Best Friends At Work?

I read this New York Times’ article about how it is supposed to be harder to make friends once you pass the age of 30 and it reminded me of some old Gallup surveys I saw on employee engagement citing “having a best friend at work” as an indicator of employee engagement.

The article itself is quite interesting as someone myself who recently nudged over the line of [SPOILER ALERT] being closer to 60 than 30. Just. Recently.
“Gallup also observed that employees who report having a best friend at work were:

• 43% more likely to report having received praise or recognition for their work in the last seven days.
• 37% more likely to report that someone at work encourages their development.
• 35% more likely to report coworker commitment to quality.
• 28% more likely to report that in the last six months, someone at work has talked to them about their progress.
• 27% more likely to report that the mission of their company makes them feel their job is important.
• 27% more likely to report that their opinions seem to count at work.
• 21% more likely to report that at work, they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day.”

I don’t know if ‘having a best friend at work’ really is a major driver of employee engagement. It stirs up conversations for sure whenever I bring it up in workshops. Even Gallup referred to it as “controversial” but they stuck by it. I guess I can see it as symptomatic of a workplace culture that allows trust, belonging, contribution, support and all those good things that do definitely drive engagement. Certainly, on the flipside, those without employment at any time also lose a massive chunk of chance to interact socially which us humans definitely need. Losing a job isn’t just losing a pay-cheque.

So, what does work provide that potentially generates and builds friendships?

“As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other…”

Where these days (or ever) do those conditions occur? Schools and workplaces. And if you’re over 30, you’re probably not at school anymore. (Maybe we all should be?) Unless you’re a teacher. But then, that also counts a workplace. Teachers must have lots of friends.

The Great Divide – Rob O’Neill’s Article On The Employee Engagement Gap In New Zealand

Rob’s article yesterday gave a very detailed snapshot of a study into the current state of employee engagement in New Zealand and, to a lesser degree, compared with Australia. I have one bugbear with something that someone from the research company said that worries me which I’ll turn to soon but the article as a whole and its primary conclusions were spot-on, I think.

That primary conclusion was reflected in the article’s title – there’s a big difference between the engagement levels of the bosses compared to the bossed. The opening paragraphs screams it out, “A massive gulf is emerging not just between managers and workers in this country, but also between senior managers and middle management – and that will damage productivity, both management experts and unions are warning.”

The average figures generally reflect other engagement studies. About a third of people are disengaged. BUT when they stratified their findings by pay-grade, the startling gaps became plain. “57 per cent of leaders were engaged at work while just 32 per cent of non-managers – or those people that actually do the work – were engaged, a 25 percentage point difference.”

While the disparity between bosses and the bossed is a worry, let’s look at that 32% of non-managers who actually are supposedly engaged. Other studies have shown that to be in the mid 20s so 32% is less bad. (In New Zealand we use the phrase “less bad” way too much.) Other studies routinely show, with some variation here and there, about a quarter of workers are engaged and a quarter disengaged. The rest are ‘present.’ They show up, consume oxygen, do what they’re told to or paid for and no more. That’s where the greatest  performance improvement potential lies.

Here’s my beef from just one quote in the article from one of the researchers, “Only a third of New Zealand employees without management responsibilities report feeling engaged at work…”

Report feeling engaged! To me, what people report they think they feel is perhaps interesting but that is not engagement. Engagement is a set of observable behaviours which, to be fair, the article does go on to outline later. To me, the most basic, yet critical, of which is the acid test of engagement. The engagement that leads to the productivity and profitability benefits not just changes in people’s feelings. That acid test is discretionary effort.

People can say they feel motivated or unmotivated or engaged or disengaged or any number of adjectives. It may or not be accurate but what matters is their observable behaviour, not what they report they feel. If the research cited in the article was a genuine measurement of actual behaviour reflecting the correct definition of engagement then the startling gap is indeed a worry. I myself only have three facial expressions and one of them is startled so I’m OK.

