Connect Before you Correct

[0:04] This is the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast, supporting sales leaders and managers to improve their sales funnels from people to prospects. I'm Hamish Knox. In this show, you'll learn how you can improve your results, lead a great team, and hit more targets with Full Funnel Freedom. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, sharing with you ideas and insights around connecting before we correct a team member. The Full Funnel Freedom Podcast is brought to you by Sandler Calgary. If you're tired of having consultants and coaches just tell you what you need to do to scale your business without actually sticking around and helping you with the how, check out hamish.sandler.com forward slash how to Sandler. We've got the what's and we'll help you out with the hows so it doesn't sound like you just went to a training class. Also wanna give a shout out to our listeners in Israel who consistently keep us in the top 100 in the careers section. Thank you for listening. I also want to read a review from T. Nowakowski. The title of the review is Salient Immediately Usable Content.

[1:23] Immediately useful insights, techniques, techniques, and ideas for sales managers in any industry. Looking forward to the weekly podcast to come. I'm already re-listening to the first three. So Tina Wachowski, thank you so much for your rating and review. Love to read your review on a future episode. So do leave us a rating and review after you've had a chance to listen. So connecting before we correct. Often when we feel another person in our life that could be a vendor, it could be a team member, it could be a peer, it could be spouse, partner, child.

[2:02] When we feel that they are offside, we have a tendency to do one of two things. We either avoid addressing their behavior in the moment, which is kind of like pushing a beach ball underneath the water when we remove our hand later. It doesn't necessarily gently bob to the surface. It blows up and it becomes all of the things that that person has ever done to be offside, not just addressing the behavior. So we either avoid it or we essentially hammer them with a message to correct the behavior that we believe is offside. Now, there is real power in on-the-spot coaching. This is a bit different. On-the-spot coaching is different from correcting behavior, which to the recipient sounds like, hey, dummy, you should do this instead. And it doesn't matter what we say, it matters what they here. So we want to remember this rule. It's never about us. It's about them. It's never about us. It's about them. Each person we're communicating with has their own fears, dreams.

[3:11] Worldview, and that in this moment is bumping up against our fears, dreams, hopes, worldview, view and we're getting friction. So the create long-term mutually profitable relationships with your team members, lock this mindset in. And you may want to write it down on a note that you can put up somewhere where you can see it all the time. The mindset is I connect before I correct. I connect before I correct. What this means in practice is we're putting the brakes on our gut gut reaction to correct and take a moment to understand what is prompting the other person.

[3:59] To behave in a way that's offside. Let's just say that one of our team members isn't entering data properly into our CRM or entering it at all. Just pretend it's never happened with any sales leader having to have this conversation. I appreciate that. So just play along with me for a moment. But let's say that that's the case. We've got a team member who is not entering data either correctly or at all into the CRM. Now, our gut reaction, of course, is to call them up, message them, walk over to their desk, and download a correction on them, which may create short-term compliance, but is not going to create long-term sustainable behavioral change, which is what we're really seeking. In order to create full funnel of freedom, we need to create long-term sustainable behavior change. There are three steps that.

[4:56] To connecting before correcting. Again, we're using that example of the team member who is not entering data properly at all into our CRM, which is something we have communicated to the whole team. We need this to be done. So first step is we need to connect. There's lots of ways to get to this mountaintop. There's lots of ways to connect.

[5:15] Some of the ways that our clients have have found effective is to say something like, feels like there's something going on. Or I've noticed recently that you're not on your usual pace of, or another version is, my sense is you're not a fan of, insert the recent change, the news, the announcement, or in this case, we would say, My sense is you're not a fan of putting stuff into the CRM. Whichever path to the mountaintop of connection we choose, the key part is to give a three to five beat pause after to allow our team member to respond. If they don't, that's absolutely okay. We've put the connection effort out and it It needs to come off as sincere, obviously. We can't look like we're checking a box. But if we say genuinely, it feels like there's something going on, I've noticed that your entries into the CRM aren't there, aren't very complete, et cetera, et cetera, pause, give them a chance to respond.

[6:30] Second part of connecting before correcting is to be vulnerable. As a leader, our greatest strength is in being vulnerable, especially with our team members. By being vulnerable, we're bringing our emotions into the conversation.

