Extracts from David Freemantle's books

EXTACT FROM WANTED

(How to become the most wanted employee around)

CHAPTER 1   FALL IN LOVE

Falling in love with your work is potentially less perilous and more rewarding than falling in love with the person of your dreams

Search your heart to discover the type of work you love – and then focus your time and energies on securing that work.  Your love for this work will drive you towards this and ensure you perform effectively doing it.

When you love the work you do your bosses (and customers) will love it too.

To make any progress in your job and career you have to fall in love with the work you do.  If you love gardening then become a gardener.  If you love baking then become a pastry chef.  If you love computers then become an expert in information technology.

In an interview in the Daily Telegraph (July 20th  2008) Linda Bennett founder of the fashion retailer of the same name  said:  “I have been passionate about shoes since I was a child and I realized early on that you’re much more likely to make a success of something if you love what you’re doing”.

Nanz Chong-Komo, woman entrepreneur of the year in Singapore in 2000 and winner of the Singapore International Management Action Award in 2001  was founder of the former One.99 chain of retail stores.  When I interviewed her on July 12th 2002  she stated “I don’t do this work for money, I do it for love.”   

I have yet to find a person who is good at their work who does not love what they do, whether it be tailoring, hairdressing, dentistry or cleaning streets.  A few years back an acquaintance told me of a street-cleaner in London who won an award for service to the community.  “This woman loved what she did,” he said, “she loved to have the cleanest streets in London.  She loved to help passers-by by giving them directions.”  Work is all about love. I have even had a funeral director tell me he loved his work.

In his Commencement address to students of Stanford University on June 12th 2005 the founder and CEO of Apple Computers Steve Jobs said: : “You’ve got find the job you love.”

There is nothing worse than finding people who hate what they do.  You will find them in any major city, standing around ignoring customers, not interested in the product and with only one aim in life – to earn money. 

If that’s your aim, just to earn money, then that’s what you will do.  But it won’t take you too far in your career. To make progress you have to go beyond your wage, salary or fees and fall in love with the business you are in.  That means loving to serve customers (internal or external), loving the products you are making or selling and loving to expend physical, mental and emotional energies on these activities.

Just as people fall out of love with each other some employees fall out of love with their jobs mid-career – and change direction, falling in love with a new type of work. A typical story is of a thirty-year old woman who, having had a successful career in advertising, gradually fell out of love with it, resigned and embarked on a career in acupuncture and yoga. The money was less, the hard work the same but the happiness much greater.

Loving your work does not come with a price. There is no correlation between salary and the amount of love you feel for your work. In fact as you pursue higher levels of income the risk is your love turns to greed.  This was the case of some unscrupulous bankers and the sub-prime crisis, the precursor to the September 2008 global financial crash.

Few people embark on nursing careers for the money. Most do so because they love caring for people during difficult times. The same applies to any type of social service.

It was Kahlil Gibran  (in ‘The Prophet’) who said  “Work is love made visible”. Summarily it is far better earning  ten thousand doing work you love than twenty thousand doing work you hate. The extra money will never bring you the happiness that can be attained when you love your work.

EXTRACT FROM THE BUZZ

(50 little things that make a big difference to delivering world-class  service)

  by Dr David Freemantle

 published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London Uk, 2004

 Chapter  24     WORK YOUR VOICE

Give voice to your positive feelings for customers

The voice is multi-faceted and with the exception of opera singers, stage actors and public speakers much ignored as an instrument for connecting with customers. Most of us rely on our ‘default’ voice without thinking whether there are better options in the way we use our voice to express ourselves to customers.   This ‘default’ voice is a product of our upbringing and one most people pay little attention to.  We are unaware of how we sound and the impact this has on others.  Tone, pace, clarity, intensity and intent as well as vocabulary and idiom are vital factors in determining the way we express ourselves to customers.  In other words to ‘tune in’ to customers we have to fine-tune our voices.

