Employee Engagement Archives - Page 2 of 2

Identifying the Fertile Soil for Strong Leadership

The impact of leadership

I think we’ve all seen and can easily identify poor leadership. I’m sure at one point all of us have experienced poor leadership, whether it was in our youth on a team or in a club, in our supervisors at work or in our government or communities. There are many examples of great teams, businesses and communities that falter or never meet their full potential because of poor leadership. This speaks to how crucial strong leadership is to success and development.

Most of us think of leadership as a top down hierarchy and something that is fixed by those in the higher positions. In most cases it’s true that leadership rests with those at the top. The impact and success of everyone involved is often dictated by the skill and competency of those chosen to lead. So a strong understanding of what constitutes leadership is important for both those chosen to lead and for those expected to follow leaders.

Let’s look at some famous quotes and see what we can pull from them to get perspective on good leadership.

“As we look ahead into the next century, Leaders will be those who empower others.”

– Bill Gates

Empowerment is this century’s leadership (that’s a common aphorism of mine, heavily borrowed from Mr. Gates). This idea is meaningful in pretty much every situation, from employers empowering their employees to be the best at their positions, government empowering its citizens to thrive and improve their lives, or sports team captains empowering their teammates to go the extra mile. The need to consider empowerment as an essential component of leadership is increasingly becoming of critical importance.

“Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge.”

– Simon Sinek

This is a personal favorite of mine, especially when you’re talking about organizational leadership. In a company or organization, supporting and developing the skills of those you are required to lead is, in my opinion, the essence of good leadership. This idea aligns well with a leadership focus on empowerment. When you lead, you are committing to bringing everyone up together–not standing on the heads of those who follow you.

“Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says “Go!” a leader says “Let’s go!”

– E.M. Kelly

Collaboration and the ability to build strong relationships and partnerships are key elements in effective leadership. Whether those relationships are built internally or externally, leadership is about being a part of something greater than yourself and being able to inspire others to follow you. This brings me to another personal motto: Influence is greater than power. When you wield power, others are compelled to follow you; with influence, people choose to follow you.

A good leader takes a little more than their share of the blame, a little less than their share of the credit.”

– Arnold H. Glasow

Humility and integrity are other important foundations of leadership. This includes owning the mistakes and missteps and giving recognition for the efforts and talents of those with whom you’ve collaborated. In many ways, I believe this is generally a key missing piece in political leadership. Too often people are focused on self-preservation and keeping in the good graces of those who put them in their leadership roles and will too will often sacrifice their integrity to maintain their status.

Lead from the side

Another important element to consider is that leadership doesn’t have to only be top down. Leadership is not about a position– it is more about actions. In circumstances of poor, hierarchical leadership, the actions of those lower down in the hierarchy can introduce the qualities of supportive empowerment, collaboration, influence, humility, and integrity that can provide leadership from a peer or mentor level. This can be encouraged by modeling the qualities of good leadership with your co-workers and clients, and cultivating an environment of appreciation, transparency and support. Making room for leading from the side can create meaningful and lasting change and progress. Admittedly, it is an uphill battle to bring organizational change from the side or the middle, but the point is, leadership doesn’t have to only happen from the top down. There are often great leaders who empower and inspire others from the break room table, the next cubicle over or at the water cooler. If we all know what those qualities look like we can empower those who empower us.

Written by W. Coby Milne – Partner at Roman 3 Solutions Inc.

Roman 3 is an advising and solutions firm that specializes in inspiring progressive action, creating a culture of innovation, and assisting organizations in implementing transformative change. We help you build capacity, collaborate, be progressive, and grow to your full potential. For more information on our services and support check us out at www.roman3.ca

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Most Managers are Not Successful at Leading

Managing To Meet The Needs Of The Future

So, for years I have worked in workforce and talent development. I pride myself on innovative and progressive approaches to supporting the workforce, because I understand the true potential of having the right skills in the right place. Our world is shifting, and like or not it is because of the millennials that having conversations about not only what employers should expect from their employees, but also what employees should expect from their employers. It is incredibly important that employees be dedicated, hardworking, and ethical. This allows them to do the best job they can, whether or not someone is watching them. However, it is really up to the employers to create an environment that fosters that level of professionalism, and it allows for employees to feel valued when they do. Often when I speak to employers who have issues with turnover and who can’t retain top talent, they often state that they are frustrated by people leaving. My two most common questions are: “What are you doing to make them stay?” and “Are you aware that most people don’t leave their job, they leave their boss?”

