Sandra A. Shelton Topics

SANDRA A. SHELTON

BA, MEd, CTACC

TOPICS (all available as virtual presentations)

REAL LEADERSHIP MENTORS ON PURPOSE

Right Mentoring Writes the Future

The traditional model of mentoring is one-sided and unappealing. Mentoring that truly grows people is two-sided in one-to-one mentoring and multi-sided in group mentoring. A leader understands there has to be more than cloning another person or presupposing the mentee has no direction in the matter.

In developing an effective mentoring methodology there is a wonderful reciprocity of both mentor and mentee moving forward in dreams, aspirations, and in the direction that benefits both the organization and the individual most. The 4 Mentor Power L’s are important (and most meaningfully in the order presented below):

Look at what is the core of the person to be mentored, how each is equipped to serve effectively and successfully with benchmark proof behaviors.
Listen to the mentee’s answers to a proven paradigm of questions to mentor without judgment.
Lead by example of not knowing all the answers but by testing the waters and creating a relationship that allows unlimited growth.
Learn from the mentor’s journey. If there is growth only on one side of the relationship, mentoring is not happening; instead, one person is demonstrating “ how to be like me” or “how to do it my way” for the other person.

By far the best leadership for true mentoring that changes lives and organizations literally liberates mentees to do what is required for the job with the highest engagement principles possible. …. relationships are priority one for the high excelling organization. Developmental mentorship is the liberating force for any organization that creates a systemized, proven direction to move people to their highest potential and that includes the possibility that potential shows itself to be beyond what the organization offers. There are no losers where moving people to highest potential is concerned.

Participants learn:

The essence and specific outline for leadership that develops mentorship, that is, a formal mentoring methodology.
New perspectives on hiring people ready to grow.
Understanding to use the 4 Mentor Power L’s of mentorship.
Application of the power L’s using audience involvement.

BETTER INTERNAL RELATIONSHIPS, BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE

How we are to each other is who we are to the community we serve.

The reason any organization has value is that there is a successful connection to customers. A failure to understand and use the vital, consistent communication necessary to keep that connection a successful one is the often overlooked issue. Not overlooked by our company, you say? For all the talk and writing about service, the missing piece to the excellent service puzzle is that our customers can get only as good as our least effective communicator gives.

Translation: when the team is not having a good day, neither is the customer.

The dilemma it seems is that relational connections are not easy to see and talk about. Fixing a problem one can see, touch, read, or calculate is easy compared to tackling the oh so heavy word “relationships.”

Relationships are invisible though the unseen core of how we are to each other. Internal relationships can at times change an entire environment’s status quo in a nanosecond (Now, oh dear, we have to deal with emotions - a typical business thinking resistance point or last on the to do list! In fact, that is how policy manuals grow. That is, instead of fixing the “invisible,” broken relationship, why not add a note in the policy manual to correct the behavior. Have everybody be nice to each other. That works, doesn’t it?)

Let’s start with the bottom line. Customers pay all salaries and customers are people before they are customers. Tunnel vision focused on company policy, procedure, meeting agenda, or product alteration without considering the customer relationship misses this foundational point. In a business relationship, there is no reason to come up with any one thing if the customer will not benefit in the long run - yes, even to what toilet paper for use in the public rest room or the best link on the website’s browser. In other words, if it is good for the company, department, employee, or vendor, it may or may not be good for the customer.

Recognizing that the customer pays all salaries can awaken a pulsating vigor within a company to exhibit the true deliverable, that is, all of us or none of us. To be needed is reciprocal. Each person has a connection to the customer regardless of job description – every single one. StrengthBank® COMMUNICATION WorkOuts® – creates a self-perpetuating paradigm that keeps internal communication focused, clear and constantly renewing internal working relationships. These relationships mirror the bottom line for what customers receive. As many participants have realized, StrengthBank® COMMUNICATION WorkOuts® make relationship savvy visible. What we can see we can manage more effectively and enjoy at higher levels of productivity.

Participants learn:

How communication, conversation, and relationship are synonymous.
How listening is more than an ear skill for attentive service providers.
How to do more than a collective stab at “good customer service”.

WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE!

