Tag Archives: employee motivation

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Attention is Oxygen for Relationships

It’s been said that attention is oxygen for relationships.  That’s why it’s important when meeting with an individual, to develop the habit of being present by staying focused on him or her and giving your full attention.  Be engaged and curious by asking questions and then ask follow-up questions to clarify.  Listen carefully to words and observe facial expressions and body cues. Pause before you respond to make certain he or she has finished. Don’t check your smart phone, don’t look at your watch, don’t look around the room or let your mind wander.  Develop the habit of being present during conversations and you will soon see how it improves your relationships and influence.

Update: Engagement Strategies Magazine just featured an article we wrote entitled “Do Leaders Need to Make Employees Happy?”  This week I had the pleasure of giving a keynote speech on employee engagement at the Recognition Professionals Association’s annual conference in New Orleans.  Later this month I’ll be speaking on inclusion and innovation at the Dallas Convention Center as part of the American Society for Training and Development’s International Exposition and Conference. We will also be exhibiting at ASTD so if you’re attending, please come visit us.

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Your Leadership is Killing Me!

Why do people react so strongly when they don’t have a voice in decision-making? Research suggests there is a rational biological basis for this reaction.  It comes down to this: feeling that we have little or no control is detrimental to our health.

The famous Whitehall studies in the U.K. established that there was an inverse relationship between level of hierarchy, power, control, status and cardiorespiratory disease/mortality rates in members of the British Civil Service.  More recently, a group of researchers found that participants in a Harvard Business School program for leaders had lower stress (as measured by cortisol levels and self-reported anxiety levels) versus people in the local community who didn’t manage others.  The researchers also found that leaders with more powerful positions had even lower cortisol and self-reported anxiety.  Here is a link to the published research and to a New York Times article about it entitled “It’s Easy Being King.” 

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Leader, Beware of Failing to Give People a Voice

John Sexton, the president of New York University, is been aggressively expanding NYU at home and abroad.  Now the faculty of NYU’s largest school, Arts and Sciences, have scheduled a no-confidence vote on Sexton.  An article in yesterday’s New York Times entitled “A Test of Leadership at NYU,” described the no-confidence vote as coming about because dissident faculty felt Sexton was acting like a maverick CEO.  How did this happen?  It appears that Sexton’s mistake was failing to give faculty a voice in major decision-making and failing to address their legitimate concerns such as increased teaching loads that require travel abroad and the impact of the expansion on student-teacher ratios. “Voice” is one of the three elements in a Connection Culture (the others are Vision and Value).  When a leader fails to give people a voice in decisions that affect them, he or she runs the risk that some people will organize and seek to have the leader replaced.  This article describes that scenario.  Note in the article that one astute observer comments: “had more faculty been involved in the process…few if any professors [would be actively opposing Sexton].”

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Feel Lonely and Left Out at Work?

Recently, I’ve sensed more people feel lonely and left out at work.  With years of layoffs, those who remain carry greater workloads.  This crowds out time to connect with colleagues.  Managers are also stretched and have less time to connect with the people they are responsible for leading.  When I ask people at the seminars I teach which element of a Connection Culture — Vision, Value or Voice — they would like to increase in their workplace culture, it’s nearly always Voice.   One result of this is that there has been a decline of connection, community and the spirit of unity in organizations.

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Life-Giving Cultures in Health Care Organizations

You can’t give what you don’t have. That’s why cultures in health care organizations need to be life-giving in order to energize health care workers who give so much of themselves to their patients. This is an important issue today.  In some health care-related fields, as many as one-third of employees leave their jobs each year. What can be done?  To learn more, read the article I wrote for the Fall 2012 Addiction and Behavioral Health Business Journal entitled, “Connection Culture: Creating a Life-Giving Environment in Health Care Organizations.”

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Wisdom in Seeking and Considering Opinions of Others

Seeking and considering the opinions and ideas of others reflects the character strengths of wisdom and humility. Today’s world is complex and rapidly changing so that we need to hear the perspectives of people who have had different experiences and who possess different thinking styles.  Doing so helps improve the likelihood we will make optimal decisions. 

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Is Too Much Stress Damaging Your Chromosomes?

Too much stress, including stress in your workplace, damages “telomeres” on the ends of your chromosomes and causes rapid aging.  Interestingly, when people connect in supportive relationships it triggers the production of enzymes called “telomerase” that heal damaged telomeres.  Check out this outstanding 58 minute National Geographic documentary entitled “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” about this and other research on the effects of stress. It includes an excellent segment on the famous Whitehall research studies in the UK that established stress and mortality were inversely related to hierarchy in organizations.

