What Law Firms Could Learn from Singapore Airlines

Posted on 12 April 2012 by tonyreiss
Air hostesses for Singapore Airlines. January ...

SIA cabin crew being caring, warm, gentle, elegant and serene

 

I’ve just had my first experience of travelling Business Class on Singapore Airlines. In the back of my mind I had thoughts that they had a good reputation. Upon returning I checked this out and they claim to be the world’s most awarded airline, including the Best Airline in The World in 22 out of the last 23 years! Wonder what happened in that odd year out?

So what are they getting right and what could other service providers, including law firms, learn from Singapore Airlines (SIA).

Let’s look at what impressed me…

  1. First impressions. With just a few exceptions, a plane is a plane is a plane – in the same way that most offices look and feel the same. But the staff that greet you? That can feel different. Singapore ‘girls’ (as they’ve been called consistently since 1972) have such distinctive outfits (designed by top designer Pierre Balmain in 1972). Other airlines, such as those for Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand have similar attire, but they aren’t as classy or distinctive somehow.

So, as a passenger, you start with a positive good impression. You’re already looking at them through rose-coloured glasses.

The Singapore ‘girl’ branding has been controversial but a quote in Singapore’s Straits Times puts its finger on the importance of the brand: “To remove the Singapore Girl icon from SIA is like removing Mickey Mouse from Disneyland”.

Some hotels get this first impression right as well. They bother to check if you’ve stayed with them before. They might greet you in front of the desk rather than behind it or do the check-in procedure in your room. I’m sure I’m not the only person who is impressed by this attention to detail. 

The questions for law firms: What first impression is your firm trying to make? Are you succeeding? How do you know?

2. The service is better. The Singapore Girl is said to engender “Asian values and hospitality” and has been described as “caring, warm, gentle, elegant and serene”.

My experience was that the cabin crew who greeted me seemed a little brighter and were possibly a bit more outgoing. They seemed to provide a greater level of attentiveness. It’s as if they really, really cared about providing a great service.

Here are just a few examples of what Singapore Airlines did:

  • Instead of just leaving magazines on the rack, they walk them around. Then they just have a better selection of magazines. The articles and photos in their own magazine are that bit classier – more Vogue than Good Housekeeping.
  • Instead of just handing out menus they are prepared to give you time. They stand there to help you chose and answer any questions.
  • They don’t bring a tray with everything on it. They lay your table!
  • You chose what chocolates you want, rather than getting two in a box pre-chosen by somebody else (I only like plain!)

The question for law firms: Just how good is the service delivery to your clients? Are you systematically checking? Do you reward those who consistently deliver good service?

3. It’s not just the service that’s different. There is attention to detail on the product as well. After takeoff they hand out drawstring bags of socks- but not like the other socks- these have padded soles to make them more comfortable for walking around. Then there’s the range of products available. Their tea selection had 13 varieties including decaffeinated Earl Grey and 3 different green teas. You can choose what coffee beans you’d like. They also have a distinctive salt and pepper pots. One nestles on top of the other and looks like a snowman! 

The questions for law firms: How much selection do you offer and how much product or process innovation is your firm doing? Or are you just offering what your rival firms offer?

4. But most impressive of all was their way of handling mistakes – on a late night flight, my meal hadn’t been warmed up and one member of the cabin crew owned up to it. But this is the best bit – she was so, so apologetic and wanted to make up for it. She asked if I was staying in Singapore so I could try the dish there. She asked others in the plane and recommended where I should go. A great way of addressing a potential problem and demonstrating impressive initiative!

The question for law firms: Mistakes are inevitable, but how good are you at dealing with them?

Overall, I got the impression that everything SIA said and did came from a place of having a deep belief that they are one notch better than everybody else.

Upon my return, I’ve read up about SIA and I’m not surprised my experience was so good. They ran a recent service excellence initiative, called Transforming Customer Service (TCS), involving staff in five key operational areas, including back office functions (eg Engineering) that don’t directly interface with customers. This investment was split pretty evenly on people training, product innovation and innovating new processes.

The question for law firms: What levels of investment in client service training are you making?

The Senior VP responsible for the Cabin Crew at Singapore Airlines sums it up. “Profit is the applause you receive for serving your customers well.” 

