By guest blogger Margaret Jennings, M Squared Consulting

Cybersphere’s newest celebrity, Steven Slater - the Jet Blue flight attendant who announced to the world he was quitting his job by releasing the emergency chute at JFK and, literally, leaping to freedom – was reportedly provoked by a difficult passenger who pushed his patience too far.  For his actions, Slater has become an instant folk hero.

If Slater is to be believed, it may be that, in this instance, “the customer is not always right.”  But some pundits say that Slater, like any other flight attendant on any given day, should have bitten his tongue and continued working normally despite the apparent abuse from the passenger.  But at what point do we, as individuals and as business leaders, draw a line and take responsibility for the well-being of employees over demanding and/or abusive customers? 

Many successful, savvy executives (including Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines) have built their empires on flexible employee-customer policies.  They believe that the happiness of their employees comes first, because disgruntled staff are not well-positioned, nor, at the very least, motivated, to provide excellent customer service.   Kelleher once wrote a personal reply to a passenger who regularly flew on Southwest, and, consequently, complained after every flight.  ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’

Yet, when an employee accepts a job offer, shouldn’t they be aware of, and take some responsibility for, the type of stress (and abuse?) inherent in the new position?  Certainly, employers should be recruiting people with the right temperament for the job and providing them with adequate customer training.  But it is not always possible to walk away from challenging customers, just to keep your employees happy.  Small businesses in particular face a dilemma when dealing with difficult customers, as a single lost account could mean disaster.

So, if the customer is not always right, where do you draw the line between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’?  Set the line too high or too low, and you risk alienating either the customer or the employee. Finding that perfect balance is difficult, and different for every business.

For information about how M Squared Consulting can help you manage your flexible workforce strategies, visit www.msquared.com or call 888-818-2505.

By guest blogger Margaret Jennings, M Squared Consulting

Keeping your staff motivated and engaged can be far from straightforward. 

Author  Peter Bregman, in a recent blog in the Harvard Business Review, suggests a simple concept to help:  connect your staff with the source of an idea or business practice to inspire their commitment through a sense of ownership. By doing so, he finds employees are “always happier with the outcome. They feel something deeper than the success of a project gone well. They feel pride of ownership. They feel satisfied by the journey that brought them to their success.”

Larry Sternberg, writing for Workforce.com (‘Give Employees What They Need’), takes this idea further and believes there are two interlinked principles to keep in mind when motivating staff.  Firstly, “Each person has a unique configuration of need - their own goals, wants, desires and aspirations.” And secondly, “People stay in organizations that meet their needs.”

He provides some detailed tactics for meeting such needs.  In summary;

1.     Ask your staff what their needs are.

2.     Don’t be afraid to change precedent for your best performers.

3.     Make staff feel important, have time to listen to them.

4.     Emotionally rehire people.

Not surprisingly, in today’s economy many employees have diminished confidence in employment stability, feel vulnerable and are no longer happy working for someone else.  The trend toward a flexible and self-employed workforce looks set to continue.  Projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predict that the flexible workforce will grow 19% through 2016, almost twice the rate of total job growth of 10%.

This change in approach to employment has an upside for employers too.  More on this topic in upcoming posts.

To help your organization leverage the top-tier of the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com

Back in April in this space we discussed whether there’s a talent shortage in America, particularly in light of the coming retirement of many baby boomers.  We examined whether there is indeed a pervasive labor shortfall, or if the laws of supply and demand are out of balance in certain industries or geographies.

An article this week in the Wall Street Journal by Mark Whitehouse expands on this topic.  The piece, titled “Some Firms Struggle to Hire Despite High Unemployment”, cites why, despite the tough economy, some companies are having a difficult time filling job openings.

Some excerpts: 

…With a 9.5% jobless rate and some 15 million Americans looking for work, many employers are inundated with applicants. But a surprising number say they are getting an underwhelming response, and many are having trouble filling open positions.

“This is as bad now as at the height of business back in the 1990s,” says Dan Cunningham, chief executive of the Long-Stanton Manufacturing Co., a maker of stamped-metal parts in West Chester, Ohio, that has been struggling to hire a few toolmakers. “It’s bizarre. We are just not getting applicants.”

Employers and economists point to several explanations. Extending jobless benefits to 99 weeks gives the unemployed less incentive to search out new work. Millions of homeowners are unable to move for a job because the real-estate collapse leaves them owing more on their homes than they are worth.

