Turn negative employees into positive ones

Conversations – especially those dealing with emotional issues – rarely follow a logical pattern or system. Every conversation is a little different.

You can’t shoe-horn a conversation into a pattern or system. What you can do, however, is develop a method for getting the other person’s feedback and moving toward a desired result. This five-part conversation method and system has worked for many managers when they’re seeking a change in behavior or performance. A step-by-step example of dealing with someone who’s always negative and critical of others’ ideas:

1. ‘When you … I feel …” You can use this to set up the problem: “When you say, ‘That’s a dumb idea,’ I feel as if you’re being disrespectful to the person who offered the idea, and you discourage others from speaking up.”

2. Wait for their input. This is one of those points when your silence can be golden and when you can put into practice one of the “don’ts” we described earlier – “Don’t feel as if you have to fill every silence.”

Let your “When you” sentence hang and wait for a response. And here’s where it gets a little tricky, because you can’t be certain of the response.

The person may deny it, in which case you’ll have to give examples: “I can describe at least three times in the last week …” Or the person may say, sincerely, “I didn’t realize I was doing that.”

Sometimes, too, the person will offer an excuse – valid or invalid. For instance, the response may be, “I’ve been losing a lot of sleep because of migraine headaches, so that may account for some of it.”

If you believe the excuse is valid, take steps to help or accommodate the employee. That’s what supervisors are supposed to do. Even if you do that, you still can move on to the next step.

3. “I would like …” Here’s where you describe, specifically, the change in behavior you’d like to see: “I would like you to come to the next meeting with at least three ideas of your own on how we can improve.”

That sets the standard and results in positive terms: “This is what I want you to do.” Instead of “This is what I want you to stop doing.”

Consider how that works in any number of conversations involving performance or behavior. For instance, the person who’s always
coming in late.

Negative: “I would like you to stop coming in late.”

Positive: “I would like you to be on time every day.”

4. “Because …” In almost any situation, you have to provide a reason for requesting change (other than “because I said so”).

Again, try to stay positive: “Because I know you have a lot of good ideas, and I think we’d all benefit from hearing them.”

That beats the negative attack mode: “Because we’re tired of hearing your criticisms.”

5. “What do you think?” You’re asking straight-out for feedback here, and you’re doing so with more than one purpose:

• You don’t want the person to walk away with the feeling that he or she has been given some iron-fisted orders.
• You can move toward a commitment from the person to change.
• You’ll get a real feel about whether the conversation worked and you’re headed toward a desired goal.

Try this system the next time you’re in a difficult conversation, and see how it helps to get you where you want to go.

10 reasons why your business should be utilizing social media

Now more than ever, it’s important to connect with your customers.In short, if you don’t have a social media strategy, then you’re already behind your competitors. Here are 10 reasons why your business should be utilizing social media:

1. Social networking sites have overtaken porn as the Internet’s #1 activity.

2. Twitter has seen an increase of almost 1500% over the last year.

3. Two out of three people on the PLANET visit social networks.

4. Time spent on social networks is growing at three times the overall internet rate.

5. 100 Million YouTube videos are watched every day where every minute 20 hours of video is uploaded.

6. More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day where more than 1.5 million pieces of content are shared.

7. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 8th most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.

8. If YouTube were a country, it would be the 3rd most-populated place in the world.

9. We are at 3.8 billion tweets and counting.

10. 68% of Internet users have used social networks, while only 65.1% have used email.

Show Notes: 3/21/09

The Orlando Business Report: SHOW #1 Original Airing: 3/21/09

Listen / Download the show here:

• Segment #1: Proper Forms of Business Communication
• Segment #2: Ron Lattrell from Diamond Pawn
• Segment #3: Mike Finn, Sticky Films & Fund Education Now
• Segment #4: Power Points with Steve Urquhart: Small Business Stimulus

Ron Lattrell, Diamond Pawn: http://diamondpawn.com/

Mike Finn, Sticky Films:

• www.youtube.com/user/fundeducationnow
• www.facebook.com/pages/fundeducationnoworg

Power Points with Steve Urquhart:

I. The basics …

A. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009. It is an unprecedented effort to jumpstart our economy, create or save millions of jobs, and to address long-neglected challenges so our country can thrive in the 21st century.

B. The Recovery Act takes a comprehensive approach and attacks several problems facing small businesses at once by reducing fees, guaranteeing a greater share of certain loans, expanding capacity in the Microloan program, providing new loans to help small businesses keep their doors open through economic hardship, as well as new mechanisms to help unfreeze the secondary markets for SBA-backed loans.

C. The bill provides $730 million to the Small Business Administration (SBA) and makes changes to the agency’s lending and investment programs so that they can reach more small businesses that need help.

·         $375 million for temporary fee reductions or eliminations on SBA loans and increased SBA guaranteed shares, up to 90 percent for certain loans (saving businesses about $2000 on a $100,000 loan)

·         $255 million for a new loan program to help small businesses meet existing debt payments, helping small businesses consolidate their debts — something it wasn’t allowed to do in the past.

·         $30 million for expanding SBA’s Microloan program, enough to finance up to $50 million in new lending and $24 million in technical assistance grants to microlenders

·         $15 million for expanding SBA’s Surety Bond Guarantee program

The bill also authorizes refinancing for certain SBA loans so borrowers can expand their businesses on favorable terms, and expands leverage capability for Small Business Investment Companies.

D. The main areas of focus for investment include:

·       Infrastructure

·       “Green jobs”

·       Health care

·       Education

There should be plenty of opportunities for small businesses to contract with the government: By congressional mandate, the government aims to award 23% of all contract dollars across all agencies to small businesses every year. (State and local governments have their own rules; in Florida you can visit the Department of Management Services Web site to learn about contracting with the state of Florida – http://dms.myflorida.com/contracts and http://dms.myflorida.com/business_operations/state_purchasing)

As a small business, you must first find out what federal or state agencies, if any, are buying their products or services and then network with the right people at those agencies. This can involve submitting lengthy proposals, and can take weeks or months to hear whether a company has won the contract. Small businesses are often at a disadvantage compared with larger businesses that have a staff well-versed in the intricacies of government contracts.

According to Shelby Scarbrough, of the Virginia based Entrepreneurs’ Organization, “Many times it is better for a small business to start out as a subcontractor on government projects to get a sense of what government work is like.”

In the month of April, the SBDC will offer a series of seminars on contracting with the government, including federal procurement, bids and proposals, subcontracting and teaming … http://www.bus.ucf.edu/sbdc/seminars_gov_descriptions.html

II. Outlook for recovery?

A. By most economic indicators, things will get worse before they get better

B. That being said, I anticipate that we will see the bottom of the stock market and close to a bottom of the housing market in 2009

C. Some parts of Florida are going to take longer to recover, because not all parts of the state have the diversity that the Metro Orlando area has

III. What else?

A. Check out Recovery.gov to learn more about the high level goals

B. Go to sba.gov/recovery and sba.gov/stimulus to learn more about the programs discussed here today

C. And make sure that you plug in with the Small Business Development Center  www.sbdcorlando.com  and the Disney Entrepreneurship Center for local program support (the SBDC just held a workshop this week called “Business Strategies during a Down Economy” and other events are posted on their site)

D. This plan also has provisions for hiring and training staff, including tax credits for hiring disadvantaged youth or unemployed veterans.  In our next segment, I will talk about Florida’s workforce system and investments in talent to compete in the 21^st Century.