Do you care to elevate Customer Experiences?

During a recent corporate training, an executive raised the question, “Can you teach somebody to care?” The general consensus was surprising.

How much we care on any given day at work is relative or dependent on our emotional state at that time. In other words, our levels of care fluctuate. What is not relative is the correlation between caring and Customer Experience Index scores. CSI scores will influence your company's reputation and determine customer loyalty. When customers feel disrespected or insignificant, they simply don't return... furthermore, their reviews will effect your profits and brand strength.

The majority of executives in attendance agreed that the art of caring could not be taught. People either care or they don’t. How disappointing.

So how do you fix the problem of non-caring employees other than firing them, because on-boarding new hires costs time and money. There is a more effective solution. It consists of not only hiring the right people, but also providing great training. Teach them these 5 simple behavioral tools and they will act as if they truly care.

Leadership must first establish a culture of caring and happiness as the barometer. Then, provide those non-caring employees with actionable behavioral tools to reinforce the culture. Tools that when implemented, give the appearance of a person that does care. Read about the five tools that will make your employees deliver extraordinary experiences.

Vital Germaine

President ENGAGE

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6 Relevant Company Culture Stats You Need to Know About.

Your culture defines your brand.  Establishing an environment that promotes and enables strong emotional connections amongst your team is crucial to the success of your organization.  It starts with executive leadership and trickles down to your interns.

Healthy and engaging cultures are about happy employees that are unified with themselves and your mission and vision. Strong and clear communication channels, and a positive attitude of collaboration and accountability fueled by trust need to be created. 

It sounds simple, yet many companies fail or overlook the value and impact their culture has on their bottom line and brand strength.

Here are the fascinating results of a survey of more than 1,400 North American CEOs and CFOs, executed by Shiva Rajgopal, an accounting professor at Columbia Business School.

1. Only 15% said their firm’s corporate culture was where it needed to be.

2. More than 90% said that culture was important at their firms.

3. 92% said they believed improving their firm’s corporate culture would improve the value of the company.

4. More than 50% said corporate culture influences productivity, creativity, profitability, firm value and growth rates.

5. Turnover at companies with a poor culture is 48%

6. Turnover at companies with a great culture is just 14%

ENGAGE is renowned for its ability to inspire teams to see beyond the ego, embrace differences and deny inhibitions. The result for you the client is a more engaged, more focused and dynamic, collaborative team effort. This promotes problem-solving, increases produtivity and efficiency. It also lays a foundation for a healthier and happier work environment where everybody can thrive and thereby strengthen your brand and increase revenue.

WE BUILD HAPPIER TEAMS AND TRANSFORM CULTURES.

CONTACT US TODAY FOR A PROPOSAL.

Thank you, Vital Germaine

President, ENGAGE Consulting

Why creativity is crucial to your organization's success.

1. Of CEOs polled, 60% agreed that creativity was the most important skill to have in a leadership role.

2. Companies that foster creativity are 3.5 times more likely to outperform their competitors regarding revenue growth?

3. 43% of business executives that participated in a 2014 PwC study agreed that innovation is a “competitive necessity” for their organization.

4. A 2016 study by Nielson shows that 63% of customers like it when manufacturers offer new products.

5. 82% of companies believe there is a strong connection between creativity and business results.

Innovation mindset.

A fundamental component of growth and innovation is a creative mindset, whereby perspectives and boundaries are broadened, attitudes are changed, horizons are expanded, scaling established and relevance maintained. This in turn sponsors the production of new and relevant ideas and methodologies. Without creativity there can be no differentiation. The modern consumer is engaged by the new, the faster and the better. 

Gallup Chairman and CEO, Jim Clifton said in a Fast Company article that, "To stay competitive, we have to lead the world in per-person creativity." 

Innovation is no easy achievement. It takes courage to implement, let alone make a part of your cultural DNA. It's your strongest differentiator! It is not an overnight outcome, but the result of ongoing and repeated exploration, risk-taking, mistakes. Organizations must have a pulse on the needs and pain-points of the modern consumer and adapt accordingly. The modern consumer desires, if not demands technology and innovation to improve and simplify their lives. 

