Tag Archive for: Articles by David Irvine

If you want to know what motivates employees, ask them.

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When I was in Maine recently I was speaking to some hotel and hospice executives. We were discussing a recent interview I did for the National Post (the Article, entitled, Motivating Alberta’s ‘entitled,’ Workers appeared in the Financial Post on Tuesday, March 19). We were discussing how to retain employees in a labor market where the unemployment rate is low. In Maine, as in many other states, there is a shortage of nurses. Many hospitals are so desperate for nurses, they are offering them a sign-up bonus, cutting them a cheque for upwards to $1,000 for simply signing up for a job. Unfortunately, the technique is backfiring as many nurses take the cheque and bolt to the next hospital.

We discussed the importance of applying Ken Blanchard’s old and faithful model of turning the organization upside down. When you put the customer and the employee at the top of the organization and start working for them, you soon realize that all the intelligence, good ideas, talent, resourcefulness, and brain power for solving organizational problems are not found at the executive level. When requested, they are found  at the front-line, with those who are taking care of the customers. One hotel executive pays his best employees to periodically go off-site for a weekend to a think tank for better customer service. We explored asking employees, including new or even perspective hires, “What could we do to get you juiced about coming to work here – so that every day you jump out of bed eager to get to here?”
We recognize that for many employees and perspective hires the immediate answer will be, “more money.” So let’s start by talking about more money. Find the dollar amount they are asking for and play out the movie. If every employee started out being paid what they wanted, that would not serve the employee, because the business would soon be out of business and they wouldn’t have a job. But what if you could work with the employee to reach the point of earning what they deserve and what they are asking for by creating enough value for the company and the stakeholders that the company serves. Then we can start talking about what really matters to people.

There will always be some employees who are driven only by money. I don’t work with companies that pay to keep these kind of people. I also don’t think we take the time to listen – really listen – and understand what matters to people so that we can form a win win partnership instead of parent/child power and entitlement relationship.

I came back from Maine inspired to have new conversations with my staff and with those good clients that I serve. We are all in need of new conversations in the workplace. While we obviously can’t give our employees everything they want, extending some trust that they know something worthwhile goes a long way.

I’d love to hear your experience with asking employees what motivates them, listening carefully to their response, and negotiating for a win win partnership.

An a completely unrelated topic, I have been too busy to write about my experience in the North West Territories with a group of great community leaders. We had a two-day retreat at Blachford Lodge, 1/2 hour flight from Yellowknife. I wish every Canadian could experience the North. These were amazing authentic leaders who gave me a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. I am a better person for having spent two days with them.

Leadership: Do People Trust You?

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This morning, my eighteen-year old daughter drove our truck to school. At noon I met with a prospective client who is considering our firm to help with leadership development. In between, my sales team discussed their goals for the quarter and made agreements to each other. There is a common thread that runs through all these scenarios: trust – a belief in and reliance upon, one another.

Trust is the most important issue facing the world today and lies at the foundation of every relationship. Trust is the keystone of success in work and in life. It’s the new global currency. It crosses cultures and generations. Building, restoring, and sustaining trust is your number one leadership challenge. Without trust there is no leadership, no relationship, no life as we know it in this interconnected universe. If you stop and think about it, trust lies at the centre of everything we do.
So, if trust is so important, how do you know if you are trusted by others? How do you assess it? How do you measure it? While trust has an emotional component to it, trust is not an emotion. Trust is an action. Trust is demonstrated by the way you behave in response to another person or circumstance.

In your most trusted relationships, trust is generally not even talked about. Instead, it’s demonstrated. You can take an inventory of how you measure up to trust:

You know you have earned trust when:

