At the end of last year, I was having a meeting in a professor’s office when I noticed a bunch of pencils on her desk. Hmmm….pencils in an office; it’s quite normal and yet I was drawn to it.
It’s the 2nd day of the year and I thought that it’s a good time to share them (the insights, not the pencils) with you. Life is indeed like this bunch of pencils.
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You know how in movies, a character will just tell someone what they want? Like, “I want this thing,” and then the other person just gives them that thing?
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We are happy to announce that our collaboration with Fin2U Academy has resulted in our first e-learning course, Persuasive Power with Business Storytelling, led by our principal trainer and founder, Gina Phan.
In this self-paced course, learners will find 9 chapters (108 minutes) of how storytelling can enhance your communication and compel people to action.
Continue readingInfluence and Persuasion are needed in leadership, conflict resolution, decision making, project management, or in selling.
When people think about the word “influence”, they usually think about it in terms of PUSHING: a person exerting power or pressure on another. While this is certainly true, there is also another side to influence that many people don’t realize exists: PULLING.
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On 4th Sept, I was invited to serve as a committee member for the IUPT Asia-Pacific Centre, located in Kuala Lumpur. It certainly is a great honour and privilege for me to serve together with industry leaders such as KC See, Jonathan Low, Martin Mueller, Shirley Leong , Soo Hoo, Daphne Au, Ayappa Dass Kunnath, Dr Azeeza Jalaludee, and many more.
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I like challenges, but don’t like competition. Does that make sense?
I notice I would get excited when I have a challenge to overcome but once there is a competitive element in it, I lose interest in the activity or task. I believe it’s because I just like to compete with myself.
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The Covid-19 story is still not over. Yesterday, Malaysia reported 33,209 new cases, with a 7-day average of more than 27,000. The virus is very much still with us. The best way to keep the virus at bay is to not catch it in the first place. The problem is that we are not always in control of the situation we walk into, e.g.
Continue readingAre you a sales professional who want to connect better with clients? How can I standout above my competitor in my communication?
In conjunction with Knowledge Hub Asia Sdn Bhd, we are delighted to announce this course that is specially designed for Sales Professionals. Story telling is a compelling method to introduce yourself, build rapport, sell your personal and corporate brand, and respond to objections. They are other times in which this tool can help in positioning your solution, product or service.
Date: 17 & 18 Feb 2022
Location: TheHub, Jaya One, PJ (click for map)
Contact: Esther Yong, +6012-266 2728, inquiry@knowledgehub-asia.com
It’s the last day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. This is the time for many of us to reflect on the last 12 months, and some will make resolutions for the next.
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Some may have read this on my social media channels but I thought I’ll put this in a blog post so that I can easily find it again in the future.
18th December 2021 – it started raining and raining and raining. It didn’t stop until the next morning. News of floods starting from the Klang area which soon also affected other parts of Shah Alam and Subang Jaya. This would be one of the greatest floods in the Klang Valley since 1971. The cause of the storm is a mini typhoon named Tropical Depression No. 29. This is the first time an eye of a storm developed in the Straits of Malacca.
I chanced upon this riddle on the internet recently. It’s titled ‘Who am I?’
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What can you do with a potato? Lots! French fries (chips, if you prefer), potato salad, wedges, casserole, curry puffs, creamy mash, and a chicken curry is never complete with its potato. But never did I expect to see something beautiful demonstrated with potatoes; to be exact — a boy and his single potato.
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I have given 6 quick tips on how to create an empowering culture by
1. Letting go of fear and starting to trust
2. Flattening the hierarchy and setting clear objectives to employees
3. Delegating with the intention to develop
4. Providing the resources to support your employees (and see an increase in customer loyalty)
5. Being open to feedback
6. Encouraging creativity and see innovation thrive
This 6th tip in the empowerment series is to help employees with their creativity and think out-of-the-box, as cliché as it sounds. You must encourage your employees to explore their potential and unlock the opportunity for increasing their creative thinking abilities.
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Improve your business writing in 12 hours!
No more staring at a black screen, trying to structure a message or a report.
Join our trainer, Gina Phan, for 3 half-days in this engaging online workshop.
This course targets how to create business documents in the modern workplace, which takes into account the many forms that modern communication can take, and teaches participants how to align their message with the appropriate medium .
Dates: 18-20 August 2021, morning sessions
Organised by: Event Mastery
Know more and register: Click here or contact +6017-866-8522
A few years ago, I was doing a project consulting project for a software company. The management had assigned Samantha, an experienced executive to act as a resource person. As I worked with her, I noticed that Samantha would stick to a very fixed way of performing her tasks and never want to learn any new ways. She would never tell me why and each time, she goes on a very long explanation about the process she takes. When asked for ideas and opinion, she would not contribute any. At first, I thought she was inflexible and unteachable.
