Seth Godin takes a different approach to marketing, it revolves around empathy that starts with identifying change. Once you know who you are targeting with your products of services, then you determine what change are you trying to make?
As a leader, that question is appropriate to ask of your team, too. What change are you trying to make in them…and why?
Although, we don’t know who actually said it (other than Spiderman circa 1962), with great power comes great responsibility. How you treat and direct your team has a far greater impact than you might imagine. Without uttering a word, a single look can elevate or crush a person.
You don’t even have to look at them to effect their behavior. You surely have had the experience of someone being angry as they enter the room and you automatically want to steer clear of them. Alternatively, someone on a subway with headphones watching a video and laughing will cause others around them to start smiling and eventually laughing with that person, even if the person doesn’t even look up from the video!
Energy is contagious.
Think about your customers or clients. What change do you help them make? For example, I help my clients be stronger, more balanced and flexible, calmer, and self-aware. I change the way the see themselves and the world around them as a result.
Far too many businesses are not 100% aligned with the change they seek to make. For example, there is a marketing company I know that expects their customers to be open, honest and transparent with them so they can help their clients be see as the best in their respective field. Yet, the marketing company’s leaders are not open, honest or transparent with their employees, their employees do not fully trust their bosses, not to mention are intimidated by them. The employees often operate in a fear state. It is a really tense place to work.
Clarity for change
When you determine the change you’re trying to make with/for your customers, then you look internally to your team. Here are three questions to begin guiding you toward clarity:
Are you empowering your team to make the change you desire and have identified?
Do they even know the change your company is trying to make with/for their customers/clients?
What can you do, starting today, to communicate that change more effectively?