Feedback to Inspire

I believe feedback can inspire, motivate, activate, encourage, enthuse, stir, drive, propel, energize, and awaken confidence and performance.  I have seen it occur.  However it can also…

Dampen, dull, decrease, lessen, lower, diminish, reduce, suppress, smother, asphyxiate, and choke confidence and performance.

My research and experience show that there are a number of factors that influence the outcome.  Here are a few of the big ones:

1. The provider of the feedback: Why, how, when, and where are as important as the what.  Many times the feedback they provide says more about themselves than the person they are providing it too.
2. The receiver:  History and experience with feedback play a specific role in how someone interprets feedback, as well as personality preferences.
3. The relationship:  The relationship between the people involved plays a role.  People respond based on patterns.  If there is a relationship pattern it will be difficult to break and they will have to work at it.
4. Organizational Culture:  Culture of the organization plays a significant role.  If the culture is based on fear and distrust it can be difficult to inspire.
5. Diversity:  Cultural and generational differences impact how the message is received.  With all of the best intent, positive attitudes, skills, and technique sometimes we are just unaware of customs, style, and cultural backgrounds.

However, all of these issues can be worked through, improved or overcome and the provider plays the biggest role.  So providers of feedback…lets aspire to inspire!

 

Achieve Organizational Success in Today’s Economy

New Book: Employee Engagement
MEMPHIS, Tenn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Five years ago your company hired a bright, young, talented college graduate whom you believed had the moxy to someday take your position as leader. Since his hire, he’d become a top producer, had risen within the organization and, literally, was next in line to take your place. You felt as though you had mentored and nurtured this person for five years. Obviously, they didn’t feel the same way. Then, out of the blue, he comes to you and hands over a more …

Power of One – We Can Change Our Corner of the World

Watch this compelling video and then simply…Act on it.  Do one thing today.  Just one.  Recognize your personal power and use it.

The Fun Theory

Research has demonstrated, over and over again, that if we make work “fun” and “interesting”  people perform better.  Employees enjoy working on things about which they are passionate.  Most importantly, the more we engage customers and employees the more they will engage in us, their work, or the experience.   Well this brief video clearly demonstrates the “Fun Theory.”   Check it out!!!

Workplace Paralysis a Problem With Younger Workers

According to a study conducted by MetLife Mature Market Institute, organized in alliance with Boston Colleges Sloan Center on Aging & Work, the decline of our economy has had more impact psychologically on young adults than it has on older workers from the Baby Boomer and Traditionalist generations. This studys results were compiled into the report, Engaging the 21st Century Multi-Generational Workforce.

The main goal of the study was to discover if generational differences were a factor in the area of employee engagement. This theory was proven to be true. There is a distinctive difference in what impacts different employees. While the information as to what will affect different generations of employees is an excellent resource in itself, it is also fascinating to learn how different groups of employees are braving the economic upheaval.

Employees age 26 and younger (Generation Y) and age 27 to 42 (Generation X) revealed a decline in engagement, while those over 43 showed very little change. This anomaly may be because younger employees have not been through similar tough times, while Baby Boomers and Traditionalists have. Having survived previous declines, the older workers understand that things sooner or later improve. Therefore, on a whole, older workers are better able to adjust.

A recent Business Week article about the recessions impact on todays young people reports the same findings. The Age of Anxiety piece reported that the younger generation of our country are commencing their careers at a frightful time, and their initial employment choices may have financial ramifications for many years.

Both the MetLife study and the Business Week article indicate that managers need to do more to help younger workers cope with the anxiety of living and working in a recession.

It may seem to be a waste of time to indulge younger workers, especially with everything else on your plate every day. However, I have found, and the research of Harvard professor Bob Sutton shows, that a significant deterioration in productivity is the inevitable result of employees overtaken with the anxiety that a recession can produce.

Older managers should try to find time to discuss with younger workers how they are feeling about the economic slump and suggest strategies for braving the storm. Sharing personal stories from prior recessions and tips to pull through the stressful times in a positive manner will go a long way in improving younger employees work ethic, and ultimately the teams results.

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Engage Workers By Letting Them Think

“If you see a fork in the road, take it,” and “You can observe a lot by watching” are some of the many one-line quips of baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.  Yogi’s comments are both fun and a blinding flash of the obvious that often draw us back to simple truths.  My favorite is “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

One blinding flash of the obvious that is often missed, and that could be extremely pertinent in the age of employee engagement, is “Engagement requires thinking.”  In my experience, many employee engagement approaches are still one-way communication efforts on steroids that fail to tap into the ability of employees to think and act differently.  At a time when study after study confirms that only about 20% of employees are engaged in their current work, it’s hard not to conclude that something’s not working!  Maybe “having a best friend at work” isn’t the determining factor.  Why are so many employees simply checked out at the place where they spend 40% of their waking lives…at work?