The research company is also in the business of selling solutions to the problems they just identified. I can’t bag them for this. Why else does research ever get done? (One of my other facial expressions is cynical.) That said, I can’t disagree with their generalised solution guidleines:

1. Be visible and available for people throughout the organisation,
2. Build an environment of openness and trust,
3. Connect your employees and their work to a shared vision and values.

I’m always raving on about autonomy, mastery and purpose being great drivers of engagement. Their point 3 certainly ties in with purpose. Their point 2 seems synonymous with autonomy. So while I’ve nitpicked a bit, its a great article and seemingly research highlighting a problem that needs addressing.
Someone should definitely do something about it. That’s where my third facial expression arrives – looking around innocently…

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?

Top 5 Factors To Win Over Staff

This article in a newspaper over the weekend created a sense of conflict within me. Firstly, it made me use the term “newspaper” when paper never entered into it. I read the headline online via my iPhone and emailed the link to it to myself so I could access it on my laptop at home and refer you to it when I got around to next posting on my blog. No paper was involved, yet I still used the term “newspaper.” That aint going away in a hurry.

Secondly, it’s painfully obvious that a lazy or perhaps pressured and under-resourced media outlet pretty much regurgitated verbatim much, if not all, of a press release. If you told me it was a paid placement I wouldn’t be surprised.

The sense of conflict in me  I mentioned earlier comes from me mostly agreeing with much of what it says. Yet again, I’ll stress that I believe there is a major difference between true employee engagement that drives productivity and profitability and everyone just being happy and this being a great place to work. If I worked in a car factory that let me take home a new car every night, I’m sure I would think and tell everyone I knew, including Fairfax’s business news ‘reporters’, that this factory was a “great place to work.” It doesn’t mean I’m actively engaged and it doesn’t help productivity and profitability. That said, their key points aren’t a million miles away from the drivers of true engagement which I reckon are self awareness, autonomy, mastery, purpose and developing others. Their top 5 factors to win over staff are:

1. Set clear expectations
2. Communicate well
3. Shared company values
4. Reward and recognition
5. Promote within

Assuming there is a company mission that could connect with individual employees’ senses of purpose, the top 3 definitely reinforce the driver of purpose and self awareness. Numbers 4 and 5 reinforce mastery and developing others. So, on balance, I like this research and its findings if not the article per se. (Once again, I’ll confess the reason I like it is because it agrees with me.)

More internal conflict is generated for me as its primary superstar employer is Chorus. I don’t know the company that well. I’ve never worked with them or for them. They’re one of the companies that fell out of the restructuring of New Zealand Telecom. Their vans are double parked all over our country whilst men and women with pliers are up to their armpits in cables. They may do more than this. Other than hearing about them in the business news due to the restructuring, their other claim to fame in my memory was shunting those people with pliers out, away from being ‘employees’ and into being ‘self-employed contractors.’ Away from all that security and benefits and overheads and inclusiveness and legislative protection.

I am a self-employed contractor. I love it. I chose it. I’m not dissing the business model. I am wondering if perhaps Chorus’s current high levels of employee engagement might be due to them only surveying employees? Much of the actual working workforce performing their actual core business are no longer employees, they’re self-employed contractors. They may not be so happy – or engaged. If Chorus did include them than bloody well done. They must have handled the displacement and contracting process with Saint-like genius and I’d applaud them for that. If.

Read the article but be warned, do not eat beforehand. The gratuitous self-martyring of some of the bosses quoted may cause you nausea. I especially liked one HR Manager’s story of refusing 3 attempts to upgrade her airline seat so she wouldn’t put herself above anyone else. I got the same sickly-sweet feeling that much non-business class airline food causes.
The other sense of conflict it caused me is that it made me struggle to work out the possessive of Chorus and apostrophes and the need for an extra s. Is it Chorus’ or Chorus’s or something else?

Some UK Employee Engagement Stats

This company’s website has some useful overview stats on employee engagement, especially the consequential benefits. It’s simply but very effectively presented in graphical form. Nice job. Some telling stats too – such as 75% of managers having no engagement strategy despite 90% of them stating that they know it’s important and impactful on business success.

Who Says Work Has To Be Fulfilling?

