Yet many leaders don’t have the heart for tough conversations; are you one? If so, you might learn the mechanics of stepping into the dialog but neglect all things that can go on in your head about what will take place.

• You might overthink the situation and get nervous about it. Dress rehearsals are fine for thinking through what you will say, but they aren’t the actual event. Just as an actor, as you think about what you will say, you might get nervous about remembering your lines. When the actual “performance” happens, you can go blank or let your emotions overwhelm you.
• You discover you can’t control the other person. So even though you might have rehearsed the words you want to say, when the conversation actually happens in real time, it’s either stilted or nothing like you imagined in your (one-way) rehearsal. It takes two to dialog; even though you have your part down pat, you can’t predict the other person’s reactions in real time. A contingency plan isn’t available when the two-way interaction doesn’t go the way you’d planned.

The problem is that you’ve spent all of this time in your head thinking about the conversation, and it shows. The person you need to have the difficult conversation with sees right through it, and lots of peculiar things can happen. Thinking it through is a great thing, but you also need to be able to go with the flow of the conversation rather than trying to control it.

Have you ever heard “I’m going to have a head-to-head conversation”? Of course not, but this is what often happens in our organizations. Having a “heart-to-heart” conversation is what’s most important when the topic is difficult. The words you will say aren’t enough (those come from your head); you need to also have an open heart.

Remember that the actual conversation is only the tip of the iceberg; there are lots of emotions going on below the surface (words being said). Here are some thoughts on how to make your tough conversations more than a head game.

• Remember that this is about them, too: The heart-to-heart conversation is something that you both have a stake in; it’s not only about you.
• Try empathy: While you’re thinking about the words you’ll say, consider how the other person might feel. Open your heart, and try to see yourself from the other person’s vantage point.
• Start with a question: What would you like to ask the other person? Starting with a question that begins with the other person in mind can let the person know you care and puts the emphasis on that person. This can be a much calmer way to start rather than blurting out your side of it, creating defensiveness.
• Listen to understand: Listen more than you talk. If your emotions are causing your brain to chatter in a way that takes you away from listening, take a deep breath and return to your focus of listening to understand.
• Allow the conversation to flow: Don’t try to control it. Stay calm, listen, ask questions and gently get your points across.

Difficult conversations are best accomplished with your head and your heart. If you aren’t “openhearted,” they can have a life of their own, and often one that isn’t pleasant.

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Difficult conversations require your head and your heart originally published by SmartBlogs

Luckily for restaurants and retailers, users also pin products and brands they plan to buy, including a favorite pair of jeans or a favorite vegetarian meal. Who are they? Nearly 5 million visitors in March were women, and moms are 61% more likely than other demographic groups to spend time on the website, ClickZ reported.

The site is young, but its popularity has grown so quickly that there are plenty of experts offering tips on how to market on Pinterest, including a Restaurant Hospitality article by TVI Marketing Manager Eugene Farber.

Because Pinterest is such a visual platform, the right photos and images are essential to any marketing effort. For restaurants, that means food pictures, but it also means snapshots of special events involving the restaurant or your chef; pictures of the restaurant space and action shots of your servers; media coverage of the restaurant; and photos of the inspiration behind your dishes, Farber writes.

Populate Digital ran a useful graphic on the same topic, with 64 tips covering issues including how to create a profile and boards, copyright concerns and what to research to ensure you’re on the right track with your Pinterest marketing.

As with any social-marketing effort, the work truly begins once you’ve created your profile and started to populate it. One of the easy first steps is linking your Pinterest account to Facebook and Twitter, to expand the reach of your pins into the social universe and boost the likelihood that prospective patrons will get to know your brand. “It is important to remember that this is a social network, and it only work if you are being social,” TVI’s Farber writes.

If you want more step-by-step advice on how to create a winning presence on Pinterest, Northwest University Marketing Vice President Jason Miles created the blog Marketing on Pinterest and offers a free, 33-page guide that starts with a glossary of terms for users and includes plenty of examples for creating eye-catching photos that will get noticed and tell a story about your brand.

How is your restaurant marketing on Pinterest, and how’s it going? Tell us in the comments.

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How are you marketing on Pinterest? originally published by SmartBlogs

Alan Turing’s computer proved to be a tremendous challenge to translate into engineering terms for a functional, memory-capable device. But contrary to what we might expect, the rapid answers to this problem weren’t found at the big, famous and funded laboratories of the post-World War II era, says George Dyson, author of “Turing’s Cathedral.”

