“Ask questions about how they can help you accomplish something that is important to both of you.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 658
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Here’s Jeff Bajorek with his weekly contribution to the show:
Jeff Bajorek: Top performers love being held accountable. Most people love being held accountable, but the problem is that people confuse accountability with micromanagement and that’s just not a comparison, really. A micromanager is someone who’s looking over your shoulder to make sure that you do what they told you to do. Whereas an accountability partner is someone who is going to ask questions about how they can help you accomplish something that is important to both of you. And I won’t go any deeper than that, but I can tell you that top performers look for accountability meetings on a regular basis. They start groups, they get together, they help each other, and they do so a couple of times a month, at least.
So as I’ve started to work through some of these types of meetings with my clients, I’ve developed a little bit of a framework that I think has been very, very helpful. My clients are seeing results that they haven’t seen. I also think that this framework is very templatable. That’s not a word. Look it up, but it is now. And I think that you can take this same framework and use it with your peers, with the teams that you lead, or even with the leaders who lead your team.
So seven simple questions. The first three are really about the current state, right? The first three is, what have you accomplished since the last time we met? What’s gone well? What hasn’t gone so well? This is your current state. Did you get done what you said was important to get done? What went well? What can you show me the wins? Tell me how we can distill some best practices from this and what didn’t go so well? What got in your way that you weren’t expecting?
Now, the next part of the meeting is setting really kind of setting the agenda for the next meeting that you have the next two questions. What do you need to do next? And when will they be done? So tell me what your next steps are. This is really important to think about before you start doing anything, what are you trying to accomplish? Right? And when you’ve identified what you need to accomplish, give yourself a deadline, hopefully, it’s before our next meeting, but this is what we’re going to hold you accountable for the next time we speak.
The last two questions. These are the moneymakers. These are the team builders. These are the things that really drive engagement and they drive performance because these are the questions that you ask of someone else that makes them want to perform. Do you have what you need? And how can I help? Those are the big difference-makers between accountability and micromanagement. Let me help you. Not only with my skills and my talents, but maybe some resources that I can find for you, or maybe I’ve talked to some other people who have some tools that can help.
So those seven questions, I’ll run through them really quickly. What have you gotten done since the last time we met? What went well? What didn’t go so well? What’s next, what are you going to do next time? When will that be done? Do you have everything you need? And how can I help?
Introduce that framework. These are quick meetings. They don’t have to be very long. These set the tone on the agenda for these meetings. And you can carry on as long as you want around the water cooler or brainstorming ideas or whatever. But when you have this framework in place results come quickly. Teamwork, team building that atmosphere, that level of engagement, that feeling of belonging, that’s where this all comes from. And that leads to high-performing teams and high-performing cultures everywhere they do this stuff.
Scott Ingram: For more about Jeff Bajorek, be sure to click over to DailySales.Tips/658 and then come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!