Let’s start with a key premise that’s often missed in engagement efforts – that we want to solve problems ourselves.  From Sudoku to mystery novels to crosswords, we all love the challenge of solving a puzzle.  Obviously, we could just turn to the back of the book and get the answer or read the final page.  But what’s engaging about that?  We want the intellectual and emotional experience of finding a sense of achievement in our own thinking.  When people get a chance to solve their own puzzles, they own the result.  And owners think, act, and engage differently from non-owners.  They’re vested, they’re passionate, they won’t take no for an answer, and they’re willing to put in more effort than is required.I once talked to an employee at a large Canadian bank just after she was given her first opportunity in 15 years to actively think about her business.  In an “official” group discussion, she was asked to compare and contrast major marketplace trends and consider competitive threats, industry consolidation, and consumer expectations.  The experience was a real eye-opener for her – and for her leaders.

She told me, “You know, learning and engagement require thinking.  In the past, people have tried to persuade me to do things differently in order to improve the business.  But they never asked me to think about the business.  This is the first time I’ve ever learned anything here – the first time I have really been engaged in solving our problems.  Now that I’ve had a chance to actually think about our business, I’m beginning to change my ideas about how it works and my role in it.”

And it’s not just intellectual – engagement is emotional.  You can’t possibly be engaged if someone else is trying to draw your conclusions for you.  You need the “emotional aha.”  You need to feel like you’re totally in the game by really feeling what the business needs, figuring out how you can help, and realizing why you make a difference.  The woman at the bank felt valued because her company offered her a challenge instead of spoon-feeding her a solution.  That showed her that her leaders believed that she had the ability to think.  And this energized her and created a sense of belonging, pride, ownership, and desire to go the extra mile.

Most organizations attempt to execute their strategies by doing all the thinking for their people – and then trying to persuade them to dedicate their heads, hearts, and hands to bring the strategies to life.  Our 20% engagement statistic should loudly tell us that this doesn’t work!

So to be engaged means that you know what you need to do as well as why you’re doing it.  But if you’re a leader at any level in your organization, how do you get people there?  Abraham Maslow said, “The great tragedy of the human race is the history of people selling themselves short.”

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New Economy and Old Rewards Don’t Mix

For several years now, many of us have been saying that the business world has changed and that many of our tools in our toolboxes have become outdated.   One of those tools is our incentive structure:  our carrots and sticks.  In this video Dan Pink makes an argument, a very persuasive one at that, to change the way we do business.  Take a look and let us know what you think…

An Engaging Mission

I just got back from speaking at a conference. During my talk I asked this question:

“How many of your businesses have a mission?”

About half of their hands went up in the air. Then I asked those with a mission:

“How many of you involved employees in developing that mission?”

Only one hand remained.

“How can you engage your employees if you have not engaged them in the mission of the organization?”

Now is the time to reconnect your employees with your mission.  With all of the change, restructuring, lay offs employees are feeling lost, guilty, frustrated and more.  One way to help everyone reconnect and move forward is to re-establish a corporate mission.

Employee Engagement: The Hard Facts

In the autumn of 2008, David MacLeod and Nita Clark were asked by UK’s Secretary of State for Business to conduct an in-depth review of employee engagement and determine if there was value in the concept.  Specifically can employee engagement help organizations in down or globally competitive economies?

Their answer was an “unequivocal yes.”

Some highlights from the report:

Those organizations with the bottom quartile engagement scores had up to:

• 51% more turnover
• 51% more inventory shrinkage
• 62% more accidents
• 32.7% decline in operating income over 12 months

Those organizations in the top quartile saw:

• 12% higher customer advocacy
• 18% higher productivity
• 12% higher profitability
• Earnings Per Share (EPS) 2.6 times greater than the bottom quartile
• 19.2% improvement in operating income over 12 months

One bank found branches that had an increase in engagement levels saw a 16% increase in profit margin over those with lower engagement level scores.

Engaged employees take 2.69 sick days per year versus 6.19 days taken by those disengaged.

70% of engaged employees have a good understanding of how to meet customer needs, while only 17% of the disengaged do.

Other results include the impact employee engagement has on innovation and change.   The verdict is in…ignore employee engagement at your own peril.  Employee engagement is more than a touchy feely subject.  Employee engagement is more than doing the right thing.  Employee engagement is a real competitive advantage.  Build your case now!

To download the report go to: http://www.performancepointllc.com/Employee_Engagement.html

For more information regarding Employee Engagement the book go to: http://www.engagementleader.com/

Are you ready for your future?

