 10 Simple Exercises! Part II

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Tips for Customer Retention & Keeping Your Cool.

“The customer is always right,” is an old cliché, but here’s why it’s true. It’s harder to win new customers than to keep old ones. A recent survey conducted by accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers found that it costs five to ten times more to acquire new clients than to keep existing ones happy. And with customer turnover of about 50 to 65 percent on average every five years for the typical shop, learning to keep customers is a key part of doing business. Even when your customers are upset (or worse), take a deep breath and remember that their satisfaction is literally part of your bottom line.

Here are 10 tips to manage your clients successfully and to increase retention and overall customer bliss:

• First impressions about how you communicate are important: Your first contact with customers is often pivotal in determining the tone of your business relationship. When you send your project proposal on time, it signals you are diligent and efficient. When you send an email follow-up, it signals you are organized and thoughtful. When you produce correspondence and all other branded material in the same way, it signals you are consistent and professional. On the other hand, you don’t want to set up unrealistic expectations. If you respond to an email within minutes of it being sent, that might set a precedent you can’t live up to later. If you allow your customers to call you at anytime, they may call you when you are on a deadline or have other pressing priorities.

• Set boundaries and expectations and then live up to them: Particularly if you are a freelancer, you should make your customers aware of your boundaries. Freelancers have to balance their development time with customer consultation time, which can become impossible if customers call at inopportune times. Try to make a routine for emails. Instead of checking emails all day, consider checking email only once or twice per day, but make it a point to respond within 24 hours. As for phone calls and IMs, make sure that you schedule them so they don’t become disruptive. If you explain to your customer that setting an appointment for a phone call will be more productive because you can prepare ahead of time, you can make the customer feel appreciated without needing to be on high alert for random calls. When you keep up habits and patterns, customers will know what to expect and will adapt accordingly.

• Be transparent and professional about billing, time sheets, and turnaround times: If you show how much you bill and how, your customers will face less sticker shock. One of the most frequent complaints in customer care is a lack of billing transparency or a gap between perceived value and price. Being upfront can ease this. It also helps to develop real plans for turning around project work items so that you can accurately and confidently quote this information in future correspondence. If the customer suggests a change but you don’t know how long it will take, follow up with more information instead of offering a vague promise. It’s better to follow up with more information confidently than to set your customer up for later disappointment.

• Build self-service, timely updates, and useful features into your website: Your website should offer continuing value for your business. Freelancers should sign up for project management and billing sites to make sure they make professional and accurate communication with their clients. Self-service can help customers to feel empowered, but make sure that your site provides a quality personalized experience.

• Approach confrontation with the customer with their perspective in mind: Everyone eventually faces the irate call from a customer due to a missed deadline or some other problem. Listen to the customer, and respond gracefully and professionally. It helps to repeat back the customer’s question or complaint to confirm that you have listened. It also helps to use positive phrasing such as “Here’s how we can solve this problem”. If the conversation becomes particularly personal, gently remind the customer by saying something such as “I know that these comments are not directed towards me but this situation, which if I were you I wouldn’t be satisfied with either.” Some social scientists have discovered that in the case of refunds, it can actually be helpful to ask the customer to suggest a fair refund price. More often than not, the customer will offer a price lower than you expect, and if you keep the customer, this goodwill will pay dividends.

• Personalize all correspondence and communication as much as possible: When you send correspondence to your customers, use their name and information about a recent conversation to make the correspondence seem more urgent and timely, which gives the customer greater satisfaction. If sending a generic email, at least give users a chance to opt-out. Sending email too often will seem like spam, so use software that detects whether the user is reading your emails or not. Use a service like Scrubly to make sure that your address book contains the best name to use to address customers and that all email addresses in your address book are clean, neat, and up-to-date, which will prevent annoying customers with accidental duplicates and improper salutations.

• Use automated telephone systems with care:If you use a computerized telephone system, make sure that customers are able to speak to a real live person at any time. If you can afford it, use professionally recorded audio instead of text-to-speech, which can sound robotic and unfriendly.

• Ensure that customer care representatives have everything they need to interact successfully with the clients: You should keep a log that documents all customer interactions. No customer likes the sense that they’ve had to repeat information from earlier conversations. This log will also help you to develop a rapport and to find leads.

• Under-promise and over-deliver: Customers get excited about big project plans at deep discounts, but this is a recipe for disaster either because you can’t meet the price or you can’t meet the high expectations. Going the extra mile on a smaller project plan will delight the customer and will show extra value than failing to deliver a bigger plan.

• Cold-call old clients and win them back: One of the difficult things to do, particularly for freelancers, is to learn to cold-call old clients. Old clients could be easier to win back than you think even if you parted on not-so-good terms. Focus on a technique called “the soft sell”. Instead of convincing customers they should come back, remind them of what it was like when they did business with you. Talking about the past conversations you had and other information about your relationship shows that you are considerate and remember their specific business. If they talk about their current projects, suggest how those projects would have been on time and on budget if they were still a client.

Up Next: “Avoiding the 10 Common Killers of a Small Business”