Tag Archive for: Articles by David Irvine

Where Does Commitment Come From? How To Inspire People

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Leadership is about creating cultures that inspire people, build commitment, and harness energy. As I sit on the plane returning from San Francisco this weekend, I reflect on some of the critical factors I have found in creating an engaging culture. Having just finished re-reading James Kouzes and Barry Posner’s book, Encouraging The Heart, I got inspired to write this blog. After you’ve read this blog, I’d love to hear how you inspire others.

Values

Years of consulting with organizations have taught me that clarity of values is the force that determines an individual’s commitment to an organization. Personal values matter most. To inspire people, you have to get to their core values. Living according to other people’s conditions virtually guarantees that we will not be giving our all.

How many executives go on a retreat, create a corporate values statement, print it on posters, publish it in the annual report, hold training classes to orient people to it, post it beautifully in the headquarters’ lobby, and then wonder why commitment isn’t skyrocketing?

These efforts are a huge waste of time unless there is an equally concerted endeavor to help individuals understand, through dialogue and discovery, their own values and examine the fit between their values and the organizations’. I’m not saying that organizational values are not important, but they are only one side of the commitment equation. Commitment is a matter of fit between the personal and the organizational values.

Personal Vision

The vision of reaching the top of the mountain gives energy to the climber and makes the experience of climbing worthwhile. With no summit in mind, we are aimlessly wandering through rocks and trees, irritable and discontented. Vision keeps us on track. It helps us prioritize the demands, clarifies what we need to say “no” to, and gives us purposeful action. Vision gives us focus, energy, perspective, power, and significance, especially during moments of discouragement.

Alignment

Human beings simply don’t put their hearts into something they don’t believe in. Energy, passion, commitment comes when there’s a fit, when there’s alignment between personal and organizational values. Employees are much more likely to be engaged when they know their positional leaders are committed to them. Loyalty begets loyalty. This can only be accomplished with careful and meaningful dialogue. Here are three useful questions to ask employees to help move you toward alignment:

  1. What matters most to you? Where does work fit into the broader context of your life?
  2. How does this organization ensure that you bring your values to work?
  3. What do you need from me as a leader to ensure that there is alignment between your values and ours?

Culture Trumps Talent

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The key challenge for any hockey coach is to create the necessary bonding, team chemistry – or what I call culture – to get the job done.  In other team sports, we have seen superstars with enormous individual talent come together for the olympics, for example, but were not able to gel as a team, either because of their egos, their inability or unwillingness to play as a team, or simply the inability to bond as as group to get the necessary chemistry. The gold medalist for this tournament will not necessarily be the team with the most talent, but rather the team with the best culture. Culture trumps talent.

I’ve been watching culture in action in the development of my daughter’s soccer team. Eleven years ago, on a U8 team with barely enough players, Chandra moved out of recreational soccer to a competitive team. But, the team wasn’t very competitive to say the least. Not only did they not win a game, they scored one – that’s right – one single goal that year. It happened in one of the last games of season. Their team performed so poorly that scoring one goal resulted in so much cheering you’d have thought they just won the championship!

That was eleven years ago, when their coaches, Andy and Deedee Cook, began devoting themselves to developing a team out of this group of girls. Culture began that year, several seasons ago. While not always explicit, the values, and thus, the priorities, of this couple and of the team they built were abundantly clear:

  • Fun – in everything they did
  • Friendships – among every player and
  • Fundamentals – of both soccer and of character

It was always clear that on this team it is more important to be a good person than a good soccer player. These amazing coaches understand that the game is a tool for something far more important.

In the seasons that followed, the values remained consistent as the friendships grew and the skill levels developed. It wasn’t much about winning in the early days. If they lost, they were more interested in where they were going to go eat after the game. The parents seemed more attached to the win/loss records than the girls ever were. What mattered most was the effort they put in, not the scoreboard. There have been times over the years where they won by a large margin but the coaches were not happy with their effort or application of the skills they had learned,  just as there were games they lost where the coach was thrilled with their execution.

