Let’s use an Olympic athlete as an example. She probably was introduced to the sport like downhill skiing at age 5, took lessons, practiced, started to shine by age 9, took advanced lessons, attended special camps, traveled to where the best teachers were for private instruction during her teenage years, spent hours every day at the gym honing and strengthening her body, spent countless hours prepping her mind for success, participated in competitions all over the world, read many books about successful people and the will to win. She went through trials just to make it to the Olympics.

Now it’s the official day and all her training and preparation have to come together for her seconds-long run down the mountain. Today is the Moment of Truth. It’s where the rubber meets the road. It’s when all the preparation, training, support from parents and friends, coaching from her coach, excitement, passion for the sport, equipment selection, and fierce will to win all descend into a couple of runs down the mountain that take only seconds. If she brings everything together well, her name will live on forever. If her moment of truth is lackluster, she’ll remember and so will those close to her, but no one else in the wider world. The moment of truth is the culminating moment.

In our businesses we intend to understand our target market and their needs, we prepare products or services, we train our people, we strategize with business plans and strategic partners, we strive to do things better by improving our internal systems. But our moment of truth is when the customer or client says, “I’ll buy,” or “I’ll buy again.” That moment is the culmination and validation that everything we prepared was valuable enough to someone else that our time was worth being put in this direction. The version of ‘truth’ is the customer’s because he is the one making the purchase.

So what if your product/service is not selling well? Is it just because the salesperson is weak? Perhaps it’s because the support systems, product/service design, emotional intelligence, brand positioning, attention to customer experience, leadership or a host of other factors are not coming together well enough to create a strong enough structure to support a successful ‘moment of truth.’  It is leadership’s role to see it and fix it.

Or perhaps many things have been put together well and the final person who handles the customer relationship and is expected to communicate this culmination of value, the frontline employee, is one of the least trained, least paid, and least valued persons in the business. Think of bank tellers, wait staff in restaurants, customer service reps, store clerks, telephone sales reps, receptionists, junior accounting staff, paralegals, etc. Sometimes the culmination of all the value of the firm is put into the hands of people who are considered the least important. Really they are the most important because they deal with the customer all the time delivering the value handling those moments of truth.

So many organizations consider their frontline employees as ‘churn and burn’ because they only stay a short time. Perhaps they need to re-evaluate the impact of the frontline employee, develop a different profile, hire differently, expect the person to stay a long time and invest in heavy duty training and compensation for this important person who delivers the organization’s moments of truth. The fate of the organization relies on it.

If you have some thoughts about how and by whom Moments of Truth are handled in your industry/organization, please share.

If change were an acronym, what would it be?

C.H.A.N.G.E.:  Constant Havoc Amidst Needy Grumbling Employees or

C.H.A.N.G.E.:  Challenging, Hostile, and No-Good Edicts (from management) or

C.H.A.N.G.E.:  Corrosive Headaches Arriving and Not Going (away) Effectively

We laugh because it is funny, and we laugh because it is true.  Even organizations and employees who claim to thrive on change reach their limits, and as a rule, we all struggle with the pace of change.

Recently, an organization was faced with several changes happening simultaneously – a change in leadership, a change in policy and practice, and a change to the way peer teams worked together.  That change was causing internal conflicts, office behavior issues, and other related challenges.  The employees were struggling to be productive and stay focused.  Many organizations find that employees shift their focus to the change and the challenges that come with change, and then find it difficult to return to work as usual.

Can we all agree that organizational change happens, if not routinely, then certainly regularly?  If that is true, then how can you help your organizational teams – your colleagues – manage that change emotionally, and work through it in order to get back to productivity as soon as possible?

One strategy is to use a version of the Tuckman model to encourage your employees to work through their own challenges with whatever change is occurring.   Information on the Tuckman model is widely available should you want to know more, but in essence Tuckman outlined four critical stages – or phases – of change, as follows.

In the first stage of change, Forming, the team (and individuals) are forming.  They learn about the opportunity and challenges, they begin to tackle the change head-on. Team members tend to behave quite independently. They may be motivated and are usually on their best behavior but very focused on themselves. At this stage, you may begin to see how individual team members respond to change in general and to specific pressure points.

In the second stage, Storming, the group hits the proverbial “wall.”  The individuals react in various ways to the change, and emotions run high.  Different solutions compete for consideration.  The group may feel chaotic or dysfunctional in this phase.  In some cases storming can be resolved quickly. In others, the team members begin acting out or focusing on minutiae to evade real issues.  Here’s the secret, though.  The storming stage is critical to the growth of the team. It can be contentious, unpleasant and even painful to members of the team who are averse to conflict.   But every team – for every organizational change – will go through a storming phase before getting to the last two phases.

In the Norming phase, teams begin to work together naturally.  Productivity begins to increase; team members agree to rules, professional behaviors, and working tools.  Trust goes up and motivation increases.

After time, most teams will reach the Performing stage. These high-performing teams are able to function as a unit as they find ways to get the job done smoothly and effectively without inappropriate conflict or the need for external supervision. Team members have become interdependent.

If your organization is in the throes of change, consider this application of the Tuckman model to allow your team the space and the time to identify in which of the four phases they find themselves, and to define what the characteristics of each phase look like.  One organization recently brainstormed what the four phases looked like for their organization, and came up with this list:

This activity allowed the organization to openly discuss how each team member felt, and to process through the various stages and raise awareness.  Try this for your team!  And, let us know how it worked for you.

I’ve been studying company culture for awhile now. At its’ best it drives profitability. At it’s worst you’re replacing staff every time you turn around. Who is responsible for creating your company’s culture? If  you’re the business owner, you are!!! That means you can change it if you don’t like what you’ve got. You change it by changing how you lead.

What are the benefits of creating a great culture? Why should you care? I could name dozens of reasons, For today let’s just name 4 biggies.

• 32% more productivity
• 25-100% more profit
• Ability to take a vacation
• Growth of the asset value so the company sells more easily, for more money

Here are some things that great cultures develop:

1. Culture book – a small book that employees contribute their comments to, almost like hard copy blog. It can be used to build pride among employees. It also can be used as a recruiting device.
2. Five minute beginning-of-the-day meetings where people get on the same page, share what they are going to accomplish that day and ask for resources from others. This is a stand up meeting.
3. End-of-the-day huddles where staff share great moments from the day. An appreciative customer’s comments, something that went really right, thanks to each other for specific kindnesses or making the ‘transaction’ go so smoothly. These can be video or audio recorded and loaned to prospects and new staff to show them what it’s like to work there.
4. A clearly communicated vision for the company’s future that everyone understands and is motivated to contribute to.
5. Clearly communicated values that everyone lives, especially leaders who model value oriented behaviors for everyone else.
6. Very selective hiring practices that prioritize alignment of vision and values before task related skills.
7. At least 4 institutionalized programs that give appreciation, respect and encouragement (ARE) to employees.
8. Random acts of ARE that happen often and unexpectedly
9. Development of the character of employees in addition to the job related skill training. Development indicates that the company is interested in growing the individual as a leader, that you will be better at whatever you do if you know your personal vision and values so you can see whether or not they align with the company’s
10. Survey of the employees at least once a year
11. Managers who regularly ask their frontline staff, ‘How can I best support you?’
12. The philosophy that the frontline staff person who talks to the client everyday is the most important employee of the company.  He’s always touching the ‘boss’ that pays everybody’s salaries (the customer) he gets the best feedback (which contributes to innovation), he handles most of the customer complaints, he’s in the best position to ensure that the customer continues to spend their money with you.

Please add your thoughts and comments. I’d love to hear from you.

What is a culture of connection and what does it do for the profitability of a company?

