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

When I look around my natural surroundings in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, or do organizational research as I frequently do by watching Animal Planet or Discovery Channel (more the older programming about bugs,snakes and Wildebeest, not the new stuff like ‘MythBusters’ or ‘Dirty Jobs’), I am constantly reminded of the principals of diversity, interdependency and inclusiveness that underlie the workings of the natural world.

On the other hand, when I consider many of the models employed when evaluating, developing and rewarding employees in our commercial enterprises I am confronted by the focus on internal competition as well as the heavy emphasis on rewarding individual performance, despite exhortations to pull together, be a team, think big picture etc. Does it ever occur to us that these practices may serve more to confuse than to encourage employees and thereby produce a negative impact on engagement?

I am referring here to regular practices of putting individual employees or groups of employees in artificially competitive situations or force ranking employees for compensation purposes, like that ever made any sense! How about the discussions that many of us have participated in where we cull out our “A” players or make lists of High Potential Employees, (Hipos? Hypos? more non-words from the HR/OD vocabulary)  all without much recognition for or questioning of the models that give rise both to the vocabulary we use and the practices we engage in.

To what degree might your own organization routinely and thoughtlessly engage in these and similar practices without questioning whether, 

• the fundamental assumptions on which they were originally based are or ever were valid, 
• the degree to which (validity aside) the practices we employ when evaluating or rewarding employees contribute to or impede the basic level of engagement of the major contingent of our employee base 
• key measurements used to establish the basis for rewards or developmental opportunities are true measures of performance or really “roll-ups”, reports of aggregate outcomes of other measures which if considered separately might be much more meaningful, if not for purposes of reward most certainly for developmental planning,
• there is the slightest recognition of the nature or fundamental motivations of the factions within organizations that insist on the preservation of traditional models , especially compensation models that favor the few over the many?

And all this is to say that possibly the compensation systems we so doggedly cling to are only satisfactory for a minority of employees but that minority is responsible for designing the systems.

In my real life corporate working career as an HR professional I was once “forced ranked” among a group of 97 other professionals, most of whom had highly technical backgrounds. According to my manager I was ranked #15 among the group. Not too bad you say! How about the fact that I could not have performed the work of any of the people ranked above or immediately below me on the list?

When they wrote ‘First Break All the Rules’ back in 1999 Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman gave managers everywhere a collective “big shove” between the shoulder blades and suggested it was time for us to wake up. They offered anecdotal references and data that suggested that there was significant evidence that many of who they considered to be the world’s best managers did not play by the traditional rules. They actually, of their own volition, did what they considered to be in the best interest of each employee, without regard to past practices of existing policies. How far have we come since then? Eleven years after its first publication, Amazon reports ‘First Break…’ among its top ten best selling titles in both Management and Leadership Categories. For me that is pretty compelling information.We're still a'studyin, maybe soon we'll get to more doin!

How do you feel about normal distribution curves, I mean as they relate to human characteristics like IQ, talent etc.? Personally, I am a big believer in the laws of natural distribution. That is one reason why I have never understood the arrogance of highly intelligent people. How do you become arrogant about an accident of nature? Given my beliefs in this regard 

• I do admit to a natural bias on my part towards models that support and reward collaborative performance. 
• I also admit to a bias towards systems of reward that honor individual accomplishment, especially performance that benefits the larger collective of employees and the organization as a whole.
• Finally, I admit to a bias towards developmental practices that originate with both a deep understanding of organizational needs and a deep and comprehensive understanding of individual talents and strengths. I favor having these practices grounded in a commitment to optimize the interests of all parties involved.

Do these biases and beliefs of mine sound contradictory or paradoxical?  They should if they are meant in any way to reflect the true complexity of dealing with human beings in increasingly complex commercial settings.

• Where do you shy away from the complexities of employees?
• Do you embrace simplistic thinking when it comes to employees because it saves time or is just so much easier to understand?
• Do you shoot for practices and policies that encourage collaboration and inclusiveness and build on the strength of diverse perspectives and talents?

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A short time ago while leading a workshop I was asked this question by someone who sounded like an experienced manager. “What do I do with an obviously talented report who just doesn’t seem committed to the work he has been assigned?” The manager and I engaged in a brief dialogue to establish the signs that the employee was not committed. What we rapidly determined was probably not surprising. The manager was not necessarily reporting on the results being produced, she was reporting on her observations of the mannerisms of the employee. She didn’t like his attitude! Though not exceptional, the results were fine, but the employee was often overheard discussing matters related to Fantasy Football with colleagues when time could be used for additional production or education on the finer points of the work.

At first glance this may seem silly to even talk about. However, I am in and around a lot of managers and supervisors, literally thousands over the period of any given year. It is not uncommon for me to hear similar concerns expressed by many who have management responsibility.

{I’ll be the first one to tell any employee that I believe employee engagement is the responsibility of the employee, when I am talking to employees…and in the blink of an eye I’ll be the first one to tell management that employee engagement is the responsibility of management, when I am talking to management. From my perspective the conversation depends on where you are in the relationship and make no mistake about it, engagement is a matter of relationship. Like any other relationship worth being involved with, there is no simply doing your part; you are either in for the whole thing or not at all.}

As the conversation continued with this particular manager I asked an intentionally provocative question. “Have you ever asked this employee what he finds so engaging about fantasy football?” The manager came back quickly with, “Why should I have to do that?” The point of the question was to establish where the manager stood regarding responsibility for this employee’s level of engagement. The question she asked in response to mine quickly established where she stood. She assumed none.

 I went on to ask whether she understood that fantasy football was a fairly complex topic requiring considerable research and attention to detail and nuance. Yes, it was a game that concerned a sport but the skills involved in gaining proficiency called for dedication ,study and analysis of statistics, and a commitment to keeping up to date with an ever changing landscape of information. What if she sat down with this employee and explored his interest in depth, strictly for the purpose of understanding what it was about this game that the employee was so passionate about? Might an exploration like this allow her to understand what it was about the game that captured this employee’s interest and warranted such freely given dedication? Perhaps then she might be able to consider structuring the employee’s work to take advantage of his natural interests and get more of the attitude she was looking for as well as more productivity.

She didn’t buy it! And so it goes.

By now you are probably thinking that this encounter I have described is an exception and managers who follow a compliance-based approach to managing productivity and overall performance are fewer and farther between. I beg to differ and I beg you to consider that to the degree you don’t recognize your own or know your manager’s basic attitudes about employee engagement your employee base, your organization’s working capital, is at risk.

Intuitively I have for a number of years suspected that engagement, productivity, retention and profitability are intertwined like the links of the DNA helix. Mainly I came to this belief this by observing myself in relationship to whatever work was required of me. But now we can all go beyond simple belief or intuition and I think we owe it to our profession as managers to do just that. Thanks to a timely tweet from my associate and colleague Paul Hebert today I received a “heads up” on a newly released posting from Bret Simmons titled appropriately enough, “Employee Engagement and Performance: Finally some Credible Evidence.” Take a look for yourself. Bret’s cites some very sound newly released research evidence on the critical relationship between job engagement and performance. Pay particular attention to the closing words to his post, “If you find yourself lamenting that your employees don’t appear engaged, you are going to have to do something different.”

• The corollary to Bret's closing words of course is that if you are not willing to do something different, you can reduce your suffering by not expecting anything to change!
  

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Working with a group of managers this week we opened what has now become to me a familiar and productive organizational conversation. “How can we learn to need, not just use each other?” The group I was working with was by any standards “high functioning” yet it was obvious upon introduction that they didn’t quite grasp the question they were being asked. So, I tried asking the question in a slightly different way, “OK, what’s the real reason everyone complains about IT?” This proved to be a bit more penetrating as the people in the group began to grasp that what I was pushing them on and what was making them uncomfortable was having to acknowledge something that we have all become familiar with in our organizational lives, avoiding vulnerability. We all do it and we don’t talk about it. But what if we did?

Back in 1959 Peter Drucker coined the term ‘knowledge worker’, he then spent a good portion of the next 45 years studying and revamping his theories about knowledge worker productivity and how best to adapt and adjust management practice to account for this new reality. He went so far as to say, “…better knowledge work productivity is our most important economic need.” He further warned that our long term prosperity and even our economic survival depend upon it.

Today more than ever our habitual treatments of Drucker’s ideas as quaint or optional are like “chickens coming home to roost.”

Through observation of this new reality of economic life, the worker as asset not merely resource, Drucker developed some perspectives that the majority of managers are, 5 years after his death, just beginning to grasp. What Drucker saw was the need for managers to simultaneously make their present Enterprise more effective, identify and realize its potential, and create a different Enterprise for a different future. In so doing he suggested that business leaders needed to continually shift resources from less productive to more productive areas through better knowledge work productivity and innovation.

“ …business leaders need to continually shift resources from less productive to more productive areas ...”

