Mike Lehr's Blog

On a recent business trip, I met a community bank president from Williston, North Dakota. He had just heard a presentation I gave regarding influencing and wanted to share his thoughts.

He has a daily regimen of walking through his bank and saying good morning to each employee. He wanted to emphasize to me the impact he felt this has had on his people. For him it has been quite an eye-opening experience and has surpassed his expectations. He went on to say that it’s so easy to forget how valuable these things are when you’re dealing with the daily demands of the job.

What I have found is that executives often do not realize the impact they can have with simple gestures of appreciation with their people. With a previous employer, whenever I organized training, I could always guarantee a successful segment if I got an executive to do a half-hour question and answer. These portions of the training, regardless of the executive’s speaking skills, produced top evaluative marks from the participants.

When you consider such simple gestures don’t cost a cent, the return on investment is astronomical. The most powerful tools we have are the ones God and Mother Nature gave us.