"If you are building a culture where honest expectations are communicated and peer accountability is the norm, then the group will address poor performance and attitudes." — Dr. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologist and author The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center: We are starting to see companies develop open communication cultures that facilitate honest and transparent dialogue between departments, teams and co-workers. Teams are more successful when each member understands his or her individual contributions and how those contributions impact the end result. This ensures that the team understands interdependencies and the effect of poor performance on their co-workers. As leaders, we expect honesty and accountability throughout the entire organization. The Ritz-Carlton maintains a culture of accountability through empowerment and trust. Our Ladies and Gentlemen know they can give candid yet respectful feedback. When complacency creeps into our routine, we quickly identify it, and we work together to make the necessary changes. How are you encouraging your team to be accountable to one another? ∞ The Blog Post Inspired Thinking: Peer Accountability appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

Here at Citrix, we love to share our customers’ success stories. Occasionally, we even get the opportunity to feature them as case studies. This last quarter we had several customers who were eager to share their accomplishments with us, and we couldn’t have been more thrilled to talk with them and learn how they were using the Citrix GoTo cloud services. Below are a few examples of how our customers have innovated and benefited from our solutions: Avigilon A leader in high-definition surveillance solutions relies on GoToAssist Corporate and its Salesforce integration to deliver outstanding customer support around the clock and across the globe. IN2 Innovation A product design and development firm compresses project timelines, engages clients, reduces costs and supports all-digital, flexible working using GoToMeeting with HDFaces. Choosing GoToMeeting over WebEx was the clear choice for them! Prophix Software A Canadian software company enhances its high-touch, customer-centric reputation using GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and GoToAssist for remote demos, education and technical support.  Webtrends A digital marketing optimization firm finds many creative uses and benefits of GoToMeeting with HDFaces, including greater hiring flexibility and enhanced teamwork. To read more about what our customers are saying, visit our Customer Reviews page. If you have a story to share about how you are using our products and benefitting, we would love to hear it. Email us at VoiceOfTheCustomer@CitrixOnline.com.   Photo credit: Webtrends

Dear Ritz-Carlton: How does the culture translate into management? For example, how are management and supervision different? How do you model the culture? How are employees "coached" or disciplined differently? The above question is from an attendee at the "Symposium: Your Journey to Service Excellence" in April. The following answer is from Jeff Hargett, Senior Corporate Director, Culture Transformation at The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center: The most important way that a leader can show support of the culture is to be a role model. There is not a Ritz-Carlton leader who is unwilling to "get their hands dirty" by jumping in the trenches alongside any of our employees, the Ladies and Gentlemen of The Ritz-Carlton. We look at Leadership in two ways: Leader by Title or Leader by Example. Leaders who rely on their title to give them power live in an "us vs. them" state—US the Leaders vs. THEM the workers. That view doesn’t gain loyalty or commitment from their direct reports. Leaders by Example should be everyone on your payroll. A tenured employee can be the "leader" for a new employee even when they have the same position and title. As for coaching, it involves collaboration between the leader and employee to find the best way to correct a problem or reach a goal. Discipline, although sometimes necessary, is more negative and typically leads to punishment. It should only be used when coaching doesn’t achieve the goal.  ∞ On Thursday, November 12, 2015, The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center will present "Your Journey to Service Excellence," The Ritz-Carlton approach to legendary service, employee engagement and a customer-centric culture. This one-day Symposium will take place at The Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner in McLean, VA. Complete your enrollment by August 1st to take advantage of early-bird pricing. The Blog Post Dear Ritz-Carlton: Leaders by example? appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

