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

 I ask you to consider that if you are a manager your greatest contribution might be made while not being noticed.                                                                                                           

“A manager (sic) is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

Lao Tzu- Chinese Taoist Philosopher, 600 B.C. – 531 B.C.

After 25+ years of working, reading and studying the topic of manager’s development the quote above is still my favorite when it comes time to characterize how managers need “to be” as they perform their roles. The great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu advised that the fundamental character of a “good manager” (He actually said leader but please allow me the poetic license!) is one of making a contribution or adding value while being invisible; i.e., transparent, transmutable and permeable.

Not being noticed! This may be a tough concept to digest, especially if you are uncertain of your own vision as a manager, are constantly spoken to about “your numbers” like you actually meet them, or you have a personal need to be in charge. I struggled with all of this myself for a long time, especially needing to be in charge. It took me a while to realize that a personal need of mine did not qualify me as a manager!

For some of us this image of the manager as invisible presents a paradox as we think about a) contributing b) while not being noticed. Perhaps our greatest fears are associated with not being viewed as valuable or important, as though it is us who needs to be valuable rather than value being produced is the objective.

What if as you pursue your role as manager your unexamined motives have you become visible, in fulfillment of personal rather than organizational needs. You may now be “in the way”, a limit to what can be accomplished; you are the narrow spot in the road, the lid on the jar and very likely a bit of a pain in the arse and not just to others but yourself as well. If you make the role about you, you are apparent in ways that detract from the production of value.

If you yield to any of the following fears you are probably more visible than necessary and getting in the way:

● an unwillingness to trust others work completely

● an unwillingness to give up control

● an unwillingness to depend on others

● an unwillingness to not seem always buried with work.

● an unwillingness to not be viewed as “in the know.”

● an unwillingness to let go of today and focus on “the future” or even be freed up to do so.  

Consider these words from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, “…The primary job of the manager is not to empower, it is to remove obstacles.” It will be pretty hard to be focused on removing obstacles if you are constantly yielding to one of the fears mentioned above. Truthfully you may be so fearfully occupied in the present that you don’t see the potholes in the road ahead.

The best way to become transparent, transmutable and permeable is to become obsessively interested in the future. Become intensely knowledgeable of how the business will likely profit in the future, focus on how the work being done around you will affect that future profitability and notice what obstacles you can observe and intentionally remove in service of the mutually important objectives of employee, client and shareholder satisfaction? What can you see about the way your company has always done things that might no longer be creating value? You cannot see these things from the present, you must move to a future focused perspective and when you do you’ll disappear. But don’t worry; it will probably be a relief to a lot of people and who knows, you may find you like your new found invisibility as well.

• What could you let go of today and get out of the way?
• Where is there an immediate opportunity to remove an obstacle?

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                                            “A long journey requires lots of mango.”

  Dan and Chip Heath, ‘Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard’

How many of us have heard these questions:                                           

• "Could you do that training in one day instead of two?"
• "I thought these people had been trained?"
• "Can we get by pushing that training off to the next budget cycle?"
• "Why would I take time to go to an outside development session?"
• "You’re kidding; you think I need a coach? My results are great!"

Have we been discouraged by the attitudes behind these questions? Yes! Will there ever come a day when the rhetoric about employees being valuable assets of any company is matched by the actions when a quarterly objective is in doubt? Maybe! Training budgets have long been among the first things to get sacrificed when the going gets tough. We all know that the mindset enforced by the language of accounting (employees as expense on the balance sheet) continues to hold sway over the reality of employees as assets. For now that is. You can have something to do with how long this view holds its power.

I know a CFO who flatly states that he hates to spend money on anything. I have asked him how he feels about investment. “Investment, why I love investing, it is one of my favorite things to do”, he says. “Nothing makes me happier than seeing an investment grow.” When I follow that question up with another about how he feels about investing in employee development he gets a sour face and says “It’s not the same thing! Employees are an expense of the business.” But I am his coach and he thinks that it is going well.

There is at least one company I know that annually accepts awards because of the percentage of the annual budget that is committed to employee training. If you back out the amount the company spends on new hire training because of high turnover in certain positions and just focused on employee development the same company would be far from award winning. However, the very same company is currently searching for a director of leadership development.

Let me clearly state my own vision: Every employee has the potential to be developed into a more valuable contributor than they are today. I firmly believe that it makes sense to think that any employee’s last day on the job should their most valuable whether they have been with a company one year, ten or even twenty. This is an uncommon view that I have been working to make common for twenty five years.

Today I am more excited about the future of employee development than ever. The very fact of the constant change all our organizations now face gives us the opportunity to realize the fullest value of every employee in ways that the non-global economy never did.

This realization will require a shift in thinking by those of us in leadership positions - especially positions where decisions are made about how best to invest our company’s money.

