According to Innovators Forum guest blogger Marilyn Suttle:
During a recent radio show interview, the host made a passing comment that struck a chord for me. She said something like this: Sometimes the biggest asset you bring to your company can become your most limiting factor. Since I do a great deal of work helping people discover and release limitations, her comment rang true.
Is it possible that the very thing that makes you an asset to your company can ultimately be a source of limitation? Can the best part of your efforts toward attracting and retaining customers backfire? And if so, what can you do to minimize or eliminate those limitations?
Let’s take a closer look:
Suppose your strength is relationship building. You are the one your company sends in to smooth over the most extreme cases of customer upset. You see it as challenging, maybe even exhilarating, holding the attitude, “You may be unhappy now, but I’m going to turn this situation around and have you loving this place.” Your coworkers think you’re a bit of a magician. Nice talent to have, yes?
Or suppose you are a visionary leader for your company. You are the person who sets the next level of goals. You have a natural ability to point the ship in the right direction, get everyone rallied to set sail, keep the vision forefront in people’s minds while continuously hitting your marks. Most would say your contribution to the workplace is priceless.
Or maybe you’re the Guru of Measurements. You understand numbers, facts, and statistics like no other. Your ability to zero in on the operational end of things keeps your company in the black while your competition is dipping in the red. What can possibly be limiting about owning and using those fine attributes of yours? How could it limit the growth of your company? How could it ever have a negative impact on customers?
Consider this:
Success is a long-term proposition. You don’t want one-time customers, you want long-term customers. You don’t want short-term success for your company, you want long-term success. To sustain long-term success, you need to step back and view yourself from a distance. Take a piece of paper and draw a small circle in the center of the page. Place a line through that circle. The line to the left of the circle is the past. The line to the right of the circle is the future. And, you guessed it – the circle is you in the present moment in time.
In the circle, take a good look at your talents. Notice how your strengths contribute to customer satisfaction and the overall success of your company. Notice what things you are responsible for that no one else in the company can do quite as well. Now look at the line to the right and move forward in time. What possible limitations do you see for the company, your customers, and yourself as you move forward? What happens when you are not there? Suppose you want to take a vacation, a leave of absence, or perhaps you are struck with a new and fascinating avenue of the business that you feel passionate about exploring, but that would require you to step out of what you’re currently doing? What if you won the lottery and decided to travel the world for a year? How would it impact your company and customers if you weren’t there for a while?
Here are three points to consider:
The need to control : Note the difference between being in control and needing control When you are working from your strengths and passionate about what you do, you become a natural leader and role model. You are in control of yourself and adaptable to change. On the other hand, needing control is limiting.
Parents experience this to the extreme while raising children. There comes a phase when it’s time to give up control and have the children do for themselves that which was once the parent’s job to do. It’s not particularly comfortable to watch someone do a poor job as part of the process of learning how to do something well. But, allowing them to do it themselves is a way that children are empowered to learn and grow. Plus, the parent is freed from doing day-to-day tasks that the child can manage. Refusal to think long-term leads to grown children who are ill-prepared to live on their own at college and beyond.
The same is true at work. It could very well be that you have brilliance at creating instant rapport with customers. You put them at ease like no other. It may seem a total waste of resources to have anyone but you deal with the most challenging customer service issues. But therein, you discover the limitation.
When you become indispensible at work, there are certainly good feelings that come from being needed. There may also be a certain sense of importance – but is that really good for you or your company? That need to control and be indispensible is also confiding and limiting. For you (and your business) to grow longterm, you need to empower those around you to handle things when you are not available.
Long-term planning: It’s both easy and logical for you to be put in charge of the activities at which you are brilliant. As your company grows and you feel the effects of economic rebound, there will be more demands on your time and energy. Be aware of the impact that new growth is having on your company and employees. Have a longterm succession plan that allows your star players to stay vibrant and excited about their job. Without it, burnout and resentments emerge. When key people leave the company, and no one is groomed to replace them, your customers will feel the impact. And today’s customers are less tolerant of companies that disappoint them. They know they can find someplace else to take their business when they don’t feel as if they’re being served by the best talent at your company.
What you don’t know, you can discover . . . if you want to: While interviewing the management at Paul Reed Smith Guitars, for our “Who’s Your Gladys?” book, one of their leaders said something quite profound. He said, “The more you want to know, the more you’ll find out.” He was referring to customer feedback. The same can be applied to yourself. Look at your current contribution to the longterm success of your business. Look at your long-range plan for customer retention and attraction. The more you want to know about sustainable success, the more you’ll find out. Since the human brain is bombarded by a tremendous amount of input, it has a natural mechanism that filters out anything considered unnecessary. For example, you may be completely unaware at this moment of your nose, because you’ve filtered it out as you’re reading this article. When you put your attention on a particular issue, (or your nose for that matter) your filters start letting through information about it. You’ve probably experience this phenomenon when buying a car. When you think about buying a blue Ford Fusion, you start seeing them everywhere. Start adding questions to your mind’s filter to let in new information.
Are your talents being utilized in a way that will lead to long-term customer retention and company-wide success? The more you want to know, the more you’ll find out. Take a close look at your succession plan. What would best support the overall success of your business and your professional growth as you look out 5 years, 10 years, 25 years? Notice what you can be doing now to support your growth and the sustainability of your company’s success over time.
Jess Wells, Editorial Director of Innovators Forum, and her team her guest bloggers interview experts, entrepreneurs and authors on how to run a small business better. To learn more about small business best practices and the technologies behind them, visit www.CiscoInnovators.com.