Tag: Executive Coach

Team-Building

Posted on by Howard Shore

STOP…wasting money on team-building exercises and retreats that, in the end, fail to bring about the desired results anyway. A significant reason that team-building initiatives fail is that too much emphasis is placed on the misconception that team-building should be fun. The purpose of team-building is to improve the performance of a work group, thereby creating better outcomes. This requires change, and for most people change is not fun … it is hard work. Team-building can be fun… if the members of the work group enjoy the learning process and relish the opportunities that change will bring. This is where a business coach plays a vital part in successful team building that brings results.

Key Elements For Driving Team Performance

If you want to improve teamwork and performance in your organization you have to look at the four core elements to driving team performance: relationships, goals, roles, and rules. All four of these elements must be executed well for the organization to flourish.

Focus on Improving Relationships LAST

Ironically, improving relationships is probably the last area you should focus on. Yes, the area that most leaders spend most of their time addressing is usually the symptom, not the problem. Almost every organization that has team-building issues will find their root of their problems in goals, roles, and rules. In my experience, when we address goals, roles, and/or rules, many of the relationship problems disappear.

State Your Goals

The first step toward achieving success as a team is to state your goals properly. You know your goal is well stated when anyone who reads it knows exactly what you are trying to accomplish and in what time frame. The better a person states the goal, the easier it is to create the action plan. An acronym commonly used for stating a goal properly is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistically High, and Time-based).

Understanding Your Roles

In order for a team to function properly it is important that every member of the team understands specifically the actions and/or activities assigned to them. This is not as simple as some make it out to be, which is why this is usually an issue for team. There are two different types of roles: task and maintenance. The “task” roles relate to driving the desired outcome of a team. The “maintenance” roles relate to managing team processes and relationships among people on the team.

Rules Must Apply to Everyone

Rules are a very important component of teamwork. This is one of those areas many leaders, particularly in entrepreneurial and family-owned businesses have the biggest concern with. Everyone is fine with rules as long as they apply to others. You cannot have one set of rules for some people and another set for others.

Contact us if you need team-building ideas.

Howard Shore is a business growth expert and business coach who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please contact Howard Shore at 305-722-7213 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.

5 Ways to Increase Employee Satisfaction

Posted on by Howard Shore

I’m working with many companies as a leadership development coach and have noticed that many of them lack good strategy in one key area: employee satisfaction. At Activate Group Inc., we use a system called Human Capital Management to effectively manage employees, and ensure long-term growth and satisfaction of “A” players. This process starts with hiring the right people and ends with maintaining employee satisfaction. As you probably know by now, it costs so much more to replace a great employee than to simply keep them happy.

How to Keep Employees Happy

Here are five ways to ensure your best employees stay happy, stay productive, and stay with you for a long time:

1. Hire Right.

The best way to ensure long-term employee satisfaction and success is to hire the right person for the right job in the first place. Too many companies hire “blindly” by simply scanning resumes, getting a few recommendations and hiring quickly. Using assessment tools to screen for people with the right skill sets for open positions (before you even look at resumes) is one of the easiest methods to increase the number of candidates that are a good match for the job and the company.

2. Regular Affirmations.

Show your people appreciation by saying it regularly. Recognize when someone goes above and beyond, even if it is something small. Thank them when they coach others. Here is a fantastic list of motivating phrases from the Bud to Boss blog.

3. Onboarding Plan.

When you bring a new employee onboard, you need to do it the right way. A detailed plan for the first 90 days for every new employee is a crucial tool in getting them off to a positive start with the company. Many employees who have a negative onboarding experience (no training, no expectations, no coaching, etc) end up leaving the company — and that costs you money.

4. Employee Recognition Program.

Every company should have an employee recognition program, even small companies and even if it’s just a simple program. Recognizing and rewarding employees for going above and beyond the call of duty is super-charged positive reinforcement, and is also highly contagious. A word of caution: avoid rewarding employees for simply doing their job. After all, they are being compensated for doing their jobs and achieving certain milestones. Rewards work best when they are reserved for special effort.

5. Job Satisfaction Survey.

Once a year (or every couple years) you should ask employees to fill out a simple survey about their experiences with the company. Keep it confidential and keep it relatively short — try for 20 questions or less. Ask them about their career development, relationship with their manager, team environment, and if they feel like they are contributing to the company goals. All of these things are essential to job satisfaction.