When we

• ask our trainers to do “hurry up” training,  
• we relate to development like it is something that gets “done” rather than something that gets started and sustained,  
• relate to coaching like a remedial activity,  
• think development is another word for training,
• act as though development is something others might need but exclude ourselves from the need for periodic revitalization,
• or when we decide that training and development budgets can be slashed without consequence,

we are making it clear to our employees that there is still a ways to go before we authentically act like they are the company’s greatest asset. But it is a process we are involved with, one that requires patience and reinforcement when progress is in evidence.

The words in the opening quote to this post refer to a process of animal training described by the authors of “Switch…’. Mango is the treat used by trainers of monkeys learning to ride skateboards. The Heaths are making the point that reinforcement plays a big part in bringing about the learning of complex skills. They could have as easily said “A long journey requires lots of patience” and the quote would have been equally apt but not as intriguing perhaps! Their point, and the point here as well, is that there will be no moment when your company finally recognizes employees as its most valuable asset and begins to habitually invest in development as if this were so. There is a process and those who lead it will need to be persistent and bring along lots of mango.

Where in your company do you see signs that senior managers, especially those responsible for resource allocations, are inclined more towards employee development now than in the past?

Have you told them that you appreciate what they are doing?

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Dear World:       

Please be advised…A major talent is being released into your care this week. My youngest son, Jackson Reed Cook, has launched himself and is ready and able to dazzle and amaze you with his “mad skills” and youthful self-confidence. Are you ready?

Jake called Monday to wish me a happy Father’s Day. When he called he was standing in front of the sublet apartment he had just rented in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, NY. There was plenty of street noise in evidence as proof of his surroundings as we talked. He had also called me Sunday but we didn’t connect so he was calling back to make sure he had the opportunity to share his affection and best wishes. He had initiated this process all on his own with no prompting from his mother … a rather new behavior pattern.

But there is a lot about Jake that is new, or more accurately, now just rounding into shape. He graduated in late May from SUNY Purchase with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree specializing in Graphic Design and he is eager to begin his career as a Design Professional. Like most young adults around his age he has had several “job” jobs as he worked his way through college but now it is time to begin his career and for a guy with his ambitions there is probably no better place than New York City. At least that is what he thinks and I am in no position to have an opinion on the matter.

He is taking this new beginning very seriously. He has a Linkedin page and has developed a website and you can also take a look at his portfolio if you are interested. Mainly I wanted to give you some advice about the care and handling of this package of opportunity (my son) that has become available. We talked for a while on Monday to establish some parameters and he is pretty clear about what he is looking for…

• He is looking for a place to contribute
• He wants to be listened to
• He wants coaching and constructive criticism of his work
• He prefers working with others to having individual projects
• He has a keen sense of integrity and fair treatment
• He has a finely tuned “baloney” detector
• He’d like a place where he can grow into more challenging assignments

Of course it should go without saying that he wants to make a decent living and I am not kidding about him being a major talent. This is not my assessment as it comes from his professors.

The main thing I want to stress is that along with his technical talent he brings a priceless package of “intangibles.” He will make your workplace more attractive to others; he is a natural collaborator; he will openly express appreciation of work done by his colleagues; he does not compete; he learns and develops from interchanges with others. Will you recognize and encourage these traits?

As his father I am of course interested in his welfare but I am not too concerned. He’ll find a place to work, probably several. What mainly interests me is how you will receive him. If you don’t offer a workplace that provides what he is looking for he won’t stay long. He has too much confidence in his ability and too much commitment to his vision to hang around where he is not appreciated, respected or allowed to make a difference. If he sees you treating employees with favoritism or what he considers unfairly you better 1) plan on hearing from him about what he sees 2) expect him to depart if you don’t listen or change your ways.

You see, he will arrive engaged. The question is will he be welcomed in kind?

• Do you handle your new employees like they are a precious commodity or simply a commodity?

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Recently I have not been feeling very positive about the HR profession. If I was really being specific I wasn’t feeling good about a couple of interactions I had with HR managers that I thought were shortsighted. Well, really I thought the interactions reflected an unnecessarily biased perspective towards management’s interest. OK, so I didn’t get what I wanted! Are you happy now?

When such an occasion does arise and I find myself “screwed into the ceiling” I often turn to cooler heads to provide me a new perspective and allow me the opportunity to come down from my high horse. One person I always feel confident can talk me off the ledge is my long time associate, former Managing Director of HR at Federal Express, Bill Catlette.

Unlike me Bill is one of those people who suffer from perpetual “level headedness”, a trait I can honestly say I only aspire to. My hope would be that whether you are an HR professional or a manager in some line function that you have someone like Bill that you can turn to when you can’t get out of your own way.