The implication of this statement is profound and redefines what it means to manage. It is no longer sufficient to think of the role of management in terms of knowing what needs to be done and seeing to it that it gets done. While this definition  remains a portion of what it means to be a manager we must expand the demand on the role to include “knowing” what talent is available at all times and seeing to it that it is put to use for the best advantage of the enterprise. It also means, and this is where the “why we are all afraid of IT” thing keeps coming up; as managers we must be able to recognize what knowledge and skill we need… that we do not have and cannot provide for ourselves… that we will be reliant on others to provide. This last requirement makes us veeerrry uncomfortable. Embracing the interdependency....eeeeeuuuuwwww!

In order to succeed in the manner Drucker is describing we are going to learn to consciously, strategically need the talents, knowledge and skills of not only those people working for us but also of those we will collaborate with. And look at us; we are still struggling with getting our performance reviews done on time, again, this year, for the umpteenth consecutive year. It is time to step up our game or step away from the role!

Tomorrow I’ll go back into my workshop and we will continue to explore this newly introduced distinction between needing people and using them. As the conversations unfolds predictably the managers in the group will begin to see that they

• Need to know a great deal more about themselves in terms of strengths and limitations.
• Need to know much more about the capabilities and interests of people reporting to them, continue to know what needs to be done and now who is best to do it and, what is going to need to get done that we must be preparing for now or we’ll never be ready and who should be doing that and
• Know where they currently have collaborators who are not being related to as assets, what do those assets need from them in order to be able to provide them service and what are they going to need from these collaborators in the future that they need to let them know about now so their expectations stand a chance of being met.

And at some point in the process of becoming fully aware of what is called for now they are going to become overwhelmed with the limitations they have placed on themselves and recognize that they will need to shed some of the protective behavior patterns they have used to avoid vulnerability until now. And they will get a bit panicky, and then they will be fine.

Puff, puff, puff! Whew! The level of complexity is daunting and yet if we (managers) continue as we have with our historical ways of working like we don’t really need as much as we do we are going to get run over by the sheer volume of what we are faced with. Like the man in the commercial said many years ago, “you can pay me now or pay me later.”

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Pretty basic stuff this week but it never hurts to go back to basics.

Assuming that we are all in agreement that engaged employees are preferable to ones who are not, let’s take a brief look at actions we take as managers that actually dis-incent the engagement we say we want.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

                                                                      Upton Sinclair

If I have heard it once I have heard it a hundred times from a potential client in an initial meeting, “Mike, what I am looking for is more leadership from my people!” Notwithstanding that this statement is often made thoughtlessly the first time around, my standard response when I hear it is “Then what we need to do is determine what you and your managers are doing to discourage leadership!” Silence follows.

Once everyone starts breathing again we can begin a fruitful dialogue.

The truth of my experience is that when senior managers strongly suggest they are interested in more leadership, they are muddling leadership with engagement and their real interest is more engaged employees. If it is really more leadership they want, we’ll have a further conversation about how much control they are willing to give up. That is always interesting!

In either case the task becomes one of working with both senior and mid-level managers to distinguish how they may be unwittingly discouraging the very engagement they profess to be seeking.

Much of what managers do to discourage or dis-incent engagement will have a reasonable explanation in the minds of the managers and will look like blatant chicanery in the eyes of employees. Some cases in point:

• “Our manager says she wants us to speak our minds and offer ideas and suggestions. When she holds a meeting she tells us to hold our questions and comments to the end of her presentation. Then as she gathers her things to leave she asks if we have any questions!”
• “Senior managers tell us we can contact them directly; when we do they ask our managers why we are bringing this matter to senior management attention rather than handling it more locally.”
• “The only way for me to make more money in my current position is to create opportunities for overtime. The easiest way to do that is to slow down so my work takes extra time and then I get labeled as a mediocre to poor performer.”
• “I can easily complete my assignments most weeks in 30-35 hours; I am good at what I do. There’s no real incentive to perform at a higher rate cuz every time I finish early my manager adds work from some of the poorer performers.”
• “I’ve offered five suggestions for improvement in the past year and not received a positive response on any of them. Managers promised they would get back in writing on all suggestions within 72 hours of receipt. I’d just be happy with that”

When confronted on this behavior, managers will often respond that it was a one time occurrence, they were pushed for time, it made sense when they took the action, etc. etc.

NOW HEAR THIS…all ye who would manage. The basic employment relationship is predicated on a mutually understood imbalance of power. You have more than the people reporting to you, at least in theory!.

Without question, at this point in time the majority of employees, no matter what the organization, are keenly attuned to this imbalance and on constant alert for any sign that their status in the “royal household” may be in jeopardy. This is to say that if you make a sudden move to scratch your head don’t be surprised when they duck. This underlying and unspoken unholy understanding is only made worse by our failure as managers to acknowledge the truth of it.

In my experience as a manager I have directly said to employees, “I seek your partnership. You are not worth much to me if our relationship is based in fear. Unless I can trust you to speak up when there is something to be said I will be essentially working alone. Whatever we need to do to work through whatever fear you have of me or managers in general, I am prepared to work through with you. I am not prepared to hear after the fact that you knew something and didn’t express it.” Not everyone who received this offer accepted but everyone who accepted has not been disappointed, nor have I.

• Take a look at the bulleted items above and examine yourself not just by reading the examples but by checking yourself against the spirit of the message.
• Can you come up with your own list of unconscious behaviors on your part that may be a dis-incentive to engagement?

In case you are wondering, I am not a "management hater." I do hold managers to a certain standard because of the power balance I speak to here. My highest loyalty is always to what at any point in time I see as the "best interest of the organization."

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Is it too easy to beat on British Petroleum right now? Perhaps, yet the saga unfolding is more than an environmental catastrophe, and it certainly is that. This is not merely the story of one company behaving badly; this is the comeuppance of a context. We might name the context "Management's Apparent Sense of Entitlement." On a larger scale we may even see it as the comeuppance of a national culture of entitlement; our own.It is important to see ourselves in everything taking place in this set of events. 

I know there is a lot of "piling on" taking place right now, most of it well justified, some typically politically motivated, some pre-emptive in an attempt to shed responsibility for the blame which will eventually be spread far and wide. It may be particularly hard to see the lessons to be learned for all the noise and emotion. However, rather than be concerned strictly about and for the actions of BP let's take a look at the similarities between what we are seeing in the public behaviors of this international giant , those of previously similarly embattled corporate "citizens" and our own actions at times as managers. If you are a manager I'd ask that you pay particular attention this week.

In order to get the full benefit (if I can call it that) from the tragedy being played out in front of us in this disaster we need to be able to see ourselves in the behaviors of the BP spokespeople and executives. From the very beginning there has been plenty of evidence that BP was going to spend a lot of energy deflecting and limiting its responsibility in the matter, as did TransOcean and Haliburton, the other major antagonists in this multi-act spectacle. But is what we are seeing so different really from the behavior of Enron executives several years ago? How about in the collapse of Global Crossing?

·         Take a look at this incomplete but fairly comprehensive list of corporate scandals from recent history.

 In the case of each of these events someplace in the back-story there is a justification on someone’s part, an interpretation that allowed otherwise “good” people to behave badly. I am calling this phenomenon Management’s Apparent Sense of Entitlement and I want to stress “apparent” because no matter what the real motivation it sure looks like someone thought they were entitled to act the way they did. And, this behavior, played out repeatedly to a lesser degree daily in our places of work has a withering effect on employee engagement. In the same way that repeated exposure to radiation would poison the body, repeated exposure to a lack of accountability and inauthenticity on the part of our managers poisons the soul. On the grand scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster it has the effect of calling into question our very way of life.

What we are witness to has been played out on a lesser scale countless times before just not so much on the world wide stage. There is a sense of entitlement, a right to not be held to account that has been repeatedly asserted by corporate leadership for many years now.

Whether we are apt to admit it or not, as often as we observe and condemn behavior similar to that we are seeing on the part of BP representatives, we are all infected by the virus that thrives in this context.

Just focus on your work place for the moment. Have you ever participated in an employee meeting where a question to an executive was met with an “I’ll have to get back to you on that” response and you felt the spirit in the room droop as a collective experience of disillusionment took place? There would be no "getting back later". How about the director who is repeatedly late for her own meetings and always arrives with a handy excuse? Or, the manager who routinely schedules last minute meetings expecting their staff to dismiss whatever other commitments have been made to attend? Thankfully these examples are not a Deepwater Horizon equivalent event. However, I assert that they are justified from the very same context, “management has its privileges.” Until we can see ourselves in the BP disaster we are not going to be able to develop either an appropriate response in ourselves or consciously correct our own behavior.  

In no way do I mean to condemn all management or all corporate activities. It is the insidiousness of the assertion of a categorical right to not be held to account by many leaders of larger organizations that fouls the water for all of us.

• Where are you opting to not account for yourself with your reports?