The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can’t qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work like the food servers that Pilot Flying J seeks for its truck stops.

… Matching people with available jobs is always difficult after a recession as the economy remakes itself. But Labor Department data suggest the disconnect is particularly acute this time around. Since the economy bottomed out in mid-2009, the number of job openings has risen more than twice as fast as actual hires, a gap that didn’t appear until much later in the last recovery. The disparity is most notable in manufacturing, which has had among the biggest increases in openings. But it is also appearing in other areas, such as business services, education and health care.

If the job market were working normally—that is, if openings were getting filled as they usually do—the U.S. should have about five million more gainfully employed people than it does, estimates David Altig, research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That would correspond to an unemployment rate of 6.8%, instead of 9.5%.

… Longer-term trends are at play. For one, the U.S. education system hasn’t been producing enough people with the highly specialized skills that many companies, particularly in manufacturing, require to keep driving productivity gains. “There are a lot of people who are unemployed, but those aren’t necessarily the people employers are looking for,” says David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Manufacturers of high-precision products such as automobile and aircraft parts are in a particularly tough spot. Global competition keeps them from raising wages much. But they need workers with the combination of math skills, intuition and stamina required to operate the computer-controlled metalworking machines that now dominate the factory floor.

Clearly, there are many angles to explore here, ranging from the state of the economy to the effects of long-term unemployment benefits to the quality of our public education system. 

For the high end of the market, there is also a healthy debate about whether there are enough skilled workers in the right place at the right time to help companies advance their strategic priorities.  Many companies continue to seek out interim specialists and consulting talent to help them during the peaks and valleys of normal business cycles.

Stay tuned as we continue to follow developments on this important subject.

To help your organization leverage the top-tier of the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com or call 1-888-818-2505

A recent online HBR essay by Matt Dixon and Lara Ponomareff is a worrisome read for any marketing executive who’s focused on helping their company develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers.  It exposes the challenges facing organizations that want to gain more insight from their clients in order to better serve their needs.

An excerpt:

Have you ever walked into an airport, seen that there is nobody in line at the check-in counter, but still made a bee-line for the self-service kiosk? Better yet, have you ever waited in line for an ATM machine even though there is nobody in line for the teller inside the bank?

If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, you’re not alone. Most customers these days demonstrate a huge — and increasing — appetite for self-service, yet most companies run their operations as if customers prefer to interact with them live.

In our research on this topic, we’ve found that corporate leaders dramatically overestimate the extent to which their customers actually want to talk to them. In fact, on average, companies tend to think their customers value live service more than twice as much as they value self service. But our data show that customers today are statistically indifferent about this — they value self-service just as much as using the phone. And guess what? By and large, this indifference holds regardless of their age, demographic, issue type, or urgency.

This attitude toward self-service has been a long time coming. Two-thirds of the customers we surveyed told us that three to five years ago, they primarily used the phone for service interactions. Today, less than a third do, and the number is shrinking fast.

What is it that makes self service so appealing? Maybe it’s the efficiency of the interaction — the airport kiosk is probably faster than interacting with a check-in agent — but that wouldn’t explain why we go out of our way to take care of our service needs ourselves. On a psychological level, it might have more to do with the unique element of control that self service affords. Or, maybe this self-service love affair is a product of our infatuation with gadgetry and electronic communication. All fairly benign explanations, to be sure.

But here’s a hypothesis that would be concerning if it’s right: maybe customers are shifting toward self service because they don’t want a relationship with companies. While this secular trend could be explained away as just a change in consumers’ channel preferences, skeptics might argue that customers never wanted the kind of relationship that companies have always hoped for, and that self service now allows customers the “out” they’ve been looking for all along. For managers hell-bent on deepening relationships with their customers, that’s a sobering thought.

Consider this: Running your company as if customers want to talk to you isn’t just expensive, it’s potentially undermining your efforts to build longer-term loyalty. Our research shows that customers who attempt to self serve, fail, and are forced to pick up the phone are 10% more likely to be disloyal than those customers who were able to fully resolve their issues in their channel of choice. As one CFO remarked to us recently, “When you think about the relative cost of live service and the disloyalty effect of channel switching…it’s like paying your customers to be disloyal to you.”

How often does channel switching happen? All the time.

We found that a staggering 57% of inbound calls come from customers who first attempted to resolve their issue on the company’s website. And over 30% of callers are on the company’s website at the same time that they are talking to a rep on the phone. That’s a lot of frustrated customers.