  1. People seek your advice. You know that you have earned the trust of others when they come to you for your input, your opinion, your perspective. Do others ask you for guidance?
  2. People are honest with you. People will have the tough conversations with people they trust. You know you have earned trust when others share good news or bad, negative feedback as well as celebrations, and when they are vulnerable, direct, candid, and straightforward with you. You can be polite with anyone, but the seed of trust lies within genuineness. Are people giving you open and honest feedback, bad news as well as good?
  3. People challenge you. As a corollary to #2, you know you have established trust, especially when you are in a position of authority, when others respectfully challenge your point of view, your approach, and your decisions. Are you being challenged by the people who report to you?
  4. People are competent. While you can foster competence for a time in a non-trusting relationship, it won’t last. Trust breeds competence. Trust builds results. Trust fosters capability. Are you getting the results you need from your team?
  5. People are relaxed around you. I recently coached a manager whose boss exploded every couple of weeks. He constantly lived in tension, never knowing what would set the boss off. Being relaxed is not the same as being complacent. It means being calm in the midst of activity. You are more effective when you aren’t wound up and stressed. You are more productive and do better work when enjoying yourself. Tension, stress, anxiety – all indicators of a lack of trust – can destroy a workplace. Are you aware of the level of tension in the people around you?
  6. People stick around. It’s been said that people don’t leave organizations; they leave bosses. The number one reason people leave marriages is because they no longer feel good about themselves in the presence of their spouse. People leave bosses for the same reason: they no longer feel good about themselves in their presence. You don’t feel good about yourself when you are around people you don’t trust. How’s the retention rate of your direct reports?

So… if you want to build trust, where do you start? With a willingness to give what you seek:

  1. Seek the input and advice of others. Genuinely look for opportunities for others to help you, guide you, and support you. Extend trust. The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
  2. Be open and honest with people. Tell people what you know; tell them what you don’t know. Show your humanness. You don’t have to be perfect to build trust; you only have to be real and honest.
  3. Challenge yourself in the presence of people. Let people know your weaknesses and what you are doing to work on them. Invite them to challenge you and thank them when they do.
  4. Be competent. Be committed to excellence. Stretch beyond mediocrity to mastery. Be dedicated to your on-going development. Nobody trusts an incompetent person.
  5. Be relaxed. Tension is an indicator of mistrust. People lack trust in a stressed, unpredictable leader. You can be firm, clear, and tough, but be relaxed and caring in the process.
  6. Stick around. People don’t trust quitters. They trust people are who dependable, reliable, and persistent.
  7. Above all, be trustworthy. Being trustworthy means being accountable, which indicates you can be counted on. Being trustworthy is about being a person of character. Character isn’t how you act when life is going the way you want it to. That’s easy. Character is how you act when everything around you is falling apart. Character is how you act when you are scared and angry and tired and frustrated. That’s when people watch you and decide whether they will trust you.

Trust is not built in a day. It is built daily. It’s built with consistent action. It’s built with care and compassion. It’s built with honesty and stability and strong character. Trust is built through paying unwavering attention to the small things and knowing what’s important to people. Trust is built with integrity and a can-do attitude. It’s built with a disciplined, focused approach of investing in the lives of people who matter to you.

Where Did Accountability Go Off The Rails?

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Somewhere down the line, something horrible happened to accountability. In the words of David Weinberger (a research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society), it has become,  “accountabalism,” the “practice of eating sacrificial victims in an attempt to magically ward off evil.”

Recently I worked with a sophisticated, seasoned group of senior leaders in the federal public service. Due to the regulating of the expense account process, they were not allowed to budget for a lunch for their group, but instead had to bill it to their separate room accounts and claim for it individually. Under the guise of “accountability” their judgment and trust has been relegated to a set of bureaucratic rules and regulations.

Such an emphasis on accountability is an understandable response to some terrible scandals in the private and public sectors. But the notion has grown to an extreme, suggesting that there is a right and a wrong answer to every question, and eliminating the possibility of good intention. Accountabalism bureaucratizes accountability, takes away individual choice, and drives out human judgment. Accountability – the ability to be counted on – the foundation of labor and life – has been relegated to an organizational buzzword at best, and, at worst, a hammer to control and punish people. While claiming to increase individual responsibility, accountabilism actually drives out trust. For example, when a sign-off is required for every step in the work-flow, a process is broken down to its smallest parts and the vision of the whole and the ability to see the big picture is lost. It sets up finger-pointing and blame when something goes wrong. And something will inevitably go wrong. No system works perfectly. But it doesn’t mean that the system is broken and needs fixing with more rules. If one employee cheats on an expense claim, there’s no need to distrust everyone and set up a whole new time-consuming, inefficient reporting process.

What’s needed is the return of a common sense approach to accountability that builds trust, ownership, and a renewed commitment to the greater good. Not more extremism of accountability or “accountabilism.”