In your industry who is eating who for lunch? (yes you’ll understand what I mean if you read through the article.)

Years ago when I had my IT company we received a $1,000,000 RFP. It was a bigger job than we ever had done before. We knew we had a good chance to win it. Everyone in the company worked on parts of it. The accounting department worked on the financials we had to submit with it. Our purchaser got best pricing from our product sources. Our trainers estimated the training costs Our word processing expert figured out how to respond in the format that was required.. I created a document and the verbiage that pulled everything together. We worked on it for a couple of weeks. We were close to deadline and one of our inside sales people offered to call and find out how late the office was open and drive it right to the location and deliver it. Twenty of us really worked together as a team because we had a common purpose, respected each others talents and abilities, and listened to each other’s suggestions. Our company had to meet with a committee and defend it like a doctoral dissertation. One of my salespeople and myself were the key people in that meeting. We had gone over the questions they had sent ahead and we were prepped. We went in and bowled them over with how much we were on the same wave length about how our company’s capabilities matched their needs. We were completing each other’s statements, sensing together when we needed additional clarification, working the committee like a couple of pros. It just flowed and it felt wonderful and exciting.

In this example from my own background I’ve experienced working as part of a team that connects. Each person contributed. No one watched the clock to see if it was 5pm. They were all about getting the project won. Each person was engaged and connected to each other. What are the three elements that come together to form this high level of engagement, enthusiasm and connection?

1. Purpose. People feel they are working toward something bigger than themselves. It captures their imagination and their motivation and helps them focus on a target outside themselves.
2. Respect. When each person is recognized as special and valuable, each individual feels worthy and unique.
3. Contribution. When each person feels his/her opinion is heard, even if there isn’t agreement, they feel a sense of belonging and giving. Listening, contributing, and accepting reinforce our bonds to others.

In the ebook “The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage” By Michael Lee Stallard the author defines a connection culture. He writes: “Unless the people who are part of a business feel a sense of connection—a bond that promotes trust, cooperation and esprit de corps—they will never reach their potential as individuals, nor will the organization.” An organization with a high degree of connection has employees who are more engaged, more productive in their jobs, and less likely to leave the organization for a competitor. Organizations with greater connection also have employees who share more information with their colleagues and, therefore, help decision-makers make better-informed decisions and help innovators innovate. Connection is what transforms a dog-eat-dog environment into a sled dog team that pulls together.

So what is connection anyway? When we interact with people, we generally feel that we connect with some and not with others. Phrases such as “we really connected” and “we just didn’t connect” are common in our daily conversations. Connection describes something intangible we sense in relationships. When connection is present, we feel energy, empathy, affirmation and are more open. When it is absent, we experience neutral or even negative feelings. Although we know what it’s like to feel connected on a personal level, few among us understand the effect connection has on us and on the organizations we work in.”

So if you grow a connection culture in your business, how would it help the bottom line?

• 32% more productivity per person according to some studies
• More employee retention, it cost 2 to 3 times an annual salary for someone new to be recruited, hired, trained and come up to speed
• The level of engagement among employees is directly connected to the level of customer loyalty according to many studies. Loyal customers refer more, sing your praises in word of mouth advertising and social media
• Your customer acquisition costs go down, It costs 5 times as much to get a new customer than to keep an existing one, according to the finding of Frederick Reichheld, Bain & Co,
• A 5% improvement in customer retention translates into a doubling of margins, same source
• If a majority of your customers are predictably loyal, you can buy or staff up in predictable patterns – saving you money in the long run
• Loyal customers buy more and cost less to service
• Loyal customers don’t require heavy discounts, they accept higher prices because they understand the value of the relationship and the product/service
• More fun at work, less stress, less money spent on sick time, late arrivals, etc.
• They innovate more and create new products/service/processes that help move the company forward and gain/maintain market share
• They take initiative and handle more responsibility allowing owners to take worry-free vacations, ‘think days’ for strategic planning, and leadership training, ultimately allowing the company to grow exponentially

We did win that RFP.

If you are not fostering a ‘connection culture’ in your company, and if you don’t think it can be a competitive advantage, then your head is in the sand. Your competitors who do will eat you for lunch.

I’d love to read your comments and experiences on this topic.

Henry has a decision to make. The disgruntled customer in front of him has a valid point. There had been a mix up on the part of Henry’s service team and things had not gone smoothly. It wasn’t the end of the world but the customer had been inconvenienced once and now the ‘fix’ is going to inconvenience this customer again. Henry feels that that the extra discount and consideration that the customer is asking for is not unreasonable. How can this be handled? How would your company handle it? Using a centralized leadership model or a distributed leadership model?

Centralized Leadership Resolution

Henry has to contact a manager. The manager has to stop what she is doing, come to where the customer is, listen to the story, hear the customer’s request, calculate if it’s reasonable and make a decision. Meanwhile Henry is standing there listening and waiting and being unproductive. Then Henry does what is necessary to put through the orders to accomplish the decision. Plenty of time has passed and the customer is thinking about all of his time that is being wasted. If the customer is still not happy, he might ask to escalate his request to yet another higher level manager. His blood pressure is rising if he’s not satisfied and you can be sure all his friends will hear about how they should stay away from this company and especially Henry.

Distributed Leadership Resolution

Henry has been trained and empowered to make decisions on the spot. He sees that the customer’s request falls within what he has been authorized to decide himself. He graciously agrees with the customer and puts through the order immediately. The customer is pleased that it has taken only a minute and his needs have been listened to and satisfied with no hassle. He considers Henry his new best friend and tells all his friends that Henry’s company acknowledges and takes care of their screw-ups without drama. He says he’ll be back when he needs to buy again.

In an organization you can have the leadership be centralized in top management or you can have it be distributed among all the staff. Distributed leadership is when your employees are empowered to make decisions that benefit the customer and accelerate the operations of the company. Distributed leadership is a characteristic of high performance teams. When people are given the latitude to make their own decisions, they try new things. Initiative increases, productivity increases, morale increases because people feel trusted. The leadership model, whether centralized or distributed, is a characteristic of a company’s culture and it is determined at the top. A micromanaging executive cannot generate a culture of distributed leadership because he’s concerned about maintaining control. Distributed leadership is about passing control to people on the front line so customers get taken care of easily, less time is wasted on everybody’s part, costs therefore go down and customer loyalty goes up. Shifting your company from a centralized leadership model to a distributed leadership model is difficult because of the habits that need to be changed. Habits come from attitudes. So the underlying attitudes need to be changed as well, especially at the top. But companies do it all the time because the benefits are so great.

Here are some things to keep in mind if you want to shift your company’s model towards distributed leadership:

Leadership needs the most help in changing attitudes. They no longer manage their areas like fiefdoms. They need to learn how to coach and collaborate, rather than command and control. They have to give up power and change their views on authority. They need to be coached because the shift is not easy. Now their role is more service and support. Others below them cannot make the shift if their managers don’t shift in their own roles.

People need to be developed. You want people to make decisions when before they didn’t? It’s not like flipping a switch. They are going to grow into it, test the new system to see if it is real or just lip service. They will gradually learn to trust their abilities and that management will trust them.

Strong but not suffocating operational guidelines help people make decisions that benefit the company as well as the customers. Sharing the vision and goals of the company/department and especially the reasons why those are written the way they are helps the newly empowered staff make better decisions. Training the staff becomes a big part of the picture. Having clearly defined company values provides structure that guides staff and defines the brand of the company. (double benefit) Sharing some of the finances of the company’s operations helps the frontline people make better decisions while weighing the customer’s needs and the company’s costs. People can’t make decisions in a vacuum so transparency and training is a prerequisite to shifting to this model.

