Monuments

Last week, I took my twin nieces to Mt. Rushmore.  (That’s us in the photo.)  I was awestruck by the powerful sight of four of our greatest presidents carved into a granite mountainside.  It got me thinking about monuments, their power, and their meaning in our culture.

Monuments are imbued with meaning by their creators.  Mt. Rushmore is a memorial to American history and instills hope and is meant to represent a basic belief in the decency of our country and its government.  But I believe Mt. Rushmore holds greater power than imagined by its artist because of the personal meaning for each individual who visits.  For me, the monument represents America’s values of freedom, liberty and opportunity.  I can only imagine what it might mean to others: hope, strength, truth, justice, happiness, or possibility.

In organizations, we create monuments imbued with meaning that is intended to send a message, represent shared values, or align with the company vision.  Sometimes the monuments are explicit, such as a sculpture of a company founder or a mural depicting major events in a company’s history.  Other times, monuments are subtle reminders of important beliefs, such as a plaque on which are listed the company’s core values.  More subtle still . . . a monument can be found in the form of company lore─a story told time and again.  The important thing to remember for leaders who erect monuments (or perpetuate a company’s oral history) is to make sure they are inspirational.  A monument endures when its meaning is universal and can stand the test of time.

·    So, what monuments exist in your company?
·    Do they inspire and appropriately represent your organization’s vision and values?
·    What do they mean to you and others?
·    How do they help your company progress and grow?

Lynae

Effective Communication

Research indicates that employees spend somewhere between 75% – 80% of their total time at work communicating in one way or another.  This isn’t surprising, since communication is so crucial to everything that goes on in an organization.  Communication is the “life blood” of an organization.

Without effective communication there can be little or no performance management, innovation, understanding of clients, understanding of mission, alerts to changes, coordination of effort, etc.

Research also indicates that many managers and employees do not communicate well, and do not set an organizational culture where communication within the organization is managed effectively.

Poor communication is self-sustaining, because it eliminates an important “feedback loop”.  Employees are reluctant to “communicate” their concerns about communication because they do not perceive the manager as receptive.  Both staff and management play out a little dance.

Effective organizational communication, regardless of form, requires three things.

1.    All players must have the appropriate skills and understanding to communicate well.

2.    Effective organizational communication requires a culture that supports effective communication.  This involves trust, openness, reinforcement of good communication practices, and shared responsibility for making communication effective.

3.    Effective communication requires attention.  It doesn’t just happen, but develops as a result of an intentional effort on the part of management and staff.  Too often, communication, whether it is good or bad, is taken for granted.

You play a critical role in fostering and nurturing a culture that is characterized by open communication.  Without this culture, all the best laid plans, resources and skills in the organization will be wasted. We must bring communication to the forefront of our organization and give it attention.  If you make the effort to improve communication, your employees will recognize that it is important.  If you ignore it, so will your employees.

“True interactivity is not about clicking on icons or downloading files, it’s about encouraging communication.” Edwin Schlossberg

With Respect,

Georgine

Engage Play Laugh

This weekend marked the opening of the new movie, Eat Pray Love, based on the book by Elizabeth Gilbert.  While decidedly a “chick flick”, the movie’s message is universal: finding the meaning of life.  Well, this blog is not about the meaning of life – although it is certainly a worthy topic.  Rather, I wanted to pay homage to the title and devised Engage Play Laugh as an inspiration to leaders for creating positive energy in the workplace.

Engage.  We’ve written before on the topic of employee engagement and there is more evidence than ever that when employees are engaged at work, profits and productivity rise.  So, what can leaders do to engage employees?  Here are some ideas:

• Make sure employees have the tools they need to succeed. This includes procedures, equipment and training.
• Provide clear expectations through goals and performance standards.
• Recognize employees for their performance frequently.  Don’t wait until the annual review to let them know how things are going.
• Encourage innovation and creativity.  When you provide encouragement to “color outside the lines”, employees are more likely to create new solutions the old problems.
• Ask for their opinions and ideas.  Involve them in projects and strategic planning to give them a sense of ownership.
• Identify development and advancement opportunities and make sure they have the support needed to reach new performance heights.

Play.  Playfulness in the workplace can be a very productive activity.  In his recently published book, Delivering Happiness, the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh talks at length about one of their core values:  Create Fun and a Little Weirdness.  Now, for those of you who have never heard of Zappos, it’s one of the most successful online companies in U.S. history (right up there with Amazon, which bought Zappos last year.)  Zappos grew to a billion dollar company in 10 years because they focused on building a vibrant and customer focused culture.  Fun and weirdness are an important part of their culture.  Hsieh makes the case that encouraging fun and weirdness “encourages people to think outside the box and be more innovative.”  So, ask yourself these questions:

• What can you do to be a little more playful and differentiate yourselves from the competition?
• How much fun do you have on the job and what can you do to increase the fun factor?
• What can you do to make your job (and the jobs of others) more fun?

