What if you are wrong?

Have you ever known you were wrong? I mean did something said something and afterward knew it was the wrong thing, the wrong action, the wrong methodology and that it/you would fail?

What did you do?

I hope you admitted it. Came clean. Apologized to whoever needed an apology and then – started over learning from your mistake.

But what if you don’t know you are wrong? What if you aren’t certain it was your idea that made it wrong? Made it flounder? Didn’t help it succeed? What do you do then? Because others will blame you. Others will look at it and they will know, that it was you, your input, your idea that caused the problem. Even if it wasn’t.

And the answer is, admit to the failure. Take the blame/responsibility and move on.

Does it matter if you are wrong? Most people will say YES! Of course, especially if it could mean your job or how the company looks at you, reacts to you, sees you.

And as I have worked with companies over the last 30 years, some organizations do blame someone. And, that blame can cost a job, a career, a promotion. Maybe you are not in the right place, right company, right state of mind if you have to fear those types of repercussions.

Truly leading companies will accept and honor mistakes. Use them as building blocks to create something new, something better. Great companies understand that mistakes happen. Especially when you are pushing for the top. Mistakes lead to great innovations, superior productivity, inspiring creativity, and ideas.

Where does your organization fit into all of this? Have you trained your people to take risks? Have you inspired them to push the limits? Are you currently utilizing an agenda in your company that is helping your people grow professionally and personally?

Do you offer training, not one hour a month or one guru speaker a year but real honest training and support?

Are you changing your people’s lives because you want them to change your company? I teach Mental Prosperity, which is a course on getting the most for your company/organization because you are getting the most out of your employees simply because they are wanting the most for themselves.

And that all happens because a company cares and shows it cares by how that organization treats their people. Offering more to their people because they understand that company growth happens when the personal growth of their people is involved.

We teach math and science and welding and .. yes, we teach but do we train? Do your people have the skills to be happy at home? Better husbands and wives, better parents, better neighbors? Are you helping them by training them how to cope with frustrations? How to manage their money? How to discipline their kids? How to have a dream that can motivate them to be better and in that constant achievement create a happier employee?

 

What if how you have been running your company or organization has been wrong all this time?

What if this type of training can change your entire business model, create greater success, increase productivity and massively increase your profits?

What if you are wrong …

Is a basic skill set that trains people that it is ok to be wrong. It is ok to make mistakes. It is not being wrong that hurts us the most but not being able to admit it, fix it, learn from it and grow to the next level.

I am Steve Sapato. I train on Mental Prosperity, the ability for groups, businesses, organizations to get the most out of their people because their people are getting the most out of themselves.

You can reach me at steve@stevesapato.com steve@profitbuildercoaching.com

#1 REASON Why your company is not all that it should be!

Managers are the key to your company being all that it should be and much more!

Every project, every department, every business, every organization can grow exponentially if they have great managers.

Contrary to what seems to be the popular mandate, great managers are made and not born.

People do not automatically become good managers because they are promoted or hired in as a manager.

We have all had those average managers. Many of us have had that terrible manager.

Have you ever experienced a great manager?

What a profound difference isn’t there? When you have a great manager, you want to produce. You want to excel. You want to be your best. And great managers make you feel great about trying to be better. They make you feel better about working hard and smart and reward you for being part of a great team.

Most average managers do not think of rewarding their people. They do not know there are dozens of ways to reward employees. They do not know there are dozens of ways to motivate their employees. Do you? Are you?

If you or your organization is not requiring your soon-to-be-managers to attend some management classes, (please note I said some and not ONE!), then you probably have or are experiencing the average or below average manager syndrome.

And your company is suffering. Your people are suffering. Your production is suffering. Your moral is suffering.

Great managers require great training, great challenges, great communication classes to help them get the most out of their people so their people can do the most for your organization. Those classes are called Mental Prosperity because mental prosperity gets the most out of people because they want to give the most and be rewarded for their efforts either by their peers, their leaders or simply because they learn what it means and how important it is to themselves to feel good and be good at their job.