Expect mistakes. When people are trying out their wings, they will make mistakes. Be careful to treat mistakes as learning experiences. Don’t kill the program or eliminate the employee when a mistake happens. You’ve just paid for their training (learning from the mistake). So point it out for what it is, learn from it, and move on. The number of mistakes will decrease as people learn from them.

Look at your hiring practices. Not everyone may work well in a distributed leadership model. The change might be too much for some. Existing employees will weed themselves out. Make sure when you hire new people, you select candidates that are self-leaders, who are itching to serve customers, who can think for themselves and make decisions. There are plenty of assessments that can help with that. Contact me if you want to explore this further.

Companies large, medium and small are moving in the direction of distributed leadership because of all the advantages, reduced costs, time savings, fewer employees in management roles, greater customer loyalty, increased morale and employee retention, great PR and word of mouth, increased market share. Companies like Zappos, Jet Blue, Southwest Airlines, Best Buy, Nordstrom’s, Ritz Carlton Hotels, and Disney have turned it into a unique value proposition that helps them rise above the competition.

If you don’t move in the direction of distributed leadership, will you be left behind by one of your competitors who does?

Have you steered your company towards distributed leadership? Or has your company steered you in that direction? We’d love to learn more about your experiences. Thanks for your comments.

Since at least the time of Plato and Socrates some 2400 years ago, mankind has been implored to “know thyself,” in life and in business. Individually, this is often taken to mean knowing your strengths so you can leverage them and knowing your areas of weakness so you can improve them or compensate for them. But it involves much more than this. While at the business level, many organizations struggle with getting more done with fewer people and less resources. As your employees have changed roles or added responsibilities, you need to have confidence that you have the right people in the right positions to get the best possible results.

In some cases you do have the right team members in the right places and in some cases you probably made some wrong choices, as we all have. Companies forced to reorganize made quick decisions resulting in people landing in the wrong roles. Likewise, companies that have experienced significant growth have ended up with similar staffing outcomes. Diagnostic assessments can help you identify

performance gaps and help your company effectively understand and align the talents, behaviors, and motivators of every employee. Having the right employee in the right position is as critical to each individual’s success as it is to the success of the entire company.

The first step in bridging performance gaps is for management to commit to a people development process for employees. It should be based on the skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for them to do their jobs successfully. If the size of the organization is large enough, it can be implemented by HR. Regardless, the objectives and strategies of developing employees, and how those emp

loyees are going to help drive results, needs to be owned by management.

After commitment has been gained and the objectives have been identified, diagnostic assessments can help determine individual performance gaps, since developmental opportunities will be employee-specific. Assessments can also be utilized as an important tool for creating skill development as well attitudinal and behavioral improvement while eliminating employee and organizational resistance to change.

There are a multitude of individual assessment tools available, but regardless of which we utilize, when working with clients we focus diagnostically on the whole person as defined by these three key areas:

1. WHAT natural talents do your employees possess? An analysis of TALENTS gets at a person’s ability to do things, how they make decisions and interact with the world around them, as well as how they perceive themselves.
2. WHY are your employees motivated to use their natural talents, based on their personal motivators and drivers? An analysis of MOTIVATORS gets at why people do things. Everyone has their own unique mix of personal drivers and motivators that help guide them toward success. Understanding what really drives a person is a crucial element of success.
3. HOW do your employees prefer to use their natural talents, based on their preferred behavioral style? An analysis of BEHAVIORS gets at a person’s manner of doing things; how they do things. Since each individual has their own unique preferences and habits for how they like to behave, this understanding is crucial when working with team members as a leader or a manager, or in an environment that requires conflict resolution.

Establishing new behaviors requires that the employee feels able to adopt those behaviors and feels comfortable doing so. A well-designed people-development process focused on objectives leveraging diagnostic assessments drives long-term change. After the completion of a development process, we consistently see high levels of adaptable change with sustainable results. To learn how to achieve these types of sustainable results for your people and your business give us a call or visit http://www.drivingir.com/whohow-do-we-help/our-approach/individual-assessments

When you are looking in the mirror, you are looking at the problem. But, remember, you are also looking at the solution.

This week we are taking an in-depth look at the 2011 BlessingWhite study on employee engagement. In Tuesday’s post we looked at the key findings and asked questions about how they apply to your organization and you as a leader. In this post we’ll consider some of the implications derived by the authors from the date they collected.

Download the whole report at http://www.blessingwhite.com/eee__report.asp Or read my summary and thoughts in this week’s posts.

Implications

• Engagement belongs to every body all the time not just to a engagement team or as something apart from the regular work of the company.

Jeri’s thoughts: Engagement isn’t a separate department or something that HR handles. It’s part of the fabric of the company; it’s the strategic plan, values, vision, culture, and every interaction with every employee. It belongs to top management , middle management and each individual worker. As the leader of your business are you taking responsibility and growing a culture of employee engagement?

• Individuals need clear direction on what the organization is trying to achieve. Each needs to understand his own talents, interests, goals, values. Managers can coach you to clarity on those items. Executives can communicate strategy and set the tone for culture. Ultimately you own your own engagement.

Jeri’s thoughts: Each individual employee owns his/her own engagement. Even with all the other parts of the organization coming together, each employee needs to buy into it. Are you as the leader hiring the right people? How do you know who will become an engaged employee? Interviews and assessments.  If you are the employee, what are you doing to take responsibility for your engagement? If you hate your job, go somewhere else where you want to give your all.

• Managers are the leverage point to coach individuals to align and commit to the objectives of the organization. It’s not so much about what you do as who you are that effects engagement of those you manage. Get to know your people. Understand their special talents and unique engagement drivers.

Jeri’s thoughts: Emotional intelligence is a key manager training and development topic. Relating to individuals to inspire their productivity instead of just considering them pawns in the workflow will encourage retention, lower HR costs, create a high performance team. Does each employee’s personal goals, visions, and values align with the company’s goals, visions and values? As a manager it’s your job to find out and help that alignment happen. You are in a sandwich position of passing down the strategic vision and passing up employee’s needs. If your execs are clear and the hiring has been done well, your job is easier. Know each employee and their special talents, motivations, personal concerns and you’ll earn their trust. Are you taking your role seriously and getting the information you need from each side so you can create alignment? Do your managers know that his is their role?

• Executives need to speak with passion about the linkage of engagement and business results. You must have the trust of your workforce. Communicate frequently and in depth about the ‘Why’ and the ‘What’. You must hold yourself accountable for building a culture that fuels high performance and engagement.

Jeri’s thoughts: You as the business owner are responsible for the culture you grow in your business. If you link employee contribution to business results, your employees will realize how impactful they can be. Communication, trust, your purpose (the big ‘why’) are all parts of the culture you are responsible for building.  Are you taking full responsibility? Speaking about the business purpose, vales, vision?

For a free consultation on how this study relates to your organization and how you can improve, please hit reply and we can set up a time to talk.

I’m interested in your comments about your organization and your thoughts about employee engagement and the implications of this study. Please leave your comments below.

^{This study involved 11,000 individuals from 6 industrialized parts of the globe.}

Each of the 11,000 participants was asked:

“Assuming you have a choice, do you plan on remaining with your organization through the next 12 months?” – participants in the U.S. responded:  Yes, definitely 56%;  Probably 32%;  No Way 13%.  So only a little more than half (56%) of respondents say that they plan to stay with their organization through the next 12 months. And the percentage who responded “No Way” has almost doubled since 2008 when it registered at 7%.

Key findings:

• Only 1 in 3 employees are engaged, 1 in 5 are actively disengaged, approximately 2 in 3 are looking for new positions.

Jeri’s thoughts: You can look at this as a challenging year for retention, or a hot year to attract new talent. If you’re looking to attract new talent, make sure you learn below how to keep them.

