Tag Archive for: leadership

Employee Engagement and The Power Of Wholeheartedness

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I was in the doctor’s office the other day for my annual physical. The receptionist at the front desk was absorbed in her computer work and did not see me come in.

“I have an appointment to see the doctor.” I said, politely interrupting her.

Without a response, and barely looking up from her computer, she handed me a card with a number on it. Take this to room #17. Put it in the basket outside the door and take a seat.”

No smile. No greeting. No hello. It put me in mind of the many “robotic” employees that I see in many workplaces who exude dissatisfaction in their jobs.

As I sat and waited for the doctor, a series of questions ran through my mind:

  • How would it be to go to work every day and spend so many hours in a state of unhappiness and lack of engagement?
  • Is the detached behavior of such employees an expression of the culture they work in, or are they actually creating the culture?
  • How much is their lack of engagement reflective of the culture, and how much is reflective of their own life? Most people I meet who are disengaged in their work are also disengaged in their personal life.
  • How could I have been more caring toward this kind of employee? It always seems easier to be a critic than to be a solution maker.

Who really suffers when employees aren’t engaged? Not the customer. Five seconds with a miserable employee isn’t going to affect my life too much. Not the organization or their colleagues. When you are around disengaged people, you just tend to disengage from them. If an employee is miserable all day, they are miserable, for the most part, by themself.

I believe the biggest cost to employee disengagement is to the employee. They have to live with themselves. They are they ones who spend thousands of hours at this thing called “a job,” and if they aren’t finding a way to make it a joyful experience, they are the one to ultimately suffer.
If you are waiting for someone to get you engaged in your job, you’ll soon learn that waiting is not a very good strategy. You ultimately have to take responsibility for your own happiness and engagement at work. No one else is going to do it for you.

Certainly a boss and the culture make a difference, and when I work with positional leaders, managers, and supervisors, I tell them so. Bosses have a responsibility to create an environment worth working in. But it isn’t all up to boss. Bosses and employees share the responsibility.

I have five suggestions for living a wholehearted life:

  1. Decide that all blame is a waste of time. Being a wholehearted employee and a wholehearted person starts with a decision. “If it is to be, let it begin with me,” is a good slogan here. If you aren’t wholehearted in what you do, identify the obstacles and work toward overcoming them. Take a good honest look at yourself and ask, “Is it the job that needs changing, or is it my attitude?”
  2. Be a purpose-driven-person. Create an inspiring vision to get yourself out of bed in the morning. Martin Luther King had a prayer to start every day: “Use me God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”
  3. Make a point to create value everywhere you go. Every conversation. Every interaction. Every contact. Create an opportunity to make the life of another person better or the situation improved. Be a problem solver rather than a problem maker. Zig Ziglar once said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
  4. If your job doesn’t inspire you (and even if it does) find something to do when you are home that feeds your soul and helps you come alive. Howard Thurman, the African American author, philosopher, and civil rights leader, said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
  5. Try something new. Break out of the box. Do something uncharacteristic for you. Take up Aikido. Skydive. Sign up for a ballroom dance class. Do something where you are a beginner, and take some risks. There’s nothing more enlivening that getting out of your comfort zone and breaking through some fears. Nothing like an adventure to get your adrenaline going, your energy moving, and your heart open.

Leadership: Lessons From My Father

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As Father’s Day approaches this weekend, I have been reflecting on my late father, Harlie, one of the first leaders in my life. He was a true mentor leader – even though I didn’t fully realize it when he was alive. Here’s some lessons I learned from him and hopefully you can relate them to your work as a leader.

  1. Give what you expect from others. Harlie engaged me by first being engaged himself. Leadership is about energy, and if you want energy on your team, you must bring energy to your team. Energy – whether it’s positive or negative – is contagious. Harlie was passionate about so many things. He was passionate about learning, about growing, and about life. As a former national gymnastics champion, he kept himself in great shape. He lived what he led. If you want engagement from others, you must be engaged. We cannot give what we do not have.
  2. Be motivated by love. Great leadership is largely a matter of love. If you are uncomfortable with that word, call it caring, because leadership involves caring about people, not manipulating them. Dad was tough on me when I needed it, but I never doubted his motive: he genuinely cared. He cared more about me than the results which were a means to a higher end. Harlie was motivated by love. You can’t fabricate love; people will see right through you. What you can do is decide to care about people. People don’t care how much you know until they know  how  much you care.
  3. Live your passion. Our basement was filled with evidence of Dad’s passion: exercise equipment, a tumbling mat, weights. Every morning Dad would exercise at the crack of dawn. Although he couldn’t always get me engaged, especially in my early years, he lived his passion. He preached the importance of exercise without saying a word. When I was in junior high, Dad took me to the YMCA to teach me how to exercise on the parallel bars. I didn’t have the strength to lift myself up, much less do any maneuvers on them. After several disappointing attempts, Dad soon got the message: I was just not meant to be a gymnast. Even though I have memories of him being disappointed that he couldn’t engage me in gymnastics, he kept his own passion alive.
  4. Tune in to what drives people. When I was 14, dad was teaching me to drive our old 1954 Chevy truck. When I pulled over into a farm yard a mile from our home, dad sensed that something was wrong. We sat in silence for a few moments and I opened up about an incident in physical education class. “We ran a mile  and I couldn’t finish it without walking… I came in last, but I want to be the best miler in our zone track meet next year.” Dad knew little about running, so we went to the library and found every book we could on running. Dad became my coach, and the next spring I won the mile race in our zone track meet. Everyone has a passion. Everyone is engaged about something. The key is to create the space to listen and tune in to what matters to people. When you are committed to helping people find and express their voice – their unique gifts and passion, you’ll get engagement.
  5. Have a vision of greatness. Greatness wasn’t an external thing for my father. His life was about making a difference, not making a buck. He never had a mission statement. But he had a mission and it was expressed in how he lived his life. When you have a vision, whether it’s expressed explicitly or implicitly by your actions, it inspires people. In his “I have dream speech,” Martin Luther King did not say, “I have a strategic plan.” While plans may be necessary, it is dreams that inspire, uplift, and engage us. “If you want to build a ship,” writes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “don’t herd people together to collect wood, and don’t assign them to tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Whatever your vision, live it well and you will inspire others to engage with you.
  6. Be a good gardener. Dad was a good gardener and he taught me a lot about leadership by the way he gardened. No plants ever grow better because you demand that they do so or because you threaten them. Plants grow only when they have the right conditions and are given proper care. Creating the space and providing the proper nourishment for plants – and people as well – is a matter of continual investigation and vigilance. But another reality about gardening is that you really don’t have much control over the harvest. Despite your best efforts, for a myriad of reasons, some plants simply won’t make it. You can’t engage everyone. It’s a reality we all live with.

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.