Laugh.  Surely this is an extension of creating playfulness, and perhaps a little weirdness, in the workplace.  Laughter breaks down walls, reduces tension, and lightens up the energy in a room.  But, you don’t have to have weirdness to have laughter.  There’s a little too much seriousness in the world today.  We probably could all use a big belly laugh.  What’s your leadership style like?  Do you tend to take things seriously?  Are you able to laugh at yourself and your mistakes?  If you walk down the hall and hear people laughing, do you join in or does the laughter taper off when you appear?  Think about the energy you create at work and consider “lightening things up” a bit.

Decide to incorporate a little more playfulness and laughter into the workplace and see if you don’t get a lot more engagement from the team.

Lynae

Make Respect a Habit

“Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.

Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors.

Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits.

Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.

Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”  -Gandhi

I have always loved this quote from Gandhi and ran across it just the other day. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it over the years, it still causes me to pause and affirm to live each day at my best.

The part of this quote that I am most focused on today is the part about habits. In our work with leadership development we know that people are creatures of habit.  Habits serve us well because once we have a habit engrained we become very efficient. We don’t have to exert much intellectual energy to accomplish tasks. Did you know that brain researchers estimate that out of every 11,000 signals we receive from our senses, our brain consciously processes only 40? This shows how often we operate on “auto pilot” as we go about our work and personal lives.

Habits, our automatic responses, can be bad or good. One bad habit I have worked on is interrupting people before they have finished talking. This behavior is not respectful. Even though I have never interrupted someone with the conscious intension to be disrespectful, this behavior doesn’t match my values and so I risk being perceived as not honoring what others have to say. I am committed to practicing good habits in listening because they align with my values and create the perceptions that I want others to have of me.

Og Mandino, author of The Greatest Salesman in the World, gives the advice to “make yourself a slave to good habits”.  Here are three simple tips to develop a good habit.

1.    Start simple.
Choose one behavior that you want to make habitual. Write it down on a piece of paper as an affirmation and post it somewhere that you will see each day. Visualize yourself behaving that way in a number of different situations.

2.    Commit for 21 days.
Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. Consistency is also important during this conditioning phase so commit to doing your new behavior every day for 21 days.

3.    Celebrate outcomes.
Notice what the results are when you practice your behavior. If your behavior is a personal health related one, notice how you feel.  Good habits in self care result in higher levels of self respect. If your behavior is interpersonal, notice the results your behavior has on others.  Consider sharing your commitment with a friend or co-worker and ask him/her to give you feedback as he/she observes your behavior.

Warm Regards,
Georgine

Getting What You Want

Over the weekend of July 15th, Georgine and I attended the International eWomenNetwork Conference in Dallas.  Among several great speakers was the incomparable and much beloved Zig Ziglar.  In spite of being 85 and having suffered some minor short term memory loss as a result of a fall in his home more than 3 years ago, he is still traveling the world spreading his message of inspiration and motivation.  With the help of his daughter (who interviews him and helps him remember things), he shared stories about his childhood, his long-term marriage, and the importance of family – something he refers to as the “home court advantage.”  His talk was heartwarming and poignant.

Of all the things he said, one thing had the greatest impact on me.  He said, “You can have anything you want if you help others get what they want.”  This idea is central to respect because it’s about doing for others, honoring the needs of others, and recognizing that there may be others who require support more immediately than you do.  Now, I admit . . . this can be hard at times.  I speak from experience when I say that sometimes when I’m in need, I’m convinced that it is indeed the most important thing happening.  It takes self-awareness and humility to recognize and internalize that the world doesn’t revolve solely around me (or you).

When Madd-Steiny works with clients to manage change, we encourage small acts of getting what you want through helping others get what they want.  This is especially important during times of change because just about everyone is dealing with some sense of loss or struggling through transition.  Everyone needs something.  So, by helping others, there is an energy shift that takes place and the result is more space for solutions.  Sometimes, by focusing on the needs of others, we learn that our needs are not as significant as we initially thought – we might even let go of something because it’s clear that it doesn’t matter as much as someone else’s need.  Here are some things you can do to get more of what you want, during times of change or any time:

·    Every day, ask at least one person: “How can I support you today?”
·    Offer to take something off a co-worker’s plate.
·    Take on some extra assignments to reduce someone else’s workload.
·    Listen with compassion (and without talking) when a colleague needs to “let off some steam.”
·    Recognize the successes of your teammates loudly and proudly.

