I was hired by the communications department of a large pharmaceutical company. On my first day, I arrived in the lobby just before 8:30 a.m., excited to begin my new job. I told the security guard my name and told him I was to meet Melissa, my new boss.

The guard found Melissa's name in the directory and called her desk. No answer. He told me to have a seat and wait. Twenty minutes passed. I started to feel frustrated. I'd been told to be there at 8:30 a.m., and had gotten up extra early to make sure no hiccups could happen during the commute.

At 9:05, a woman entered the waiting area and asked, “Are you Tim?” When I jumped up and said “yes,” she brusquely told me to follow her. I had no idea who this was. She took me to what turned out to be the security office so I could get my ID badge. This took about an hour to finish up. Then, she took me up to the fifth floor and ushered me into an empty cube. No phone, no computer, just a chair and a desk. She handed me a stack of forms to fill out and an employee handbook. “Someone will be by in a bit to get these from you.”

At this point, I felt as though I was in a doctor's office. I hate doctor's offices.

An hour later, a guy named Stuart showed up. Stuart told me he works in communications. He told me that Melissa was out of the office this week on a business trip, and she's called and asked Stuart to show me around.

Stuart took me on a walk up and down the rows of cubes. In the next ten minutes, I met at least 20 people. It was like a blur of faces and names going past. I didn't remember anyone's name, and I had no idea what any of them did.

Stuart walked me back to the cube and told me to wait, since IT would be by soon to set me up. I waited until about 12:30. At that point, I'm starving, so I hurried down to the cafeteria to grab something to bring back up so I wouldn't miss IT. Turned out I didn't need to rush. IT didn't show up until after 2 p.m.

Ben, the guy from IT, came by with a used laptop. He was the first person to stop and take a moment to really talk with me. Ben was really nice, but he wasn't the sharpest of IT professionals. He didn't know how to get me logged on to the system.

During Ben's third phone call to the help desk, Stuart stopped by and told me that Melissa would be back on Wednesday. I didn't make it that long. I quit the next day.

Tim's a client of mine. The story of his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day is all true. In the span of less than eight hours, his tank of enthusiasm went from overflowing to completely empty. His new position at a stable company with a good salary and benefits didn't matter when stacked against the interactions he had on his first day on the job.

Although Tim's day may be an extreme example, just a couple of these offenses would demoralize most people. Tim saw the writing on the wall and left. What about those people who had a similar onboarding and chose to stay? How does it affect them? And how does it affect how engaged they're willing to be at work?

Tim's day was not a product of bad luck. It was a product of bad leadership. Melissa completely dropped the ball in ensuring Tim had a great experience. As a result, Tim and the company both lost out.

In this chapter, you're going to learn the ins and outs of experience and why it's important to create great experiences for those you lead. Most important, you'll gain a new set of tools to create great employee experiences in the future.

WHAT IS AN EXPERIENCE?

Reality, at a human level, is quite subjective. What we perceive as “reality” is the sum of the inputs to our five senses, our reflections on those inputs, and the feelings and thoughts we ascribe to those inputs. When you add all of that up, you're left with your experience of something or someone.

Experiences are the foundation of every type of human relationship. What we think and how we feel about someone (family members, colleagues, neighbors, etc.) or something (airlines, sports teams, types of soap, etc.) is entirely shaped by the exchange we have with or about that person or thing. Each contact leaves an impression: positive, negative, or neutral. Jan Carlzon, the former CEO of SAS (Scandinavian Airline Systems), called these contacts moments of truth. To give you a sense of the cumulative power of these moments of truth, consider Carlzon's perspective:

Last year each of our ten million customers came in contact with approximately five SAS employees, and this contact lasted an average of 15 seconds each time… These 50 million “moments of truth” are the moments that ultimately determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company. They are the moments when we must prove to our customers that SAS is their best alternative.¹

In the customer journey, their overall experience is created by every touchpoint where your company interacts with them. This isn't limited to their exchange with a customer service representative. It's much broader, including aspects such as your online presence, how easy your website is to navigate, how quickly you respond, the quality of your product or service, and your relationship post-sale.

WHAT DOES CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE HAVE TO DO WITH LEADERSHIP?