How to Keep Employees Motivated

How high is your employee satisfaction? Do you know or are you guessing? Here are a few more tips on how to motivate employees from one of my earlier articles.

Howard Shore is a leadership development coach who works with companies that need executive development and strategic business coaching. Based out of Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group Inc., provides management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about leadership development coaching through AGI, please contact us at 305.722.7213 or email Howard today.

Simple Ways to Increase Productivity

Posted on by Howard Shore

These days, time is the ultimate luxury. We executive leaders easily fall into the trap of living on our gadgets in an effort to streamline our lives and buy more time. We try so hard to make our lives easier, but sometimes we end up just living our lives faster.

If you want to buy back some real time, instead of losing yourself in it, follow my five simple steps to a more productive professional life:

  1. Unplug. It’s not easy to gain the right perspective if we spend most of our day in the middle of an information stream. Take an hour or two and cut off the info overload. Tell everyone that you are unavailable, shut off all your gadgets, go somewhere private, and take some time to think about what is important and what is not. What are your goals? Where are you going? What will it take to get there?
  2. Prioritize. Once you have your head cleared, you need to figure out your priorities. Ask yourself this question: What task can I do that will get me the most return on my time investment? Think about the project that will make the biggest impact on your business.  Make a list of these types of tasks and establish them as your top priorities. If you have a list of things to do everyday, and one or two of them are truly essential, do those items first thing in the morning.
  3. Delegate. Look at your list and identify what is not essential. Which items can you drop or delegate to someone else? Then, as you focus on your essential tasks, check back on that list periodically. You may realize that the less essential tasks are really unnecessary ones.
  4. Simplify. Do not rely on a bunch of gadgets, or the latest and coolest applications to manage your time. A simple notebook and a simple to-do list can work wonders. Forget about the tools and think only of the tasks at hand. If you are too focused on the tools, you may not actually be getting anything done!
  5. Focus. Most of the time multi-tasking is a waste of time. You cannot get things done when you have 10 other things vying for your attention. Focus on the essential task in front of you, to the exclusion of all else, and you are much more likely to get it completed, in less time, with less effort.

Streamlining your professional life is easier than you think. Don’t be afraid to cut the “fat” from your schedule and be ruthless about it. In everyone’s schedule there are unnecessary things sucking up time. Get rid of them and take your time back!

What time suckers have you found in your schedule?

Howard Shore is an executive leadership coach and founder of Activate Group Inc, based in Miami, Florida. His firm works with companies to deliver transformational management and business coaching to executive leadership. To learn more about executive leadership coaching through AGI, please visit activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.

Better Candidates With Better Job Descriptions

Posted on by Howard Shore

How do you know if you have the right person in the right position? How do you know if your employees and leaders are successful? How can you tell if they are achieving what you expect of them? More importantly, how do they know if they are focusing on the right activities? The truth is, unless you have defined realistic yet challenging success metrics for each position you have no better idea of your employees’ success rates than they do. This is the basis of Human Capital Management.

Creating employee success starts with the hiring process. It starts with writing the best possible job description—I call it a position profile. The difference between a standard job description and a position profile is huge.

Position Profile vs. Job Description

Typically, job descriptions are used in job posts to advertise an open position, to determine compensation, and/or to establish a basis for performance reviews. However, job descriptions are not constructed in a manner that allows for the vetting of potential candidates or the measuring of performance—a position profile does.

The position profile identifies a role in the context of the organization, and communicates the link between business strategy, internal processes and your people.

In short, a position profile:

  • Documents the expertise, skills and experience needed to perform the job
  • Communicates expectations for performance and results
  • Detailed description of the job from three key perspectives:
    • Supervisory (Strategy & Direction)
    • Employee (Role & Responsibilities)
    • Customer (Quality & Acceptance)

By clearly defining each employee’s role in the context of the organization, and providing detailed success metrics and milestones that employees and managers agree on, you will not only target the right candidates for open positions, but you will also understand your overall team performance.

To learn more about creating a performance-based talent system for your organization, download the free eBook on Human Capital Management from our homepage.

