Tag Archives: employee retention

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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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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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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?”.

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Best Practice: Stories to Encourage Good, Avoid Evil






In the workshops we teach, we use stories of great leaders in business, government, the social sector and sports who inspired people to do what’s right.  This is a best practice to strengthen the positive effects of an organization’s identity (i.e. mission, values and reputation).

Check out this outstanding TED video of Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo speaking on the topic of how culture encourages or discourages evil.  In the video, he recommends heroic stories that encourage people to do what’s right and shares a couple inspiring stories of his own.

What heroic stories have inspired you?  Please share below or feel free to email me at mstallard@epluribuspartners.com.  I’m going to write about some of my favorite stories in a forthcoming series of posts.

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Steve Jobs’ Announcement: Reminder of Need to Make Cancer History

Steve Jobs


Apple’s announcement yesterday that Steve Jobs is stepping down as its CEO, is a poignant reminder of just how important it is to make cancer history. I learned of Jobs’ announcement yesterday while in Houston to share our work with leaders at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The combination of learning the news about Jobs and being at M.D. Anderson triggered a some emotions. I’ve followed Jobs closely over the years and written about him.  I’ve also written about the challenges facing cancer patients and their families from my wife Katie’s battles with breast cancer in 2003 and advanced ovarian cancer in 2004 (today, Kate is cancer free).

MD Anderson LogoBeing at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was inspiring and humbling. MDACC is the top-rated cancer center according to U.S. News and World Report. The people there think of themselves first and foremost as healers. Being with people who serve a cause greater than themselves always moves me.  Yes, they have to keep an eye on econonomic matters, too, in order to make their work sustainable, but money is not what motivates them.  This is an important distinction that makes a difference to affordable delivery of healthcare, as Atul Gawande noted in an excellent New Yorker article he wrote entitled “The Cost Conundrum.”

During our presentations at M.D. Anderson, we shared  the research and ideas in our book, Fired Up or Burned Out. We firmly believe that creating a culture that is intentional about developing both task excellence and relationship excellence is the only way organizations can achieve sustainable superior performance.  In the context of healthcare, research is showing that culture and relationships affect patient outcomes.  A recent article that appeared in the  Annuls of Internal Medicine, entitled “What Distinguishes Top-Performing Hospitals in Acute Myocardial Infarction Mortality Rates? A Qualitative Study,” supports our view.

Hospital cultures should be life-giving but the irony is that most are not.  We are human beings, not machines, and recent research shows that workplace cultures that are hostile or indifferent to human needs shave years off our lives.   We hope that more hospitals will get this important message and do something about it, like our friends at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center are doing in their pursuit to make cancer history.

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In Search of Happiness

Happiness is much sought after these days. Book stores and magazine stands are full of titles that promise to unlock the secrets of happiness.  Positive psychology courses are all the rage on college campuses across America. Recognizing that happiness gets attention, I recently decided to title a chapter I’m writing “Should Leaders Care About Employee Happiness?” The chapter will be included in the American Society for Training and Development’s new Handbook of Management.

In my view, the primary reason happiness is on the decline in America and in many market democracies around the world is that we’ve become “achieve-aholics” who, as a result of our achievement-seeking lifestyles, lack sufficient human connection.  Lacking connection, we eventually dysfunction. As achieve-aholics move through adulthood, they feel a sense of boredom, emptiness and meaninglessness.  Many are mis-diagnosed as having depression when in fact they are just lonely (I wrote about this in an earlier post on the rise of loneliness in America). To feel better, achieve-aholics oftentimes seek illegitimate thrills (e.g. sexual affairs, pornography, extreme sports and extreme business risks) or they self-medicate to numb the pain, which leads to substance abuse. In my opinion, this is why America, with a mere five percent of the world’s population consumes half of the mood-altering pharmacological medications and two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs (a point that Joseph Califano, head of the National Center on Substance Abuse at Columbia University, made in a video interview on the Atlantic’s website).

The bottom line is that we are human beings, not machines.  As I consistently present on this blog, and all the science makes it abundantly clear, we need human connection to thrive.

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New Research: Friendly Workplace = Longer Life

During our speeches and workshops we conclude the section where we present research from a diverse fields of knowledge that makes the case for connection to thrive at work and in life by stating:

“connection = life” whereas “disconnection = death” (we point out that this applies to both individuals and organizations)

Now we have additional research about the effect of connection on individuals in the workplace to prove it.  A 20-year study by researchers at Tel Aviv University found that workers who reported working in cultures where they experienced positive social interactions and felt emotionally supported to the people they worked with were 2.4 times less likely to die over the next 20 years than those who reported they didn’t feel emotionally supported at work.   The New York Times recently included an article about it entitled “Friendly Workplace Linked to Longer Life.”  (You can purchase the published research findings on Psychnet at “Work-Based Predictors of Mortality: A 20-Year Follow-up of Healthy Employees.”)

This provides additional evidence that the “Connection Cultures” we described in Fired Up or Burned Out are essential for people and organizations to thrive for sustained periods of time.  Connection boosts hormones and neurotransmitters that make us feel more alive, more energetic, more confident, more creative and better problem solvers.  Furthermore, during periods of stress, connection reduces stress hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine.  This helps us cope with stress and anxiety so that we are more likely to make rational decisions rather than rash decisions when our emotions overwhelm us.

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Leaders Can Learn From College RAs

TCU Logo

Most leaders can learn an important lesson from the RAs at TCU who are creating a sense of community in the residence halls on campus.  You can read about it in this excellent article entitled “Culture of Caring.”  The article makes an important point that creating a sense of community requires intentionality. Daniel Terry, TCU’s director of Community Renewal, puts it this way:

“We’re trying to create whole people here at TCU. [TCU has always had an emphasis on personal attention and mentoring relationships.] We’re implementing Community Renewal at TCU because, like all communities, there needs to be some intentionality around relating to the people around you.  Where there is no intentionality, people tend to take relationships for granted.”

So true.

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Has SAS Institute’s Goodnight Cracked the Code on Corporate Culture?

sas_institute

Congratulations to SAS Institute for being recognized the second year in a row as #1 on Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Places to Work list. Last year I met with Jim Goodnight, SAS Institute’s founder and CEO, to learn more about his leadership and SAS Institute’s culture.  You can read the article I wrote at  The Economic Times‘ website or below.