Leadership Fundamentals

How’s your day-to-day work experience? You spend at least a third of your day there. Most days, do you drag yourself to work or are you anxious to get to your desk and start on your projects? What’s your average day like — a chore or an opportunity to do well again today? Do you feel appreciated by your direct report? How about your team — is it a good one? Do you appreciate them? How are your relationships with co-workers and associates? In short, what is your overall feeling about your work environment?

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I have just received a new book in the mail, which should be an interesting reading experience, since it brings together 2 of my particular interests – poetry and leadership/management. The book is titled The Heart Aroused : Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate Americaand is by a poet whose name is David Whyte. He writes in the opening chapter:

The Heart Aroused is written for those who have chosen to live out their lives as managers and employees of post-modern corporate America, and who struggle to keep their humanity in the process.

Such an intriguing explanation of what this book intends to examine is making it difficult for me not to plunge right in and begin yet another book [I'm already in the middle of two]. Of course one of them is a silly mystery which it would be very easy for me to forget about, but the other one is one to which I should give my undivided attention. More about that book in some future post.

In the meantime, without meaning to, my eyes have drifted to the top of the next page, where Whyte writes:

The split between what is nourishing at work and what is agonizing is the very chasm from which our personal destiny emerges. By accepting the presence of this chasm we can begin to deal, one step at a time, with the continually hidden, underground forces that shape our lives, often against our will.

I can hardly wait to see what the rest of this book has in store for me.

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Part 1: Employee Engagement Research

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently
is based on 2 Gallup Research Studies taken over the last 25 years. – the largest study of its kind ever undertaken. The first one zeroed in on Employee satisfaction and productivity, and asked “What Do the Most Talented Employees Need from their Workplace?” The answer was that talented employees needed great managers. Gallup recorded interviews with over 80,000 managers at different management levels, with different styles of managing, and a million employees, to find out the core attributes of great managers and employee performance.

Their findings regarding employee engagement are intriguing. One conclusion is that key employees do not fit a mold. You should not, and cannot, try to make them all behave the same. They bring their own core values and behaviors to the workplace, and each one contributes their own perspective and way of doing things. They may react differently to the same treatment. Thus, if you do not see them as individuals, with inclinations and behaviors formed by their unique selves, you may lose the best part of each of them.

If organizations view employee satisfaction as not being critical to the company’s success, consider these eye-opening facts stated by Gallup:

“Actively disengaged employees erode an organization’s bottom line while breaking the spirits of colleagues in the process. Within the U.S. workforce, Gallup estimates this cost to be more than $300 billion in lost productivity alone. In stark contrast, world-class organizations with an engagement ratio near 8:1 have built a sustainable model using our approach. As organizations move toward this benchmark, they greatly reduce the negative impact of actively disengaged employees while unleashing the organization’s potential for rapid growth.”

“Through rigorous research, we have identified 12 core elements – the Q12 — that link powerfully to key business outcomes. These 12 statements emerged as those that best predict employee and workgroup performance.”

In deference to the Gallup Organization, I won’t lay out those 12 elements here, but I provide a link from Gallup for you to uncover them yourself.

Employee Engagement Overview

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll discuss Gallup’s research into great management.

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There is something extraordinary about creatives. They want to share their knowledge [which may have taken a very long time to acquire]. They can’t help themselves. I’ve been pondering this for years, trying to figure out why this is so. Since I feel the same way myself, I’ll try to explain it.

There is a certain type of person who loves knowledge for itself — not for where it can get them — and they cannot resist sharing that information with other people. They actually take a delight in giving it out freely. It makes them almost giddy.

Life can be frustrating at times for these kinds of people. They get distracted. They go off in directions they hadn’t even thought about. They pick up a piece of information, which leads to a question, which leads to more investigating, which leads to other questions — you get the picture. Yet, they digest each morsel with gusto, and continue looking for more. Along the way, they pass along what they’ve come across — because they can’t help themselves. They get excited, caught up in the joy of discovering.

They could hoard the information, making it theirs exclusively — that is, unless someone else wanted to spend hours or even days seeking the same data. It’s impossible for them to do that, though.

I wish there were a name or a classification for these people. Why? Because if you can find one, you have truly uncovered a treasure for your company. I’ve been lucky enough to have known and worked with a few. I am truly thankful for that.

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Do you ever think to give a cheer for hard work, outstanding effort, or creative ideas? I once asked my manager to tell me if I was doing a good job or not. The reply was that as long as I wasn’t told I was doing a bad job, I could assume I was doing just fine. Not a good response, when you consider we all need positive reinforcement from time to time. Some managers believe that when all is going fine, no commentary is necessary. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Nobody wants to feel they are just another body, unnoticed until a misstep happens.

If you want to do even better, take your employee or your team out to lunch occasionally. When someone makes an extraordinary effort, get them a gift card, or give them a day off, or even a couple of hours for lunch. These are all easy enough to do, and they are gestures which will never be forgotten.

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Well, it’s not that difficult if you remember that most people want to do a good job. Not all, but most. In order to do that, you have to give them the right tools. That means a good space to work in, an understanding of their job requirements, and an atmosphere that is conducive to creativity and job satisfaction. This has nothing to do with fancy office furniture. This is a space where they have room for the items they need, the quiet they need for solving problems, the interaction with others to solve issues and brainstorm.

This blog is about improving the performance and satisfaction of your team. It will visit some issues I have experienced that deplete the energy and enthusiasm of a team. It will talk about communication, respect and trust, and the makings of a great place to work. As it moves on, it will portray some of the best and the worst practices of management. Companies fail when the corporate environment is unhealthy. I want to explore that and the improvements that can be made to create a vital and creative environment.