Howard Shore is a human capital management expert and sought-after business coach based in Miami, Florida. His firm works with companies to deliver transformational management and business coaching to their executive leadership. To learn more about human capital management through AGI, please contact Howard at 305.722.7213.

Common Personality Traits In Great Salespeople

Posted on by Howard Shore

In my career as a sales force development coach, I have worked with hundreds, possibly thousands, of salespeople. I’ve helped companies large and small develop the right sales force development practices, including finding and hiring “A” talent for their teams. In my experience, there are a few personality traits that are common to all top sales talent, regardless of background or industry.

Ego. Great salespeople can handle rejection without letting it consume them. They realize that it’s part of the job and let rejections roll off them like water off a duck’s back. They also truly believe in themselves and their abilities. The ones who are full of doubt and need constant wins never last long.

Self-motivation. “A” sales talent needs coaching and development just like all other employees, but they can generate their own motivation. Most great salespeople have their own goals and aspirations and have no difficulty pushing themselves to get there.

Results Mindset. Top performing salespeople always see the numbers they need to hit. They keep their eye on the prize and work at achieving their goals. They also have a tendency to break those results down into smaller chunks (“chunking”) so they can achieve smaller results along the way.

Energy. Great salespeople jump out of the bed in the morning and go full force until there is no steam left in the engine. Their presentations are engaging and full of life, and they have the ability to get others excited about the product.

Have you seen these traits in your sales team? What other traits would you add to this list?

Howard Shore is a sales force development coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides leadership and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about sales force development coaching through AGI, please contact Howard at 305.722.7213 or email him.

9 Questions Every Business Model Should Answer

Posted on by Howard Shore

One of the most important strategic planning tools every company must have is a well-written business plan with a winning operational model. Well-constructed operational models answer nine key questions with a resounding ‘yes.’ Some small companies mistakenly think that only large companies need to address these operational questions. The companies that decide to put this off until they become bigger are among the 50 percent that fail within the first five years.

Questions That Determine If Your Company is Under-Performing

If you can’t answer these questions with a strong ‘yes’, your organization is probably under-performing in the areas of sales growth, customer service, employee satisfaction, innovation and profitability:

  • Does your management team willingly participating in the annual planning processes?
  • Does your organization regularly achieve all or most of the financial and non-financial goals in your plans?
  • Does everyone in your organization know the plan goals and how they will contribute to them?
  • Do the actions in your organization regularly resemble the plans?
  • Do you receive regular input from all levels of the company and use it to develop your plans?
  • Do you get regular input from your customers (not just complaints) and use it to develop your plans?
  • Do you know what trends are going on in your industry? Who your competitors are, what your competitors are doing, and what your opportunities and threats are? (SWOT analysis)
  • Have you identified specific market segments to focus on?
  • Do you know what capabilities, management systems, people, and other resources you must have in place now and for the future, and by when?

If your answers to these questions are a definitive ‘yes’, you have a successful business plan. If not, you know exactly where to start improving your model and planning process.

Howard Shore is an executive leadership coach who works with companies that need leadership development and business management coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides strategic planning tools and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about business strategy development through AGI, please visit activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.

3 Things Great Leaders Never Do

Posted on by Howard Shore

Great leaders have a lot in common. I have been reading Great by Choice (Jim Collins), which discusses the personality traits common among the most successful CEOs in the country. Things like goal setting, creativity and healthy paranoia are highlighted. As a business coach and leadership trainer, I have worked with many successful CEOs. Based on my experience, I’d like to add to the conversation with three things that the great leaders would never, ever do:

  1. Pass the buck. The buck stops with the leader. That’s what they are getting paid for, and if something goes wrong within the team they innately understand that it is their responsibility and no one else’s. Great leaders never blame others. I think this is especially important for young managers and mid-level team leaders to remember. Great leaders at all levels don’t play the blame game.
  2. Say, “I’m too busy.” A leader’s primary responsibility is to set their employees up for success. Period. If employees need help, have questions or want to share their ideas, great leaders always have time and an open door.
  3. Spend, spend, spend. Great leaders understand that spending company money is a highly visible responsibility, and that they set the example for everyone else. I’ve seen leaders and company owners spend money like drunken sailors and guess what? So do their employees. And at the end of the year when accounting shows them the damage, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Howard Shore is an executive coach and leadership trainer with expertise in leadership coaching and human capital management. To learn more about AGI’s executive coaching, management consulting, and leadership training, please contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or email him.