Sources: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/duc_huynh/PDF%20Files/SIA_What%20it%20takes%20to%20sustain%20service%20excellence.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Girl

Posted in Business Development and Selling, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Managers Can Get the Best Out of Others – Using SCARF

Posted on 5 April 2012 by tonyreiss
My Scarf Collection

Which SCARF shall I wear today?

Neuroscientists are making progress in understanding what makes us tick. Apparently we are deeply motivated in our subconscious to maximise reward and minimise threats or dangers. Makes sense to me!

According to Dr David Rock, the five key dimensions to explore in our work and social experiences are: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness, hence the SCARF Model.

I look at each of these in turn to see what managers can do differently to get the best from their team members.

Status is about our sense of who we are and our position in the pecking order. We feel good when this status is enhanced and bad when our status is reduced in the eyes of others.

Consider how we give feedback to others. Do we leave the other person with a heightened or diminished sense of status? For many, just having a date in their calendar for a forthcoming performance review fills people with dread. Skilled managers will start these discussions by letting their team members review their own performance and will ensure team members are motivated by the outcomes.

Certainty concerns being able to predict the future. We seek to avoid ambiguity and desire clear expectations. Consider how stressful it is when:

  • our boss doesn’t make clear exactly what he or she wants and the deadlines,
  • we have competing demands on our time.

It might not always be possible to give staff such information. But it might be possible to say when the information will be available or when a key decision will be made. This will alleviate negative reactions.

Autonomy provides a sense of control over events. We feel good when we have a sense of choice. This explains why a boss who micromanages can demotivate us, or we feel anxious when change is imposed on us.

As a manager, it isn’t always easy to allow total freedom of choice. But consider whether you can ask for the opinions of others before deciding. Or whether you could offer your team members choices along the lines of “Here are a couple of options….which would you prefer?”

Relatedness is a sense of safety with others – of having a sense of whether they are friend rather than foe. It can feel stressful when we are at an event and don’t know anybody. Our brain and subconscious are apparently assessing the level of danger from potential foes and this effects our behaviour.

When working in global, virtual teams it is important to build a sense of relatedness and trust. Consider having buddy pairings, mentoring programmes, action learning groups to build this sense of relatedness.

Fairness is about having fair exchanges. These stimulate positive brain responses, not unlike receiving a monetary reward. Secrecy and a lack of openness can lead to a sense of threat.

Again it might be useful for managers to create an open style to create this sense of fairness. For example, it might help to be more explicit about the basis for making any decisions, such as who needs to work over the weekend or be promoted or chair an important meeting!

I provide some tips on decision-making at https://tonyreiss.com/2012/02/24/how-to-make-a-decision-and-get-it-to-stick/

Managers sometimes think they need a bullet-proof jacket for all the flak they get. It turns out they just need a SCARF!

For more on SCARF, read Dr David Rock’s article, SCARF: a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others, NeuroLeadership Journal, 2008

Posted in Coaching and Training, Leadership and Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Western Style Training Doesn’t Work with Eastern Style Cultures

Posted on 2 April 2012 by tonyreiss

I’ve just come back from Asia having delivered three workshops in Kuala Lumpur, Sri Lanka for Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi participants and  China. This was my eleventh trip to Asia, designing and delivering programmes for international firms. I’m beginning to get the hang of working with the cultural differences. Some of these differences are subtle but they are all potentially important for trainers and coaches to take on board.

The purpose of this article is to pinpoint what western trainers need to do differently when working with Asian or mixed groups.

Some implications for training design and style

Generalisations are potentially dangerous on this subject. It is important to recognise that each country has its own unique issues. I’m grateful to loads of people for their inputs to discussions I’ve initiated on LinkedIn on this subject. Here are some general thoughts as a guide:

  1. Design programmes that recognise the different attitudes to status. I have noticed that, if you have a mixed hierarchy group in Asia, the juniors will tend to wait until the seniors have spoken. So if you want to address this, you need a different process for collecting opinions or making decisions other than asking the whole group for thoughts. Try buzz groups or breakout groups. But above all you’ll need to acknowledge the status of the senior people in the group.
  2. Consider involving the senior local executives to co-train on the programme. Not only will this help get the culture fit right, but it helps to get more local buy-in. This can be particularly important if you are working on an initiative from a western-based head office. Even a satellite office in your country doesn’t usually like interventions from head office! The potential downside of using locals to co-train is that the local training style and skills might be different to yours, leading to some mixed messages or confusion.
  3. Don’t push for too much honest feedback in exercises – This might feel uncomfortable because harmony is more important than honesty in most Asian cultures. In terms of feedback to you, there is likely to be a tendency to give you the answer they judge is what you want to hear, rather than what we would call the truth.
  4. Show more respect for seniority, age and wisdom – Try to avoid challenging senior people or older members in group discussions. This might feel uncomfortable to the group.
  5. Avoid doing anything that might risk somebody ‘losing face’ – Avoid putting anybody on the spot that risks them looking foolish in front of colleagues.
  6. Don’t do too much facilitation in the form of ‘pulling’ issues or processes from the whole group – they will be expecting to be told what to do and might feel uncomfortable with any attempts by western trainers to ‘empower’ them.
  7. Avoid having an attitude of thinking that western ways are better than eastern ways – the west and east have evolved different training styles to match our different cultures. It can be tempting to take out any frustrations we may have on the group, but this should obviously be avoided at all costs!

When working in our own culture, we just need to consider psychological filters when designing and delivering training programmes. When working outside our western culture we need to consider cultural filters as well (see Coaching Across Cultures, by Philippe Rosinski). Western trainers need to try on eastern ‘moccasins’ to attempt to get insights into these cultural filters.

With international expansion continuing and western and eastern firms forming more joint ventures, it is becoming increasingly important to get the training styles right for all cultures.

We are all so lucky to have these differences in the world. I welcome any further thoughts and insights from readers.

Posted in Leadership and Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Managing Global and Remote Teams

Posted on 17 March 2012 by tonyreiss
The Earth seen from Apollo 17.

The team are out there somewhere...

It’s hard being a good manager when you and your team are working under the same roof. It’s a lot harder managing others and building effective relationships or teamwork when the team members are spread out over thousands of miles. Many managers are struggling to manage such teams well. Here are 3 areas to focus on.

1.   Praise works better than criticism

Managing remote relationships brings special challenges. ‘Inputs’ are often difficult to observe and ‘outputs’ (often in terms of sales figures or other performance indicators) do not tell the whole story – especially in the short term.

Try to avoid cracking the whip with underperformers. Recent research suggests that this is the wrong approach. A focus on the negative produces negative behaviour on the part of those being managed – measurable in terms of not working as hard as they might and even looking for another job.

This is particularly true with remote management because comments made – positive or negative – have a much bigger impact because the frequency of contact is greatly reduced.

The research evidence suggests that a possible tip should be:

Always look to find a positive and build on that rather than breed resentment by focussing on the negative  

2.   Outcomes Based Leadership and Building Trust

Two key drivers in leading successful remote teams are:

  • Outcomes Based Leadership – Leading remote teams, you can no longer manage activities. You need to manage people to deliver outcomes and coach them on how to achieve them.
  • Building Trust – Everything you do needs to build trust. That goes from your communications and the way you assign work to drive natural interdependence across your remote team. It can help to organise mini projects in a way that they need each other’s help and support to be successful.

Those managing remote relationships often benefit from 1-1 coaching. Also it can help to organize occasional workshops with the team to get everyone understanding how they can all work together better and be much more successful.

3.    Communication is the key

Try the following:

  • Hold a weekly meeting ideally via teleconference so you can see each other. Make sure you have an agenda and action points
  • Setting up the telephone system so that calls to ‘best friend’ firms are internal calls – it feels different
  • Set up projects which give people an opportunity to work together
  • Avoid sending emails for everything, phone calls are more personal
  • Take time to get to know each other on the phone (‘how was your weekend?’ etc)
  • Empower others as much as possible
  • If financially possible, offer secondments/exchanges, visit them and work with them at their site.
Posted in Leadership and Management | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Do you want to get better at pitching?

Posted on 14 March 2012 by tonyreiss
Breaking News: Miss Philippines was the one wh...

Not this kind of beauty parade!

Tired of losing too many beauty parades? A one day open workshop is available to get state-of-the-art pitching skills. You’ll work in competing teams and do a pitch in a day.  It’s great fun!

