"Follow, follow, follow the Yellow Brick Road ..."

Who are our social media followers?

Dorothy assembles her motley crew of
followers along the Yellow Brick Road

Just like Dorothy on her odyssey along the Yellow Brick Road, we all want to have followers, whether it is our Facebook page or our LinkedIn profile.  Social media has spawned the age of the follower and the need for everyone to show that they have a large following in business or personally.  Numerous blog posts and articles loudly proclaim ’10 Ways to increase your Twitter followers’ or ‘How to drastically increase your Twitter followers’, offering tips and techniques to increase your follower numbers. Most of the techniques are valid and usually ethical, but there are 

plenty of sites and Twitter accounts out there that offer to increase your followers through less reputable means (see ‘Fake Followers’ below).

Some of the largest Twitter followings belong to celebrities, such as Katy Perry and Adele, whereas the brands that have some of the highest corporate following are the accounts of Starbucks and Samsung.  Recently I was keen to add to the followers on my Twitter account for Windsor Training, @windsortrain and in the process I started to wonder about who followers are and what might their motivations be? I was intrigued why some people chose to follow me and why others chose not to and I wondered what this tells us about the anatomy of a follower and what we can expect from them as a result.

I chose the individuals and organisations that I wanted to follow, because they already seemed to be interested in business issues that might also suggest a pre-existing interest in the types of topic that I was blogging about and the sort of services that Windsor Training offers, covering a range of business and management subjects. I am talking here from the perspective of the small or medium sized business, rather than the large corporate. I am also going to consider followers to social media in general, rather than to any one service in particular.

From my reflections I came up with a typology, or anatomy, of the social media follower:

Category 1: Friends, family and business acquaintances

These tend to be the most loyal of your follower base – subject, that is, to divorce or the end of a business relationship. They know you personally and they have had some kind of relationship with you, either business, personal, or both.  They follow you because they are genuinely interested in what you have to say and they can usually be relied upon to interact with you on a regular basis. Unless you have a large client base or family, they also tend to be small, so trying to build a large following from amongst Category 1 is unlikely.

Category 2: ‘Fan’ Followers

These are people who follow you because of some engagement they have had with you: perhaps they read a blog post that they agreed with or you responded to a tweet and they liked your comments.  Perhaps they use your products or services and want to know more about what you offer or benefit from your expertise.  These followers are the most valuable, because they have come to you because of some interaction with them, whether through social media or because of other online or offline marketing engagement.

Category 3: ‘Follow-me-back’ Followers

These are followers who are following you in the hope of some reciprocity: they expect that you will follow them back.  They can be fickle and also short-lived.  Some Twitter accounts with multiple thousands of followers can follow you, in the hope that you will follow back, only to rescind their following of you in a few days’ time when they hope you won’t notice.  Building a following from amongst the ranks of the follow-me-back followers is unlikely to enable you to build a following of people who are genuinely interested in your message or the products or services that you offer.  They are more interested in broadcasting their own message to you and with little interest in any interaction or dialogue.

Category 4: Fake Followers

Needless to say this is not the type of followership that you want to develop, although the larger your following, the greater the risk that, unwittingly, some of that number may well be fake.  In 2012, Twitter reported that nearly 83 million accounts, which was roughly 10% of users at that time, were fake.  They are usually created by a program that is intended to create fake identities and it scrapes data from Twitter and beyond, which is why their feed is often full of nonsense and non-sequiters. The only way to avoid them is to vet what your follow has tweeted or run your followers through any number of applications, such as JustUnfollow. There are scores of sites where you can buy these fake followers, but my advice is … don’t.  Fake followers reflect badly upon your business and celebrities and politicians that have tried to buy followers have had scorn heaped upon them.

