The Crusher, the Shooter, and the Smarty.

These are the nicknames my sons have earned because of the different ways they play hockey.

The Crusher aggressively goes full-speed after the puck, crushing anyone standing in his way. The Shooter gets his name from being a defenseman who, when he gets the puck outside the zone, uses a powerful stride to get within shooting range to take a good shot. The Smarty plays intelligently, predicting plays, reacting quickly, and rushing to where the puck is going to be.

All three boys are good hockey players, but they play the game in their own unique way. And, while each can learn to improve in the areas the others are strong, it’s important to put them in positions where their innate style of playing will benefit the team.

Employees are the same way. Every person has innate talents, strengths, and instincts that will impact how they “show up” in their job. Asking someone who is meticulous and detail-oriented to create a high-level strategy might not be the best use of total team effort.

But, when that person teams up with someone who tends to think about big systems and another who loves to simplify, they will create many opportunities for the larger team to score.

By empowering each individual to perform tasks according to their most effective ways of working, you’ll create a high functioning team with a bunch of very happy employees.

And guess what? Happy employees provide a better customer experience.

‍Let's explore how to piece together employee engagement, team performance and customer experience (CX).

‍The Content Advantage: Building Strong and Resilient Content Production Teams with Ann Rockley. In this fun discussion that inspired today’s reflection, Scott Abel and I discuss what makes a high performing team with a content strategy legend. In her decades leading and working with content teams, Ann has always focused on building teams according to the innate talents of the individuals. She’s so passionate about team building that she’s making this her next career move. While the discussion is aimed at content teams, the lessons apply universally.

‍How To Grow Employee Engagement In A Remote Environment by Michael Timmes. If we learned one thing from the past year, it’s how to effectively work remotely. We can no longer use remote work as an excuse for unengaged employees. Michael provides four keys to an engaged remote workforce - create a foundation with documented rules of engagement, replace the almost extinct in-person conferences with other opportunities for growth, offer structure to encourage organic fun, and set up and codify feedback channels so you know what’s working and what’s not.

‍Forget Customer Experience. Forget Employee Experience. Enter Total Experience by David Roe. I’m pretty sure the term Total Experience (TX) is just a new marketing term for something that already existed. I mean, Employee Experience (EX) and User Experience (UX) have always been drivers of CX, and CX already has a strong reputation for impacting the business as a whole - at least for SaaS companies. Nonetheless, in this article, David strengthens the point that UX, corporate culture, and EX are so inextricably linked to CX that they all deserve a unified strategy. Culture becomes a strategic asset, a system of unified and engaged employees delights customers, and strengths in UX and EX inevitably build customer trust and loyalty. That’s a win.

This article was originally published in Megan's Friday Reflection, where she shares her unique perspective on recent events and how they pertain to content strategy, customer experience and business leadership. Subscribe to her weekly newsletter here. Megan Gilhooly is VP of Customer Experience at Zoomin. She previously led global content teams at AWS, Amazon and Ping Identity.