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As a manager, especially a manager of younger employees one thing I encourage you to be on the lookout for are occasions that attack the confidence of the your less experienced reports. No doubt you can remember your own baptism by fire when in your earlier years you innocently asked a question of a superior in an open meeting, with the best of intentions, and got handed your head on a platter following a public flaying that left you questioning yourself, your values, the direction of the poles etc. If you were fortunate you had a manager who took you aside and assured you that you were fine and that what you had done hadn’t warranted the treatment you received and maybe there were better ways or times to make your thoughts or questions known in the future. If you were not so fortunate you were met in the hall after the meeting by a co-worker who cauterized your wound with a glib “Glad that wasn’t me” comment, forever cementing in your mind that you were never going to let anything close to that happen again, and were never heard from there or anyplace else that had a similar look and feel. Or maybe you were passed over for a promotion or “thrown under the bus” by a colleague in a public setting, etc. etc.

If you’ve been around for a while you now know the drill, you know you will survive, as Kenny Rogers says, “You gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em!” And you know there will always be another day and the point is not so much to avoid the impact of life in the workplace as it is to develop the ability to choose your points of high impact and recover quickly. Nothing will make you more ineffective than

·         the inability to confront events when necessary to get things done,

·         the inability to sustain an injustice and return to the field of play quickly or

·          the inability to leave the past in the past

As object lesson let me present a situation very fresh in the minds of many fans of professional sports. In baseball there are two types of actors on the field at all times, those who play the game and those who officiate the games. Theirs is an uneasy interdependency made necessary by the subjective nature of many of the transactions. Kind of like performance reviews! J Anyway, last Wednesday, June 2^nd, the fans in Detroit’s Comerica Park were on the verge of being treated to one of the rarest events in all of sports, the pitching of a perfect game*. Unfortunately the gods of baseball have a weird sense of fate. On a play that would have been the last of the game a veteran umpire made an erroneous call on a fairly routine play, costing the pitcher, the players and the fans the experience of a lifetime.

*The “perfect game” has occurred only 18 times since 1900 out of something like half a million games played in that period.

I am pretty sure you as well as almost everyone at Comerica that evening can readily see the error of the call made by umpire Jim Joyce.

The fans were stunned, the Detroit players were furious, the manager, Jim Leyland, offered strenuous protest, to no avail. Amazingly, the pitcher, Armando Galarraga, calmly returned to the mound, faced the next batter, got him out and completed a one-hit game for the win.

Following the game a chagrinned Jim Joyce faced the press and admitted his mistake to the press and apologized in person to Galarraga. The next day to no one’s surprise there was an appeal to the Baseball Commissioner, Bud Selig, to reverse the call and award the perfect game. (C’mon Bud you know that wasn’t fair, give the kid a break!) To his credit Bud Selig was true to the game and declined to reverse the call.

Just like in any workplace the two protagonists in this drama returned to work the following day. In a gesture most rare and inspirational Armando Galarraga met Jim Joyce at Home Plate with the daily lineup card, (a task normally completed by the team’s manager), gave him a pat on the back and a hug and assured him that he forgave the mistake and affirmed his confidence in Joyce’s ability to proceed to effectively call the balls and strikes that day. Remarkable and rare, a story worth repeating and one I encourage you to share with your younger employees.

In any interdependency, marriage, co-worker or business partner there is room for disappointment. At times we will let each other down. These are the moments that define relationships; these are the moments that define careers. When they occur will we withdraw from the field never to risk again or will we return to play knowing that somewhere in the future we will experience disappointment again? Can we learn to apologize, can we learn to forgive, even when we know the game will never be fair. For those who cannot…there will always be tickets for the game, that’s why they call them spectators.

·         Are you noticing any of your reports becoming spectators?

·         Are there apologies for you to make or forgiveness to grant?

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For the past fifteen years I have greeted business leaders clamoring for more leadership and accountability in their organizations with this challenge, “What are you willing to give up? The question is almost always met first with silence followed by a familiar response, “What exactly do you mean by give up? Then the fun begins.

I have been adamant for some time that employees want to give their employers the best they have to offer and employers behaviors and practices often serve to constrain this from happening. Many employees are not going to give their best for conventional rewards and they certainly are not going to give it for nothing, but they will give it for free. I know this without data to back it up, I just get it in my bones and I bet you do too.

“Thankfully, there are those writers who do like data and they often do the research to make the connection between “hunch” and reality. Every so often a new voice bursts on the management/leadership development scene with an unconventional take on familiar themes and they can back it up with facts and then many of us shout “I knew it!” No author may be as "right now" in this regard as Daniel Pink, author of 'Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

This is not going to be my review of Drive, there are already plenty in circulation, in fact if you are interested I’ll send you right to one written by Andrew O’Connell that appeared in Harvard Business Review earlier this year. Better yet, if you’d like a pretty compelling synopsis of the book by the author himself I recommend setting aside ten minutes or so to watch the video animate created by RSA.org. I am betting that after you watch this piece you’ll buy the book if you haven’t already.

Without the benefit of the research presented in ‘Drive’ my company stumbled on some of Daniel Pink’s fundamental new truth through direct experience back in the mid-1990s while working with our local independent telephone company. (You may recall the 1990s as a time when telephone companies were still relevant!) During that period we were working with this company to bring about a shift in thinking, a transition from seeing the world though the eyes of a regulated utility to seeing the world through the eyes of a player in a competitive marketplace for telephonic services; a tall order at the very least.

Among the many changes that the telephone company was working to bring about at that time was to turn Customer Service from a pure expense center into another of the company’s revenue generating locations. The idea; pretty simple really, since the company could count on a regular inflow of contacts from customers with issues or questions why not address each of these contacts as also a sales opportunity. Calling features were in vogue then, Call Waiting, Three Way Calling etc. and each was available, for a price.

To motivate the customer service representatives who would be involved in making this change the company put in place a financial incentive program knowing full well that the employees would jump at the chance for additional income…they didn’t, and management was confused and perhaps not surprisingly they were angered as well. “Everyone” knew this was a great idea, why couldn’t these employees just buy in and get with the program and "hey, don’t forget the money", the money was a good thing.

We came on the scene about three months after this program had been put in place and the situation was getting very tense. The managers who had first proposed this program had gone on record promising their seniors a big payback and it was not showing up. Knowing that their idea was sound the managers determined that if they could not entice desired behavior with incentive they might as well initiate some negative consequences for not “playing ball.” And so they did and suddenly the union representing the service reps got very involved and then no one was having any fun.

When asked if we had any possible remedy to offer the first of our questions set the stage for a dramatic shift in perspective. We asked, “What made you think that people who had been basically performing the same or similar functions for on average twenty years were suddenly going to care about making more money?” The answer was pretty simple and understandable. The managers assumed that the customer service reps were motivated by the same things that motivated them. Within a short period of time we were able to determine that time off, an afternoon to spend on family issues, a simple recognition luncheon, a book of car wash coupons, or just the time to spend with a customer without worrying about who was next in the queue, all these were more meaningful to the service reps than a chance to make more money. All of these motivators were virtually free but they did mean management would have to change their behaviors, and they did.

It is now fifteen years later. Daniel Pink tells us that autonomy, mastery and purpose are the motivators that matter to much of the current workforce in the conceptual age. You might think this would be good news for many employers. Not necessarily so. Providing these incentives means management will need to give up control of employees’ time and direction to some degree. For many employers, they would still rather let go of money than they would control.

• Where are you struggling to gain employees' 'buy in' but you have failed to offer them any freedom? What are you prepared to give up?
• Can you envision your role without any supervisory or directive aspect? What could you do with the time freed up?

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In recent years I have developed a keen interest in what might be identified as the "elements of a resilient business community." I live in an area of the country, rural/coastal northwest Washington, where the economy is dominated by small business. Truthfully most of the United States is in a similar position as the director of any Chamber of Commerce will readily affirm.

Unlike metropolitan areas where often there are larger enterprises serving to establish "economic thrust," in areas like ours the success of small businesses seem to me to be almost entirely dependent on the support of customers or clients in our local area.

With this much obvious interdependency, local business owners still express constant concern for their visibility and viability when faced with price advantages offered by on-line shopping or "big box" stores a reasonable drive away. Unfortunately I find that all too often these merchants do their fretting in private and hope for the benevolence of local citizens.

The sort of tensions I am describing seem quite normal to me. What I question is whether it is possible to break the cycle of rugged self-reliance on the part of our local business owners without throwing the "baby out with the bath water." As a business owner myself for the past twenty years I share the interest I see in other owners to pursue their own path and express themselves through a commercial venture, sort of test themselves in the open market of perceived value. However, is it possible to begin to harness the aggregate business wisdom in a given local area in service of all participants? Why merely depend on patronizing each others' businesses, why not also be available to advise, coach,critique and most importantly hold each other to account for actions committed to?

So I am asking for your input, and the input of those you know and trust. If you were tasked with developing a total framework that would reliably support a resilient, sustainable commercial community in a defined local area,

• What elements would you make sure were present in the local political environment?
• What measurements and statistics would you use to describe healthy businesses?
• What education, books, programs would you want to have available as part of a basic business owner's curriculum?
• How might you explain to local business owners the possible benefits of taking a collaborative approach to business development?

