Turbo Leadership Systems^™

Listen, listen, listen

Jerry, service manager for a commercial heating and air conditioning service contractor, told Session 8 of Turbo’s Leadership Development Lab (LDL):

“Last Thursday morning, my technician, Scott, called me from one of our customer’s sites to inform me we had a bad compressor in one of the water source heat pumps he was performing routine preventative maintenance on. This is not good news for our customer, and none of us enjoy being the bearer of bad tidings, especially at this time of year. I asked my operations supervisor to put a price together for the pump. Including installation, it came to $2,600.00. When Scott gave the price to Dan, our customer, he started yelling at Scott about how much money this was; ‘Why are you ripping me off? I am going to have to call for prices from other contractors from now on,’ and on and on. Scott quietly waited for Dan to calm down a little, then in a professional tone said, ‘How about if I call Jerry and ask him to call you directly about the work authorization. I’m sure you guys can work this out.’ Dan felt comfortable that Scott came up with a workable next step solution, so I called Dan and told him I had figured on 8 hours to change his compressor. ‘Scott says he can do it in 6, so let’s do this job for time and materials and I will guarantee you it will be less than the $2,600.00 for the repair.’ Scott did the job in 4.5 and we saved Dan $600.00.

“The lesson I learned from this experience is that successful problem solving is a multistep team process. The action I call you to take when things heat up and you are on the receiving end of a complaint is to use Leadership Principles # 5 and 6, See Their Point of View and Be an Active Listener. Use these principles while you

wait for your client to cool off. The benefit you will gain is stress-free problem solving and you will have a happy customer.”

There is an old song, sort of a hymn that says, “No storm can shake my inmost calm.” What if you and I could find a place inside ourselves that was so calm and so connected, where there was no storm, no circumstance that could shake our inmost calm, customer complaints included?

Today, as you’re doing all the many things you have to do, take a moment and notice that there is a place inside of you that is independent of anything that’s going on in your life. There’s a place in you that knows that peace. There is a place in you where no storm can shake your inmost calm. Operating from this place, living from this place, will make you a truly powerful person.

Get Involved! Become a fan on Facebook Connect with me on LinkedIn Tweet with Larry on Twitter