Communication and Relationship Building Flashcards
Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult stakeholder and how you managed to turn them around?
Whilst working at Harvest Education Technical College, the CEO was projecting sales figures for an education course that targeted entrepreneurs and small business owners. She had a lofty sales figure of close to 1 million sign-ups in Australia within 5 years. My task as the marketing manager was to create a marketing plan that aimed to achieve this figure. I assumed this figure to be too high for the timeframe and region stated, and the lacking marketing budget would hinder potential growth. Instead of complaining about it, I decided to research the validity of this goal and how much marketing budget would be needed for similar results. I tapped into the CEOs love for digital startups like Uber and Air BnB and highlighted in the plan the timeline and budget spent to achieve similar revenue as would be achieved by the target (at the estimated sales price). This timeline was more than 5 years and the budget was in the $100 millions.
I also provided information in the marketing plan that looked at annual new & current business registrations by the ABS. The data revealed that in order to achieve these figures we would need to control a sizable market share. Within the plan, I outlined a plan based on the current estimated budget and suggested revised figures, but stated if similar capital could be provided we would likely be able to achieve this goal. When I provided my plan, there was a lot of back and forth amongst myself and her; and she finally conceded to my evidence that we would need to revise down our estimates. This helped take a lot of pressure off my team.
Give me an example of a time when you were able to successfully persuade someone to see things your way at work.
Whilst working at Harvest Education Technical College, the CEO was projecting sales figures for an education course that targeted entrepreneurs and small business owners. She had a lofty sales figure of close to 1 million sign-ups in Australia within 5 years. My task as the marketing manager was to create a marketing plan that aimed to achieve this figure. I assumed this figure to be too high for the timeframe and region stated, and the lacking marketing budget would hinder potential growth. Instead of complaining about it, I decided to research the validity of this goal and how much marketing budget would be needed for similar results. I tapped into the CEOs love for digital startups like Uber and Air BnB and highlighted in the plan the timeline and budget spent to achieve similar revenue as would be achieved by the target (at the estimated sales price). This timeline was more than 5 years and the budget was in the $100 millions.
I also provided information in the marketing plan that looked at annual new & current business registrations by the ABS. The data revealed that in order to achieve these figures we would need to control a sizable market share. Within the plan, I outlined a plan based on the current estimated budget and suggested revised figures, but stated if similar capital could be provided we would likely be able to achieve this goal. When I provided my plan, there was a lot of back and forth amongst myself and her; and she finally conceded to my evidence that we would need to revise down our estimates. This helped take a lot of pressure off my team.
Describe a time when you struggled to build a relationship with someone important. How did you eventually overcome that?
When I was working at HETC, I struggled to develop a relationship with the new COO. I was new to management, so being on a near equal level to the COO was quite scary. As such, I was always very nervous when around this person; struggling to build a rapport with them.
The way I got around it was realising over time that this person was not some super-advanced human, but a regular human being with the same faults and loves we all have. I also realised that he was not always judging me looking for a reason to get rid of me for failing to live up to expectations. He just wanted to do his best job, which required trusting his team.
Upon realising this, the fear disappeared and I started to develop a relationship with them based on mutual respect; and shared/swapped interests with this person to ensure I got a more rounded view of them as a person.
Tell me about a time you had to resolve conflict in the workplace?
Whilst working at Harvest Education Technical College, the head of finance approached me and talked to me about our departments lack weekly spend & sign off on spending.
The conflict that arose was this process took my team additional time to do each week, and that their team already had 4 people working in there. I believed that they should be the ones doing this task, as it was a finance issue After organising a brief meeting with him, I listened and was empathetic to his request.
I highlighted my issue with the request, and he provided why he believed that marketing was responsible for the requested task.
At the end of this discussion, I saw his request as reasonable based on the evidence provided and decided to move forward with his request. From that point on, I made it a regular task for our team to perform and we rarely missed it in the future.
Do you consider yourself to be better with written or verbal communication? Give an example of good communication in spoken
Depends on the purpose of the communication. If it is a negotiation or ongoing commercial discussion, I am much better at written communication, whilst when it comes to presenting an idea, I am much better at verbal communication. Written Example: working with suppliers for aggregator platforms for good agreements.