• Engaged employees plan to stay for what they give, disengaged stay for what they get.

Jeri’s thoughts: Look at your own staff. Which people fit each category based on what you see in their behavior every day? If you don’t like what you see, whose fault is it? After all you hired them and you set up the culture in your company. What can you do to change your culture? What do you need to change about yourself in order to change your culture?

• Top drivers of job satisfaction: opportunities to apply their talents, career development, training.

Jeri’s thoughts: Do you offer your employees opportunities to apply their talents (do you assess their talents and put them in roles that are suited to areas where each one can use their strengths?) career development (chances to be promoted to higher levels of responsibility and personal growth), training (to excel and master new skill)? What do you need to change in your organization to up your levels of talent application, career development  and training? How would it benefit your organization? Some studies put the number at 30% additional productivity which drops to the bottom line pretty quickly in a small business.

• Trust in executives can have twice the impact on engagement levels than trust in immediate managers because executives set the overall culture.

Jeri’s thoughts: The executives set the vision and lead with purpose. This engages people’s spirit and helps them feel they are contributing to something bigger than themselves. Companies that have a rally cry inspire their people to grow, contribute and believe. Think Apple with ‘Innovation’ and Zappos with ‘Delivering Happiness.’ Executives establish the values of the company. If executives lead by example, they can expect a lot from their people. If not, their people are demoralized. How do you lead? Do you inspire people to work toward a purpose? Do you stand for your values and expect others to respect the company values as well? Do you inspire people’s creativity or shoot them down whenever they make a mistake which encourages them to never show initiative?

• Employees’ relationships with their managers as ‘people’ behind the titles impacts engagement levels more than manager actions.

Jeri’s thoughts: People are emotional beings. Training managers on emotional intelligence so that they realize the value of seeing people as unique individuals with lives, talents, concerns, goals, feelings, etc is an important part of management training and development. How do your managers do at getting the most from their people? Do your staff relate well to their managers because their managers care?

• Engagement surveys without visible follow up action may decrease engagement levels.

Jeri’s thoughts: If you ask your staff lots of questions in a survey and then do nothing with the results, wouldn’t your staff be demoralized because you set up an expectation of change and then never fulfilled the expectation? If you ask questions, prepare to make changes based on the answers. If you’re not prepared to make any changes, don’t insult your staff by asking questions.

You can download the whole survey here. If you would like to discuss these findings in relation to your company, I’m currently offering a free consultation. Contact me at 212-923-5820 or jeri@drivingimprovedresults.com

Please leave a comment below about you thoughts on any of these points.

Neuroscience research is revealing the social nature of the high-performance workplace. This reference comes from an article by D. Rock entitled “Managing with the Brain in Mind.” So what does this have to do with Motivation? According to the researchers of this study and a number of other studies now emerging, one thing is clear: The human brain is a social organ. It’s physiological and neurological reactions are directly and profoundly shaped by social interaction. In other words, they found that “Most processes operating in the background when your brain is at rest are involved in thinking about other people and yourself.”

When you think of this in terms of the workplace, it presents enormous challenges to managers. Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, in which people exchange their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first as a social system. It’s not a stretch to relate to for anyone who has had their job eliminated and found themselves without the work relationships they once had. One manager explained to me just after going through such a process, that he felt like he had just gotten through tearing at the social fabric of the organization. The impact of this neural dynamic is a threat response that disorients people causing their brains to become less efficient. Based on my experience as a manager and a consultant, this accounts for a significant portion of lost productivity organizations experience following layoffs or unexplained terminations.

Researchers also found that when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisions, support people’s efforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response. In other words people within the organization become more effective, more open to ideas, and more creative. They notice the kind of information that passes them by when fear or resentment makes it difficult to focus their attention. They are less susceptible to burnout because they are able to manage their stress. They feel intrinsically rewarded and are more likely to feel motivated and engaged.

It reminds me of an exercise that I went through myself a number of years ago that I now ask some of my coaching clients to complete. Several of the questions in the exercise ask you to remember those experiences in your past when you were the most productive and motivated. It also asks you to note the characteristics of the person you worked for at the time and what you were able to accomplish. Rather than simply agreeing with what the researchers found and I believe to be true, I actually took the time to dig out my responses from a moldy smelling file in my basement. I recognize that this does not come anywhere close to passing as an official validation of the study, but I am convinced the leadership characteristics that resulted from their research that mentioned in the prior paragraph, is what’s necessary to motivate and engage today’s workforce.

I also believe that the reason that these are not the prevailing leadership characteristics we reward today, outside of the top performing companies, has to do with our reluctance to grasp the fact that the management practices left over from the Industrial Revolution are no longer up to the job.

If you’d like to read more about this study the reference is…reprint number 09206 from Strategy + Business issue 56, autumn 2009. And, as always, we would appreciate your feedback and comments.

What is your state of mind as your reading this?
Are you tired? Energized? Frustrated? Confident? Bored…I hope not!

Our state of mind changes dozens of times throughout the day; a boring meeting, a difficult phone call, an accepted offer, a misunderstanding with a demanding client. We know that all of these things affect our state and, as a result, our performance. But, do we understand how it affects our co-workers and staff?

As a leader, you can’t afford to let your state manage you; you need to manage your state instead. Teams tend to mirror, and even magnify, the emotions of their leader…positive and negative. If you’re confident about a situation, they’ll trust things will work out. If you’re worried about business performance, they’ll fear for their jobs and business will suffer.

Managing your state is not always easy. After all, we’re human and have a right to be angry, frustrated or worried. My rule is that I’m allowed to get emotional about a situation for 5 minutes, behind closed doors. Then I take a deep breath and change my state. Here are some of the ways I’ve learned to change my state:

• Smile – Sounds silly but it works. The next time you’re in a negative state, take a deep breath and smile real big. You’ll notice a change in state almost immediately.

• Be Thankful - Think about all the things you could be thankful for; family, friends, home, situations, etc. Being thankful will help you to forget the problem of the moment and take a longer term view.

• Ask The Right Questions – “Why me?” is the wrong question. Asking negative questions makes matters worse by causing you to dwell, unproductively, on the problem. “How can we achieve this goal regardless of the issues?” is the right question. A positive question will lead to productive, creative answers.

• Pick a Song - After a very difficult situation with an employee last week, I was incredibly frustrated. Five minutes after one of my favorite songs, I was a different person. Pick songs that “pick you up” and use them as medicine for the mind.

• Take a walk – Taking a long walk allows my mind to slow down. It relieves the stress and I, almost always, come back from my walk with a new idea.

Learn to manage your state and you’ll be surprised at the result in your own productivity as well as your teams.

What ideas do you have for managing your state? I’d love to hear them.

We’ve just celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. Some of us like to celebrate it all year long no matter what color the beer is. Leprechauns, shamrocks, pots of gold and the luck of the Irish are all part of the folklore surrounding this holiday. Let’s talk about luck.

Some people appear very lucky. Opportunities fall into their laps. They ‘just’ happen to meet the right people who take a liking to them and give their careers a boost (example 1). Or the entrepreneur coincidentally runs into someone who wants to produce a show about them and give them free PR (example 2).  Or the right person just stops in, gets hired and turns out to be the best employee (example 3).

Is this really just happenstance? Let’s look more closely at luck. The saying often goes that ‘luck is where preparation meets opportunity.’ Certainly if the individuals in the above examples had not been in their positions, they would not have been ‘ripe’ for the happenstance that occurred to them. I would even say that if the person hadn’t been prepared, the occurrence would not have even been recognized as an opportunity. Let’s look at a few elements of this.

