I want to be famous for being inspiring, inventive, and radiating positive energy! I’d like to be famous for my common sense Customer CARE principles and my PASSION for bringing positivity into workplaces.
But mostly I want to be famous for motivating people – like you – to take away one or two or maybe three ideas every month or so, put them into practice and experience the positive change – and THEN feel motivated to teach it to others.
There’s only one problem – research shows that only 10% of an “audience” will actually put something into practice. Are you in that group? I’ll bet you ARE!
Here’s a short Positivity Practice for you today:
Ask Positive Questions
If you want to get great answers – you’ve got to ask great questions. If you want to get powerful answers – you’ve got to ask powerful questions.
The brain runs on questions – from the minute you get up in the morning.
Think about this morning. As you first became aware, I’ll bet you used questions to organize your thinking. What time is it? Uh- is it 6 o’clock already? When’s my first meeting? What will I wear? Is it snowing again? What’s for breakfast?
All day long our brains ask questions. Often those questions are disempowering and negative. Who screwed up here?Why am I so clumsy? Who’s to blame?
What if we thought about the kinds of questions that will improve our experience and those of our customers? How can I create more value here? How can I make it easier? How can I make this more pleasant? What can I learn from this? How can we be remarkable? How can we make our customers happy? How can we make each other happy?
What do YOU want to be famous for?
It’s a great question. I use it with my clients all the time. It helps them refine their thinking about their customer experience. What do you want to be known for?
You might be thinking that you don’t want to be famous at all but I’m not talking about the bright lights kind of fame – I’m talking about the people you touch every day. All of us are famous for something (even if it’s just hogging the remote or making a great cheesecake.) What do YOU want to be known for?
How do you want the world to experience you?
As being an influence for goodness, compassion, helpfulness, team spirit? As being attentive, a good listener, a helpful friend?
What do you want to contribute?
These are amazing questions to think about in the AM – aren’t they?
I wonder what would happen if we all looked in the mirror in the morning and instead of inspecting our face for new wrinkles or new zits, we thought about how we show up and are present in the world, how well we pay attention and how much we think about the effect we have on others.
That’s important – because emotions are contagious and customers are emotional people!
Howard Schultz, the genius founder and CEO, Starbucks
“For the most part, customers are irrational beings, making many decisions based on feelings and emotions, some which they don’t even know they have. Nothing we do triggers these emotions more than the experience our customers have with us every day. When everyone here finally realizes and embraces their role in this, we will have something special, something lasting.”
Every business I know could say the same thing.
Customer have two sets of needs – business needs and emotional needs – there are companies that can take care of their business needs – but not that many companies that take care of their emotional needs at the same time. How are you doing?
What do you want to be famous for?
JoAnna