So tell me, what trainings are your managers receiving? What communication skills are they developing? What leadership skills are they learning?

What programs are in place to train your soon-to-be-managers? What books are they reading, sharing, studying? And what is your company doing to make sure your company will succeed simply by training your managers to get the most out of their people?

Many companies have had the displeasure to watch their organization hire people who are probably very good at half of their jobs, the technical side, yet fail miserably on the personality side.

Because of this failure it doesn’t take long for their teams to become disorganized, fractured and disheartened and they watch their organization simply falter and fail in their tasks or productivity.

People need to be lead. People want to be lead. People want someone who not only understands what needs to happen but puts in place the mechanisms that can produce those results. They love to be on a winning team. They love recognition and results. They enjoy all of the perks that come with winning.

How about you? What do you want from your leadership? From your admins and managers?

Isn’t it about time you passed this article on to your superiors and start making this happen?

Average managers create average results. Great managers produce great results.

I am Steve Sapato, the most famous unfamous speaker in America and damn fine management trainer. You can pass this on to your superiors so they can connect with me at steve@stevesapato.com

How to get GREAT employees

Why is it that some managers seem to always find good employees? Why are those few managers so blessed and why do so many others struggle to find those good employees.

That answer is in the answer to this question: when do you start hiring your next employee?

What was your immediate response? Was it, as soon as I know someone is leaving? Was it as soon as we get the permission from the boss or HR ?

The real answer is, you start hiring your next employee as soon as you hire this one.

Yes, most of you agree. But how does this process work for you?

Each member of your team is dependent upon each other member of your team as well as upon the supervisors and managers of those teams. Each member is given value and responsibility based upon how their team culture is developed. And based upon how you encourage and reward your team is how your team grows and how you will find your next great employee.

Many managers think they will find good employees and great employees from the talent pool that is either offered via their company or through agencies they utilize.

But the really great employees come from the recommendations of your current employees. It is their constant accolades and banter that tell others how good a place your department or organization is to work for. Great employees are always looking to work for great managers and companies that will promote and encourage their success.

It is how you treat all of your current employees that will bring you additional great employees. It is the words your current employees use to describe their organization and manager that have others waiting for an opening. The new employees coming to your department are because of the people that you make feel valued.

There are numerous methods and tactics that will help you become a great manager, because great managers are made not born, are gleaned from other Great Manager articles, additional books and further training.

Where you will find your next great employee will be from your own staff and the recommendations they make to other top quality potential employees.

Steve Sapato- the most famous unfamous speaker in America and trainer of Great Managers.  steve@mentalprosperityblog.com

 

Great Managers never allow ‘boring’ into their meetings. Separating good managers from great.

What is one of the greatest challenges for communicating information? Boredom!

Tell me I am wrong. (OK don’t because I’m not.)

Whatever you are trying to accomplish in your meetings, if these meetings go on forever, your people are bored. If you give someone the opportunity to speak and they are not good speakers, if they don’t understand involvement, if they don’t understand interaction, voice inflection, humor, stories, how to get information across to their peers, their audience, then you will lose interest.

I teach GREAT MEETINGS and I teach Professional Speaking and I teach people how to keep people interested. And that is because I sat through hundreds of boring meeting and terrible workshops and seminars. I know you have too, right?

So then why do we allow people to bore us to tears? Is it because our managers don’t have the intestinal fortitude to tell a poor presenter that they are boring? That they need to take a course, class, workshop on speaking for success? Is it that the managers are boring themselves? Is it that the managers are not good managers and therefor don’t know how to talk to their people and tell them they can’t speak to the group again because everyone was falling asleep?

And, how do you talk in front of a group and not notice your audience is falling asleep, is bored or lost interest?

Either way it falls back on the MANAGERS to be great managers and now allow their meetings or presentations to be boring. Want to ensure they are not boring? As a manager, sit in on a one-on-one run through of that presentation before they give it. If you are struggling in a one-on-one situation to give them your attention you know that they are going to be terrible for the group in the meeting.