Those labs produced great innovations and inventions, and there’s been the argument recently that we need to return to the Bell Labs era. Dyson points out, though, that sometimes creativity and problem-solving cannot be managed merely by constructing a certain setting. Small groups without backing can do great things when left to their own devices.

“The lesson to take from that, in my view, is, you know, let these small, imaginative groups of people do what they want,” Dyson says. “Don’t get in their way. … Very often, the most creative things happen in the most implausible places.”

Big Think is a forum in which top experts explore big ideas and core skills defining the 21st century. Learn more from its editors, fellows and guest speakers.

• The Facebook Effect In The Business World
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Creativity isn’t dependent on building an expensive research center originally published by SmartBlogs

“The Chipotle Effect” is touted as the first book on the fast-casual restaurant business. What inspired you to write the book?

The vision was one that started back in the mid ’90s, when nobody was really looking at the space the way I was. I saw this as a revolution in how the restaurant industry would innovate to meet the new demands of the consumer. At that time, I knew the Web would transform everything we do in the business, including connecting with our guests, but even then I still did not fully grasp the massive impact that social media would play in the future of the business. I felt this was the ultimate game changer for our business, and in 2002, I recognized I was onto something really big!

With that insight, I focused on getting FastCasual.com to the forefront of the media sphere, and the idea of the book was born. As I expected, the evolution of the Web, social media and the fast-casual segment came together in a “perfect storm,” and today, the fast-casual segment is realizing the most amazing growth the restaurant business has experienced in more than three decades.

In one of your excerpts, you discuss the “food-as-lifestyle” revolution. What advice do you have for restaurants that want to keep up with the revolution but might not have the resources to do so?

I think every great restaurant operator finds the resources to keep up with the latest trends and technology. The barrier to entry is so much lower than ever before. After all, they are all innovators, some better than others, and the reality of this or any business is that it’s about people and ideas. If you are short on either, you are toast. Traditionally, the restaurant business has been built on food, when in my opinion the shift to “food as a lifestyle” is the new mantra. This means you must create an overall experience, one that not only impacts the guest while in the restaurant but also when they are outside the four walls, in ways that will create new lifestyle expectations: better health, better taste, better quality, better lifestyle.

Innovation is the only way to stay competitive. The consumer is already two steps ahead of us now due to the mass adoption of social media and technology, which have created a whole new level of consumers who are highly adaptable, flexible, curious and armed with seemingly endless choices. This is the biggest opportunity that has hit the American business scene since the evolution of the auto industry. Tech bubble, ha! The golden age of the restaurant business is about to change in ways that will impact hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. alone and will create tens of thousands of entrepreneur millionaires over the next 20 years.

What do you see as the future for fast casual? Is Chipotle’s fresh, sustainable approach the answer for every restaurant?

I think we are faced with some pretty big issues within the industry as aging boomers and new consumers in the Generation Y segment remap how we think about developing our menus, our designs and even our operations. The health halo that Chipotle has created is one that was fueled by the consumer, not necessarily Chipotle. What they did brilliantly was capitalize on an emerging need for local, sustainable and fresh as a theme. This is the key to how we face tomorrow’s consumer — identify and capitalize on future trends before they happen.

What’s the worst mistake that you see fast-casual restaurants making, and how can they rectify it?

Falling prey to the standardization of their product or brand position. This is the kiss of death. Growing to 10,000 units, I fear, is left for only a very few in our industry. Fast casual is about power segments and power players that control certain menu categories or geographic regions. Bakery café = Panera; fresh Mex = Chipotle; sandwich = Firehouse Subs, etc. The real failure of fast casual will be when a consumer puts a fast-casual brand in the consideration set of “fast food.” If that happens, we have lost the purpose and the vision of what the consumers are pushing us toward. If anything, I see fast casual going up the line with more customization and quality to create an experience that the consumer has yet to truly taste. There are a few examples, such as Rick Bayless and XOCO, and the work of the Lettuce Entertain You group, as well as rising players such as Piada and BurgerFi.

How can fast-casual restaurants stay plugged into what consumers want, even as their preferences evolve? Is it only a matter of technological adoption, or is there more to the picture?

The picture for the whole restaurant industry is one that is pretty amazing as Big Data plays into the boardroom, and monetization of social and digital platforms becomes more of a reality. But best of all, we are serving an evolving consumer in an evolving technology and device world. We are close to the shift to a post-PC world, thanks to Apple, which means consumers will get information and act on reviews, word of mouth and social centers almost instantaneously versus traditional media, which have longer lead and lag times. Speed and mobility will have an immense impact on the future restaurant, especially fast casual. What is interesting is that consumers are evolving much faster than ever before, and we need to be supercareful or we could lose them to a whole new culture of food consumption.