How to Set SMART Goals

Posted on by Howard Shore

The first step in successfully executing a goal is to state it properly. A well-stated goal clearly explains what you are trying to achieve and in what time frame. A well-stated goal is the foundation of an effective business action plan. An acronym that is commonly used to define a properly stated goal is SMART:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Realistically High
  • Time-based

While these criteria seem simple, they can be difficult to perfect. Allow me to summarize briefly what each of these criteria means:

Specific. Fuzzy goals are destined for failure. For example, “We are going to establish a new training program for our supervisors by 10/1/XX.” You are not defining what you want your supervisors to learn.

Measurable. How do you know when the goal has been achieved? State the goal in a way where this is clearly described. For example, “We are going to increase the frequency of meetings with our hourly staff.” How often will you meet and what will be discussed?

Realistically High. Goals must be lofty enough so you challenge yourself but still realistically attainable. In other words, you don’t want to trip over them. If the goal is too low/easy it will not motivate extra effort, but if it is too high no one will take it seriously because it seems out of reach.

Time-Based. What is the time frame for completing this goal? Set a deadline so the goals aren’t just floating out there for years.

Here is an example of a SMART goal:

Get 10 appointments with decision-makers in the hospitality industry that employ more than 250 people and are located within 50 miles of Miami area by the end of the quarter.

Take a few minutes a write a SMART goal for yourself—personal or professional. Work to refine it until it encompasses all the above criteria.

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or email him.

Setting Examples Helps Employees Care About the Bottom Line?

Posted on by Howard Shore

As a leader in your company you are the foundation of the company culture. Like many business leaders, you may be struggling with how to build a sense of fiscal responsibility within your team. It’s a challenging thing to try to get entry-level employees to care as much about the bottom line as you do. The number one way to get employees on board with penny-pinching?

Set the example.

Spending money is a responsibility. And it is public, whether you want to believe it or not. When you spend the company’s money, employees make mental notes. If you are spending money frivolously, employees will get the impression that the company is rolling in dough. And when they see company leaders spending money left and right on non-essentials, they usually believe it’s okay for them to do the same.

I’ve seen CEO’s spend thousands on employee outings, perks for management, personal trips and entertainment, gadgets, etc. Not only do employees see this as a sign of prosperity and therefore excess, but also they see it as selfishness and favoritism. Giving certain employees (like yourself) valuable perks and excluding others is favoritism and a huge demotivator for the rest, which equates to less work effort overall.

By not controlling your company spending you are sending two very bad messages to employees:

  1. Spend money carelessly because I do.
  2. Only special employees get perks…and you aren’t one of them.

Double whammy on your bottom line.

The good news is that setting a good fiscal example is pretty easy. All it takes is discipline and prudence. Here are three easy tips for controlling your spending:

  1. Set an annual client entertainment budget. When it runs out, that’s it.
  2. Set an annual employee recognition budget. This could be spent on things like an Employee of the Month program and/or annual team party. Again, when it’s gone it’s gone until the next fiscal year.
  3. Instead of handing out individual perks to management or “favorite” employees without context, hold some kind of internal performance contest and reward the winners. Prizes should come out of the employee recognition budget.
  4. Never pay for personal perks or entertainment out of company coffers. As the company founder/leader you many feel entitled to reward yourself, but resist it because the message this sends is: “I worked hard and deserve a personal perk on the company dime.” You don’t want your employees thinking that way, do you?

Have you ever rewarded yourself on the company dime?

About the Author

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or email him.

3 Lessons Learned from the Penn State Scandal

Posted on by Howard Shore

The Penn State scandal has been all over the news these past few weeks and it got me thinking. I wondered how such a respected and seemingly professional establishment could have allowed this situation to go so far. How did these secrets stay buried for so long and how could an organization with such moral conviction let these decades-long accusations fester in the dark without follow-up?

Looking from the outside in, I can only assume that the internal communications and processes for handling crises are severely flawed on many levels. Here’s what I think we as business leaders can all learn and apply to our own organizations after watching the Penn State scandal unfold.

