[Infographic] 6 Simple Steps A CEO Can Take To Improve Employee Engagement

This week I attended an Entrepreneurs Organisation learning event led by long time EO member Ridgely Goldsborough on the subject of “Know your WHY“.

Here’s a picture of EO Barcelona Learning Chairman Toni Mascaro welcoming over 100 entrepreneurs to the event.

Disengagement: The “Quit and Stayed” Employee

I recently posted about the 4 paths of our working lives – and one path is Quit and Stayed. These category of people are those who have emotionally given up on their jobs, but they still keep sending their body in to sit at the desk and collect a salary.

Ridgely shared statistics on the impact of disengaged employees on a company.

An indifferent employee costs you $2,246 per year according to Gallup. An actively disengaged employee costs you more than $25,000.
33% of American employees change jobs every year. 90% leave jobs for reasons to do with “attitude“, not skills.
Recruiting expert Brad Smart (author of Topgrading) shares evidence that 1 bad hire costs a company 5 times their salary (and 10-15 times for senior hires)

Apart from the financial cost, there is a painful emotional cost for all those who must work in close proximity to this disengaged individual – they suck your passion. I know that the best way to increase team performance is to remove the disengaged team members.

Achieving Engagement

According to the AONHewitt definition, engaged employees want to:

Stay (intent to stay with the organisation)
Say (speak highly of the organisation to others) and
Strive (make an discretionary effort to deliver results)

Ridgely presenting the benefits of Engaged Employees

Ridgely shared that engaged employees deliver:

37% less absenteeism and turnover
48% fewer safety accidents
41% fewer safety defects
21% higher productivity
22% higher profitability

How do we Achieve a Culture of Engagement?

Ridgely explained that people are different and seek to express themselves in different ways. If we try to be everything for everybody, we end up frustrated and wasting our time.

Do you understand the different personalities of the people that you work with? I have done so many psychological tests that I assume that everyone knows these tools (I studied psychology at university…). When I was 14, my father brought home a Myers-Briggs test and did it on all of the family.

About me…

Myers Briggs? I am an ENTP.
Eneagram? Type 7.
DISC Profile? Green (D)
Belbin Team Role? Plant (PL)

What about you? What are you? What types do you get frustrated by?

The Why types

Ridgely worked through a short coaching process where each participant was able to identify their primary “why” from a list of 9 “Whys”. The 9 whys are:

Contribute
Trust
Make Sense
Better Way
Right Way
Challenge
Master
Clarify
Simplify

By the way, I came out as a 7 – Master. My “why” is to seek mastery and understanding above all else.

Infographic: Employee Engagement

One of the challenges of important life lessons is that we need to be reminded every day. Now that I have just written a blog post about how people are different, I am primed to not over-react when I meet someone who is a “5 – Right Way” and has a constant focus on what the precedent is, what is proven, what is low risk… all perspectives that I find tiring. However, tomorrow I will forget and will overreact again.

What can company leaders do to create a culture where we actively seek to empathise with each person’s primary purpose?

I found an infographic that describes the problem of employee disengagement and 6 things that CEOs can do to create engaged employees. Click on the infographic to get a large version. (Personally, I think that the yellow colour scheme is a bit aggressive):

Inspire employees through purpose
Align employees behind your strategy
Develop line managers
Be Fair (in process, in resource distribution, in relationships)
Role Model
Measure And Set Engagement Goals

Read in more detail at the business2business blog.

How Engaged are You?

What do you think? Is your workplace engaged? Are leaders actively creating engagement?

Become Strategically Unavailable

First, you may ask, what is “Strategic Unavailability” anyway?

What is Strategic Unavailability?

If you say “yes” to every request for your time, money or attention you will have none for the areas that are your own personal priority. If you want to achieve success, you must retain most of your resources and dedicate them to one to three areas of your choosing. Thus, you must learn to say “No”.

Saying “No” is hard. It also has several negative consequences in polite society.

Far better than the use of the word “No” is the use of a series of tactics that come under the general concept “Strategic Unavailability”.

At the very simplest, the idea is to avoid being there when someone might make a request that will take away your time, money or attention. The key is to retain “plausible deniability” during your use of the tactic. Some tactics require greater acting capacity than others. Beginners would be best avoiding these high acting requirement tactics.

The aim is to keep time for the important 1, 2 or 3 priorities that you have decided for yourself in your profession. It is a total waste if you use the freed-up time to watch CSI Las Vegas or re-runs of Downton Abbey.

