Tag Archive for: Articles by David Irvine

Employee Engagement: It’s Not Rocket Science, But It Is Science

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The Gallup Q12 is a survey designed to measure employee engagement. The instrument was the result of hundreds of focus groups and interviews. Researchers found that there were 12 key expectations, that when satisfied, form the foundation of strong feelings of engagement. So far 87,000 work units and 1.5 million employees have participated in the Q12 instrument. Comparisons of engagement scores reveal that organizations with high Q12 scores exhibit lower turnover, higher sales growth, better productivity, better customer loyalty and other manifestations of superior performance.

The Gallup organization also uses the Q12 as a semi-annual employee engagement Index – a random sampling of employee across the country.

The engagement index slots people into one of three categories:

  1. Engaged employees – Work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward
  2. Not-Engaged employees – Are essentially “checked out.” They are sleepwalking through their workday. They are putting in time, but not enough energy or passion into their work.
  3. Actively Disengaged – Employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.

The results of the latest engagement index: Engaged employees – 28 % Not-engaged employees – 54% Actively Disengaged – 17%

In other words, 71% of the workforce is either under-performing or actively undermining their work.

The Q12 Index: Here are the questions:

  1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
  2. Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right?
  3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
  4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?
  5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
  6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
  7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
  8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
  9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
  10. Do you have a best friend at work?
  11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
  12. In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?

Ten Steps For Building An Aligned Culture

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A lot of people ask about our process for building an aligned culture. Here, in abridged form, is our process. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and feedback.

Step 1. Define your culture.

Decide on the scope of the culture that you are committed to build – that lays within your sphere of influence. Is it your company, department, division, community association, team, family?

Step 2. Define your leadership team.

Identify your 5-6 key leaders – allies that you will depend on to build your culture. These will be people who have the positional power, capacity, and commitment to make it happen. Be sure you have a Chief Emotional Officer on your team: a person with the positional power as well as the passion (a monomaniac with a mission) to take accountability for the culture.

Step 3. Get alignment at the top.

Identify your core values that you, as a leadership team, are committed to living. Have an “offsite” leadership meeting to ensure that you are all committed to living the values, first with each other and then with your entire culture. If you are a “subculture” – a culture within a larger system, you will want to take the larger organizational cultural value statements and make them real for your culture.

Step 4. Develop a team “code of conduct” with your leadership team.

Once you have decided upon your core values, you will need to develop a process that outlines your promises to each other: how you will hold yourself and each other accountable for living these values. This is about turning values into specific expected behaviors.

Step 5. Assess Alignment – And Connect to Reality.

Decide on a process for assessing your current alignment between your “vision,” your “claim,” and your “reality” as an entire culture. In order to do this you will need to pay attention to the “visible” culture and the “real” culture – your current reality. You may need to take the time to get into the hallways, the coffee conversations, etc. to get to the grapevine and current reality.

Step 6. “Roll out” your values with your entire culture.

Once you are clear about the current alignment, meet with your entire culture. Have your leadership team at the front of the room and outline:

  • Your vision as a leadership team for this culture
  • Your core values
  • Your assessment of the current reality in your culture and the degree of alignment you see between your vision, your claim, and your reality
  • Your leadership code of conduct
  • How you expect to be held accountable for living these values as positional leaders – your promised actions as a leadership team
  • An outline of the remaining process for getting these values lived at every level of the culture

Step 7. Have each of your leadership team members define – and build – their own leadership teams.

Meet with each of the leaders on your leadership team and help them define their own leadership teams, and go through the same process with their respective teams. This will continue throughout the culture until, ideally, every person is eventually assigned to a “leadership team” or at least closely affiliated with a leadership team.

Step 8. Engage your employees – at every level.

  • Begin and sustain the process – and build trust – through the power of courageous conversations:
  • Start – and continue – to create conversations around your core values, at every level.
  • Turn every conversation about value statements into mutually agreed upon actions and promises.
  • Tell the story. Schedule time in meetings, planning sessions, etc. to tell a story about where someone in the group recently lived one or more of your values.
  • Shine the light. Acknowledge when and where individuals lived one or more of your values.
  • Repeat the message. Find a way to get the message out there. Consider a cultural “kudos committee,” a group of committed people who find creative ways to capture the stories and get the message out there in organizational newsletters, bulletins, etc.
  • Embrace the negative. Don’t be afraid of conversations that address misalignment between the claim and the reality.
  • See mistakes as learning opportunities. Keep learning and growing together. Have high standards of yourself and others, and be patient with yourself. It’s about progress, not perfection. Keep reminding people that direction is more important than velocity.
  • Stick with the winners. Put the majority of your time, energy, and resources into the people who are committed to living the values.

Step 9. Define how you will convey to stakeholders outside the culture how you will live your values.

  • How will you convey your values to your customers?
  • What needs to be written in your marketing materials/web site, etc.?

Step 10. Get your values into every system.

  • Bring values into your hiring processes, your performance management system and HR practices.
  • Only promote leaders who are living the values.
  • Make it tough to not live the values.

