Leadership
You know that feeling of dread you get when you’ve planned a big party, and you start to worry that no one is coming? That’s a feeling we get every year when planning our Re:Imagine Leadership Summit. This year was no exception. But, I’m happy to report that we packed the room to a sold out house!
Thanks to our generous sponsors, amazing speakers, honored guests, talented volunteers, and culinary artists, the day included many valuable takeaways. I’ve gathered these from our team members and clients alike to share with you.
1. Danielle Aguas, Director of Marketing for Center for Executive Excellence, kicked off the day with a story about the lessons she’s learned from buying a home with systemic root issues. Her leadership lesson? “Don’t fall into a book-of-the-month club training cycle for your team. Instead, find training that’s going to help you identify root causes. Otherwise, you’ll never truly address the issues that lie below the surface.”
2. From Dr. Tony Baron, our Co-Founder and Scholar-in-Residence, “Leadership is about relationships. Leaders who transcend best practices understand that every human being has the need to love and to be loved. People who are the most disturbed are the ones who are most isolated. Don’t isolate yourself as a leader. Don’t surround yourself with your own kind.” Be together. Not the same.
3. Kevin Kirkland, People Manager for Stone Brewing, shared, “Since we started taking our core values seriously in 2015, we’ve seen a direct impact on our employee engagement survey: 60% favorable in 2015, 75% favorable in 2016, and 86% favorable in 2017.”
4. Cheryl Kilmer, Founder and CEO of TERI, Inc., shared an inspirational message. “Since the age of 17, I’ve dedicated my life to changing the way the world sees the special needs community. If you think about it, who among us can say that we have not experienced one or more aspects of the disorder spectrum – including depression, anxiety, ADD, or a learning disability?” Watch this video to learn more about this groundbreaking nonprofit and its Campus of Life project.
5. From Strengths Coach and Trainer Matthew Veling, “When I want to turn away from corporate greed and a maniacal focus on power, I am reminded by the words of Max Stackhouse who said, ‘Business leaders are increasingly the stewards of civilization.’ It’s our responsibility as business leaders to use our power to make more than profit, but to make a positive impact on the world through the opportunity that comes with power.”
6. Gina Frasca, Director of Safety, Risk and Sustainability at California State University, San Marcos, reported, “When I experienced a major turnover of my team in 2015, we turned to Gallup StrengthsFinder training and coaching to help us learn to appreciate and leverage the strengths of our team members. Last year, the team reported 100% employee satisfaction, and our internal customer satisfaction ranked No. 1 among all six of our university peers.”
7. Michael Coffey, our Senior Executive Consultant, shared the following equation: Strategy X Organizational Development X Learning & Development = Organizational Effectiveness. “You’ll notice,” said Coffey, “that it’s a multiplication equation. That means, if any of the 3 terms are equal to 0, the result of the equation is 0.” How would your organization score?
Thanks to our generous sponsors, passionate attendees, and powerhouse team, the 3rd Annual Re:Imagine Leadership Summit was a success. What’s next? Two things: we’re donating profits from the Summit to TERI’s Campus of Life campaign, and we’re rolling up our sleeves to welcome you next year!
Question: What do you do each year to invest in your growth as a leader?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
People
Nineteen months from now, 50% of the global workforce will be made up of Millennials (75% by 2025). This year, Baby Boomers are retiring at the rate of 14,000 per day. Per day. The knowledge and skills gulf between the two generations is enormous.
While that is daunting, what is even more daunting is the overt lack of respect that Baby Boomers often show Millennials in the workplace. They say things like — “Millennials don’t know what hard work is,” “Millennials want recognition without earning it,” “They’re snowflakes!” – while Millennials are sitting in the same room!
Instead of taking advantage of the unique contributions of a cohort that could give their organization a competitive advantage, Baby Boomers either openly berate Millennials, treat every Millennial like tech support, or ignore them altogether.
In a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, every employee, regardless of age reported wanting their work to have meaning beyond a paycheck. At the same time, each generation reported feeling that “the other generations are only in it for the money, don’t want to work as hard, and do not care about meaning.” How can this be? Negative stereotypes.
Many Millennials believe that “Baby Boomers are stuck in their ways,” “They can’t learn new skills or keep up with the times,” and “They’re too old to be included as someone I’d like to get to know better.” Think not? This “What Age Do Millennials Think Is Old?” video is an eye opener.
Whether you’re a Baby Boomer or a Millennial, I urge you to take a moment to consider any biases you have about the other generation. How might your words and behaviors be contributing to the negative stereotyping of each other? What’s one thing that you can do today to get to know a colleague from the other generation and begin closing the generational divide and leverage this opportunity for competitive advantage?