The fact is every successful business needs innovation and a forward thinking culture in order to compete and stay relevant in todays faster-than-ever, changing business trends. Clients are hungrier than ever to find that next best thing. Creative ingenuity provides a platform upon which to shape that next best thing – be it developing memorable sensory experiences for your customers, or implementing ground-breaking marketing and sales strategies - even identifying new markets, or creating defining products that will separate you from your competitors.

CLICK ON THE VIDEO TO LEARN MORE

At ENGAGE build happier, forward thinking cultures that elevate customer experiences and increase company profits.

We are renowned for our ability to inspire teams to see beyond the ego, embrace differences and deny inhibitions. The result for you the client is a more engaged, more focused and dynamic, collaborative team effort. This promotes problem-solving, while increasing produtivity and efficiency. It also lays a foundation for a healthier and happier work environment where everybody can thrive and thereby strengthening your brand and increasing revenue.

BOOK US TODAY FOR YOUR NEXT EVENT.

KEYNOTES AND TRAININGS BY VITAL GERMAINE PRESIDENT OF ENGAGE

Becoming a better leader through communication skills.

I recently experienced a very unique and memorable Leadership Excursion. What made it so memorable is that horses were both the teacher and the student. The experience reinforced the power and impact of our non-verbal communication.

Here are 3 crucial take aways that will make you a stronger leader and more effective communicator. 

1.    Self-awareness

The Horsemanship Leadership Excursion began with the trainer (Kaitlyn), and owner Kri, helping us understand the fragility in developing a strong bond between the horse and the trainer. Be trustable, likable and relatable - this definitely applies in real world scenarios. Each horse is very unique, as are humans. Both the horse and the human participants are observed in regards to their characteristic strengths and weaknesses. That information is shared to help build self awareness (emotional intelligence), with the objective that leaders and employees can grow and improve their skills and clarity of communication and elevate engagement.

An organic synergy needed to be developed between horse and trainer, with the horse being very sensitive to all levels of the trainer’s energy and personality. The stronger and more streamlined the synergy or relationship is, the greater the odds of success… perhaps this sounds just like the workplace and client experiences you live.

 2.    Clarity and Simplicity

For those of you familiar with Albert Merhabian, you will know that 55% of communication is body language, and only 7% are words, with the remaining 38% based on facial expressions or tone of voice. Most of us confuse our colleagues because our words and facial expressions don’t fully align with what our body is saying. We complicate the communication with unnecessary information. If Mehrabian’s 7%-38%-55% rule is true, then how often have I (you) potentially confused team members through incongruent communication.

Miscommunication costs organizations money!

David Grossman reported in “The Cost of Poor Communications” that a survey of 400 companies with 100,000 employees each cited an average loss per company of $62.4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees. Debra Hamilton asserted, in her article “Top Ten Email Blunders that Cost Companies Money,” that miscommunication cost even smaller companies of 100 employees an average of $420,000 per year.

 A Watson Wyatt study found that companies that communicate most effectively are more than 50% more likely to report turnover levels below the industry average compared with only 33% for the least effective communicators.

3.    Anticipation

The horse trainer highlighted that the major component of effective interaction and “teambuiling” was her need to anticipate the horses behavior. This made me think of how great leaders are sensitive/aware to the pulse of their workforce. It allows them to make needed adjustments ahead of time, minimizing roadblocks or loss of enthusiasm. Equally, in order for business and organizations to remain relevant and competitive, they must be fully aware of shifts in markets and trends… they must anticipate on all levels.

Bring it together. Implement these 3 steps and experience a significant improvement in all your personal and business relationships. Employee productivity and company efficiency will also increase.

THANK YOU

Vital Germaine

President of ENGAGEteams360

Top-selling author, Vital Germaine is also Las Vegas' most dynamic keynotes speaker and corporate trainer. His sessions are an experience designed to inspire extraordinary performance. BOOK VITAL TODAY for:

• KEYNOTES

• EXECUTIVE TRAINING

• EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT

• WORKSHOPS

• BREAK-OUT SESSIONS

https://engageteams360.com/communication

Life lessons

There are many lessons I learned during my years at Cirque du Soleil... some of them I now use to inspire as a speaker because they relate and lend to the business world. Other lessons focus on who we are as individuals, as humans. All the lessons have helped me grow as a person and I gadly share them.