Part of being engaged is the ability to handle change, to grow and develop, and to help others do the same.  I recently came across this list of future jobs from an organization called Fast Future.  they were doing a survey on future careers.  When you look at these positions…What are your thoughts?  Feelings?  How engaged would you be in some of our potential futures?  How would you suggest engaging others?

1.      Body Part Maker

Due to the huge advances being made in bio-tissues, robotics and plastics, the creation of body parts – from organs to limbs – will soon be possible, requiring body part makers, body part stores and body part repair shops.

2.        Nano-Medic

Advances in nanotechnology offer the potential for a range of sub-atomic ‘nanoscale’ devices, inserts and procedures that could transform personal healthcare. A new range of nano-medicine specialists will be required to administer these treatments.

3.        Pharmer of Genetically Engineered Crops and Livestock

New-age farmers will raise crops and livestock that have been genetically engineered to improve yields and produce therapeutic proteins. Works in progress include a vaccine-carrying tomato and therapeutic milk from cows, sheep and goats.

4.        Old Age Wellness Manager / Consultant Specialists

Drawing on a range of medical, pharmaceutical, prosthetic, psychiatric, natural and fitness solutions to help manage the various health and personal needs of the aging population.

5.        Memory Augmentation Surgeon

Surgeons that add extra memory to people who want to increase their memory capacity and to help those who have been over exposed to information in the course of their life and simply can no longer take on any more information – thus leading to sensory shutdown.

6.        ‘New Science’ Ethicist

As scientific advances accelerate in new and emerging fields such as cloning, proteomics and nanotechnology, a new breed of ethicist may be required. These science ethicists will need to understand a range of underlying scientific fields and help society make consistent choices about what developments to allow. Much of science will not be a question of can we, but should we.

7.        Space Pilots, Architects and Tour Guides

With Virgin Galactic and others pioneering space tourism, space trained pilots and tour guides will be needed, as well as designers to enable the habitation of space and the planets. Current projects at SICSA (University of Houston) include a greenhouse on Mars, lunar outposts and space exploration vehicles.

8.        Vertical Farmers

There is growing interest in the concept of city based vertical farms, with hydroponically-fed food being grown in multi-storey buildings. These offer the potential to dramatically increase farm yield and reduce environmental degradation. The managers of such entities will require expertise in a range of scientific disciplines, engineering and commerce.

9.        Climate Change Reversal Specialist

As the threats and impacts of climate change increase, a new breed of engineer-scientists will be required to help reduce or reverse the effects of climate change on particular locations. They will need to apply multi-disciplinary solutions ranging from filling the oceans with iron filings to erecting giant umbrellas that deflect the sun’s rays.

10.    Quarantine Enforcer

If a deadly virus starts spreading rapidly, few countries, and few people, will be prepared. Nurses will be in short supply. Moreover, as mortality rates rise, and neighborhoods are shut down, someone will have to guard the gates.

11.    Weather Modification Police

The act of stealing clouds to create rain is already happening in some parts of the world, and is altering weather patterns thousands of miles away. Weather modification police will need to control and monitor who is allowed to shoot rockets containing silver iodine into the air – a way to provoke rainfall from passing clouds.

12.    Virtual Lawyer

As more and more of our daily life goes online, specialists will be required to resolve legal disputes which could involve citizens resident in different legal jurisdictions.

13.    Avatar Manager / Devotees – Virtual Teachers

Avatars could be used to support or even replace teachers in the elementary classroom, i.e., computer personas that serve as personal interactive guides. The Devotee is the human that makes sure that the Avatar and the student are properly matched and engaged.

14.    Alternative Vehicle Developers

Designers and builders of the next generations of vehicle transport using alternative materials and fuels. Could the dream of underwater and flying cars become a reality within the next two decades?

15.    Narrowcasters

As the broadcasting media become increasingly personalized, roles will emerge for specialists working with content providers and advertisers to create content tailored to individual needs. While mass market customisation solutions may be automated, premium rate narrow casting could be performed by humans.

16.    Waste Data Handler

Specialists providing a secure data disposal service for those who do not want to be tracked, electronically or otherwise.

17.    Virtual Clutter Organizer

Specialists will help us organise our electronic lives. Clutter management would include effective handling of email, ensuring orderly storage of data, management of electronic ID’s and rationalizing the applications we use.

18.    Time Broker / Time Bank Trader

Alternative currencies will evolve their own markets – for example time banking already exists.

19.    Social ‘Networking’ Worker

Social workers for those in some way traumatized or marginalized by social networking.

20.    Personal Branders

An extension of the role played by stylists, publicists and executive coaches –advising on how to create a personal ‘brand’ using social and other media. What personality are you projecting via your Blog, Twitter, etc? What personal values do you want to build into your image – and is your image consistent with your real life persona and your goals?