Want Better Employee Engagement? Change may be the Answer.

March 26, 2013 by

Employee-Engagement-William-PowellUnless you have been sleeping under a rock for the past 10 years or so, employee engagement has quickly taken front and center. Its influence on bottom line numbers has been researched extensively and CEOs and other organizational leaders are sitting up and taking notice. According to a Boston Consulting Group report, companies that focus on being “People” Companies have “outperformed the market average in eight out of ten years“. In 2011, that difference was 99 percentage points in favor of “People” Companies. What’s a People Company? One that is committed to investing in the development of people as a means to enjoy better economic performance.

Employee engagement has to meet organizational goals and still add value to the personal and professional goals of the individual. The moment this balance is skewed in favor of one party over another, they both lose. If you’re not up to scratch on your engagement efforts and feel like you’re trying to sort out how to begin eating this elephant, take heart. You can utilize something that may already be on your radar to help.

There is little in the life of a business that captures its attention more than significant change. A laser-like focus begins to develop and people are at least expecting something new as a means to navigate the yet unfamiliar territory change tends to bring in its wake. Change provides an opportunity for questions, the openness to communicate uncertainty and the need to become more human with others in your organization.

Questions. Open communication. Human vulnerability. All key components to good engagement. Change also gives you enough latitude to revisit your values and cultural norms. Change that’s going to come anyway may be the best excuse to get off your duff and get cracking on improving your engagement levels and work towards becoming one of those mysteriously profitable “People” Companies.

Questions. Open communication. Human vulnerability. All key components to good engagement.”~William Powell Tweet this

Here are a few tips to help make change a great catalyst for improving your engagement levels:

  1. Critique your values – Will your current values support the change AND facilitate engagement? Be true to your organizational DNA, but make sure the language around your values has adequate purpose to communicate effectively enough to increase engagement. It has to speak to individual – as well as organizational – needs, desires and goals.
  2. Re-visit your mission statement – I’ve seen many organizations spend so much time crafting language around values and engagement and cultural refinement then not even touch their mission statement. Often times, this can lead to a seriously mixed message and actually decrease engagement. It’s tough to engage in something that is confusing or contradictory.
  3. Communicate alignment – As you reinforce the ranks to be prepared for change, take that opportunity to connect their roles to the vision and values and how that will make the change less painful. When people know HOW they are contributing to the success of something bigger than themselves, engagement happens much more easily.
  4. Challenge leadership – Don’t let your leaders sit in the corner and chew their nails while they wait to get run over by the change train. Completely uncool and unfruitful. Rally them around the benefits of navigating the change. How will the change develop them as a team? As leaders? What will be the individual win and the organizational win? Have them be active in the process and the communication of the benefits of it. This will drive engagement.
  5. Get your hands dirty – Find out where people feel overwhelmed and ask how you can help make it less ominous. Everyone needs to be responsible for their own engagement, but leadership is responsible for creating an atmosphere that facilitates that ownership. Provide an opportunity for people to communicate their anxieties and perceptions of the situation. Simple dialogue can do wonders for engagement.
  6. Include others – There needs to be a plan of action to effectively navigate the change. People doing the job probably have some great insight into how best to make it more effective and productive. You hired adults, so instead of being a babysitter with a manager title, listen to what they have to say. The more influence you can give them, the more effort they will put into implementing the solution they helped develop.

Change doesn’t have to be a four-letter word. It can be the biggest blessing your organization can receive if positioned properly. Imagine coming out on the other side of change stronger and more engaged, instead of beat up and only having survived the process. It’s time to make a difference. What will you do?

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Are We Over Grooming Our Leaders?

March 22, 2013 by

are-we-over-grooming-our-leaders-Karin-Hurt“Stop grooming me!”
“I don’t want to be like you.”
“I don’t want to lose the core of who I am.”
“I want to lead like me, not you!”
“My team has damn good results and they are happy… just how is my “smiling less” going to help the situation?”
“Will pricey shoes really make a difference?”
[Read more…]

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Leading Virtual Teams Effectively

March 3, 2013 by

Leading-Virtual-Teams-Effectively-Chris-LemaDo you remember playing the telephone game as a kid? You’d say one thing to the person sitting next to you, and they’d pass on your message. Then the next person would pass on what they thought they heard and so on. The real fun of the game was when you heard the last person share what they thought was the message, and the first person share the message after that.