Personally I am intrigued by the idea of being able to spend time with other business owners reflecting on lessons learned while considering the wisdom gleaned from  newly published works like Jeff Hayzlett's "The Mirror Test" or Michael Gerber's classic, The E Myth. Or, having one of my local colleagues share with me the latest technical application that has proven profitable to install.

What would you recommend/suggest/insist be included in the development of a "community" approach such as the one I am pursuing?

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"How little the public realizes what a girl must go through before she finally appears before the spotlight that is thrown upon the stage."

Florenz Ziegfeld

Now and then, if we are fortunate, there may be presented to us the opportunity to see a master as they perform. Less often and even more fortunate are those occasions when we have a chance to work with a master as they pursue their craft. Last Friday in Seattle at the Green Lake Theater, along with nine other lucky travelers I worked with a master.

I became acquainted with Kimberly Davis back in 2007 shortly after the publication of my first book, THRIVE. Through a series of serendipitous occurrences, me moving near to where she was living in Seattle, she and her husband moving to the Dallas/Fort Worth area and me securing a contract with an agency in Fort Worth, we did wind up working on a project together in the spring and summer of 2008. It was my project and I asked Kimberly to assist and she actually ended up as the co-creator of a wonderful initiative we put together for "at risk" youth in the Fort Worth school district. Unfortunately the funding for that program was canceled shortly after our pilot phase. At that point, sadly,my working relationship with Kimberly ended. I returned to Washington to begin a new phase of my professional life and Kimberly, well she didn't miss a beat.

Shortly after our project in Fort Worth was canceled I started receiving "newsletters from Kimberly letting me know about her knew venture, On Stage Leadership.  The name is probably a dead giveaway, yes it is leadership development wrapped inside the trappings of theater. But rather than give away any further details I'll just tell you that the experience was one I'll draw upon for years to come.

From the time I began receiving Kimberly's newsletters I knew I wanted to participate in her program. Our brief experience working together in Fort Worth had let me know that she is a rare and special talent. While she did a marvelous job assisting me in co-creating the Texas project I knew there was "her work" and I had hoped I would some day get to see her in her element.

Is there such a thing as "ridiculous authenticity?" If there is then Kimberly Davis is guilty of this character surplus. There is of course her theatrical training and I am sure she would be the first to admit to being a "drama queen" but in a way that is so engaging you just want more of whatever that is oozing from her being.

The tag line on the Onstage Leadership logo says "Get Real, Get Real Results" and I cannot think of anything I would like managers (who let's face it we are all hoping will be leaders) to get more than REAL. On Friday that is what we worked on, getting real. On one hand it is sad that being REAL with each other is so challenging and on the other it was literally awesome to see this group of managers awaken to the possibility of power emanating from vulnerability. I could just see shoulders relaxing and tension draining from the faces of my fellow participants as one by one they came to the realization that what others wanted from them was not perfection, it was their humanity, something that over years of organizational life they had learned to keep in check, lest their emotions get the best of them.

During the course of our workshop last Friday Kimberly asked us some very tough questions:

• Is your passion buried or near the surface?
• Can you recall having said something to someone that made a difference?
• Do you know the difference between your purpose and your tactics?
• Who is counting on your for leadership?

Throughout the day we had multiple occasions to reflect on this last question, sort of a self assessment of customer satisfaction. We were all getting square with ourselves on whether we were honoring our positions (manager) or honoring the opportunity it presents us with (leadership) and getting clear that an "either or answer" is not satisfactory. Our organizations grant us our "managerness" and our followers grant us our leadership.

Somewhere during the course of the day I was reminded of something I know that I know. People come to work each day hoping for the opportunity to make a contribution and to be in some way recognized for making it. I say hoping because it is generally not at all clear that an employer is looking for anything more from us than simply doing what is asked. We all know that , day in and day out, simply doing what is expected is not worthy of the time of our lives. When we encounter someone, a leader, a regular human being clear about their purpose and willing to allow others to play at the top of their game we naturally gravitate to that opportunity. We will move obstacles to be near someone who values and validates our contribution. To do that for others, a contribution in itself we as managers must realize we are on stage all the time. The spotlight is a harsh critic, it is also a doorway for us being fully realized as human beings while serving as organizational archetypes.

• What have you said to someone reporting to you that you know made a lasting impression? Consider that it may have been something not positive.
• Who is counting on you for leadership?

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There is much merit in the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Take this picture for instance.In case you don't know this is Mt. Ranier in Washington. This particular shot was taken with my Palm Treo from the window seat during a flight I was taking from Seattle to Fort Worth two summers ago. I think it is pretty great given no time for set up and it sure does a much better job of showing the magnificence of this peak than if I was to tell you how "really big" it is.

 Sometimes though you really do have to hear the story to get the picture.

We go to the gym to stay in shape, we hire a management coach to stay in shape, we go to church on Sunday to stay in shape. Repetition seems to be a fundamental practice for those who would stay sharp, whether it be in body, mind or spirit. And so it goes with those of us who create these periodic blog posts.So again it is time to repeat something we have heard countless times before.

In his March 25th post in All Things Workplace this year Steve Roesler does a great job of outlining the lesson I have mind for us to review today. In his words,

"I've coached executives and conducted workshops on all aspects of presentations for many years. One of the liveliest parts of the discussion emerges when I introduce the fact that influential presentations require at least as much time listening to the audience as speaking to them. For many, that's counter-intuitive to the common notion of influence."

Listening...there it is again...whether we are in the midst of a presentation or a one-on-one conversation, how many times have you heard said that listening is more important than speaking, especially when it comes to gaining respect or establishing influence? If you've heard it once I bet you've heard it a thousand times...and still it bears repeating.

So now that story I promised...

Some thirty years back I held a real job in a real company, actually a Fortune 50 company in the petroleum industry to be as exact as I need for my purposes here. One of my favorite assignments during this period of my career involved a two year stay on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in a large refinery.

On one particular morning my manager showed up at my office early asking of I had time for a special assignment. He had in mind for me to do a comparative analysis of the healthcare plan we offered our employees and one offered by a local chemical company. The assignment seemed pretty straight forward so I took it on and within a short time was waist deep in charts and tables.

What I noticed fairly quickly was that on virtually every feature the plan offered by my employer was equal to or superior to the plan I had been asked to analyze comparatively. After about an hour I sat back and pondered the assignment for a few moments and just as I concluded it was a waste of time I headed upstairs to see my manager. He was someone I respected a great deal and if he had asked me to do this he had a good reason; I needed to know what that was before proceeding.

When I asked my manager how it was that he came to make the request of me to do the analysis the picture began to take shape. Late in the afternoon the day before one of the more vocal plant workers, a man who seemed to have a certain following, had stopped in to see my manager. He spent about half an hour complaining to my manager about how much better the medical plan offered by “so and so company” was and wondering aloud why we couldn’t get a better plan, to the point where my manager finally said he would arrange for an analysis and see what might be done.

I told my manager of my preliminary findings and he said maybe I should continue my analysis because the company was committed to doing whatever could be done within reason to keep the plant employees from thinking they needed union representation. Now I grew suspicious.

An interesting feature of this particular refinery was the fact that it was not unionized, like virtually all other refineries in the United States and the company management took great pains to make sure that was the way things remained.

I asked my manager if he minded whether I arranged a visit with the employee who had stopped by to see him and he said that if I thought it would help I could go ahead. Later that day I had the employee stop by and we began talking about his issues, and of course all the other employees who agreed with him. Within a short period of time listening to him I could not get a clear understanding of the problem, just the vague sense that something more was going on than the simple complaint. Finally I just said to him point blank that if he could not be more specific it would not be possible for me to determine whether we should or shouldn’t consider a different medical plan and I made it clear that I wanted to help if at all possible. The employee was silent for a few moments and then said that the employees at the other plant had this plastic membership card they could show at the doctor’s office or drug store and that was all they had to do to make a claim for coverage. Our plan required the employees to complete a form, attach a receipt, mail it in and wait for reimbursement. So that was it; that was what all the fuss was about, the claims process? Well, that was almost all of it!

We talked for a while longer and it became apparent that there was a cultural factor involved. This was some years back and this was a culture where the moms in a family stayed home to raise the children and take care of the family business. Virtually all the refinery employees then were male and most worked rotating shifts so they were only on a 9-5 schedule once out of every three weeks and their wives handled the household affairs. Many of women at home didn’t understand the claims forms and since the men were used to them handling everything they were embarrassed by giving them something that was hard to understand. So this was the real problem, we had placed our male employees in a position where they were letting their spouses down and those very same spouses talked with other women who’s husbands worked at the chemical plant with the plastic card and…you get the picture. This was an emotional issue not rational but if you were not listening you would never have heard it.

We got it all worked out. I offered to set up classes for or take phone calls from the wives to help them understand the claims process. I also promised to work with our health plan administrator to simplify the claims process. The issue of considering another plan never came up again while I was there and not since as far as I know. My manager was stunned,; he realized that he was so tuned to listening for anything that might lead to unionization that he could not have heard the employee’s real request no matter how many times they talked. I was new so my biases had yet to be established.