Question: What are some ways that you might be contributing to this workplace discrimination issue?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
People, Uncategorized
Does your team trust each other? If not, what impact do you think that’s having on the bottom line?
This is a question that we have explored with teams ranging from publicly-traded companies to nonprofits. Regardless of the size of your team or the industry you work in, “trust is the foundation of real teamwork,” writes Patrick Lencioniin his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
In the mid-1990s, Lencioni observed a business climate that was manically focused on growth with little attention paid to the fundamentals of team alignment and organizational effectiveness. As a result, Lencioni and his colleagues developed a simple online assessmentthat measures team effectiveness in five key areas.
1. Trust.Think about a time when you worked with a team member who you trusted. What was that experience like? Did you freely share information with her? Did you ask her for help? Admit mistakes? Now, think about a time when you worked with a team member who you didn’t trust. What was that experience like? Did you ask him for more data? Did you talk to others about his reliability? Did you try avoiding him altogether? Now multiply the results of these interactions by all of the possible team member combinations in your organization. You can quickly see how trust impacts speed, and how speed impacts results. We’re living in the age of Airbnb, Kickstarter, Etsy, and Uber – where trust is the fundamental economic driver. Yet, we have yet to master the ability to trust our colleagues as much as we do total strangers.
2. Conflict. Teams that do not trust one another will be reluctant to have open, constructive conflict. You’ve seen this in action in the form of passive-aggressive behavior, circular conversations, veiled discussions, and guarded arguments. You’ve witnessed people nodding their head ‘yes’ in the room but shaking their head ‘no’ in the hall. Teams that trust one another freely engage in debate so that they can assess reality correctly before making a common commitment. Teams that lack trust also lack the ability to effectively uncover the root causes of issues that impact performance. Instead, they spend their time dealing with symptoms and side issues.
3. Commitment. A team that can accurately assess reality will have a better chance of making clear commitments. A note of clarity here. Team commitment is not the same as consensus. When you are encouraged and inspired to share your ideas and know that you’ve been heard, you’re more likely to agree to the final decision even if it differs from your original input. As a result, you walk away motivated and feeling valued rather than resentful. Commitment requires weigh in before buy in.
4. Accountability. If you manage a team of people, you understand that part of your role is to hold them accountable for delivering results. Holding your peer team members accountable, however, is harder. This is especially true when you haven’t built trust, participated in constructive debate about root causes, or felt that your opinions about what to do to move forward haven’t been heard. You’re much more likely to call your peers out when you’ve bought into the agreed upon direction to deliver results.
5. Results. “What gets measured, gets done,” is a familiar maxim. If you are measured and incentivized based on individual effort, human nature follows that you are more likely to put your individual results over collective results. High-performing teams, however, understand that if the team loses, everyone loses. When you’re held accountable for team results, you’re much more likely to make the extra effort to help team members when they need support.
Teamwork isn’t easy. But high performing teams understand that team alignment is a competitive advantage.
Question: Are you achieving results or experiencing regrets toward team goals so far this year?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Employee Engagement, Leadership
In the past, business success was all about size. Today, it’s all about speed. But with speed, comes change, and change, as we know, creates fear. People don’t like change because it’s disruptive. Employees begin to disengage as they struggle to define where they fit in or fear that they may become obsolete.
Disengagement doesn’t come cheap. Each year, companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to improve an estimated $550 billion annual impact to the U.S. economy in lost productivity. The latest research by Gallup shows that nearly 68% of American workers are disengaged. Clearly, the dollars being thrown at this issue are making a paltry impact at best.
From productivity to profitability, from safety to shrinkage, employee engagement is not a philosophical exercise. It has bottom line implications.
Employee engagement is both potential and kinetic in nature. You likely recall potential and kinetic energy demonstrated by Wile E. Coyote in his thwarted attempts to capture the elusive roadrunner. Potential energy is stored by an object – perhaps a giant spring or over-sized mousetrap. The object is loaded and ready for action. Kinetic energy is related to the object’s motion – like a coyote arrow launched by a bow.
The same is true of employees. Engaged employees have both stored and activated energy. Stored energy comes from having both meaningful work and aligned goals. Activated energy is an employee’s ability to tap into his or her strengths and the learning and growth afforded on the job. Together, they make up four pieces of the engagement puzzle. Here’s a breakdown of each piece:
1. Meaningful work. Do your employees know the value your organization brings? Regardless of whether you are a non-profit or for profit enterprise, everyone in your organization should be passionate about your why. As Simon Sinek argues in his popular TED Talk, people want more than a paycheck. They want to be a part of something greater than themselves.
