StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 23 – An Interview with Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 23 – An Interview with Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership explores how how executives and managers can transform their organizations through candid, meaningful dialogue with each other, their employees, and their customers. During our discussion, Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst “Best” Practices of Business Today and Founder and CEO of Fierce, Inc., shares with us her insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • what Fierce Leadership is
  • developing and using ‘squid eye‘ to recognize business practices that challenge individual and organizational success
  • engaging in ‘mineral rights‘ deep dive converations to gain full understanding of a situation including one’s personal contributions and impacts
  • the six worst ‘best’ business practices and their Fierce Leadership alternatives
  • how to promote Fierce Leadership and Fierce Converstations throughout one’s organization

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights Susan shares in Fierce Leadership and this special edition podcast are the additional resources accessible from her organization’s website at www.FierceInc.com and her books’ websites at www.FierceLeadership.com and www.FierceConversations.com. Susan’s book, Fierce Leadership, can be purchased by clicking here.

Complimenting Fierce Leadership, is Susan’s book, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time. Fierce Conversations can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership, is Founder and CEO of the global training company Fierce, Inc.. For over two decades, Susan has helped executives at companies such as Microsoft, Coke, Starbucks, Cisco, and Google transform their companies by teaching them how to engage in more vibrant dialogue with one another, their employees, and their customers. She is a globally recognized thought leader, the bestselling author of Fierce Conversations, and recipient of the 2008 Stevie award for Entrepreneur of the Year. To read Susan’s full biography, click here.
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Seven Secrets to Employee Engagement (Hint: It’s NOT about the Benjamins)

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If you’ve seen the movie Jerry Maguire, you’ll remember the scene where Tom Cruise asks Cuba Gooding, Jr., “What can I do for you?” Gooding says, “Show me the money.”

Many employers think that’s the key to employee engagement. But any company that THINKS you have to pour money on employees to get them engaged will write off employee engagement efforts during tough economic times. “We just can’t afford to do it right now,” they say.

[wcm_restrict]In fact, you can’t afford NOT to pay attention to engagement, especially when the wind is howling outside. Employee engagement scores regularly account for up to 50 percent of the variance in customer service scores. A disengaged employee can cost you 30 TIMES as much in safety-related incidents. And disengaged employees are over 85 percent more likely to leave.

A 2006 study by the Gallup Management Journal found that engaged employees make up an average 29 percent of a company’s workforce, leaving a startling 71 percent who are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.” (Cue offstage scream.)

Engagement comes not from dollars but from more personal factors. Here are seven things that will help your employees stay engaged for the long term:

  1. An employer who cares enough to listen. The best way to know what your employees need and expect is to ask them – and to listen carefully to their answers.
  2. Clear, consistent expectations. Vague policies and unclear expectations can make employees feel irritated, unsafe, even paranoid. And yes, disengaged. They click into survival mode instead of focusing on how to help the company succeed.
  3. A sense of the importance of their work. This has a greater impact on loyalty and customer service than all other factors COMBINED.
  4. Opportunities for advancement. The chance to work your way up the ladder is a tremendous incentive for productivity, bonding, and engagement.
  5. Good relationships with others in the workplace especially the supervisor. If that relationship is toxic, you can forget about asking the employee to put his shoulder to the wheel for the company.
  6. Regular feedback. If you want to keep them moving forward, give employees the occasional rudder report. And don’t forget positive feedback, which should ideally outnumber the negative by about 5 to 1.
  7. Celebration and rewards for success. Set realistic targets, then reward and celebrate when they are reached. And don’t wait for the end of a big project to celebrate. Pick landmarks along the way and go nuts when you hit them.

Moving from “The Company” to “Our Company”
The heart and soul of engagement is ownership. As long as your employees feel they are working to help YOU make YOUR company succeed, engagement will be low. Once you get them to see themselves as partners in the endeavor – making decisions, staying informed, sharing in the company’s ups and downs – everything changes. Engagement soars.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Roxanne Emmerich’s Thank God It’s Monday!: How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon bestseller. Roxanne is renowned for her ability to transform “ho-hum” workplaces into dynamic, results-oriented, “bring-it-on” cultures in a day. Listen to the free 60-second audio with teammates each Monday to clean up the craziness in your workplace and focus on getting massive results. Sign up today at www.ThankGoditsMonday.com.

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 21b – An Interview with Duane Sparks, author of Selling Your Price

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 21b – An Interview with Duane Sparks, author of Selling Your Price further explores how the Action Selling process is used to help clients understand they are not purchasing a commodity product but rather one that is highly differentiated by the value you and your company offer. During our discussion, Duane Sparks, author of Selling Your Price: How to Escape the Race to the Bargain Basement and Chairman and Founder of The Sales Board, shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • why buyers come to perceive products and services as commodities
  • why salespeople fall into the trap of accepting their client’s assertions that their products and services are commodities
  • what salespeople can to do differentiate their products and services
  • how salespeople can deal with buyers who are highly trained and skilled in negotiating on price in order to avoid the race to the bargain basement

Additional Information

In addition to the invaluable selling skills insight Duane shares in Selling Your Price and this special edition podcast, please visit his company’s Sales Training or Sales Management site. To discover why this selling skill is so effective at maximizing sales productivity, purchase Duane’s book: Selling Your Price.

Complimenting Selling Your Price, are Duane’s four other books on the consultative sales process including:


Read a Summary of the above Sales Books.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Duane Sparks, author of Selling Your Price, is Chairman and Founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based strategic sales training company that has trained and certified more than 350,000 salespeople in more than 3,000 groups in the system and skills of Action Selling. He has written five sales books, personally facilitated more than 300 Action Selling training sessions and continues to engage in the business and art of the strategic sales process. Read Duane’s full biography and the history of Action Selling Sales Management Training.
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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 22 – An Interview with Michael Bender, author of A Manager’s Guide to Project Management

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 22 – An Interview with Michael Bender, author of A Manager’s Guide to Project Management explores how executives should approach project management in order to enhance alignment and accountability to their organization’s vision, mission, goals, and values. During our discussion, Michael Bender, Founder and CEO of Ally Business Developers and author of A Manager’s Guide to Project Management: Learn How to Apply Best Practices shares his insights regarding:

  • a process for aligning projects with the organization’s vission, mission, goals, and values
  • frequency for rebalancing the corporate project portfolio
  • criteria and method for evaluating whether or not to discontinue a project
  • importance of accounting for unbudgeted activities when evaulating a project’s cost

Additional Information

In addition to the invaluable insights Mike shares in A Manager’s Guide to Project Management and this special edition podcast are the additional resources accessible from his Ally Business Developers website (www.AllyBusiness.com). Mike’s book, A Manager’s Guide to Project Management, published by FT Press can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

Michael Bender, author of A Manager’s Guide to Project Management, is Founder and CEO of Ally Business Developers, a consortium of world-class business, organizational, and professional development experts. Michael’s leadership and project and program management experience contributed to projects including the Hubble Space Telescope, NEXRAD – the Next Generation Weather Radar, and air traffic control systems for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan. He is an American Management Association speaker and guest speaker at DePaul University and the Project Management Institute. To read Mike’s full biography, click here.
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