Michael Lee Stallard

Much is happening at E Pluribus Partners these days. Presently we are:

• Working with a global advertising agency to create a custom employee engagement survey
• Teaching workshops on Connection Cultures at TCU and the forensic accounting firm Connolly, Inc.
• Teaching online training for Executive Development Partners
• Teaching a 4.5 hour online course for the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD)

In addition, we are pleased to announce that we have committed to writing our next book on Connection Cultures for ASTD Press. The book will be published in early 2015.

Expanding our relationship with ASTD is a great way for us to help more organizations develop healthy, high performance cultures. ASTD is the world’s largest association dedicated to the training and development profession with 120 chapters across the U.S. and members in more than 100 countries.

Stay tuned for more details about the book in the coming months.

#22 Hold In-Person Meetings and Regularly Check-In - Good relationships are maintained by staying in touch. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill understood this. Historians have found more than 1,700 letters, notes and telegrams Churchill wrote to his wife so that they would remain connected.

Take a page from Churchill’s playbook. With your direct reports, stay connected by meeting weekly with them in person, if at all possible. If you cannot meet weekly, use “check ins” – phone calls, emails, text messages – to help keep you connected. To stay connected with people who work remotely, regularly call or Skype them. Remote work can be lonely and people should feel you are on their team and want to help them achieve their potential. Besides work issues, inquire about how they are doing personally, too. There is much truth to the old saying that “people don’t care what you know until they know you care.”

This is the twenty-second post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.

#21 Know Their Stories – Take time to get to know the people you work with, especially your direct reports. Have coffee or a meal with them.  Ask questions to learn about their lives and what’s important to them.  Questions unrelated to work might include “what are your interests outside of work?”, “what do you like to do during your free time?” or “where did you grow up?”.  These questions typically open the door for you to ask follow-up questions. This will give you insights into how they are wired, including what they value at work and in their lives outside of work.  Research by psychologist James Pennebaker has shown that when you get people to talk, they feel more connected to you, they like you more and feel they learn more from you.

This is the twenty-first post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.

Many people look to Warren Buffett for investment guidance, and rightly so.  Buffett is widely recognized as an exceptional judge of corporate value. “The Oracle of Omaha,” as he is known, is arguably the most successful investor in history. Corporate leaders regularly make the trek to Omaha, Nebraska, seeking his wisdom.

With so much attention on Buffett’s investment acumen, it’s easy to overlook another talent: motivating people. It’s one of a host of reasons his investments tend to outperform the market.

The talented managers who run Buffett’s companies remain with him because he keeps them engaged in their jobs.  In Buffett’s own words, “Charlie [Charlie Munger, Buffett’s longtime business partner] and I mainly attend to capital allocation and the care and feeding of our key managers . . . Most of our managers are independently wealthy and it’s up to us to create a climate that encourages them to choose working with Berkshire over golfing or fishing.”

A closer look at Buffett shows, at least in part, how he does it. Read more »

#20 Stay Aligned with Core Values – Take your direct reports through the final core values you decided upon. Discuss which values are most important to your team’s success, which values your team is strong in, which values it needs to develop and what can be done to live them out. Follow up with a written summary of action items, responsibilities and due dates that come out of the meeting. Meet periodically to review and revise the action plan. Ask your direct reports to do the same with their direct reports.

Consider having your core values printed on a small card that can fit in a wallet. Each Ritz-Carlton employee receives a card with the organization’s core values (called “Ritz Basics”) printed on the front and back sides of the card. Teams meet briefly every day to review one of the 20 Ritz-Carlton values and each week one example of a Ritz-Carlton employee who lived out a value is shared with all Ritz-Carlton employees worldwide.

This is the twentieth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.

Jim Blasingame’s new book, The Age of the Customer: Prepare for the Moment of Relevance, provides a practical guide to help business leaders prepare for the shift from the age of the seller to the age of the customer. What makes this book stand out from others is the thoroughness with which Blasingame has thought through this shift and what businesses need to do to survive and thrive.

Blasingame is well positioned for this task. He is the host of the nationally syndicated “Small Business Advocate” radio program where he interviews a wide-variety of experts. (I’m a regular guest on the show as an expert on employee engagement.)

This is a book you will want to read with a pad of paper and pen handy to write down the ideas and actions you learn. The sheer breadth of topics Blasingame covers – branding, communications, globalization, marketing, organization culture, outsourcing, processes, quality, sales, social media, etc. – is impressive. He effectively connects the dots of what he’s learned from an army of experts, makes sense of it and explains it in clear, concise language.

I could not recommend this book more highly. For a business owner, it’s not one to be missed.