1. The truth will always come out.

It’s the golden rule of public relations: attempting to hide a negative, potentially damaging situation within the company only makes it worse. By trying to bury the accusations against Sandusky, Penn State made the entire situation far worse by being exposed after it festered beneath the surface for years. I’ve seen it happen in many organizations. If someone in your organization—I don’t care who it is—is involved with something unethical or illegal, it must be dealt with immediately. Damage control processes need to be activated with your corporate communications folks and a crisis plan needs to be created. Because the truth will always come out, even if after many years in hiding.

2. The open-door policy must be lived, not just talked about.

Most companies have an open-door communication policy but many don’t live up to it. In the Penn State situation it was clear that Sandusky’s improprieties were witnessed and reported to superiors. Nothing was done about it. But something made the whistleblower stop there. Was he told to let it go? Was he made to feel like a detractor for blowing his whistle? Whatever the case may be, we can all learn that when an employee comes forward with something it must be taken seriously and there must be absolutely no element of discouragement or retribution for being the one that came forward. An open-door policy that is lived is one that instills a sense of comfort and safety for employees that need to bring bad things to light.

3. No one is immune from responsibility.

Joe Paterno is probably the most loved college coach of all time, and clearly a pillar of the Penn State organization—not just the football team. Yet even he is not immune from doing the right thing when faced with a difficult situation with one of his employees. All leaders should take this to heart. As a leader, you are responsible for the wellbeing of your company first. Personal relationships must take a back seat to the law.

Have you ever faced a difficult legal or ethical situation in your professional life? How did you choose to deal with it?

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.

Finding the Right Employees

Posted on by Howard Shore

Many of the companies we work with and come across define their recruiting criteria incorrectly and some do not even realize they have a problem. The typical initial problem statement is, “We need to fill a position with a qualified candidate.” Defining “qualified” is where they tend to go wrong. Some go on to say, “We will have better results when we hire from the inside than from the outside.” Others insist, “We should only look at people that previously have worked in this particular function for a certain number of years.” Or, “We want someone that has been in our industry before so we won’t have to teach them our business.”  What these criteria and the initial problem statement often overlook is the real problem in the company. There is not an “A Player” in every position, and the company does not make defining, finding, keeping, and growing “A Players” a necessity.

When filling positions in a company, there is one common denominator that gets overlooked consistently in almost every company I come across. If you want to solve a problem, it is important to first define it correctly. Once you have defined it correctly, you can then come up with the questions you need to answer in order to solve your problem. Redefining “We need to fill a position with a qualified candidate” as “We need an “A Player” in every seat” forces you to redefine your expectations for the position and the criteria for the candidates. Many people you might have hired using the old definition should not get past your screening process.

The next time you fill a position in your company, ask the right questions:

  • What are the key performance indicators of “A” performance for this position?
  • What are the key success factors for producing this performance?
  • What qualities does the person need to have to produce this performance?
  • What track record do you want to see for you to trust that they can do this job?
  • What are the cultural aspects of your company that are important to consider when choosing a candidate fit?
  • What values must a candidate have in order to be hired, and what questions will you ask to test whether they’ve demonstrated those values in the past?
  • What early warning indicators will you put in place so that you can tell whether things are working?

We can help you find the “A Players”.

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please contact Howard Shore at 305.722.7213 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.

Commitment to Change

Posted on by Howard Shore

Just like the people who work for them, CEOs and leaders come in all different sizes, shapes, styles, and backgrounds. As you can imagine, those variations influence how their people behave, who they hire, the systems and processes they use, and the strength of the team they have around them, etc. Dave Kurlan of Objective Management Group put together a list of 10 ways some CEOs react to recommendations he makes about their sales force. They are exactly the typical answers we’ve heard from the CEOs and seniors regarding unsuccessful projects of all types:

#1 – “Thank you for your advice. I’m not comfortable with that.” Who says that you have to be COMFORTABLE? You have to do the right thing for your company!

#2 – “I’m not quite ready for that. How about if we do that in six months?” This is a less honest version of #1 – at least be straight with me!

#3 – “Whatever you say. You’re the expert.” This tends to work out a lot like #1. Yes, they agree with whatever I say but are no stronger with management than with me and can’t drive change.

