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Katie and Carol talk about Tips 12 and 13 from Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
Little things make can make a big difference in relationships, especially when you remember and recognize events in others’ lives.
In this episode Katie and Carol give you practical tips for women in leadership who would like to build relationships in the workplace by recognizing birthdays and other significant events in the lives of your co-workers.
Tip #12 Remember birthdays and employment anniversaries of the people with whom you work.
Tip #13 Be aware of your employees’ family life and major events.
Just a card or announcement, but something that indicates that you are on top of it, organized, and working from integrity.
Keep extra blank cards in your desk.
It’s all along the lines with what your mama may have taught you, and it’s a great reminder to use that social refinement at work as well. It’ll send the message that you have a little class, missy. (wink, wink)
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Hello and welcome to the Skirt Strategies podcast, the podcast to help you get the support, validation, and skills you need to accomplish your goals and really succeed in a male-dominated world, all without having to give up your incredible female strengths.
It’s another podcast of Skirt Strategies for women in leadership.
Katie: This episode we’re delving into a couple more tips in the book Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership.
Carol: Available on Amazon and in Kindle.
Katie: This episode we have attached two tips to one another. For those of you who are looking for something kind of nice to do at work and as a leader and something that makes you seem more thoughtful, maybe seem more thoughtful than you really are?
Carol: I definitely need to work on this. Tip Number 12: Remembering birthdays and employment anniversaries of the people with whom you work.
It is really important and then we’re also going to talk about tip Number 13: Be aware of your employees’ family, life and major events.
Katie: It’s just a nice thing to do. It’s almost like my mom would say, “Miss Manners.” And it’s professional and it can be something that sets you apart as boss that doesn’t care vs. a boss that really does care.
Carol: And it’s not just female either.
Katie: It’s not. You mean men can do this tip?
Carol: Men can do this tip as well. And question, don’t you have a story about that? Isn’t there a man executive, a male executive that did this?
Katie: Yes.
Carol: Do you remember it?
Katie: It comes from a book.
Carol: I’m sorry. I put you on the spot. Let’s talk about this in our own lives. It really is important that your employees, the people you work with even and the people around you that you surround yourself with know that you care.
Katie: And I’m going to go one step beyond that. Know that you care about not just being a resource to them as a work resource, not just a tool, but that you have a life and you are a person you have a family and other needs and things that are a priority to you.
How often have you been in a situation, let’s first put our listeners into the situation of how often have they been the recipient of this?
Okay so think back in your career life, anything business, where somebody surprised you by knowing what was happening with a family reunion that you had or a death in the family or that you were about to become a parent or a grandparent. Do you remember that?
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: There’s somebody in our community that, she happens to be my backdoor neighbor but she’s also kind of a prominent person in one of the nonprofits here in town, and every time my name is in a paper or magazine, she cuts it out, puts it in a little card, says a little nice thing to me and drops it in the U.S. Postal Service.
Carol: That’s nice.
Katie: Very nice. And sometimes I actually needed an extra copy of it anyway. What an effort! What a great effort.
Carol: Yeah that’s important for kind of the periphery people in your life as well as if your employee, somebody on staff is celebrating something, for you to take some time to talk to them about it.
People don’t always tell you why they are taking time off, but when they do tell you that they are taking time off for a certain reason, then when that weekend ends, they’ve just taken a four-day weekend to go camping with their family in from some other state, make mention of it. Ask. Be curious. And really all of this is being curious about other people, makes them feel special.
Katie: It also goes with how holistic we are. As women we don’t see a job as a title and you do this task and you come in, you clock in, you clock out. We see it as part of a bigger picture. And I’d like to think we’re part of a bigger picture. You do a lot of community work. I do community work. I’ve got family. I’ve got hobbies. I’ve got other things – travel, I’ve got lots of things. I don’t isolate the business part and I don’t think our employees generally do either.