But then, I found that this was a common trait among the staff that worked for the same department that Samantha worked in. I noticed that their manager is a subject matter specialist and takes the effort to correct his staff when they made any mistakes. He is not nasty when he does it and I believe he truly wants them to learn. But it would be better if he had balanced his feedback to be both supportive and corrective in nature.
So as a result, like Samantha, they will not want to try anything new nor share their thoughts. They don’t really know how they are performing as they feel they are being corrected all the time.
In this How to Empower series, I have shared the following:
Empowering employees does not mean they are to be left on their own and figure out how they are doing at their work. Expect mistakes and provide feedback.
I’d like to share something that a friend taught me about giving feedback.
If you want to help someone improve, catch them when they do something right.
Often, leaders feel they need to point out mistakes that employees have done so as to avoid the mistake being repeated. There’s a limit to how effective this is. How many times have you heard leaders say this — Despite my reminders so many times, I still see the mistake being made.
By praising employees when they do something right, you are reinforcing the right behavior and you will see more of this behavior. This increases their confidence as well as trust in you as a leader.
How did this help Samantha? I started by giving her goals, instead of tasks. I did not give her any fixed processes and asked her to tell me what was the best way to achieve these goals. She was not used to it at first. I also made sure my feedback was positive and took the time to acknowledge when she did something right. She became more confident and had stopped justifying every single step of the process she took.
(Read the other parts about empowerment)
(*nrp stands for National Recovery Plan.)
(Feature Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay.)
About the Author: Gina Phan is a consultant and trainer with Zinfinity Consulting. She currently conducts courses in workplace performance skills. Click here to contact her, follow her on Facebook or connect with her on Linkedin.
#leadership #servantleadership #empower #empowermenttips #management #feedback
#trainergina #ginaphan #gp
This is already the 4th piece about empowerment. If you are not already convinced, here’s a major benefit of empowering your employees — According to a Gallup study, organizations that empower employees experience higher customer loyalty by as much as 50%.
Your customer’s experience with your brand is largely dependent on what is happening inside your organisation — employee satisfaction. Empowered employees take personal responsibility for doing a good job. The business reaps the benefits of this mindset.
Ritz-Carlton famously empowers its employees to spend up to $2,000 to make a customer happy, and a baristas at certain international coffee shops are authorised to give you a free drink if you have an issue with the service. No wonder these brands rate high in customer experience and satisfaction.
Your employees can deliver superior products and services if they feel engaged in the organisation. They want to be able to address day-to-day challenges of customer handling more effectively. If there is an unsatisfied customer, do they have the tools and authority to make a decision to fix the problem immediately?
As a business leader, it’s good to think about how and what your employees can be empowered to do. And then, think of what resources are required for them to be able do it. What kind of changes to you need to make to your systems and processes to accomodate this?
Many years ago when I was on a business trip, I arrived at my hotel to find that my room was not ready. The staff kept me waiting at the lobby for 2 hours. Despite my complaints, they were not empowered to upgrade me to another room. And for some reason, the hotel’s General Manager was ‘uncontactable’ for that 2 hours. That was the last time I ever chose to stay in that hotel.
Compare that with another hotel that paid for refreshments for my family and upgraded us to a suite when the same thing happened on one of our holidays. No fuss; the staff at the reception are empowered to do it. Did they get my loyalty as a customer? You bet, they did!
(Read the other parts about empowerment)
(*nrp stands for National Recovery Plan.)
(Feature Image by Rodrigo Salomón Cañas from Pixabay.)
About the Author: Gina Phan is a consultant and trainer with Zinfinity Consulting. She currently conducts courses in workplace performance skills. Click here to contact her, follow her on Facebook or connect with her on Linkedin.
#leadership #servantleadership #empower #empowermenttips #management #resources
#trainergina #ginaphan #gp
Empowerment increases employee engagement. According to Joseph Folkman who analysed data on more than 7,000 employees, people who felt a low level of empowerment were rated with engagement at the 24th percentile, whereas those with a high level of empowerment were at the 79th percentile.
After Tip #1 and Tip #2, let’s see how delegation helps.
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Today, I take a small break on the topic of empowerment and talk about mindset. Leaders are responsible for their team’s performance. Sometimes, they are sent for formal training and sometimes they rely on on-the-job experience (aka shoot, then aim). Why are some more successful than others as leaders? The biggest contributor to this difference is mindset.
Today, I take a small break on the topic of empowerment and talk about mindset. Leaders are responsible for their team’s performance. Sometimes, they are sent for formal training and sometimes they rely on on-the-job experience (aka shoot, then aim). Why are some more successful than others as leaders? The biggest contributor to this difference is mindset. O
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On this first day of the second half of the year, I share the second tip on how to empower successfully. To make empowerment effective, it’s good to flatten the hierachy. Flat organisations have few or no levels of intermediate management between staff and leaders. This “flattened” hierarchy increases employee involvement through a decentralized decision-making process.
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