Employee Engagement: What’s Making Us So Unhappy?

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When getting to the nature of human performance and well being it is important to understand the relationship between three vital words: 1) Achievement; 2) Expectation; and 3) Happiness.

Happiness results when our achievements meet our expectations. If you come to work, for example, with the expectation of your boss is “100,” and your boss achieves an “80,” then we say you will be “20% unhappy” with your boss.

If, on the other, you have an expectation of your boss of “80,” and you she hits “100,” then you will be “125% happy” with her.

Now what happens when this same boss, who meets the expectations of one employee, yet doesn’t meet the expectations of another employee? One employee will be happy. The other will be unhappy. Maybe the problem isn’t the boss. Maybe the problem is the nature of our expectations.

People these days bring enormously high expectations to work, but also to all their relationships. We are, frankly, all pretty spoiled. The more we get in this society, the more we expect. Look at the result:

  • In Canada, 47.1 million prescriptions for antidepressants were filled by retail drugstores in 2014, representing sales totally $1.91 billion. 11% of all men, women, and children in our society are on antidepressants.

According to a recent Gallop poll:

  • 70% of Canadians are “unhappy,” “not engaged” at work;
  • 6/10 employees intend to pursue new job opportunities somewhere else in the next year, and 2/10 say “maybe” and are working toward it.

It appears to be human nature that the more we get, the more we expect. In academic language this means that we are spoiled. Research will bear it out that the societies with the lowest GNP are often the societies with the happiest people. If you have travelled much you know that the people around the world who are the poorest are often happier than people in this country that have so much? Why are they happy? They are likely happy because their expectations are lower. They aren’t always striving for something better. There’s something to be said about simply being satisfied with what we have.

While I’m all in favor of boss’s continuing to learn and develop ways to create environments that engage people, I know some people who could walk on water for their employees and they still won’t be happy. This is because most people who are unhappy at work aren’t just unhappy at work. They are unhappy with all aspects of their lives. They achievement is low and their expectations are high. That’s a good formula for unhappiness. And no amount of “employee engagement programs” are going to turn that around.

Let’s all look at ourselves when it comes to employee engagement. It’s a shared responsibility. Yes, positional leaders have a responsibility. But so do employees. It starts by looking in the mirror.

How is your own personal relationship between 1) Achievement (e.g. How committed are you? What are your own goals? How much responsibility are you taking for your own level of achievement; 2) Expectations (e.g. How realistic are your expectations of your boss? How much responsibility are you taking to meet your own expectations? And 3) Happiness (e.g. How does the answers to these questions affect your level of satisfaction and enjoyment – at work and away from work?

How much responsibility are you taking for your own happiness? How much is your unhappiness affected by your unrealistic expectations of others – independent of what your boss does? How much are you willing to give rather than expect?). It was my father who taught me that you get what you give, not what you expect.

The Five Key Ways To Unleash Greatness On Your Team

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I meet some amazing leaders in my work. People hire me to work with their organization and I end up growing by spending time with them. One such leader who has turned into a good friend is John Liston. John was formerly a regional director at Great West Life, and now is the principal of Liston Advisory Group. John lives what he leads. He’s a person of strong character. He’s passionate. He cares. He cares about his people. He cares about the work. He cares about his organization. And his approach to leadership produces results. When he was at Great West Life, his region was the top region in Canada in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Unleash Greatness Within A Team

In a recent conversation with John about his coaching experience with his daughter’s Under 19 Ringette team, he explained how he coaches the same as he leads. Same philosophy. Same approach. Same leadership. Here are John Liston’s five keys to unleash greatness within a team:

  1. Hire Great People.
    You need to know the skills you need from your people but, more importantly, you need to know the kind of attitude you want from the people around you. You can always teach skills, but you can’t teach attitude. Building a great team means knowing precisely the kind of person you want on your team. It means hiring s-l-o-w-l-y. Take your time. Ask questions and assess the right fit. If you study what we do in business you find that we spend our time hiring for competence (resume, experience, etc.) and we almost always fire for character. What John, and other great leaders do, is hire for character, and train and develop for competence.
  2. Create an environment for people to be their best.
    When are you at your best? Typically it is when you are focused, but not worried about mistakes or failing. In John’s words, “When we win, we party; when we lose, we ponder.” This means it’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them. See the best in people. Fit people don’t fix people. Find their strengths and build on those strengths. Find a place where people can take their gifts, their passion, and their talents, and make a contribution. It takes coaching, mentoring, and, most importantly, time. When you create these environments, people “chose to” come to them; they don’t feel they “have to”.
  3. Understand the why before the what or the how.
    At the 1963 Washington D.C. Civil Rights March, Martin Luther King did not stand up with a “strategic plan.” Martin Luther King had a dream. He had a “why.” He gave people a reason. John Liston understands this. He understands that people aren’t accountable if they aren’t motivated. If they aren’t accountable, it’s because they don’t have enough reason to be accountable. A vision, a “why,” is what gives people a reason to get on board. John uses the vehicle of sport to teach character – that is the why. Some people get confused and think sport is about winning. Professional sport may be, but all others are about character. Winning is a by-product. It works the same in business.
  4. Execute with precision.
    John is a master of accountability cultures. He understands that you have to inspire people, and then you have to link that inspiration to clearly defined outcomes and a precise way to get there. This is where John is tough. He models the values. While he cares about people, he has a precise, results driven process for creating an environment for people to hold themselves accountable – to themselves and each other.
  5. Celebrate Success.
    In John’s words, “you have to know what success is, know how to get there, and know how to celebrate it when you’ve achieved it.” You have to know what “right” is, and then catch people doing it right. You have to care and you have to connect. Celebration can be big or it can be small, but most importantly it has to be meaningful.