So there’s your 1000+ words, did you get the picture?

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My Mom turned 86 last month so you know I am no kid, even though the image here might make it seem so. (This is actually an old photo! It's not my mom by the way, oh, and that's not me. Actually I have no idea who this is but I like the ocean and I like my mom, we did live in California for a while close to the Pacific so I decided to use this shot. I wish we had a photo of the two of us like this.Maybe we do and I have just never seen it!)

Does your Mom read your blog? Mine does and not only that she almost always sends me comments or questions based on the theme I have chosen for the week. She doesn't always get exactly what I am working on, she never worked in a very large organization like many of those I have consulted to over the past twenty years, but she does a pretty good job and mainly I appreciate the encouragement.

Having my Mom read my blog got me to thinking about engagement from another perspective than I had recognized in the past. Is there a connection, reflection or correlation between love, which I know is the motive behind my mother reading my blog, and a manager's engagement with the people reporting to them?

I recall that my very first "grown up" manager after graduate school really spoiled me by caring as much as he did. From the very beginning he took a personal interest, not only in me but in each person who reported to him. One of the events that truly impressed me back then was an occasion when I was really pressed for time on an assignment. Shortly after I turned in the work my manager appeared in the doorway of my office and asked if we could talk, of course I accepted his request. He had the assignment I had left with him in hand but began our conversation by asking me how I was doing personally as he seemed to know that I had been jammed up by the pressure of multiple deadlines. We talked for a while and then just as he rose to leave he handed me the assignment in his hand and suggested that I take another day before turning it in. He said that when he looked over the what I had presented he was concerned that I was stressing because what I had turned in was not my best work. Eventually this manager was one of two people I mention in the dedication of my 2006 book THRIVE: Standing on Your Own Two Feet in a Borderless World.

Did I experience being "loved" by this manager? No, at least not in the same sense that I feel with my mother. I did feel cared about as a person and honestly, in a work environment that was much more than I had anticipated would be available. It made a huge difference to me then and it made a huge difference to me later as an employer myself. I have always made it a point to let the people working in our organization know in obvious ways that they were cared about. We have never paid the most, in fact virtually everyone who has ever worked for my company has taken a reduction in salary to join us. It seems that over time we have developed a reputation for being something more than the ordinary workplace, some place offering a special experience, like the special experience of having your Mom read your blog.

With my Mom I know it's love, with the people that work for me, they can call it whatever they like, it is free and it is authentic.

• If you are a manager, do the people reporting to you have a sense that they are cared about as people?
• If you are not a manager, do you have the experience of being cared about as a person by the person you report to, by your colleagues? Do you care about them?

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I have only been a part of and  the following the on-line world of  workplace engagement for a few months. Call me a late adopter, OK, call me a troglodyte! I have been busy with other things.

What I have seen in my short period of exposure and study is that when it comes to "workplace engagement" there is no lack of passion, no lack of commitment and no lack of what always seems to happen when a subject becomes popular or mainstream; we now have self proclaimed workplace engagement experts, best practices and of course rules.

Nothing seems to shut down a conversation faster than unsolicited expertise but that doesn't stop the chirping and given the current state of things I am already wondering whether the best work in this field may have already been done? Should I Stay or Should I Go?  (C'mon now, you have to click this!)

What gives me hope are the FEW among the writers I have been reading. There are some long time players who keep coming up with fresh ideas. There are some new faces too. What they have in common is that they address workplace engagement from very consistent  perspectives, bringing unique insight to the conversation and they are pretty good at not taking themselves too seriously.

Here are a couple of folks doing "what I consider to be good work" in this field of exploration and they are not occupying the same space or trying to establish the rightness of their views. These are not necessarily “the best” or “the leading” voices in workplace engagement, they are just two who I resonate with and I’ll be introducing others in the weeks ahead.

Pam Slim offers a consistent message (Escape from Cubicle Nation) to anyone who may have 'had enough' of the corporate environment, Pam being one of those people herself. Back in 2006 she wrote a remarkably authentic KISS OFF to corporate life and she did it in a way that opened a door for anyone else to follow. If you are feeling a bit downtrodden and under appreciated, thinking about leaving where you are these days, a thorough reading of her 'Open Letter to CEO's...' is a tasty treat. Like a fine wine this piece continues to improve with age.

Why I like Pam's work, she is not anti-corporate, she is pro-person and she is also anti-phony, stupid, mean, selfish and cruel. (So as you can see, she can’t be half bad.) She just happened to notice that some of any company's highest paid people are guilty of pretty stupid behavior that they wouldn't put up with if it was aimed their way. I find all this to be a refreshing combination. In my mind she qualifies as a real pioneer in this field.

Another pioneer, a guy taking things in an entirely different direction, is David Zenger. A couple of years back David established an on-line community, The Employee Engagement Network. As a 'labor of love' David handles whatever administration is required to keep this community up and running. With over 2200 members joining in just over two years this self-organizing community of practitioners seems to be thriving and a demonstration of the passion that does exist for further opportunities to address the ongoing issue of under-humanized workplaces.

Back in September of 2008 David himself went on a bit of a rant about rules when it comes to the practitioners of  workplace engagement consulting

"No more rules of engagement. I am tired of people writing rules of engagement. The rules of engagement are about war and work needs to stop being war and we need to stop telling people there are 5, 8 or 10 simple rules they must follow for successful engagement.

Yet, he remains a “glass half full” guy and prolific contributor to the study of the topic. His posting of March 22nd this year, to his own blog site, echoes Pam Slim's sentiments from four years back.

The message from both these sources seems very similar to me; ‘the jig is up’ on paying lip service to or turning a blind eye to engagement issues in our places of work. Whether we are employers, executives, managers or employees the world we live in now requires that this matter be addressed honestly. From the company perspective it is a matter of competitive viability. From the point of view of the individual there are no longer the excuses about needing a job. ( A quick scan of the membership of my local Chamber of Commerce showed me that 40% of the membership were sole practitioners working out of their homes!)

• Have you authentically assessed your own level of workplace engagement?
• Do you have a plan to address any deficiencies you've noticed?
• What are your ideal working conditions and how close are you to them?

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Do you ever wish you were the one who said that, I mean something that is frequently referenced, like the saying above,"It is a poor craftsman..."  Well, this is a case where whoever said it doesn't seem to be getting any credit. After a semi-exhaustive, OK not really that much, search I have come to the conclusion that no one is getting credit for this beauty and it is used all the time. I have decided to assign it to Poor Richard, he of almanac fame. Did he play basketball?

This is a great time of year if you are a basketball fan. It is a great time of year to pretend you are a basketball fan! March Madness has come to be the most participatory event in all of college athletics, maybe all of sports, from a fan standpoint. With men's and women's tournaments being played right along side each other there seems to be something for everyone and the outcomes are almost always unpredictable. Even the most casual of fan might win the office pool this year what with all the upsets.

In this year’s tournaments it seems like the eventual outcome, except maybe everyone being dumbstruck if the U Conn women don’t win, is up for grabs. What is not in doubt is that the players involved will give everything they have physically and emotionally. Some will play through pain and injury, many will suffer disappointment over what could have been and the vast majority will go home empty handed save for the experience, which is of course priceless.

What is not so much in doubt is the way the coaches will handle the outcomes. One thing you will be able to count on and one reason these players are willing to give so much and do whatever they are asked is that if they win the coaches will give them all the credit and if they don’t they will share the responsibility for the loss.

Is this so very different from where you work, from where any of us work? I am guessing that the responses are mixed. But why should it be any different at all?

I have noticed, and maybe so have you that in business there is this assumption in the background that everything is supposed to work out, all the time! We hire people and they don’t work out, we promote people and they don’t work out. We are poorly prepared for these all too frequent occurrences yet we know they are coming. It seems that maybe after four gazillion years of running companies maybe we would see this coming and yet when the truth of the failure is finally recognized (often getting there is like pulling teeth) we seem either incredulous or betrayed.

Deirdre Honner recently posted a wonderful piece on her site that I think sheds a powerful light on all this ugly history. In her HR Maven posting of March 19th titled simply, Training and Development, she unlocks the mystery of dealing powerfully with performance failures for all managers, if you are brave enough to face it. Using the current experience of her dog in “good dog school” she offers that the difference between a previous failure and this time around is marked by recognizing that she needs to play the game not just watch it, she has a responsible role.

“This time is different.  Cameras stay home.  I am fully committed and invested to do my part, pay attention and work with Samson.  We work together on our taskings.  When he misses, it's MY fault.   He can only deliver when he understands exactly what I want him to do.  When he misses, I must examine where I am failing - by sending wrong or conflicting messages, not clear in my instructions, where I am confusing him.  That's humbling.  Really. Because Samson is a very, very smart dog.  His mistake is my fault. This time, I own it.”