Like food trucks — not one major brand saw that coming. Local and sustainable — only a handful of chefs and even fewer brands saw that one. Next is “gourmet-level value,” which is already finding its way to the street. This is a very interesting time in the business and one that restaurant execs need to look at very closely. The reality is we have a new playing field, and we need to draft a whole new team to win.

Disclosure: Paul Barron consults on consumer science and restaurant trends in fast casual, quickservice restaurants and casual dining, including many leading and upstart fast-casual brands, some of which are included in this commentary.

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Q-and-A: Paul Barron talks about “The Chipotle Effect” originally published by SmartBlogs

Last week, we asked: How do you feel about our next generation of leaders?

• They’re going to be better leaders than we’ve ever been: 24.25%
• They’ll be as good as we are: 39.34%
• They’ll be worse leaders than we are: 36.36%

We’ve got some work to do. A leader’s job is to create more leaders. The notion that 36% of you are worried that the next generation of leaders will be worse than we are is problematic. That’s a big number and a scary result. If you answered the question that way, remember you’re charged with turning those folks into better leaders than we’ve ever been. Coach them, train them, and develop them. The generation after them will be glad you did.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”

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• How well do leaders in your organization compromise with each other to achieve the best result?

How do you feel about our next generation of leaders? originally published by SmartBlogs

With Dimon facing some serious challenges in the coming days and weeks, a wise caddy would tell him to focus on these 5 key things:

Keep your focus today — It is simply bad luck that this “tempest in a teapot” blew up right before JPMorgan’s annual shareholder meeting. If this loss had taken place six months ago, few would have inquired about it at today’s gathering. I suspect Dimon will receive questions about little else. Accountability will be key with that audience, so Dimon must highlight the swift actions that have been taken in that regard. As of this writing, Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew was out, while London-based Achilles Macris and Javier Martin-Artajo were on the hot seat. (Am I the only one who sees something eerily mythic in a Wall Street titan being felled by an Achilles?)

$3 billion is still a lot of money to some people* — Dimon has chosen to highlight the strength of JPMorgan’s balance sheet by noting that the $3 billion loss won’t have a crippling affect on the bank’s overall performance. That approach is logical because his job is to exude confidence to his shareholders and the Street. But the flip-side of that message might prove messy down the road. There are large portions of the public and more than a few policymakers who have been arguing that the major Wall Street banks are simply too big. Too big to fail … Too big to manage … whatever. Dimon is essentially bragging to those people that his firm is so big that it can lose $3 billion and barely even feel it. Don’t supply such perfect ammunition for the people who blame Wall Street for the financial crisis, for the recession, for the loss of their job, etc.

Optics matter — Dimon once said proposals to increase capital buffers would be “the nail in our coffin for big American banks.” So it is a bit awkward, to say the least, that he can now act rather glib about losing $3 billion simply because his firm enjoys a rather healthy … ummm … capital buffer. And who can forget the skewering Dimon gave Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke less than one year ago. The one where Dimon asked Bernanke a rambling “question” that included a few choice brag lines about how Wall Street had cleaned up its act: “Most of the bad actors are gone” … “Most very exotic derivatives are gone.” Those statements don’t look so smooth now. It is time to let someone else carry the anti-regulation torch for Wall Street.

Don’t worry about the SEC — There is a big difference between unwise conduct and illegal conduct. Even if an SEC investigation does reveal any illegal conduct, we are talking about the SEC here. They will announce a fine. No one will have to admit any wrongdoing. And everyone will be able to get back to business. But Dimon has got to remember that he can’t actually say he isn’t worried about the SEC. Memorize the following phrase: “We plan to cooperate fully with the SEC and are eager to see what the investigation reveals.” Get ready to say it … a lot.

They still love you in the clubhouse — There has been a lot of speculation about whether or not Dimon will lose his influence on Wall Street and in Washington. That’s nonsense. When Dimon calls, President Barack Obama is still going to answer the phone. Ben Bernanke will continue to defer to Dimon. The only difference is that Dimon will have to step back from the spotlight and exert his influence in private.

* The loss has been widely reported as $2 billion, but Dimon has estimated that it could grow by another billion.