Some simple ideas for achieving “strategic unavailability”

Go to the toilet when you know someone is approaching your desk
Work from coffee shops, other people’s offices or meeting rooms during dangerous periods
Return phone calls when you can see that the person is away from their desk (go to voicemail)
Return phone calls after work hours
Delay email responses until tomorrow morning (you can write them today, but don’t let them leave your outbox until tomorrow morning)
Receive an important phone call just as a meeting is reaching the moment where actions will be assigned to people (either phone a friend style, or develop your acting abilities)
Use an old iPhone that regularly runs out of battery (this is a highly plausible tactic, mine is down to about 2 hours of battery)
Always ensure that you are involved in at least 3 projects, and demonstrate massive productivity in the first week of exposure to any new manager or colleague.
“Forget” to switch off the direct to voicemail setting on your phone
Tell your colleagues/team that you have an open-door for them – but that you request that they batch their problems into groups of 10… they can’t interrupt you unless they have accumulated 10 specific issues that they cannot address without your input (usually #1 gets resolved before they get to #5…)
Regularly ask “what could you do to move this forward that does not require anybody’s approval?”
Work with headphones in (whether you are listening to music or not, this also works on airplanes when your neighbour aims to talk for 14 hours)
Keep a charity box on your desk and ask for donations whenever anybody approaches (if you have kids, then ask visitors to your desk to sponsor your kid in a race or something). Bonus edition is to have stickers so that when one person donates, you give them a sticker and then they let others know to avoid your desk unless you wish to donate.
Cultivate a freakish interest in Star Wars, or World Wrestling Foundation, or ancient Greek philosophy, or NLP, or furniture upholstery and engage all visitors in a deep discussion about the merits of your hobby. Freaky hobbies with a plausible connection to your work are ideal.
When asked if you are available to meet, say “yes, I am free this Friday at 6:00am” – puts off all but the most keen time thieves. You will very rarely have to do it.
Bring a regional speciality food to work – I recommend any Icelanders to use “rotting shark meat in vinegar” – and request that anyone who comes to your desk try it.
Have a large audio recorder device and make a big show of switching it on when anyone comes to interrupt you – tell them that you are on a personal efficiency drive and are making a detailed study of all your interactions and all requests
Cultivate a mysterious illness with unclear symptoms
Remove all other chairs from your office (this made a massive improvement on my meeting time when I was running an airline); another variant is really uncomfortable chairs (especially very low seats)
Eat a rich curry or garlic dish for lunch in your office
Keep saying “that would make a great tweet!” and write down some banal saying from the other person

Advanced Strategic Unavailability

I need your help. What else works for you?

PS You better be very good at establishing a great reputation before you engage seriously in these tactics. If you are not viewed as a strong performer, if you are not delivering measurable results and if you are not gaining good exposure to senior influencers – fix that first (check out The PIE Model). These tactics only work if you are perceived as an “A” player…

[Infographic] Habits that Separate Successful People from Unsuccessful People

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle

Show me your daily habits and I can describe your future.

Discover the habits of successful people as opposed to the habits of unsuccessful people in the infographic created by SuccessStory.com.

Habits of Successful People vs Unsuccessful People

How’s your daily habit checklist?

7 Signs that People are Engaged in Your Business

Are your people engaged?

People consistently put in extra effort beyond what is expected.
People are highly motivated to contribute to the success of the organisation.
People consistently look for more efficient and effective ways of getting the job done.
People have a strong sense of personal accomplishment from their work.
People understand how their roles help the organisation meet its goals.
People always have a positive attitude when performing their duties at work.
Leaders do a good job of recognising contributions.

From the book The Carrot Principle. Read the page here.

The Big Question – by Bill Treasurer

This is a guest post by my good friend Bill Treasurer, who's latest book Leaders Open Doors makes its big time release this week!  Over to Bill...

If you’re a leader, there’s an important question on the minds of the people you lead. They may not say it directly, but it is the core question that defines the relationship between you and the people you lead. When people believe the answer is “yes,” they will be more committed to their work … and to you. But when they think the answer is “no,” their commitment to their jobs and their loyalty to you will suffer. The question is: Do you care about me?

Do you care about me?

The answer shows up in your treatment of people. You may say that you care about people, but if you never smile, constantly move up deadlines, rarely ask for their opinions or use their input, take credit for their good work, set unrealistic goals, and don’t say “thank you” for their hard work, then you don’t really care about them. And they know it.

To be a leader means to get results. But when the drive for results monopolizes a leader’s attention, people become a lesser priority. When a leader cares more about the “ends” (results) and less about the “means” (people), the leader becomes susceptible to treating people like objects. A single-minded focus on results often leads directly to treating people poorly. The drive to achieve results becomes the leader’s excuse for toughness, saying things like, “Sure, I’m tough. We’re under relentless pressure from our competitors, and margins are tight. Being tough creates urgency and motivates people to work hard. My boss is tough on me, so why shouldn’t I be tough on the people who work for me?”