Leadership: Have you ever treated someone like an ATM?

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I get my hair cut in one of those old-time barbershops. Where I go, you can’t make an appointment. You can go anytime you want. Sometimes you’ll find an “out for lunch” sign at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and you have to come back in a half an hour. Sometimes you’ll wait an hour. Sometimes you can get into the chair right away. But if you are waiting for a haircut, you are never really “waiting.” You are partaking in a little community experience. You get the gossip around town. You have some laughs. Make some friends. While the environment there is like the good old-fashioned barbershop, the barber is anything but. The “barber” is actually a beautiful woman from Cuba, who’s grateful to no end to have the opportunity to own a business and work in Canada. And if the line up for a haircut is long enough you’ll get to hear many of her wonderful stories. Going to get your hair cut is like going back in time, and an education. Not bad for twenty bucks. But it’s not just a haircut. It’s an experience.
But this week, I was in a hurry. I was “squeezing” my haircut in between appointments. And it was a very different experience. There was a young mother ahead of me with four young boys, each of them needing a haircut. Rather than coming back another time, I just sat and got irritated. The young mother was no longer a “person” with a family and a challenge of managing four youngsters in a barbershop. This mother became simply an “obstacle” to my objective for being there. The barber was no longer “Lazara” with a story. She was now “the barber” who was behind and needed to get on with these kids’ haircuts so I could get out of there and get to my next appointment. My irritation blinded me from the stories and for the beauty of the children or from the love from a mother or from anything positive from the experience.

I left the barbershop stressed and frustrated. And I left disconnected from the world around me. The people in the barbershop were no longer “people in a community.” They were simply “objects.” I hurried to my next meeting, only to find myself “waiting” again, irritated with the next customer service person who was keeping me from my appointment after her.

It was later in the day that I started to reflect on how many times, when we are in a hurry, when we are in our own little self-absorbed world, that we disconnect from the world around us, and turn the people around us into objects that are expected to serve us. Harried and rushed, we don’t experience the beauty that besieges us. When disconnected in this way, we miss the sunsets, the smiles, and the magnificence around us, and in the process, void ourselves of quality in our lives.

When we over-schedule or bring the wrong, people become objects. Instead of human beings they become mere tools to help us get what we want, a means to a “more important” end. The problem is that the end never gets here and we are never present in the present moment. When we stop learning people’s names and calling them by such, we objectify and de-humanize the world. The cashier at the supermarket becomes merely a “transaction machine, ” a means for getting the groceries, rather than a human being. The bank teller becomes merely an ATM that talks. And your employees become merely “direct reports” with a job to do and a result to produce. And in the process we become “consumers,” people who use others, instead of contributors, people who build others.

We are all intelligent and high-powered people. We have our smartphones and our apps and our productivity processes to accomplish our work with greater efficiency. But in our zeal to get things done we have forgotten the simple art of living. And in this absent-mindedness and use of others as objects we end up depleting the energy of our organizations, our relationships, our planet, and our lives.

The art of living can be grasped in the consciousness and mastery of two skills:  preparation and presence. Preparation is about knowing your priorities and scheduling space in your day. You obviously can’t be able to “hang out at the barber shop” every day. Maybe you have a life-style that you want to schedule your haircuts. Regardless of what you schedule, what’s important is to know what’s important to you and live in alignment with your values. Pay close attention to assess carefully how important connection is to you.

Presence is about your attitude. Presence is about “awakened doing.” Presence is not what you do but how you do it.  Presence is about your state of consciousness. Eckhart Tolle says there are three modalities of awakened doing:

  1. Acceptance – meaning letting go of the resistance you may have in a situation and flow with what is;
  2. Enjoyment – finding joy in what you are doing; or
  3. Enthusiasm – bringing passion to what you doing with an added element that you working for a higher purpose.

You will find, if you are not operating in one of these three modalities, you are causing some degree of suffering to yourself or others.

