Tag Archive for engagement

6 Signs Your Team Needs to Fight More

April 5, 2013 Uncategorized 8 comments

fightingAs you look around the room, you see lots of heads nodding up and down, toothy smiles pasted onto each face. Your boss has just pitched an idea, and you and some of the rest of your team thinks it’s not the most wonderful one he’s ever come up with, so naturally you indicate that by nodding and smiling in affirmation.

In truth, it ought to be a red flag if a team can sit in meetings together discussing important things without engaging in robust and passionate discussion about those things sometimes. If teams can discuss things without any dissent or diverging opinions being aired, they can be almost certain things are being left unsaid or unexplored. It’s tough to imagine a bunch of adult professionals sitting in a room agreeing about everything all the time.

It’s not only OK to engage in healthy conflict around ideas, it’s important to do it. We’ve got to pick more fights. We’ve got to push on each other’s ideas because that’s how ideas get vetted and get better.

What are some signs your team needs to fight more?

1. No one questions anything. Conflict essentially is considered off-limits.

2. There is an environment in place where politics and gossip thrive. More conversation about ideas and strategy happens away from the team than with it. Think of it this way: Your team will discuss the vision and strategy of the team; it’s just a matter of where it’s  going to happen. Encourage healthy conflict, and you’ll be able to manage and push those conversations in a positive and helpful direction.

3. Everyone has well-defined calf muscles.This happens as a result of tiptoeing too much. Team members spend more time and effort trying to avoid conflict than they do trying to come up with proactive, innovative ideas.

4. Not everyone has ideas. It’s not that everyone has to have a strong opinion about every single topic that’s discussed, but at the same time if someone sits silently meeting after meeting, you’ve got to wonder why.

5. Tapdancing is considered teambuilding. Everyone ignores controversial topics precisely because they could be controversial. So they dance around them and rationalize it as preserving the peace. Or something.

6. There are more disclaimers than an anti-depression drug commercial. No one feels like they can say anything without prefacing it with some sort of disclaimer. Now, I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer, and I don’t want to sound like I have any issues with So-and-So’s idea, because I don’t and I think So-and-So is just fabulous and always has such terrific thoughts; but…

Leaders, It’s on Us

This is an especially important point to grasp if you are in any sort of leadership role within your group, whether that’s a team, department, small business, or large corporation. We have to understand that we need our teams to work and think through our ideas. As humans, we’re nowhere near perfect, so we need to be aware (sometimes painfully aware) of the fact that not all of the ideas we have or will come up with are good ones. We must depend on our teams to think through ideas, critique them, and offer alternatives. It’s only after that sort of exercise that we can move forward together, confident we’ve explored the options we could think of and selected the best one, even if it’s not the one that we, as their leaders, were advocating.

This sort of healthy, productive conflict doesn’t happen automatically. It must be worked at and practiced. You may even want to consider calling someone in from the outside to sit in on a couple strategic meetings and help you identify when and where these discussions should be taking place, as well as what those discussions might sound like. If your team currently doesn’t engage in ideological conflict, it’s going to be a lot like learning how to ride a bike all over again at first. It likely will feel uncomfortable and slightly awkward, but your team needs to persevere through that stage so you can begin to really reap the benefits of cultivating that type of engaged and creative culture.

16 Questions Leaders Should Ask Themselves

February 21, 2013 Uncategorized 14 comments

Mary Poppins 3Just between you and the mirror…

1. Are you more motivated mostly by the drive to capture success or by a desire to serve others?

2. Do you use your grasp of internal politics as a weapon to get what you want? Or are you sensitive to the human dynamics at play in the organization, but work toward collaborative, empowering solutions that appeal to shared goals, values, and visions?

3. Do you rely completely on facts, logic, and proof? Or do you use intuition and foresight–gut and instinct–to balance those things?

4. Do you control information, knowing it makes you more valuable? Or do you freely and generously share your knowledge and know-how?

5. Are you highly competitive, independent, and primarily interested in the spotlight? Or are you more concerned about working closely with others, allowing yourself to be interdependent, and deflecting praise when it comes your way?

6. Do you place an over-emphasis on speed and fast action? Or do you focus on gaining understanding; adapting to organizational environments; and balancing the need for progress with the need for appropriate buy-in, input, and decentralized decision-making?

7. Do you spend more time telling or listening?

8. Do you equate patience with indecision? Or do you value listening and observation in order to make good decisions?

9. Do you act like you’re listening to those with whom you disagree? Or do you actually listen to those with whom you disagree?

