Why Are So Many Employees Disengaged?

This ‘Psychology Today’ article is grrrrrr8. Not just because it declares the obvious – that most employees are disengaged. Your first question should be, Why?” The answer is:

“The number one factor the study cited influencing engagement and disengagement was ‘relationship with immediate supervisor.’”

The article also addresses the second question that doesn’t get asked that often – WHAT’S WRONG WITH THESE IMMEDIATE SUPERVISORS?!

Often shouted by bosses is the phrase, “Recruit attitude; Train skill.” That makes sense. BUT most don’t do it although they do say it. It’s even more true of recruiting frontline leaders – the ones whose relationships are the most critical for the business. And what should those attitude qualities being recruited look like. Psychology Today says:

“the qualities companies traditionally look for when selecting and developing managers and executives are often not conducive to building positive, productive, engaged employee relationships.”

The problem is that employers are recruiting for skill not attitude, despite many saying the opposite. They’re hiring or promoting people into leadership roles because “they’re good at their jobs” or “they deserve a promotion” and leadership roles are the only promotions available. Other options might be better for those people. They deserve something but not to be given a role for which they’re not suited. It doesn’t help them or those they end up leading poorly.

So, a primary focus for Brain-Based Bosses should be redesigning your recruitment processes to attract and snare frontline leaders who have a demonstrated track record of repeatedly being inherently good at building (and maintaining) positive, productive, engaged employee relationships. Then ensuring they’re developed as leaders as soon as practicable, with emphasis on those relationship skills. (Professional relationships – not relationships as Fonzie would have seen them. If you don’t know who Fonzie is, Google him…)

Feedback: What Happens In Vagueness Stays In Vagueness

Here’s a blog post about the dangers of non-specific feedback. The blogger references the work of psychologist Carol Dweck who I also quote in my book ‘The Brain-Based Boss’ on the subject of fixed versus growth mindsets. Here’s an excerpt:

The work of psychologist Carol Dweck is germane here. What she’s found is that, when children are praised in abstract–”You’re so smart” or “You’re so creative”–rather than concretely about how they improved their performance–”You put in an enormous amount of work, and it paid off”–the feedback is diminished. How come? Because the child takes from the teacher or parent the idea that she is innately smart or creative, and that she doesn’t need to work at it–so she doesn’t.

On the other hand, very specific feedback–especially about something an individual can control–can work wonders.

Quite rightly, the blogger points out that general statements such as ‘Good job’ might make you feel better and make you think that you’re dishing out some positive feedback but it needs to be more than merely positive to be useful and conducive to enhanced productivity. That phrase would need to:

• be said at the time the specific action warranting praise occurred or as immediately afterwards as possible.
• be said to the specific individual performing and controlling the praiseworthy action that you’d like to see more of.
• contain a few more details and expectations than 2 words of generality (what exactly was the bit that was good?)
• some connection to a greater goal, the wider team or higher purpose.

So, here’s some specific feedback to several new Twitter followers I’ve gotten recently – If you’ve only got 17 Twitter followers yourself, best not describe yourself as a ‘social media guru.’

Employers delude themselves over staff engagement levels

Depressingly but unsurprisingly there may be a gap between what bosses think workers think and what workers actually think, or at least what they say they think.

This article references a couple of surveys making these 'revelations.'
Supposedly, two out of five employers described staff morale as either ‘high’ or ‘very high.' A different survey, this time of employees, showed that almost three out of five seemed to have adopted a ‘not bothered’ attitude to work.
Have a read and have a ponder on the implications. To me, one of the fundamental underpinnings of genuine employee engagement is a  sense of common purpose and clear shared expectations between everyone involved in the work - be they employer or employee. A lack of that will lead to lower engagement and a subsequent loss of productivity and profitability benefits.

The trouble with the results of those UK surveys (if they're accurate) is not only is there that lack of a sense of common purpose and clear shared expectations between everyone involved in the work but there's an absence of any meaningful and systemic communication to capture that gap and reduce it.

We shouldn't be relying on external, averaged and general surveys to tell us what is entirely predictable and, if not avoidable, at least simply mitigated through observation and enquiry.

