Here is a video from YouTube of a conversation I had about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation with Dr. Homer Erekson, Dean of TCU’s Neeley School of Business. Our conversation occurred as part of the Tandy Executive Speakers Series.
Tag Archives: fired up or burned out
George Washington, Worthy of Praise?
Today is Presidents’ Day in the U.S., a day in which we primarily celebrate our first president, George Washington. After reading the article “George Washington’s Tear Jerker” in The New York Times, one might ask, was Washington really the great leader he has been made out to be? I asked myself that question during the summer of 2002 and began a journey to unpack truth from myth. I went as far as contacting and speaking with Edward Lengel, the foremost historian on Washington’s generalship. After doing my own research I wrote the following which became one of the chapters on 20 leaders in Fired Up or Burned Out.
First in Their Hearts
Richard Neustadt, Presidential Scholar at Harvard University, observed the following about George Washington: “It wasn’t his generalship that made him stand out . . . It was the way he attended to and stuck by his men. His soldiers knew that he respected and cared for them, and that he would share their severe hardships.”
Alter+Care: Happiness at Work Podcast
Jason Pankau and I recently recorded a podcast interview on happiness at work for Alter+Care, the healthcare real estate company. You can hear the podcast at this link.
Leaders Can Learn From College RAs
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.
It’s More Than Business. It’s Personal.
This week I participated in an interview about Connection Cultures, productivity and innovation with Dean Homer Erekson at a business breakfast sponsored by TCU’s Neeley Business School in Fort Worth, Texas. (Read the Fort Worth Business Press article about the event entitled “Speaker Promotes Emotional Connection for Business“).
The motto of the Neeley School is “It’s More Than Business. It’s Personal.” This phrase expresses what we found in research that’s described in our book Fired Up or Burned Out, i.e. sustainable superior performance requires achieving task excellence (the “business” part) and relationship excellence (the “personal” part). In addition to speaking at the business breakfast I spoke to students in leadership programs and met with Neeley MBA students.
From all I observed, the Neeley Business School delivers its brand promise. It hires teacher-scholars who spend time with and mentor students. In addition, the Neeley School has first class facilities and diverse, energetic, enthusiastic and collaborative students. It’s a powerful mix that has propelled Neeley to be ranked as the #30 B-School in American and an entrepreneurship program that’s ranked #1. Neeley is on the move and I expect that it will continue to grow in national reputation and popularity with the best prospective business school students.
Personal Connections are the New Currency
Many thanks to Deborah Mills-Scofield for complementing my book Fired Up or Burned Out in her Forbes.com blog post entitled “Personal Connections are the New Currency.”
Has SAS Institute’s Goodnight Cracked the Code on Corporate Culture?
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.
Developing Connections When People are Geographically Remote
At the heart of building community is developing a bond of connection among the members of a group. In other words, when the members of a group feel positive emotions related to being understood, respected, appreciated, and included by their group’s leaders and fellow members, it forms a bond that strengthens cooperation and commitment among group members.
Emotions are important to organizational effectiveness. Research by the Corporate Executive Board has shown that emotional factors are four times as effective as rational factors when it comes to the amount of effort employees put in their work. Emotional factors include how an employee feels about his organization’s identity and the people he works with whereas rational factors include what an employee thinks about his compensation.
Typically, an organization’s managers and stars feel emotionally connected while three-quarters of all employees do not. What happens to those who don’t feel connected? They stop caring. They stop giving their best efforts. They stop fully communicating and, as a result, decision-makers don’t get the information they need to make optimal decisions. This disconnection results in a gradual spiraling down of performance that may eventually threaten an organization’s survival.
Connection is grounded in human needs. I’ve found that two of these needs, recognition and belonging, can be partially met through participation in online communities. The need for recognition is in our DNA. It’s almost as if we have a “recognition battery” that needs to be charged regularly but the curious aspect of this battery is that its plug-in is located at a spot on our back that we can’t quite reach. As such, we rely on the people around us to charge our recognition battery. If it’s charged, we are energized; if not, we become drained and lose energy.
In addition to recognition, we have a need to feel that we belong to a group — to be in a place where “everyone knows your name,” as the popular theme song of the old comedy television show Cheers stated. Positive interactions on a regular basis with members of a group bring about this feeling of belonging.
There are a number of online capabilities that organizations can put place to help meet the needs for recognition and belonging, and bring about feelings of connection.
Online Personal Profiles that allow people to express their personal identities through posting photographs, hobbies and interests outside of work provide recognition. When co-workers inevitably comment on these personal expressions of identity, it provides recognition and a sense of belonging that makes people feel more connected. Giving employees a place to express who they really are helps them avoid feelings of isolation that occur when they begin to feel like cogs in a machine. Also related to personal identity are affinity groups such as book clubs and alumni groups. These groups can be encouraged and supported with online intranet websites and social media that increase connection among people with shared interests outside of work.
Social Media can be used to inform employees and invite them into conversations about corporate issues. Leaders who mine the resulting body of content for good ideas, implement them, and give credit where credit is due will discover that this helps employees feel more connected. This practice will also improve decision-making and innovation as decision makers gain access to new information and participants to identify new business opportunities, process improvements and product possibilities.
Podcasts and Webcasts are helpful tools to facilitate connection by reaching employees who have visual and auditory learning styles. They can also be used to increase awareness of thought leaders and experts in an organization. For example, Polly Pearson, former Vice President of Employment Brand and Strategy Engagement at EMC, interviewed thought leaders and experts on an internal webcast entitled “Culture Talk.” Polly helped several EMC employees to become internal bloggers and eventually to blog externally. As a result, EMC developed more than 40 bloggers.
These are but a few of the online means that can be utilized to foster connection among the members of an organization. By helping everyone to feel connected, organizations will increase the employee engagement, strategic alignment, productivity, innovation and overall performance.
Happiness at Work Podcast
Jason Pankau and I were guests on a podcast for clients of The Alter Group, one of America’s leading real estate development firms. The podcast host was Tom Silva, Vice President of the Alter Group. Our topic was happiness at work, leadership, employee engagement and employee motivation. You can check it out at this link or download it on iTunes.
Can We Humanize Organizational Cultures?
Check out this thought-provoking interview with Peter Block. During the interview he states the following:
“in the context of organization development, what we’re trying to do is humanize systems. The systems of consistency and control and predictability steal our humanity.”
Do you agree? Can organizations achieve consistency, control and predictability while still preserving our humanity? How about organizations where the cost of failure is high such as hospitals, nuclear power plants, NASA and the armed services?
Jason Pankau and I teach leaders that it’s necessary to achieve both task excellence and relationship excellence if you aspire to achieve sustainable superior performance. In the modern era, we’ve certainly focused on and made great strides forward in achieving task excellence but we have failing miserably when it comes to achieving relationship excellence. Two articles Jason and I wrote are relevant to this topic. The first article entitled “Strengthening Human Value in Organizational Cultures” appeared in the Leader to Leader Journal. The second article entitled “Encouraging Knowledge Flow” appeared in Perdido.
What do you think?