The first week of August, I had the opportunity to attend The Global Leadership Summit, hosted at Crossroads Church in Loveland. The Summit is a worldwide conference designed for leaders from every walks of life to get better and embrace the grander vision of their business or organization. I learned a lot from 13 very gifted speakers, and from that had four key takeaways.
1. Everyone can be a leader
The Global Leadership Summit teaches that business professionals, teachers, students, athletes, stay-at-home moms, chefs, doctors, nurses, pilots, and everyone in between has the opportunity to lead people. Within your place of work, we can all strive to make positive changes to become more successful at what we do.
Photo Credit: Willow Creek
2. We are ALL in the business of customer service
Horst Schulze, CEO of Capella Hotel Group gave an inspiring talk on the importance of creating world class service in your business.
Service starts the instant you make contact with your customers, and the first 10 seconds of your conversation are essential to start building a trusting relationship. We often don’t realize that when dealing with customers, whether we are project managers, secretaries, whoever their first point of contact is… how we treat them affects their overall view of your company. Strive to be patient, kind, and go above and beyond to create a positive experience.
Photo Credit: Willow Creek
3. Both positive and constructive feedback is important
Sheila Heen, Founder of the Triad Consulting Group, spoke about the positive and negative sides to feedback and how we can improve as both givers and receivers of it.
She taught that feedback shows up 100% of the time, regardless of the company or organization; whether it is formal, informal, spoken or unspoken. How we give feedback to others influences learning and employee engagement.
We can all get better at receiving feedback in the workplace. When receiving constructive criticism, it is up to us to learn and get value from it, even when the feedback seems unfair.
As humans, we have two categories of human needs:
- We need to learn and grow
- We need to feel accepted, respected and valued for what we do
If you are givers of feedback, consider those two points when talking with your employees. Constructive feedback will tell them what areas they can work on, and positive feedback will allow them to feel appreciated, and will push them to want to work harder and get better.
“Appreciation keeps us motivated, coaching helps us get better, evaluation lets us know where we stand.” -Sheila Heen
Photo Credit: Willow Creek
4. Learning beats knowing
Liz Wiseman teaches leadership to executives and emerging leaders around the world. She believes that we are at our best when we know our very least… when we are rookies.
Think back to your last rookie moment. How did you feel? What did you do when you didn’t know what to do?
We tend to learn the most when we are desperate. When we are new to something, we find ourselves asking a lot of questions, and working through trial and error to figure things out. It’s okay to admit what you don’t know, because you’ll never learn until you ask.
“It’s not what we know, it’s how fast we learn that matters.” -Liz Wiseman
Keep asking questions, keeping pushing to learn more. We can always get better.
“Everyone wins when a leader gets better.” -Bill Hybels