In FranklinCovey’s Leading Loyalty solution, we teach about the loyalty huddle — short, targeted meetings to teach and reinforce the loyalty principles that will earn you, your team, and your organization fierce customer loyalty.
These meetings don’t need to be a big production but can be extremely effective if held consistently with your team members.
The biggest challenge facing first-level leaders is making the leap from successful individual contributor to achieving success through others. It’s harder than you might think. And when it comes to holding a loyalty huddle, your instincts may fail you. Here’s what you need to know about moving from participating in a loyalty huddle to leading one.
First, think of the huddle most people are familiar with —the football huddle. The quarterback gathers around 10 teammates, calls the play, and instructs each player on what they need to do to make the next play a success.
As a front-line leader, who has possibly just moved from being wildly successful as an individual to now needing to achieve results through others, this probably has some element of logic to it. Huddle up. Give instruction. Go to work.
When it comes to a loyalty huddle, we believe that everybody should be participating in them. So often, leaders make the mistake of thinking they have all the answers, which causes them to jump in, takeover, and personally usher a situation to a winning result. Doing so causes their team members to disengage and reduce their contributions to earning customer loyalty.
What the leader of the huddle and the leader of the team should do instead is model, teach, and reinforce a leading loyalty mindset. Guide the huddle by asking simple questions of your team that relate to building loyalty in customers. For example, “What gets in the way of us being generous with our customers?”
Resist the temptation to answer the question yourself. Don’t be afraid of the silence. If you have to, address the question in the next huddle when the team has had time to really ponder what’s being asked.
Engage your team to win the heart of every customer with Leading Customer Loyalty. Register for a complimentary webcast today and learn how companies get their frontline teams to act in a way that builds customer loyalty and drives faster growth.
About the Author
More Content by Sandy Rogers