There'll always be gaps between perceptions of employers and employees. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them change their spots.

Do You Keep Repeating Ineffective Management Behaviours?

This blog post by Kevin Herring kicks off by referencing the popular definition of insanity often credited to Einstein – that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. (If I’m going to write a blog called ‘The Brain-Based Boss’, it’s only fair that I entertain some metaphors and allegories on mental illness.)

Kevin supplies a great case study from his work with one manager and one high-potential / under-achieving employee. Years of repeated and ineffective ‘pep talks’ took place. They did the same thing over and over again and expected a different result. The boss chose to break the cycle and got a different (and better) result. If you want the details of the happy ending, go read Kevin’s post.

Maybe it’s a potentially great quote or maybe it’s something wise I actually thought of myself but I find myself saying sometimes that the two best times to change how things are done is when things are going badly and when things are going great. I am not a big fan of the ‘if things aint broke, don’t try and fix ‘em’ school of thinking. The rate of change and the level of interdependence are such these days that to expect the external marketplace to keep on some hopeful status quo path is pretty unrealistic. Change when you choose to before you have to change when you’re forced to.

Kevin calls it a ‘conversation inventory’ – a deliberate, proactive and scheduled effort to catch yourself falling into these tickbox patterns of management behaviour, repeated cycles of failed attempts to influence the behaviour of others.

Worth a go. Be crazy not to.

Can Crowdsourcing Improve Employee Performance?

This recent item from CBS News considers how looking to co-workers for feedback might be an improvement on the traditional linear boss-worker performance reviewer-reviewee relationship. According to a study it cites, 45 percent of HR leaders don’t believe that employees’ annual performance reviews accurately reflect the quality of their work. As an employee, I certainly never believed that (unless it equaled or exceeded my own expectations.)
The article doesn’t go into the practicalities of how it could or should be done but they stipulate 3 benefits:

1. Capture feedback continuously
2. Widen the circle
3. Feedback is genuine

For all its downsides, the traditional one-on-one approach is simple. (But is that sufficient reason to keep it alive?) Probably all the benefits of a peer-to-peer feedback system could be incorporated into a traditional approach – if the manager could be bothered getting out and seeking and aggregating the feedback. Which is, of course, where it falls down.
The aggregation is important to keep it honest and timely so it’s not just all warm and fuzzy cuddle feedback but open and honest corrective feedback too. As grand as crowdsourced feedback would be if it could be practically done, there definitely needs to be a means of keeping a practical ratio of positive and negative.

Psychologist Marcial Losada’s 1999 study looked at communication in teams, particularly the ratio of positive to negative statements. Various teams were tagged as being high, medium or low performing teams based on profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations from management. The lowest high performing teams has a ratio of positive to negative statements of 2.9013:1. (For us non-academics, let’s round that to 3:1.) The highest performing teams averaged around 6:1. But there were diminishing returns and eventually a negative effect. Some of the worst performing teams had an 11:1 ratio so everyone must have been so busy hugging and bestowing warm fuzzies on everyone else, that no one ever did any actual productive work. That level of positivity is over-the-top, unrealistic and evidently not productive.

What’s so special about this magical zone of positivity? Losada says a highly connected team balances internal and external focus while also balancing enquiry and advocacy. If you’ve ever been in a highly negative workplace, you’ll know what he’s talking about. If you do something and make a mistake and you get slapped with blame and negativity, that drives the behaviours of avoidance and defensiveness.

Isn’t that right, you moron?

Kudos – Can Automating Employee Recognition Enhance Employee Engagement?

I was recently contacted by someone from marketing at a company called Kudos - a polite and literate human, not a bot. They asked if I’d blog about their product. This was new to me. There’s no commission nor would I seek one. I don’t use their product – I’m a self-employed sole-charge contractor. I give myself recognition all the time which probably could be a bit more positive than it is, although some days I think I’m way too fabulous.

I knew (and know) not very much about the specifics of Kudos beyond their website and what other bloggers reveal. So, don’t think for a moment I’m formally recommending them at all, or commenting on the reliability or functionality of their offering one way or the other. I’m not because I can’t and I shouldn’t. Plus, as I said, not only am I a a self-employed sole-charge contractor, I also have a history of being flippant with a sideline as a professional stand-up comedian making serious business points using humour as a lever.

