Author: Fabrizio

Honest

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Honesty can only work when it’s two-way.

You can’t be honest if you do not accept others to be honest with you as well, and you can’t demand honesty if you are not honest in the first place yourself.

It’s about building trust and knowing that the other is going to be on your side when it matters. Sometimes by putting you in front of harsh truths, sometimes by telling you well timed lies.

Saying “let’s be honest with each other” is a commitment for the long term, something you have to start building day-in and day-out, with practice and consistency.

It’s not something for a two-hours meeting.

No competition

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Help, gratitude, kindness. There’s no competition when you start practicing them.

If you help somebody and another person does the same, all the better. If you are grateful for something, and then something else, and another thing yet, there’s just more to be gained. If you are kind by default, and your neighbour is kind too, and their neighbours too, it’s a great thing for the whole community.

We are so often stuck in a constant race that we easily forget how not everything rewards the first and forgets the others.

Talk

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Talk about what’s holding you back.

Talk about that feeling you feel before speaking in front of others.

Talk about the fear that never let you leap.

Talk about how unease you are when somebody asks a direct question.

Talk about the challenge in putting your work out there.

Talk about how difficult it is to say you were wrong.

Talk about the knots in your stomach before meeting someone you like.

Because as you talk about all of this, you take the first step to make it all go away.

Culture is action

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It’s impossible to talk about culture without taking behaviour into consideration.

You can read a book, spend time investigating what type of culture is a winning culture, have consultants come in and tell about the frameworks they have studied. But at the end of the day, culture is what you do. Culture is what the people around you do. Culture is in the actions and details.

That’s why it’s important to build cultures with examples. And in the long term, I am more and more convinced that coaching, both internal and external, is the only way to spread the culture as the company grows and the market changes.

Learning about culture is great, as it gives you the basics to discuss it in your organization and go about it strategically. Yet, remember that culture is not telling and cannot be commanded. Culture is action.

Unusual requests

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Three ways to address an unusual request from one of your customers.

1. Sorry, we can’t help, you can try over there.

2. We are sorry, we have tried and checked our policies, we can’t help. You can try over there.

3. We are sorry, it’s not perfect, but it should work. No need to pay for this, come back later and we might have a better, more permanent solution.

They are not so different from each other, in fact they stand on a continuum. And it is certainly possible to emphatize with each one of them.

But whether you go for 1, 2 or 3 makes a huge difference in the experience you shape for your customer and the relationship you are building with them.