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Dimon in the rough originally published by SmartBlogs

Shinnston Community Building. Rendering by: WYK Associates

An old theater building that took up a city block at the entrance to the historic downtown was donated to the city, but leaks and disrepair rendered it unsafe and unusable, creating “a definite sense of economic depression in the downtown,” said Emma Clarke, Shinnston’s chief financial officer. The city demolished that building and West Virginia-based WYK Associates designed a community center that Clarke hopes will bring “greater resident satisfaction, a heightened sense of community pride and loyalty and a sense of progress.”

Shinnston, with just over 2,200 residents, wants to rebuild, prosper and recover. It’s starting a capital campaign to build a community center focused on sustainability — “green principles and building methods, economic impact and social continuity,” as Clarke explains it.

Clarke says the building will:

• Be the first sustainable building in the downtown area;
• Be energy efficient to save on operational costs;
• Have a large gathering space for social events, conferences and concerts;
• Make use of indigenous building materials to decrease its carbon footprint and to support local suppliers;
• Incorporate historic elements in its design “to embody the community’s history and spirit;”
• Use chairs recycled from the original theater that will be grouped on the second floor around a 20-foot-by-20-foot natural light shaft and serve as a “living historical exhibit.”

The city was awarded a grant for technical assistance for a capital campaign from the West Virginia Development Office and is in the process of finding that assistance. It plans to pay for the building through donations, grants and loans.

The aim of the center is lofty and multi-pronged: To showcase the Shinnston City Administration as setting the sustainable standard and to lead by example in its respect for the “beautiful natural surroundings and responsibility to future generations,” says Clarke.

“The community center building will be the heart of the community,” she adds. It will be “a destination not just for our own residents, but also those from surrounding areas [and] will bring traffic to the downtown area during times that are currently quiet. This in turn could create a need for restaurants and cafes to open. It will provide a sense of redevelopment and renewal, which in turn will encourage other property owners to improve their buildings.”

When all of that comes to fruition, the city expects to see an increase in revenue from business and occupations taxes, as well as property taxes when outsiders move in and property values increase.

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Can a city increase its revenue base by building a sustainable community center? originally published by SmartBlogs

What have the folks getting promoted over you have learned that maybe you haven’t? That a strong leadership presence is one of the keys to being hired into the executive and C-suite ranks. And that your leadership presence is at the core of your Invisible Resume that helps you land the executive job, and succeed once you’re there.

In this three-part video series, I cover several diverse aspects of your Invisible Leadership Resume, your global perspective and your leadership presence and your authentic leadership style.

Part II: Develop Your Leadership Presence

Your leadership presence may not be what you think it is. It’s not about what you do, it’s about how others feel when they interact with you. Of course, your actions strongly affect how they feel, but the point is that the measure of your success is in how others feel. When people who can help promote you — or give you the big contract — interact with you, how do they feel? Are they energized? Excited? Motivated? If the answer is no, you’ve got work to do. If it’s yes, know that there’s even more you can do to build out your Invisible Resume to earn their respect and trust with greater responsibility.

In the video, I give an example of where I succeeded in building my leadership presence by helping others feel smarter in my area of expertise. There are other strategies to help you build your leadership presence as well.

Building your leadership presence is a lifelong journey, and I hope you’ll join me in a free webinar May 30 to start building your Invisible Resume today.

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Moving from managing to leading: Developing your leadership presence originally published by SmartBlogs

Most chief marketing officers acknowledge social media’s importance but attempt isolated social media campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. Many marketers find social media ineffective and frustrate themselves with unintegrated attempts at making them work. Integrating social into the larger mix of marketing to achieve overarching corporate objectives can yield results.

We have seen many examples of social media’s independent success, the building of groundswells of loyal customers. Consider the niche marketing of Etsy, the restoration of Dell’s brand and the rise of media mogul Arianna Huffington.

While incredibly impressive, companies seek to copycat them. Instead, the marketing round demonstrates how they should integrate social into the larger mix. There are other strategic approaches beyond a groundswell that social media can support as part of a larger, multichannel effort.

Here are three primary types of campaigns with which social media can help.

Direct: The marketing channel that produces the most return on investment, direct marketing can be bulwarked by social media. Direct is also used internally to recruit and to increase employee morale. But what better way to be direct than to have a one-on-one conversation with stakeholders online? Methods to go direct with social are widespread.

Here are a few examples.

• Create a channel for customer-service response on a large social network such as Twitter (pioneered by @ComcastCares, @NetSolCares and extending to many consumer brands).
• Recruit employees directly through social media (examples: Sodexo and KPMG UK).
• Interact and incentivize the most loyal customers in online communities (Starbucks and LEGO).