2. Aligned goals. Next, employees need to move from the why to the what. The sooner you can connect your strategic objectives with employee goals and rewards, the better chance you have of turning your strategic plan from theory into reality. Help employees see how their daily jobs impact goals such as profit margins or market share.
3. Strengths-focused. At this point, your employees are spring loaded and ready to move onto the how. Depending on whether you focus on improving employees’ weaknesses or leveraging their strengths, you can either thwart their enthusiasm or thrust them into action. Gallup research shows that the best way for employees to grow and develop is to leverage their natural talents to perform at their highest potential.
4. Learning and Growth. Employees under the age of 25 rate professional development as their number one driver of engagement, and workers up to age 35 rate it as the number two priority. As employees get older, their focus on development shifts away from mobility in favor of aligning a job with long-term career goals. Create an environment that gets people engaged and keeps them engaged by providing opportunities to grow and advance.
While 90% of executives understand the importance of employee engagement, fewer than 50% understand how to address this issue. Design an organization that thrives on turning potential energy into kinetic energy by focusing on the four pieces of the engagement puzzle.
Question: In which of the four pieces of the engagement puzzle does your organization excel? Where could you use improvement?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Leadership
“On the morning of April 7, 2007, I was lying on the floor of my home office in a pool of blood. On my way down, my head had hit the corner of my desk, cutting my eye and breaking my cheekbone. I had collapsed from exhaustion and lack of sleep.” Those are the opening words of Thrive, the 2014 New York Times Bestseller written by Arianna Huffington, co-founder and former editor-in-chief of HuffPost.
That fall was her wakeup call. It caused her to re-think her definition of success and to seriously consider the impact of stress on her life.
Stress. It’s become such a prevalent part of our workdays that we’ve come to accept it as an occupational necessity. Yet, the long-term effects of stress can be lethal. Stress is a factor in 75% to 90% of all medical visits, and a factor in the six leading causes of death.
If you consider yourself a leader who thrives under pressure – if you work best under a deadline – you may be addicted to stress. According to Heidi Hanna, author of Stressaholic, “stress is a drug.” When we’re under the gun, stress releases dopamine and feeds endorphins to our brains which temporarily boosts performance.
As a leader, you have a responsibility to create a culture of performance. Over time, your time-crunched lifestyle can not only have serious health implications for you, but can have a debilitating impact on your organization. Here are two practices that will help you navigate the path between stress and success:
Be Mindful. Our response to stress is something we inherited from our ancestors. It was a fight or flight response that triggered an ‘all systems go’ reaction in the body. When faced with a sabre-toothed tiger, that reaction was designed to improve our chances for survival by releasing a burst of cortisol to mobilize the body for action.
Although the sabre-tooth is extinct, our flight or flight mechanism is alive and well. Any time we face a threat – a deadline, a conflict with a colleague, a financial struggle – our body goes into stress mode. It releases cortisol causing our blood pressure to rise and our heart to beat faster. But, without a physical release of fighting or fleeing, the cortisol builds up in our system. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that we can train our brains to recognize these sensations in the moment, and learn to react calmly instead of letting out our inner caveman. It’s a practice known as mindfulness.
As defined by Dr. Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness is “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” The next time you’re in a stressful meeting, try the ABC method of mindfulness. Become Aware of the stress rising in your body. Breathe deeply and consider your options. Then Choose thoughtfully.
Build Margins. Today’s leaders are incredibly busy. Everyone, it seems, wants a piece of you. And no one seems to appreciate the fact that you are a finite resource. Perhaps you don’t even realize this yourself. You can’t be an effective leader if your calendar is crammed with back-to-back meetings and your inbox is full of unread messages.
“To be truly effective,” says leadership expert Dr. Tony Baron, “you need to make time for margins your life.” You need to create white space, or times of reflection so that information can be turned into knowledge, and that knowledge into insight. Sometimes, you just have to stop and let the information catch up with you.
Building margins in our lives helps us get over our feeling of scarcity that leads to stress. We start by stressing that we never have enough time, that we cannot make time to truly connect with our employees, that there is only so much to go around.
Margin is not something that just happens. You have to fight for it. You can start by creating a time budget like this one from Michael Hyatt to help you focus on what matters most.
Stress is not going away, but you don’t have to be addicted to it. Make the choice today to be mindful and build margins in your life to build the resilience you need to manage it effectively.
Question: How does stress impact your ability to lead effectively?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
