#209: Unlocking Engagement

Dear friends

Apologies to those of you who missed my announcement that I wasn’t writing last weekend, I was flattered to know that you missed our letter.

I was speaking at Interconnect Systems Strategy Conference and Standard Bank Group’s Software Engineering Conference (thank you Anthony Govender, ICL Chairman and Paul van der Merwe, Head of Enterprise Architecture at Standard Bank Group for the invitations).  

As you can appreciate for someone, me, who works almost exclusively one-on-one and whose work is primarily deep listening, pattern-finding and reflective conversation, being asked to speak to hundreds of people is an intimidating shift of pace and scale.

All my energy was focused on those two events. I didn’t want to let the audiences and my hosts down, and I felt I needed the focus. Thank you for allowing me the space and being back this weekend.  

If you’ve been forwarded this letter, you can subscribe here.

/ strategy

Last week Gallup published its annual State of the Global Workplace Report, which benchmarks global employee engagement. They estimate that low engagement levels cost the world 8.9 trillion U.S. dollars, or 9% of global GDP.

True of the world, true of your business.

In a cost constrained environment, your most powerful and immediately available lever is increasing engagement.

Engagement is associated with an array of positive outcomes – a 78% drop in absenteeism and a 63% decline in safety incidents, a 10% increase in customer loyalty, a 23% increase in profitability, and a 68% increase in employee wellbeing.

Quite simply, to improve outcomes, improve the experience of work.

And look at those numbers – a 68% increase in wellbeing – how you lead makes a material difference to people’s lives inside and outside of work.

You’re not managing; you’re shaping people’s lives. That’s a profound obligation.

We often grapple with how to ‘give back’. Here’s one in front of us – be a better leader.

As famed innovation scholar Clayton Christensen once observed, “Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow…”.

Jon Clifton, Gallup CEO, introduces the report reflecting on recent research by William J. Fleming, from Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Centre, which concludes that interventions like stress management training and wellbeing apps have little positive impact and in some instances cause a measure of harm.

That did not surprise me. Whilst engagement, burnout and stress are all influenced by individual attitudes, they are primarily systemic. Adopting individualistic solutions to systemic problems, inadvertently make people feel inadequate which worsens the situation.

Systemic problems need systemic solutions.

Fleming’s research showed one of the typical mental well-being initiatives, employee volunteering initiatives, did have positive impact.
Again, unsurprising.

Father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, tells us “Doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being [in the giver] of any exercise we have tested”.

Stanford neurologist Andrew Huberman tells us receiving gratitude adds happiness, joy, and more meaning to life. It does so, not just for the person giving or receiving the gratitude, but for those who witness it. The effects of gratitude are contagious.

So, ditch the subsidised app subscriptions and create opportunities for people to make a difference… but let’s get back to systemic solutions for systemic problems…

These three actions will increase engagement in the teams and businesses you lead.

One, be human. Care about people. Ask what’s going on in their lives. Emotional connection builds trust. People who have friends at work are more than twice as likely to be extremely satisfied with their job.

When Bill Campbell guided the Google executive team from being a founder-led business to a management-led one, he started their weekly exco by asking about their travels the week before. Shared anecdotes of wines and meals created connection.

Pay attention. Know the names of your team’s spouses and children, acknowledge major events, loves and dislikes. You’ll create a happier and higher-performing environment.

Two, create a high-praise environment. Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall’s research tells us, “Positive attention is thirty times more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance on a team. It’s also, twelve hundred times more powerful than ignoring people.”

Be specific about what is going well.

Aim for a ratio of at least 3 positives to every negative (Read more in Dr. Barbara Frederickson’s Positivity: Discover the Upward Spiral That Will Change Your Life).

The one negative is important. High-performing environments create the opportunity to grow. The negative, ‘this is what you could do better’, feedback is essential to that process.

Three, meet with your direct reports weekly. Even if all you can do is fifteen minutes. Ask four questions:

1. What did you love last week?
2. What was difficult?
3. What are your priorities this week?
4. What help do you need from me?

Following this simple pattern increases engagement levels by 76% and drops employee turnover by 67%.

If you’re pressed for time cut it to:

1. What blockages are you experiencing?
2. How can I help?

Removing pain from employee’s lives is a powerful way to increase trust and engagement.

Do these consistently and you will create a higher performing and happier team.

// self

To lead in this way, we need to care for ourselves and be attuned to our world.

These two tactics will help you.

First, at the end of each day answer three questions:

1. What did I do well today?
2. What could I have done better?
3. What great work did I notice and acknowledge today?

If you didn’t do the acknowledgement, make sure that you start the next day by doing it.

Second, optimism is a powerful creator of resilience. However, we all encounter tough situations or might even be overwhelmed by pessimism.

When you do, ask yourself three questions and come up with an intelligent way to answer ‘no’ each time:

1. Is this permanent?
2. Is this pervasive?
3. Is this personal?

For example, a bad response: “It’s always this way”. A better response: “This is frustrating, but here are times that I have had success… this is what I did…”.

In To Sell is Human, Daniel Pink notes, “the more you explain bad events as temporary, specific, and external, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity”.

Interrogative self-talk, in other words asking ourselves questions, (aloud if necessary) is a powerful way to improve performance.

/// soul

I loved this conversation between Krista Tippett, Janine Benyus and Azita Ardakani Walton On Nature’s Wisdom for Humanity (thank you Kaya Bryce for telling me about it).

For today I’ll restrict myself to this one observation.

Benyus reflects on how a forest regenerates itself after a landslide or fire. The destroyed vegetation leaves an open wound of naked land, a bird lands, it poops and leaves behind seeds that start to grow, protecting the soil and healing the land.

We want our solutions neatly packaged and, of course, from nature’s perspective seed-filled poop is a neat package of promise, but still I liked the idea, sometimes the seeds of the new are a little hidden, perhaps even a bit smelly.

Rarely is a colleague’s suggestion perfectly formed.

I hope this image helps you remember there may be a seed in their words. If you slow down, listen, explore and invite, you might find the beginnings of new growth.

All the best

Karl

PS: Here are two bonuses for today: Ten Tactics to Transform Your Communication and Three Books to Build Your Persuasive Power.