The object of this post is to consider the types of follower that we encounter on various social media, rather than to prescribe any techniques to increase that following (which is something that I will examine in subsequent articles).  Of the types that I have categorised here, 1 is most likely to relate to the followership you develop when you first start out, because you will reach out to your friends, but in time your client base will increase and so will your followers of this type. 2 relates to followers who you have engaged with and they should be nurtured and interacted with on a regular basis, with interesting and relevant content. Finally, categories 3 and 4 are unavoidable, but basic precautions involving software and vigilance can help identify them.

If you would like to follow me on Twitter, then please do, @windsortrain and if you have any thoughts and comments, even better.

Written by Will Trevor, Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training

Email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Picture Credit: By CBS Television Network. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

“Have a nice day”: three lessons from US-style customer service

“Have a nice day”: three lessons from US-style customer service

Customer service in the USA and the UK compared

Can I help you?

There is an advert that has been running on British TV for a few years now for Enterprise Rent-A-Car and it features two employees, one British and one American.  As you can imagine, the advert amusingly sends up the differences between American-style customer service and its British counterpart: whilst the US employee is enthusiastic and slightly over-the-top, the other is less so, despite being unfailingly polite.

I have witnessed customer service on both sides of the Atlantic and the common belief is that US-style customer service outshines the British version on all counts.  In many respects this is very true and nowhere is this more apparent than in restaurants.  There is usually no waiting around to be acknowledged and also you do not have to go and hunt for your server when you require another drink or you need the bill, or check, at the end of the evening.

With US serving staff there is often more of a rapport and a greater degree of attentiveness and this is often lacking in the UK.  Partly this can be attributed to the fact that a server knows that their tip is directly related to the level of service that they provide – unlike the UK, where tipping is not obligatory, a tip upwards of 10% of the final bill is virtually mandatory. Knowing that a waiter might see a difference of a few hundred Dollars by the end of the evening, certainly helps ensure they are focused on you and your needs.  In the UK you would not normally expect to tip in a pub or bar, although you might be more inclined to tip in a fine dining establishment or a more up-market restaurant.  Some high street pizza restaurants in the UK were exposed for keeping servers tips, whereas others impose a standard ‘service charge’, which is the same whatever the level of service and usually doesn't see its way into the staff members pocket. This makes little incentive to give good service.

I am not suggesting that the cash nexus is the only reason that service in the USA is often better than that witnessed in the UK, partly it is a cultural phenomenon. I am also not suggesting that service in Britain is always bad, because I have experienced plenty of excellent and attentive service, and I have also been the recipient of indifferent and rude service in the USA.  There are also considerable differences between different types of establishment, but, on balance, I would say that customer service 'stateside' can teach us Brits a few lessons.

Firstly, as with the Enterprise employee, there is a greater sense of enthusiasm to US customer service when it is done well. Brits often mistake the ‘have a nice day’ stereotype as being fake, whereas it couldn't be further from the truth and is often symptomatic of a less cynical and genuine approach to giving the customer a good experience.  Enthusiasm helps to make the customer feel that their business of valued and this adds to the overall experience.

Secondly, good customer service is attentive. In the UK I have often found it frustrating that you ask for the bill, only to then sit and wait an interminable age for the waiter to return with the card machine.  Being attentive to a customer and taking charge of their experience goes a long way to giving a good service and anticipating the customer’s needs, as with the card reader, is definitely best practice.  Finally, there is the idea of responsiveness, which links to the previous point.  Have my needs been responded to and has a rapport developed? To British tastes the waiting staff trying to develop a rapport might be considered too intrusive, so this should always been tempered to different cultural sensitivities.

I am sure that there are other points that are needed to deliver good customer service, but from my own experiences, these would seem to be the main ones that strike me as being the hallmark of excellence. I do acknowledge that there is also good and bad service in the USA, just as much as there is good and bad service in the UK, so these are my personal impressions formed mainly from experiences in retail and catering.  I believe that it would not be a bad thing for us Brits to adopt some of the traits of US-style customer service and I have come up with a handy acronym to remember these points by, “EAR”:

E- Enthusiasm

A – Attentiveness

R – Responsiveness

What have your experiences of customer service been on either side of the Atlantic? I would welcome your comments.  And remember …

“Have a nice day.”