That’s where I was a couple of weeks back and I was embarrassed about it. I like to think I am above taking things too personally, it is “just business” after all but I know I will on occasion get “hooked” so when I contacted Bill my face was still red and I had to sort of sneak up on my agenda by asking him about his recently published book, ‘Rebooting Leadership’. I knew he’d be ready to talk about that and once we got started I could launch into my true purpose. What transpired was an exchange that became an interview and I am pleased to share it with you here, a conversation with a true leader in the HR profession.

Here goes.

MFC: Bill, along with your longtime partner Richard Hadden and Meredith Kimbell, you have recently written and released a new book, 'Rebooting Leadership' that is targeted at front line managers and their managers, my favorite place in the management structure. I say favorite because this is where I believe authentic employee engagement is encouraged or damaged. Why did you feel this was the time for a book directed at this segment of the management hierarchy?

BC: Thanks, Mike, for giving me the opportunity to talk with you about what has become our favorite topic, too.We wrote Rebooting Leadership for exactly one reason:

For us, the topic - trying to do something to help front-line managers, was like a blinking red light with a wailing siren attached to it. Even on the best of days, front-line leaders have the toughest jobs in any organization, with increasing performance pressure, very little support, and no place to hide. Add to that an increasingly dispirited and disengaged workforce, the complete cratering of trust in the workspace, having precious little training for going on 4 years, and their jobs are made near impossible. Think about it, before they even show up for work in the morning, a glance at their email in-basket forewarns them of intense data water-boarding for the first couple of hours. And unlike a lot of others, they have real work to get done. In short, most of them are stuck in a real hard spot.

We committed to doing a book that offers the front-line leader the practical benefit that a stuck computer gets from pressing Control+Alt+Delete… a fresh start, using a time honored operating system, yet applicable to today’s challenges. Practical advice like, how to build your own high performance team (aka Friending), how to survive a failed project or bad decision (Failing), and how to get people engaged (Getting Sticky).

Early reports suggest that we may have struck a chord with it. I got a note just the other day from a business school professor at Butler University, advising that the book is required reading for his fall term graduate class on leadership.

MFC: You have a deep background in Human Resource management; you played a key role in that function at Federal Express, among other places. Your first two books 'Contented Cows Give Better Milk: The Plain Truth About Employee Relations and Your Bottom Line' and the more recent 'Contented Cows Move Faster: How Good Leaders Get People to Put More OOMPH! Into Their Work seemed to appeal more to the rational side of managers and leaders; this new book seems to be almost an impassioned plea to supervisors and managers. Can you comment on this or is this simply my interpretation? If I am in sync with you here can you also comment on this shift into another gear?

BC: Each of those books, and thank you for remembering them, was written for a specific purpose and audience. The first, ‘Contented Cows Give Better Milk’, was written as the capstone to our research that showed quite conclusively, for the first time, those organizations that treat people right, and are legitimate employers of choice, grow faster, are more productive, make more money, and create more wealth for shareholders. We made the business case, not with faith, but facts. In essence, it validated the hard work of good leaders and hard working HR professionals. Game, set, match.

The second book, ‘Contented Cows MOOve Faster’, did a deep dive on the whole notion of Discretionary Effort, that extra morsel of effort, the turbocharger that each of us can turn on if, but only if we want to. It is somewhat more prescriptive than the first book, and is intended for leaders at every level. It shows them how to tap into that extra 30 – 40% of capacity that our people choose daily to either expend in the workplace, or take home at days end unspent.

Written for Level 1 and 2 leaders and the people who coach and direct them, ‘Rebooting Leadership’ is nothing but prescriptive content (do THIS, stop doing THAT). It’s what your own boss would be teaching you if they had the time, and over 75 years of leadership experience (and the scars to prove it). We actually tried to condense it to a series of 140 character Tweets, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Our publisher, David Cottrell of Cornerstone Leadership so bought in to this concept that he allowed us only 112 pages, on the premise that our intended audience has neither the time nor inclination to read a book any bigger than that. Besides, as Mark Twain put it, long books/letters are what you write “when you don’t have time to write a short one.”

(to be continued) Coming up next, Part Two: Bill Catlette answers my question, "Has HR come to mean Human Regulation?"

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How does an organization sustain the engagement of employees through a significant period of change, not a change management initiative, a continuous period of evolutionary change lasting say, ten years? That experience is one that has been shared over the last decade by the 70,000 + employees of the Boeing Corporation in the greater Seattle area.

Here in the northwest our relationship with Boeing is up close and personal and if you work there, as a leader or not, you might feel like a fish being followed by a group of wide eyed tourists in a glass bottom boat. We cheer when the news for Boeing is good like it was recently when the company was awarded a large contract and we tremble when the company seems vulnerable as it has during the 787 project.