Top down: PR works best when a company has a position of authority in the marketplace. By using events, speaking engagements, media relations and strategically placed advertisements, companies can launch far-reaching product initiatives. Social media can support and play an increasingly larger role in significant campaign launches.

Some common support tactics:

• Influencer and blogger relations (Cisco Systems and Nikon).
• Content marketing on a large social network such as YouTube (Dollar Shave Club and Blendtec).
• Initiatives for customer-generated content (Ford Motor’s Fiesta and Doritos).

Flanking techniques: Many companies and organizations serve within regulated sectors and feel as though their hands are tied when it comes to social media. They rely on niche advertising, trickle-up media relations, guerrilla marketing and events to find and compel customers.

But social media form a wide-ranging tool set, and there are many creative ways to interact with and influence customers.

• Create or participate in private communities on LinkedIn and other networks (BIO and GovLoop).
• Release relevant and tangential data through blogging, infographics, social networks and other methods (Booz Allen Hamilton and American Red Cross).
• Release relevant and entertaining content to garner attention from an unengaged audience (Chrysler and Old Spice).

These approaches embody some of the ways companies think about their general marketing and PR campaigns. Certainly, there are many more social media tactics that can be deployed to support them. Imagination and creativity can create fantastic opportunities.

Social media tactics supporting these approaches should be selected in conjunction with other disciplines to achieve larger, measurable performance indicators for the overall marketing department. This kind of focus brings social out of the world of follower counts and “reach” and into the world of achieving real marketing objectives.

Moving forward, the question for social media marketers isn’t “What is my social media strategy?” Rather, it is “How can social be weaved into larger marketing campaigns and support the organization’s overarching goals?”

Geoff Livingston is an author and a marketing strategist. He serves as vice president of strategic partnerships at Razoo. A former journalist, Livingston continues to write and most recently co-wrote “Marketing in the Round” and wrote the social media primer “Welcome to the Fifth Estate.”

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago firm for integrated marketing communication. She also founded Spin Sucks Pro, a professional-development website for PR and marketing professionals, and co-authored “Marketing in the Round,” which shows how to get more value from integrating all marketing and communication channels.

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The unintegrated world of social media marketing originally published by SmartBlogs

The educators I talk to speak mainly about their passion for helping young minds find a love of learning. They also talk of feeling stressed out, juggling too much responsibility, fearing layoffs, being required to practice methods they don’t support and having criticism heaped on them from every quarter — whether it be unsupportive parents, critical administrators and education vendors who fail to provide adequate product training.

Educators are developing a bunker mentality from feeling constantly under siege. We are in a new era of accountability in K-12 education, and many educators feel that the criteria for success are arbitrary, measure the wrong things, and — in the worst cases — are bad for kids.

It strikes me that our current discourse isn’t very productive. Everyone agrees that there are challenges in education, but disagreement about the best path forward is preventing us from looking at the problem in the same way. For what it’s worth, here’s my advice for having a better conversation about education.

To educators:

1. Lose the defensiveness. I frequently hear educators say, “Everyone thinks he is an expert on education because he went through the K-12 system.” That’s true, insofar as it goes, but it isn’t helpful. It’s a rhetorical trick, meant to shut down debate by discrediting the non-educator who ventures an opinion. Moreover, it misses the point. One needn’t be a concert violinist to hear a sour note struck in a symphony — just as one needn’t be a teacher to see areas in need of improvement in the education system.
2. If you want teaching to be treated like a profession, be a professional. This means knowing your customer — the child, and her parent, of course. Society is also your customer. That cute seventh-grader will need skills and a job; the hiring managers of corporate America are your customer. Listen to their feedback.

To corporate stakeholders:

1. Lose the glibness. If there were easy fixes to be had in education, someone other than you would have suggested it.
2. Have some respect. Teaching is probably the single most important profession, as it makes all others possible. The data show that it’s also one of the most stressful professions, with one of the highest rates of turnover. We feel respect for other careers that are deemed to be both important and difficult (think air-traffic controllers). Teaching should not be the exception.
3. That means listening to teachers, and taking their collective voice seriously. If enough teachers tell you a thing won’t work, pay attention.

Lastly, for anyone who cares about education or has an opinion, get involved. Don’t be an armchair quarterback. Volunteer, donate, run for school board. Put up, don’t shut up. Because what we really need are educators and non-educators talking to each other, sharing perspectives and identifying common goals. We each have an interest in having a healthy, dynamic, world-leading workforce. We will never agree on every detail for achieving that goal, but let us at least agree that a collective effort will afford the best chance of succeeding.

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How can we have a more constructive conversation about education? originally published by SmartBlogs