For information on how M Squared consultants can fine-tune your customer strategies, please call 1-888-818-2505 or visit www.msquared.com

A recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review  asks “Is Your Company As Customer-Focused As You Think?”   It is a terrific piece about assessing and improving your organizational readiness:

Most managers agree that achieving sustainable, organic profit growth requires delivering on a clear, precise customer promise; continuously improving on that promise; periodically innovating beyond the familiar; and supporting all of that with an organization open to new ideas and negative feedback.

But how can senior executives ensure that everyone in the organization grasps and supports the brand promise? How can managers create an open organization, so that rank-and-file employees are unabashed about sharing customer complaints with upper management?

Based on interactions with more than 150 senior managers and a wide-ranging review of pertinent case studies, marketing professors Patrick Barwise and Seán Meehan developed five questions managers can pose to help assess their organization’s ongoing ability to satisfy customers–and thereby ensure that their products and services stay relevant.

No. 1: Can your middle managers accurately describe your customer promise?

By asking middle managers this question, senior executives can gauge whether those further down in the hierarchy understand the customer promise. Encouraging middle managers to articulate the customer promise can also help senior executives learn how clear and explicit the customer promise really is. The more clear and explicit it is, the better it is.

For example, Procter & Gamble’s Tide detergent promised to get clothes cleaner than any other product when it launched in 1946. This clear and explicit promise was–and remains–easy to state; it is not subject to misinterpretation by the customer. It is unambiguous. By contrast, “overnight delivery” implies delivery first thing in the morning. But to an office worker, it probably means 9 a.m., whereas to a construction site foreman it could mean 7 a.m.

No. 2: Can all the members of your senior executive team name the three things that most undermine trust among your existing customers?

Since bad news tends to get filtered on its way up the hierarchy, there’s a danger top management won’t hear about the organization’s failures to deliver on its customer promise. The goal of this question is to transmit the voice of unhappy customers to the top of the company.

Yes, focusing on customer dissatisfaction–which typically occurs when the company fails to deliver on its promise–is hard, because it involves pointing fingers or revisiting bad decisions. But focusing on dissatisfaction also allows managers to uncover and act on the root causes. Why is this important? Because customer dissatisfaction undermines customer trust, which in turn diminishes the value of the brand.

Back in April in this space we debated whether there is a looming talent shortage in America.  Now, in a related piece, an insightful blog article from the Harvard Business Review by authors Sue Ashford and Scott DeRue discusses how best to address the leadership talent shortage that they suggest exists in companies today:

Nearly 60% of companies are facing leadership talent shortages that are impeding their performance. Another 31% expect a lack of leadership talent to impede their performance in the next several years. Yet, in 2009, U.S. companies spent an estimated $12 billion (24% of their overall training budgets) on leadership development programs and services. By any reasonable standard, what we are currently doing to grow and develop future leaders is not working. Here are five critical attributes that we believe are necessary for developing the leaders of today and tomorrow:

1. The best learners make the best leaders. We must teach people how to learn leadership from life experiences. We argue that learning leadership is a function of how people approach, go through, and reflect on developmental experiences — a process we call “mindful engagement,” We need to stop teaching leadership theory in a vacuum, and start teaching people how to learn leadership from real-world experiences.
2. Leadership as a set of principles. Business education is largely oriented toward teaching an important but narrow set of technical knowledge and skills. We need to expand our teaching to encompass a set of leadership principles that can be globally applied across situations. Doing so will build an adaptive capacity that enables people to more effectively lead in today’s complex and dynamic business environment.
3. Reward leadership development (FINALLY!). All companies pay lip service to the importance of developing people, but how many companies actually reward (with any significance) the development of people? Answer: very few. Also, how many companies penalize managers for hoarding key talent? Answer: almost none. Yet, managers often do everything they can to avoid losing key talent to other opportunities because, as one executive put it to us the other day: “I can’t afford to lose my best people.”
4. Leadership development at all levels.  We previously argued that leadership is not about position. If that is true, then why do most leadership development programs focus on senior executives? We need to expand our focus to figure out ways to efficiently and economically develop leaders throughout the organization.
5. Keep it simple. Leadership is complex, but leadership development cannot be. We must provide key talent with clear metrics and development priorities that provide a straightforward roadmap for realizing their leadership potential. Unfortunately, that is not the case in most companies. One Fortune 500 company that we are working with developed a leadership competency model that specifies 54 distinct competencies across 15 different leadership skills. The result? Employees are confused, and assessment data are poor. Instead, identify the three or four competencies that really differentiate top performers across different levels of the organization, and then reward and promote based on those competencies.