Today we have a guest post from Matt Abrahams. Matt is a passionate, collaborative and innovative educator and coach who teaches Stategic Communication for Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and Presentation Skills for Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program, and De Anza College. He has published research articles on cognitive planning, persuasion, and interpersonal communication. Matt recently published Speaking Up Without Freaking Out, a book written to help the millions of people who suffer from anxiety around speaking in public. Matt received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford; his graduate degree in communication studies from UC Davis; and his secondary education teaching credential from SFSU. The Book of Lists has repeatedly reported that the fear of speaking in public is the most frequent answer to the question "What scares you most?" In fact, people rate speaking anxiety 10-to-20 percent higher than the fear of death, the fear of heights, the fear of spiders and the fear of fire. As a student of mine once joked: "People would rather stand naked while on fire, overlooking a 30-story fall and covered with spiders and snakes than give a speech." The fear of presenting in front of others is real and can be very limiting - in terms of career growth and interpersonal relationships - for those who suffer from it. The good news is that, with practice and persistence, novice speakers can become more confident and compelling. Keep in mind that the goal is not to overcome your anxiety. Rather, the objective is to find a few strategies or techniques for managing your fear. Managed speaking anxiety can be beneficial in several ways: It helps you to focus on your speaking task, provides you with energy, motivates you to care about your communicative outcomes and encourages you to prepare. Of course, reaping these benefits requires you to adjust and adapt to your fear. Feeling anxious undermines your credibility, which is really the only currency you have as a speaker. If your audience does not see you as trustworthy, experienced or believable, then they are highly unlikely to support whatever you are advocating. In my mind, counteracting anxiety’s impact to your credibility is about three disparate but intimately related concepts: Your knowledge of both your topic and your audience (so you can focus on the audience’s needs) The source of your anxiety and the associated anxiety-management techniques that address the underlying cause The anxiety-provoking behaviors you likely enact as you prepare your presentation, such as procrastination, perfectionism and lack of practice Join me for a webinar on November 6 to learn more about how you can protect your credibility and deliver more confident and compelling presentations by speaking up without freaking out. Photo credit: tedxyouthbfs

When your leaders are passionate and driven, it is easy for them to become engulfed by responsibility. A study by the Harvard Medical School faculty (as reported in The Wall Street Journal), found that "96% of senior leaders reported feeling burnt out to some degree, with one-third describing their burnout as extreme." This is a problem for your leaders, your employees and your organization. Psychologist Michael Bader notes that when leaders feel burnt out "it undermines their energy, passion, and imagination. And it spreads like a virus through their workplaces and families. Almost every aspect of their lives takes a hit—health, relationships with friends and family, creativity, judgment, concentration, and moods." Clearly, the ripple effect of leadership burnout is a significant hazard. Energetic Leaders Increase Bottom Line Burnout also impacts your organization’s profitability. Colin Hall, a well-known leader in South African retail circles, sought to understand the differences between loss-making stores and those that were profitable. He conducted the following experiment: "What we did was we took our best performing store and our worst performing store, and we profiled the managers in both stores. And both of them, funny enough, were equally qualified to do the job. And so we thought, ‘Well, that’s not the answer. It’s clear that there’s got to be something else here.’ So what we did was we took the worst performing branch manager and we put him in the best performing store, and the best performing manager and we put him into the worst performing store, and we watched the results. "And, funny, after six weeks, the best manager, technically, had managed to turn around the lowest making store, and the worst manager had managed to [LAUGHS] turn around the best performing store. And we conducted a whole lot of investigation into each of the managers, both having the same level of competency to run a business, but we realized that the one differencing factor was energy." This example illustrates that energetic and positive leaders inspire greater contributions from those around him or her. Your staff will follow leaders who know their direction and convey their belief that the destination is achievable and worth achieving. In contrast, leaders who appear to be beaten down by circumstances will inspire decreased performance. Combat Leadership Burnout Every Day Most leaders deal with frustrating situations—such as personnel challenges, budget issues and impossible deadlines—but they must find ways to maintain an upbeat attitude. A few simple ways for leaders to counteract workplace stress include: Share good news and take time to celebrate positive results. Set a personal goal of thanking at least one employee each day. This commitment will create a habit of looking for positive performance all day. When you hear negativity, respond with a constructive suggestion of something that can be done to improve the situation. At The Ritz-Carlton, our employees are our most important resource—and that includes our leaders. The employee promise pledges that "The Ritz-Carlton fosters a work environment where … quality of life is enhanced…." Leaders must be hard working, but they must also be able to delegate, recognize a false crisis and trust employees enough to step away. In addition, leaders must be sure that they are getting enough sleep. Tired leaders tend to have less ability to self-regulate and less resiliency. Sleep provides the opportunity for regeneration and renewal. Well-rested leaders—as well as well-rested staff—tend to behave more like Ladies and Gentlemen. Lastly, leaders need to remember that time away from work creates opportunities for personal connection, self-reflection and enrichment. Vacations that offer a true disconnect from the office enable leaders to return to work more refreshed. As a leader, you may be tempted to answer one more email, to spend one more hour at the office, or to give just a little more of yourself. However, turning off the computer and leaving the office behind for a bit may actually be the best choice for you, your employees, your family and your organization. ∞ The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center offers advisory services, courses and presentations to organizations that wish to benchmark the award-winning business practices of The Ritz-Carlton. Your organization can learn about The Ritz-Carlton methodology for customer service, employee engagement and leadership development. We also guide organizations through a multi-step process in order to achieve sustainable culture transformation.  The Blog Post Avoiding Leadership Burnout appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