Barbara Fredrickson is the author of the book Positivity. She has worked and researched in the field of positive psychology for over 10 years, since it was first developed. We often think of psychology like the medical model, fix the body when it breaks. On the other hand positive psychology is more like wellness. How can we create states of happiness and mental well being? In the research that she has performed those who were trained to think positive thoughts on a 3 to 1 ratio over negative thoughts, lived a more ‘flourishing life’. They not only were happier, they attracted more opportunities for what they desired. This makes sense. Don’t you like to do more and go out of your way for positive people? Doesn’t honey attract more bees than vinegar? Why wouldn’t someone take a liking to you and want to give you the gift of a career boost if you make his day a better day every time you meet (example 1).

Secondly, there is power in intention. Did you ever buy a car and then start noticing all the same models on the road that you never noticed before? If you set a defined goal and focus on achieving the action steps leading to the completion of that goal, you become like an icebreaker plowing through the icebergs and creating momentum as you go. A business leader who has passion for her big ‘why’, the reason she wants to be in business, talks about her mission and draws to her others who feel the same way, who admire her energy and dedication, and who want to help. (example #2)

Some things that appear to be luck are just unrecognized capability. In example #3, where a ‘drop-in’ becomes a great employee, who is really responsible for that person becoming a great employee? It could easily have turned out badly if that employee had been belittled, micromanaged, unchallenged, and denied opportunities to excel in alignment with his best talents. Instead the manager most likely placed him in the right role, encouraged him to train and excel in alignment with his strengths, let him develop a sense of mastery and freedom in his role and motivated him toward a greater purpose or company vision. It wasn’t luck. The manager unconsciously set it up that way and didn’t even realize it.

What do these 3 examples mean for us in our work situations? We have choice. We have more control over our destinies than the ‘luck of the Irish’. First, we can train ourselves to be positive and appreciative and improve our outlook. It’s like a muscle. The more we exercise it, the stronger and more consistent it becomes. Secondly, we can set goals, put intentions and passions out into the world and attract others who want to help us and join us. Isn’t that a big part of leadership, earning the trust and devotion of followers?  Leadership is a skill that can be developed. Thirdly, we can look at our relationships with others to bring out their best. We can adjust our behaviors to draw out the best in others to create the best working environment. When we choose to run our businesses and live our personal and professional lives with conscious awareness of these choices and their potential opportunities, it can lead to more ‘luck’ than any pot of gold, leprechaun or shamrock can provide.

Do you have a comment or example that you can add? We’d love to have your thoughts.

In this interview Dan explains that the things that make a difference to employees’ motivation level are free. He gives examples. Beyond the basics of an OK salary, people are more motivated by:

• Autonomy – Have some say over the work they do

• Mastery – Get a sense of making progress

• Purpose – See their work as part of a bigger vision

It would be great for you to share some comments about examples of when you’ve been motivated and when you haven’t and how these concepts have played out in your experience.

• Be engaged

• To contribute more than the minimum at work

• To show initiative

• To be creative, to excel

If you think it’s all rewards and punishments, you better think again. Watch this video by Dan Pink, author of ‘DRiVE’, for the research-based straight scoop.

Dan Pink is one of my favorite authors. His 2^nd book called ‘DRiVE” focuses on the research that says we are only motivated by rewards and punishments for low level tasks. When we use our highly cognitive skills, we are motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose. The video below explains the research and the findings. How do you build autonomy, mastery and sense of purpose into your work environment?

Please leave a comment about what you do at work for your employees to engage them and to tap into their natural needs for autonomy, mastery and purpose. Real life examples would help all our readers.

You’re out on the town with some good friends hoping to have a great dinner and a memorable evening. There’s a diner on the corner and a great Italian restaurant down the street. Which one are you going to choose

The Diner – You May Want to Stick to the Basics
Want a Steak? They’ve got it.
Want Crab Cakes? They’ve got it.
Want Veal Parmesan? They’ve got it.

They’ve got it but I’m not sure you’d actually want to eat it. The focus of a diner is to satisfy everyone by providing every type of food imaginable. However, quantity and quality are two very different things. Go ahead, ask the waiter what he recommends and you’ll get a blank stare.

You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with employees? The goal of most managers is to create well-rounded employees. They try to achieve this by identifying the employee’s weaknesses and trying to fix them. What about their strengths? They languish and dull due to lack of attention. The result of this focus, at best, is an employee who can do most things but is not remarkable at anything. Sound familiar?

When you order from a diner, you should probably stick to the basics. I’d do the same with your well-rounded employee.

The Fine Restaurant – Go Ahead, Try the Escargot

The fine restaurant has a much more limited menu but what they have is incredibly good. They make the conscious decision to forego many types of foods to focus their efforts on what they do best.

Great managers treat their employees in much the same way. They help employees to focus on what they do best, rather than trying to improve their weaknesses. Employees will rarely become strong in an area of weakness. The best one can hope for is that they will rise to become mediocre. However, where an employee has talent, they can become world-class. In addition, focusing on those areas where we have true talent is incredibly motivating.

Imagine a team of people who are all the best at what they do. Imagine your competition running scared.

Would you rather have well-rounded employees or remarkable employees?

How to Allow Employees to Become Great

Traditional management methods will not create great employees because they don’t focus on what each employee does best. Here are four steps to make it happen:

1. Identify your employees’ strengths – This task is not easy. It requires a much more individualistic approach to management. Here are the best ways to make it happen:
   Observe – The best way to identify your employees’ strengths is to observe their actions. What types of work are they attracted to? How do they act in group discussions? What do they like to do when they’re not working?
   Use Personality Profiles – There are several profiling tools available on the market which can help you to identify people’s tendencies, talents and styles.
   Conduct 360 Degree Surveys – This can be a great way to get feedback from supervisors, peers and subordinates as to an employee’s strengths and tendencies.
   Ask The Employee – Ask your employees what they feel their strengths are. The danger here is that most people are not self-aware enough to accurately answer the question.

   
   

   
   

2. Determine how to take advantage of those strengths – Once their strengths are known, you should:
   Encourage Improvement – Additional training and experience can turn strengths into incredible talents. Michael Jordan wasn’t born great; he practiced.
   Refine Roles – Find ways to allow your employees to spend a greater portion of their time on tasks that lend themselves to their strengths.

   
   

   
   

3. Figure out how to manage around the weaknesses – Focusing on what employees do best doesn’t mean forgetting about their weaknesses. Here are three strategies to deal with weaknesses:
   Shift roles – If possible, change the employee’s responsibilities to shift focus away from their weaknesses.
   Partner – Find an employee whose strengths offset another employee’s weaknesses and team them together.
   Training – Training will probably not turn a weakness into a strength; but it can get their performance up to more acceptable levels.

   
   

   
   

4. Build a team of people who compliment each others strengths – Traditional teams are made up of many interchangeable parts. This new, remarkable team is more like a jigsaw puzzle of talents. Place the right people in the right roles and change any job descriptions and performance measures that no longer fit.

Back to the original question…Would you choose the diner or the fine restaurant? It’s nice to have a few diners around for when you want something cheap or don’t know what you want to eat. But, if you want something truly remarkable and memorable, hit Zagats and find a great restaurant.

How do you help your employees develop their strengths like a fine restaurant?

Intergenerational dialog is an issue for many organizations.

The boomers have different expectations, work habits, life goals, communication strategies, technology experiences and attitudes than Gen x (born 1963-78), and Gen Y (born 1979-98) is even more different. Each generation is a product of the educational, social, family structure, political, economic times in which it grew up. So, of course, Each generation is different which makes workplaces, where they all try to work together, a bit trying at times.