Understanding the customer experience is critical for leaders. Moments of truth aren't just for customers. They happen for employees as well. Think of poor Tim, who opened this chapter.

If the customer experience is the basis for how customers think and feel about a brand, the employee experience is the basis for how your employees think and feel about you.

Today's employees have incredible choices. If an employee can jump ship and head down the street to work for another company for 15% higher base pay and similar benefits, the employee experience becomes a tremendous differentiator of value. The more positive the employee experience, the more likely your employee is going to be dedicated to your organization. Employees who are engaged put in 57% more effort on the job and are 87% less likely to resign than employees who are disengaged.²

The key to creating a great employee experience is to leverage the power of peak moments. Peak moments are touchpoints where employee expectations are particularly high. If you get these right, you'll build loyalty and commitment. Get them wrong and engagement wanes. Let's begin by looking at what makes for a peak moment and where they exist for the people you lead.

THE POWER OF PEAK MOMENTS

Think back to the last vacation that you took. If a friend asked you about your trip after you came home, what would you tell them? You wouldn't walk them through everything you did. Instead, you would go through your memory, pick specific moments to share, and edit out the rest. A lot of the boring everyday bits would be left on the cutting room floor.

What you'd wind up sharing are peak moments. Peak moments are those vivid instants that get seared into our brains. They're heightened reality, life with the dull parts taken out. Memories of peak moments are rich in emotion, sensory detail, and/or surprise.

In life, there are some communal peak moments that everyone experiences. Counting down the last ten seconds until the new year. Waking up to find the money left by the tooth fairy. Heading off to the first day of school. Graduation. As a society, we've created rituals to celebrate peak moments and guide us through times of transition.

Compared to personal lives, most professionals' lives are shockingly devoid of peak moments. No wonder so much of work seems so…plain. Not investing in these peak moments is a missed leadership opportunity. The employment life cycle is full of natural points at which such moments would be of great benefit:

• Sourcing and recruiting candidates
• The interview(s)
• The employment offer
• Preboarding
• First day on the job
• First team meeting
• Compensation and benefits
• Initial training
• Performance coaching and feedback
• Project kickoffs
• Continued professional training
• Mentoring
• Organizational communication
• Appreciation, recognition, bonuses
• Promotion
• Resignation
• Termination
• Retirement

Each of these junctures represents a window of opportunity to deepen and enrich the employee experience.

Take, for example, Tim's peak moment—the first day on the job. When it comes to a new hire, this is your one chance to make a first impression. Proportionally, it counts for a lot more than just one day. How that new employee feels about you and the company is formed and solidified in the first full-day encounter. Employees don't walk in the door fully committed. They have their radar up, watching and waiting to see how you show up for them.

Unfortunately, Tim's bad experience is far too common. A bad first day sets the tone for what the days to come would be like. According to a February 2014 survey by Bamboo HR, one-third of approximately 1,000 respondents said they had quit a job within six months of starting it. Of those that quit, more than 16% left within the first week.³

On the flipside, there are lots of companies that realize creating an incredible first experience can set their new employees on the path to success. One of my clients, a global consulting firm, brings hundreds of new hires from around the United States together for their first week on the job. They stay in a large hotel and spend the next eight days immersed in an intensive simulation to learn basic consulting skills.

But skill building isn't really why the firm puts this event on. Martin, the North American head of learning, described it to me this way:

By the end of these eight days, we want them to have the most positive experience possible of our firm. We want them to feel that their decision to join up was the best choice they've made in their entire lives. It should feel that good.

Although a week-long offsite orientation immersion might be nice, it's not required. Google's analytics team pays special attention to which leadership actions have the biggest impact on a new hire. In Work Rules, Laszlo Bock, head of Google's people function, shares a simple email reminder alert that is sent out to managers on the Sunday night before they have a new employee starting the next day. The email tells them to do the following:

• Have a role-and-responsibilities discussion.
• Match your new hire with a peer buddy.
• Help your new hire build a social network.
• Set up onboarding check-ins once a month for your new hire's first six months.
• Encourage open dialogue.

What Block and his team have found is that sending this reminder alert can reduce the new hire's time to full productivity by a month. This is 25% faster than it would be otherwise.⁴

The first day on the job, although important, is but one of many professional milestones. Each one of these markers represents a moment of truth. These are the moments when you must prove to your employees that your company is their best option.