So, after that long introductory proviso, I like the idea of Kudos. That’s all I’m even remotely qualified to comment upon.

I like that here is a possible solution to the problem I’ve personally encountered with managing operations that are 24/7 and / or geographically distributed. As I said, I sometimes think I’m pretty fabulous but no amount of fabulousness makes you omniscient or ominprescent. You cannot be everywhere at all times. Tons of things are happening in the workplaces you’re supposed to be leading when you’re, quite simply, not there. You can’t be. And no matter how charged up you are about “catching people doing things right” and how committed you are to ensuring your people get all the positive reinforcement and corrective feedback they need, you, alone, simply cannot.
I paraphrase Tom Peters (I think) a lot when I say the true test of your communication / leadership / whatever is what happens when you’re not around. A challenge I often throw at people I train is how can you be more influential over what happens when you’re not around. The idea of Kudos seems to be a great tool for helping here.

In your absence, employees can give each other feedback online and you can be kept in the loop. If it works and if some tricky bits can be handled well, then this has the potential to be very helpful. If you’ve ever sent an email that someone else has misinterpreted, then you’ll know what I imply by “tricky bits.” And, in the same way as email in some workplaces has laughingly replaced face-to-face communication lies a potential pitfall. There’s no substitute for feedback that is BEST:

B -behaviour based
E -esteem building
S -specific
T – timely

Target behaviours when recognising employees

Sure Kudos would be great if it can create a formal record and trail. It would be excellent if it helps bring together teams spread over time and space. But it would need to be implemented carefully with accompanying training and moderation. Carol Dweck’s research on mindset showed the dangers of how just gushing with praise for the wrong behaviours can be counter productive. (Kids praised for “being smart” avoided challenge later on whereas kids praised for “working hard” sought challenges.) I think that any automating of feedback needs to cater for this pitfall.

The ratio of positive to negative statements in employee recognition

Psychologist Marcial Losada’s 1999 study looked at communication in teams, particularly the ratio of positive to negative statements. Various teams were tagged as being high, medium or low performing teams based on profitability, customer satisfaction and evaluations from management. The lowest high performing teams has a ratio of positive to negative statements of 2.9013:1. (For us non-academics, let’s round that to 3:1.) The highest performing teams averaged around 6:1. But there were diminishing returns and eventually a negative effect. Some of the worst performing teams had an 11:1 ratio so everyone must have been so busy hugging and bestowing warm fuzzies on everyone else, that no one ever did any actual productive work. That level of positivity is over-the-top, unrealistic and evidently not productive. Kudos would need to factor this in too.

Another opportunity for automated recognition systems to be corrupted would be familiar to you if you have teenagers on FaceBook, Tumblr etc. Often you’ll see ‘like for a like’ requests. (Actually, you see that a lot with grown-ups’ LinkedIn recommendations.) They may indeed be genuine reflections of actual positive experiences or they could simply be recognition as a tradeable commodity. Again, Kudos would have to tackle a praise ‘black market.’ (But who am I to criticise? I’m not even sure I spelled “tradeable” correctly.)
There could be, I suppose, an application for Kudos in my current working environment where I frequently subcontract to a few training providers. I don’t have colleagues or bosses in the traditional sense. They generally employ a contractor model but we contractors too have our our needs for recognition (prick us, do we not bleed?) and we are even more problematically spaced out over time and geography. There’s definitely potential usefulness for Kudos or similar in that structure.

I’m not meaning to be negative. I do like the idea of Kudos. I also like the idea of cars and there are road rules and safety systems in place for those. Give it a try. There’s a free offer. Check out that new software smell. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, that’s what I say (despite my stance against meta-amphetamine…)

I’ll keep looking at it. Let me know your thoughts if you’ve had direct experience.

Look Like You Mean What You Say

Looking and sounding like you mean what you say is called congruence.

Here’s a Freakonomics blog post about the advantages of looking trustworthy. They reference a, perhaps not unsurprising, piece of research which found that, “… people are more likely to invest money in someone whose face is generally perceived as trustworthy, even when they are given negative information about this person’s reputation.”