Contributors:  Sue Ashford is Associate Dean for Leadership Programming and Executive MBA Program and the Michael & Susan Jandernoa Professor of Management and Organizations at the at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business.  Scott DeRue is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

For more information on leveraging leaders from the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com.

A recent piece in Workforce Management (www.workforce.com) about the influence of community on work caught my eye.  It confirmed that online communities of practice give far-flung employees a chance to network, share knowledge and communicate best practices that trainers can capture and incorporate into future learning events.

For example, early in 2008, American soldiers training Afghan and Iraqi armies were having problems using a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The equipment was old and had a tendency to jam, misfire and explode prematurely.  Frustrated, a unit commander posted a question to one of the U.S. Army’s communities of practice, which are online forums where soldiers ask questions and share ideas with peers around the world.

“Within a few days, someone who’d had a similar experience with the launcher posted a simple solution to the site on how to safely prevent misfiring,” says Mike Prevou, president and co-founder of Strategic Knowledge Solutions and senior knowledge management advisor to the Army in Leavenworth, Kansas.

The solution worked, and when the unit commander followed up to discuss his experiences, the issue became a hot topic in the community. The conversation thread was soon picked up by the Army’s safety commander, who issued a formal safety policy on how to deal with the rocket launcher’s safety issues that was sent out to all the units using this equipment. And it all took place within 15 days of the original post.

“Without the community, those soldiers may never have found a solution to their problem, and they probably would have just put the equipment away,” Prevou says.

Communities of practice aren’t just valuable for military personnel. They are becoming vital corporate tools that allow employees with similar jobs or interests to get advice and share best practices. “Communities of practice are a super-fast way for users to produce and share content,” says Eric Suave, CEO and co-founder of Tomoye, a collaboration software vendor in Ottawa. Prevou uses Tomoye’s technology to build the Army’s communities. “It’s a more responsive way to share information when it’s needed that allows organizations to collect ideas for formal training.”

That capturing of knowledge is critical for organizations that need to tap into the expertise of a far-flung employee population. It’s also an important issue for organizations with aging employee populations who might soon retire, taking with them important but informal knowledge about processes, customers or corporate culture.

 ”Both groups can work in concert,” Suave says. “On one side you have fast dissemination of information; on the other you have long-term planning that can draw on what people are talking about and turn it into policies and core content.”

This combined value is why communities of practice are cropping up in organizations around the world. They link globally dispersed workers who can serve as mentors to each other and share knowledge in an informal setting. There are pockets of excellence everywhere in organizations, Prevou says. “Communities of practice are a tool to tap into that excellence. It’s a way to share knowledge and build networks among people who might otherwise never connect.”

To help your organization develop strategies about how to best leverage the top-tier of the flexible workforce, visit www.msquared.com

Like him or not, President Obama has enviable oratorical skills.  Noted speech coach Sim Wyeth suggests that professionals who make speeches and presentations should study Obama’s repertoire, take what they like, and use what they can to improve their own public speaking.  In particular, Wyeth cites five key lessons from Obama’s rhetorical playbook:

1. Talk About the Audience’s Concerns

Notice that when Obama addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time, he told our story before he told his own. He talked about our sleepless nights, for example, and the college admission that might have to be turned down because of a lack of financing.

This was brilliant, and you can do it, too. Start your talk by broadly defining the situation that your listeners face. Then, once you’ve got them nodding their heads in agreement, move on to describe the problems or challenges that are on their minds. Start where the audience is, not where you are. Once you have their attention, you can lead your listeners wherever you want to take them.

2. Keep It Simple

Throughout the presidential campaign, Obama kept his main message — “change you can believe in” — simple and easy to remember. Sure, some pundits mocked its simplicity, but it served its purpose perfectly as the banner at the front of his parade. You, too, can keep it simple, even if you have mountains of research to report.

First, fine-tune your core message.  Fierce debate within Obama’s campaign no doubt accompanied the birth of the slogan “change you can believe in,” and similar prolonged discussion may accompany the discovery of your own core message. But once the decision has been made, don’t let that debate show. Chisel away at your topic until you can reduce your presentation to a core message. Once you achieve this, all your complex ideas can march behind it.