Written by Will Trevor, Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training

Email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Picture Credit: By allen watkin from London, UK (waiter) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Are you a boring boss?

When was the last time you made your team yawn?

Google research says forget conventional leadership traits, 'boring is best'

Yawn: boring bosses are best for business

Conventional wisdom suggests that a good leader should be dynamic and courageous, with a dash of charisma and a good turn of phrase. Well, that most unconventional of companies, Google, has just released its conclusions from some extensive research, derived from internal data and gleaned from countless interviews with Google employees about what they feel makes a good leader. Their conclusions are rather surprising, because the most important trait that staff tend to appreciate in their leaders are none of these things.  What the Google employees overwhelming suggest makes a good leader, is that they need to be ‘boring’ or, more precisely, predictable.

These are interesting findings, but it is hardly surprising that this is something that might be found at a business, such as Google, which is staffed by teams of highly qualified technical experts and creatives. They often respond best when they are allowed to have their own space and develop whatever project they are working on without the interference of a manager.

Nevertheless, I do think that this research has some validity, it was conducted in a very large and progressive business with a significant sample size of data, although it would be interesting to see this replicated across other types of organisation. It certainly ties in with recent research relating to motivational psychology, where emphasis is placed upon the need for autonomy, mastery and purpose.  The results of recent research and its application to business has been well presented and popularised in the book, Drive, by Dan Pink.  However, I wonder whether such a trait has universal relevance in other work environments and alternative situational leadership circumstances or whether it is symptomatic of the Google workplace and other similar Silicon Valley organisations.  It would be worthy of further study and research.

Anecdotally I have certainly felt more motivated in situations where I was not micro-managed by an overzealous boss who was too keen to involve themselves in the minutiae.  My previous article about Steve Job, “Riding the Shithead-Hero Rollercoaster”, suggested that Jobs firmly believed that you had to allow your team to deliver and trust them to do so in an environment in which they felt empowered to innovate and challenge. Although it is clear that both Jobs - and someone like Jeff Bezos at Amazon - do encourage cultures where confrontation is viewed as healthy to foster growth and development – something that would seem at variance with the idea of predictability, which is something that neither Jobs nor Bezos could be accused of.

This will obviously prompt further debate and research, but if you have been brushing up your leadership skills recently, you might just like to stop what you are doing and take a breather, switch on the TV or start collecting beer cans or fridge magnets, and see what you can do to make yourself just a little more boring and predictable. Rather than being boring, you can call it management training!

Written by Will Trevor, Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training

Email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Picture Credit: "Sueño (9215495371)" by Juanedc from Zaragoza, España - SueñoUploaded by juanedc. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sue%C3%B1o_(9215495371).jpg#mediaviewer/File:Sue%C3%B1o_(9215495371).jpg

"Riding the Sh*thead-Hero Rollercoaster"

“Riding the Sh*thead-Hero Rollercoaster”

Six inspiring insights from the management style and personal philosophy of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs at the launch of the MacBook Air

Steve Jobs defied the typical style of management espoused in textbooks and taught in business schools throughout the world: he was known to rant and throw tantrums, plus he was egotistical and drove people hard in an uncompromising and confrontational way.  He was not afraid to give a public dressing down to a manager who he felt had failed to deliver and, sometimes - as his biography makes clear - he would also openly weep about something that he cared passionately about.