To be sure, results matter. But people achieve those results, and when you treat people poorly you’ll get poor results. Answering “yes” to the core do-you-care-about-me question means taking a deep and genuine interest in those you are leading. Caring, in this sense, is obliging. For when you care about people, you give them more of your time, attention, and active support. A wise leader treats people as more important than results, because strong people produce those results. Period.

So what does caring look like? When you care about people, you:

take an interest in their career aspirations
seek, value, and apply their ideas
acknowledge people’s contributions and say “thank you” generously.

As a practical matter, it’s a good idea to care about your people. Here’s why: when they know you care about them, they will care about you … and your success.

In fact, you’ll know that you are truly a leader who cares when the people you lead start seeking and valuing your input, when they take an interest in your career aspirations, and when they are actively supportive of you. And when your people care about you, they’ll help you get better results.

About Bill Treasurer

Bill Treasurer is the Chief Encouragement Officer of Giant Leap Consulting and author of Leaders Open Doors, which focuses on how leaders create growth through opportunity. 100% of the book’s royalties are being donated to programs that support children with special needs. Bill is also the author of Courage Goes to Work, Right Risk, and Courageous Leadership, and has led courage-building workshops across the world for NASA, Accenture, CNN, PNC Bank, SPANX, Hugo Boss, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and many others. Contact Bill at btreasurer@giantleapconsulting.com, or on Twitter at @btreasurer.

Leaders Open Doors, Bill Treasurer

Simplifying Leadership

I am sharing a new book and a short video by a friend of mine, Bill Treasurer. The book is called “Leaders Open Doors” and is a short, simple answer to the question: what do great leaders do for those around them?

I first met Bill over 20 years ago on an Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) training program in Chicago. We were put on the same team and enjoyed the fun and challenges of 2 weeks of intense, sleep deprived, project work.

Since then, Bill has become a well known speaker and author. Bill is the author of Courage Goes to Work, an internationally bestselling book on courage building. Bill is also a former member of the U.S. High Diving Team, a cancer survivor, and a champion for the rights of people with disabilities. Bill currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife and three children.

Leaders Open Doors

Transcript of Bill’s talk

But the reality is we’ve inflated this idea of leadership too much and after twenty years I had a conversation with a very wise person that brought me back to the essence of what leadership is really all about I had a conversation with my five-year-old son.

Now Ian, at the time, was a five year old at the preschool the Montessori School and Asheville North Carolina where I live. I came home and my wife said “hey honey Ian got to be the class leader today!”

“A class leader!” My son.

I’m the guy who goes around teaching leadership and my son got to be the class leader.

“Son give me a high five! What’s it like to be a leader? What did you get to do as a class leader Iain?”

He looked at me and with 7 words he cut through to what matters most about leadership. He looked at me and said: “I got to open doors for people”

I get to open doors for people.

I thought about it for a couple of days… I kept thinking about that concept: leaders opening doors. I thought about the leaders who had made a difference in my life; and there are always people that have taken an interest in me and nudged me into discomfort; sometimes to help me be accountable to my own potential… they believed in me until I start to believe in myself.

I can live up to, and into, my potential. Leaders to open doors… and I thought about that concept and it turned into a book. “Open-door Leadership” is about serving people and organisations by creating opportunities for them to grow and develop.

What if leadership was that simple? What if that’s the central idea? Leadership is serving others. Leadership is not about the leader, it is about those being led. What are you going to do in the service for them?

The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership

I have just been scanning the book The Ten Golden Rules of Leadership.

In the words of the authors: “Leadership is not the same as management. Not everyone can be a leader. what distinguishes the real leader from a mere administrator is a unique series of perspectives and values.”

The authors of this book (Michael Soupios and Panos Mourdoukoutas) are philosophy professors who share 10 ancient sayings from the Greek sages as a basis for quality leadership today.

Know thyself
The office shows the person
Nurture community at the workplace
Do not waste energy on things you cannot change
Always embrace the truth
Let competition reveal talent
Live life by a higher code
Always evaluate information with a critical eye
Never underestimate the power of personal integrity
Character is destiny

The authors say that “True leadership begins with a philosophy of life.” You must decide what type of person you wish to be. Leadership cannot be done by the numbers.

The Causes of The Great War

The First World War began in 1914. Today marks the day that Britain and Northern Ireland entered the war.

Royal Irish Rifles in a communications trench, first day on the Somme, 1916.