This is as true for business presentations as it is for political campaigns. Granted, your content may be nuanced and detailed, but so were Obama’s policy positions. He used his simple slogan to make us believe he was the politician for change — something so many Americans longed for — and he appealed to us to have faith (to believe) in the change he was offering us. Obama won people through a simple slogan, which then allowed him to more easily serve up his ideas about meaty topics such as health care, terrorism, and the crumbling economy.

We make a serious error if we mistake a complete argument for a persuasive one. All audiences, no matter how sophisticated, have limited attention spans and a limited ability to retain detailed spoken information. Don’t fear that you’re leaving details out; you must be selective. After all, what good is a thorough and detailed argument if it is inaccessible?

3. Anticipate What Your Audience Is Thinking

Obama and his speechwriters are certainly aware of the great line by Goethe, “Every word that is uttered evokes the idea of its opposite.” What this means is that when you express one view, the odds are high that people will reflexively think about other, unmentioned aspects of the topic.

A presentation that does not deal with this “evoking of opposites” loses the audience’s attention because it fails to address the questions and concerns that come up in people’s minds. So anticipate it. Show your audience that you understand the contrary view better than they do, and explain why your proposal or argument is still superior.

Obama did this effectively in his speech on race, in which he attempted to distance himself from the inflammatory Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama pointed out, for example, that he won primaries in former Confederate states and that he had built a “powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.” But he also acknowledged what was undoubtedly on people’s minds when he said, “This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign.” He went on to say that, yes, Reverend Wright’s sermons were controversial, but, no, that’s not why he must be rebuked. He said that, yes, the clips of Reverend Wright on YouTube make him look terrible, but, no, that’s not the full measure of the man.

His speech was powerful and widely praised. It was effective in part because Obama let everyone know that he had thought a lot about race, and in particular about both sides of the controversy surrounding his former pastor.

Attack your topics this way, too, and you will be in charge of the conversation. This approach will not only grab and hold the attention of your listeners, but it will also help you win people into your camp, which is what you need to do if, say, your goal is to persuade your board of directors of the wisdom of a seemingly risky partnership.

4. Learn to Pause

Obama has mastered the art of pausing. Just check out his presidential acceptance speech in Chicago to see this skill at work. He pauses to let us catch up with him. He pauses to let his words resonate. He pauses, in a sense, to let us rest. Pauses also give the impression of composure and thoughtfulness.

Here’s an exercise to help you learn to pause.

·         Mark up your paragraphs / in this manner / into the shortest possible phrases. / First, / whisper it, / breathing / at all the breath marks. / Then, / speak it / in the same way. / Do this / with a different paragraph / every day.

Here’s what the opening paragraph of Obama’s remarks would look like:

·         “If there is anyone out there / who still doubts / that America is a place / where all things are possible, / who still wonders / if the dream of our founders / is alive in our time, / who still questions / the power of our democracy, / tonight / is your answer.”

Where you pause is up to you; there are no hard and fast rules. But try it. Slowly inhale to the count of three at each breath mark. Speak as though you had plenty of time. The goal / of this exercise / is to teach your body / to slow down.

5. Master the Body Language of Leadership

Obama’s body language is relaxed and fluid. It does not display tension or fear. He’s calm and assertive — which is exactly what you need to be to get people to comply with your requests. To achieve the body language that’s effective for you, focus on a single attribute — for example, calm — and practice implementing it in the basic motions of your day, from getting dressed in the morning, to leaving your home for work, to greeting your friends and colleagues. Research in the Scientific American suggests that focusing on one word is the most effective way to learn a new behavior. It will probably feel forced at first, but don’t worry. It will soon become natural, and eventually your body language will communicate the right mix of calm and assertiveness.

Finally, you’ll need to rehearse. Practice calmly walking up to the lectern or the front of the room. Arrange your papers calmly. Look out to the audience with a sense of command, with assertiveness. Let the silence hang for a moment, and only then deliver your opening remarks.

Calmness begets a sense of authority. Behave as if you are in control, and you will in fact gain control and command attention.

For information on how to develop your contingent workforce to the fullest, contact M Squared Consulting at msquared@msquared.com or 1-888-818-2505.

An intriguing article in BNET (www.bnet.com) caught my eye.  It noted that nine of the 20 richest people in America are geeks (and most of the rest are either named Walton, Mars, or Koch, so when the old money’s gone, they’ll all be geeks).  And we’re not just talking about Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and the Google twins - Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Have you ever heard Warren Buffet speak? He’s not a techie, but he’s still a geek, a financial geek. Why do you think he gets along with Bill Gates so well?