On that note, let’s look at how we can create an environment that will promote professionalism and give our employees a reason to say.

Maximize The Talent You Have

According to a 2018 Harvard Business Review article, titled Why People Really Quit Their Jobs, people would leave when their job wasn’t enjoyable, their strengths weren’t being used, and they weren’t growing in their careers. Even when they enjoyed their boss, they still didn’t enjoy their job, but it is their boss who ultimately is responsible for what that job is like. The elements of enjoying what you do and growing in your career, are really about utilizing your skills. No matter what we do, we want to be able to spend most of our time doing what we are good at and ideally be appreciated for our skills. This needs to be a focal point when managing a team. Look to capitalize on the skills and talents of those in your charge, to get the most out of the investment that you have made into your hiring.

This can look different for different organizations, when you have a large employee base it needs to be done in broader strokes but is best done by being open to strategies like Job Carving. Job Carving is commonly defined as; the act of analyzing work duties performed in a given job and identifying specific tasks that might be assigned to an employee. This is most commonly used to intergrade people with disabilities but can be used for everyone. It is about adjusting scheduling, recombining duties, and generally taking a more fluid approach to creating job descriptions. In smaller organizations, you can inventory the skills and abilities of your existing staff team and look to adjust tasks and roles to take a more strengths-based approach to team dynamics. Both of these strategies, job carving and strength base teams, require a very strong and progressive HR approach and leaders skilled in change management, but can be a turning point for companies with workforce issues.

Lead Vs Manage

If you are going to create a culture to maximize your workforce, run an organization that people will bring their best to, and retain talent; then you need to understand how to lead, instead of just how to manage

Here are some places to start:

Employees are your ASSET

Old thinking has always been that employees are your biggest cost, your biggest risk, and sometimes, your biggest liability. This creates an adversarial perspective to managing staff. What owners, bosses, and managers need to understand is that the Human Capital of a business is the biggest investment and therefore the greatest priority to optimize.

Open communication flow

Old thinking about communications has been to focus on the top-down chain. You need to be fed information from your superiors who possess all of the access, insight, and required intel. But this shows a lack of respect or the professional judgment of your employees, creates a bottleneck for information, and slows down productivity. By allowing information to be accessible and shared throughout, you are fostering independence in your team and empower those with the initiative to act.

Behaviour over Experience

Old thinking valued experience as the be all end all, you had to be proven to be effective. However, when you hire for experience you’re hiring someone’s past, which might be all they can give you. If you focus on the behaviour, or as we call it in workforce development their employability skills, you can expect more, develop more, and invest more in your staff.

Empower results

Old thinking puts a lot of emphasis on punching the clock. The thinking put a lot of focus on how much time you put in between 9 to 5. But the question you need to ask yourself is what are you paying them for? Is it to be busy within their working hours or to produce results and meet outcomes? You can either give your staff the flexibility they need to deliver or give them a schedule to work, you likely cannot do both.

Work where the best work gets done

In line with the last section, Old thinking emphasizes sitting at your desk from 9-5, anything else isn’t really working. But, the essential point to consider is, what are you paying your staff for? It is to occupy a desk or to produce results and meet outcomes? If the conditions of the job will allow for the flexibility of working remotely or part-time from home offices, and people can produce better results outside the office, then why not? You can either give your staff the flexibility they need to deliver the best results or give them a mandatory location to work, you likely cannot do both.

Genuine honesty

Old thinking puts a lot of value on corporate jargon and buzzwords, often to pacify people’s needs for information without actually giving it to them. We often hide behind these efforts to pacify our employees out of some antiquated thoughts that employees are like mushrooms, they develop better when kept in the dark (often surrounded by bul….oney…..baloney). When in reality the best way to develop your team is to be genuine, transparent, and trust them with what they need to do their jobs the best they can.

Fail often

Old thinking really hates the idea of failing and wants to go to any length to avoid it. But failing is essential to growth. If you never try anything new, you are unlikely to fail…..and succeed, and grow, and innovate. But if you look for calculated ways to take risks then you are open to fail….and succeed, and grow, and innovate.