One of the biggest take aways from my 5 years in the company were the lesson learned about integrity and being authentic - being true to who we are and not being afraid of our individuality or expressing it; qualities Cirque thrived on and inspired us to be, encouraged us to do, including being CHILDLIKE and in the moment.

Here is an excerpt from the sequel to FLYING WITHOUT A NET (still yet unnamed and close to publication) - this little "tease" gives a hint as to one of those many lessons.

CHAPTER 13 ~ The Cirque Audition… continued ~

There I stood below the trapeze; confused—a part of me fearless, the other half trembling.

The first part of the Cirque du Soleil audition had been a whirlwind of exploration, discovery, some really crazy shit, and a sturdy reminder to let go of conformity, feel and express without inhibition. Debbie Brown’s creative insanity left me none the wiser, only more curious and eager to play, be silly and have fun at the expense of the clowns, midgets and sword-swallowers I thought lived at the back in trailers.

The coach, Pierre, and his quiet assistant whose name I don’t remember, placed me into a harness. It fit snug around the waist. It squeezed my inner thighs and everything in between. They attached the belt to the bungee cords by a clip that mountain climbers use.

Pierre began my crash course like he had done to the other dancers...

...Instead of dancing up there as the other dancers had done, I played like a child on Christmas day. I made up several silly spur of the moment moves: the suspended swimming frog, followed by the flying monkey, ending with the slow motion astronaut and the seventies aerial robot. I went from zero to genuine clown in under six seconds.

 “It’s fun, non?” asked Pierre.

Debbie and Pierre congratulated me.

I had apparently captured their attention, imagination and curiosity despite having no idea what I was doing. It sometimes pays to be vulnerable and authentic and just do without a plan or a sense of direction—to be spontaneous regardless of circumstance—to reconnect with one’s forgotten inner child and just be.

"It's not always easy to be in the moment, authentic and let go of your inhibitions to be free, to be vulnerable and childlike. But when I do, good things happen!"

Vital Germaine

HAPPY MINDSET_RICHER LIVING

Actively disengaged employees cost the US economy $500 billion annually, simply because they are not happy!

• Is your company culture, or your leadership, remotely contributing to this statistic?

• Are you inspiring greatness, peak performance, collaboration and happiness from your employees.

• Is your team as engaged as they should or could be?

The mental wellness of your work force and company culture has such profound effects on your company's bottom line.  It's simple!  When we’re happy, we’re simply better. We’re better leaders, better lovers, better parents, employees, friends… better everything.

Have you ever noticed that when you are happy, things fall into a place a little easier: the sky's a little bluer. You don't notice all the red lights on the way to work - in fact, there are no red lights. When our mindset is positive, we have more clarity, more energy, more focus and of course more confidence. WE BECOME BETTER LEADERS... BETTER HUMAN BEINGS.

The math behind a happier mindset. Happy, forward thinking companies are up to %20 more profitable according to Gallup.  

There is sadly not enough happiness in the workplace.

According to a Gallup, who surveyed 25 million employees in a 189 different countries, to determine employee satisfaction and engagement, concluded that 1 in 2 employees are not happy at work! 

By inspiring relevant paradigm shifts within yourself as well as your company culture, these "unhappy" facts can be turned around very easily. The change will stimulate personal and professional growth and benefits.

On a spiritual level, one could say HAPPINESS is a question of vibrating at a higher frequency. On a chemical or scientific level, it's about stimulating the production of key hormones like, Serotonin, Oxytocin and my favorite, Phenylathamine (chocolate!!!).  Be it spiritual or scientific, happiness is in part due to mindset, lifestyle, attitude and perspective. It's the result of a series of choices; but there is more than that (for another blog).

Is your leadership stimulating happiness and satisfaction in your team, thus maximizing their contribution and impact to the relevance and growth your company (or your own life)? If so, SMILE and be happy - stay calm and carry on :)

If this blog was of value, please feel welcome to borrow and/or share. 

THANK YOU.