Thanks to my friend Deborah Mills-Scofield for sending me this article from Science Daily entitled “Exploring How Partners Perceive Each Others Emotion During a Relationship Fight.” It looks at how expressions of hard, flat or soft emotion are perceived and how such perceptions affect relationships. This research suggests that a leader’s ability to express appropriate emotions at appropriate times is important to keep people feeling connected to the them (and emotional connections are essential to employee engagement and alignment).
Tag Archives: teamwork
Motivate Employees Now
This morning appeared as a guest on my friend Jim Blasingame’s nationally-syndicated “Small Business Advocate” radio program where we talked about leadership, employee engagement and productivity. During the program, Jim and I discussed how the three core elements of a Connection Culture — Vision, Value and Voice — motivate employees to give their best efforts and align their behavior with organizational goals. One of the ideas I shared was to bring employees together to read and discuss a management book including how it applies to their business. To get them started, I offered a free download of the digital version of Fired Up or Burned Out to listeners who sign up for my email newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter and access the free book download click on this link.
Shine the Light on Others
- When you see someone doing something that’s admirable, be sure to let them know that you recognize it.
- Tell your family members and friends how much and why you appreciate them.
- When you are in a group discussion, praise others for their good ideas and opinions.
- Send a hand-written personal note of appreciation to a family member, friend or colleague at work.
- When a family member, friend or colleague at work is sick, send them a get well gift.
- When a family member, friend or colleague at work has something to celebrate congratulate them.
Pixar’s Competitive Advantage? A Connection Culture
At the Technical Academy Awards ceremonies held in Hollywood, the Associated Press reported that it wasn’t the host, actress Jessica Biel, who attracted the most attention. Instead, it was an understated, bespectacled, computer engineer named Ed Catmull. When Catmull’s name was announced to receive an Oscar for his lifetime of work in computer animation, the crowd went wild, whistling and whooping. And rightly so. The impact Catmull and his collaborators have had on Hollywood may last for decades to come.
Ed Catmull is the president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. He has rejected the traditional Hollywood star system and its often toxic work environment and replaced it with an environment that emphasizes community and long-term relationships. Catmull described it this way in a Harvard Business Review article he wrote: “[Pixar has] an environment that nurtures trusting and respectful relationships and unleashes everyone’s creativity…the result is a vibrant community where talented people are loyal to one another and their collective work, everyone feels that they are part of something extraordinary, and their passion and accomplishments make the community a magnet for talented people…”
What is it about Pixar’s environment that attracts talented employees and helps them produce outstanding movies such as the blockbuster hits Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E that have made Pixar the envy of Hollywood?
Overcoming Leadership Myopia
Howard Behar and Michael Lee Stallard
American leaders need to wake up and smell the coffee. Research from two well-respected organizations makes it clear that we have a big collective blind spot that’s dragging down productivity, innovation and economic performance. Earlier this year, a Conference Board research report showed that job satisfaction is at the lowest level since the organization began measuring it more than 20 years ago. The report went on to show this has been a long-term downward trend rather than a temporary decline due to the Great Recession.
Another well-respected organization, the Corporate Executive Board, came out with a research report last year that showed 90 percent of employees are either not aligned with organizational goals or not engaged and giving their best efforts. It’s nearly impossible to pull out of difficult economic seasons when nine out of ten employees are just showing up for the paycheck. We need everyone to pull together in the same direction to lift us out of this slump. What can be done?
Free Linkage Leadership Webinars
Jason Pankau and I spoke on a webinar for Linkage about maximizing employee engagement and alignment. You can see the 60-minute webinar at this link. You may also be interested in other free webinars offered by Linkage at this link.
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
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.
Vince Lombardi on Broadway?
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.
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.