Category Archives: Employee Engagement

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It’s More Than Business. It’s Personal.

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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.

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

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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.

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What to Do When You’re Stuck

There have been times in my life when I’ve been stuck.   Although I was giving my all, I wasn’t progressing.  Early in my career, I tried to figure it out on my own. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t.  What I learned over time was that I needed someone to coach me.  I simply couldn’t see where I was going wrong. It was a blind spot for me.  An outside expert’s perspective was required to put me on the right path.

Here’s an example.  When I first began speaking about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation, I was not getting the results I desired. The problem that I couldn’t see at the time was that I had learned to speak as an investment banker on Wall Street where I was analytical and showed little enthusiasm or emotion.  This doesn’t work so well when you’re speaking about leadership and people expect you to inspire and motivate them to become better leaders. Fortunately, a friend of mine with one of the nation’s largest speakers bureaus advised me to go to Twila Thompson at the Actors Institute where I would learn how to connect with an audience. Twila coached me to connect with individual audience members, to project my voice and presence. It required time and practice to get comfortable with this and make these behaviors second nature.

You simply can’t imagine the difference it made.   I achieved the result I desired.  In hindsight, I can now see that there was no way I was ever going to figure out on my own what Twila taught me.  Self-help was simply insufficient.

The point here is that when you’re stuck, get a coach or mentor who excels at what you’re trying to do.  Self-help may not be enough to get you over the hurdle. You might also want to hire a coach on an ongoing basis to help you achieve continuous improvement. Unfortunately, many people are reluctant to do this. That’s why greatness is so rare.  It requires the wisdom and humility to know when the help of others is required to be great.

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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.

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Happiness at Work Podcast

alter logoJason 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.

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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?

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Coach Rex Ryan Connects with Jets

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Check out this great article entitled “Channelling Churchill, Ryan Inspires His Team” on New York Jets’ football coach Rex Ryan  The article makes several important points that support the conclusion we came to from our research on leaders who produce sustainable superior performance.  Our research concluded that sustainable superior performance comes when leaders develop task excellence and relationship excellence.  Rex Ryan is doing this by connecting with his players on both emotional and rational levels. He connects rationally by communicating and leading his team to implement effective strategy and tactics.  This produces “task excellence.”  Ryan’s passion and authenticity helps him connect on an emotional level.  This helps produce “relationship excellence.” Ryan communicates simple, relevant and memorable themes with phrases such as “burn the boats” and “how dare you?” He tells memorable stories to illustrate his points.

The Jets are a decent team but not a great team, yet.  They just pulled off a big playoff win by defeating the Indianapolis Colts.  Given what I’m seeing, I expect the Jets are on the rise as Rex Ryan and team continue to develop a Connection Culture with Vision, Value and Voice.

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Cancer Free, Seven Years Today

Seven years ago today, my wife Katie had surgery for advanced ovarian cancer. The prior year, Katie had surgery to remove breast cancer. Today, she is cancer free.

I wrote an essay entitled “Alone No Longer” about how setting my work aside to focus on being with and helping Katie and our daughters changed my perspective on life.  The essay has been read by many individuals who want to know how they can help people in their lives who are battling a serious illness.  The essay also challenges readers to examine their own lives to consider if they are too focused on status and achievement and insufficiently focused on relationships.  I hope you’ll take time to read “Alone No Longer,” reflect on your life and share the essay with friends who might benefit from reading it.