Great managers don’t allow their meetings to be boring. They don’t allow them to run past the scheduled time. They know how to run a meeting properly so everyone benefits from attending.

I am Steve Sapato with Mental Prosperity course including the ‘Learn to Win School For Success’ and I know you are becoming a great manager.

Steve  steve@mentalprosperityblog.com

PS. Pass this on to your manager because they would like to know this information toooooo!

Why are your people leaving? I quit!

Why are your people leaving? How can I stop attrition now?

So tell me, as the lead of your company, department, organization, team, are you having a problem with high turnover? Do you know why?

If you read the statistics there are dozens of reasons but if you listen to the workers there are usually only a couple and the most predominant one is, bad manager.

Does that mean there are a lot of bad managers out there? Of course! Tell me this, how did you learn to become a manager? Did you take a course that lasted several weeks? Months? Or did you receive any training at all?

Did your manager receive any real training? I am not talking about a three-hour seminar on being a good manager. I have taught those, I know how they work, I have gone into companies and tried to make my sales pitch to make their training months long with weekly feedback, hands-on experience with direct feedback. I have tried to set up reporting where the employees tell me the strengths and weaknesses of their boss. And the companies refuse.

But make that about sales and the companies go wild offering weeks of training teaching their sales staff how to close the sale. But what they miss is that just like reduced sales, turnover is a huge cost to companies. Probably of the greatest expenses a company can endure.

So then why don’t companies do something about their managers, train them, listen to their employees, find out what really is causing turnover.

I worked in a separate training unit in one organization and the employee training manager told me he was losing one-third of the staff every single year for the five years he had been at that organization. That’s crazy. And what was being done about it? Nothing. He knew it was because of poor management. He heard the stories. He went to his bosses and their bosses to ask that management training become mandatory to help reduce this terrible situation but to his chagrin the leadership always left it as voluntary training for their managers. When I left that organization he was still experiencing that same turnover two years later.

So tell me, why are your people leaving? Do you really know? If you are doing exit interviews and it’s their managers conducting it, you will never know the truth. And if it’s your HR staff that has not been properly trained to find answers by asking the right questions, listening and asking some more then you will still not find out the truth.

My course on Questioning and Listening helps everyone who attends, from sales people to management people to front desk people to receptionists and CEO’s to find real answers, keep the people who used to want to leave, and sell more products.

There is no secret to all of this but there is an intuition when you Question and Listen to your people.

I am Steve Sapato and I teach people how to be better so other people can feel and be better too.

steve@mentalprosperityblog.com

Is my manager worth a crap? How can I tell if my manager is any good?

Isn’t it strange that most people don’t know when their manager is a bad manager? When you look at all of the most recent information you have to be appalled that 82% of all managers are no good. That means that most workers, most employees, probably have never worked for a good much less a great manager.

This excerpt from Harvard Business Review shares what makes a great manager. If your manager has these talents then you know they are great managers.

Gallup finds that great managers have the following talents:

• They motivate every single employee to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.
• They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
• They create a culture of clear accountability.
• They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.
• They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.

Gallup’s research reveals that about one in ten people possess all these necessary traits. While many people are endowed with some of them, few have the unique combination of talent needed to help a team achieve excellence in a way that significantly improves a company’s performance. These 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity. Combined, they contribute about 48% higher profit to their companies than average managers.

It’s important to note that another two in 10 exhibit some characteristics of basic managerial talent and can function at a high level if their company invests in coaching and developmental plans for them.

What is most interesting in reading and learning what the studies reveal is that there is another 10% of the people who are the right kind of people. These people would make great managers and are already working in these departments. But they are not the managers. They are people who are working hard, struggling within their area and are trying to be recognized and discovered but are passed by.

Now you know that out of every ten people, most likely, one will be the stuff that great managers are made of. And that means you have a one in ten chance that your manager is any good.

And just like the Harvard Business Review found out, another one in ten has many of the basic managerial talents needed to function as a higher level. Is this you? How will you hone your managerial skills? What will make you a good manager if not a great manager? Are you developing your skills by what you are reading or listening to?