Deirdre is the Associate Director of HR at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. As a former HR manager myself I take great comfort in knowing that there are professionals like Deirdre out there counseling managers, young and old, to realize their responsibility when it comes to the people reporting to them. Deidre clearly recognizes that her pal Samson is an asset to be treasured and developed, so are your reports. It is humbling I know, to see yourself as responsible when they fail. If you can’t do this you should step down from the post to make room for someone who can.

As the coaches in March Madness will repeat time and again during the tournament, yes it is about winning, and it’s also about how the game is played. There is tomorrow to get ready for, set it up to win.

• Where are you spectating your people's performance?
• What's the roll you could be playing?
• Are you willing to step up and engage with the game today?

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This week it is time to get “touchy/feely!” Well…at least feely, specifically those feelings we call fear and its close friend anger.

Fear…most managers I have worked with do not know how to proceed effectively in the presence of this strong emotion. What they see or sense they

• Often misidentify as disagreement or failure to buy in, or
• Think that something must be wrong and they have to fix it

Some time back I was working with a group of engineers who had committed to producing a breakthrough in the production in their plant. As the project unfolded I met regularly with the Program Manager (PM). A very short time after the project was initiated the PM began complaining about one of his key reports on the team, a guy who was in charge of a critical piece of innovation that held the key to the breakthrough the team was seeking. If this guy and his sub-team did not come through the project had no chance of succeeding.

After hearing the PM's complaints about this key player once I was quick to respond when I heard similar comments in a subsequent meeting. I asked the PM to describe exactly what his problem was with this player’s behavior. He responded by letting me know that this key player had made several promises which he had already failed to meet and he, the PM, was rapidly losing confidence that this guy was going to get the job done. I could see that the PM was angry and yet I knew these two men had worked together for years and had a positive history together. So I asked the PM what he thought was going on, suspecting that the he had already formed a pretty strong opinion that was shaping his interactions with this team member. “I don’t think he is committed to this project being successful, I think he is just going through the motions”, was the response I received and by his tone I assumed that he was pretty angry about this as well.

Passion, initiative, creativity…aren’t these traits what we all want from our team members? When that is not what we experience or observe, especially when the stakes are high and we are counting on each other there is a tendency to conclude something like what this PM had done. "The guy is just not committed, if he was we’d see flames shooting out of his pants and sparks flying off his head, not his door closed and our phone calls and emails not returned."

This was not the first such project I had worked on so I asked the PM if he would be willing to consider another possible explanation for the behaviors he was seeing. “Would you be willing to consider that what you are seeing are symptoms of fear?” is exactly what I asked. The PM seemed stunned at this prospect but then I went on to suggest that he himself was afraid and masking his fear with anger at his colleague. That comment brought on a prolonged silence. After a couple of moments of looking out the window the PM turned to me and said that yes, he had not recognized it but he was afraid, afraid that his goals would not be met and the anger was his way of expressing that he did not like being afraid. So I asked him further whether he was willing to just be fearful that the objective was not going to be met and take actions as if it were (This was a little trick I had learned when making my first parachute jump! If I had waited until I was not afraid that jump would never have happened.)

From this point on the PM and I were able to talk openly about both his fear and the anger that was covering it up. I pointed out that as long as he did not choose being afraid his fear was choosing him. Yes, there was all the baggage that is associated with our culture, men, fear etc. but the bottom line was that if he was fearful that is what he was, and no point pretending otherwise and no need to apologize. This was a big project with high stakes and as I told him, if he wasn’t afraid I’d be concerned.

Once we got through with our conversation he was able to approach his delinquent teammate and ask him about being fearful using the failed commitments as an entry point to the conversation rather than a club.

You can imagine how the rest of the story goes because otherwise why would I share it with you! That conversation opened the gates for all members of the team to talk openly about both their fears and their commitment to making the objective. No more excuses, the team moved ahead, the objective was met.

 As managers we’d do well to recognize that

• Fear in the face of uncertainty is normal and it can be seen as information and not a problem
• Fear is often disguised as pushback or inaction due to cultural taboos
• Anger is often another cover up for fear. When we are afraid we are not going to get what we want, we frequently get angry
• Until people are free to choose their fear as OK they are held hostage by this strong emotion

Where are you fearful at work and either pretending not to be or masking it with anger? 

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 When a wife yells at her husband, who has his eyes glued to his desktop screen, "You are not listening to me!" she is dead on, he's not. But does that mean he's not engaged?

Actually, he is very engaged, with what is in front of him on the screen. People are always engaged, it just may not be with what we consider to be important and that is a critical element that managers may be missing.

As managers, what we often don't seem to get is that our role is not so much to create engagement, as it is to direct it. If this sounds counter to what you have been reading, told or imagined yourself I offer no apologies but I do ask that you seriously consider what I am proposing.

Recently, a manager in a class I was delivering asked what she could do about the attitude of one of the younger workers reporting to her, he just didn’t seem as committed to his work as she would have liked. I asked about the quality of his work, she indicated that it was OK but just OK.

'OK but just OK' is an indication that the young employee is sufficiently engaged to comply with what is expected of him. I asked the manager if just OK was a problem, her response was telling. “Yes, I’d like to see more enthusiasm from him.” All right, now we were getting somewhere, the manager was confused. I mentioned to her that what she wanted was a personal preference not a legitimate requirement of the job. She didn’t seem to like this very much so we continued. I asked her if there was anything he did seem committed to and she responded sharply, “Well, fantasy football!” So I proceeded to ask whether she had ever looked into what he found so engaging about fantasy football? I could tell by the look on her face that she was shocked and maybe even offended by my question and her response matched her facial expression, “Why should I have to do that?”

I am a very pragmatic guy, you tell me you have a problem I begin looking for a solution, I don’t worry about who is right or wrong or what should be happening. Actually, I think this may be most manager’s problem with engagement, they approach it like a problem to be solved rather than an asset and a resource to be leveraged and understood.

My response to the manager rocked her back even further. “Look” I said, “You brought up the issue, you are apparently the one with the problem. I am looking at the situation and seeing whether we can uncover a way to get in communication with this young guy and leverage what he is fully engaged with since telling him he needs to be more committed does not seem to be getting the job done. Would you agree with that?” She then nodded her head yes. “So now”, I said, “You have an option available that wasn’t there before, you can give up your agenda and explore his interests or you can continue being right about his attitude. Which approach looks like it might have more promise?”

Honestly I don’t know how this turned out since that was the last time I saw that particular manager. Based on the conversation I’d say she stuck with her agenda, at least a little while longer.

This engagement stuff is nasty business; if you are serious you need to face the reality of getting up close and personal with the people who report to you. Are you up to the challenge? Are you ready for the level of vulnerability required?

• When faced with the need/desire to redirect an employee's focus of engagement ask yourself if you are willing to discover what's in it for them? If nothing comes immediately to mind you may want to hold off until you can get interested in them

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Probably the most common mistake I watch managers make daily in the workplace is addressing their reports as if they are in the same frame of mind. When people are nodding their heads, it means they are nodding their heads; that's it!

(* This post applies anytime you are counting on the collaboration of others., manager or not.)

Take a look at this group in the picture above. (Never mind the boats and water in the background, get back to business here!) Are they ready to contribute or have they assumed some pretense? Look, they have their paperwork out and turned to the first page and they seem attentive! (So do you when you assume this posture so now you know how much stock to put in their appearances.)

 You may have never thought about it but as a manager you need to be aware that engagement has at least three voices, Contribution,Compliance and Resistance, which are frames of mind your reports can be in at any time...

·         depending on the day

·         the conversation topic

·         what happened to them last night at home or this morning

·         what they were doing or

·         who they were talking to just before they came to your meeting

·         and, and, and …or, or, or…life will not leave us alone.

So now, what do I mean when I reference “frames of mind?”  Frame, like window frame, the place we are looking at the world from at any moment is more kaleidoscopic than fixed. (What you said to me yesterday was fine and welcome, say the same thing today after I have just had a tough conversation with a peer in another department and I may ‘jump down your throat, much to your surprise and dismay.) We are always giving voice to our frame of mind if others would just listen and watch

Engaged, associated by choice, is a condition of being, and there are both ultimate and interim conditions of being to consider. Ultimate engagement arises from commitments to choices made. Interim engagement is subject to the slings and arrows of everyday/every moment life and constantly in flux. Ultimately, I am completely committed to the success of my marriage; in the interim, my wife has asked me to check under the house for a water leak! Given my aversion to both maintenance and the underside of the house about the best I can muster up for this one is an “Okey Doke honey!” and grudgingly crawl under after just about anything else I can think of that just “has to be done” before checking for the leak. As it turns out my wife knows that my ultimate commitment to the marriage always wins out over my weasel mind and she will get her report on the alleged leak sooner rather than later, so she doesn’t try to handle my dawdling.

 What is this interim Voice of engagement  thing, the one we usually hear from in the moment?

 Voice of Contribution- “I am on it honey thanks for letting me know there may be a problem”, followed by action.

 Voice of Compliance- As above, “Okey Doke honey”, followed by going to the refrigerator ,making a sandwich, watching some of the ballgame and then crawling under the house.