LEAVE THEM WITH A WOW EXPERIENCE

The online shoe retailer Zappos knows a thing or two about creating great experiences. Since their founding in 1999, Zappos has grown enormously. From the start, they knew they weren't in the shoe industry. They were in the happy customer industry. Their business was shaped by their core values, the first of which is Deliver WOW Through Service.⁵

Some of examples of Zappos' WOW in action with their customers:

• Zappos sent flowers to a woman who had ordered six different pairs of shoes, who was recovering from foot pain due to harsh medical treatments.⁶
• When Zappos ran out of stock, a customer service rep left the call center and traveled to a rival shoe store to get a specific pair of shoes for a customer staying at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas.⁷
• It overnighted a free pair of shoes to a best man who had arrived at a wedding without shoes.⁸

Zappos' WOW is not limited to their customers. They also believe employees need a WOW experience—otherwise they can't deliver WOW to customers. As an example, to help ensure there's a good cultural fit, new employees are offered $4,000 to leave the company during their new hire orientation to make sure they really want to be part of the Zappos team. When Amazon acquired Zappos in 2009, they also adopted the Zappos' “Pay to Quit” offer.⁹

How do you create an enjoyable experience? In instance after instance, two core themes consistently show up: generating positive emotions and creating delight. The remainder of this chapter will share multiple tips, tools, and techniques in each of these areas. With these skills and deliberate practice, you can make creating great experiences part of your leadership job description.

MASTERING GREAT EXPERIENCES: GENERATE POSITIVE EMOTION

Conventional wisdom tells us that business and emotions do not mix. Many organizations operate with an unwritten “check your feelings at the door” policy. The fact is, no one ever checks his or her feelings at the door. What employees do is suppress their feelings at the door. This leaves them feeling like a work-bot, not a human.

Emotions have a huge impact on how we perform. In his book The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor cites research showing that happiness improves nearly every business outcome: raising sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%.¹⁰ In addition, positive emotions help us to be more innovative. In a positive state of mind, you're more able to generate new ideas and be open to the ideas of others. Some keys to generating positive emotion include modeling positivity, flipping the negative script, and acknowledging and celebrating small wins.

MASTERING GREAT EXPERIENCES: CREATING DELIGHT

The ability to generate positive emotion is an essential leadership skill. Positivity should be the default for every high-performing work environment. Yet, if you want to make the employee experience even more outstanding, you need to master the ability to delight.

Delight is not an abstract concept. It's a feeling—highly subjective and deeply personal. It's the unabashed pleasure that comes when preconceived expectations are exceeded in wonderful ways. It's, to borrow from Zappos, a WOW!

Some ways you can create delight:

• Start with sizzle
• Use surprise
• Create rituals
• End with a bang

Start with Sizzle

When an experience starts, you have a tiny window of opportunity to grab people's attention. If you don't hook them quickly, you'll lose them. In most business settings, boring is business as usual. The standard for engagement in business settings is quite low. If you try something—anything—you'll stand out from most of your peers.

I was at a conference where Ralph, the CEO of a health-care company, got up to speak. His topic: the need for the company to adopt new technology. Ralph's subject matter—dealing with change—was not a revolutionary topic. I've seen many other leaders present on the same issue. Most of them start off with something like, “The world is changing, and so is our industry. These are the things you need to know. Next slide.” These presentations are doomed from the start.

Ralph was different. Next to him on stage was a small table with numerous objects:

• A rotary dial phone.
• An eight-track player.
• A Commodore 64 computer.

Ralph used his antique props for comic effect. He got the whole crowd laughing about what life would be like if we were still using these tools at work. Ralphed hooked his audience, and they were open to him from there on.

Tools to help you start with sizzle are detailed in the following sections.

Use a Relevant Icebreaker Activity

When done well, icebreakers get people moving, interacting, and building relationships. They can relax a potentially formal or tense atmosphere.

However, when executed poorly, icebreakers are cheesy wastes of time. Does anyone really want to listen to a room full of their colleagues go around one at a time and share the name of their first pet? There's nothing like a bad icebreaker to transform a group of willing participants into prisoners.

