Tag Archives: michael lee stallard

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Maximize Employee Engagement, Alignment and Productivity

Jason Pankau and I are speaking about maximizing employee engagement, alignment and productivity on several upcoming webinars. The webinars are based on ideas in our book Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity (Thomas Nelson).

Here are the names of the organizations hosting the webinars along with the respectives dates and links to sign up:

December 7, 1:00 PM EST for Linkage

December 7, 3:00 PM EST for the Human Capital Institute sponsored by the ITAGroup

December 15, 12:00 PM EST for the New Talent Management Network

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Strengthen Your “Critical Connections”

Research has shown that people perform better if they take time to create checklists that break their work down into necessary tasks. Here is an approach we recommend. Make a list of those individuals whom you count on you in order to do your work well and the individuals who count on you in order to do their work well. Think of these people as your “Critical Connections.” Strengthening your relationship with them is, in addition to making checklists, another key to achieving excellence in your work.

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Cartoon Boosts “Voice” in U.S. Military

Doctrin Man“Doctrine Man,” a popular cartoon on facebook, has, in essence, become a means to boost the Connection Culture element of Voice in the U.S. Military.  It’s odd, I know, but it’s working.  To learn more, read this New York Times article entitled “Masked Military Man is Superhero for Troops.”

Earlier, Jason, Carolyn and I wrote an article about the element of Voice (also know as “Knowledge Flow”) for the award-winning Perdido magazine that you can read at this link.  Voice exists in an organization when everyone seeks the ideas and opinions of other, shares their opinions honestly and safeguards relational connections. Voice reflects a culture that values humility, open-mindedness, curiosity, continuous learning and experimentation.

Voice strengthens organizations in three ways.  First, it boosts employee engagement when people are informed and have their ideas and opinions considered. Second, decision makers make better decisions when they learn from the ideas and opinions of others.  Third, a culture that has a high degree of sharing opinions and ideas creates a marketplace of ideas that fuels innovation.

With those benefits in mind, I say to Doctrine Man, whoever he may be, live long and prosper!

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We Need More “Heart and Soul” in the Age of “Mind and Strength”

Wise organizations distinguish themselves from competitors by developing their heart and soul. Organizations that have heart and soul enrich their owners, customers and communities in both economic and non-economic ways.

What do I mean by heart and soul?  Let me explain.

While out running errands one day when we were relatively new to town, my wife stopped in at one of several jewelry stores on the main shopping street.  The cases were filled with beautiful pieces, new and heirloom.  The salespeople, however, were more than aloof.  They ignored her.  No eye contact.  No smile.  No “hello, my name is X, may I help you?”  This lack of connection made her feel as if they thought she was unworthy of their attention.  Not surprisingly, she has never gone back. These salespeople lacked the qualities I describe as heart and soul.

The absence of heart and soul in the workplace is not unusual.  This is the age of mind and strength. So often we focus on the tasks of our work and neglect the relational aspects.  As human beings we have emotions, hopes and dreams, a conscience, and deeply felt human needs.  Research from a variety of fields has shown that when we recognize these realities and treat others in ways consistent with them, we thrive. When we don’t, it is damaging to our mental and physical health and to the health of those around us.

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Speaking at the New Canaan Society

Here’s an article entitled “Worker Engagement Holds Key to Success” that appeared this morning in The Connecticut Post, The Greenwich Time, The Stamford Advocate and The Danbury News Times.  The article briefly describes the “Connection Cultures” we wrote about in our book, Fired Up or Burned Out, and mentions that on Friday morning, November 5, I’ll be speaking about how Christians can help improve the workplace at the New Canaan Society’s Darien Connecticut Chapter.  Breakfast begins at 6:30 AM and my talk will start at 7:00 AM.  For details, click here.

logo_ncs The New Canaan Society is a group of men who meet to encourage one another to live out Biblical values. It was founded in 1995 by Jim Lane, a partner at Goldman Sachs, and has grown to 30 chapters across the United States.

On a related topic, Jason Pankau will be speaking at the New Canaan Society’s New York City Chapter in Manhattan on January 19th and at NCS’s Annual Retreat at the Homestead in Virginia on March 4-6.  You might also be interested to know that in the coming weeks, Jason and I are doing a series of webinars on leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation for Linkage, the Human Capital Institute, the DNA Global Network and the New Talent Management Network.  The webinars are free to the public.  Details and sign-up information will be posted in the upcoming engagements section on the left-hand side of the front page of our book website at this link.

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Vince Lombardi on Broadway?

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It takes guts to bring a drama to Broadway these days without a megastar playing the lead.  To top it off, the producers of the show Lombardi promise to reveal why the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers football team was so successful.  Lots of luck with that, I thought, when I first read about the show.  My curiosity got the best of me, however, once I learned that Lombardi was based on one of my favorite sports biographies, David Maraniss’ When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi.

To my great surprise, Lombardi was enthralling and inspiring.  My wife and I were among the many enthusiastic audience members who expressed our appreciation with a standing ovation at the show’s conclusion.

What first stood out to me about the show was its supurb acting. Dan Lauria who played the dad on the Emmy award-winning television series, The Wonder Years, portrayed Vince Lombardi flawlessly.  Deconstructing Lauria’s performance doesn’t capture what he pulled off but suffice it to say that Lauria’s walk, talk, facial expressions and sheer dominating presence were pure Lombardi.

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Do Women Bring More Happiness to Families, Greater Effectiveness to Organizations?

A participant in a recent session Jason Pankau and I were teaching on Connection Cultures and employee engagement shared that she connects with her sons by talking about sports. She follows sports, not out of a love for it, but because it  gives her a language to connect with her boys. By contrast, her conversations with women tend to be about what happens in their day-to-day lives.

Her comments reminded me of a recent article in The New York Times entitled “Why Sisterly Chats Make People Happier.” The article noted research has concluded families with sisters are happier.   The article’s author believes this is true because women initiate and sustain conversations more than men.

This is consistent with my own personal observations.  

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MichaelLeeStallard.com on Newstex

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Newstex just added MichaelLeeStallard.com to its sources of authoritative content.  The organization provides real-time news and commentary collected from the world’s best online and offline sources to customers who need information but don’t have time to gather it from a myriad of places.  Today, Newstex offers aggregated news and full-text feeds from thousands of premium blogs as well as Twitter, audio and video content from editorially-selected, authoritative news, corporate, and independent publishers.

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Servant Leaders Outperform Because They Connect

Servant leaders connect with the people they lead and create Connection Cultures that are essential to achieve sustainable superior performance. Connection is defined as a bond that exists among a group of people based on shared identity, empathy and understanding that moves self–centered individuals toward group-centered membership.  Here’s an example of a servant leader that brings the force of connection to life.

Retired CNO Admiral Vern Clark was formerly the chief of the U.S. Navy from 2000 until 2005. When Admiral Clark became the chief, first term re-enlistment didn’t meet the Navy’s goal of 38 percent. Within a little more than a year, it soared from under 38 percent to 56.7 percent and the Navy had more sailors that it needed.  Although I don’t have space in this article to tell you all of what Admiral Clark did, his actions can be summarized in three words: Vision, Value and Voice.