Delightful vs. Dependable - Where You Should Focus For Better Relationships

What’s most important in your interactions with those you lead, whether it’s your team or the customers you want to help? If you are going to lunch with a customer, do they care more that you are engaging, connect with them personally and make sure they have a good time? Or are they paying more attention to whether or not you show up on time (early) and bring the materials needed, be prepared and deliver results? Should you focus primarily on being engaging, or having integrity?

No matter which way you answered, you are correct.

Before you write me off, listen up. Both of these things are important, and without both you will never do work that adds real value nor have long-term, authentic relationships with your team or customers.

But it can matter GREATLY the order they come in, and the emphasis you place on them. Here’s what I mean:

The 2 different types of people - those who primarily focus on being engaging and those who focus on having integrity - correspond to being people-oriented vs. being task-oriented.

Task-oriented people need you to have integrity first - they need you to keep your promises. Deliver on your promises, show up on time, meet deadlines, be prepared, be exact, efficient and effective.

People-oriented people need you to be engaging first - likeable and friendly and someone they enjoy interacting with, whether electronically or on the phone or in person. Or all three.

You want your team and customers to “think good things” when they first think of you, to trust you. But the path to get there is different based on whether they are task-oriented or people-oriented.

So what is the solution? It’s simple, but not easy. You need to be both things as much as possible. You need to be a person (and an organization) who keeps their promises AND who does so in an engaging, winsome way. Focusing on both allows you to do a simple pivot based on the person’s expectations.

One of the biggest mistakes I see leaders make is to focus on one of these while their client is focused on the other. We’re trying to get them to like us, and they’re fixated on whether we’re keeping our promises.

Here’s the kicker: when I talked about having integrity vs. being engaging, you lit up over one of those things because you are also either task-oriented or people-oriented, and you see one as more important than the other. So to follow through on this, you need to do something that’s counterintuitive: focus on the one that doesn’t come naturally to you. If you are naturally wired to be engaging, then guess where you need to be intentional and focus some effort/energy/resources? And vice-versa.

We address this along with other topics in our team building training, and would love to talk to you about how to bring this solution to your team.