How Do You Inspire Extraordinary Experiences?

By Deb Boelkes

Do you know what it’s like to be a customer / client / guest / patient / passenger / end user of your organization’s products and services? Have you ever put yourself in their shoes and navigated the entire end-to-end pre-sale through post-sales support process, like an undercover agent, to imagine what a truly WOW experience could look like for them if you waved your magic wand?  

The reality is, WOW experiences don’t magically happen unless every employee—at every step of the process—is highly engaged, loving what they do, in a role that aligns with your organization’s mission, vision, and values.

In my first book, The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a Best Place to Work Culture, I asked heartfelt leader Britt Berrett, then-president of the award-winning “Best Place to Work” Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, what he believed was the key to employee engagement. Britt answered without hesitation, “Purpose and Meaning—to do what you do with purpose and meaning.”

He went on to explain, “At the end of the day, I’ll go sit in the lobby. I’ll watch the patients walk in and out. They are scared. They don’t know what to do. If I, as a leader, can understand my role in blessing their lives—if it can give me purpose and meaning—then I’ll get up earlier, stay later, and be much more purposeful in my efforts. That’s invigorating.”     

In my second book of the series, Heartfelt Leadership: How to Capture the Top Spot and Keep on Soaring: Britt further explained how important it is for leaders at every level to ensure their team members are aligned with, and inspired by, the organization’s purpose, meaning and goals:

When you join an organization, you have to understand what its purpose is, what its meaning is, and what it hopes to achieve. What are the aspirations?  Then you ask yourself, “Is the team aligned with that? Do they even know what the goals and the objectives are? Do they have any idea?”

Most organizations would say, “Yeah, senior management does, but it doesn’t trickle down to the staff.” Well, that’s a problem…. If they have no idea what the greater goal is, they’ll fail to make the right choices. 

You must align all the employees with the mission, the vision, and the values.  Why are we here? What do we hope to achieve? What are the guiding principles we’re going to live by?

If you can articulate that and communicate that throughout the organization—and not only communicate it but it’s felt—then the organization, as a whole, can be nimbler and make wiser decisions.  They can innovate and be creative. They can come up with solutions. That innovation is powerful. 

From my earliest days as a cast member at Disneyland, and throughout my leadership career in Fortune 500 technology companies, my teams and I were directly responsible for the customer experience. Our overarching goal was to delight customers at every point of interaction.  I learned day-one that it takes inspired and engaged teams, working in perfect harmony, to deliver extraordinary experiences.  Anything less doesn’t cut it when your goal is to be the best-in-class provider of whatever it is you do.

A leader’s most important responsibility is to recruit, develop, and retain great teams—teams that have the right mix of talents and aspirations to get the work of the organization done efficiently and effectively, and the motivation to anticipate and proactively fulfill your customers’ every expectation in an above-and-beyond manner. 

To achieve this kind of brilliant performance, you must continuously inspire and empower your people. Everyone must thoroughly understand the mission and love what they do, day after day, in a role that matters to them, and also aligns with their personal goals. 

To accomplish this, you must really know your people—what they’re good at, what matters to them, and how to uniquely encourage them to be even more magnificent than they already are.

Heartfelt leader Jodi Berg, the now-retired President and CEO of the Vita-Mix Corporation, discussed the importance of “doing something that matters” in my book Strong Suit: Leadership Success Secrets from Women on Top:

I want to make each day matter. I want to make each thing that I'm doing matter. Even if it doesn't make a difference on this particular day, I’m laying a foundation or I’m doing something that's going to ultimately matter.

Doing something that matters brings personal fulfillment and joy. When we're fulfilled and have joy, we willingly and eagerly do more of it. It's like the best intrinsic motivator. It’s powerful when we connect our passion to making a difference that needs to be made in the world.

I first set out to release this personal and internal drive within my department. Turns out, we were incredibly successful….and we were enjoying the process. So, after that I thought to myself: What if we create an entire company with this kind of culture, and recruit people who share this passion for making the world a better place?

Since we had already identified our values as an organization, I then asked myself:

What if we make those values integral to everything we do?

What if people don’t join the company simply because they like our values, but they become part of our team because our values pump through their soul and they're passionate about making a difference?

What if I can help people determine what their personal passions and purposes are?

What if I can help them make the connection between their purpose and our company’s purpose?

What if I can help them live their purpose to make the difference in the world that they want to make?

Soon we weren't living with passion to simply make the company’s purpose happen. We were living with passion for our own individual purposes that were synergistic with the company’s purpose.

When we were each personally motivated and fulfilled, the company’s mission and purpose came to life.

When everyone on the team is inspired to make your organization’s mission come to life, and everyone loves what they do so much that they passionately give their best efforts to make WOW happen at every customer contact point, that’s when you’ll have the kind of WOW factor workplace that delivers extraordinary experiences for everyone. 

Be that kind of heartfelt leader.