When was the last time you read a book on how to be a great manager? Read a blog about being a great manager? A CD? A podcast?

Is your boss doing any of this? Is your boss involved, connected, growing?

Now you know whether you have a good manager or not.

What should you give them for Christmas? How about a book on How to Be A Great Manager!

I am Steve Sapato, management trainer and professional trainer. http://www.mentalprosperityblog.com

I’M A MANAGER, I’M UPSET AND I WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW IT! AND I KNOW YOU WILL DO MORE FOR ME WHEN YOU KNOW THIS!

Are you tired of people with an attitude upsetting your office? Read more at http://stevesapato.wordpress.com/

Are you happy at your job? 2/3 of your co-workers say no. Maybe here is how you can help.

A new study by ComPsych, a company that provides employee assistance programs, reported that workers are feeling more burned out than ever by their jobs.

The survey asked more than 2,000 employees about the stress levels of their jobs. The findings showed that 2 out of 3 workers report high levels of stress with extreme fatigue and a feeling of being out of control. And more than half of those surveyed said they miss one or two days of work per year because of stress.

I have been at this for many years now. Training and teaching people about happiness, how to rediscover their joy and how to be in control of their lived. Some call this self-empowerment. The question always come back to, what is making you unhappy?

One of my jobs in Great Managers is to teach managers how to move from good to great. Some I teach how to move from just being in a managerial position into how to be a manager and what that really entails. Not just a title but a responsibility.

And that often is what makes people unhappy with their job. Having a poor manager.

The latest information about what makes people HAPPY at their jobs is having a job that is meaningful. And then doing something that makes them feel fulfilled. Notice it is not what we have been teaching for the last several years which was ‘being recognized at their job’. Recognition now is down the list. Being significant and feeling significant is what people really want.

That means, as a great manager, you have to know what your people want and need in order to feel signficant. It means as a person working every day at your job that you have to know what makes you feel meaningful. And that means you also have to realize the importance of your job. Is what I am doing making a significant difference at my company.

If i am working at a fast food place and my job is to clean the restrooms think about how you feel when you walk into a filthy restroom and how it really does impact you. Think about how you can change that by cleaning it so that people might actually say, as many of us have in the past, wow, the bathroom surprised me because it was so clean!

Now think about how your job impacts the rest of the department or the rest of the group or…

You see, many times it is not what we do so much as how we look at what we do that will help us feel significant and meaningful. If you are just getting by with your job think how you might feel if you were your boss and someone who really did the job well was working for you? How would that impact you as your boss?

Can someone working for you put you in a better mood just because they do a great job? Can someone impact your job and cause you to do a better job just because they are doing a great job?

You see, sometimes it’s not what we do for others that makes us feel special. Often times it is what we do for ourselves that makes us proud not matter what anyone else sees or thinks.

I am Steve Sapato from mentalprosperityblog.com and I hope you are in the 1/3 of all workers who like, appreciate and excel at your job just because you want to.

My blog is moving to Greatmanagersaremade.wordpress.com and if you would like to visit there and subscribe I think you will find more frequent original content as I get things into the right place and my new website design happens. Especially for the FREE video training on Professional Networking. Please feel good about passing this blog site on and helping others to learn how to become better at their jobs and happier at them too!

Great Managers are involved! And if you think you are, think again.

One huge area where managers fail is being involved with their people. No, I don’t mean they go bowling or drinking with them. They are involved with them on a professional level at work. Now the real question is, what do I mean by ‘involved’?

Involved is a state of mind as well as a physical interaction with your entire organization. You have to make constant appearances, have constant open two-way communication. You have to listen to your people, hear their fears, ideas, thoughts, concerns. You have to stand in between them and …

Yes, I paused there. You have to stand between them and … the leadership of your company, the management that they get frustrated with, the coworkers that they get upset with, the rules that they disagree with, the things that make them unhappy at work. And you have to stand between them and those things without creating a barrier, a division or a wall the separates them from those things. You have to be the person they can go to with all of these concerns and you have to be able to calm them, salve their fears, communicate effectively with their concerns and help them see how what they do, want to do, don’t want to do can all be worked out by staying within the parameters of the norms associated with their job. And that sometimes, they will have to simply accept what they cannot change and you have to offer them the wisdom to know when that is.

