The Heart of Engagement : Leadership Development, Management Education, Retreat Facilitation & Executive Coaching : Mike Cook : AMJ Group

Let’s say you are a senior project coordinator for Apple in Cupertino,CA and you’re looking for that next opportunity for yourself. Isn’t the obvious choice to open a gourmet cupcake store in Bellingham, WA. ? OK, cupcakes might not be the first possibility you come up with and it wasn’t for Liz Kovacs either, she did make a few stops in between. But..Apple was where she started as a grown up and where has she ended up? With a gourmet cupcake store, Icing on the Cake in Bellingham, WA.     

  What I found when I entered Liz’s store at 314 Champion Street was an experience that is about a lot more than cupcakes. It feels like you are walking into a high end jewelry retailer there in the downtown Arts District. If you ask her Liz will tell you that for her it is about a lot more as well, it is about the qualities of the experience when you are a customer of ‘Icing on the Cake’, among them are the baking and presenting of a cupcake that passes the ultimate test. As it turns out she designed the ultimate test herself but when she shared it made sense to me. “You have to try the cupcakes out on kids, kids will always eat the frosting but if they eat the cake, that’s a great cupcake!” The kids I saw in the store while I was there ate every last bite. Her cupcakes were clearly passing what seemed to me to be a pretty rigorous quality test.

But as Liz said, ‘Icing on the Cake’ and the products offered there are about a lot more than just the cake in the cupcake. When she told me that since she was 5 years old she has been obsessed with out-baking the cake on the Duncan Hines box I knew this endeavor involved passion. You know which cake she is talking about too, the white cake with the gooey vanilla frosting! (Liz loved that look but thinks they probably cheated on the frosting and anyway, she is not about to serve anything that starts in a box.)

But this cupcake business is also about artistry and craftsmanship. When Liz made the commitment to bake as a profession she already knew she was creative.  Baking was an avenue for the expression of her creativity. She also recognized that being creative was not enough, she needed to be skilled as well so she took the initiative to address her skill gap and enrolled in and completed the Wilton Cake Decorating Program at the Wilton School near Chicago. If you don’t know about Wilton you should take a look, pretty amazing stuff!

Passion, Creativity, Initiative , unleashing these qualities in our places of work is the challenge that people like Gary Hamel say lies in front of all organizations. And here is Liz Kovacs, without any management support exercising passion, creativity and initiative like there is no tomorrow. What gives? How do we differentiate between people like Liz Kovacs, the wonderful playful crew at Pike Place Fish Market , and the place where you work?

I write, read and think a lot about engagement. What I read often disappoints me in that it seems to be more of the old “carrot or stick” approach. Employers and managers, despite well developed definitions of employee engagement, still continue to think in terms like Hamel described in The ‘Future Of Management’.

“How do we (meaning management) get more (meaning units of production per hour) out of our people (meaning the individuals who are obliged to follow our orders)?”

                     The operative question for 20^th century managers. Gary Hamel

And we been repeatedly told, by those who reportedly measure such things, that the current state of engagement, of the American work force at least, is dismal, apparently only about 27% of workers report being fully engaged. In my view there are a lot of maybes when it comes to engagement and there will continue to be until we begin to explore the degree to which Choice and Embracing Interdependence factor into this equation.

What gets young men in the prime of their lives to get to bed early every night to participate in a 6AM set up routine that is exactly the same day after day seven days a week? Pull the fish out of the freezer, shovel the ice, stack the fish, and sell the fish; Choice, and a group of co-workers who are counting on them and will hold them to account. They choose this experience, this work and these co-workers each day as though it was their first on the job.

So what does Choice have to do with Liz Kovacs and cupcakes? It is the backdrop against which her whole business takes place. And let’s face it, her routine is pretty much the same every day, even she’ll tell you that. On more than one occasion she has been approached by people who are inspired by her product, at least the idea of it. When she describes to them the actual process behind all the pretty jewels in the case out front, which she calls high production baking, they become almost immediately disenchanted.

And Embracing Interdependence? I would hope it would be obvious that none of us really make it alone in this world but in case the point needs to be made you can take a look at this piece about Liz and her cupcakes from the Bellingham Business Journal back in October of last year. She’s the first to tell you she could not being doing this alone.

 “Her daughters, Emily and Ona, help with baking, decorating and cleaning. Emily also operates the business's booth at the Bellingham Farmers Market...

Kovacs' husband, Steve, has also been instrumental. He helped build her first commercial kitchen, which she used for a small baking business she started in 1998. He was also her guinea pig for the six months she spent refining her recipes."He's a retired taste tester now," Kovacs said

Her brother, Steve Sieler, an independent art director in Santa Cruz, does all the marketing for the business, he designed the logo as well as the retail space.."

 Ultimately Liz is a business person, her focus is the customer experience, as you can readily tell when you spend time with her as I did. Those years at Apple served her well. She is a business person operating a gourmet bakery not a baker operating a business so as she sat in front of me talking she was also working on the business. As we talked she was taking pieces of silverware fresh from the dishwasher and wiping the water spots off with a towel. She does it as a matter of Choice because everything about ‘Icing on the Cake’ is done like it matters. 