You’ll learn how to get on the inside track and put convincing and persuasive arguments as to why your firm should be selected.  You’ll learn how to deal with those tricky questions and much more.

Also, why wait to be asked to pitch? We’ll cover how you can legitimately pitch when you weren’t even invited!

Details at: http://www.ark-group.com/mp_introduction.asp?ac=1230&nc=1&fc=167

Posted in Business Development and Selling | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Consultative Selling for the Professions – Seven Simple Steps

Posted on 11 March 2012 by tonyreiss
Assorted forks. From left to right: dessert fo...

What question do you ask when the fork hits the starter?

My article on Procter & Gamble’s seven selling steps has been popular. It covered the process that P&G found worked for their sales specialists while on a call (state the idea, explain how it works, reinforce key benefits etc). In the article I question the applicability of this approach to the professions.

Here’s a bigger picture process designed more for selling higher value and more complex services, such as those of professional services – rather than cases of Ariel. It looks at selling and what might happen over a period of weeks or months with one particular prospective client, using the consultative selling model.

Curiously it’s another seven stage process! I’ve taken each stage I’ve applied them in turn to lawyers or accountants and their business development activity.

  1. Planning and research

Research is important to ensure targeting the right companies and people. This avoids wasting time.

One client flew two senior partners to the head office of a major computer company to discover that the service they wanted to talk about had been outsourced!

Once appropriate targets have been recognised, prepare questions for an initial phone call and meeting.

2. Initial approach to gain interest

Consider what’s in it for the prospect to spend time talking to you. Senior people will be busy. A lunch with a lawyer or accountant is not necessarily as attractive as you might think. Do you offer insights, connections or opportunities for the prospective buyer to meet their own targets or look good internally?

From your research, try to find five topics that might be of interest and pick one of them with which to lead your conversation.

I had the pleasure of sitting in a meeting in which PwC were talking to a leading international law firm. As the fork was lifted for the starter, the Senior Partner at PwC asked the Senior Partner of the law firm: “What’s your thinking about LLP status?” Sure enough, three years later, this led to work for PwC.

3. Meetings to clarify relevant client needs

Having got a meeting, the skills required now are primarily questioning and listening. You need to establish your credibility and build rapport and a sense of being a trusted advisor. As the trust develops the prospective buyer will share their buying criteria.

The role of the professional advisor is to facilitate the buyer thinking all this through – not overtly to push their services! This may take several meetings and involve introducing colleagues.

4. Presentation

A presentation is best done after the prospect has expressed interest. The skilled presentations establish an understanding of the clients’ needs (those of the organisation and of the buyers themselves, as individuals) and show clearly what the professional firm can offer in terms of features (about the firm) and benefits (how the firm’s offerings benefit the client organisations and key individuals).

But most of all, the effective seller will demonstrate their capability by providing evidence. Selling is more effective if it’s not just ‘blah, blah, blah’ but also contains something such as ‘Here – let me show you….’

5. Overcoming objections/negotiating

It is quite likely that the prospective buyer will have some doubts about saying ‘yes’ just like that. When objections are expressed, it can feel like rejections to those that are selling. But they are often what are called ‘buying signals’. If the buyer was not interested they wouldn’t be haggling!

The partner should firstly listen and acknowledge the buyers comments, perhaps asking some gently probing questions to understand better what lies behind their concerns. Then revised options should be offered with both buyer and seller offering thoughts on alternative ways forward.

If you are trying to overcome major objections and persuade at this stage then something’s wrong. You have probably missed understanding an important need.

6. Close

I don’t mean an old style, somewhat pressurized ‘closing’ (as in ‘Would you like it delivered on Wednesday or Friday?’ or ‘Would you like one dozen or two?’). This should be a process designed to reach a collaborative agreement on a way forward. The partner should be acting as a facilitator. Complex systems, such as selling professional services, need help in arriving at good decisions. Try ‘How would you like to proceed and make a decision?’

7. After-sales follow-up

Having started to establish the role of ‘trusted advisor’, the partner should now focus on fulfilling the professional service and delighting the client. This may involve a good deal of internal coordination and good project management skills.

Good client partners should continue to take responsibility for checking the quality of service being delivered, even if by a different team.

If you get this right, more profitable work should follow. Might this approach to consultative selling help your firm?

