Right on Dude! Follow Through and Follow Up: 2 Keys to Success

Kris Jenkins had it. Michael Jordan had it…many times over. Even Jeff Spicoli had it, if you consider Mr. Hand’s desire for Spicoli to merely show up for class, even if having pizza delivered to class wasn’t part of the deal.

What is “it”, you ask? Follow through, and its twin, follow up.

I’m not one to rant, though I will if given the opportunity. It depends on the topic. As you can see, I’m writing about two basic, yet shockingly absent, keys to…well just about anything: follow through and follow up. Ok, so this is about to shift into a rant. I do so unapologetically, as I believe you’ll agree that it’s rant-worthy.

Before I jump in with both feet, I should point out that none of what follows is fabricated for the sake of the post. I’m a storyteller, and love a good piece of fiction as much as the next person. That said, this post is, unfortunately, non-fiction masquerading as horror, grotesquely formed with a seemingly endless supply of appalling rubbish. Commence rant.

Obligatory Thor GIF via Giphy

 

Sorry Yoda: Only “Do”, Never “Do Not”

Raise your hand if you’ve heard the expression, “Do what you say you’re going to do”. Yeah, me too. And so has just about everyone else, from Generation Z to Baby Boomers. So, if we’ve all heard this and know it’s meaning, why is the action part – “do” – so glaringly lacking?

Follow through and follow up are two keys to success in both your both personal and professional lives. As a teenager, you proudly carried the flag of anti-tyranny rebellion, protesting any request (all of which were, like, totally unreasonable) from your parents. You learned what follow through means when you found yourself “unfairly” grounded. “I’ll never treat MY kids like that,” you growled as you skulked away to your room.

Fast forward to your adult life. Maybe you’ve married and produced some kids. Life gets busy, but not too busy to forgo disciplining your kids for whatever treasonous act they’ve committed (like leaving dishes on the dinner table). As you swing the hammer of discipline like Thor, and hear your hellion of a child shout, “I’ll never treat MY kids like that,” a feeling of déjà vu sweeps over. Wait, what’s that? Now I’m showing my kids what it means to follow through?

In your personal life, follow through means standing behind something you say. “If you don’t do your homework, you lose (insert device).” Few threats draw a line in the sand like that of taking away your kid’s device(s). It’s also the line that is challenged more than raptors testing the fences in Jurassic Park. Fail to follow through on this promise and you’ll end up with a T-Rex sized problem.

Always Be Closing (Following Up/Through)

Follow through and follow up in business and your professional life are two skills that, while not hard to do in reality, seem to be as fleeting as the evidence supporting the existence of the elusive Sasquatch. Sidebar: I keep an open mind…and let’s leave it at that. But I digress.

As Chris Farber once wrote, and something I strongly believe: EVERYONE in a company is in sales/business development. What about development or compliance, you say? Whether it’s building new functionality or managing risk and regulations, every team within a firm has a sales responsibility in that all ultimately serve clients. Fail to follow through on a client request, and whoosh, kiss that client (and likely others) goodbye. Flip side…deliver what they want and make them happy, and they’ll continue to buy your products or services.

Follow through and follow up are core competencies for successful business developers, across a wide range of roles, including corporate sales, account management, relationship management, and recruiting. Most sales take place at, or after the fifth contact with a prospect, so why not continue to follow up with your prospect until at least that point? If you tell your prospect you’ll provide something, you’d better follow through. Do it.

Filling the Gap

In the first sentence above, I mentioned recruiting. In many posts and updates I read on LinkedIn, and in conversation with colleagues, a common theme arises: a lack of follow-up from a recruiter. Someone I know well has been approached by dozens of recruiters. After an initial contact and perhaps an introductory call, only a handful followed up or followed through. The trail ran cold with no further contact whatsoever, despite follow-up by my friend. That’s no way to run a people-focused business.

Fair or not, this assessment is obvious, given the visibility of the recruiting profession. It’s a sales, business development, and relationship management role that sits in clear view, considering the number of people looking for new gigs. How hard is it to fire off a quick note to show someone they matter?

I follow up or follow through with whatever I’ve been asked to deliver, and I do so in a reasonable amount of time. What’s reasonable? Depends. One key to successful follow up and follow through: setting proper expectations. This is a topic for another post, but suffice it say: if you don’t manage expectations, you’ll find it tough to follow up or follow through timely.