    - So where is "what matters" not being attended to in your area?

   - Can you tell if it Choice or Need that keeps your people coming back?

   - Have you fully Embraced the Interdependence and do you make

     sure your supporters experience appreciation?

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Last week I was working with a young manager I have been coaching for a while who had just delivered a tough review to one of his direct reports. In reflecting on how his session had gone he mentioned that the employee’s last manager had stopped by recently and apologized for not previously addressing the employee's performance shortcomings.

"So why couldn't he have handled this before now and skipped the apology?", my young colleague quipped. "What good does that apology do me now? So one more time I am left to be the bad guy!"

He may have thought he was asking a rhetorical question but I decided to provide him an answer, albeit perhaps not one he was looking for. “So did you hear the invitation in the other manager’s apology?” I asked. Silence…”What do you mean invitation?” the young manager asked in return. I responded, “Well you asked why he couldn’t have skipped the apology, how about interpreting the apology as an invitation for some coaching?” Again the young manager was silent for a bit, then chimed in, “Wouldn’t that seem a bit arrogant on my part, suggesting that maybe he was looking for some coaching?”

So here was a young manager expressing the limits of his vision* in much the way Arthur Schopenhauer  a couple of centuries back suggested that we all do.

“Everyman takes the limits of his own field of vision to be the limits of the world.”        from ‘Studies in Pessimism’

* I have reached this point time and again with managers I have coached over the years; a failure to be able to look beyond some disappointment they have experienced and create an empowering alternative interpretation of something that has occurred.

So I responded, “Well maybe it would depend on how you asked the question.” The point I was getting to was that this young manager had a gift to offer the employee’s previous manager. So I went on, “You have spoken to me before about this manager as someone you work well with and you know he has trouble with confrontations. What if you went back to him now and asked to talk about the apology again and made him an offer?” For a moment it seemed that I had thrown my colleague a real curve ball when finally he asked, “Could you tell me how that might go?”  So here now was the request for coaching that had been missing.

"OK!", I said, " How about this, you could go back and ask to revisit the conversation. Knowing him as you do I expect he’ll accept the request. Once underway I suggest that you thank him for the apology then let him know that it would be of greater importance to know that he was going to correct this shortcoming and not have a similar situation occur in the future. You then can offer your own skills and let him know that you’d be more than happy to coach him when the next opportunity comes along for a tough conversation and he is thinking of passing it up. He’ll either accept the offer or not and let him know that whatever his choice the offer will remain open." I finished off with this question, “Which do you find preferable, leaving things as they are, wishing that manager would change and being pretty sure that on his own he won't, or taking this initiative and recognizing that your gifts are to be given, not to be apologized for and definitely not used to make yourself feel superior to those you work with?”

Maybe to you as the reader the answer to my question seems obvious but it is not. For this young manager to accept my suggestion he was going to have to break through one of his own limitations, not wanting to appear arrogant. There was going to be a win in this for everyone involved if it could be pulled off. We’ll see.  

• Where are you watching someone struggle and being judgmental rather than offering to help?
• What are the gifts your employees have that they could offer each other?

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When the idea first came to me to write a post using this title I wanted it to be profound, pithy, memorable and certainly tweetable! What I found in trying to write the piece is the words in the title so say it all that there seems to be almost no need for further explanation! Rats! Not much room for pithiness but it is a great title so allow me to illuminate where no explanation is required.

Intuitively you probably agree with the quote used here. The words are those of Ian Tyler CEO of Balfour Beatty, an international construction contractor. The context in which I encountered these words was the 2010 IBM Global CEO Study: Capitalizing on Complexity. I downloaded a copy of this study shortly after reading about it in a post from Sharlyn Lauby, The HR Bartender, on March 6th.

It is always interesting to me what different perspectives come from readings of the same material by a diverse set of eyes. Me, my eyes are always tuned to picking up insights into patterns companies have developed that unwittingly undermine their expressed intentions to encourage a highly engaged workforce. Ian Tyler’s words struck me as the kind of obvious wisdom almost any manager would agree with then quickly launch into one of those “…wouldn’t it be great if we lived in a perfect world, one that allowed us to choose just the right people for management, blah, blah, blah.” Nothing discounts profound knowledge faster than a “Yeah but…”

It is certainly a matter of picking the right people for management but what does that mean? What are the criteria that indicate the greatest chance of success? I’ve lost track of the number of companies that complain about the quality of their managers when they really mean they are missing leadership. When asked, these same companies will answer sheepishly that they usually find themselves selecting a top performer for the vacant manager spot or the most technically knowledgeable candidate available so they will have someone filling the spot, since as we all know if the employees don’t have someone watching them they will run amock or just sit at their desks idly.