Over time, with these values clearly in place, and as the girls kept having fun, bonding with each other through social events, hard work and discipline, plus strategic coaching and technical sessions for skill development, the team has became an attraction to soccer players and coaches around the province. The team is now attractive, not just because they are winning, but because they are connecting. The are also attractive because of the power of their presence: respect for themselves and others, a commitment to put the team above their self-interest, a positive attitude in everything they do, and a bone-deep commitment to excellence and integrity on and off the field. The coaches have relentlessly modeled this strength of character and have this expectation of everyone. They know how to assess and build on the strengths of every player, creating an environment where every girl knows they belong and contributes to the success of the team in their own unique way.

Over the years this core group of girls have stuck together and grown into a U16 team that is absolutely magical to watch. From a small town with essentially the same group of girls for sixteen seasons (eight years of indoor and outdoor), this team now beats teams from the cities where upwards to 100 girls may try out for the team. This year they are in the midst of an undefeated season in the second highest division in the province, and are currently in the process of progressing to Tier 1, where they will compete with the best players in the province in their age group. Deedee and Andy frequently get calls from girls in the city who would be willing to drive a great distance just to have a chance to play on this team. They are drawn to the culture of this team. Strong, aligned cultures are an attraction. At this stage, it’s all about winning, and, simultaneously, not at all about winning.

Fun, friendships, and fundamentals: culture trumps talent… in sports and in life.

Corporate Culture

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I’ve been observing and learning from some of the best companies in Canada these days. Some time ago, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Sean Durfy, former President and CEO of WestJet (“Durf,” they call him around WestJet). WestJet, one of Canada’s icon companies, has a vision that they will be one of the five most successful international airlines in the world. Based on what I’ve seen in their culture, I have no doubt that they will achieve this. They are well on their way. Here’s just a few of the things that WestJet believes in and does to build – and sustain – the amazing culture they have:

  • “If you take care of your people,  your people will take care of your guests, and your guests will take care of your profits.”  ”It’s not rocket science,” says Durf. “You have to treat your employees the way you want your guests treated.”
  • “The culture, as it changes and grows, will change. What won’t change is our values.”
  • “We don’t focus too much on “employee satisfaction.” Instead, we are committed to employee loyalty.”
  • “To get loyal employees, you have to align the goals, aspirations and values of the company with the employees’ goals, aspirations, and values. But you also have to align the goals, aspirations, and values of the employees with those of WestJet.”
  • “Empowerment without accountability won’t hold up.”
  • WestJet spends more time in the hiring process than does Disney. You really do have to get the right people on the bus.

Everyone holds everyone accountable to live the values. For example, if Durf sees an employee acting disrespectfully in any way to a guest, rather than being disrespectful of the employee, here’s how he’ll handle it – respectfully and without punitive measures: “…why don’t you take an hour away from your desk to get a break and figure out what happened so this doesn’t happen again…”

While management holds their employees accountable for living the values of the culture, employees will also hold management accountable. For example, in between flights all employees on that flight are expected to stay after the guests leave to help clean the cabin for the next flight. Once Durf, while flying on a holiday with his family, did not stay after to help clean the flight. The next day he got a call at his cottage from the captain of the plane, expressing his concern that he didn’t stay and contribute to the clean-up.

This down-to-earth Newfoundlander who runs this company gets it: to build a great, high-performance culture you have to be real, you have to be in touch with reality, and you have to know how to connect with people.

What are you doing in your culture to make it great? I’d love to hear from you.

Constancy: Success Lies In Your Habits

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Walt Disney had four keys to success. One of them was constancy. I interpret constancy as “staying on the path whether or not you are in the mood.” However, first you have to have a path, a direction a vision. And then you have to stay with it even when you are bored, fearful, or inconvenienced. That is what will give you success and self-respect in your life. I first learned this as a nationally ranked distance runner. I had to get out and train, day after day after day, whether I felt like it or not. Of course, some days I was tired and ran more slowly or shut it down early. But developed the habit early in my life to show up and put the running shoes on.

Since my early days of running, I’ve learned to apply this principle of constancy to every aspect of my life. Whether it’s the day-to-day grind of parenting, business development, serving the customer, or staying with a spiritual practice, constancy is what brings success – and self-worth. If you can’t rely on yourself, how can you be a reliable person? And if you aren’t reliable, how can you achieve anything?