Here’s a list of ways you can get back to the art of living, of enjoying your life by practicing better preparation and presence, of connecting with the people around you, and, who knows, maybe you’ll even be more productive:

  • Everyday, take time to pause, to stop, to breathe, and to be present to the world around you.
  • Take a five-minute sabbatical every day – to think, reflect, and ask yourself what you can take out of your day to make some room for what matters.
  • Make a “don’t do list.” Make it a point to take something out of your day every day to make room for what really matters.
  • Each person you interact with – from the check-out person at the grocery store to the custodian who cleans your office, to the waitress who brings you your lunch – take time to find out their name, make eye contact with them, smile, and offer something positive to them. Treat everyone with the dignity that we all deserve.
  • Schedule a little space in between your appointments so you have some time to enjoy the experience of being at your appointments. Give yourself more time than you need.
    Be like the Greeks, and take a nap in the afternoon. Okay, if your boss doesn’t like that idea, then at least take a nap on Saturday.
  • Notice beauty whenever you can. In a person, in an act of kindness, in a flower, in the pride of a day’s hard work, in a hug at the airport. You’ll soon find that beauty is all around you if you s-l-o-w d-o-w-n and pay attention.
  • Stop “waiting” and start enjoying the moments by being present. If you are “waiting” you are living in the future, and there’s no joy in the future – or the past for that matter. There is only joy in the present moment, in being here now. You can stop “waiting” simply by changing your mind.
  • Challenge yourself to take a little stress off of everyone you meet. Practice kindness wherever you go. Practice being patient and a little less demanding in your interactions with strangers and loved ones.
  • Remember to say “thank you” at every opportunity, and bring an attitude of gratitude into everything you do.
  • Resolve to begin today to relax, putter, and be lazy and unproductive a little more often. Take time to meditate and watch the sun go down behind the hill. Be good to yourself so you can be good to others. Remind yourself of the great philosopher, Winnie The Pooh, who always seemed to have “so much time, and so little to do.”

Authentic Success and the Wisdom of Youth

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In my opinion, young people today are, for the most part, wiser than I was at their age. They’re wiser because they have observed the mistakes of their parents and the adults that have raised them and are determined to live life differently.

My daughter’s best friend, an amazing, authentic young woman, was valedictorian at her high school graduation. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from her speech:

“I think that sometimes people are too terrified of failure, and they let it stop them,” Janelle told her graduating class. “You are never a loser for trying. Never. To be honest, one of my favourite quotes comes from Little Miss Sunshine, of all places. When the grandpa is questioned on what a loser means, he says, ‘a real loser is someone who’s so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.’”

“There’s a preconceived notion surrounding us,” Janelle continued, “that condemns one to be a loser simply for not being the best, or being imperfect. Please, never, ever let yourselves be degraded into believing this. I implore you all to have faith in  yourselves; have faith in your dreams; Our goals are unique and deserve respect; we shouldn’t let anyone make  us inferior for holding on to them. Success doesn’t lie in brilliance or being consistently perfect in all your endeavors. You’d never learn anything that way. Authentic success is discovering, growing, breaking, fixing, and all things to do with uncertainty. Success holds holds a different definition for each person, and no definition is inferior to another. There are so many ways to be successful, and it’s something that each one of us is going to discover for ourselves…”

Thank you, Janelle, for the inspiration of your authentic presence, not just in this speech, but in the influence you have had in my life since you first connected with our family years ago. I’m a better person for knowing you. May we all be a little more attuned to the wisdom of our amazing youth, that have so much to teach us about living authentically.

The Inspiration Of A Training Master

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I was inspired by an article in the Calgary Herald about the former Calgary Flame, Gary Roberts, who, by transforming his own life through nutrition and exercise, is now doing the same for the next crop of NHL stars.

Driven prematurely from the sport at the age of 28 because of bone spurs and nerve damage in his neck, Gary staged one of the most astonishing comebacks in recent memory, enduring two surgeries and extensive rehab to return to play for several more seasons with Carolina, Florida, Pittsburgh, and Tampa Bay.

“I had something taken away from me that I loved, the game of hockey,” Gary explains. “And like it’s often said, you don’t really know how much you love something until it’s gone. My desire to play again is what led me to becoming immersed in health. The injury changed my life. The fact that I began to train properly and eat right allowed me to come back and play 13 more years.”

Now, at the age of 44, Gary proclaims he’s in better shape than he was when he came to training camp at the age of 18. Since retiring from hockey in 2009, Gary now trains and coaches young elite hockey players in the area of fitness and nutrition.
This is leadership at it’s finest: Taking your trials and turning them into talents.
What’s your story?