Leadership Thought

Commitment, passion, engagement, enthusiasm, determination.  When employees exhibit these characteristics organizations are highly successful. This isn’t an accident.  It takes effective leadership to create the kind of an environment in which these employees can thrive.

Take another look at those opening words, these are all aspects of our emotions. Daniel Goleman in his book “Primal Leadership” advances the notion that leadership actually works through the emotions. Assume that an organization has a dynamite strategy to really get fantastic results.  No matter how brilliant the plan, if employees do not have an emotional connection it isn’t going to reach its potential.

Here is how I think it works. When our logical left brain is stimulated by the plan and then our more emotional right brain kicks in something almost magical occurs.  People begin to make connections, see opportunities, develop ideas and most importantly act intentionally.  They care about what happens, feel responsible and act accountably.

Effective leaders create environments that draw people into the process in a way that creates that emotional connection. One primary element of that environment is TRUST.  People do not follow leaders they do not trust.  Why? Simple, a lack of trust stimulates emotions such as suspicion, fear, apathy, distain etc.  Do you know of any toxic environments such as this that produce great results?  I don’t.

The Integro Leadership Institute (disclosure -I am an associate partner) has a primary focus of helping leaders learn to build trust.  Contact me to talk about a proven trust building process.

al

Alan Adyniec Employee engagement, Leadership effectiveness achieving results, Effective leadership, emotional intelligence, Trust

Okay so based on the last post we want to create an environment where people not only can perform at their best but want to.  Here are some basic ingredients:

• Align around essentials - Everyone in the organization must be totally clear on why we are in business; what value do we generate beyond a profit. This leads to who your customers are, and why they would want to do business with your organization.
• Build trust - Trust has become the buzz word of this new century. Books are written about its importance, research bears out its impact on achieving results; it is fundamental to success.
• Engage staff in creating and achieving goals - Once everyone is aligned and it feels safe to really apply themselves, you would be surprised at what they are willing to commit to accomplishing.
• Stay out of the way - This is one of the most difficult steps for managers. Many can get this far and then they try to manage or handle what happens from here on out. It is like spending lots of time with family choosing a car and then saying only I can drive. BIG mistake.
• Coach staff to success - Coaches don’t score points, players do. Coaches are on the sidelines supporting players with conditioning, strategy and feedback.

This is a lot of “what to do” but “how” do you do these things.  First, understand this is a process that takes a few months to generate results and possibly years to truly create a performance oriented environment.

Keith Ayers, president of the Integro Leadership Institute has developed some great material to guide this transition.  To check out Integro click here or visit my site at www.Coach2Engage.com.  Al

Alan Adyniec Employee engagement, Leadership effectiveness alignment, business success, Effective leadership, employee enagagement, Trust

Surveying staff certainly isn’t a new idea.  However I am not sure that staff satisfaction, the most common survey, is very helpful in improving performance.  The level of satisfaction may or may not have an impact on outcomes.  For instance staff may be perfectly satisfied and, at the same time, be somewhat complacent about their work.

Several 21^st Century staff surveys focus on aspects other than satisfaction such as employee engagement, the level of trust, employee passion, organizational alignment etc.

The value of these surveys is that they deal more directly with organizational performance.  Mountains of research (links below) clearly indicates that employee engagement, trust, and alignment have a direct impact on performance.  Obtaining an employee perspective on the organization’s effectiveness in areas like communication, leadership and process function can lead to breakthroughs in performance, highlight areas for training and development and often separate a little of the “ivory” from the “tower” that many executive teams live in.

Most surveys provide a good overall look at the environment or culture which is a strong indicator of the health of the organization.  Drill down capabilities are also usually available to “slice and dice” the data by group or function.   Some of my clients have fielded surveys as an element of strategic planning.  In the same way that organizations gather data on the external environment more organizations are also assessing the internal environment. After all having a brilliant strategic plan that can’t be implemented because of internal problems is of little value.

The Gallup Q12 which measures employee engagement has been around for a while.  More recently Curt Coffman (formerly of Gallup) has developed a similar product the Employee Engagement 2.0 which is gaining some traction.

Personally I like the survey tools developed by the Integro Leadership Institute.  Keith Ayers has some great surveys that give a better picture (by my reconning) of what is going on within the organization.  Integro’s surveys measure things like specific behaviors that build trust, employee passion, alignment with the organizations purpose, values, vision etc. There is even feedback available regarding how well values are demonstrated in the workplace.

If you go to the Integro Website and click on Assessments you will get a better idea of what I am talking about.  Click on the Passion Index to complete a free survey to find out how passionate you are about your work.   al

Gallup research on employee engagement on business results

Cornell research on The Impact of Trust on profits

Alan Adyniec Employee engagement, Leadership effectiveness achieving results, alignment, Effective leadership, employee enagagement, Trust

Control based leadership does work.  It is the leadership style that took us through the 20th century.  The question is; Is (or was) control based leadership the most effective method?  The answer according research is NO! If you had a chance to review the HBS blog and video of Eric Schmidt in my last post you can see that Google’s leadership style is an open and trust based leadership approach.  It could easily be termed “out of control” leadership.  Yet Google achieves great results through innovation.  Control stifles innovation.

Most leadership teams operate under the delusion that they are not control based.  Why, because it is really hard to see your own behaviors and how they affect others.   I believe that control based leadership is the primary reason that Employee Engagement surveys show very little improvement after investments of years and billions.  al

Alan Adyniec Uncategorized achieving results, Innovative leadership, Trust

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Alan Adyniec Employee engagement, Leadership effectiveness alignment, Trust, trustworthiness