Speaker, Susan Thomson
Action Coach is a global franchise. There are five coaches in Susan’s firm. They started 11 years ago.
They work with companies:
- growing too fast
- stuck
- 5-7 years from retiring/passing the business on
- emerging leaders/teams
- career limiting behavior crowd
17% of employees are actively engaged in their work.
You will lose your A players if the have to report to C players. People will usually focus on skill unless you talk about attitude and fit to culture. Attitude and fit to culture is no more than choosing to put a smile on your face. Everyone’s going to have a bad day but if you can’t choose to show up with a smile every day and buy into our culture and help, then there’s no place for you on my team. A players make more money.
Opportunity: Fix the root cause of a problem so the team gains momentum.
Susan was in R&D for North America for Fiskars. They went through tremendous growth, the new leadership made sweeping changes which she didn’t like.
You have 100% control over your thoughts, what you say, what you do. As long as you remember that, you’re never a victim of circumstances. Once Susan realized that, that she was making a choice to have her daily pity party, she decided to go run another company. She learned how to negotiate with players like Walmart and Home Depot. She had to get clear on attitude/fit in culture.
Busy trumps vision. Culture evolves vs. being set. As owners, we need to choose our culture. Spend some time, figure out what’s important to you. We need to tell people. They can’t read our minds.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lincioni
Short read, good book.
Team members need to trust each other to do conflict.
The only person I can control is me.
Learn your triggers. Who are those people or situations who push your buttons. Prepare for those. Design your culture and tell people what you want it to be. Get good at behavior providing (DISC). Practice. Practice for interactions that might be uncomfortable. Get help and get into action!