[6:48] So to get to this mountaintop in step two, we could say something like, and I'm struggling, or I'm not sure what this really means. Or we could even say, and I'm frustrated. So going back and building this along, we could say, I've noticed recently that you haven't put any information into the CRM, even though we've had lots of conversations about all the great activities that you're doing and I'm struggling. So that's the second box. We want to be vulnerable with our team member, bring in our emotions, again, from a genuine perspective.

[7:34] And then the third and final step is to ask for help. It's another way of being vulnerable and it engages them. The two most powerful words in human communication are help me. We're all social creatures. We're all wired to help each other in some way. So if we go back to the very beginning and we say, I've noticed recently that there haven't been any entries in our CRM, even though we've had a lot of great conversations about all the wonderful activities you're doing, and I'm struggling to understand why, would you help me figure out a solution to this?

[8:21] Some other options could be, so I thought we could work through this together. Are you okay with that? Or another option is, and I thought it would be better to talk this out with you instead of making up stories about why this is happening. Fair? Yeah.

[8:38] That last one's really important because we all make up stories about other people's behavior. We make those snap judgments when we see someone doing something at a restaurant or on the street or at a sporting event, and we instantly make a judgment about why they are doing whatever they're doing. And by the way, that's a story. It's kind of like the cliched example of someone who blows by us in their car when we're driving and we shake our fist at them and we call them names. And what we don't know is they're late to get home or they're rushing to the hospital or whatever that might be. So when we tell our direct report, I don't want to make up any stories about what's going on. And I want to work this out with you instead. We actually elevate them and we raise them up in their eyes, which creates a stronger opportunity to have a conversation with them and resulting in a much more successful outcome than coming in going, hey, get your stuff into the CRM or get out. Again, none of us would probably say that, but it doesn't matter what we say. It matters what they hear. And corrections without connection will sound like the example I just gave. Now, I appreciate that there are instances where a team member is willfully offside with their behavior. I get that. I may have even done it as a salesperson earlier in my career.

[10:06] Even if we believe they're willfully offside. Now, unless they literally are sending us notes or walking up and down the halls going, I'm not going to put stuff in the CRM. We don't actually have a way of knowing that they're willfully offside until they tell us. So we can still follow the process, even though we believe they are willfully offside in their behavior.

[10:27] In that case, the first step of the connection might sound like, feels like there's something going on and it's affecting your usual performance. When we phrase it that way, we put the pressure on something's going on instead of coming off to our team member like, hey, you're not performing. I don't care what's happening outside of work. Figure this out or get out. Again, we're not probably saying that, but that's probably what they're hearing. So we put the pressure on something's going on. It gives them that opportunity to say, yeah, this is what's going on. I didn't really know how to bring this up to you. So let me, you know, let's figure this out together. I do have to share that some of the leaders that we've worked with have expressed.

[11:18] Reservations at following these three steps of connecting, bringing in the emotions, and then asking for help because they're afraid of what their team member might say. And in that case, what I've shared with them and I'll share with you is another mindset to adopt, which is I can handle any response because you can. Yeah, there are certainly extremes as to what someone on our team might say, but most of the responses are probably going to fall somewhere in the middle of that's reasonable. And I can address that with the three steps that we've talked about before.

[12:01] The real power of this process is with our tonality. We want our tonality in these cases to be gentle, nurturing, and genuinely curious. And we want our body language to be open, warm, and inviting. So at the very least, these three steps are done voice to voice. Face-to-face, ideally face-to-face, whether that's on video or in the same physical space. This is not a text-based conversation. In a text-based conversation, this can go sideways very, very quickly because in text, the recipient gets to decide what our tonality is. Now, if you're still feeling uncomfortable with these three steps, practice alone, find a trusted advisor so you can role play out the three steps, connecting, Connecting, bringing your emotions in and asking for help without sounding like you just heard it on a podcast or it's stilted and weird because that's actually going to do more harm than good. So going forward, mindset is I connect before I correct.

[13:07] What you'll find is your team members are more likely to open up to you and you are more likely to create long-term mutually profitable relationships with them and probably everyone else in your life. This has been the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I've been your host, Hamish Knox. Today, sharing ideas and insights around connecting before correcting behavior. Thanks again to Harley Adventures for your wonderful review. you. Connect with us on Instagram at Sandler in YYC. Like and share, rate and review. If you want to be a sponsor or a guest on the Full Funnel Freedom podcast, email podcast at fullfunnelfreedom.com. Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom. Thank you for listening to Full Funnel Freedom with Hamish Knox. If you want to increase your sales with ease, go to fullfunnelfreedom.com.

[14:10] Music.