Inspiring Your Team

When was the last time you were inspired by an email, a message, or a talk? In the last few years, there has been a strong trend toward electronic communication. 95 percent of communication happens by e-mail or other online messaging platforms, and much of it is tedious. Now consider this: a British museum study revealed that visitors only looked at paintings for an average of eight seconds. It’s in this demanding environment that leaders need to consider how to best communicate to capture attention. You have less than eight seconds!

Here are some unusual and imaginative ways you can capture attention and inspire your team:

1. Tell a Story. “I will always remember. . .” or “I wish you could have seen. . .” These phrases are memorable and capture imagination and excitement. Try it in your next meeting or talk.

2. Share a Picture. Variety catches attention. Try using a picture to capture and communicate one of your ideas. Snap a picture, add a caption, share it with your team.

3. Forget PowerPoint. It is hard to inspire via bulleted text. Run away from PowerPoint at all costs.

4. Avoid Lengthy E-mails. Get your people out of their inboxes. Experiment with e-mails that are short and to the point.

5. Remember News Clippings? If you see a powerful article in a magazine or in the Wall Street Journal, share it old-school style. Different stands out.

6. Be Okay with Messy. Don’t spend hours perfecting your talk, e-mail, or meeting. Teach your team that messy can be great and perfection isn’t often worth the investment of time.

7. Talk about Five Years into the Future. If your team does not know the destination, how can they enjoy the journey?

8. Make It Personal. Do your team and company know who you are? The more authentic you are, the greater connection you create. Capture a video from one of your retail sites, or when you are with a customer, give your personal reaction.

9. Listen to Yourself. When did you last play back a recording or video of yourself? I often ask the executives I work with to send me a recent talk so I can give them tips to improve how they inspire others.

10. Do You Understand and Believe? To be inspired you have to both understand and believe in the company direction. Before you inspire your team, you have to make sure you understand and believe yourself. Where do you and your team fit? Map where you and your team fit HERE. 

When was the last time you experimented with a new approach or asked for feedback about your communication? Pick one idea and try it this week.

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

The Unique Value Of Being A Teenage Entrepreneur

Empty chip packets shrink if you put them in the oven. 

If you then cover them in resin and drill a small hole in the top, you can attach a key ring and sell them. 

Trash then becomes valuable. Three British Pounds to be precise. 

It was 1989. I was 15. I was running my first company. 29 years ago or 250,000 hours ago. 

Last week I spoke to 300 teenage entrepreneurs at UCLA Anderson’s School of Management as part of Project Echo’s Entrepreneurial Bootcamp. It reminded me of my life as a teenage entrepreneur. 

Except I didn’t think of myself as one at the time. In fact, I only really started telling this story last year when the University of Wolverhampton invited me back on campus to tell my story since I was there studying Business and Finance at night school. 

As part of HSBC’s sponsored Young Enterprise, we got to raise money, design, produce, and sell products, including shrunken chip packet key rings which were incredibly popular!

I learned more being apart of this company, shrinking chip packets, making wooden jigsaws, and working with my class peers to make a profit than any school class or test. 

I started working at age 18 at a department store group called House of Fraser. I’m forever grateful for their sponsorship of my night classes at the University of Wolverhampton. I would apply what I had learned that evening the following day on the TV department sales floor. 

Having seen the creativity and grit of 300 teenagers last week, my long standing prediction of an explosion of teenage entrepreneurs may be just about to happen.

How are you bringing the voice of youth into your company?

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/

Why You Need To Tell People To Shush

The first time someone on my team told me to shush, I was stunned. I soon found out that she would regularly say, “Shush!” to her peers and executives. Her tone may have bristled a few, but her intent was clear. She needed silence to think or to just to get a word in between many boisterous executives. At the time I was leading a dynamic group of leaders and we were running fast, making acquisitions, and hiring across multiple countries rapidly—and I was failing as their leader because I was not creating the most readily available and free resource for my team: silence and space. That was many years ago, but the lessons of that story stuck with me with future teams I led, and now with the companies I work with. I advise executives on how to take their insane calendar, overscheduled life, and thunderous input overload and magically create more time so they can rapidly grow their business. It first starts with silence.

Here are my best tips to press the mute button for you and your team:

1. Start with you. Book silence sessions during regular work hours in your calendar and protect them ruthlessly from cancellation. Carve out a new routine, stick to it, and tell others why it is valuable for you.

2. Create silence in meetings. Who is the first to speak in your team meetings? If it is always you, then you are missing out on hearing what your team really thinks. If it is always one or two particular people, then they are unfairly dominating decisions, strategy, and opinions. Control the flow and participants in meetings.

3. Silence in the car. Try switching off all of the information, music, and distractions on your next drive and let your mind wander in peace. See where the silence takes you.

4. Start and end every business trip alone. It is tempting to book your business trips to minimize time away from the office, but you should do the opposite. Start your trip with a quiet meal alone to plan what you want to achieve and what impression you want to leave. Then end your trip with quiet reflection to capture your thoughts, and to decide what was successful and how you can replicate that success.

Once you practice these silence habits, you’ll soon realize how deafening the rest of your life is. Look at your calendar right now, where can you prioritize a time slot for your first silence session?

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val