The first key to leading an effective icebreaker is clarity. The rules need to be easy to understand and follow. People need to be able to fully engage without confusion. Your directions need to be so precise that there's no possibility for misunderstanding. The best way to get to this standard of precision is to practice. Find a few friends or family and try it out on them first. Don't let showtime be your first dry run.

The second key for an effective icebreaker is relevance. Don't just do an icebreaker for the sake of breaking the ice. Choose an activity with useful subject matter that connects to who you are, why you're there, and what you hope to accomplish. For example, when facilitating workshops on leading change, I often start the workshop by saying, “Follow the instructions on the next slide.” The slide is shown in Figure 12.1.

After they move, we debrief their experience: what happened and what their internal reaction was. Through dialogue, we discover how the activity was an analogy for how people feel and respond to being told to change when that change is sprung on them suddenly. The activity hooks people in a way that just discussing the concepts never could.

Poll the Group Using ART

When it comes to sizzle, use technology to your advantage. Audience response technology (ART) is an interactive means for you to create engaging, real-time interaction with your audience. There are hardware, software, and cloud-based systems to choose from.

There are plenty of benefits to using ART. First, ART works at the speed of our instant-gratification culture. In seconds, you can collect and analyze participant feedback to any question that you pose. Because people don't see the results of others until you reveal them, the individual polling process prevents groupthink.

Second, the technology enables you to turn traditional one-way communication into two-way communication. This interactive dialogue builds credibility and trust, because you're showing people that you're interested in what they think. Given the anonymity, people feel safe to answer honestly, and both introverts and extroverts have a chance to be heard.

The key to a successful ART session is to have genuine thought-provoking questions. For example, if you ask, “What's the biggest issue our customers would say we have?” you'll prompt a rich discussion. If you use softball questions such as, “Who's happy to be here? Press 1 for yes, Press 2 for no,” it'll be a failure. Be creative. You can certainly create a mix of lighter fun questions, as well as challenging questions that cut to the heart of your subject.

Ask Them a Question about Themselves, Get Them Talking, Then Listen

Research tells us that people do have a favorite subject to talk about: themselves. Based on your understanding of the audience, craft a compelling question for them to discuss.

Here are some quality generic questions:

• What's the biggest challenge you face in your role?
• If you were CEO, what would you change first?
• Who has been your strongest leadership mentor and why?

You can have people pair up and spend a few minutes interacting, then ask for a few replies, which you will (through clever preparation) use to transition into your next point. Redirecting the communication flow so you do more listening than talking will build rapport. In addition, the interactivity will increase engagement.

Play a Video

Everyone in your audience has grown up watching movies. They are fluent in the language of cinema. Perhaps more than any other medium, movies have the power to make us feel. Moviemakers are experts in their ability to take us on an emotional journey. As a leader, why not leverage what already exists to your advantage?

Choose a video that's relevant to your message. With the internet, you have boundless options. For example, if you are about to hold a meeting to establish team communication norms, maybe you'd want to show “A Conference Call in Real-Life.”¹³ Here's a tip: let your participants know how long the video will last. Saying “we're going to watch a short video” is vague. Short to you might be 20 minutes. To me it's three. Instead, say, “We're going to watch a video that runs about four and a half minutes.” Then people can settle in for the ride.

TAILORING A PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCE

As an experience creator, you can make work a dynamic place, filled with purpose and meaning. As Pine and Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy, put it,

experiences are inherently personal, existing only in the mind of an individual who has been engaged on an emotional, physical, intellectual, or even spiritual level. Thus, no two people can have the same experience.¹⁵

The relationship experience between you and those you lead is deeply personal. When it all goes well, it should be tailored specifically for them. Yet, you don't need to create each new experience from the bottom up. You can mix and match these tools and techniques in new combinations to engage and collaborate at an entirely new level. You're only limited by your imagination.

When I've shared these tools with leaders in workshops, a common response has been, “This experience creation stuff is all fine and well and good, but I'm already super-busy. I can barely keep up with what I'm doing now. How can I be expected to use these new techniques when my plate is already overflowing?”

Understood. You can't take on more when you're already full. Being too busy is one of the biggest hindrances to collaboration. To lead smarter, sometimes the best thing you can do is to not do something—to streamline, minimize, or eliminate. We'll explore how. you go about doing this in the next chapter.