PERSONAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
HOW CAN YOU SPOT A LEADER?
In recruitment, you get to know the signs of someone who can manage others effectively. Good leadership is a quality that every growing business needs to drive success but how do you spot it? Dan Barfoot, Operations Manager at CMD Recruitment, says you should consider these key questions of your candidate, to work out if they possess leadership qualities.
|
Can they be inspirational about a goal?
What’ s crucial in leadership, is getting the people working for you to buy into a shared vision – whether that’ s in the army – to fight together, on a construction site to build to a high quality, or in an office, to provide an outstanding service. Workers on the shop floor, or in the call centre or representing your company in a pitch, will make or break your business depending on their motivation – so being able to inspire others is essential for a leader.
From a worker’ s perspective, when it looks like the leader is just there to make life difficult, to take credit for your work or to undermine you, then you can expect problems in your business.
|
How do they react to stress? Stressful problems are what leaders deal with day in and day out – interpersonal problems, failures in tasks, confrontations, testing conditions, unexpected challenges. So, what coping strategies and problemsolving abilities does an applicant have? You are looking for the mindset that says,‘ every problem can be an opportunity.’ For recruiting businesses, challenges can be set at interviews or difficult questions can be asked – designed to catch the interviewee out of their comfort zone. The real leaders will find innovative solutions or cope without flapping. There may be clues in someone’ s background – maybe they have sought challenges in a sport, or have had personal challenges to overcome. Those who refuse to panic at any hurdle and instead calmly rely on their intelligence – those are the ones you want heading up projects. |
Can they really communicate to different kinds of people?
We have heard a lot about Emotional Intelligence or EI, in business in recent times, as a good indicator of someone who makes things work. People can have very different approaches, dispositions and peers in life. To get on with, understand and manage a large group of people you need a degree of empathy and to be able to adapt to people who see things in a different way to you. If you can still break through and engage effectively with people who are different in their outlook to you and others in the team, then you have that X factor of leadership.
|
|
Are they able to differentiate between what is important and what’ s not?
It’ s all too easy to get tangled up in tasks that are meaningless to the overarching goal. Good leaders are often visionaries who always see the big picture and keep on target towards it. Having 20 meetings about other meetings, working on details that add no value to a goal, wasting time on irrelevant problems – these are pointless exercises which will bore and drain a team. You do not want someone who cannot forge ahead because they have created a swamp of red tape or they simply manage the office rather than lead the team. A good leader creates momentum.
For more info: www. cmdrecruitment. com
01225 805080
|
The essence of good customer service
By David Rigby, Smart Coaching and Training
Every customer service professional is the key touch point in the customer’ s experience with any brand. Customer Service is...
“ the act of taking care of a customer’ s needs by providing professional, helpful assistance before, during and after they buy a product( or service), and rendering this assistance in a manner that enables the customer to have an easy and enjoyable experience”( Institute of Customer Service)
David Rigby, Smart Coaching & Training
Among their list of skills required to do the job well are:
• Good communication skills
• Empathy
• Knowledge of body language and active listening
“ A good understanding of body language as well as the art of active listening is necessary. Without these skills, you cannot communicate effectively with customers.”
But nothing is said about interpreting what you see. A C-me colour profile will tell you how you prefer to be( introverted or extraverted, detailed or intuitive), and how you like to be communicated with.
Using this knowledge you can also use your skills to interpret body language and actively listen for key words and characteristics such as:
• Do people glaze over when you try to give them product details – but you insist anyway?
• When you ask customers to imagine what it will be like when they are in their new car and the neighbours are watching? Does that get a positive response?
• Does the effect on the environment affect your customer?
• Are you bored when the customer wants to know every detail in the product brochure and asks for more?
• Can you tell whether this is decision day? – the customer has spoken to you five times already – so you avoid when he comes in – and another assistant gets the sales commission?
Understanding yourself and learning the skills to understand others is the difference between not getting the commission or clinching that sale.
For more info: www. smartcoachingtraining. co. uk
0333 566 0067
@ SCT4success
Some tips:
1. Ask someone you trust to observe how you are and what you say, your language and gestures, in a chosen interaction and see what they say about how you tend to communicate.
2. Watch a sales person in action – what do they say, how do they hold themselves, how do they move, what is their tone and manner of speaking? And …. what was the result of their selling effort?
3. Do your C-me Colour Profile – it will give you the best insights into your own preferred ways of being and doing, and some ideas and clues as to how to better negotiate with and interact with your customers.
14 THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2017