Since we’re at the beginning of the school year, I thought I would pass this along just to highlight the difference in life experiences. Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992. For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks, and Tony Perkins have always been dead. Each year, Beloit College puts together a list of “cultural touchstones” that affect the lives of students entering college in 2011. The faculty uses it as a reminder to be aware of dated references. Here are some of our favorites:

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. Al Gore has always been animated.
4. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
5. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
6. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
7. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
8. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
9. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
10. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
11. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.
12. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
13. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
14. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
15. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
16. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
17. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.
18. Beethoven has always been a good name for a dog.
19. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.
20. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi (SYFY) Channel.

You can view the complete list at www.beloit.edu/mindset.  Are you guilty of being “dated” in your dealings with the younger generation? These folks will soon hit the workforce so be aware of language you may want to change. Read more about intergenerational dialog in the workplace at http://www.drivingir.com/facilitation/intergenerational-dialogue and leave a comment on how generational differences have made a difference in your workplace or home environment.

Whether you’re an organization 1, 10, 100 or 1000 people, learning is the key to a continuously successful business. Yes, there are other keys, like capital, leadership, client relations, etc. But in many ways they relate back to learning. As a business/firm owner there are many things to learn. You probably learned a lot of things in school and previous work environments. An accountant learns accounting in school and during his on-the-job training. This professional knowledge is all about the services he will provide to his clients. He is much less likely to learn how to run a firm, how to manage staff, how to select ideal clients and market to them, how to engender client loyalty, how to grow the firm strategically. His initial work environment most likely will not provide that learning either. Capital, leadership and client relations are things he needs to learn on his own through his continuous learning.

A lawyer or engineer may have a firm of 100 people. For her people to act like a team, communicate well without silos, have effective management, and generate results she could let people guess what would be best to do with every task. Then when they are wrong or fail, she could correct them. That’s one way for a staff person to learn. It’s painful for the person and for the organization. And when the lesson is learned what has been achieved is mediocrity. Along the way there is wasted time, lost clients, hurt feelings, plenty of blame. All too many organizations are still run that way. What if, instead, there were a way that staff would be constantly exposed to new information on how to be proactive in time management, client loyalty, big picture thinking, teamwork, how to communicate better orally and in writing, new developments in client services? I know professionals need to earn continuing education credits each year to maintain their professional licenses. So partners get updated in their professional services. But what about the other business-growth skills and what about the other staff?

Here are some things that happen in The Learning Organization, an organization that is continually growing in capability.

1. Provide a university, an organized collection of course on various ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills. This provides training on topics that will enhance people’s performance on the job.
2. Go beyond training and offer development. This helps the employees to apply the skills in their own environment and deal with whatever obstacles are in the way. Usually the biggest obstacles have to do with the person’s mindset and personal values and beliefs. People see their own patterns and learn how to reprogram those patterns
3. Offer individual coaching. This is intensive development at its best and results in contextual changes like enhanced self-esteem, self-direction, self-reliance, evolutionary growth, big transformations that prepare a person for substantial change.
4. Run book discussion groups (see our recommended book list) or seminars on business topics. This might include client loyalty, communication, leadership, goal achievement self-improvement or similar topics. The organization might hold these at lunchtime or in workshop format, providing books, a facilitator, seminar leader, etc. Some organizations provide a lending library for staff.
5. Offer teleseminars or on-line learning to staff. There are many different companies that provide web based training. There are a lot of webinars on current topics that can be purchased for small amounts of money.
6. One of the most effective things I’ve seen is one group inside a company presenting to the other groups. The topics can be about a particular client service. Or it could be on a proposed service offering that the group has researched, a soft skill, a topic that the group learned at an outside seminar, or the contents of a book. Of course, this requires allocation of some staff preparation time.
7. Learning software, learning how the software will be used in your firm’s environment, learning how to use mobile technology.
8. Bringing in a coach/consultant to work with partners to strategically address growth, management, conflict (if it exists), silos, business development. These facilitated group sessions bring out the best in each person’s experience and help engage everyone in creating solutions

In the Learning Organization people feel valued and engaged because the organization is investing in them. Managers trust their employees to make decisions and empower their staff to take over tasks because the staff have received training and are worthy of the empowerment. Delegation becomes easier rather than partners thinking they have to micromanage and do it all themselves. The Learning Organization is poised for growth. It’s worth the investment.

Please tell us your experience as part of a Learning Organization. How has it worked for you? If your experience did not include working in a Learning Organization, how do you feel it has held you back?

Are you the kind of person who likes to get away? Get away from big city noise and traffic and crowded sidewalks? Get away from a series of appointments and emails and the pressures of a normal workday?

Would you really like to do more planning and evaluating, but never seem to find the time? Mostly, because there are interruptions: people and phones and emails and the running dialog of stuff to do going on in your head all the time. And a half hour here and there wouldn’t cut it even if you found it in your schedule, because it’s not enough time to focus and get your brain wrapped around the planning and evaluating you want to do.

And even if you made the time and forced yourself to focus, you’d be talking to yourself. You know what you know. You don’t know what you don’t know. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to offer a different perspective, offer feedback, show another path – maybe an easier path to the same objective. Wouldn’t it be nice just to relax, lay your cards out on the table and see what new answers you can come up with?

How about your team? Do you have people who are influential in your business, whether partners, high level employees, virtual assistants, key clients, whose opinions you value, but you never seem to have a long conversation to get the benefits of their input? And if they had a voice in helping to create or enhance your company’s strategies, wouldn’t they be more motivated to help accomplish them?

These are the main reasons business owners schedule retreats:

• getting away to a relaxed setting
• evaluation and planning, a chance to stop and determine strategy
• a day or two devoted to nothing else but focusing on the issue at hand
• bringing together input from pivotal players to make the evaluation and planning meaningful and doable
• helping the participants get to know each other in different ways and enhance communication
• involving a facilitator/coach/consultant who can offer objective feedback, make sure all participants get heard, keep the discussion focused, offer alternative strategies, and steer the group toward an actionable plan

There are lots of ways to structure a retreat. Including some fun activities in between sessions is usually a great idea. Incorporating rest and individual refection time enhances the experience. Time can be scheduled for breaking into pairs to come up with specific solutions or scenarios, as well as debrief time with the whole group. Facilitated interactive activities allow people to have experiences which drive home learning.

If this sounds good, we can help you plan your retreat. Have you been on a business retreat? Please tell us a high point and a low point of your retreat so we can all learn what to include and what to avoid.

Here’s some useful information for Valentine’s Day (and any day)!! These are gifts that will be truly treasured no matter who you call your Valentine.

Maybe you have a spouse or significant other. Maybe you have a business partner, employees, customers or strategic partners. Recognizing and addressing these issues can improve your customer loyalty, employee loyalty and things on the home front. Here’s a test to see if you can identify issues that come up in personal and business relationships. (clue: Read with emotion!!!)

1. ‘You never ________ when I’m talking to you.’

2. ‘You always take me for granted. You don’t even know I’m here. All I want is some __________.’

3. ‘I never see you. You’re always working. When are you ever going to spend some ________ with me?’

4. ‘Don’t you ever want to try anything new? Don’t you ever want to do anything different? Why are you so resistant to ________?

5. (Clue: the same word is used twice because it’s a biggie and it bears repeating twice.) Scenario: There’s only one TV working in the house. It’s Superbowl Sunday and you want to watch the game and she wants to watch a movie. You both want __________ of the TV. So you wrestle for the remote _________.

6. People fight about this all the time usually because there is not usually enough of it. Sometimes you save it and some times you spend it.____________

7. ‘Let’s get this project done. We work well together. We make a good __________.’

Here are the answers.