How To Generate Effective Discourse, Engagement, and On-target Decision Making and Mentoring

Relationships form the backdrop of success not only for each person but for the entirety of what an organization has to offer those it serves. The workplace that disregards the particular, individual focus for each of its employees and its customers, will fail and fall into the ignominy of being just another workforce of ill-prepared or disengaged workers. No level of the organization is exempt.

However, with each person’s unique plan or bank of strengths (StrengthBank®) in place and called upon and allowed to function at its highest, success in inevitable. Sandra’s strategies will prosper the individual and the organization, generate no harm, and will give self-renewing hope–a future one by one and for the organization as a whole. With her complete relational work out system (StrengthBank® COMMUNICATION WorkOuts®) in play the organization can go consistently forward, “on plan.”

For the individual:

Each of us has a bank of strengths and the ability to communicate for healthy relationships. That bank of strengths used as designed with its original “equipment” (COMMUNICATION WorkOuts®) becomes a productive workout for human relationships/connections/conversations. The design in place produces a readily accessible tool that benchmarks and guides each one to the most efficient and effective best use of talents and skills.

For the organization:

When Sandra’s mental work out strategies are used consistently to work out circumstances and arrange life and work with others, negative people issues, half-baked plans, and frenzied “busyness” behaviors dim in the light of higher productivity, creativity, and “on task” engagement. Without this bigger StrengthBank® vision of each life’s purpose, one can easily lose interest and give up. Without this constant guide to encouragement and improvement, the focus on every day life becomes a plethora of seemingly endless, trivial tasks. With the StrengthBank® vision firmly in place, not only does one soar to full capacity but also is engaged to lead and serve others in their pursuit of excellence, each one’s path of greatest potential.

The potential is to be part of a truly energized workforce that stands ready to blow the doors of the competition while creating great competitive relationships. We all win because regardless of which team we are on, we collectively urge each other to higher standards.Think of it this way; at the end of every sports event, the opposing players not only shake hands but often have good friends on the “other side.”

At the end of the day, we are still Americans who are blessed by the freedom we have to love what we do for a living and still look ourselves in the mirror when we go home. The pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness is lived in the capitalism and the Republic that sustains it. We are part of something bigger than just “get a job and do something to make a living;” instead, we are taking an active, joyful part as did our forefathers to keep the bell of freedom ringing across the fruited plains and for future generations.

Principle Themes:

Sense of humor is everything. Seeing the humor in everyday circumstances creates a strong, highly impactful platform to handle even the tough stuff that life throws our way, a high tolerance for human foibles.
Multi-generational Workforce. Capitalize on a diverse, multi-generational workforce to produce higher “on task” or engagement behaviors.
Communication. Everyone works things out using simple communication work out grids to capture and resolve relationship skill strategies in a way never before simplified to a shared working paradigm.
Leadership Development. Understand that the ability to lead to greater productivity requires understanding that behaviors (”be[beings] having’s”) showcase the heart of productivity. They are never the primary place to solve problems. Studying personality styles and viewing them as a cure-all for interpersonal skills leads to short-term, destructive manipulation rather than positive, productive communication.
Time Management. Relationships are the core issue; when relationships are functional, time flies and things get done.
Character: It is never too late to connect to others better. Connecting better relationally stimulates personal growth and always contributes to the greater good of not only the organization but also its customers and vendors.
There is a plan! Each of us is designed to be able to experience productively in confident and assured step-by-step, moment-by-moment, and relationship-by-relationship lives at home and at work.
Attitude: Attitudes matter because they come from the heart and soul, not from job titles and company benefit packages.

ENGAGEMENT BEGINS AT THE HIRING TABLE

Specific strategies for peeling back the onion to better predict higher productivity.

How we hire should be every organization’s “killer app.” What could possibly be more sound than focusing first on who gets hired, developed, promoted, or asked to move on? What about a more reliable hiring process than assessments, interviews, and reference checks? Charisma, humor, and charm can go a long way in an interview; but at its core, the traditional interview is superficial.

A candidate for employment can look great, smell great, exhibit all the right moves, have the right credentials, and still be the wrong person for a particular job.

Wait a minute! If what I am looking for and all the details are covered, how can this not be the right hire?