  If either you or I ever behaved in that way, or we had adopted a style of management similar to that of Jobs, you can guarantee that our tenure in the role would not last long before we were shown the door by both an exasperated employer and some delighted colleagues.  Jobs, however, had a particular vision and he once said that those people who are just crazy enough to believe that they can change the world, are usually the ones that actually do.  It was his ‘crazy’ vision that turned Apple into one of the world’s most valuable corporations, by pursuing his passion for what he did and expecting the same level of drive and commitment from those around him. When he died he was hailed as a genius and visionary, and there was a genuine outpouring of grief at his early demise. He was, nevertheless, a controversial figure and working with him was described by colleagues as ‘riding the shithead-hero rollercoaster’: signifying the daily perils of either being in Steve’s good books, or out of favour and at risk of being the target for one of his legendary tantrums.

There is a lot that could be written about Jobs in terms of both his management style and his personal philosophy, but I want to pick just three for each.

Management Style

1)      A belief in teamwork. Jobs once said in interview that his model for business was the Beatles.  He believed that the four band members balanced each other out and that together the total was greater than the sum of the parts. They were a collection of egos and individual talents, but together they kept each other’s negative tendencies in check. That’s how he saw business and he believed that great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.  Probably the time in his life that this held most true was in the development of the Mac. Jobs was not unaware that he could be difficult to live with, which is why he relied on the talents of a good team around him in order to challenge him and help drive the success of the business forward.

2)      Manage the ‘top line’. Jobs declared that what was important was to manage the ‘top line’ - by which he meant the business strategy, the people, and your products - and the bottom line will follow.  By focussing on what the business does best and doing it well, then the organisation should be able to deliver the expected profits.  Rather than on focusing too much on the bottom line, at the expense of the fundamental and core activities of the business.  This is a sobering lesson for many businesses overly obsessed by the need to show the City or Wall Street consistent quarterly returns, rather than focusing on strategy, people and products.

3)      Trusting your team to deliver. Despite Jobs’ own egotism he was a firm believer in the need for selecting a strong team and this is why he gathered around him such stellar talents as his chief designer, Johnathan Ives.  For Jobs, teamwork was about trusting the other members to deliver, without watching them all the time, but believing that they are going to come through with their parts, when needed.  The lesson here is to ensure that you gather around you a team that you can trust to share your mission and who do not need to be supervised and overseen on a regular basis.

Personal Philosophy

Finally, three insights from his personal philosophy:

1)      Find what you love. When Jobs delivered the commencement speech to the students of Stanford University, he famously exhorted them to find what they love, declaring it to be ‘as true for work as it is for your lovers’. He urged them not to settle for anything less and implored them that they would know when they find it. He went on to say that he remembered a quote that had inspired him, ““If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”[i] Jobs urged an uncompromising focus on what you love the most and not to settle for anything less than what you love to do.

2)      Passion. People who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world, are the ones that actually do. This point naturally stems from the previous one. Whilst Jobs might have been many things, he certainly didn't lack passion for what he did, in the products that he delivered and for the various successful businesses that he built. Both Apple and Pixar were built upon his passion and commitment.

3)      “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”  In giving this quote from the artist Pablo Picasso, Jobs was acknowledging that there is nothing new under the Sun and that many of the things that you do, may have been done by someone else at some time before you.  This goes for business, just as much as your personal life – the iPod was not new, instead it applied design flair to existing MP3 player technology.  To achieve this end, he declared the need to ‘expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing’ – something that he certainly achieved, bringing artistic influences into his styling and design.

Finally, the words he used to bring his commencement speech to a close to the assembled Stanford graduates, are probably the most succinct encapsulation of his personal philosophy:

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

Written by Will Trevor, Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training

Email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Picture Credit: "SteveJobsMacbookAir" by Matthew YoheOriginal uploader was Matt Yohe at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia; transferred to Commons by User:Sfan00_IMG using CommonsHelper.(Original text : self-made). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SteveJobsMacbookAir.JPG#mediaviewer/File:SteveJobsMacbookAir.JPG

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[i] Quote from Steve Jobs commencement speech to Stanford University students in 2005. Available online at: http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eimh45ehjl/steve-jobs-live-each-day-as-if-it-was-your-last/. Accessed, August 1^st, 2014