Reflecting on and writing about customer service experiences has brought up the question – what is the employment experience like for those individuals who are responsible for or provide such poor service?
Do they feel like valued employees? Do they even know what it feels like to be a valued employee? Do they believe that people care about them? Are they recognized for outstanding customer service?
Through the Strengths work and coaching that I do it’s been my experience that people feel valued when leadership invests in their employees by establishing a Strengths-based culture. When leadership infuses Strengths into every aspect of the culture their people show up with feeling better about themselves, with a greater sense of their unique contribution in service of the greater good.
From my perspective, it just makes sense to take care of your people first (put your oxygen mask on first) so they, in turn, feel valued and then care for the external customer as they have been cared for.
This is part 1 in the 5-part series on A New Era of Relationships by Diana Gabriel, Certified Strengths Strategy Coach.
Human interactions rule our lives. In a world where technological advances increasingly provide solutions and perform jobs, our social skills can increase or diminish our value. But most of us — professionals, employees and managers alike — undervalue our social skills. We’re unaware of our Strengths sweet spot that enhances our social interactions, which is not an option in an era of dwindling job opportunities.
I see this with both associates and coaching clients. We take our social skills and our natural abilities to interact and work well together for granted. Many of us don’t give much thought to our social skills, which is, again, not an option in an era of changing and dwindling job opportunities.
“When people in an organization develop a shared and intuitive vibe for what’s going on in the world, they’re able to see new opportunities faster than their competitors, long before that information becomes explicit enough to read about in the Wall Street Journal. They have the courage of their convictions to take a risk on something new.”
– Dev Patnaik, Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy (FT Press, 2009)
The term, Information Age insufficiently captures our future professional landscape. We face unprecedented data streams, vast knowledge networks, and unknown problems.
Success hinges on how well we can work together in groups. CEOs recognize that teams are significantly more productive, creative and valuable than individual workers — as long as team members work interdependently, using their Signature Strengths combined with their finely honed social intelligence.
There’s a growing demand for relationship workers: people who are socially astute, no matter the field. As neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga aptly states:
“Natural selection mandated us to be in groups in order to survive…that is how we are built. Without our alliances and coalitions, we die. It was true…for early humans. It is still true for us.”
Most of us assume our jobs cannot be taken over by a computer. However, technological advances and history may prove us wrong. There are few skills computers cannot eventually acquire. Computing power doubles every two years, so more tasks can, and will, be handled by sophisticated algorithms, notes Fortune Magazine Senior Editor Geoff Colvin in Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will (Portfolio, 2015).
It may well be that Leaders who know and develop to a higher level their Strengths along with their social skills will have a competitive advantage in the future when the number of jobs diminishes. Building your Strengths Intelligence provides you with the knowledge you need to work and play from your sweet spot.
Do you know where the sweet spot of your Strengths and social skills lay? Are you playing to that knowledge each day? I would love to hear about it. You can reach me here and on LinkedIn.
Diana Gabriel, PPC
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