Update: I recently returned from speaking, teaching and meeting with leaders of organizations in business, higher education and government in Houston, Fort Worth, Texas and Erie, Pennsylvania.   ASTD’s The Public Manager recently published a version of a case study I wrote about CNO Admiral Vern Clark’s improving the U.S. Navy’s culture.  The article is entitled “Great Leaders Connect with the People They Lead.”

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In a Crisis, Culture Matters: the Navy on 9/11

Within hours after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, destroyers and cruisers were in place to protect America’s shores. Naval leaders anticipated what had to be done and took action before they received orders. At the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., planning for America’s response began while fires from the attack still smoldered nearby.

The rapid response of the U.S. Navy on September 11 was in part due to the culture led by Admiral Vern Clark who served as the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) from 2000 until his retirement in 2005.  The CNO is the principal naval adviser to the President and the Secretary of Defense on the conduct of war.  The Navy achieved some impressive gains during Clark’s tenure as CNO and the naval leaders I’ve met or spoken with have praised his leadership and positive impact.  By the time Clark retired as the second longest serving CNO in U.S. Navy history, he had led changes that would have a positive effect on the U.S. Navy for years to come.  Learn about Admiral Clark’s leadership of the U.S. Navy in an article I wrote for Leadership Excellence that you can read at this link. 

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NYTimes: Why Coach K “Coaches Like a Girl”

Recently I was delighted to read a great USA Today article about Coach K of Duke leading the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team in the Olympics.  Coach K has won four NCAA college basketball titles as the head coach of Duke, a gold medal as an assistant coach of the 1992 Dream Team in Barcelona and a gold medal as head coach of the U.S. mens team in the 1998 olympics in Beijing.  He’s a servant leader who creates the “Connection Culture” where his players feel connected to him and to one another, a phenomenon we wrote about in Fired Up or Burned Out.  Coach K cares about task excellence and relationship excellence.  He cares about people and results.

To learn more about Coach K’s leadership style and the surprising story of how he evolved as a leader check out this fascinating New York Times Magazine  article entitled “Follow Me.”   In it you’ll learn why this extraordinary leader, a guy’s guy from an all boys Catholic high school, West Point and the U.S. Army, coaches, as the author Mike Sokolove says, “like a girl.”

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Courage, Connection and the Flow of Ideas

“Little of consequence is ever done alone.”

– David McCullough

Last week my wife and I went to see the historian David McCullough speak about his new book The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris.  I’ve seen David McCullough speak twice before and always found his talks to be thoughtful and inspiring.

On this occasion, McCullough spoke on the courage of Americans who went to France between 1830 and 1900 because they were “in love with learning and advancing their abilities.” They made the difficult trip across the Atlantic that lasted anywhere from one to three months.  They remained there despite language differences and outbreaks of disease such as cholera.  Upon their return, they applied knowledge acquired in France to improve America.  Greater competence in their chosen fields was not all they gained.  Their character had changed as well.  Exposure to new people, new ideas, exquisite art and architecture, broadened their perspective, lifted their spirits and inspired them to make a difference.

The stories McCullough told were marvelous.  His enthusiasm was contagious as he recounted the tales of Harriett Beecher Stowe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emma Willard and others.  James Fenimore Cooper, while writing in Paris, visited the Louvre every afternoon to speak words of encouragement that would help his friend, Samuel F.B. Morse, persevere in painting the masterpiece Gallery of the Louvre.  It was in France that Morse learned something that gave him the idea for the telegraph.  Charles Sumner, while studying at the Sorbonne, came to know black students who were his equal in their aspirations and intelligence.  He returned to America to become an influential voice for abolition despite threats against his life.  The flow of ideas and knowledge, reflected in these personal accounts, is something I’ve written about in Fired Up or Burned Out and in the article “Encouraging Knowledge Flow” that appeared in Perdido.

This summer I’ll be reading The Greater Journey and another of McCullough’s books, The Great Bridge.  If you’ve not already picked up books for summer reading, I encourage you to check out these titles.  I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend Brave Companions, John Adams and Mornings on Horseback, also by David McCullough.

Update

In early May I spoke at the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) International Conference and Exposition in Denver on the topic “Do Leaders Need to Make Employees Happy?”.