John’s passionate, inspiring energy is contagious. It’s always been important to him to create an environment in which people have a chance to be their best, to realize their potential, and to be recognized for their achievements. John is the kind of leader people want to work for. He’s also the kind of friend people seek.

What kind of environment are you creating on your team?

Good Leadership Means Helping People Know They Make An Impact

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This past week our family buried our pet and companion, Freddie. After a long and good life, we laid him to rest in the field behind our home where he loved to chase squirrels and gophers and lie in the sun. As part of a little funeral for him we each told stories about what we loved and remembered about him, what he contributed to our family, and the impact he had on our lives.

What I’ve learned from dogs is that, like people, they give back what has been given to them. Good leadership – in families, communities, and workplaces – means ensuring that every person is given respect and a purpose so they will return the same to those around them. Having a meaningful role and a sense of contribution and significance gets people engaged in something worthwhile. By being needed, listened to, and taken seriously, individuals will feel validated and will want to contribute to the best of their ability. While it is up to every employee to understand how they make a difference, good leadership creates a place where people have chance to be their best, to realize their potential, and to be recognized for their achievements and for the impact that their contribution makes.

Three Ways Good Leadership Helps

Here are three ways you can help those you serve realize that they make an impact.

  1. Don’t wait for a funeral to give a eulogy. Be careful of the natural human tendency to take people – especially your best people – for granted. Make it a habit to express regularly what you appreciate and value about the people around you. It may feel awkward and phony at first, but keep at it until it becomes a part of who you are.
  2. Ask your employees what they know about the positive impact they make to the organization and team. They may need some coaching to come up with an answer, but know that if they can’t answer this, they are likely not engaged. Helping them affirm, for themselves, the difference they make, will always have a more lasting impact than simply being told.
  3. Discuss with your employees the difference between chores and contribution. Chores are the items on a job description. They are the daily duties that need doing to make an organization run. Contribution is what makes a difference. Contribution connects chores to the purpose of the organization. While chores provide you with a job, contribution provides a place where you belong.

Leadership only exists when people have the ability and the choice to not follow you. The art of good leadership is getting people to want to do what must be done. The path to get there is through helping people know the difference they make.

The Key To Organizational Leadership: Strong Character

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Hydro One, a Crown corporation that runs Ontario’s transmission system, fired an employee this past week who shouted obscenities at a Toronto television reporter after a soccer game. While the company’s code of conduct (which all employees sign) covers after work behavior, the decision to let the engineer go generated a heated debate online.

In an exclusive interview, Hydro One CEO Carmine Marcello gave his rationale for making the decision:

“…at the end of the day, it was a pretty simple decision. We [as a leadership team] looked at who we are, what our core values are, and we made a values based decision, and decided we couldn’t condone that kind of behaviour. We had to send a clear message to the employee, and quite frankly to our employee base, and made a decision to terminate him.

… I have yet to find a single person to say his behaviour was commendable. It just doesn’t exist. So, really what we’re saying is, hold yourself to a high standard at work, and quite frankly, hold yourself to a high standard within society.

…I’m sure he’s free to speak his mind. We all are. I think there’s also a level of common decency and decorum that we all expect, and not getting into a debate, I’m just going back to the first principles in Hydro One: the issues and the values that we hold dear around our people, our customers, and working collaboratively together. What’s important to us drives business success.

… it’s clear that this behaviour did not fit with who we are as a company and we took appropriate action.

… We have our own code of conduct, we’ve had it for many years. When I became the CEO a number of years ago, one of the things I really focused on was transforming our culture. Job one was to improve our customer service … but at the end of the day it’s about people and their ability to do great work. So I rolled out a process about identifying certain core values around our employees.”

It’s inspiring to witness a company and CEO stand for something. My father would say that these organizational leaders have an almost forgotten quality: character. Character is about choosing what’s right over choosing what’s popular or easy. Being a person or a company of character isn’t taking the comfortable road. But this is what business culture, organizational leadership, and employee accountability are all about. If you don’t stand for something, if you don’t have the courage to hold yourself and others accountable to what you say you stand for, then why have fancy value statements on your website and office walls in the first place?

I admire Mr. Marcello and his leadership team for having the courage to remain true to the foundational principles that Hydro One’s culture is built upon. The organizational leadership they exercised isn’t just good for their company; this kind of leadership is good for society.