Be vulnerable

Old thinking embodies the omnificent leader who is to be feared and respected by all, and that might have worked for Julius Caesar, that is not how true leadership is. Real leadership and successful management are about having the confidence to laugh at yourself, make own your mistakes, say “I don’t know”, and ask others for help. A leader who can inspire people by being human and an equal to their staff will create a loyalty and work ethic that will surpass any threat, fear, or power that old thinking can muster up.

The Takeaway

No one wants to be managed, but we all want to be lead. A manager who follows the old thinking of management will always have workforce issues, limited innovation, and get satisfactory results. A leader who looks to inspire, empower, and develop their team will outpace, outshine, and outdo any manager every day of the week. Do you want to give your team a reason to stay? Give them the boss they never want to leave.

– Written by W. Coby Milne

Director of Roman 3 Operations

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What an Indispensable Employee Looks Like

Intrapreneurs, The Heroes of the Workforce

I spend a lot of time working with and teaching highly skilled and highly motivated people, young professionals and experienced professionals, entry-level workers and high-level executives, technical focused and people focused; a really wide range of people. Of all the different kinds of people I deal with on a regular basis, the most welcoming and exciting to work with have to be the Intrapreneur. For those of you who are not familiar with the Intrapreneur; they are people who exhibit the personal drive, dedication, professional pride, and intrinsic motivation and are the hallmarks of successful entrepreneurs, except they choose to work within an organization or business. These are the people who work in a company that makes other people wonder; “With their skill and drive, why they haven’t started their own business?”

Intrapreneurs are the heroes in their company who are not necessarily in it for the money or prestige, they are motivated by a need to seek innovation, solve problems, and, most often, they believe in what they do, and they look to do it better. Intrapreneurs are often the backbone of a successful company, if a company creates an environment where Intrapreneurs can thrive, be recognized and given more responsibility to create a larger impact then they will lift the company beyond anyone’s expectations.

What makes Intrapreneurs?

Developing Intrapreneurship is really not that different from developing a garden. You need the right materials, the fertile soil to get started, and the right resources to be nourished.

In this sense, the right materials are likely within the personality qualities of the person. As someone who researches and teaches topics around cognition and skill development, in my professional opinion, these qualities are best identified in the Big Five Factors personality traits. This is part of the foundation of Personality Psychology and an excellent inventory of the qualities that make us who we are. The main quality strengthens that are needed to create an Intrapreneur would be:

Openness

-Adventurousness (prefers variety and trying new and different ways to do things)

-Intellect (likes complex problems, enjoys going in depth with complicated ideas)

-Liberalism (avoids convention, tends to not be satisfied with the status quo)

Conscientiousness

-Self-efficacy (has the confidence to take on tasks and successfully complete them)

-Achievement-striving (self motivated to work hard)

-Self-discipline (will complete tasks, regardless of how distasteful)

If you would like to test yourself against the Big Five Factors and find your score on the above traits, among many others, you can take the actual IPIP-NEO assessment that is the representation of the scientific assessment used by Personality Psychologist. Find the test here.

What environment is needed to develop an Intrapreneur?

Going back to the garden analogy, what is the fertile soil to plant the budding Intrapreneur? Basically, flexibility is key. An environment where there is not just a linear process to accomplish outcomes, where there is a way to fine tune and improve processes or look at new ways to create efficiencies. The Intrapreneur is all about ideas, sees the angles, and wants the flexibility to pursue the best option.

Another essential piece is the resources to be nourished; the key to this is really access. The Intrapreneur needs to have access to information, equipment, and support to develop the idea or solve the problem. Access can be the greatest form of appreciation for the Intrapreneur, as it is not just lip service to their efforts and potential, but a tangible endorsement of their efforts, which will be key to keeping a successful Intrapreneur at your company.

The Takeaway

We have all seen Intrapreneurs in action; they are the indispensable co-workers who we know will go above and beyond and find better ways to do their job. It’s the person who works for a company we regularly deal with and enjoy interacting with because they take pride in what they do; they are self-motivated. If you have ever dealt with someone and have been impressed with their ingenuity, commitment, work quality and thought to yourself “this person is going places” then odds are you have been dealing with an Intrapreneur.

Intrapreneurship needs to be fostered, cultivated and appreciated. They are essential to the growth and sustainability of any organization or company. The reality is that human capital is the most important resource to any business and Intrapreneurs are the gold standard that gives any business its greatest value.

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Are Your Efforts Creating Empowerment or Dependence?

