A Sense of Community
This is my favorite benefit. Phenomenal leadership is creating a community. A community of people with a shared vision, a shared mission, and a shared purpose. A community of people who support one another and operate by the same set of values. When you travel with your staff members or attend events together, you can bond with them and share the vision, mission, and purpose. This is your opportunity to make a difference in their lives and get to know them better.
You might think, I’ll go to the seminar myself and then transfer the knowledge I get to my staff when I return. How is that working for you? It helps, but there’s a big chasm between what you are able to transfer and what they could be getting. Between the time it takes for you to regurgitate it and re-teach it,
not to mention the details you don’t recall, it becomes so watered down that they are missing about 95 percent of it.
It has been said that the average attendee forgets 77 percent of what they learn at a seminar. This can be demonstrated by watching a movie you’ve seen a few times. Did you see a scene or a line that you thought you never saw previously? You bet! You might get the key point of the seminar, and that’s
great, but you leave a ton of good information on the table.
It can also be demonstrated with the game “telephone” in which one person whispers a message to another, which is passed through a line of people until the last player announces the message to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.
Some players also deliberately alter what is being said in order to guarantee a changed message by the end of it (that would never happen in your business, right? Wrong!).
Keeping your team engaged in a learning environment keeps them focused on the right things. The old saying goes “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” When they are not engaged in learning, they begin to focus on the obstacles and problems. They will focus on the scuttlebutt, the water cooler conversation, or worse. When they are engaged in learning, you automatically begin to develop a better vision for the future. New ideas begin to emerge from the students. Your employees begin to give you constructive
ideas rather than complaints.
Dale Carnegie said, “People support a world they help create.” I think one of my most important assets is the fact that I involve my people in developing the vision for the future. In fact, one of my employees was with me when the vision for Phenomenal Products was born. This doesn’t mean that you will always agree or that things will always turn out exactly like you want them to, but getting your employees involved in the “vision casting” is huge.
Other benefits of taking employees to outside events:
1. A great time out of the office with the boss = stronger one-on-one relationships (if we treat them right on the trip and we remain a good example!).
2. An opportunity to see how they operate outside of work.
3. Exposure to the industry at large. I think we underestimate the power in this because we have been so overexposed.
4. Positions your company in your employees’ minds as the expert company because you are not only investing in education, but investing in theirs as well.
5. Exposure to new ideas and techniques. Remember that Experiential Marketing is important with your “internal clients” as well. Remember that you are leading a movement—a group of people who are on a mission together. Education is a humongous part of that.
You want your employees to do things the right way so long that they don’t even know what the wrong way is anymore. That is not always possible, so when you see that they are getting off track begin to coach them and mentor them on a daily basis until they are back on track.
(Reference Pages 214-216 of the 5 Secrets of a Phenomenal Business Book by Howard Partridge)