Over 9 million soldiers died in the 4 years until 11 November 1918. Total direct casualties were over 37 million (source).

My great grandfather Sidney was in the trenches in the Great War. He never spoke of his experiences.

The causes of the war are complex. The trigger for the war was the assassination of the Crown Prince of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist.

The true causes of the war?

The rise of Nationalism. “My country is better than any other” was a popular belief in Britain, France, Germany. This storyline blinded the population and the leadership to the real facts of the situation.
The rise of Imperialism in Germany threatening Great Britain’s sense of world superiority. Germany were rapidly building a powerful navy and Great Britain were concerned about Germany overtaking their control of the seas. Germany wished to build an international empire “worthy” of their status as a leading power. Britain felt this ambition threatened their own empire. Both Britain and Germany had interest in a valid reason to “adjust” the balance of power.
Delusional Arrogance of the aristocratic leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Britain. They were surrounded by “yes-men”. Roles were filled by family connection not by merit. Each leader was led to believe by their advisors that they had massively superior military capabilities. Each country believed that the conflict would be over in a matter of weeks. “It will be over by Christmas” was the general view of the British soldiers as they headed off to war. Germany’s first 3 days of war was so incredibly successful (Belgium and northern France collapsed entirely) that the country got very excited by the war.
Political Power more important than Human Rights. Military and Political leaders who saw soldiers like pawns on a chess board – expendable units for a few yards of advance. Military technology had moved ahead in giant leaps, but military tactics remained locked in the distant past.
Internal weaknesses in Russia and Germany – the senior leaders needed an external enemy to avoid revolutions and major changes in their own regimes. Russia had lost a recent war with Japan and needed a victory to boost moral. Germany was a weak confederation and Kaiser Wilhelm needed a common dangerous enemy to unite factions.
“Sleepwalking” diplomats that watched the events unfold without having a sense that the continued build up would reach all-out war. Europe had not had a major war in almost 100 years and senior diplomats were often chosen for their family ties, not for their experience or wisdom as spokespeople for their nations.

The song “The Green Fields of France” is often sung in pubs in Ireland to remember the fallen of the war. It is an intensely sad song that always makes me feel an intense gratitude to be alive today and to live in a time when myself or my friends and children are not under the threat of spending 4 years in trenches. The song asks whether we have ever learnt the lessons of the war. I hope we do. My own personal ambition is to teach the world to use words so powerfully that guns are not needed. This is a big challenge.

The Green Fields of France

by Eric Bogle

Well how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while ‘neath the warm summer sun
I’ve been working all day and I’m nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen.
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene.

Chorus :
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the dead-march as they lowered you down.
Did the bugles play the Last Post and chorus,
Did the pipes play the ‘Flooers o’ the Forest’.

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back there in nineteen-sixteen
In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed and forgotten behind the glass frame
In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
The warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There’s no gas, no barbed wire, there’s no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it’s still no-man’s-land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generaation that were butchered and damned.

Now young Willie McBride I can’t help but wonder why
Do all those who lie here know why they died
And did they believe when they answered the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying was all done in vain
For young Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Further Resources

Be for things

It is easy to point out why things are wrong. It is easy to point out why someone or some policy is flawed. It is easy to make a list of reasons why you should not do something.

You only get to do this cynicism* if you can tell me one thing that you are in favour of.

The cynic wants to prove you wrong.

The sceptic wants to understand how you achieve your goal.

*Two Important Definitions

You must learn to distinguish people who are sceptics (positive) from people who are cynics (negative).

cynic ˈsɪnɪk noun

1.

a person who believes that people are motivated purely by self-interest rather than acting for honourable or unselfish reasons.

“some cynics thought that the controversy was all a publicity stunt”

sceptic ˈskɛptɪk noun

1.

a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions.

6 Key Characteristics of “A” Players

Everyone wants to be Bruce Lee, but few want to put in the 10,000 (or more) hours of practice and preparation. It is only when the bar is held high that we can consistently put in the practice and push our skills to the highest levels.

What makes for an ‘A’ Player?

The simplest possible definition is “somebody you would enthusiastically re-hire”. Imagine you got to re-hire your team each morning. Who would be the first people chosen? These are your “A players”.

What attracts “A” Players? Two things – other “A” Players and a meaningful challenge.

How do you create a culture of “A” Players? There is only one path: Zero tolerance of mediocrity. At the end of this post I describe this leadership attitude.

I was inspired to put this post together by an article on “Learning from the Catalysts at Goldman Sachs”.