The idea of a to-do list is pretty straightforward. You make a list of everything you need to do so that you don’t forget anything. It’s also fairly straightforward to create. You just write down your tasks on a piece of paper and cross them off as you complete them. Everyone from the young office junior to the CEO has used to-do lists in one form or another. There are even people that have them at home as well as work so they can keep their social life in order. But since we now work in so many different ways with so many different apps, we have seen the to-do list take on tons of new forms and shapes. There are a lot of apps available across different operating systems and web browsers that will help you track your tasks. We’ve used apps like TeuxDeux, Remember the Milk and Cheddar. The benefit of apps like these is that they compartmentalize different areas of your day or your work. You can have one central list as well as others that feed into it. You can also schedule regular reminders for actions if you have reoccurring tasks each week. The other big benefit of these apps is that you can synchronize them across different platforms. This means that if you have a brainwave while eating breakfast, you can drop a note straight into your to-do list and have it ready and waiting for you when you turn your computer on. The downside to apps like these, though, can be their tendency to overcomplicate task tracking. Just keeping your to-do list up to date can feel like its own task. If you’re not keen on using apps and you like the old-school approach, then the trusty pad and pen is the winner. There really is no way that you can overcomplicate anything with this method. All of your actions are right there in front of you. You can add things onto the list as they come in and scratch them out as soon as you’re done. You can also format it in your own style and make sure that everything is laid out in the way you will be able to understand best. The big downside to this method is you must remember to take it everywhere with you, and your world is prone to collapsing if you lose it or if the cleaner throws it out. Of course, there are other systems that you can use. A good idea is to try and combine the two. Using systems like Evernote can help you jot down notes when you’re out and about. The cleaners can do their job properly without accidentally throwing away the to-do list you left inside your old magazine. Do you put your trust into to-do apps? Or do you still like the tried-and-tested method of writing things down? Photo credit: tinymind

"If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it—young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous—is changed by it." — John C. Maxwell, author, speaker and pastor The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center: As leaders, we must make it our goal to lead by example and cultivate a positive work environment. Creating and maintaining such an environment is a never-ending task, but the payoff is always worth the effort. When your employees feel positive and encouraged by their environment, they are motivated to improve themselves. Research by psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman, Ph.D. indicates that when leaders deliver corrective feedback in an encouraging manner—such as: "I see you are really working on this issue, and I’m impressed with what you’ve accomplished so far. Let’s work together to make this next improvement"—then the left prefrontal cortex of the brain activates. This is important because the prefrontal cortex is responsible for flexibility and information processing. Encouragement fosters improvement. Leaders at The Ritz-Carlton not only encourage their staff—the Ladies and Gentlemen of The Ritz-Carlton—to develop and improve, but leaders also express their appreciation through recognition programs and First Class cards. Have you tried delivering corrective feedback in an encouraging manner to your workforce? ∞ The Blog Post Inspired Thinking: Encouragement appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