In researching my current book, I came across one so-called research finding that concluded that people with assymetrical faces made better leaders. The reasoning behind this was that beautiful people have it easy their whole lives so they don’t have to put in the effort with people to influence them, whereas not-so-beautiful people had to develop influencing skills their whole life because nature didn’t give them any natural advantages. This does seem to contradict books like ‘Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful.’

Both are interesting possibly but is either of any use to a leader in the workplace trying to be a Brain-Based Boss and get better results by applying this thinking in the real world of work?

I suggest that while it may be possible to change how symmetrical your face is in order to enjoy any supposed benefits, that’s a tad crazy. (Crazy isn’t like pregnant. No one’s ever a “tad pregnant.” You either are or you aren’t. With crazy however, there is an abundance of shades.)

My point, surreal as it was getting, is that the face-shape research might be amusing but it isn’t usefully applicable in the real world of work.

Looking trustworthy has more potential usefulness. I couldn’t tell with just a skim read of the article but I hope that whatever trustworthy looks like isn’t something you’re born with but is a set of behaviours you can learn and use. And by “use”, I don’t mean “fake and manipulate.” And I don’t just mean raised eyebrows and a smile. There must be a combination of micro body language movements that reflect a genuine trustworthiness.Straight posture, open gestures, eye contact and many more that a mere still image in a lab test cannot hope to portray.

If you are trustworthy, it’ll enhance your professional communication and leadership effectiveness if you can also look trustworthy. Here are some clues:

No disrespect to the follically challenged, and I get that these are simple computer generated images, but I think the +3SD guy would look even more trustworthy if he added some hair (though not not in beard or mustache form) and lost the black t-shirt…

Overcoming Bad Attitudes At Work

Here’s a short, snappy, quirky YouTube video on overcoming bad attitudes at work. It’s a sensible approach given it’s less than a minute.

You’ll often hear people in the workplace comment about others, “Oh, they’ve got a good / bad attitude.” A mental model I see used a lot in leadership and supervisor training is that of the iceberg. The tip of the iceberg, the only part visible above the waterline is a tiny proportion of the mass of the iceberg as a whole. (Just watch the movie ‘Titanic.’  Spoiler Alert! – It’s really loooong. The movie and the iceberg.)

The tip of the iceberg is behaviour – what people say and do. That is observable. That’s all you can see or hear. You can’t see ‘Attitude.’ You can only see behaviour. Underlying that behaviour is attitude, underlying that are feelings and underlying those are beliefs. Each subsequent layer takes up a greater proportion of the iceberg but gets decreasingly visible.

As a leader in the workplace, it’d be great if you had the time and ability to influence beliefs and feelings for the better with a view to generate better behaviours over the long-term but the further down the iceberg you go, the greater the challenge. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try, although with beliefs there are some times when it’s inappropriate. You do need to stop first and work out if it’s worth the effort. As a baseline, you ultimately should be primarily concerned over observable behaviour in the workplace.

A case I came across in one workplace was that of an fifty-something man supervised by a barely-twenty-something woman. The situation was coloured (pun intentional) by racial / cultural issues too. Long-story-short, he was generally perfectly capable at his job but acted in a hostile manner towards her. Her supervisory performance was more than competent.  You can try to change the sexist beliefs of one person in a particular workplace. Good luck. You should definitely try but it probably aint gonna happen. Beliefs like that are at the foundation level of the iceberg. You’re a team leader or manager, you’re not a shrink. But you absolutely must target and manage the observable behaviours that reflect any sexist attitude.

If you do ever succeed in genuinely changing someone’s truly bad attitude, you are allowed to stand at the pointy end of your workplace and shout, “I’m the king of the world!” (Just be wary of what happened to the last guy who did that…)

Look Like You Mean What You Say - Congruence

Looking and sounding like you mean what you say is called congruence.

Here’s a Freakonomics blog post about the advantages of looking trustworthy. They reference a, perhaps not unsurprising, piece of research which found that, “… people are more likely to invest money in someone whose face is generally perceived as trustworthy, even when they are given negative information about this person’s reputation.”