 

This HBR Blog post  poses a challenging and provocative question for those of us who seem to always be championing that workplaces should attract engaged employees and provide them an environment and culture that nurtures employee engagement. I’m one of those champions who sees a bedrock foundation of such a culture as having to include providing meaning for the people from their work – a purpose to get out of bed and zip in to work beyond the mere collecting of a paycheck. (Not ‘instead of’ but ‘as well as’, although there are many for whom it is ‘instead of’ and good on them but that is neither practical nor desirable for everyone.)

My scan of their post makes me think that they’re saying, “fageddaboutit.” Its too hard to find a fulfilling job. You have to make rent. Suck it up and suffer a crappy third of your day every day and whore yourself out for a buck. Even if you do luck your way into a fulfilling job, it won’t last. Get your jollies in your spare time. Be realistic.

They make many good and fair points. We do have to make rent. So do the people you lead. If everyone really was solely out to get fulfilled by their work above earning a wage, wouldn’t a lot more of us be working on water purification projects in Sub-Saharan Africa? But I can’t just let it slide. My view on getting meaning or fulfillment from your work (and the guts of what I try and advise my kids) is, Be realistic and aspirational.

Starting out, a lot of people flip a lot of burgers, push a lot of trolleys and pump a lot of gas. Substitute whatever jobs you personally perceive as being unfulfilling. I work with a lot of senior and highly qualified professionals who get an immense amount of achievement and satisfaction from their work on top of a kickass paycheque. But I work with a lot more front-line and first-time supervisors who don’t have that kickass paycheque and who don’t YET get an immense amount of achievement and satisfaction from their work – but they might.

I’m not extrapolating from the 100 or so employees I’ve worked with in the past year who stack vegetables that everyone can be fulfilled by such a routine and repetitious set of tasks. But some people can and do. I’ve met and worked with them. Most don’t. They punch a clock, make a buck and move on. Maybe their lettuce-stacking enables them to buy the turntable that launches their MC / DJ career? The moving on in the search for the possibility of eventual fulfillment is as much a driver of employee engagement as actually ever arriving at some magical and transitory arrival point called ‘fulfillment.’

Employee Engagement And The Workplace Environment

 

This blog from TNS quite rightly suggests that the workplace environment is more than merely “the physical characteristics that make up a workplace.” It goes on to suggest that resource supply is a critical influencer of employee engagement. I agree but think they could have gone a lot further and deeper with their point.

Hopefully, most employers are keen to create a productive workplace and go about the relatively easy task of setting up the physical space in which work occurs. Many things are highly prescribed by law such as workplace safety or incentifized by potential downstream costs such as using ergonomic workstations to prevent the costs of lost-time injury due to occupational overuse syndrome or whatever it’s called these days. They’ll install heaters, fans, air conditioning, legionnaires disease filters, white strips on staircase steps, adjustable chairs and so forth. Those things are tangible, observable and relatively easy.

Employee Engagement Is Influenced By An Interdependent Workplace Eco System

I prefer to think of the workplace environment as a bit like an eco system and I have worked in a few swamplike places over the years. But, of course, I mean eco system in the sense of non-obvious interdependencies. The physical, cultural, social and many other words ending in “al” aspects of the workplace combine to produce whatever level of effectiveness and productivity you’re currently enjoying (or enduring.)

No doubt, you may have someone who has it in their job description to make sure the aircon works and the chairs are adjusted, perhaps even one or more people whose job is nothing but doing those things. But whose job is it to make sure the non-obvious and non-tangible environmental factors are at least acceptable and hopefully improving? The boss you say? Sure, why not?
Me, I say it’s part of everyone’s job. If workplace leaders are hiring inherently engaged and motivated people and desire to create a workplace culture that nurtures genuine engagement, then those employees should have zero qualms about speaking up or taking action themselves. The boss can too (and should.) The boss certainly bears the ultimate responsibility but it should be everyone’s job.

Then again, it should only ever rain at night.