So you are looking to better a situation

There are many, many people out there who commit either their free time or career or both to helping others. These are the altruistic people who are determined to make whatever situation they are passionate about better for all involved. I have seen these people throughout my career, from my days working with children with disabilities, to my work in the non-profit sector, to my more recent role in economic development. In fact, I am someone who is passionate about helping others and improving the lives of everyone in the communities where I live and serve. Often one of the side effects of those who work in roles to make positive change and help others is professional burn out. People who are committed to improving the lives of others often do it at the expense of their own. It’s a kind of the double-edged sword of altruism. The sad reality is, there is always more need than time, resources, and people to provide it. This is often the case because we look to do things for people in the short term to support them, causing the habit of continuing to do things for them, creating a dependence from them, and a never ending need to help them. This is where dependence starts to stack up and become never ending. And thus professional burn out.

Teaching people to fish

It makes sense that when we want to help people, we do things for them. It is a direct line of cause and effect. Someone is in need of help, so we do something for him or her that will help, simple. The problem becomes when we are always doing things for people, and not with people. This takes me back to early in my career when I was working with children with disabilities. I worked with a lot of well meaning people who would do things like typing up notes for students with weak fine motor skills, which seems like the nice and helpful thing to do. The student has trouble typing, so you type for them…simple. The problem with helping them in this fashion is that you are creating dependence. The proper thing, though it appears less nice, is to give the students a portion that they are responsible to do, and you take a portion that you are responsible for. Then over time you adjust the potion to give them more and more, and hopefully one day all. This is about creating independence. In a similar path, in community and in economic development when there are people, businesses, and organizations that require support and assistance the nice and helpful thing to do to take their problems and do the work that they require to be successful. Although, the proper thing, though it appears less nice, is to build resources that will give those in need the tools and supplies needed to support themselves. All of this is really just the practical application of the old adage: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

If you take all of these words of wisdom, approaches, and advice and you boil everything down to its basic core, what you are talking about is empowerment. This is a term I use on a daily basis and have for many years. From education, to career and workforce development, to community and economic development, everything is about truly empowering others. If you create the interventions and resources that people need to lift them up in their time of need, give and teach them to use the tools and supports that will improve their situation, share the workload with them so they are gradually taking on more responsibility, then you will watch them be successful on their own. Its nothing fancy or complicated.

Empowerment is universal, but so is dependence

There are really very few situations where empowerment is not an ideal method to support others. It is the foundation of good education, human resources, community work, economic growth and healthcare, just to name a few. However, we sometimes get caught up in the short-term solution and look to create temporary solutions that end up creating dependence. We see this all of the time when we unintentionally sacrifice what is right for what is easy. This can look as simple and common as not properly training our pets to greet people at the door when they are young and then we need to isolate them or pick them up when we have company arrive. This can also be as large and complicated as when a community becomes dependent on a single industry or large business. If the majority of their employment opportunities are tied to a single employer, without diversifying, the community ends up in a critical situation if that employer were to shut its doors. Large or small, inconsequential or critical, it doesn’t matter, creating dependence is nothing short of setting yourself up to fail.

The Key to Empowerment: Sustainability

What you are doing when you look at empowering others is you are playing the long game to a sustainable solution. Your efforts are geared toward not only the short term need, but the long term benefit of your efforts being an intervention, not creating a permanent and ongoing job or role that will always need to be filled. This is why in my career I have always defaulted to the majority of my efforts being in resource development. Spend the time, effort, and money to create something that will be able to wean someone’s dependence off you, and that can be used over and over by others who require the same support. This is why in my student support role I would create guides and games to strengthen things like typing skills in my students. In career development, I would design progressive experiential learning processes to strengthen skill in communication and independent job search. In economic development, I would focus on processes and information that would support the independence of entrepreneurs. Creating sustainable interventions is critical to building up and empowering those you serve.

The Takeaway

One of the hardest things to do is to not come to someone’s aid when they need you. It appears cold and callous to then help them with a plan to limit your help over time and to give them tools that they need to do it for themselves. However, messaging and methods of delivery aside, it is critical to look at help and support from a long term, sustainable approach. Just like in parenting, we need to do what is right, not what is easy and be focused on what is the best thing for the future. Doing this will truly help by providing support and encouragement while they become empowered to do more and more things for themselves. Otherwise we will metaphorically and literally have them living in our basement until they are old and grey.