Through the last several posts, we’ve taken a hard look at just how important it is to have candid conversations with our team members when they’re not keeping it between the ditches rather than ducking the issue and hoping things will get better on their own. While we’ve looked at some very specific examples of what works, and some that just don’t, there’s one more thing we can do to increase the effectiveness of those often difficult conversations!

In a LinkedIn article I published recently called How THEY Want to Be Treated, I touched on how much The Platinum Rule applies in these situations. If you’ve been reading these posts for more than a few weeks, you know where that reference will lead us over the next few. If that’s not ringing any bells and you think that was just another one of my grammatical errors, put The Platinum Rule in the search box here on our blog and you’ll find all you need to get up to speed in a hurry…

Over the last decade, I’ve seen dozens of situations where a senior or incredibly skilled team member has chosen not to exceed expectations. The challenge in most of those instances really boiled down to that team member actually choosing to not even meet the expectations the organization (or business owner, or their team members) had clearly defined for the role they were in.

As we looked at how failing to exceed, or even meet, expectations can impact customer retention and the organization’s overall profitability through the last several posts, it was extremely clear that average performance won’t be what separates any of our businesses from the competition. This is just as true when it comes to the culture we build internally - how tasks get done even when a customer will likely never have direct exposure to them…

Let’s be honest, highly skilled team members are hard to come be regardless of the ups and downs of the economy. That often results in...