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…

Improved Employee Engagement Reverses Downward Trend

Here’s some fresh research on employee engagement numbers. It contradicts some other surveys and suggests a trend. Maybe that’s accurate. Maybe that’s not. Whether some average in a survey is bigger or smaller than some average in another survey should be of little interest to me or you. What should matter is how your engagement levels are trending at your workplace. Survey that or, better still, wander around and observe it and immerse yourself in it yourself. That’s quicker, cheaper, more accurate, more timely and more useful to you right now.

Having just lambasted survey results and generalities, there are some specifics that could be of applicable relevance to you. Here’s a quote, “The report also identified three main drivers of improved employee engagement – career opportunities, recognition of employees’ hard work and organisational reputation… This last factor was particularly valued by European employees, who were more concerned about their employer’s public reputation and values than personal recognition.”

I recently blogged about the extent to which corporate social responsibility could be a lever to attract and retain talent and to enhance employee engagement. In short, I thought it could if there was a direct, personal and emotional connection between the type of corporate social responsibility and the individual employees. Otherwise it could just be hype and spin – a superficial facade or off-target wasted effort.

So, if we accept this new research tagging employer reputation as being a genuine driver (or represser) of employee engagement, then that would seem to further suggest that corporate social responsibility might be a good thing, not just because it is inherently a good thing, but because it drives employee engagement. AND, as I am at pains to often stress, employee engagement is a good thing, not just because it is inherently a good thing, but because it drives improved revenue and profitability. And that’s a good thing even for bean counters* who might not personally care about employees or society.
*

Corporate Social Responsibility: A Lever For Employee Attraction & Engagement

This Forbes article contains some challenging results from surveys about what some employees would be willing to trade off in terms of pay in exchange for a workplace that was into social responsibility, positive environmental impact or similar values. I’m a little cynical but having made some similar trade-offs myself in recent years, I can believe it. I think my cynicism is around the fact that these employees must have some baseline of income they’d demand before they start getting all altruistic. Fair enough. The happiness research says that beyond a certain point, more money doesn’t make you sustainably happier. So maybe some of these warm, fuzzy organisational behaviours would?

When it comes to employees, ‘happy’ is not the same as ‘engaged.’ Happy is whatever you think it is for you. Engaged means you’re applying discretionary effort at work – i.e. doing stuff you don’t HAVE TO because you CHOOSE TO. That said, I’d like to be happy and I’d like employees to be happy. Of course, the big question is to what extent am I, or any employer, willing to pay for that happiness? My usual answer applies, “It depends.”
It would depend a whole lot less if there was a genuine willingness to make some trade-off. We’d all love to hug a tree but might be less inclined to live in one.

35% would take a 15% pay cut to work for a company “committed to corporate social responsibility” (whatever that means.) 45% would take a 15% pay cut to work for a company making a social or environmental impact. (I presume they mean a positive impact?) 58% would take a 15% pay cut to work for a company “with values like my own.”

Employee engagement and people’s natural internal motivation is driven by, amongst other things, a sense of purpose – contributing to something greater, something beyond self. I think that, for this influence to kick in, it would have to be a more specific personal connection than merely a general or vague corporate social responsibility. It would need to be precise and relevant to the individual. Taking a 15% pay cut to work for a company that might cure cancer sounds like a box you’d tick on a survey. But if you had cancer or loved someone who did, you wouldn’t have time to tick the box or take surveys because you’d be passionately engaged in working towards helping cure cancer. Nothing inspires a personal protest against motorways more than a letter revealing your house is in the way of a motorway development.

The sad thing, not so much about the article itself but how some employers may interpret it, is how some employers may choose to use the information from the survey. If the primary finding was that people will take a pay cut to do good deeds with us, you’d like to think that would encourage employers to do good deeds etc. The last recommendation of the article was to optimise social media to spread the word about the good deeds. This spin angle is what many businesses will pick up on. What will get generated may not be a better world but a noisier one. But I suppose the community-minded employee has to find out about potential employers somehow. I do worry that the truly socially responsible corporates will be drowned out by those with shiny facades and little true depth.

So, long-story-short-too-late, I agree that community contribution or social responsibility or whatever label you choose to use, could be a useful lever for enhancing employee engagement but it would have to be strongly personally relevant and emotionally connecting. But, even if it wasn’t, I’d prefer banks etc not to be parasitic blood-sucking leeches.

