“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  Maya Angelou.

• As we have been talking about influence vs. authority and being “people smart” over the past couple of weeks, I felt that this one statement summarizes the heart of the message.  When people make decisions based on emotions, they are not always even rational choices.  If I could give any manager only one piece of advice it would be that statement.  How do you make others feel when you have an interaction? 
• Let’s look at this from a customer’s point of view.  At Culver’s our mission statement is that every guest that chooses Culver’s leaves happy.  Our mission statement is based on emotion.  In the Go-Giver mastermind, one of the rules is that our worth is determined by if we provide more value than the price paid.  Value is determined by the customer and is driven by the what emotion they feel when they leave.  Whether or not a customer returns is based on how they felt from their last visit.  If a customer comes in and says last time they were here they were disappointed, they are giving us a chance to save them as a regular customer.  They are most likely one of our raving fans that didn’t leave happy last time.  What can we do to make sure that they leave happy today?  We need to filter every interaction we have with a customer through this filter.  How did they feel when they left?  If we can add emotional value, we will always have a leg up in the value equation.
• Our goal is to create loyal, raving fans of our business.  Our raving fans will go to the ends of the earth to tell others how great we are.  Here in lies the rub, we couldn’t pay people to talk this good about our company if we tried, and these raving fans will do it for free.  All we need to do is make them feel valued every time they are in our business.  Seth Godin argues that if your business has 1,000 raving fans then your business would be unstoppable.  Here is the challenge for the next few months, start to build and identify your 1,000 loyal, raving fans.  If you have 50 team members, challenge each of them to connect with 20 customers to get you 1,000 fans.
• Let’s look at this from a team member’s perspective.  Think about how we treat our team members and how we make them feel.  If we want to influence our team members, it does not come from authority; it comes from how they feel about us.  If we want better team engagement, our team needs to feel good about coming into work.  This thought goes directly back to our idea of the “director of happiness” title.  If our managers are happy, then our team members are happy.  If our team members are happy, then our guests are happy.  We can say or do a lot for our team members, but if they do not feel that we value them as people, they will never fully buy in.  This is why some team members work better for individual managers.  Some managers value team members more than others do and the team member can feel it.  It is often said that most team members don’t leave their job, they leave their boss.
• On a personal note, this statement holds the key to our personal relationships as well.  As a parent, this is particularly the case when it comes to our relationship with our children.  We can say and do a lot with our children but how do they feel when we are around?  If we can build the feeling of love and trust with our children, we will gain influence.  How we make our loved ones feel determines if we have a rewarding relationship or a toxic relationship.
• It would be interesting if we would filter all of our interactions with others through this lens.  Would we say or act differently if we wanted the other person to leave the interaction happy every time?