The variety of options in working a voice is vast and correctly chosen will greatly enhance the prospect of influencing and delighting a customer. Thus the skill of persuasion is not just a matter of the words selected but of the way the words are voiced.  Articulation is one of the arts of customer service requiring the exercise of vocal nuance for maximum impact.  It is the little things an individual does with his or her voice that can make a big difference in communicating with a customer. 

Modulation of the voice requires energy and a high degree of consciousness of how we sound to another person.  In working our voice we need to be sensitive to the effect of our words on the other person.  We need to be asking ourselves questions such as:  “Have I really connected with the customer?  Is she listening or just hearing? Can I adjust my voice to secure a more effective engagement with the customer?”

Each customer is different and the key skill in communicating is to select expressions which maximises the probability of commanding the customer’s attention and engaging him.  Thus if the customer is not fluent in English we should speak at a slower pace with full attention being given to clear articulation. The same applies if the customer is a senior citizen who is a little hard of hearing. 

Emotional tone is significant here.  The amount of feeling pumped into any one word or short phrase will register with a customer who will interpret an employee’s sincerity or disinterest accordingly. As such the voice can almost ‘sing’ with ‘melody’ as opposed to sounding flat.   Some people’s voices are a ‘drone’ whilst others allow their happiness to infiltrate every sound.  Equally some people have voices which are abrupt or clipped and thus alienate whilst others have soft, warm and rounded voices which reassure and attract.

Summarily in connecting with customers the voice has to be worked upon and this means becoming conscious of how it currently sounds and all the little things that can be done to modulate it and enhance its sound.

EXTRACT FROM THE BIZ

(50 little things that make a big difference to motivation and team- leadership)     

by Dr David Freemantle

published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing 2004

Chapter 4       HIRE THE BEST

The best people to hire are those motivated to be the best in their chosen field

 It starts at the beginning. Unless you hire the best people you will be in trouble for many months if not years to come.  When you hire second or third rate people you lock yourself into performance troubles and you will waste time trying extricate the company from all the problems these laggards create.  Poor performers are time wasters. They waste everyone’s time on problems.

When you hire people one little thing you should do which will make a big difference is to look for motivation. This will be reflected in:

• the best track record       – the candidate is motivated  to achieve great results
• the best skills/talents       – the candidate has a high degree of self-awareness and is motivated to focus on and develop what he or she is best at in life and at work
• the best experience         – the candidate is motivated to develop his or her career by gaining new experiences
• the best knowledge         – the candidate is motivated to learn and become an expert in his/her chosen field
• the best behaviour           – the candidate is motivated to create the best personal approach
• the best relationship skills   – the candidate is motivated to work well with people
• the best potential              – the candidate is ambitious and is motivated to do even better than in the past
• the best energy levels     – the candidate is motivated to work hard to achieve personal goals at work
• the best attitude                – the candidate is motivated to be positive, helpful and a good team-member
• the best imagination        – the  candidate is motivated to find creative ways of overcoming problems and creating a bright new future for the team and the company
• the best qualifications     – the candidate is motivated to demonstrate formally, through qualification, that he or she is exceptionally well educated
• the best employers          – the candidate is motivated to work for only the best employers
• the best pay           – the candidate sees pay as a barometer of success and therefore has always been paid the best

 These factors apply whether you are hiring a Chief Executive or a bus driver.  For example it is far better to hire a bus driver who is motivated to have the best safety record, who is motivated to learn about customer service than a hire a bus driver who is just there to earn money by driving a bus from ‘A’ to ‘B’.

It can often be a struggle to find the best. Even so if the market is tight this is no reason for selecting second best.   There are many enlightened and progressive executives who, on encountering a person who is the best will hire them irrespective of whether or not there is a job vacancy.  When you find the best people hire them irrespectively.

Summarily if you want to do the biz and the best for your company, customers, shareholders and employees then you have no option but to recruit the best people. Anyone else will drag the company down.

This means that for every little step of the way in the recruitment and selection process you have to qualify each decision with the word ‘best’ (the best advertisement, the best selection methodology, the best interviewers – and the best candidates).