Spoken: 41st International Mental Health Summit
For verbal, as I mentioned I am a strong presenter. I get nervous when speaking to people I don’t know or on informal occasions. However, instead of freezing up, I naturally channel my nerves into powerful spoken word; my nervous jitters shine through as genuine passion for the subject. As long as I am presenting from a known material, I am able to excel. The best example was my presentation at the 41st International Mental Health Expo, where I presented on social media and mental health. In the presentation, I advocated for the use of social media to promote positive mental health. I passionately delivered my presentation, and I know I kept a fair few people interested as afterwards people came up to ask me questions and further elaboration.
Do you consider yourself to be better with written or verbal communication? Give an example of good communication in written
Depends on the purpose of the communication. If it is a negotiation or ongoing commercial discussion, I am much better at written communication, whilst when it comes to presenting an idea, I am much better at verbal communication. Written Example: working with suppliers for aggregator platforms for good agreements.
Written: To create effective written communication, I typically try to show an active interest in the task and person at hand, I try to be a pleasure to respond to. My biggest secret is that whenever I write an email, I always try to do so when happy or in a pleasant mood, speaking what I will say out loud and usually smiling. I will read back my finished text once completed to ensure it is likely to be interpreted as intended. Anywhere I think “this would be a great place to have an emoji to highlight tone”, I rewrite it to be more clear (as emojis are typically not professional).
Most people do not do this and don’t appreciate the power of non-verbal cues, and as a result, when you are angry you can write an email that injects your anger into your sentences, and the reader may take offence (when you don’t intend for that to happen).
Have you ever had a time where you’ve proposed a solution to a problem only to have it rejected? What did you do?
Whilst working at HETC, we had an issue with customers failing to continue to pay their invoices. We did not have lock-in contracts or debt collection; so we needed to think of a way of reducing the dropout rate.
I proposed that we include in the agreement a Debt Erasure fee. Having the fee equal 2.5 months of tuition. The fee would signal an agreement that we would cancel the contract, with no future additional payments from the user and that their debt would be forgiven; allowing them to walk away with no black marks against their name.
The idea was that these people didn’t know we wouldn’t pursue them before they cancelled. So what we needed to do was make them think we might or greater powers such as debt collectors in the future might come after them. This can be avoided by paying the fee, and when discussing cancellation we would have our student team highlight this offering but encourage them to stay.
By making the price nearly 3 months (which was about 1/4 of their degree) and most cancellations happened at 6 weeks; we could push that you were essentially halfway there; why not finish and this should reduce cancellations along with the barrier to exit.
Despite my proposal, it was never implemented and no solution was implemented. I kept pushing this as a viable solution whenever the issue came up and possible solutions were found. I never took offence or got short with someone for not taking on the idea.
I did my role, I provided advice and potential solutions, advocating why I believed they would be effective and allowed those with the authority to act to make the decision as they see fit; trusting in their judgment.
Have you ever calmed down an angry customer or colleague? How?
Not an angry colleague, but a stressed & sad one. Whilst working at HETC, the PA to the CEO one day was being overloaded with tasks; to the point where started breaking down in tears.
I stepped in to help alleviate her burden by looking at the available workload my department had, shifted some projects around and assigned some work to help her complete her large number of tasks. I am a big believer in displaying humanity and treating other people as fully-formed individuals and not just worker drones.
The tasks assigned to members of my team were tasks that should have been handled by marketing anyway. I got her to sit with me and talk through her concerns, breath and relax.
As a result, I helped that person resolve their emotional concerns, helped them take some burden off their back and helped them complete the assigned tasks.
Tell me about a time you’ve wished you handled a situation differently?
There’s no such situation. Whilst there may be some regrets in the past, I believe strongly in looking forward and not dwelling on past mistakes.
Past mistakes we make are self-evident to all of us, and wishing we could turn back time is only a distraction of our goals in the here and now. We are who we are, we know what we know, and each decision takes place in the circumstances of the moment, many of which we cannot control.
We did what we had to do, and we should always focus our attention on the present moment. That’s my philosophy of life, and I want to stick to it in my new job as well.
Have you ever had to give a presentation, and how did it go?
I am a strong presenter. I get nervous when speaking to people I don’t know or on informal occasions. However, instead of freezing up, I naturally channel my nerves into powerful spoken word; my nervous jitters shine through as genuine passion for the subject. As long as I am presenting from a known material, I am able to excel.
The best example was my presentation at the 41st International Mental Health Expo, where I presented on social media and mental health. In the presentation, I advocated for the use of social media to promote positive mental health. I passionately delivered my presentation, and I know I kept a fair few people interested as afterwards people came up to ask me questions and further elaboration