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…)

What Causes Talented And Engaged Employees To Give Up?

This article has a great quote and a word of warning to workplace leaders, “Once-engaged employees who are now disengaged can cause more harm to a company than those who were never engaged.”

Ouch!

It varies slightly from time to time and from country to country and, even, industry to industry but, let’s say roughly, research shows that 26% of employees are engaged & 28% actively disengaged. The 28% is bad enough but that missing 46% are ambivalent. It’d be easy and understandable for workplace leaders to target their efforts at improving or managing out the disengaged. Or even considering that the biggest bang for their buck and time and effort would be investing in better engaging the ambivalent middle 46% who merely show up. That’s not a bad idea but it should NOT be done at the expense of the highly engaged who are choosing to apply discretionary effort at work.

For a start, if the ones you’re trying to move up into the engaged group see how you’re failing to support the engaged group, that’s likely to be self-defeating for you. Personally, I believe that people who are engaged are far more likely to be self-motivated at work and in life generally by the pursuit of greater autonomy, development towards mastery in skills and movement towards some sense of purpose. If you just get out of their way, you’re unlikely to be able to diminish those drives that exist within them. However, if you’re short-sighted and inobservant, you could chip away at their abilities to pursue those self drivers.

They would most likely leave but, in the meantime, would they become a worse contributor to your workplace than if they’d never been engaged in the first place?
The article quotes findings from research conducted by Florida State University College of Business. “Model employees committed to their organisation are willing to go the extra mile to see it thrive but can give up if they sense that they’re being asked to do more and more, and with fewer resources, while comparatively little is being asked of their less-engaged colleagues.”

I doubt that a truly engaged person would sulk and withdraw but it’s never a good idea to reward poor performers and punish good performers, even if it is easy to do in the short term. How many newbie team leaders find themselves saying something like, “Hey great job. Can you finish this task that someone else couldn’t?” Maybe if that’s only an occasional occurrence and if it’s handled well and if there’s something in the extra work that appeals to the top performer being ‘rewarded’ with more work, that scenario might be OK. Maybe.

But, over time , if that’s all there is for the engaged top performer, I can see some resentment potential. It might cause them to leave but they won’t turn on you nor will they give up. They’ll simply give up ON YOU. But the things a leader can do (or not do) that will contribute to the talented and engaged employees giving up are anything that messes with those core drivers of the pursuit of greater autonomy, development towards mastery in skills and movement towards some sense of purpose.

Ideally, employees should be like the judges at Olympic ice skating with their little scorecards ready to hold up every time you ‘perform’ as their leader. But they don’t. They’d probably end up with repetitive strain injury anyway…

10 Things Economics Can Teach Us About Happiness

This article in The Atlantic by Derek Thompson makes lots of interesting research-based correlations between wealth and happiness, for individuals and countries. Have a read. In short the answers are, "Kinda", "Up to a point" and "It depends."

From my interest area of employee engagement, some key comments were that its not so much the lack of wealth that makes unemployed people unhappy. Its the unemployment. And the self employed are happier than the jobbed (until they're not.) Work (or 'jobs', if you prefer to use that similar but not totally synonymous word) provides us humans with more than money. We'll take the money we need, and the lack of it up to a point will make us unhappy, but past a further point, more won't make us happier. Those points are different for different people and change with time and circumstance. The unemployed get sick and depressed partly from a lack of money but mostly from a lack of a sense of self worth, inclusion, contribution and development. Plenty of people in sucky jobs get the same negatives even if they have an income. That negatively impacts on health, attendance and productivity.

To me, the overwhelming theme of the findings is that people are different. Average findings about wealth and how it relates to happiness (if wealth really is any kind of an indicator about employee motivation) might be interesting but it isn't useful. People are different. That's the level of research that becomes useful. And that is the level when you as a leader observe and investigate the individual people you lead. What works for them?