1. Listen. When we listen, we show that we value the other person’s words. The best salespeople are the best listeners. The best managers are good listeners and incorporate the employees’ suggestions so the employees take ownership of implementing solutions. The best parents and spouses are good listeners. Give your Valentine the gift of listening.
2. Attention. Everyone likes to feel unique and special. Customers like when you know their names and their kids’ names. Our loved ones like when we go out of our way to give them something that is reminiscent of who they are and of our relationship. Attention is proactive, a real reaching out to make the other person feel special. Give your Valentine the gift of attention.
3. Time. You only have so much of it and it would be a shame not to give it to those who mean the most to you. Kids spell love T-I-M-E. Building customer trust takes some time also. Give your Valentine the gift of time.
4. Change. Some people love it. Some people hate it. But it is always with us. Being adaptable and flexible means that you open yourself up to other people’s views and suggestions. You take a walk in their shoes and try on a new experience or perception. You take a risk and face your fears. Who knows, you might learn something? As the business world is changing so quickly, you’ll be doing yourself a big favor. Give your Valentine the gift of your ability to change.
5. Control. There are always power plays. We’re human. We’re competitive. We like to be right. Why? Because we need self validation, because we want to build up our pride, because we think it builds our power. But power and respect are earned, not demanded. You can get more control and influence through offering listening, attention, time, and openness to change than through trying to exert control. Give your Valentine the gift of ‘being right’ and see what happens to ‘control’.
6. Money. Employees seem to want more pay. Customers seem to want discounts. People seem to want things that require money. But if you look at customer loyalty studies, customers are more interested in the personal connection. If you look at employee loyalty studies, employees value money number four behind interesting work, full appreciation for the work they do, and a feeling of being in on things. Loved ones want you, your time and your attention. Certainly some money is necessary. But it only becomes all important when listening, attention, time, openness to change and sense of control are not present. Give your Valentine the gift of keeping money in perspective.
7. Team. Everyone wants to feel included. Everyone wants to feel they are making a contribution to something bigger than themselves, that their lives have meaning. Doing things together provides that opportunity as well as shared experiences, trust, recognition of talent and leadership. Whether it be cleaning up the apartment or rolling out a new product, give your Valentine a chance to participate on a team.

If you want to be a hit this Valentine’s Day, or if you want everyday to be Valentine’s Day, personally and professionally, focus on giving these seven gifts every day.

Your challenge: Give 3 of these gifts everyday. Then increase it to 4, 5, 6 and 7 over time. At first it may be difficult depending on where you’re starting from. But after awhile, you’ll get such rewards from giving these gifts that you’ll look for opportunities to give more. If you ask anyone who’s done it, you’ll hear that the giver gets much more from the experience than the receiver. Happy Valentine’s Day!

1. Dance full out. You can dance small or you can dance big. Have you watched ‘Dancing With the Stars’? Do the performers get any points for holding back? No, the judges want to see full expression and commitment to the movement. Are you committed to your business? Do you really go for it? Put in your heart and soul? If you’re going to do something in your business, do it fully. Accept the risk. Make the leap of faith. When you make a decision, get fully invested in implementing it. Get past your comfort zone. Go for it.

2. Leaders take care of their followers. Followers have entrusted themselves to you. It’s your job to steer them toward open space and away from potential bumps and bruises from obstacles along the way. It’s your job to give good instructions so that they can respond easily. You will learn by how they respond if your instructions were clear enough. You’ll continually fine tune your instructions so their responses produce the results you’re looking for. If you don’t get the response you’re looking for, hold yourself accountable and figure out how to be a better leader. Make your followers look good. Whether you’re a leader on the dance floor or the office, the same tenets hold true.

3. Followers maintain their own strength, balance, and frame. It’s your job to be steerable, not wimpy. Dancers maintain frame, which means they don’t let their arms collapse or their shoulders give or their spines twist. If their bodies turned to spaghetti, the leaders wouldn’t be able to steer them anywhere. In the business world leaders expect you to use your judgment, maintain the company values, keep yourself stable and strong to fulfill your role. Followers provide real feed back that comes from a center of strength. It helps the leader be a better leader.

4. The value is in being connected. Leaders and followers are responsive to each other’s movements. Good dancers connect with each other. In business we connect with our clients and with our employees. Gallup polls show that customer loyalty is not as much about customer service as it is about empathy and the emotional bond that forms among people who make each other feel special and unique. Retaining clients reduces marketing costs and increases buying frequency. Employee retention reduces turnover costs, increases the stability of the customer experience and retains knowledge within the organization . Understanding the emotional intelligence of leveraging points of connection can make or break your bottom line. It’s a business strategy.

5. It’s all about action. Dancing requires action. You can’t learn or practice dancing by just watching. You have to get up and do it. In business we also learn by doing. Sure you can watch someone else for a while, or read about a subject. But you really need to be doing business everyday to sense the pitfalls, understand the terrain, and experience the joy of success. You can plan all you want, but it’s execution that will make revenues

We’ve seen plenty of layoffs in the last few months and we feel for people who have lost their jobs, have very little with which to support their families and are perhaps in danger of losing their homes. Much less has been said about those who didn’t get laid off. There are things affecting them, too.

Fear and uncertainty. Will I be laid off, too? When? How is the company doing? Will the company be able to weather the recession?

Excessive work. If a number of people were let go, who’s going to do their work? Will I be asked to now do 3 jobs instead of the one I have been doing which had been taking all my time? How many more hours will I be expected to work? If I draw a line to protect my personal time, will I be seen as not being a team player, and possibly lose my job? Will I have the skills for these new tasks? Will I like doing these new things? Will there be new responsibilities without a pay increase? Is that fair to me? What happened to work/life balance?

Poor morale. How will our company culture be affected? Our morale is low due to all the changes. Will it ever get better? I don’t want to work where there are depressing frowns and complaining all day? How will my manager treat me? Will s/he be more stressed than usual which will make matters worse?

Guilt. Why were they let go and not me? I’m relieved to still have my job, but I almost feel their hardship is because I’m still here. This is especially true for those who did the firing.

Anger. My friends and former co-workers were treated shabbily during the layoffs. Can I respect the person who is still my manager when s/he wasn’t respectful, honest, and caring with people who used to be my team members and were committed to the company?

How can an owner/manager make these situations better?

1. Respect and caring during the layoff process. It’s never an easy process but give people the respect and honesty they deserve as they are being asked to leave. Show the remaining employees that you are maintaining your values and acting ethically.

2. Communicate. Tell the employees what’s going on that will affect the sustainability of the company. Employees may not be happy but they will appreciate your honesty and that you’ve given them a chance to make some decisions based on accurate information and realistic expectations.

3. Talk about the direction of the company. Hear your employees’ opinions. They may have some good ideas about how to refocus the company or align responsibilities. Even if you don’t go with most of the ideas, it’s easier to get buy-in if people feel they’ve been listened to. It also builds a sense of team and working in the same direction with a common mission, a great antidote to poor morale.

4. Build morale with plenty of recognition, praise, gratitude, special lunches, birthday celebrations, little ways to create fun and appreciation.

5. Focus on building a high performance team. You’ve cut to the bare minimum. Now you have to give your reformulated team a reason to be motivated to become highly efficient and the core of your future company. Invest in training and development. Talk to each individual and find out what motivates each one. It often isn’t monetary compensation. Make sure each person is in a position where strengths are being maximizing and weaknesses are being avoided.

Recently I was leading a workshop on Customer/Employee Loyalty which I entitled ‘Dancing With The Stars’. Many of us have watched that TV show or a similar one called, “So You Think You Can Dance.” Some of us have even tried some partner dancing, taken lessons, or danced at weddings.