#19 Reflect Upon, Write Out and Communicate Your Core Values – Take time alone to reflect on the values you believe in and want to live out in your life. For inspiration, read Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz’s excellent book Pour Your Heart Into It and read the Montpelier Command Philosophy in Fired Up or Burned Out. Write out your core values in a manner that is similar to the Montpelier Command Philosophy, i.e name the value, explain what it means and why you believe it’s important. Ask trusted friends whom you respect to read your values and provide feedback about “what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s missing” from them. When you believe your draft is in good shape, share it with your direct reports and ask them to provide feedback about “what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s missing.” Consider the feedback, make the changes that you believe improve it and then circulate the final to your direct reports.

This is the nineteenth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.

It’s difficult for employees to be truly engaged if they don’t like or trust their bosses. Netsurvey’s data shows that 87% of employee “promoters” of their companies also give their direct supervisors high ratings. -  The Four Secrets to Employee Engagement, Harvard Business Review Blog

In most communities, January through April is the time of year when the girls in green are out in full force selling Girl Scout cookies. Can you imagine a world without Thin Mints^®, Tagalongs^® and Do-si-dos^®?  Sadly, they were once at risk.

There was a time in the mid-1970s when the Girl Scouts were struggling and their future looked uncertain.  Fortunately, Frances Hesselbein came to the rescue. Although she had no daughters, Mrs. Hesselbein had begun her association with the Girl Scouts when she agreed to help with a troop of 30 girls in Johnstown, Pennsylvania that had lost its leader. It wasn’t long before Hesselbein’s experience with Troop 17 developed into a lifelong commitment to Girl Scouting. In 1976 she became CEO of the national organization, Girl Scouts of the USA.

With membership falling, and the organization in a state of serious decline, Mrs. Hesselbein put sound management practices in place. During her twenty-four-year tenure, Girl Scout membership quadrupled to nearly three and a half million, diversity more than tripled, and the organization was transformed into what Peter Drucker described as “the best-managed organization around.” Hesselbein accomplished the amazing turnaround with a paid staff of 6,000 and 730,000 volunteers.

Here are three practices that helped Frances Hesselbein put the Girls Scouts on a track for success.

1. Create an “Inspiring Identity”

Hesselbein gave the Girl Scouts an inspiring identity by showing women how important it was to reach out to girls, given the threats they face such as drugs and teen pregnancy. She helped women to envision the Girl Scout organization as a professional, well-managed organization that carried out this important work.

2. Promote “Human Value”

Mrs. Hesselbein’s leadership style, in fact, it seems her purpose in life, is to bring out the best in the people she meets. She has a high regard for people that shows she values them. She has written that good leaders have an “appreciation of their colleagues individually and the dignity of the work their colleagues do.”

Hesselbein “walks the talk.” Her words and actions embody human value. On her watch, she built a conference center to train Girl Scout staff and invested in improving Girl Scout leaders’ people skills.  As a role model, she effectively increased human value in the Girl Scout culture and multiplied her actions as other leaders across the organization adopted her leadership style. She kept up with what was going on in the lives of the people around her and personally reached out to them when congratulations or consolation was in order.

3. Increase “Knowledge Flow”

Knowledge flow is key to innovation.  It creates a marketplace of ideas so that people are more likely to spot new opportunities to improve the organization. The energetic Hesselbein increased knowledge flow by approaching communication in an inclusive way, expanding information in ever-larger circles across the organization. Rather than lecturing, her style is to ask insightful questions to draw out relevant issues. In planning and allocating the Girl Scout organization’s resources, she introduced a circular management process that involved virtually everyone across the organization.

By the time Mrs. Hesselbein resigned from the Girl Scouts in 1990, the organization’s future was bright. Peter Drucker paid Frances Hesselbein the ultimate compliment by recruiting her to be the head of the Drucker Foundation (which was renamed the Leader to Leader Institute and more recently renamed the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute).  Through its activities, including publication of the award-winning Leader to Leader journal, the Institute is dedicated to carrying out the mutual passion that Peter Drucker and Frances Hesselbein shared for strengthening leadership in the social sector.

As you move from authority to influence in leading people, particularly in a volunteer organization, the challenge of inspiring employees increases. How can you employ the elements of inspiring identity, human value, and knowledge flow to increase your effectiveness?

#18 Replenish the Vision - Vision leaks, so look for ways to keep your organization and team’s mission, values and reputation in front of your team. Take employees out to visit customers or bring customers in to talk with employees about how they use your products or services and how it benefits them. Keep up with articles and press releases on your organization then circulate those that reinforce the mission, values and reputation.

This is the eighteenth post in our series entitled “100 Ways to Connect.” The series highlights language, attitudes and behaviors that help you connect with others. Although the language, attitudes and behaviors focus on application in the workplace, you will see that they also apply to your relationships at home and in the community.