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I was talking to a client the other day who was unnecessarily repeating her story. I felt like saying, “I got it the first couple of times,” but didn’t as I figured she needed to vent her concerns more than once in her mind. Priding myself on truly listening to what clients are saying, I had to really focus. Made me realize that it takes focus to focus. How easy is it when talking to a client or customer to step on their words with our own words or to let the mind wander in and out of the conversation. To truly listen to someone, you need to not only hear the words, but to watch the body language including the facial expressions.

Small children are good examples of focus. Although their focus may be short lived (short attention spans), when they are talking or listening it is with every ounce of their being. Do you have trouble listening to a boring customer or employee? Go past the words to what is really going on in their heads. As I learned, it takes focus to focus. When has this happened to you?

-Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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I’m so excited to join you for December to share a few ideas of things we’ve implemented at sweetriot! At sweetriot we are creating a sweet movement to fix the world. We’ve started by sourcing our cacao directly in Latin America, using recyclable, reusable packaging which features emerging artists, and only using all-natural, healthy ingredients for our dark chocolate ‘peaces.’

Sarah @ sweetriot on the HR Committee

The foundation of sweetriot from the very beginning was to start first with 1) great products and 2) great people. The people part is the most difficult because we’re all human.

This past summer we created an HR committee. This was a monthly meeting between a colleague and I where we would check-in on any issues.

Have Regular Meetings
Monthly meetings have created a great structure for check-ins and making sure we are addressing any morale issues for the company. It’s sometimes tough to bring up issues, so a forum of some kind is paramount.

Name it Correctly
One night I woke up and thought to myself, we can’t call it an HR committee at a company like sweetriot! The term seemed formal, old school and had a negative connotation for me like we were meeting to look for negative issues. I could hear an evil booming deep voice in my head saying, “We’ll take that to the HR committee.” Our company’s logo is a thumbprint and thumbprints are the unique identifier of the world. Whew. That felt better, as in fact we were really just meeting to make sure that every unique human being was taken care of.

Success Secret
Everyone is unique and you have to weigh all ideas carefully when it comes to humans. Give the rioters a clear voice and mechanism for change.

Sarah Endline, Guest Blogger
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