Geekdom transcends gender, geography, and generation. Geeks can be your employees, your peers, your manager, even your CEO.  Anyway, if you want to get ahead in this world-gone-geek, you’ll need this indispensable guide:

10 Things You Need to Know About Geeks in the Workplace

So if you want to get ahead in the modern business world, you’d better get your geek on. Just don’t overdo it. Geeks can smell a fake light years away.

To find just the right consultant or team for your next project, contact M Squared Consulting at msquared@msquared.com or 1-888-818-2505.

A recent piece by psychiatrist and business consultant Kerry J. Sulkowicz about how best to give advice caught my eye: 

Much has been said about how to deliver feedback, because giving it is so often fraught with anxiety. Bosses shy away from the negative, critical part, even though they know it’s one of their most important responsibilities. But relatively little has been written about the art of giving good, old-fashioned advice. Unencumbered by some of the complications of performance reviews — nothing official, nothing related to compensation or promotion, nothing necessarily critical or painful to hear — well-intentioned advice should be a treat to give and to receive.

Why should you get better at giving advice? Lots of reasons: it’s helpful to pass your wisdom on to others; it extends your own influence, regardless of whether you ever get “paid back”; it’s a way to gain trust, stature and gravitas; and it’s just plain gratifying to be valued for what’s in your head. This is ego gratification of the very best sort.

So why do people who are sought for advice still manage to screw it up? In my experience, it’s less about the quality of advice and more because of the way it’s delivered. The way advice is given can inadvertently increase the receiver’s resistance to hearing it or acting on it, which is such a shame, because that undoes the best of intentions. You want the advisee to come away with good advice, rather than bad feelings about the advisor. Here are four tips on how to give advice well. (Remember that giving it well doesn’t necessarily make it good advice. Caveat emptor.)

1.    Bear in mind the difference between solicited and unsolicited advice. Both are perfectly fine ways to be helpful, but remember that the unsolicited variety may not always be welcome, so the recipient might be more vulnerable to a bruised ego if you push the advice too far.

2.    Say thank you before plunging in. This applies to solicited advice. Before offering any of your wisdom, express some gratitude for being asked. After all, it’s flattering to be seen as wise and helpful. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like being asked for advice. In fact, doing so is one of the best ways to deepen a relationship, because it’s a mutually gratifying human interaction and flattering without being obsequious.

3.    Make sure you understand the limits of the question. There’s nothing more annoying than asking for advice on one thing (like “What do I need to do to get a promotion?”) and getting advice on your marriage and your vacations plans, with a few golf tips thrown in. Stick to the subject at hand, unless somehow there’s a connection.

4.    Be confident, but not arrogant. This distinction is blurry for some folks. There really is a difference between coming across as authoritative (presumably the solicitor wouldn’t be seeking your advice if they didn’t think you knew your stuff) as opposed to authoritarian (using your power to compel someone to follow your advice, or being pathologically certain that you’re always right). Being authoritative can be done with humility, like saying “I’ve seen a lot of situations like this, and I’m concerned that if you don’t deal with this problem executive now, the damage will only get worse with time.” An authoritarian way of giving the same advice might be, “Look, you have to get rid of that guy now, or else I’ll do it for you.” The latter is obnoxious, off-putting, and not helpful.

5.    Give the recipient an “out.” This is related to No. 4. While there’s plenty of room for passion in the giving advice, a bit of humility also helps. You can say, for instance, that you’ve seen such-and-such approach work for yourself and for others, but it might not be for everybody. Or you can preface it with a turn of phrase like, “I’m not sure about this, but I think you could benefit from doing x, y, and z.” Or my personal favorite: “Have you considered…?”

6.    After giving advice, ask how it sounds. Often the best advice is created in an iterative way, rather than being delivered from on high. So after you’re done expounding, ask the recipient if that makes sense, or how they might feel about acting on your advice. Their reactions can help you refine it together and make it even more meaningful.

7.    Ask for follow-up. Not only does it show you care if you ask your advice-seeker to let you know how it goes, but it also conveys that you have a stake in giving good advice. Whether or not they take you up on the offer, it will leave them feeling even better about you and more confident in acting on what you’ve shared.

I’ve learned that giving advice is one of life’s great pleasures, especially when it turns out that I was right. I’m also grateful for all the good advice I’ve received over the years.

For good advice on how to maximize your workforce strategies, visit M Squared Consulting at www.msquared.com or call us at 888-818-2505.