 Voice of Resistance- “It rained last week and I don’t want to get muddy so I’ll get to it next week, its probably nothing.”, followed by no action until asked again.

 I hope that you can translate these personal examples into your own when addressing your team or another co-worker while engaged in getting something done.

Message for today: If you don’t check in with people (ask) you run the risk of talking to yourself and assuming that head nods, Okey Dokes and even “You got it boss” means that something is going to happen and you can count on it.

So, do you know your reports as well as my wife knows me; I didn’t think so.

• How many times have you been burned by talking with your folks as though they are right there with you?
• How many times have you known they were not right there with you and you went right on talking as though you could talk them into it?
• How many times have you taken their silence to mean assent and walked away hoping you were going to get what you asked for. 

Is this too basic? I wish it were and I don’t by any means want to insult anyone, unless it will help get this clear, when you are not winning as a manager start with where people are at. Address them where they are, not where you wish they were. Be curious, find out why they may not be engaged, ask what you can offer to address misunderstandings or fears directly. In the interim getting in communication is the result to be produced, ultimately it will get you where you want to go.

Where are you assuming engagement and getting egg on your face?

For an alternative to the manager's perspective, to see how "life at work" can impact the individual, take a look at All Things Workplace by Steve Roesler especially the post of February 25th, What Happened to the Talent? 

I recommend a regular visit to Steve's site, you'll get hooked.

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Last Friday night my wife and I had occasion to meet and have dinner with four people I may never see again, yet my life would be poorer had the experience not taken place. Each of the four, is a good deal younger than I am, a fact which itself was a source of inspiration since they have more years in front of them to make their contribution than I likely do. They were as a group and individually quite remarkable and what I’d call “leaders in the process of becoming.” Each, already accomplished in their own right, will likely be recognized as a leader on a broader stage sometime in the future.

I expect as I mention these folks by name they are recognizable among their existing audiences as “already leaders”, an assertion I will not dispute because each one has achieved in their chosen field and is undoubtedly well known. My thesis as regards each is that they will eventually be well recognized outside their immediate field as social as well as business leaders and it is purely a function of their engagement with their own vision that this possibility exists. They are agents for their vision.

Our hostess for the evening and the ringleader of this group was Christen Lien. An independent musician, viola is her primary instrument though she is rapidly mastering the harmonica as well. As her website offers, “Christen Lien’s unique fusion of East and West, classical and postmodern, acoustic and electronic, has created an entirely new sound that is both uncannily ancient and reassuringly contemporary.” She has also recently discovered her inner eco-activist and is preparing herself for a full frontal assault in support of the needs of the Amazon’s indigenous peoples.

Danielle Barnett, a photographer who lives in San Francisco’s Mission District, has combined her passion for photography, love of city life and the counter culture to take her into the heart of the hip hop world. Her natural passion now supports her as she serves as advocate for young aspiring hip-hop artists as they tumble their way through a business structure that would have them sign away their artistic rights without batting an eye.

When David McConville introduced himself Friday evening he said his firm specialized in Immersive Projection Design. Hello! For those of us from the “nuts and bolts” business world this expression did not register cognitively so I went with the intuitive and that turned out to be on the money. Short version, he does projector shows in domed environments. Longer and more accurate version, better a question than an explanation; how would you like to take a ride to the edge of the universe and back without leaving the room? David also sits as a member of the Board of Directors of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and through BFI he collaborates with numerous community initiatives to develop systems-oriented solutions to energy, environmental, and educational challenges.

Monica Niess is President of The Write Choice Network, a full-service social change organization that brings to bear broad expertise in resource development, strategic communication, organizational development, and social enterprise. Shorthand; if you are a not-for-profit and in need of funding these guys will find it or raise it for you. In November 2009 Monica had the great good fortune to meet up with Christen Lien in the Ecuadorian rain forest on a trip sponsored by the Pachamama Alliance. Not that Monica needed any inspiration, now she has new partners and the fun can really begin.

There can of course be events that intervene and you’ll never hear of any of these people again after this post but that is always true in this life, nothing and no one is guaranteed an outcome. However, it was a privilege to meet each of them even if briefly as they paused along their journeys to share an evening with my wife and me. By the way, none of these people needs a leader; they have their vision to guide them.

When I meet people like these four, I am certain that we know very little in the business world about how to cause leaders. How could we when we are so focused on what we want done rather than on what might be possible?

 Based on everything I have read, heard or experienced over the past twenty years I think it fair to say that what we know about leaders in the business environment starts after they either have success or have followers. This may seem obvious and like a lot of topics I bring up it raises the question, "Why are you talking about this?" Honestly, I find the field of leadership studies to be  limited by its focus on success, numbers and prescription and I think it is time to expose the shortcomings we all recognize are there in current modeling practices. How about we barbecue a few sacred cows forthwith? Let’s start with the following and you are welcome to add your own favorites:

• Addressing managers as though they are de facto leaders is irresponsible organizational behavior.
• Putting anyone through a one week "leadership intensive" and expecting "leaders" to emerge mirrors the wisdom of "spitting into the wind" and is tantamount to saying that when it comes to causing leaders for our organization doing something is better than doing nothing, and hey, who knows we might get lucky!
• Some of any organizations best leadership takes place in middle management and the people involved should not be promoted just because they are solid in the middle.

I can of course go on and so can you. The point I am pursuing here is that leadership is likely studied more effectively before the fact as an emergent phenomenon spawned by vision rather than afterwards as a behavioral pattern.

What is it like in your organization; are you searching for people with passion and imagination or just for those who produce results?

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“The Dude!”, “El Duderino”, “His Dudeness”, of course there is only one man who answers to all these titles and he is Jeffrey Lebowski, central character of the Coen brothers film classic of 1998, The Big Lebowski. This week I offer “The Dude” as one of the more unlikely yet profound mentors for those of us involved with the workplace environmental factors that contribute to employee engagement.

Sometimes the muse eludes me and sometimes she literally slaps me in the forehead. Last week was a “slap in the forehead” kind of week. Wednesday as I eagerly checked the mail I found that my copy of ‘The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies’ had finally arrived from Amazon. (You know something is up when you go to place an order for this type of publication and it is on Back Order) Then Saturday evening as my wife and I sat having dinner in a Mt. Vernon public house the restaurant was suddenly flooded by a cadre of men in blue bathrobes, shorts, flip-flops and dark glasses, and it is January in northern Washington! (The local classic film theatre had just shown The Big Lebowski and in apt homage this crowd had attended in costume) Finally, Sunday morning as I sat in services at my church of preference listening to harrowing stories of women around the world overcoming cultural oppression it was no longer possible for me to ignore the obvious signs I have been receiving. It is time for a post on authenticity* and there is no one who had a keener sense of the truly authentic than Jeffrey Lebowski aka “The Dude”.

As Victor Hugo asserted many years back, “Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” If I had wondered further whether or not this post would be timely I had only to do a quick blog search on Sunday evening on “The Dude” to be informed that ‘The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski’ will open this spring off-Broadway in NYC with an initial six week schedule. Yes, the signs favoring a focus on authenticity are many and like yellow Volkswagen Beetles, now that I am looking for them I can clearly see they are everywhere.

When he first came into our lives, “The Dude” was not well received either by critics or at the box office, and even to this day he suffers what might be considered an image problem, he is not a mainstream character. Many of us, upstanding, solid character types might have considerable difficulty admitting our identification with a man who at first exposure seems at best the classic “slacker” our parents raised us not to be. And so this prophet of our times has languished in something of a cinematic obscurity slowly gathering what is known as a cult following that now conducts an annual conclave in Louisville, Kentucky known as Lebowski Fest, currently heading into its 9^th annual renewal from austere beginnings in 2002. What stronger endorsement can there be for authenticity and efficacy than sustainability?

Jeffrey Lebowski, everything about the man serves as an outright rejection of that in us and our organizations which is not authentic. His personification may be somewhat easier to address if we consider him not literally but as an extreme expression of every employee, if they did not fear retribution for their honesty. “The Dude” eliminates the oppression of this fear by staying gainfully unemployed and simply not giving a crap. For many of us this is just too much honesty! Absent his respect “The Dude”, like many of our employees, is not above using us for his own purposes thereby perpetuating the notion that in fact the best we can expect from that relationship called employment is a sort of sad, smirking conspiracy where "I’ll use you and you’ll use me" and mediocre is what we’ll settle for, as long as we make our numbers.

If we cannot take our guidance from man who shops for milk at midnight in his bathrobe then maybe we’ll listen to legitimate types, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II. These are the authors of ‘Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want’** (And is it such a big leap to also say further, what employees really want?) Gilmore and Pine go to great pains in their book to expose us to what “The Dude” simply lived as a matter of personal expression. “His Dudeness” stated an unequivocal rejection of the inauthentic as an outright form of violence with the memorable words “This aggression will not stand Man!” As academics and researchers, Gilmore and Pine seem compelled to verbosity and taxonomy (‘Authenticity’ is nearly 300 pages and gives us five genres of Authenticity to consider) but they do provide legitimacy to the conversation;

• Natural authenticity- raw, of-the-earth, rustic, stripped down and best of all sustainable
• Original authenticity- the first of its kind
• Exceptional authenticity- stresses uniqueness, the aesthetic appeal, not like anything else
• Referential authenticity- evokes an iconic time, person, group or place
• Influential authenticity-implies or provokes change

If your place of work does not have the appeal of one or more of these categories you can be sure neither Gilmore, Pine nor “The Dude” would be found there, at least not for very long.