Happiness is a staggeringly shifty set of goalposts to aim for and really isn't the same as engagement. But if you grow a workplace culture that supports self awareness, movement towards skill mastery, increasing autonomy, some sense of purpose and the ability to influence others, then you'll engage your people. If they've got that, they won't be unhappy.

A lot of my blog readers come from countries celebrating a public holiday today - Queen's Birthday. It's a bit anachronistic but a holiday is a holiday and in the southern hemisphere, there's a long, cold and dark winter until the next Monday off in the Spring. The definition of employee engagement is when an employee chooses to do some work they don't have to do. They engage in a discretionary activity and that activity happens to be some work. That occurs at the workplace and these days the workplace is very hard for many to pin to a single location. (Wherever your smartphone is, there you are!) So, on a public holiday, people are getting all discretionarily active all over the place. What are you doing? What do you get out of that activity? Are there aspects of your work where you get the same jollies? If not, you could be one of the three quarters or so of workers who are either disengaged or merely present at work. Maybe spend some of your holiday thinking about that and make a change?

Paid Work Isn’t The Same As A Job

This really provocative ‘Democracy In America’ blog in The Economist got me thinking. They make various observations about all the noise from politicians and agencies about the need for, and urgency of, job creation. Jobs as a source of income and a sense of worth for those who need it are obviously critical. But as a tributary off the main argument flowed some thinking on the subset of people who had either lost a job or opted out of traditional fulltime employment. This, to me, was the provocative bit.

The blog suggests that a significant group of talented and educated people of a certain age were certainly searching for work but not necessarily for a job. They throw in a bit of terminology like ‘Post Materialists’ and ‘Threshold Earners.’ A threshold earner has an amount they think they need / want. Once they reach it, they choose not to work anymore. Enough is good enough. This might be a great philosophy for someone like me (or subscribers to The Economist – or, more likely, people reading bits of The Economist’ free online or in libraries.)

To me, time with my kids and being fit and creative is important. I don’t just say that, I live it – now. I didn’t always used to. I think I can label myself a ‘Threshold Earner’ although I doubt I’m a Post Materialist. Certainly my kids aren’t!

Work, be it paid or otherwise, provides us humans with a lot more than money. That said, whatever the amount is, we all do need money. I’ll hug a tree but I won’t live in one. Work gives us connection, purpose, health, development, esteem and so much more. A lack of money can mess with our heads but mere money itself is not such a drawcard anymore. If, as a leader, you want to truly start to spark genuine employee engagement at your workplace you need to understand the implications and benefits of this. Lots SAY they do.

So, by all means, let Government try and do their best to stimulate job creation or, at least, get out of the way but if you’re an employer searching to attract and retain the best talent you can, you must reconsider if the old ‘jobs’ paradigm will work for you in the future or the now. If they have the talent and can improve your business’s productivity, what can you do to make it easy for Post Materialists and Threshold Earners to work for you? Actually, let’s revisit that wording because it’s important. They don’t want to work FOR you – that’s the whole point. They want to do some of the work and get paid but they don’t want to work for you. Just because you’d love to work for you doesn’t mean everyone else would.

It’s raining heavily and I am so glad I’m not living in a tree right now.

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…

Positive Thinking Can Set You Up To Fail

There are limits to optimism

Heidi Grant Halvorson in her recent Psychology Today article made the bold statement, “Positive Thinking and vision boards can set you up to fail.” Susan Krauss Whitbourne also wrote about the trouble with optimism. Both rightly pointed out the faults of positive thinking and optimism if they were the only strategies being used. I’d agree with that. Positive thinking and optimism are tools. Used correctly they’re perfectly useful. A hammer is a tool. Use it for banging in nails and it’s perfectly useful too. Use a hammer for brushing your teeth and serious damage can ensue. It’s not the fault of the hammer…

Whitbourne refers to studies on optimists and pessimists in stressor situations and the different coping mechanisms employed. Two were ‘emotion-focused’ coping and ‘problem-focused’ coping. It’s not immediately helpful but I like the findings as they fit in nicely with my world view. There is no one best way of coping. It depends. Sometimes it’s best to focus on the emotion, looking on the bright side etc. Sometimes, it’s best on trying to solve the problem or minimise the damage. What it depends on is how much control you have over the situation at the time. If it’s beyond your control, focus on your emotions. If there’s still something you can do, make the effort.

Some useful tips were to be realistic, look out for the changeability in situations, find sources of social support and look after your immune system. I like the latter two especially as they require us to be prepared and work on our resources before we hit the inevitable stressor situations that life throws at us. Sometimes s**t happens. Even Victor Frankl back in the day identified that as a common trait among successful and resilient people – the belief that sometimes s**t happens and we deal with it and move on. People expecting life to constantly throw them a parade and sprinkle rose petals in front of them as they stroll are going to hit some speedbumps and some pretty serious disappointments in work and life.

It’s not that Halvorson is a raving fan of negativity. She stresses that the right kind of negative thought employed in a practical action-oriented way can move people towards goals. But it isn’t just done by the thinking of the thought. Focus is important as it does affect how our brains perceive what’s going on around us – even if it is just looking out for the luck and the opportunities that are always there. I’ve found even a physiological cross-over. One day I won the lowest prize on lotto – about $36. Nevertheless it put me in a good mood for a time, radiating a bit of positive thinking. Then I noticed that my ceiling corners needed the spiders webs cleaned out of them. Why? Because I was looking up! People in positive moods look up. I wonder if the reverse is true, that looking up can put a person into a more positive mood? Might go Google that now. (Having said all that, I have a few down times and I never then notice that my carpets need vacuuming…)

How To Demotivate Employees (If You Really Want To)

 

This article with video from ‘Good To Great’ author Jim Collins identifies three primary employee demotivators. Actually, he doesn’t limit them to employees but rightly says they are inflicted on people in many forums. Parents especially are noted as perpetrators. Those three demotivators are:

• hype
• futurism and
• false democracy.

There may be others but these three are good ways to put out the fires that might be burning inside people you have who are already inherently motivated. Crazy. You’d think that employers would want to not do that, yet I see an awful lot of hype, futurism and false democracy in a lot of workplaces. All of it is well-intentioned.

In one of my previous management roles where I was a significant agent of change, I had a little personal catchphrase, “No fireworks, no bugles.” What I was trying to reinforce to myself and to others was my own anti-hype position. I really did not want to overpromise. I’d learned from being on the receiving end of too many projects or ideas that were going to magically transform everything into a wonderland of worker amenity and prosperity. Never quite panned out quite as wonderlandy as they painted it. Few things do. Honestly, I’m not anti-hype. It has its place. Used in short bursts at appropriate times, it can generate heat, energy, attention, focus and movement. My problem is that, often, the hype is all there is. In fact, isn’t that the meaning most of us apply when we see, hear or use the word? Too much hype. Nothing but hype. Over-hyped. Don’t believe the hype. What must follow hype to avoid demotivation is prompt and positive change of meaningful substance.

Workplace examples of death by overhyping I’ve seen have included introductions of performance management systems and departmental restructures. That said, I’ve also been involved in introductions of performance management systems and departmental restructures that were highly successful, well received and used hype, to some extent, very well. So, I’d disagree with Collins if he means that all hype is bad. I suspect he doesn’t mean that. I believe he means the hyperbole that isn’t followed up with action of substance. Far better to, as he says in the video, “…to confront the brutal facts.”
How is futurism bad? I thought we were all meant to be planning for the future, setting goals, anticipating and pre-solving problems etc? Once again, Collins isn’t slamming all futurism, merely those bosses who focus on nothing but the future with little or zero emphasis on the now or recent history. Those bosses can’t learn from mistakes, can’t celebrate successes and can’t leverage employees ‘in the zone’ or in ‘a state of flow.’ These high performers don’t ignore the future but when they’re at their most productive, they are very much solely in the now. Bosses who break that focus and drift off over the rainbow are counter-productive.

Collins says to show results as an indication of progress, to show that people are part of something that is actually working. He refers to this as ‘clicks on the flywheel.’ (I get what he’s saying but will admit to having to go look up what a flywheel is – a heavy disk or wheel rotating on a shaft so that its momentum gives almost uniform rotational speed to the shaft and to all connected machinery. I’m pedantic enough to argue that change never happens at a ‘uniform rotational speed’ and I don’t even like the metaphor’s ‘rotational’ representation of change. But I still get it and love the whole point of it which was the benefits of showing progress and being part of something that works!)

False democracy is a label for all the actions by those employers who have already made up their mind but would like to paint over their intentions with a thin veneer of dishonest inclusiveness by engaging in some token campaign of capturing ideas and inputs from the team. Not that anything ever amounts from these campaigns. This is worse than just being a blatant autocracy. At least that’s honest and transparent. Sometimes even well-meaning managers will engage in such a campaign even though the system of their workplace is so rigid and unresponsive that actual democracy is unlikely. That might be worse as it raises false hope?

Doctors have their oath and the first part is about at the very least not doing harm. Leaders, when it comes to motivating their people, could, at the very least, take that page out of the doctors’ book. (Don’t take a page out of their prescription pad though. You’ll never read their handwriting!)

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.

How Can You Make Your Own Luck When It Comes To Recruiting And Retaining The Best Employees?

This recent article in the business section of the New Zealand Herald cites research conducted by a firm of recruitment consultants. I’m not suggesting for a moment that they have a vested interest in interpreting the results in any particular way, but they interpret the results in a particular way... that says employers aren’t recruiting effectively. (If only there was someone around who could help them?)

Sarcastic and cynical as I am, I’m not disputing the results of the survey – just their narrow interpretation of the cause. There’s never ONE cause. Maybe poor recruitment contributes. I bet it does.

The Hudson survey "paints a bleak picture for employers", saying: "Of every 10 employees: four are not good hires, eight aren't engaged in their work and six are actively seeking other employment." Ouch! This is born out by other research I've been reading over years and around the world. There's a bit of variation, mostly by industry, but this survey isn't that surprising and New Zealand isn't that bad. Nevertheless, there's plenty of scope for improvement.

Apart from the recruitment tools being used which the recruitment company focuses on, the primary cause of the problem implied is that employers are recruiting almost entirely for skills - technical skills. It's that old mindset of, "I've got a vacancy, I'd better fill it because it's costing me money" without doing the correlating maths on how much it costs to fill that vacancy and get it wrong - to fill it with someone technically competent (and that's even assuming they get that bit right) but quickly disengaged or a misfit in several other ways.

Bad luck? Like most games, you make your own luck in the recruiting game. I was meeting recently with a manager who hadn't had a single instance of negative turnover for nine years. Yes, people had moved on but for the right reasons such as internal promotion. He used the usual suite of tools to find a pool of potential applicants, whittled them down through CV checking, interviews, reference checks and even the occasional behaviourial profile. But he added another step. Shortlisted applicants all got to sit in on some actual work with some people who, if their application was successful, would be their co-workers. Those co-workers got a right of veto. I used this myself in the past with some success in a call centre that wasn't a typical call centre. It gave applicants a dose of what their potential working reality could be. Sometimes they got put off by us and our work; sometimes we got put off by them. Either way, it's better for both parties that be known early and up front so neither employer or employee have to suffer the consequences of misfitting. And those are greater than the costs of vacancies.

Another means of increasing your odds is to encourage referral of potential applicants from existing employees. Some firms even offer a commission for this. BUT if you do that, ponder how this might affect behaviour and what exactly it is you're wanting to incentify and provide commission on. Any commission should be for a successful applicant who is still there after a predetermined period and performing well. Not just for putting someone with a pulse into a vacancy. Rather than just advertising to the great untargetted masses for your specific vacancy, wouldn't it increase the chances of success if you sought via an informed gene pool - the people who are already aware of what it takes to do the job and who is likely to prosper there?

Wringing the final life out of my luck metaphor, when it comes to those few shortlisted candidates who are demonstrably technically competent but you're not absolutely certain that they'll fit and be engaged, you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run. Often it's better to walk away and play another day. Cheaper in the long run even if baby needs a new pair of shoes.