You will become a great manager by communicating effectively on all of these fronts especially when they do not perceive you as having done any of those things. Then you will have become a great manager that they will support, stand by, and do things for because they will believe in you as much as you believe in them.

And all of that must be done without alienating them from any other person or part of your organization. Can you do that? Do you know how to do that? And if you don’t, then what you need to do to become that GREAT Manager is start learning how to do that by 1) Reading the right things 2) Listening to the right tapes/cd’s/programs 3) attending or associating with the right people or seminars that can help you learn and grow into the person you want to be.

And helping your people do the same things.

I am Steve Sapato and I train managers to become GREAT MANAGERS. You can learn more at my website mentalprosperityblog.com and write to me at steve@stevesapato.com for answers to yoru questions and help in becoming.

 

 

What can you learn from the GM Firings? The culture of mediocrity~

Have you been keeping up on the “firings” of certain ‘key” personel by GM over design flaws and the deaths that happened because of this ‘negligence’?

If you read the materials coming out and all of the peripheral documentation it appears that GM and loads of employees knew about the flaws and potential outcomes for as long as eleven years. Yes, I said, eleven years. That makes the fifteen people fired merely pawns in the game of profit vs safety. It makes those fifteen the sacrificial lambs that are supposed to appease the government investigation and the quench the publics desire for results.

But what has really happened at GM? Why, if it takes eleven years to come to light, are we supposed to believe in anything GM again? Is GM really concerned with our safety? Should I risk my family on anything GM?

But let’s get past the issues of safety and products. Let’s get beyond brand loyalty and history.

What I really want to know is, will next years cars be any safer? Will I listen to the rhetoric of Cogressional hearings and ‘finding’ the culprits who are responsible for these aggregious errors that were ignored for almost eleven years? Will I eever really feel like GM has understood not only what happened but why it happened?

If you listen to GM leadership, they have instituted new committes, appointed new heads of new departments meant to address the issues that led to these errors and printed new posters to post all over the place to show the employees that there is a new atmosphere for addressing issues without repercussions.

And now I ask, will this fix their problem? Will this really address the issues that have kept people silent, babbling in frustration but secretive about the failure and potential catastrophic results these issues had on the familes who were killed?

And the answer is probably not. For what is troubling GM troubles a lot of companies both big and small and that is the culture we create in our companies. The culture we have created in our society. The  culture of look the other way, don’t get involved, don’t make waves, because all it will bring you is trouble and grief.

Look at your own organization and ask yourself, can people come to me with major issues about attitudes? Yes, peoples attitudes. For it is within your employees that your company exists. It is within the minds of your employees where your company culture resides. It is within the hearts and spirits of your employees where we find whether we can communicate with safety or fear. Can we bring up new ideas? Can we show criticism of existing things without fear or repercussions? Can your employees openly affect areas that are important?

And the important question is…  how do you know what they are feeling? When was the last time you openly solicited input from all employees and truly addressed these issues with the employees? Discussed them openly and responded to them.

I recently was involved with an organization where the CEO had an open blog where anyone could post a question. Everyone saw the question and everyone saw the response ny the CEO to each and every question. It was a great concept and it worked amazingly well. He sometimes even responded to the stupidly absurd questions that some people asked. And the results were amazing. Because everyone felt safe because it was so public.

Now I ask again, what can you learn from the GM firings?

 

Steve Sapato is a management trainer and coach and travels the country training up and coming managers and staff on how to be more effective in their dealings with people and employees. You can reach Steve at QLman49@gmail.com where the Q stands for Question and the L stands for Listen. Question everyone and everything and listen to the answers. If the answers make a lot of sense with no serious flaws maybe you should consider changing your opinion instead of trying to change theirs.