Posted in Business Development and Selling | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Leadership is Too Important to be Left to the Partners

Posted on 3 March 2012 by tonyreiss
A bonfire lit the sky of Babil Province, as no...

Law firms would benefit from more leadership

 

Law firms have a wealth of untapped talent at the senior associate (SA) level. If partners could let go a bit more, so much more could get done and margins would be improved.

For SA’s, I’m not talking about running-the-firm type leadership, but leadership at an operational level, such as:

  • running matters effectively,
  • helping to motivate team members working on matters,
  • assessing risks to the firm and mitigating such risks
  • contributing more to BD activity etc.

So here’s a 3 stage process for helping SA’s transition to being more effective leaders:

Stage 1 – Establish the Requirements and Set Leadership Goals – Management needs to agree and support such an initiative. Not easy in itself because not all partners will feel comfortable letting go.

Then each SA needs to have goals that should be stretching and geared to each individual’s capability and interests. We would also advocate using a 180 or 360 diagnostic to help the lawyers get insights into their current leadership style.

Stage 2 – Run a Development Programme – The programme would be designed to clarify what the firm expects of their SA’s and would aim to equip SA’s with the skills required. Details of our suggested content for such a programme are below.

Stage 3 – Ongoing Action Learning Sets – Training programmes on their own are limited in terms of what shifts can be achieved.

Ongoing programmes will remind SA’s of what needs to be worked on and provide support. Internal and external coaches can provide the support and crack the whip as required! Sponsoring partners can play an important role as well.

Proposed Content for SA Development Programme

From our experience at working on leadership programmes, below is an example of what we’d recommend to move your SA’s up a gear.

  1. ON BEING A TRULY COMMERCIAL LAWYER – Exploration of the commercial lawyer’s skillset –  defining what being a commercial lawyer means for clients & for the firm
  2. HOW TO RUN A PROFITABLE MATTER – Input explaining the levers of profitability, do’s and don’ts & tools for  running a profitable deal.  Providing guidelines on scope creep and pricing.
  3. BEING AN EFFECTIVE MATTER MANAGER – Understanding the requirements of the client, the firm and team members and exploring why it’s hard not to drop a ball when you get too sucked into the detail.
  4. DEVELOPING BD & CLIENT SKILLS – Framework for understanding what we have to do to develop contacts & client relationships and support partners on client relationships and profile-raising. Clients increasingly want to build a relationship with the SA’s
  5. UNDERSTANDING YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE – Using a diagnostic tool to deepen the participants’ understanding of their personal style, the different styles of others and how participants might benefit from adopting different management approaches sometimes.
  6. DEVELOPING YOUR PEOPLE – On being a leader that others want to follow. The art of delegation, supervision & coaching. The skills of giving feedback & delivering difficult messages .

We are passionate about this stuff. Give us a call if you’d like to hear more about how we can support you make such a transition.

 

Posted in Leadership and Management, Managing Change | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Encouraging Engagement from all Attendees on Learning and Development Programmes

Posted on 29 February 2012 by tonyreiss

Classroom, Cathedral of Learning, University o...

At many workshops intended for learning and development purposes, I’ve often felt there is a range of different types of attendees – particularly if people have been made to attend!

There are the 4 P’s:

  • The Prisoners – who are sat there screaming in their heads ‘let me out!’
  • The Protestors – who say out loud from time to time ‘ but that won’t work!’
  • The Passengers – there for the ride, not really committed but also not disrupting proceedings.
  • The Participants – there to learn!

Peter Block, author of the best book on consulting I’ve read, Flawless Consulting, has offered these questions at the start of a learning and development workshop to encourage engagement:

  • To what extent do you intend to get value from this workshop? (score out of 10)
  • To what extent are you intending to engage personally to achieve this? (score out of 10)
  • To what extent are you prepared to take risks to learn? (score out of 10)
  • To what extent are you prepared to take responsibility for the learning and development of others at this workshop? (score out of 10)

Carefully crafted questions can work wonders. Perhaps use them to get a discussion going at their tables before you get going? Might they be helpful to you?

I’m grateful to David Gurteen for sharing the questions. Contact David at http://gurteen.com

 
Posted in Coaching and Training, Leadership and Management | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment