Performance Through People
A conversation about how to make a habit out of success
Here we are at the final lesson in my Employee Engagement course, lesson 6. If you haven’t interacted with any of the other lessons, you can find lesson 1 here.
In this final lesson we learn about two skills that, in some ways, may summarize the others. We learn about the Challenge skill called “Optimize” (the right horse in the right spot on the team) and the Connect skill called “Love” (not office romance!).
Welcome back to my Employee Engagement course. This is lesson 5. If this is the first post you’ve seen in the series, you can find lesson 1 here.
Lesson 5 brings us to some skills that can be a little more challenging for leaders but pay huge dividends in Engagement. We learn about the Challenge skill called “Evaluate” (not that annual pencil whipped thing) and the Connect skill called “Trust” (HUGE!).
I have a new word for you in lesson 4 of my Employee Engagement Course. BTW … If this is the first post you’ve seen in this series, you can check out lesson 1 here.
The new word is the Challenge skill called “Qualitize” (it’s a word!) and our Connect skill in this lesson is “Recognize” (not one-size-fits-all).
Well Done! You’ve made it to lesson 3 in my Employee Engagement course. If you’re just getting this for the first time, you can find lesson 1 here.
We round out the first half of the course by learning the Challenge skill called “Inspire” and the Connect skill called “Solicit.”
Here’s lesson 2 in my Employee Engagement course. If you missed lesson 1, you can find it here.
In lesson 2 we learn the Challenge skill of “Equip” (How is that a challenge?), and the Connection skill of “Cultivate” (not actual gardening, but close).
As promised, here is lesson 1 of my course on Employee Engagement. This is the longest of the six lessons (1 Hour) because it includes an introduction to the whole subject from my perspective.
In this lesson, we cover the Challenge skill – Expect (having and setting expectations), and the Connecting skill – Train (really? A connecting skill?) along with our Change your BS and Change your habit sections. Enjoy!
Years ago I started learning about and practicing the art of Employee Engagement. I believe that if you are a business owner or a leader of any kind, engaging your people is the most important thing you should be thinking about in your work. Here’s why. Engaged people stay! Engaged people attract other people like themselves! Engaged people are the ones who give their discretionary time, talent, and energy to making work better.
But, engaged people don’t just happen. You can’t hire someone for their engagement. Engaged people become engaged because someone engaged them. That someone is their leader. That someone is you. But how do you do that? That’s what I’m going to share with you over the next six weeks.
I put together a training program that I’ve called different things over the years. At one time I called it “Best.Boss.Ever. – How to be the Best Boss Your People Will Ever Have.” Lately, I’ve just called it Engager Dynamics. Each of six lessons covers two specific skills. One of those skills teaches you how to challenge your people to become and achieve more than they ever thought possible. The other one teaches you how to connect with your people on a level beyond just the employer/employee relationship. Those two abilities, to challenge and to connect, are what I’ve found to be the essential abilities of a leader who knows how to engage their people.
Each lesson also has a section called “Change your B.S.” That’s belief system, and one called “Change your Habits.” Those sections get at the heart of how to make the skills we discuss part of your Leadership DNA. The lessons are between 30 and 60 minutes long and are in video format. I’ll post one per week starting next Monday. Until then, here are four 5 – 7 minute videos to get you thinking about Employee Engagement and why it matters to you.
Three Myths about Employee Engagement
Three Mistakes People Make about Employee Engagement
Three FAQs about Employee Engagement
Three Keys to Employee Engagement
It’s Thanksgiving week. A lot is going in my life personally and in our country and the world. I decided to go back to see what I had written about thankfulness in the past. Two years ago, almost to the day, I posted what I’m reposting today. This was pre-pandemic if you can remember those days! I had just spoken at a church that week and I’m referencing that talk in the post.
There are more reasons to be grateful then there is space to write about but I shared four in particular:
First, The attitude of gratitude is good for you. Studies have shown that consistent gratitude is good for your mental health and physical well-being. Grateful people are better looking! Think about the most ungrateful person you know. Picture their face. Now picture a consistently grateful person. Who looks better? Grateful people have more friends because gratitude is attractive of positive relationships. Grateful people get more stuff because it’s way more fun to give to a grateful person.
Second, the attitude of gratitude is aligned with reality. The more we align our thinking and living with reality (some call it truth), the better our lives will be. This reality is that everything you have is a gift. I know you’ve all worked hard and earned your way. But, think of this question, how hard did you work to start your heart in your mother’s womb? Or, think of this question, how hard did you work to make sure your parents met? With everything that had to happen, the fact that any of us is even here is a miracle. Our lives are a gift, gratitude is the appropriate response to a gift. Your mama taught you that.
Third, the attitude of gratitude is the antidote to entitlement. We are living in a culture of entitlement (word nerd alert): “the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.” Entitlement is like a poison that withers people and cultures. It hollows them out and makes them weak. Entitlement is the epitome of ingratitude. Developing gratitude is the antidote. For the sake of ourselves, our children and our culture, we need to become a grateful people.
Fourth, the attitude of gratitude is a mark of obedience. The apostle Paul writes in two places in the New Testament of the Bible: “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be Thankful.” Colossians 3:15. And, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18. God’s commands always have a practical “why.” See the first three reasons for the attitude of gratitude for examples
I approached this question from three angles.
First, how can I have gratitude when bad stuff is happening to me? This is where the rubber meets the road for most of us. We all know about bad stuff happening in our lives. “Feel the burn” is a way of looking at the physical suffering of exercise as a positive thing. It means that our endurance is increasing. The physical suffering of exercise produces endurance that proves itself on the field or court when you perform. Seeing that progress of endurance and improved performance makes you feel good about the result like, “maybe there’s hope for me after all!” The same is true with character (check out Romans 5:1-5 in the New Testament, google it).
Second, how can I develop gratitude? Simply put, train your brain. Experts say we have 50K – 80K thoughts per day. Wow! Fortunately, our brains filter those thoughts so that we are often aware of only a fraction of them. The filter you have is either developed by your circumstances or you can adjust it yourself by what you think about. Your life gravitates in the direction of your most dominant thoughts like a flower grows toward the sun. We become what we think most about.
You have the ability to choose what to think about. As the apostle Paul said, again, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” Try keeping a daily journal of what went well today and what am I thankful for. Study that journal on a weekly basis. That will help train your brain and adjust your filter.
Finally, how can I express gratitude? Use your words. Say “please” and “thank you” often. Use your gifts. When you use the gifts you’ve been given (physical or spiritual) it honors the giver. Finally, use your body. You had to be there yesterday to get the experience but suffice it to say we practiced expressing our gratitude for God and his goodness in the same way we express our excitement over our sports teams.
Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!
The late CEO of PRIDE Industries, Mike Zigler, loved to tell stories about employees who would come up to him in the hall at the office with a big grin on their face, pull out a utility bill, hold it up to his face and say, “Mike, I paid this!” You see, Mike personified the mission of PRIDE Industries which is to create employment for people with disabilities. Those stories were about people who, because of their disability, had never had a job before. They were proud to have accomplished paying their first utility bill on their own, so they just had to tell Mike! And he loved it!
I had a conversation just the other day with another leader. She has quite a story of her own. She is a recovering addict who spent at least a year living homeless on the streets. She has clearly turned her life around. She not only got a job and kept it, but she has advanced past the level of lead to assistant manager and is doing a great job. Part of our conversation was about what motivates her to work hard even when it doesn’t always feel like her peers are pulling the same load. She said that she loves the feeling of accomplishment so much that she will get up and do what she may not feel like doing but needs to be done even if nobody else is doing it. That’s the “Do side of Self-Control.”
To “accomplish” means to achieve or complete successfully. I think we all love to complete things successfully. That’s why so many people go into lines of work that produce a product that you can step back at the end of the day, look at, and say, “I did that.” Whether you’re baking bread, building houses or bridges or skyscrapers, or writing a book, there is a feeling of pleasure in finishing it. I even feel that when I close the cover on a book I’ve just finished reading. Accomplishment feels good.
Why does it feel so good to accomplish something? There is a physiological explanation. The brain releases dopamine, a hormone associated with both motivation and happiness, in anticipation of reward. So when you plan and know you’re going to work for something, you’re in a biological position to feel good. Each milestone gives you another dopamine hit, which makes you want to keep going with the job. Another reason is that accomplishment taps into one of our intrinsic motivators – Autonomy. Completion of each task can make us feel better about ourselves because it proves to us that we’re in control of our own destiny and competent enough to achieve our goals. We did something.
Thomas Edison once said, “There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish some[thing]!” John Maxwell included that quote in his book Leadershift: The 11 Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace. It’s in his chapter on the shift from “Maintaining to Creating” where he’s talking about mental blocks to making that shift. The specific mental block in view where he quotes Edison is the one that says, “Follow the Rules.” After quoting Edison, Maxwell adds the following note, “Most revolutionary ideas have been disruptive violations of set rules.”
I can hear people of a certain personality type cheering and saying, “Yes! Let’s break some rules and get something new done!” But I can also hear others saying, “No, no, no, no, the rules are our friends. They’re there for a reason.” Accomplishment for each of those people will look different from the other. But it is still accomplishment and it still feels good. Do you check a box or do you cross the item off your list? Have you ever written something down that you already finished just so you could feel the pleasure of checking the box or crossing it off? It feels good to finish something.
Since it feels so good to accomplish something (and who doesn’t like to feel good?), let me leave you with two questions. First, why wouldn’t you organize your day around accomplishing things? Second, why wouldn’t you celebrate those accomplishments in some way? Here’s a bonus question for you leaders (BTW leadership is influence, if you have influence in anyone’s life, you’re a leader). Why wouldn’t you celebrate the accomplishments of those you lead?
Small changes can have huge consequences.
In 1979 a passenger jet carrying 257 people left New Zealand for a sightseeing flight to Antarctica and back. Unknown to the pilots, however, there was a minor 2-degree error in the flight coordinates. This placed the aircraft 28 miles to the east of where the pilots thought they were. As they approached Antarctica, the pilots descended to a lower altitude to give the passengers a better look at the landscape. Although both were experienced pilots, neither had made this particular flight before. They had no way of knowing that the incorrect coordinates had placed them directly in the path of Mount Erebus, an active volcano that rises from the frozen landscape to a height of more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m). Sadly, the plane crashed into the side of the volcano, killing everyone on board. It was a tragedy brought on by a minor error—a matter of only a few degrees.
Experts in air navigation have a rule of thumb known as the 1 in 60 rule. It states that for every 1 degree a plane veers off its course, it misses its target destination by 1 mile for every 60 miles you fly. This means that the further you travel, the further you are from your destination. If you’re off course by just one degree, after one foot, you’ll miss your target by 0.2 inches. Trivial, right? But…
That would be like heading for Chicago but landing in Memphis instead. That would be inconvenient, wouldn’t it? Off course can be inconvenient or deadly like the New Zealand flight. I’ve read that commercial aircraft are off course 90 percent of the time. Turbulence and other factors cause them to go off course but constant feedback from the instruments allows the pilot to make adjustments and return to the flight plan.
We can get distracted and get off course in our lives and careers as well. Regular instrument checks and adjustments are a good idea.
What if we took the same principle of “one degree” and replaced “Off Course” with “Change Course?” Now we have a whole new conversation. Now we’re talking about making an intentional change in the trajectory of our life. The same principle applies. A slight change of one degree can make a huge difference. That’s encouraging. You don’t necessarily have to do a complete about-face to make a big difference.
In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear writes about a time when he wanted to eat healthier. In a section of the book that talks about the power of our environment on our habits, Clear tells how one small change made a huge difference. He used to buy apples and put them in the crisper in his fridge . . . never to be seen again until they were rotten and had to be thrown out. The simple change? He started putting the apples in a big bowl on the kitchen counter where he could see them every time he came into the kitchen. Not a huge about-face, a slight change, but now he is eating the apples instead of throwing them away.
Whether we’re off course or changing course, a slight shift can make a huge difference. That can be a warning or an encouragement depending on your perspective. Which is it for you?