When I’ve taken the time to extend a hand to help others, it has always helped me get what I want.  I hope the same is true for you.

Lynae

No Gossip Zone

We heard from one of our clients the other day who was quite excited about something.  He wanted to implement a “no gossip zone” within his organization.  His enthusiasm resulted from a book that he read by Sam Chapman – The No-Gossip Zone.

Needless to say, he got my attention!

From our experience, nothing can sink a team faster than the disrespectful communication of gossip, zingers, and whining!  We define these practices as:

Gossip is going behind someone’s back and saying something about him/her that you wouldn’t want him/her to know you said.

Zingers are quick-witted jokes made at someone else’s expense. It is a way of criticizing others under the cover of a joke.

Whining is repeated complaining and venting of frustrations without any attention given to potential solutions.

Perhaps we’ve all gossiped, zinged or whined from time to time, and maybe we’ve been a victim of one or more as well.

So, how can we do away with these destructive behaviors and create a work environment of acceptance, fun, and empowerment that is focused on authentic and respectful communication?  Here are three action items to get you started:

1. Start with you. Be the change. Remove gossip, zingers and whining from your communication repertoire. Think of it as a cleansing process. No longer participate in conversations about others who are not present. Articulate your new commitment to your co-workers. It’s likely they will respect you for it.
2. Open a dialogue with team members about the destructive communication of gossip, zingers and whining. Call out each individual’s responsibility to communicate authentically and respectfully. Check out how Madd-Steiny can help you teach skills that give employees alternative behaviors to gossip, zingers and whining.
3. Establish clear performance expectations that define the behaviors of authentic and respectful communication. Address and deal with the destructive communication behaviors of gossip, zingers and whining as a performance issue. Coach employees to higher levels of performance and support their development to grow and improve.

Most sincerely,

Georgine

What Drives Performance?

I’m reading Daniel Pink’s newest book Drive.  The premise of his book is that the traditional “carrot and stick” approach to motivation doesn’t work over the long term.  He presents some compelling evidence to make the point and argues that it’s time for organizations to upgrade their motivation systems.  Specifically, he says that motivation systems need to move away from a focus on the extrinsic (rewards) to fueling people’s intrinsic desires – the inherent satisfaction with a particular activity.  I am intrigued by this idea because it speaks to the notion of employee engagement which is a topic that we at Madd-Steiny Productions are wild about.

When an employee is engaged, their “whole person” is involved in something – body, mind, heart and spirit.  Pink’s argument suggests that the traditional motivation systems speak only to extrinsic values which often only connect to actions and outcomes.  In other words, extrinsic motivation generally only appeals to what a person does with his body and mind.  For example: “Produce 100 widgets, and you get 100 dollars.”  Or, “Come up with 10 good ideas and you’ll get a day off.”  Now, for some folks, this is enough.  In other words, their main motivator is external rewards and any deeper satisfaction is secondary.  But for others, the main motivator is something that speaks to values of freedom, challenge, purpose and meaning.  This is what Pink suggests is missing from the traditional motivation systems.

In the book, Pink states: “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”  To intrinsically motivate people, you have to create space for three elements of motivation to take root: autonomy, mastery and purpose.  Let’s start with autonomy.  Pink is convinced that people are naturally curious and self-directed.  So, when given autonomy people produce greater results.  (There’s loads of science to prove this, and Pink includes a lot of it in the book.)  Then, there’s mastery – the desire to get better and better at something that matters to us.  Unlike autonomy that happens in the moment, mastery takes place over time.  So, it’s an organizational responsibility to provide the tools for people to create satisfaction by becoming really good at something.  Finally, there is purpose.  Purpose provides context and people who are primarily intrinsically motivated want to know that there is a purpose greater than themselves of which they can be a part.

There is a lot in the book and this is only the tip of the iceberg.  But, I am really excited about what I’m discovering and wanted to share some of my learning.  And, some of my early thoughts about motivation systems are as follows:

• One size does not fit all. There are different types of people with different motivations – both extrinsic and intrinsic.
• Motivation systems don’t actually have to be “systems”. Rather, they can simply by inherent elements of organizational culture that create space for people to be autonomous, develop mastery of skills, and hitch themselves to a purpose that gives meaning to their daily activities.
• It is possible to do something new and achieve even greater results. We have to let go of old ideas that are producing average results and be willing to explore alternatives to help us achieve extraordinary results.

There’s much more on this topic that I will write about in future blog posts.  Let us know if you have thoughts about motivation that you’d like to share.  And, I encourage you to pick up Dan’s book.