The right hire will have answers beyond the test and outside the box. These answers will tie the offered job paralleled to personal aspirations.

The needed plan of action for greater success for hiring engaged people requires rethinking, ad hoc conversations, and time outside the interview room. There is a great tendency to move all pre-employment steps possible to tests or online mechanisms. However, pre-employment paradigms need to focus on hiring live people to work live, face-to-face, i.e., to work productively with others.

When value is constantly added by every hire, the organization finds itself with higher engagement, accountability, and retention of best of the best. Elevating hiring to the same level of professionalism and integrity as financial management not only makes sense but also is mandatory in today’s culture of “job search trained” applicants. Hint: Firing needs a like strategy as predictor of the next best hire for the newly vacated slot.

Participants learn:

Value added conversation strategies to use in the hiring process to increase the potential for hiring highly productive and engaged employees.
Identify gaps in current hiring process to increase the chances of hiring longterm, engaged employees at all levels.
Break down the necessary hiring process into actionable, unique strategies: some reinvented, some new, some never before done.
Transfer session learning to specific templates to use immediately for the next hiring opportunity upon returning to the organization.

THE CHARACTER OF LEADERSHIP

Leading and supporting a respectful, creative workplace that inherently sustains itself

Everyday conversation, coherence, and closure stand on the same doorstep with silence, incoherence, and conflict. That doorstep is perception - the first prompting to encourage or discourage communication, relationships, and camaraderie. Engaged, synergy-focused leadership whether personal or positional respects even the mediocre person and allows each to have potential to contribute. Servant Leadership!

Starting with this respect for each person’s bank of strengths that works out individual performance and engagement, leadership with character allows disagreement without belittling, critique without disgrace, and correction without destruction. Without a bigger vision of our life purpose than showing up to earn a dollar, we lose interest and give up. Without encouragement and improvement all we can see is our every day life with its trivial tasks. With the A,B,C’s of Character Leadership (Apparent, Believable, Connected) firmly in place, not only do we soar to our full capacity but also we are innovative, creative, and engaged to lead others in mutual pursuit of excellence and each path of greatest potential.” With Character leadership in place, we are talking creative, energized workforce!

Apparent

To the inevitable issue of conflict, character in leadership begins with a liberating thought, i.e., there is an apparent constructive side to conflict, alongside a destructive one. Conflict is often a positive sign that an organization is filled with people who really care about what’s going on. Disagreements are an opportunity for change, improvement, and greater understanding. The non-constructive side of conflict arises when disagreements create heated conversations and moments of utter frustration.

Believable

Leadership with character emancipates the individual so that full potential and engagement with all the faces of human behavior are less likely to obstruct living out the promises made to the customer; the customer believes in the offer to be served. Serving customers and contributing from an on-fire rather than a burned-out workforce becomes the smoothly chugging “little engine” that could and can and consistently does what it promises.

Connected

A connection often overlooked is the individual’s relationship with work as it plays out at home and in the local community. We are people first, employees second. Wise leadership understands the leading is “more of weaving of relationships than an amassing of information” ~ Max Depree, Leadership Is An Art.

Issue identification is the key to leadership excellence. Misunderstanding the first issue as human beings leads to poor decisions and misaligned strategies. The work must be connected to the people as surely as the hip bone is connected to the leg bone if we are to truly succeed. Long-term success has a human face on it for the leader with character.

Participants Learn:

How to master the ABCs of leadership with character: Apparent, Believable, and Connected.
How the influence of leadership’s character is displayed in small and showstopper moments.
How the three cornerstones of positional leadership management predict greater character in leadership.
How to have the mental focus for greater character that moves from the heart out through the lips into performance.
How to implement and develop leadership with character starting with the next conversation.
Recognize the hiring and service connections in the environment imbued with the character in its leadership.

PUBLICATIONS

Current Book Release

StrengthBank^®
Hope For High Schools

Current Curriculum release

StrengthBank^® People Skills WorkOuts
StrengthBank^® Mentor Manual

UPCOMING BOOK

Face-to-Face Talk: How do I fit in without losing me?

Service On Purpose™: Reality 101: Engaged Or Not, Employees Are The Customer Experience!