Ever heard the saying, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know? Well the NTHBA just happened to know the right person to hook us up with Mark Lukert as our guest speaker for our January 5th General Membership Meeting. Mark Lukert is a talented motivational speaker known by many in the North Texas area and beyond.
Several know him from his long list of accomplishments, State President of Texas Elementary Principal’s and Supervisor’s Association (2003), TEPSA Executive Committee (10 years), Texas Representative for the National Association of Elementary School Principals (6 years), State President for Texas Association for the Improvement of Reading (2 years), District IX TEPSA President, President of Wichita Falls Elementary Principals Organization, Special Education Advisory Board, Wichita Falls ISD, Protégé Advisory Board, Wichita Falls ISD, Total Quality School District Trainer, Wichita Falls ISD, Extra Mile Award, Coppell ISD, PTA Life Member, Wichita Falls Family of the Year (1993), many due to his long history with the WFISD as well as his community involvement.
Mark opened the program with somewhat of an ice breaker by talking about his family. Mark teased, saying he doesn’t always get to talk about his family so now that he had a captive audience he was going to do so. Mark mentioned he had married his childhood sweetheart, Debbie in 1976 and together they had 4 wonderful children: Kris, Kolter, Kaleb and Katy as well as numerous grandchildren. Mark talked about how proud he was of his family. This set the tone for what he was going to talk about, relationships.
Mark quoted from Zig Ziglar: The foundation – Stones for a balance between success, honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty. He mentioned as business owners it was important to build a foundation with our employees in order to build relationships with our clients.
Several factors go into a relationship.
Trust – When you build a relationship, you are building trust.
Perception – powerful personal reality distorted.
Many times people are totally off base with their perception of someone. They may make a determination by the way a person is dressed, look, speak or carry themselves. In many cases you are better off if you listen and learn. Sometimes all people need is for someone to listen. Overall it is important to realize everyone has a story. People will forget what you say or do but not how you made them feel.
Impression – The impression a person gets from a business when they walk in is what they remember. Front line people are the key to business. People can tell the climate of a business as soon as they walk in. If they see a happy face they feel they are walking into a happy place. If you are that front line person and you’re having a bad day, you need to fake it until you make it. People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. Mark said we as leaders should still put customer service at the top of our list. We should be totally committed to customer experience. He said, “Think positive, be positive and positive things will happen. Even today, a smile does go a long way.”
In closing Mark mentioned not all relationships are easy to build but in the long run they are worth it.