Mastering People Skills: The Key to Effective Leadership and Success (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Rick Conlow. In our book, The Superstar Leadership Model, Good Boss, Bad Boss, Which One Are You?, one of the key skills and values that we emphasize is caring for people and then being able to communicate effectively with others. So let's talk about getting along with other people. Someone once said, success is simple. Managers do the right things at the right time in the right way. Wow, what a great quote, but it's easier said than done. According to management derailment studies, 50% of managers fail and we've talked about that and are emphasizing that in many of our messages because we have to have managers do better than that. If managers are more effective, the employees in the organization are more effective and the company succeeds more with sales, customer retention, and profit. There was a speaker at this conference and he was talking about communicating and leading and he challenged the audience of 500 people that if anybody couldn't get along with other people to stand up, nobody stood up. So we issued the challenge again. Nobody stood up. So we issued it dramatically one more time. Finally, a guy stood up in the back of the meeting and the speaker looked at him and said, sir, you mean to tell me you can't get along with other people? And the man said, well, sure I can, but I feel sorry for you standing up there all by yourself. See, we all think we can get along with other people, but as I said, the statistics are saying that it's not true that managers are failing. And in fact, most managers don't know that the best way to solve an employee problem is through a mutual decision making process. So there are issues related to interacting and communicating effectively with other people. Dr. Daniel Goleman has done a tremendous amount of research on emotional intelligence. That's mastery of self and mastery of relationships. And it comes down to people skills that managers have to get better at. People skills related to listening, to asking questions, dealing with conflict, diffusing emotions, facilitating effective meetings, coaching effectively. Those are the kinds of things that managers have to be a student of the game at. In other words, they've got to keep learning. They need to go to seminars. They need to read the books. They need to get coaching themselves. They need to practice and mentor others. They need to be open to feedback. If they do, they'll be more effective in terms of getting along with other people. What it creates is more harmony in the workplace, better morale, better employee engagements, and then affects the bottom line of the business. I guess it comes down to having a value related to the golden rule or as motivators zigzag Ziegler says so succinctly, give other people what you want and you get what you want. So in other words, notice how he says that. First you give, then you get. So if we want our people to be better, we have to be better at leaders. So we need to communicate better. We need to have better teamwork. When we do this, it has the positive impact on the people we work with. Hey, have a great day and I look forward to talking with you soon.