Lynae

Respect and Teamwork

Recently, I facilitated a teambuilding session with a marketing team from a leading company in the pet products industry.  The day was exhilarating and rewarding.  I’m continually inspired by teams who are committed to creating deeper connections with each other and improve their overall performance.  One of the things we did together was select a set of values for the team that will guide their actions and attitudes going forward, and help them to achieve their organizational vision.  One of the values they selected, and a theme that surfaced over and over again throughout the day, was respect.

Respect for this team is paramount to their long term success.  And, for any team, respect serves as a foundation for more effective collaboration, innovation and problem solving.  Why?  Because when there is respect on a team, there is room for different perspectives and new ideas.  Respect creates space for passionate dialog around varied philosophies and a diversity of opinion that can lead to rich and complex solutions to everyday problems. When I asked the team to define what respect would look like on their team, they answered simply:

·    Listening to each other without judgment.
·    Making sure everyone has a voice.
·    Thanking each other for a job well done.
·    Sharing resources.
·    Treating everyone as equals.

Take some time this week and talk with your teammates about respect on your team.  It’s simple, and can make a huge difference.

Respectfully,

Lynae

Work-Life Balance

I’ve talked with three people already this week who brought up their desire to figure out a better work-life balance. With the current shifts in the economy and marketplace, I encounter many people with desires for a better balance in their lives that seem to stem from too much work to not enough work.

Work-life balance is different for each of us because we all have different priorities and different lives.  For me, work-life balance is the ability to split my time and energy between work and the other important aspects of my life – like time for family, friends, community participation, spirituality, personal growth, self care, and my hobbies – in a way that creates a feeling of satisfaction. This can be challenging as the projects in my work and personal life ebb and flow.  Certain times bring situations that require extra time and attention.

There are two sides of the work-life balance coin.

On one side is the personal choices and decision that individuals make.  Here is a simple process that will help you guide your choices and decisions.

1. If your life could focus on one thing and one thing only, what would that be? If you could add a 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th thing, what would they be? If you answer thoughtfully and honestly, the result will be a list of your top five priorities.
2. Drop unnecessary activities. After making your priority list, you may discover you’re devoting too much time to activities that aren’t a priority, and you can adjust your schedule accordingly.
3. Protect your private time. Your private time deserves some respect. Carve out hours that contribute to yourself and your relationship. Stop checking email and cell phones so often and use time to nurture relationships and renew yourself.

On the other side of the coin is a corporate culture that institutes policies, procedures, actions, and expectations that enable employees to easily pursue more balanced lives.  Here are some organizational practices that we have found instrumental to organizational cultures that support work-life balance.

1. A flexible policy on work arrangements. Organizations that offer work schedule options that give employees the flexibility to accommodate their personal and family needs, whether it’s child care, unexpected family emergencies, doctor appointments, personal time for school events, increase their ability to attract, retain and motivate a high performing work team.
2. Employee Assistance Program. EAPs promote wellness and offer employees confidential, short term, counseling services for personal problems that affect their work performance.
3. Management commitment and communication. Mangers who are sensitive to their employees’ personal needs promote a joint responsibility to communicate with one another on work-life balance issues in an open and trusting environment. This concept of shared responsibility becomes a win-win by valuing both business success and personal fulfillment.

With Respect,
Georgine

Reflections on Trust

This week I’ve been thinking about trust; the influence it has on relationships, the impact it has on our work, and the process that creates it.  I have seen evidence in many organizational cultures that trust can easily erode during challenging or changing times.

As I reflect back on the employee groups that we have worked with to build a respectful workplace, the common experience I’ve had with all groups is that everyone recognizes the power of trust and wants to build trusting relationships with more people at work.

Our experience with employees is that it’s pretty easy to identify what a trusting relationship looks like.  All we have to do is think about one that we have in our lives.  The characteristics that are identified are always the same.

• You feel you can depend on them no matter what the situation – they “have your back”
• You can talk about anything and information flows freely – even constructive feedback because you believe they care and have the best intentions
• Listening to each other is a common practice
• Confidentiality is honored
• You are able to work out disagreements – these relationships endure conflict and differences are honored
• Trust gets built over time. It’s a process.

The real challenge for most of us is how to regain trust that has been lost or diminished and act on it.

Here is some great advice that one employee group offered as they worked to answer the question: What can I do to help regain or rebuild trust in a relationship where it’s been lost or diminished?

• Approach the other person and request a time to talk
• State your intentions – i.e. you want a stronger, healthier relationship
• Stay mindful of your own behavior and manage your emotions, staying true to your intent
• Be honest, share your perceptions (using “I” statements) and request what you want/need
• Ask the other person for their perspective and what they would request
• Restate what you heard and commit to what you can and will do to build a more trusting relationship
• Forgive the past, start fresh in the present and create a better future relationship
• Persevere – trust is a process that develops over time

Best wishes,

Georgine