Leading Virtual Teams is Tough

For almost two decades I’ve been managing remote staff. In some cases these were full teams located in one place far from me. In other cases it was an entire team spread across three countries, with no two people within 100 miles of each other.

Leading a virtual team – one where members are distributed all over the place – can take that telephone game to a whole new level of crazy. And if you’ve been leading in a remote context there’s a good chance you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Leading Virtual Teams is Counter Intuitive

What I know to be true is that when it comes to leading virtual teams effectively, you can’t simply add a weekly phone call or regularly emailed report to your normal leadership strategies and hope for success. Leadership in this context requires something else.

In fact, the most central thing I’ve learned is that it’s all unintuitive. By that I simply mean, leading virtual teams effectively requires you to embrace two new leadership paradigms because, like the telephone game, what you think you know may not be what you need to know.

It Means Managing Less

One of the things we all tend to do in situations we’re uncomfortable in is to limit the degrees to which things can fail. So we control more and release freedom less. This puts us, we think, in a stronger leadership position.

But that’s not always the truth. The truth is that we’ll never develop ownership by assigning tasks. And that can quickly become a vicious cycle where we create the lack of ownership by the way we’re leading our virtual teams.

Instead, assign roles and goals. Get out of the task business. It will drive greater ownership over tasks simply out of necessity’s sake. After all, if you don’t own the tasks, someone must. And why should it be anyone other than the people with the roles assigned to pursue the goals?

In this way you step out of task management, and step into the leadership work of clearing the roadblocks and providing the air cover that your virtual team needs.

It Means Embracing Peer Pressure

We’ve all learned, from early on, that peer pressure was something we were supposed to reject. But we never stopped to question if some kinds of peer pressure was good.

I run a daily “pulse” call with my different virtual teams. That call can last anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes and it’s where I share context so that team members can make better decisions. It’s also where I hear about roadblocks that may be in the way, and anything else that someone thinks I need to know.

But the most important aspect of the call is when each team member answers the question – “What is done done?” No, that’s not a typo. It’s there twice on purpose. Because I want to know what is actually complete. Not partially or mostly done (with an attached modifier after the word “Done”). Instead, I want to know what’s so done that the only word after it is done.

As we “walk” around our virtual meeting room, each person shares what’s done done. They don’t share activity. They share accomplishment. And there’s no trouble when a person doesn’t have anything to share on any given day. But after a couple of days, there is mounting peer pressure.

The fear of peer rejection is stronger than the fear of looking weak.” ~Chris Lema (Tweet This)

No one wants to be the slacker, the slowest one on the team. And so they do what comes naturally – they ask for help. First from each other. And then from me. But they don’t hide for days. Because tomorrow’s another day where they can shine, where they can get something done, or help someone else on the team succeed.

What about Your Experience Leading Virtual Teams?

Are you leading virtual teams? What other paradigms have I missed? Share them with me in the comments.

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5 Steps to Become a Pioneer That Makes Great Things Happen!

July 17, 2012 by

pioneerWhen we think about pioneers one can think about a lot of different people throughout history. More notably are the actual pioneers who crossed the plains and mountains of the western United States in the 1800’s in search of freedom and opportunity in the West. Their stories of perseverance are inspirational and help us to put our own struggles into perspective.

As I think about a “pioneer,” I also think about others throughout history that have forged paths that greatly helped themselves and greatly affected others. This has been on my mind since I wrote a post for Peter Stelacci‘s Personal Branding Blogathon entitled, “Screw “Dents”… I’m Aiming for an Immense Gaping Hole!

In 1775 the founding fathers of the United States met for what was called, the Virginia Convention. In that convention tempers flared, fears were manifest, and the inspiring speech of Patrick Henry in which he declared, “give me liberty or give me death,” inspired a young country to change course and fight for freedom and separation from Tyranny. During the next 100 years the U.S. would experience wars and conflict that would tear families apart, stain fields red with blood, and would rattle the foundations and heart strings upon which the great nation as we know it would eventually emerge. Those early founders pioneered a cause that cost many of them their own lives, but their actions formed the basis to what is known as the greatest country of freedom and opportunity.

