My question to you is - since when did "loud" become a sign of strength? Are we to assume that quiet people are weak, and loud people are strong? Do you genuinely believe that?

Before you say no, think about this: The personality trait most likely tied to "loud and soft" is the extroversion trait. High extroverts are loud and boisterous, low extroverts are quiet and soft spoken. Is high extroversion a strength? Absolutely. But it is only one of four potential strengths, so people can be plenty strong without extroversion being high.

How does high extroversion manifest itself as a strength? When a highly extroverted person passionately believes in their mission, and believes in themselves, then the strength of their extroversion is immediately apparent. You won't miss this, whether they are selling you a product, or on the last movie they went to see. The point is - it's only one of the potential areas of strength. What are the others?

High Dominance is clearly a strength. People with this trait will have a tremendous desire to win, and an ability to take the lead and provide solutions to problems. When properly harnessed their leadership strengths create an environment where people will follow their lead, and this is how their strength will be evident.

Patience and conformity are also strengths. For patience, it's the ability to connect and relate with other people, and then to persistently pursue whatever the goals are until fruition. For conformity, it's the ability to create a path and process and utilize that process to achieve the results at hand.

Here are the two key concepts for you to consider. First, if everyone has strengths, then why isn't everyone strong? They are, but we don't get to see it because people find themselves in positions where their strengths are not being harnessed. Remember I talked about the strength of the high extrovert when they are passionate about their product. What happens when this person loses that passion and they feel their product or service offering is not good? Do you think that environment is harnessing their strength? I don't think so. (This is a bit more complicated, as there are other factors involved, so please feel free to reach out to us if you want to discuss this further.)

Second, if we tend to view others through our own prism of strengths and weaknesses, aren't we likely to view people that have strengths similar to our own in a more positive light, and miss the strengths of other people? You bet! That's why a journalist could write a story about "quiet but strong".

Make sense to you now?

Everybody has strengths. Everybody. Tony Dungy's strengths are not derived from his extroversion. Maybe yours are. Our goal in working with all of our clients is to help them understand where every person on their team's strengths are coming from, and then figuring out exactly how to harness that strength. Remember the adage from Buckingham and Coffman's book First Break All the Rules:

• People don't change that much
• Stop trying to put in what was left out
• Try to pull out what was left in
• That is hard enough

It is plenty hard. Let us help you.

First year retention was 32%.

Now it is 78%.

Second year retention was 15%

Now it is 65%.

Let me put that another way. Had the Sage partners hired 100 salespeople in the "old days" two years later a grand total of 15 of them would still be selling. Now there are 65 of them left- 50 more salespeople!!! And think about those 50. Seasoned, knowledgeable, and raring to go. How would you like to have those 50 extra sales people on your team?

Think about the implication of that to everyone's bottom line. Sage and their resellers have been extremely happy with the results. The proof of that pudding is that Sage has repeated the program twice more after the initial launch, and we've been an integral part of each effort. In addition, they have expanded our relationship to include utilizing OPUS services to assist with the technical consultant positions as well. Why not? The results speak for themselves.

Please read the article when you have a moment - in fact, here's the link:

If so, please visit the website of an organization that can help you do exactly that. It could be well worth your while.

Thirty million presentations will be delivered today. Millions will fail. Millions more will be received with yawns. This book shows you how to transform your presentations from dry recitals of facts into compelling stories with laser-sharp focus on what matters most: what's in it for your audience. The author has used these techniques to train the top brass at Intel, Intuit, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Compaq and many others.

March 7, 2007

"The Six Things Management Does to Kill Morale and Employee Productivity, and What You Can Do To Fix It"

March 21, 2007