Do: follow through and follow up. Don’t: be a Sasquatch.

 

 

Staying Cool: 5 Reasons to Be Cooler Than The Other Side of the Pillow

Image by memegenerator.net

The Most Interesting Man in the World implores us to “Stay thirsty, my friends.” There are many hilarious memes with variations of the Most Interesting Man in the World’s “I don’t always…” theme. One of my favorites is “I don’t always drop ice cubes on the floor, but when I do, I shamelessly kick them underneath the fridge.” Comedy gold aside, there is a real life lesson, adapted from the famous Dos Equis pitchman’s directive: staying cool in the face of adversity.

If you watched the NFL playoffs this past weekend, the Pittsburgh-Cincinnati game in particular, you saw the Bengals author an epic implosion. While we can argue the merits of the plays, calls or non-calls during the last two minutes of the game, what isn’t debatable is that the Bengals came unglued at the worst possible moment. Benefitting from two personal fouls against the undisciplined Bengals, the Steelers gained 30 yards of field position without a second coming off the clock. After the Steelers kicked the game winning field goal, the Bengals blamed everyone but themselves for the stunning loss. Needless to say, Cincinnati did not stay cool in the face of adversity.

When you’re part of a team, you can’t be an undisciplined hothead. It will end up costing you and your team at some point. If you’re the team leader (coach, manager, supervisor or whatever), you have to keep your team in control and on task. In the game, Bengals coach Marvin Lewis failed to control his team, and the result speaks for itself. I coach my youth baseball, and even at the 10 year-old age (or especially at this age, depending who you ask), keeping my team focused and not unraveling when things inevitably go awry is critical to its success and the kids’ developing life skills.

With this in mind, five benefits of staying cool, whether you’re part of a team or its leader:

1. Keeps you focused on the big picture

It’s not often in sports, business or life that everything goes as planned. Obstacles will arise and challenges will emerge that threaten the objective. When you stay cool, you’re able to manage these distractions in a way that doesn’t compromise the primary goal.

2. Shows strength and character

This is especially true for team leaders, who lead by example, in one way or another. How you deal with adversity will filter down to the troops, and they will respond accordingly. As part of a team, by staying cool, you become a much more valuable resource to the team’s leader and an example for others.

3. Demonstrates leadership

For better or worse, team members will follow their leaders and mimic the behavior they see. By keeping calm when responding to adversity, you show the team the stability many will need when in managing the situation. Overreacting tends to produce difficult-to-reverse decisions, or at the least, decisions that result in people questioning your ability to lead.

4. Promotes accountability

Staying cool in the face of adversity allows you to acknowledge the situation and respond in a positive fashion, without attempting to cast blame. People instinctively want to help others, so when you’re able to keep calm, you’ll be able to accept responsibility which will endear you to others, and elicit their help.

5. Advancement opportunity

In sports, business and life, people that stay cool are respected, valued and rewarded. We’ve often heard one or more variations of “…is a pressure player, and plays his/her best when the spotlight is the brightest.” The same applies in business and life. When you can stay cool, you show the type of leadership that people appreciate and will follow.

By no means am I saying that it’s easy to stay cool and focused. I can appreciate the frustration of seeing things crumble before your eyes, when you’ve worked hard to get to that point. We’re human beings, and for whom emotions and rationale thought separate us from the rest of the creatures on the planet. I’m also not advocating that we transform into cold, emotionless robots. However, by staying cool, we help not only ourselves, we help others too.

As such, and in a nod to the Most Interesting Man in the World: Stay Cool, My Friends.

 

Like Fingernails On A Chalkboard

Word usage, or more accurately, improper word usage, can undermine your credibility in communicating with employees, colleagues, clients and prospects. It happens with an alarming regularity, ranging from small blogs to global company newsletters, all with equally off-putting results. I considered the humor in writing this post with brutally incorrect word usage, but the writer in me would have none of that. Besides, it would be painful – on par with being forced as a kid to eat my veggies before leaving the dinner table. Now that was painful!