Another person, a boy, who at the age of 15 came home from school one day to find that his mother had committed suicide, through the years he battled with demons that would tear him apart. But he knew, despite his heartache, that there had to be a way out. He ultimately became one of the pioneers to uncover the mysteries of a disease that affects 120 million people worldwide and causes over 850,000 deaths a year.  That disease is known as depression. This man Richard O-Conner and others, has helped to pioneer cures and preventions that have saved and improved millions of lives.

In recent years, a couple I know had a baby that carried a disease that honestly just defies reason …for me at least. Unable to properly hold and cuddle their child for fear that his skin would tear off and he would die. Struggling financially, emotionally, mentally, to keep their family cared for they fought on; they sacrificed much and saw other children die going through the same treatment. They pioneered their way through struggles that I can only imagine tore to their very core. But they kept faith that they could save their son and were instrumental in helping to pioneering what appears to be a cure or at least the beginnings of a cure for this horrible disease. And they can now hold their child.

All of these individuals are pioneers, just like each and every one of us can be a pioneer. We each have struggles and aspirations that can cause us great pain and heartache. I believe that, the moment where we decide to take that first step, and begin the journey to cross that great plain of uncertainty before us; is the moment we all become pioneers.

“The moment we decide to begin the journey to cross a great plain of uncertainty is the moment we all become pioneers” Click to Tweet This!

As I thought about these pioneers that I mentioned, I wondered to myself, what defines one as a pioneer? I wondered if there was a model or process that could be extracted from the lives of these pioneers, to help us in our own struggles, but also to help us as leaders to create greater dents in this world.  I ended up discovering 5 traits that I believe are essential for our own pioneering success, and as I thought about great leaders, I found these traits also matched closely to how they operated.

  1. A Robust Vision In The Outcome – I think you have to believe so strongly that the outcome will be worth more than any sacrifice it takes to get there. Without that dream of a better outcome, I think it is difficult, if not impossible, to begin the journey, and endure the difficulties of the journey.
  2. The Inability To Turn Back From Where You Began -Early pioneers often left with the knowledge that they couldn’t turn back. In our own lives, it might be a moral, ethical, physical, or spiritual reason as to why we cannot turn back, but a pioneer begins their journey to a better future and metaphorically doesn’t look back. So must be our mindset, as we begin our own journeys.
  3. Knowledge That You Might Not Make It To The End, But You Are Willing To Do It Anyway. – In our own journeys, there will likely not be a physical concern of death, but when I think about the tough times where I embarked on something; perhaps it was overcoming a weakness, overcoming a difficult relationship, moving onto a new job, work struggles, going through the adoption process, beginning a new business venture, I can remember thinking to myself, “I don’t know if I can do this.” And there were a few tough times that I can recall thinking and praying, “I don’t know if I can survive this.” It wasn’t doubt in my ability, I actually felt that perhaps my heart would fail and my perseverance would die and I would end up in some vegetative state. I have later learned that it was times like that, when I was uncertain of the outcome, that great rewards were in store for me.
  4. Knowledge That Your Sacrifice Will Make The Life Of Someone Else Better – As I think about some of the pioneers I have mentioned throughout history, I think they all had this knowledge that their sacrifice would be beneficial to others. Our sacrifices and journeys may never be as physically daunting, but the emotional and mental challenges can be similarly daunting for us. Remembering that the sacrifices we make will make the lives others better, can give us hope and endurance to continue on.
  5. Faith That You Actually Can Succeed – The last but most important aspect is faith. Faith that you can succeed, faith that you have the abilities, faith that your vision will endure. If you have a negative attitude of your outcome, than the journey will we all the more difficult.

 

I think these 5 ideas can help us as we embark to become pioneers and do great things. What pioneer has inspired you throughout history; and what lessons have you learned from them? Please leave a comment below and join the conversation below.

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