Are there some companies that do a solid job, certainly, and based on my experience they seem to be few and far between. Why else would “My Manager” be among the top reasons cited for employees leaving their positions voluntarily? In my career I can count on one hand the companies I have encountered where managers told me they felt well prepared before they received their first management assignment. The number of companies that do a rigorous job of succession planning for first management positions may be more numerous than my experience would indicate.

However, when it comes to leadership, managers who have an understanding of how to become not only a leader of the people they manage but also among peers and superiors… I think the recognition that their position as leader is granted by their audiences is truly rare.

Case in point: I interviewed a young manager last week who I was told by superiors was struggling to find a leadership voice. It didn’t take me long in the conversation to establish that this was an exceptionally bright young person who one day may well become both a solid manager and a good leader. But not yet! In a period of maybe thirty minutes the young manager provided at least five examples of personal brilliance and frustration...if people would just listen to them…it was sad! I left recommending an immediate coaching engagement, if not with me certainly with someone else because this situation already smelled of burn out and it had only been 11 months since the appointment had been made. Too bad, really smart person, really passionate person, I hope this turns out for the best.

To just wrap this up quickly for now I suggest you might want to refer your managers to this little piece I found while searching last night. It is called Connecting as a Leader and it was written by Ivy N. Carter. It is a sweet little bit of personal wisdom and experience that I am sure almost any manager would benefit from.

• Are you trying to lead without preparing your audience?
• Do you know someone who is struggling because they think their title confers leadership on them?

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One of the remnants from a time not yet past is the notion that employee vacations are an earned benefit. Bah! Humbug!

The other day I was speaking with a neighbor, a younger person, who was talking about his feelings of needing to take some time off work. “So why not just schedule some time in the next month”, I asked? I was taken back by his response. “Well, I only have a week paid vacation time each year and I’d like to hold off until the weather gets warmer”, he said. It has been a long time since I worked for someone else but one week of vacation annually hardly seemed adequate for my young friend to recreate, refresh and ready himself for extended periods of performance in the mentally challenging role I knew he held.

When I started my “career” with a major petroleum company nearly forty years ago I recall how my new manager explained to me that the company was going to generously provide me two weeks paid vacation time after one year of service and after five years service I’d have another week added. I am not sure that my manager realized that since I was just coming from six years of higher education with usually three weeks between trimesters off and summers as well a “generous” two week vacation seemed more like a sentence to servitude than a benefit. Yet, that was forty years ago and an altogether different time. And here my young friend was in 2011 with just a single week paid vacation time after a few years with his employer!

 
That conversation disturbed me! Somewhere between full slumber and consciousness this morning I started thinking about the necessity for knowledge workers to regularly and intentionally involve themselves in the practice of refreshment. I am not talking about the worn out conversation around “using all your vacation time.” I mean an intentional practice of unplugging, shutting down the commercial part of our brain and just playing at something. So I started this morning with a visit to the dictionary:   

Main Entry: ¹va·ca·tion  
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English vacacioun, from Middle French vacation, from Latin vacation-, vacatio feedom, exemption, immunity, from vacatus (past participle of vacare) + -ion-, -io -ion -- more at VACANT
1 : a respite or a time of respite from something : INTERMISSION, REST
2 obsolete a : freedom from work or cares : LEISURE b : time free for something else; specifically : time for contemplation
3 a : a scheduled period during which activity or work is suspended.

Look…look, we are three usages of the word into the common definition and there has yet to be mention of vacation as an employee benefit or employer concession! To be fair that meaning does come shortly after what I have shown here but it is not at the top of the list.

The point I mean to get to is that the subject of employee vacations remains as symbolic as it is practical and to that extent I see an issue that potentially affects employee engagement. The symbolism of course is reflective of an era where employers were considered the “grantors” of any condition of employment. For many, many years in the North American economy employment was considered to extend at the pleasure of the employer. This mindset was simply a matter of fact for decades. The times may have changed but much of the mindset remains intact. But perhaps not as much as in the past.

In a very recent article in Fortune, ‘Flexible Vacation Policies are Here to Stay’ reporter Shelley DuBois opens with a most provocative series of questions:

“You're an adult. You know how to prioritize your time to do your job. So why should your company ration out vacation reluctantly and monitor when you spend it? Wouldn't it be nice to do away with vacation-day limits entirely, so you could leave work whenever you want for as long as you feel you need?

So, if you are an employer does considering this concept of flexible vacation time sound revolutionary, make you a bit lightheaded? Does it leave you feeling weakened in some way. If it does I’d suggest that you place more of a premium on control in your business than you do productivity. Viewed from the perspective of considering practices that will promote engagement and therefore less need to spend time focused on productivity a change in your current policies may be worth looking at. You would of course need to consider your own business and the needs for customer satisfaction as the basis to work from. However, if you want encouragement…the company I started in 1989 began with a flexible vacation policy and until I left in mid-2010 I can say for sure that we never has a recorded incident of abuse of this practice. More often than not I found myself in the position of telling employees that they needed to take time.

• When was your last vacation? Did you really disconnect ?
• When is your next vacation? Will you do better at disconnecting that time?

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