Carol: Well I think we all have a tendency to kind of isolate it. Well this is what I do for eight hours and then I go have fun. Well can’t we make what we do for eight hours fun and interesting and involving so I’m involving you and your life and the people in your life? Happy anniversary. I hope everything goes well. Here are some tickets to a concert. Why don’t you and your husband enjoy it?
Katie: That’s so thoughtful of you, and generous. Were you going to get me some tickets? Is that what you just said?
Carol: I just said it was a great idea.
Katie: Are there people that don’t want to have this?
Carol: Oh you mean?
Katie: Are there people who don’t want to be singled out or –?
Carol: I do think that there are some very private people and you’ve got to really know who those people are because they don’t want you to mention that it’s their birthday. They would like to just pass it by and not have it even be a part of their day.
I don’t understand that. It’s not where I come from. I’ve had to deal with that enough that I know that there are people like that that don’t want the extra attention.
Katie: Are those employees also not likely to stretch themselves at work in other creative ways? I think I’m stereotyping because I’m thinking about what a person might be like that’s private like that. They won’t talk about blah and blah. Are they the ones that will come out with – to me they are not risk takers.
Carol: True, well they could be private for one reason or another. You don’t ever know their reasons behind it. So I wouldn’t necessarily stereotype –
Katie: Like their criminal record?
Carol: It could be.
Katie: It’s a good idea to keep some blank cards in your desk. That’s part of our tip as well, the fine, almost lost art of beautiful stationery. They have some pretty stamps now that have your monogram or something on them or an embosser and every few years I’ll buy another one of those because those are kind of fun.
Carol: I had an epiphany in this last year. I have hated my handwriting for a long time and it’s just gotten worse because I don’t write anything out. I don’t use my handwriting. If I’m writing something it’s notes for me that I can’t read anyway but I stopped doing handwritten notes because I hated my handwriting.
Now I’m going to be a big name dropper here I do want to say, I got a handwritten note from Governor Martinez and it was both sides of a card, thanking me because she was a speaker at one of our events and her handwriting sucked.
And I thought if she can do it, I can do it. You know?
Katie: If she can do what? Write it out despite not having good handwriting?
Carol: Yeah. So I just totally flipped my – it felt very special that I got the card. Obviously.
Katie: So don’t not do it simply because you have bad handwriting, is that what you are saying?
Carol: Right. And I use send out cards a lot – you kind of do a handwritten card online and then send it and it looks like you wrote it because I hated my handwriting so bad, that was the only way I would do a card.
Katie: Well I will find that if I have something on hand, if I have the stamps on hand and the address necessary on hand, and the stationery, these tips are a little bit easier if it’s all right there in a drawer.
Carol: So remember birthdays and employment anniversaries and then also be aware of the employee’s family life. This doesn’t just apply to employees. This applies nicely to any critical relationships at work: clients, suppliers, customers. What a nice thing to do? There is more and more research that is showing effective leaders are – great leaders – are determined by how well they make connections.
Carol: Relationship building is huge in leadership.
Katie: Yes and this is what differentiates you and if you sell something, you are more likely to have a customer come to you because, we talked about this in February of 2014, networking, you might not get a sale right then but you’ve made a little bit of a spark of a connection which sooner or later leads to a relationship. Which sooner or later when they need a product that’s like you or needs some advice, you come to mind.
This helps build that, these two tips help build that as well.
Very smart. We highly recommend it.
Well I don’t think there is much deeper to talk about that without rattling on about Hallmark cards and how they are the best supplier of stationery in the world.
Carol: Yeah, let’s not do that because we don’t have any stock in Hallmark right now.
Katie: I know but they are a Kansas City company to I’m going to support them anyway.
Carol: I see.
Katie: Yeah a little plug.
(Music plays)
That’s it for this episode of the Skirt Strategies podcast. Thank you for joining us and please be sure to leave a question or comment at Skirtstrategies.com. Remember that success comes when you lead using your natural female strengths.
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