It’s good to get inspired every so often, but it’s the day-to-day work you do when you aren’t inspired that produces the results. Sometimes your heart isn’t in it. Sometimes you’re tired. Sometimes you’re afraid. Sometimes it’s just plain hard work. But you put the running shoes on and show up, not because it’s the easy thing to do, but because it the right thing to do. That’s the Law of Constancy.

Inspire, Illuminate and Encourage Authenticity in Leaders

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If anyone out there is attempting to grow thier business to a new level (and who among us is not), It can often be helpful to revisit your mission statement. The passion and promise of our business is to build cultures of trust that attract, retain, inspire, and unleash greatness. Its about making this world a better place to work. Through the strength of  authentic presence, leaders can learn to connect with their authentic selves, thus amplifying their impact on the world. The path to transform cultures is ultimately to inspire, illuminate, and encourage authenticity in leaders.

Inspire is about nourishing and creating learning environments and conversations that awaken the human spirit, connect with and tap into the power of the universal life force, touch the soul, open the heart, and move people to action through significant emotional experiences. This can be achieved through the expression of our own unique gifts – the strength of identity and integrity as human beings.

Illuminate is about shining a light on the gifts and the voices – those seeds of possibility – that lie deeply hidden within every one of us as we are besieged by a world that tells us how we “should” be. Illuminating is also about making a conscious contact with a deeper life force that carries, guides, and supports us to live authentically.

Encourage – Has its root in the Latin word cor, which means “heart.” So does the word courage. To have courage means to have heart. To encourage means to give courage, to give others heart, to give of my heart so that others may more fully develop and experience their own courage and heart.

Authenticity is the dedication to living congruently between our inner and outer lives. This ongoing inquiry and commitment leads to amplifying the impact we have on the world through deeper presence.

Leaders are culture makers at all levels of organizations and in all walks of life: people who are committed to find and express their voice in the service of others.

Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. Leaders see the oak tree in the acorn, and create the environment that brings the oak to fruition. Leadership is about presence, not position. Leadership is like the sounding cavity of a violin: It takes in the sound, resonates with it, and gives back depth and fullness to another  voice. My work is built on a simple premise: great leadership cannot be reduced to technique.

Great leadership comes from the identity and the integrity of the leader. This involves making deep changes within so as to be capable of transforming others from the depth of our own experience. We lead from the inner strength of who we are. Greatness is the commitment and capacity to fulfill your natural, authentic potential. For further reading, please check out our “Authenticity and Art” blog.

Tragedy As A Gift In Disguise

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Over the years, I have learned that every life circumstance, even a tragedy, provides an opportunity to grow. A friend recently told me of how she had lost her farm and her home that she loved so much in a horrible fire. Everything she owned and collected for more than sixty years was destroyed.

“At moments like this,” she said, “you stand at a fork in the road. If you take the familiar path, you collapse, give up, and feel hopeless, resentful, and defeated. You focus on the negative and lose yourself in the ‘problem,’ pointing to your misery to rationalize your pessimism. It takes little effort to be a victim and to stay a victim. It’s the easy way out.”

“You can, however, take the other path, You can view your tragedy as an opportunity for a new beginning. If you decide to keep your perspective, you can look for growth opportunities, and find inner reserve of strength. By deciding to focus on the possibilities rather than the pain, I was able to come through the loss of every material thing I owned with more strength and contentment than I had before the fire. When I sat and reflected on the whole experience, I soon realized that the things I had collected over my lifetime were just that – things, and things that I no longer needed, things that were actually becoming an anchor to keep me on the shore of new growth. After considerable suffering from the loss, I began to realize that the important things in life are not things at all. No longer attached to my house, I moved closer to my grandchildren. This was a move I had been procrastinating for sometime.”

“As I adjusted to my new environment, I was invigorated. It felt as if I were starting the second half of my adulthood. Had I taken the path of misery, I would have remained resentful and depressed, and would have missed the opportunity to set sail to new possibilities.”

What gifts have been given to you that are disguised as tragedies? What is calling you to deepen your authentic presence? What are you waiting for?