Improper word usage or grammar tends to create one of several undesirable perceptions of you or your company  – lesser intelligence, careless when communicating, lack of respect and polish, diminished or lack of power in negotiating, and more. I’m not the grammar police, but I don’t see why we can’t make the effort to produce higher quality communication. With that, read on: below are a few examples of common, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard mistakes seen far too often in a corporate setting.

1. Your / You’re 

If “you are” number…good luck with that.

 

• Tops the list as a result of the stunning frequency with which this gaffe appears.
• “Your” is a possessive form of “you”…your house, your car, your reputation.
• Quick test to see which form to use: replace either term with “you are”. If it makes sense, then you can use “you’re”. If not, go with “your”.

2. There / They’re / Their

Well done.

 

• With three possible ways to flub this, it’s hardly surprising that it occurs so frequently.
• There is a term inferring direction, hence “reading there books” makes no sense.
• They’re is a contraction meaning “they are”. What are they? They’re books. 
• Their is a possessive form of they. Whose books? Their books. 
• When in doubt, follow the simple test above, using “they are” in place of any of the terms. If the term makes sense, you can use “they are”.

3. Personal / Personally

• Ugh…not sure why, but I find this more grating than the others – maybe it’s personal.
• Personally is an adverb that refers to one person having done something, or about to do something.
• Personal is an adjective, and refers to a specific person.

4. Lose / Loose

• This head-scratcher has appeared at an increasingly alarming rate, and I have no idea why.
• Lose has approximately fourteen definitions (if you count slang), but not one of them indicates a lack of tightness, as does loose.
• The team did not “loose” the game (believe it or not, I’ve seen this many times and still can’t wrap my head around it), but they did “lose” the game. Simple enough. 

5. It’s / Its

• This one can be a bit tricky, but we still need to get it right. While many possessive terms contain an apostrophe (Dan’s car, the wolf’s pups, etc.), this does not.
• It’s is a contraction meaning “it is”.  
• Its is a possessive form: “Its rugged exterior and powerful drive train made the Jeep the choice of off-road driving enthusiasts.”

Well, there you have it. It’s my hope that you see how much you have to lose with improper usage and that you don’t take my comments personally, as they’re intended to be helpful. Oh, and by they way…you’re welcome! One last, mind-numbing example is this image of a resignation letter I received from a member of a team I managed several years ago.

Oofa toofa.

 

 

The Art of Being Thankful

Image by Gisela Giardino on flickr

 

Thanksgiving is upon us and countless families will gather around a table overloaded with turkey and all the trimmings, and one by one, state those things for which they are thankful. Some will express their gratitude for family or health, while others will give thanks for professional or personal success. Regardless, it’s a holiday that encourages us to reflect and be grateful for what we have (or in some cases, don’t have). It’s also the only day of the year where giving thanks is heavily promoted, encouraged and celebrated.

Why wait until Thanksgiving to give thanks? Being thankful is something we should aspire to do each and every day. It’s not as if there aren’t many things for which we can be thankful. Perhaps your spouse hands you the butter knife at the dinner table, or at a work meeting where you forgot to bring a pen, a colleague lends you one. Many times throughout each and every day, we’re presented with opportunities to express our gratitude for something that someone else did. You never know how much “Thank you” will brighten someone’s day.

It’s easy to say thank you when you:

1. Receive a gift
2. Land a significant client
3. Get the job offer
4. Hear people say “congratulations” to you

Other, less obvious, but just as worthy “thank you” moments include:

1. Someone, either directly or indirectly, says they believe in you
2. You feel inspired by something you’ve read, or after a chat you had with another person
3. Hearing words of encouragement when you’re having “one of those days”
4. The muse strikes as a result of a conversation you have with another person
5. Being let go from a company on the verge of it folding and subsequently having an epiphany about what truly inspires you
6. Prospects that say “No”, since we learn more from our failures than successes
7. Receiving feedback from colleagues, clients, prospects or managers that redirects your efforts

While there are seemingly endless “thank you” moments, the gist of this post is to say that we should all be willing to express our thankfulness.

I get it. It can be hard to say “thank you” to someone when things go awry. You might need time to pass to fully appreciate the situation and how it ultimately helps you. Having the humility to give thanks when any of the more difficult situations arise makes us stronger. It gives us courage and hardens our resolve to see things through. So, for me, having experienced each of the seven moments listed above, I am thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

#artofbeingthankful