10. Do you get annoyed when others won’t think or act the way you want them to? Or are you thankful for the variety and use it as an opportunity to examine your own thoughts, presuppositions, and conclusions?

11. Do you view your network as connections to be used to get you things or give you information when you want it? Or do you view them as other humans who have unique strengths, information, and perspectives that you could learn from?

12. Do you secretly relish being able to look down from atop the org chart? Or do you view your leadership position more as an immense privilege and responsibility to serve a larger group of people to a greater degree?

13. Do you use intimidation (in all its forms) over inspiration?

14. Which is more important: what benefits you or the good of the whole?

15. Do you believe leadership is about control? Or do you believe leadership is about finding ways not to have so much of it?

16. Do the people whose work you admire always happen to work exactly like you do? Or do you value the diverse and interesting ways people are wired to work?

No one’s judging anyone. At least I hope not, or I’m screwed. We’re all imperfect humans and consequently imperfect leaders. We all struggle with any of these things at given points. I know I have and do. But as leaders, I believe it’s important for us to look in the mirror, ask tough questions, and give vulnerable, honest answers.

6 Ways to Really Screw Up Recognition (Guest Post)

January 7, 2013 Uncategorized No comments

wind up tired manA short while back, Matt wrote a terrific blog post over at Globoforce on how to make your company values sticky. As the saying goes, “no good deed goes unpunished.” So we’re reciprocating by giving his audience (you) six sure-fire ways to screw up recognition.

So with that said, here are six ways you can really louse up your business results, lose your best employees and demoralize the rest of your workforce—all in the name of recognition:

1. Run Multiple Inconsistent Recognition Programs

If you really want to cripple yourself out of the gate, make sure you hold onto every legacy “employee of the month parking spot” program and every random department-only perk. Whatever you do, do not create a single, centrally-managed, global program that is accessible to all employees, in all departments, everywhere in your organization and everywhere in the world. A universal program with a single focus and brand will cut costs and connect your entire workforce around common values and business objectives. It will also be measurable and manageable, which is sure to spell dreaded success.

2. Limit. Limit. Limit.

Make sure you confine recognition to a strict hierarchy and implement departmental silos, to assure failure. Make managers the only distributors of recognition, only able to appreciate their direct reports. Making recognition “social” and peer-to-peer just allows people to easily see their coworkers’ awards and add their own congratulations—which amplifies the experience and positively impacts business results. Don’t empower and inspire all employees to recognize peers, managers and subordinates—across departments and geographies, or you run the risk of encouraging a true culture of recognition.

peer-to-peer
3. Give vague, delayed recognition.

Stale recognition is sure to be ineffective. For the worst possible, try to give it once-a-year or even once-a-quarter, only. Gallup reports that employees who received recognition or praise for doing good work in the last seven days had 10% to 20% higher productivity results. A study by Stanford’s business school of effective recognition programs found that recognizing of 5-8% of employees per week with substantive, specific recognition is a good benchmark for success. Avoid great stats like that by ignoring your employees and then mis-remembering what they did in the first place.

4. Do not connect recognition with core values and objectives. 

This one is critical. There is a strong connection between recognition, core values and business results, so you’ll have to work hard to keep them apart and render your recognition useless. Research from Deloitte has shown that managers of higher profitability companies were 12% more likely to have a strong focus on core values and corporate culture.  Connecting company values to recognition gets your values off the plaque in the hallway and injects them into actual employee behavior. Keep your values confined to the wall by making recognition random and not tying it to corporate values.

Benefit_Connecting

5. Spend nothing.

A common question we are asked is “what should we be investing to make recognition successful?” According to a World at Work survey, 2.0%+ of payroll is the mean average for recognition spend, but experts agree that you should dedicate at least 1.0% of your payroll for recognition. A SHRM/Globoforce research, has shown that companies who spend at least 1% on payroll have higher engagement and better overall business results. To ensure failure, stay under 1%.

Higher_Spend

Obviously, this is tongue-in-cheek, and the real best practices for recognition are the ones in blue, above.  If you’re interested in finding out how your program really measures up to industry best practices—based on a lot of independent statistics and a long track record of double-digit engagement increases, check out the 10-question Recognition Grader Assessment.

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Guest post by Darcy Jacobsen. Darcy is content marketing manager at Globoforce, the world’s top provider of SaaS-based employee recognition solutions. Contact her or follow her writing at www.globoforce.com/gfblog.

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