In researching my current book, I came across one so-called research finding that concluded that people with assymetrical faces made better leaders. The reasoning behind this was that beautiful people have it easy their whole lives so they don’t have to put in the effort with people to influence them, whereas not-so-beautiful people had to develop influencing skills their whole life because nature didn’t give them any natural advantages. This does seem to contradict books like ‘Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful.’

Both are interesting possibly but is either of any use to a leader in the workplace trying to be a Brain-Based Boss and get better results by applying this thinking in the real world of work?

I suggest that while it may be possible to change how symmetrical your face is in order to enjoy any supposed benefits, that’s a tad crazy. (Crazy isn’t like pregnant. No one’s ever a “tad pregnant.” You either are or you aren’t. With crazy however, there is an abundance of shades.)

My point, surreal as it was getting, is that the face-shape research might be amusing but it isn’t usefully applicable in the real world of work.
Looking trustworthy has more potential usefulness. I couldn’t tell with just a skim read of the article but I hope that whatever trustworthy looks like isn’t something you’re born with but is a set of behaviours you can learn and use. And by “use”, I don’t mean “fake and manipulate.” And I don’t just mean raised eyebrows and a smile. There must be a combination of micro body language movements that reflect a genuine trustworthiness.Straight posture, open gestures, eye contact and many more that a mere still image in a lab test cannot hope to portray.

If you are trustworthy, it’ll enhance your professional communication and leadership effectiveness if you can also look trustworthy. Here are some clues:

No disrespect to the follically challenged, and I get that these are simple computer generated images, but I think the +3SD guy would look even more trustworthy if he added some hair (though not not in beard or mustache form) and lost the black t-shirt…

How To Help Your People Deal With 'Difficult People'

1 out of 5 people are difficult. Look at the 4 people around you. If it's not them - it's YOU!

OK, the 1 out of 5 statistic above is a joke. It might be true but that can said of 57% of all statistics. Tony Schwartz in his HBR blog writes that the difficulty in the dealing does indeed actually lie with YOU.

He makes some good points. It's bad enough for you if you have to deal with someone you find difficult at work and you're stuck with having to deal with them every working day. Schwartz stresses how much worse it is when that person is your boss. Firstly, it's a natural stressor when you choose to believe you've lost control and / or are powerless. Both these situations will add to that. And, of course, when it's your boss, you've got a dollop of fear thrown in for good (bad) measure. Baseline security fear, the powerful kind. (Thanks Maslow.)

Schwartz uses a very helpful 'lens' metaphor as a possible solution. There's the lens of 'realistic optimism', the 'reverse lens' and the 'long lens.' The stress, the feelings of control and power and the fear are largely driven by how you choose to react to situations. So, choose to stop and look at it from some different perspectives. What are the facts and what am I telling myself about those facts? What is this other person feeling that is driving their behaviour? To what extent can I influence that? Ask some other questions about how this might play out and what can be learned and how important it is in the scheme of things.

So far, I've written from the angle of you having to deal directly with a difficult person of your own. If you're reading this, you're probably an experienced grown-up. You're probably able to take care of yourself instinctively. But how can you help your people who perhaps aren't as instinctively clued up?

I like Schwartz's approach of using questions, only instead of asking yourself, you engage your team member in a private conversation. They may come to you with a problem in dealing with someone else in the workplace. You cannot realistically give them some miraculous piece of advice that will work every time. You do not want to create a relationship of dependence with you having to always step in and solve others' interpersonal problems. But in engaging them with these questions, it'll drive them to think, not just with this person they're having difficulty dealing with today but in the future as well.

I read of a  social experiment. Individuals were told they'd be working with a partner in a another room. Each would do one of two tasks, one of which was unpleasant. You got to choose who did what & your partner would never know. (Of course, there was no partner in the other room.) The researcher left for a few minutes while the subject decided. They had a coin in a sealed plastic bag in case they wanted to "decide fairly." 90% of non-coin tossers gave the crappy job to their partner. Of those who tossed a coin, the crappy job was given to their partner...

...90%!

The only variable that made the decider make fairer decisions = putting a mirror right in front of them.