Today we have a guest post from Harold Jarche. Harold helps create work environments that foster innovation. He has been described as "a keen subversive of the last century’s management and education models." People have connected with Harold over the past decade, through his blog (www.jarche.com) and professional services, for pragmatic ideas on leadership, social business and collaboration. Harold has held senior positions at the Centre for Learning Technologies and e-Com Inc. He is a co-author of The Working Smarter Fieldbook with his colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance. His preferred workplace is on his bicycle, where he gets his best ideas. Open online courses, talent management, social collaboration: The training world is changing. Traditional training structures, based on institutions, programs, courses and classes, are under pressure. One of the biggest changes we are seeing in online training is that the content-delivery model is being replaced by social and collaborative frameworks. Here are just some of things happening now that trainers should be prepared to tackle in the new year: Increasing Complexity Helping people be more creative and solve complex problems is now a priority. While workers still need to be trained and educated, that alone will not prepare them for a networked workplace that requires continuous learning on the job. Training departments need to add more thought and resources to enable people to learn socially, share cooperatively and work collaboratively. Nomadic Knowledge Workers As companies employ or work with more contractual, shorter-term knowledge workers, they will have to deal with people who bring their own learning networks. Training departments must be ready to adapt to these new "knowledge artisans" with a greater emphasis on collaborating and connecting with their external online networks. Learning Out Loud Narration is turning one’s tacit knowledge (what you know) into explicit knowledge (what you can share). This is where online activity streams, web conferencing and micro-blogging can help organizational learning. People can see the flow of work in small bits of conversation that, over time, become patterns. Narration of work is a key step in integrating learning into the workflow. Networked Communities Effective communities of practice can help solve problems, retain talent and develop new strategies. The job of the community manager is a new and growing role for training and development professionals. An Expanded Role for Training and Development Training professionals will need to help create and support social learning networks, moving out of the classroom to where the work is being done. They will also need to promote continuous knowledge sharing by modeling how it is done and setting the example. Trainers will have to become expert learners. Learning as a Business Imperative As work becomes more networked and complex, the social aspects of knowledge sharing and collaboration are becoming more important. Learning amongst ourselves is getting to be the real work in many organizations. Training development professionals should be part of that change. For a more in-depth list of near-term trends that should be taken into consideration during the next year, download the white paper: https://www.slideshare.net/GoToTraining/whats-working-and-whats-not-in-online-training Photo credit:  Thomas Rockstar

Dear Ritz-Carlton: What is the psychology behind memorable customer service? The above question is from an attendee at "Symposium: Your Journey to Service Excellence" in April. The following answer is from  Joseph Quitoni, Corporate Director, Culture Transformation at The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center: Psychologist Daniel Kahneman has lectured on the topic of two mental operating models: the experiencing self (the "you" in the moment who lives through an event) and the remembering self (the "you" who maintains the story of the event). You can apply this concept to the customer experience. The experiencing self may best be described as "the transaction of service"—while the remembering self is "the memory of the service that is created." When you tap into the remembering self of your customers, you can enhance their experience and make your organization more successful. When the remembering self of your customers adopts a positive story about your organization, then not only will your customers return, but they will also make positive comments about your brand. At The Ritz-Carlton, we want to make memories that stay with our customers. Our employees—the Ladies and Gentlemen who work at The Ritz-Carlton—tap into the remembering self of our customers by remaining in the moment during each guest interaction. The Ladies and Gentlemen look for clues that will help them tap in to the guest’s emotional needs. When you engage with customers and uncover their unexpressed needs, you have the opportunity to provide personalized service that will be remembered by your customers. ∞ The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center offers advisory services, courses and presentations to organizations that wish to benchmark the award-winning business practices of The Ritz-Carlton. Your organization can learn about The Ritz-Carlton methodology for customer service, employee engagement and leadership development. We also guide organizations through a multi-step process in order to achieve sustainable culture transformation. The Blog Post Dear Ritz-Carlton: Psychology Behind Memorable Service? appeared first on The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center.

It’s time to reframe the conversation. Flexible working isn’t only a bonus for employees; it’s a bonus for business. Flexible working is often talked about as if it’s some kind of free ride or reward for employees, offered by businesses out of the goodness of their hearts even though it could cost them money. I would never offer employees the option to work flexibly simply because it’s a nice thing to do. Rather, I offer it because by empowering them to work flexibly, I create a competitive business advantage. The compelling business case for flexible working A recent report commissioned by the UK government found that "there is a strong and compelling business case for flexible working." The report argued that in addition to an increase in productivity, flexible working also engendered greater loyalty, a wider talent pool to recruit from, lower absenteeism and a higher retention rate. All of these perks come with cost savings, which is a wider benefit that finance teams should be excited about. Businesses can also save on desk space, travel costs and even the expenses of hosting a meeting. So, let’s reframe the conversation and start looking at the benefits flexible working offers to not just employees but businesses as well. Photo credit: jeremylevinedesign