I speak in depth about leading A players in the past post “Leading Teams: The 5 Styles of Managing People”

The 6 Characteristics of ‘A’ Players

Positive Attitude – Resilient; life gives us all blows… some keep moving, some get knocked down. A players keep moving.
Adaptable – Open to Change, Flexible; what was right yesterday may be wrong today, what worked well yesterday may be ineffective today.
Reliable – write things down, get things done, relentless follow through, do what needs to be done
Big Picture – they know where they and their team are going, they have a personal sense of why they are doing the work that they are doing; building skills not just for today, but for where they want to be tomorrow.
Connected and Influential – Plays well with others, listens actively, open to being influenced and capable of shaping the perspectives and attitudes of others.
Always Learning – reading books, attending seminars, open to culture

How to run your talent program like FC Barcelona

At a conference at IESE Business School in 2011, Geoff Smart spoke to the audience about how to source, select and attract top talent to your organization. He asked “has anyone ever hired someone who looked great on paper, only to find out weeks or months later that it was a terrible decision?” Many hands were raised in the air.

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, says that the very first step of leaders who create massive success in their businesses is “get the right people on the bus”… and the corollary… get the wrong people off the bus.

There are 4 parts to hiring well.

Know clearly what you want the person to achieve. Go beyond vague descriptions of skills. eg. “Analytical Thought Process” develop further to “Distinguishes key facts from secondary factors; can follow a progressive thought process from idea to idea; makes sound observations.”
Go to where the best people are. Where are the best people? They are not looking at job adverts. They are not spending their weekend reading job websites. They are passionate about their current role. It is unlikely that those who are actively searching through non-personal channels are top performers. The top performers are still doing well in their current jobs. How to find the best people? There is only one way: Network. If you want talent: ask who the best people are, get to industry events, meet people at conferences. Watch people in action, know them through their activity, read their books, their tweets, their Quora profiles, their blogs.
Selecting the A players: focus on the past, not the future. Don’t ever ask “how would you solve the problem?”. Ask “tell me about a time when you solved a similar problem?” Everyone can tell you a great story about what they would do. The top performers are not smarter, don’t have better to-do list systems, better technology. The differentiator is that they have found the way to overcome procrastination. They actually do the things that they say they will do. Give them a present problem and ask them to solve it. See their creative thinking, not necessarily the solution. Look for performance, don’t ask for opinions.
Selling the opportunity, building the culture. Selling the opportunity to an A player does not mean “be their friend”; it means sell them on the personal growth, the professional growth the opportunity to impact the world on a massive scale. This is what great people want. Not more friends. They want to be pushed and demanded and be allowed to change the world for the better. Jonathan Davis says that culture is hard to build and easy to destroy. Jonathan turned down a hiring contract recently with a big company. He told the CEO “You cannot be client of ours. I’ll tell you why. Your VP of sales is a !@#$%^!. He won’t waste an opportunity to tell you how awesome he is. We can help you recruit a great employee, but he will leave.” It is the culture that you build that will really attract and keep the top talent. If you create a great culture, you don’t need to pay employees to bring people in… they will bring their ambitious, high performing friends in. The online shoe retailer Zappos pay $2000 for people to leave.

Finding, Recruiting and Retaining Talent is Hard Work

How do you do this without any effort? You don’t. Good talent doesn’t just happen because you are showing up. One of the hardest things in business life is removing a loyal but mediocre performer from your team. There may be bonds of friendship, there may be many good shared experiences in the past, feelings of connection. However, the continued presence of mediocrity in your team is a cancer that will eat away at your ability to achieve important goals. One way to reduce the pain of having to let go of mediocre performers is to get very good at only hiring star performers into your team.

Leadership sometimes means Letting People Go

My father once told me that the greatest service you can do for an unhappy, under performing employee is to let them go – it frees them to search and find a place where they can contribute and find greater meaning. They won’t thank you in the moment, but this is the service of a leader – it is not about giving – it is about serving; it is not about the easy answers, it is about the right answers.

Highly Demanding, with Love

How would you get Leo Messi to play for your football team? It would help if you had 3 of the top 5 footballers in the world already on the team. How do you attract the top talent to your team? Build a culture of high performance around you.

This starts with a zero tolerance of mediocrity.

A participant on my course last year began his speech “I have often wondered whether it is better as a parent to be permissive or authoritarian. Which is better? At a conference a few years ago, I had the opportunity to speak to one of the world guru’s on child development. I went up to him after his talk. I congratulated him. I asked him the question: ‘is it better for a parent to be permissive or authoritarian?’

The guru smiled and said ‘highly demanding with love’.”

It is the same as a leader – can you be highly demanding, with love. Expect the best from those around you and they rise to the challenge. Accept the worst, and they will coast in comfort.