One person told a story about what they witnessed on a cruise, There was some dancing going on in the lounge. Joe was sitting at the bar. Susan, his wife was sitting there, too. She’s getting motivated by the music. She’s watching the other couples having fun, getting close, interacting with each other. Joe is focused on his drink. So she pulls Joe off the bar stool and says “Come on, let’s dance.” What is Susan seeking? An emotionally positive experience that’s hassle free, where she is individually recognized and respected. She wants to feel a connection. She wants to have fun. Joe has a choice. He could get up and do the minimum, go through the motions without really connecting. He could ignore her and continue to nurse his drink. Or he could get up and interact with her, respect her desire to connect, look at it as an opportunity to co-create something between them.

You are given an invitation everyday to interact with customers and employees. The choices you make will dictate your success. When you join the ‘dance’ or interact in a focused caring way, you create a point of connection. Just like dancers have points where they touch so they can respond to one another’s movements and feel bonded to one another, your customer and employee points of connection are very important. Research shows that emotional points of connection create customer and employee loyalty.

So what else can we take from the dance metaphor?

Partners must trust each other. It’s certainly not a good experience if Joe is stepping on Susan’s toes or makes her bump into other couples. The leader needs to be trustworthy. Are you developing long lasting trust relationships with your customers and your employees?

Dancers make each other shine. Give and take happens as the leader and follower roles switch back and forth. Followers add flourishes and kicks to augment the move the leader leads. Sometimes there is ‘playing’ done by both to interpret the music. In the world of sales, being effective means being an assistant buyer and helping the buyer discover what he needs, then offering several solutions from which the buyer chooses and modifies the one that he likes best. There is give and take. Empowered employees think up great solutions to problems that the boss might never have thought of.  Achieving an outcome is about us, not about me. 1+1=3.

Each dancer maintains his or her own balance. It’s no fun dancing with someone who is falling all over the place. Employees need balance. Are their personal goals working in concert with the organizations goals? Are your personal goals and professional goals dovetailed? Do you seek quality customers that seem to be have balance, can pay their bills, realize you have a life also, and maintain an emotional even keel?

A good dancer has firm arms, strong abs and sturdy legs and ankles. Each partner supports herself/himself and maintains a connection and a strong frame. Strength in the business world is identified by core values such as integrity, respect, customer service and providing value, Vision of where you’re going and where you’ll be in the future is also a source of strength. Probably the biggest source of strength is self-esteem. Do you foster the core values, vision and self-esteem of each of your customers and employees so they can be better partners in the dance of business?

If you’d like to watch a real dance (not show stuff) with great connection, please click this link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TyqjMp2HNI

In the last business tip we talked about big hairy audacious goals (BHAG’s) a term coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book Built to Last and discussed again in Jim’s book Good to Great. We mentioned that it’s management’s job to help individual employees align their personal goals with the company’s goals. When personal BHAG’s dovetail into the company BHAG, amazing things happen. People love to work there. Productivity soars. Retention is no longer a problem. The company realizes economic gain and the customers benefit from the ease of doing business, great customer service and reduced cost (remember The Speed of Trust by Stephen H.R. Covey)

So how can managers help individual employees align their personal goals with the company’s goals? There are several answers to that question, but they all start with great communication. The manager has to really listen to each employee when s/he asks,

What matters most to you?

Some employees will answer ‘time with my kids’, or ‘establishing financial security’, ‘building my own business someday.’

BHAG’s change over time and vary as one’s motivation, life experiences and accomplishments change. A good manager is familiar with Maslow’s work. Abraham Maslow postulated that human needs fall into 5 categories. The first is Physiological. Once our needs for food, water, shelter, etc. are met, we look for Safety and Security (the second), hence, financial security and safety from terrorists or dangerous products in a modern world. Thirdly, our needs shift into Social Acceptance and being loved, having friends and family, and fitting into a peer group.  Then our focus starts going to the fourth level of need, Self Esteem, self-confidence, competence, independence, positive self-image. The last stage is called Self-Actualization, becoming the best you can be, becoming excellent at everything that makes you unique. BHAG’s at level five are not always visible by someone still at level 2 because they are not there yet. This is good for company managers and HR people to know as they try to inspire that BHAG dovetailing mentioned above.

A great manager treats everybody differently and respects where each person is along this continuum of personal needs. Here are a few examples: Some people need to make money because they’re living hand-to-mouth. (Level 1) or need benefits to extend their financial security.(Level 2) Others want time with their families and friends(Level 3). Others want empowerment with regular feedback but no micro-management. (Level 4) Others want to excel, achieve their best and make a difference in the world.(Level 5) And I think many people have elements of several needs at the same time, even though they may have a predominant need. Each manager will do a better job of inspiring and empowering his or her employees if s/he knows each employees’ BHAG’s, predominant needs and what motivates him or her. One size does not fit all. When an employee is treated like a unique individual and it is clear that his/her predominant needs and goals are understood by his/her manager, most personal goals dovetail with company goals effortlessly. With mutual respect and concern the manager is looking to give to the employee what s/he needs, and the employee then cares about his/her contribution to the company.

There are a number of factors that go into building a great company. This is one of the most basic because in a knowledge based society, the biggest asset of any company is its employees. Poor managers are the number one reason people leave their jobs. Managers who don’t demonstrate that they are concerned with their employees needs and  goals are creating huge costs for their companies in terms or turnover, retraining, rehiring, poor customer service, customer attrition, new customer acquisition costs, etc.

Do you have a big hairy audacious goal (BHAG)? This is a term coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book Built to Last and discussed again in Jim’s book Good to Great. For a company, a BHAG is its reason for being, what it does best in the world, gets passionate about and drives its economic engine. For a person it’s a life purpose that supersedes and directs one’s everyday actions. Inside every company there are many individuals all with their personal BHAG’s. It’s management’s job to help and inspire employees to dovetail their personal BHAG’s with the company BHAG. When this happens, there is very little employee turnover and a great deal of productivity.

In my work I ask people to define their Purpose in Life or BHAG. They mostly all have trouble with this question. In our time together my clients are going to accomplish many goals. Without a direction goal achievement is rather unfulfilling. It’s just busy work. Our culture is so activity based that we often ‘do’, but we don’t know why. People often answer that they want to become a better salesperson or a better CEO because they want their sales or business to grow. Then I play the 5 year old who continually asks ‘why?’ to dig deeper. To have more money. To have a sense of accomplishment and status. Why? Many answers revolve around financial stability for themselves or family. Some say ‘to pursue excellence’. Occasionally I hear to ‘to help clients and staff be the best they can be.’

Being clear with yourself about your own BHAG is important. It leads to focused and motivated behavior. Envisioning your purpose helps you excel and achieve. Robert Cooper in the book, Get Out of Your Own Way, talks about research done on the forebrain which lies just beneath your temples. Stimulating this part of the brain with BHAG visions mobilizes your inner resources to realign and energize your current actions to achieve the future you envision. Strengthening this brain activity is like strengthening a muscle. Focusing on your BHAG vision, repeatedly sets you in motion because of the reactions of other parts of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. There’s a lot more to this analysis than I can go into here. So check out his book. Here are two more inspirational ways to look at the power of a BHAG.

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations. Your consciousness expands in every direction. And you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”     — Patanjali

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? … And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

Last week we started understanding concepts from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. After analyzing companies that had met his criteria for explosive and sustained growth, he discovered that each had what he calls “Level 5 Executives”. While levels 1-4 include competent people, Level 5 Executives distinguish themselves by a “paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will.” They are “fanatically driven to produce sustained results”. They make hard decisions and do whatever it takes to make the company great. They are not ambitious for themselves. He believes that many people have the potential to develop into Level 5 Executives. Level 5 leaders got started on the quest for turning a good company into a great company by bringing on the right people first before developing a vision and strategic plans. They got the best people in the right positions (eliminating people who were not appropriate) and then worked on vision and strategy.