* Many thanks to Dwight Garner, book critic for the New York Times. His piece on November 29th, 2009 was the original inspiration for this post.

** If you are interested in an executive summary of 'Authenticity' send me an e mail to theheart.amj@gmail.com

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"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" a remark often attributed to Peter Drucker, is one of those statements that so clearly frames a truth that among others things you wish you had been the one who said it!

These words are so rightly on the mark. Why does it seem that business leaders will to do almost anything BUT heed the reality described in Drucker’s words? The data, the data, the data… over the years the data makes an unequivocal case for the fact that ignoring the gravitational force of culture almost always brings change initiatives to their knees and smothers or slows the ones that do manage to succeed.

 In my post of December 28th I spoke to the issue of control (command culture) as a damper on engagement. Shortly after that post a friend sent me a note suggesting that it was one thing for me to talk about the concept of senior leaders giving up control to get more leadership and engagement throughout an organization and another to provide real examples of how this might all work out if tried.

OK then, let's talk about examples! In the December 09 issue of the Harvard Business Review on-line magazine an article appears that speaks right to my friend's suggestion. What could be a more on point title for the article than To Be a Better Leader, Give Up Authority ? The authors, Amar, Hentrich and Hlupic begin with what I believe is a very authentic statement, based on their research,

"Although business thinkers have long proposed that companies can engage workers and stimulate innovation by abdicating control—establishing non-hierarchical teams that focus on various issues and allowing those teams to make most of the company’s decisions—guidance on implementing such a policy is lacking. So is evidence of its consequences. Indeed, companies that actually practice abdication of control are rare.”

Maybe you are like me, maybe not, but I have wondered for years about the pace of the democratization of our places of work or more accurately the non-pace. We, the self-proclaimed democracy loving-est people on the planet seem to enjoy talking about democratic principles in our matters of government but when it comes to our places of work we prefer, put up with, or settle for top-down, functionally oriented, command and control type organizations. Freedom of speech in the workplace, not so much; freedom to act, not unless you run it by the boss first. I do not know a company that I have worked with over the past twenty plus years where within hours of my arrival and encouragement of communication someone hasn’t piped up with the quote of quotes, “If I said that I’d be fired!” In these very same companies, I have heard senior managers lament the lack of passion and innovation from the ranks of non-managers and never make the connection between their complaint and the web of constraints they insist on.

Good for our three guys from the HBR article above. They do provide anecdotal and factual information about two companies they have worked closely with and from their experience; they have concluded this about leadership;

       “Furthermore, we’ve found that contrary to what many CEOs assume, leadership is not really about delegating tasks and monitoring results; it is about imbuing the entire workforce with a sense of responsibility for the business.”

Kudos to the authors for pointing out that this definition of leadership applies mainly to knowledge organizations. This acknowledgment lends itself to the idea that any credible definition of leadership must make accommodations for situation, circumstances, and context.

While this type of research and analysis provides credence to the idea that applications of democratic principles are legitimate and successful in a management context there is still the question of numbers. As the authors state, “…. Indeed, companies that actually practice abdication of control are rare.” True enough, but what about when the company is a tech giant like Cisco? Maybe this one counts for a lot?

In the not too distant past John Chambers, renowned CEO of a company with a $20+ Billion cash cushion observed that the organizational structure and culture that had gotten Cisco to its prominence would very likely not take it to where it wanted to go, among other places the leadership position in Telepresence video.

The move by Chambers to turn over operational control of Cisco to a community of internal leaders using a structure of commitments to mutual success and committees has not necessarily drawn cheers from all quarters (20% of senior leadership has exited since this transition began) but it has drawn a lot of attention and much of it from various media concerns. A November, 2008 article by Ellen McGirt in Fast Company, 'How Cisco's CEO John Chambers is Turning the Tech Giant Socialist' provides a very comprehensive view of the makeover John Chambers seems to have in mind. The article title, using the term "Socialist" is likely a bit inflammatory. However, given the limited experience we have in America of using any participatory management approach I am not surprised that only terms with which we are immediately familiar would be used to describe something we do not know a great deal about.

What I do know is that the Fast Company article continues to draw comment, as recently as January 11, 2010. I find this unusual, there is something very psychologically provocative going on at Cisco. This change is obviously about a lot more than just economics. I also know from perusing various blog sites and reading the business pundits that the jury is still out on whether John Chambers is going to eventually be viewed as this generations Jack Welch. Has Cisco, under the direction of John Chambers found a way to not only keep culture from eating strategy for breakfast but maybe now serve its realization? At the time the article appeared in Fast Company Cisco stock was trading at just over $17/share, last Friday it closed at just over $24. In our copy cat business culture you can bet that if this trend continues John Chambers will have plenty of imitators.

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"Creating a great place to work is one of the best things a company can do for its bottom line. It’s no accident that the organizations consistently identified as winners also happen to be some of the best places on earth to work.  This occurs not as an afterthought, but as a vital, premeditated element of business strategy."

        Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden, The Contented Cows Partners

I have been associated with Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden since early 2000, just about the time they self-published their first book 'Contented Cows Give Better Milk.' Since that time Bill and Richard have remained among the vanguard of voices providing fact based reasoning for why it is a sound business practice to take good care to see that employees have an environment to work in that fosters productivity.; appreciation, training, tools and technology etc. For them and for me it isn't simply a matter of values,it isn't just "nice to be nice to the nice", this is dog doo practical stuff and the facts back it up.

As practical but perhaps not as easy to swallow is the notion that leaders/managers must be willing to consider themselves among the environmental factors that affect overall levels of engagement. Much is made of the idea that customers will vote with their feet, highly mobile employees, usually the most highly prized, will do the same thing but maybe faster when faced with disengaged managers.

When it comes to answering the question of whether I am pro-management or pro-employee my answer is always "Yes!" If I am anti anything, I am anti-stupid where by stupid I mean to distinguish thoughtless action, driven by force of habit and justified in some fashion by past success or privilege of position. So no, in case you are wondering, I do not mean to imply or assert that employee engagement is the sole responsibility of leadership or management, as you prefer. Engagement, what it takes to be sufficiently involved to be highly productive is everyone's responsibility. However, it falls to leaders to recognize, i.e., not be stupid about the fundamental condition in the workplace. There is at worst an imbalance of power in the workplace and at best a perceived imbalance of power. While I would be quick to say to an employee that their engagement is first and foremost their responsibility I would also hurriedly add that perception is fundamentally, in the absence of trans-formative thinking, reality, and leaders who ignore this truth are, for lack of a better phrase, acting stupidly. Oh yes, and as a manager, since your value is added through the actions of those reporting to you...

Is there evidence for this assertion, for I am certainly making one here? Of course there is, you do not ask a question like this unless you already know the answer! Gary Hamel, in a recent posting to his blog in the Wall Street Journal blog “Management’s Dirty Little Secret” cites the recently published Global Workforce Survey from Towers Perrin showing that of the 90,000 people surveyed 21% reported that they are truly engaged with their work! If I am not mistaken this number is lower than that initially reported in the early Gallup surveys similar in nature some years back.

Hamel chides managers in a more polite way than I do. He suggests that managers are heedless of the issue of engagement where I say stupid about. OK, potato/pototo, tomato/tomoto, he has better  street cred than I do, let’s go with heedless for now. Net, net, after Hamel dismisses the possibility that the heedlessness might result from 1) Ignorance-not realizing that employees are emotionally disconnected. (He uses the Dilbert strip as essentially exhibit “A” for the Prosecution in this instance.) He then goes on to check off 2) Impotence- meaning mindless, uninspiring work as a possible source of the disengagement (surprisingly 86% of those participating in the Towers Perrin survey indicated that they loved or liked their work) and finally he arrives at 3) Indifference – managers see engagement as a nice-to-have but not financially important. In his words,

“…if we’re going to improve engagement, we have to start by admitting that the real problem isn’t irksome, monotonous work, but stony-hearted, spirit-deflating managers.”

While he does not say this, I will; by stony hearted, spirit-deflating managers he means at all levels and most importantly, the top where the privileges provide the greatest disconnect between head and heart.

Hamel, like Drucker in his later years, has clearly made a connection that makes him dangerous to the management establishment. He is “the man” when it comes to the “X’s and O’s” of business so he cannot be waved off. In addition, he has come to understand that while the applications in business may be economic, the operating system is social.

As we roll along here, in future postings we will tackle just what an individual manager can do about this sad state we all find ourselves in, among other things.

Thank you for your attention.

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