The Power of Tone Setting
The Power of Tone Setting
When used in the leadership role, simple human interactions can have extraordinary impact and power in managing morale and productivity. Quite simply, leaders with good tone setting skills will achieve much greater results, improve the loyalty of their team members, work through difficulties easier, create an environment with less stress and deliver greater levels of service to their end customers.
The truest definition that has passed the test of time is that leadership is the art and science of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it for you. This definition supports both the very personal nature of leadership and the role of followers in the leadership equation. Team members work for the leader and not the organization and willing followers are needed for effective leadership.
Tone setting is a core leadership skill that requires effective leaders to invest significant time and energy into the morale and energy of their team members. It also requires a singular belief, that in leadership, the most important task is the team and not any individual project or work that the leader is performing individually.
Effective tone setting comes with a penalty. Perhaps one of the biggest penalties of leadership is that as a great tone setter, the leader is not allowed the luxury of having a bad day. No moping about what happened at home. No complaining about how the organization has pooped on your career path. No crying about other people or how you have not been dealt a bad hand. Another cost of tone setting is the amount of physical energy that is required to do it well. It is common to report a feeling of being drained when tone setting was used consistently as a leadership skill.
To be effective in this skill set, the leader must recognize that the tone setting responsibility begins the moment that he or she is at the workplace. In some cases this means being a tone setter in the parking lot or walking down the hall to the working environment. Team members will pick up as much on non-verbal signals as what the leader says. Great tone setters approach this phenomenon almost as being “on stage” or “show time.”
After arriving in the work area with upbeat facial expression, neutral or positive body language and an approachable walking pace, the leader is faced with a common dilemma. In his or her office is work. Mountains of notes, papers, a few hundred new emails and the flashing light of phone messages waiting. There are also people. The people that do the work. The people that are looking to you for the tone for the day. Go directly to the office and you are telling people, that at best, they are second most important. Greet them first and you tell them that they are the most important part of the organization.
The initial greeting of team members will establish morale and good tone for about two to three hours. This greeting needs to be delivered in a sincerely upbeat manner and focus on the individual team member and not about work issues or challenges. Tone setting is not an inspection tour or grand inquisition. The purpose is to demonstrate the feeling of importance to team members to improve their productivity and service delivery. This greeting should be personalized to include items of importance to the team member’s perspective.
After the initial tone setting run, the leader is given several opportunities during a typical day to maintain or reestablish workplace tone. Reviewing situations with optimism, removing negative language, avoiding gossip and staying away of self-seriousness are several small ways to manage tone. Another effective method is through healthy doses of positive feedback without any chained statements or conditions. As a side note, cynicism or sarcasm are rarely effective with anyone in tone setting.
The real punch from tone setting comes from an analysis of the cost and the return on the tone setting investment. Morale rises, productivity is enhanced, turnover is reduced, service is improved and the cost for this improvement is absolutely nothing more than a little leadership energy.
The Power of Tone Setting - To learn more about this author, visit Tim Schneider's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
Good morning. How is your day going so far? How are the kids? That dog of yours is hilarious.
When used in the leadership role, simple human interactions can have extraordinary impact and power in managing morale and productivity. Quite simply, leaders with good tone setting skills will achieve much greater results, improve the loyalty of their team members, work through difficulties easier, create an environment with less stress and deliver greater levels of service to their end customers.
The truest definition that has passed the test of time is that leadership is the art and science of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it for you. This definition supports both the very personal nature of leadership and the role of followers in the leadership equation. Team members work for the leader and not the organization and willing followers are needed for effective leadership.
Tone setting is a core leadership skill that requires effective leaders to invest significant time and energy into the morale and energy of their team members. It also requires a singular belief, that in leadership, the most important task is the team and not any individual project or work that the leader is performing individually.
Effective tone setting comes with a penalty. Perhaps one of the biggest penalties of leadership is that as a great tone setter, the leader is not allowed the luxury of having a bad day. No moping about what happened at home. No complaining about how the organization has pooped on your career path. No crying about other people or how you have not been dealt a bad hand. Another cost of tone setting is the amount of physical energy that is required to do it well. It is common to report a feeling of being drained when tone setting was used consistently as a leadership skill.
To be effective in this skill set, the leader must recognize that the tone setting responsibility begins the moment that he or she is at the workplace. In some cases this means being a tone setter in the parking lot or walking down the hall to the working environment. Team members will pick up as much on non-verbal signals as what the leader says. Great tone setters approach this phenomenon almost as being “on stage” or “show time.”
After arriving in the work area with upbeat facial expression, neutral or positive body language and an approachable walking pace, the leader is faced with a common dilemma. In his or her office is work. Mountains of notes, papers, a few hundred new emails and the flashing light of phone messages waiting. There are also people. The people that do the work. The people that are looking to you for the tone for the day. Go directly to the office and you are telling people, that at best, they are second most important. Greet them first and you tell them that they are the most important part of the organization.
The initial greeting of team members will establish morale and good tone for about two to three hours. This greeting needs to be delivered in a sincerely upbeat manner and focus on the individual team member and not about work issues or challenges. Tone setting is not an inspection tour or grand inquisition. The purpose is to demonstrate the feeling of importance to team members to improve their productivity and service delivery. This greeting should be personalized to include items of importance to the team member’s perspective.
After the initial tone setting run, the leader is given several opportunities during a typical day to maintain or reestablish workplace tone. Reviewing situations with optimism, removing negative language, avoiding gossip and staying away of self-seriousness are several small ways to manage tone. Another effective method is through healthy doses of positive feedback without any chained statements or conditions. As a side note, cynicism or sarcasm are rarely effective with anyone in tone setting.
The real punch from tone setting comes from an analysis of the cost and the return on the tone setting investment. Morale rises, productivity is enhanced, turnover is reduced, service is improved and the cost for this improvement is absolutely nothing more than a little leadership energy.
The Power of Tone Setting - To learn more about this author, visit Tim Schneider's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
 | |
 |
No article feedback found. |
| |
Leave Your Feedback |
 | |
| |||
John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
|||
Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
|||
Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
|||
George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
|||
Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
|||
|
To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us. | |||
 | |
|  |
Subscribe to Tim's articles
 | |
|
|  |
 | |
|
| |
 | |||||||
|
 | ||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
| ||
 |
| Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details. |
|
|
 |
| Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media |
|
|
 |
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"
Click Here To Learn More |
|
|
|
|
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
|
|
|
 Best Cover Letter Strategic Alliance Elevating Your Business Success & Happiness Exit Interview Document |
|
 | ||
 |
Top 50 Marketing Blogs
Top Marketing Blogs of 2010 | |
 |
Fortune Hunters
CBC Entrepreneur TV | |
| ||
 | ||||
| ||||
|
| ||||
| ||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
|
|
|