#4 – “This is B*ll S*it. They’re just going to have to do what you say, right now, or they’re gone.” That’s the spirit, but it isn’t driving change. You can’t pound people with a sledgehammer to drive change; you have to inspire them to change.

#5 – “Let me see if I can get some consensus for this.” Oh-oh, this isn’t going to work. You never get consensus from people who don’t want change in the first place!

#6 – “OK. Let’s talk about how we’re going to accomplish that, given our challenges.” Much better! At least we’re going to talk about how we can implement…

#7 – “Great – can YOU deliver that message for me?” This is even worse than #5!

#8 – “I’m not going to drive this. One of my senior managers will have to drive this.” OK, how many years are you willing to wait to find a genius who finds value in this AND isn’t threatened by it or me?

#9 – “Why aren’t my people doing what they’re supposed to do?” Because you have to be strong enough to tell them that it’s a condition of continued employment rather than quietly sitting there, not saying a thing, and expecting something to change!

#10 – I don’t want to do it your way. I think it should be done my way instead.” Ah, excuse me, but isn’t that the same way you were doing it for the last 10 years – and it didn’t work then either?

Remember, your people won’t be committed to change if leadership isn’t.

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please contact Howard Shore at 305.722.7213 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.

Make a Decision

Posted on by Howard Shore

Decisions, decisions, decisions…who’s making them in your company? Do you have a good decision process and are the right people involved in the decision making? Are they being made in a timely manner? Are they good decisions? If you find yourself mired down in a bog of disappointment by the answers to these questions, the following reasons may be why:

  • There is a lack of good decision-making processes for key decisions.
  • Too much time is being spent on matters that are unimportant.
  • Not enough time is spent on matters that are critical.
  • Companies fail to make decisions regarding critical matters.
  • Senior management involves itself in the wrong issues.
  • Many decisions should be delegated to lower tiers, but senior management does not delegate responsibility.

Does any of this sound familiar? To start pulling yourself out of that bog of disappointment, there is a framework that we have come up with to guide you through the decision-making process:

For all decisions, 12 questions should be asked:

  1. What is the goal in the decision?
  2. What are the consequences/costs of making a bad decision?
  3. Why am I involved in this decision?
  4. What is my role in this decision?
  5. Do I (we) have the expertise to make a proper decision?
  6. What criteria should we use to make a good decision, and how will we rank and weight them?
  7. Are there proven tools to help us make this decision?
  8. Who else should be involved in this decision, and what rile should they play?
  9. How much information is appropriate for this decision?
  10. How much time should I spend on this decision?
  11. How long am I willing to wait to make this decision?
  12. How many alternatives should be considered?

By using this list, one can help avoid making major decisions without taking proper precautions. The list also helps balance risk, time, and cost.

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please contact Howard Shore at 305.722.7213 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.

Does Beauty Equal Success?

Posted on by Howard Shore

There was an article written I read that can be found on Economist.com that brings up the argument that better looking people are more successful in just about all aspects of business. The article “The Line of Beauty” mentions that “physically attractive women and men earn more than average-looking ones, and very plain people earn less.” It seems that looks are considered more of an asset than the education you earned to be a success.

We are all told during our educational years, that to enter the professional field we must look the part. The clothes we wear are just the superficial aspect of it though. As humans, we naturally gravitate toward beauty. We would like to think we are above it all, but studies have shown that the majority of us are not. Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, both economics professors, held a study that concluded that less attractive people earn 5-10% less in all occupations across the board.

Surely when planning your business and focusing on making your company a success the last thing on your mind was how your looks may affect that success. And that is where those thoughts should stay, in the back of your mind. Your professional appeal is important, but maintaining your business goals and seeing to the growth of your company take precedence over how someone else may perceive your facial structure. The bottom line is just that, the bottom line, and if that’s where your focus lies and you continue to see that bottom line grow, well then isn’t that a measure of your success?

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please contact Howard Shore at 305.722.7213 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.

6 Tips for Setting Better Client Expectations

Posted on by Howard Shore

Think for a moment about your last unhappy customer. Maybe it was a client who didn’t see the results they wanted or a customer who had a bad experience. Continue reading “6 Tips for Setting Better Client Expectations”

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