The trials and tribulations of the Boeing’s 787 project are a journalist’s dream come true because so many things have gone wrong. And with a presence as prominent as Boeing’s is here in the Northwest you can bet that EVERYTHING gets reported on and from many perspectives given the wide diversity of agendas that have some dependency on the company. Almost no news day is complete without something being reported out of Boeing.

Something I have wondered about for a while is how any company can maintain employee engagement during this period of rapid and sustained evolutionary change. Boeing provides plenty of opportunity to consider this question. So Monday when an article appeared in this Monday’s (4/4/11) Seattle Times Business and Technology section profiling one of the key leaders at Boeing it grabbed my attention.

I was hoping for some insight into how Boeing’s senior team has been leading the organization? What have they been doing to keep engagement high, have they even been concerned about it? I am a fan of both Bill Bridges and Dick Axelrod. In his highly regarded book ‘Terms of Engagement’  Axelrod outlines three critical leadership practices that are keys to success in any change management process, such as Boeing has been undergoing for a decade. They are: 

·         Honesty

·         Transparency

·         Trust

It is these practices, Axelrod tells us, that when followed create the conditions in which employees can choose to engage fully while leadership is making big demands on them. How is Boeing’s leadership doing as followers of these practices?

As I was reading this new piece I had Axelrod’s model in mind.  

The article by Dominic Gates, the Times Boeing beat reporter, profiles Nicole Piasecki, Boeing’s vice president of Business Development head of Strategic Analysis for Commercial Airplanes. If you live anywhere, never mind simply the Northwest, and are involved in employee engagement you will find some nuggets here, some to save and some to avoid.

The article, as well as being an executive profile discusses some of the key strategic issues Boeing leadership has and is dealing with as it prepares for competition in spaces in which it has been one of two dominant players for many years

Nicole Piasecki has clearly been on both the receiving end of some pretty big decisions made by others that resulted in negative consequences and also an active participant in making some of these same decisions herself. As Dominic Gates points to in his article…

“…some of Boeing's strategic moves in the past decade — which Piasecki had a hand in — now look questionable. Boeing's leadership has conceded that the wholesale outsourcing of work on the Dreamliner (787) program was handled badly. The debacle has trashed the company's stellar reputation for delivering on time and has cost the company billions of dollars.”

Has Boeing’s leadership completely stepped up to full responsibility for the decisions that led to the 787’s problems? Maybe you should judge for yourself but here is how it was reported by Dominic Gates when he directly asked Piasecki about one such decision…

“Piasecki considered her answer for a long moment, pausing, a conversation that was otherwise a fluid mix of lively, confident answers and occasional playful banter.

Finally she acknowledged, as her boss Jim Albaugh did recently, that Boeing's leadership at the time was very focused on shrinking in-house assets to boost Wall Street's assessment of company profitability.”

As I read these words I felt my confidence in Boeing leadership rising and then I read the next sentence…

“Then she briskly moved on, saying she won't "second-guess decisions that have already been made."

For my part, and she may not have intended it to be so, I found this response cavalier and I was left deflated. I know Boeing employee’s read this piece and I wondered whether they might have the same impression as I did. Is this the kind of transparency, honesty and trust that provides a foundation for engagement?

So I am now left wondering a) whether Boeing’s leadership is fully prepared to create the conditions for employees to continue to choose to engage at the high levels the company no doubt needs and b) whether those 72,000 + employees working for Boeing in the Seattle area are coming in each day fully engaged or whether they may just not have anyplace else to go?

•  What about your own leadership? Have you made decisions that went badly? How did you handle these with the people affected?

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Welcome, both to you and to me. Today marks the beginning of a new phase of my life. This is the first entry into this dialogue that I plan to host, and I am more than excited. I am by trade and experience what would traditionally be called a consultant. Personally, I have never felt that name suited, I see myself as more of a catalyst. But that gets funny looks when you put it on a business card.

Engagement is my game. More accurately, "THE HEART of ENGAGEMENT", which for me is less about knowing something for certain and more about establishing a dialogue. The point is to be continually searching for, and then asking the questions that concern what it takes to create and sustain a working environment that fosters engagement. I believe the the power to get things done organizationally, and to produce results, is a function of engagement and engagement alone. A claim like this deserves some further dialogue and maybe even some evidence along the way. My intention with these posts is to provide just that; and I sincerely hope that you will add to the conversation as we go along.

First perhaps a little definition. These days the word engagement gets tossed around so much you'd think we were talking about empowerment!  In a short time, the word has almost become meaningless or so broadly defined, as to have no power when used. I prefer a definition I found in my Webster's several years back; association by choice.  So whatever factors you choose to use to define engagement, you are welcome to. My frame of reference will always be seeking the factors that contribute to working environments and working relationships that are characterized as associations by choice.  There are many questions such as:

• What has an employee make the initial choice to join a particular workplace?
• How does a company's leadership demonstrate continuously that it has chosen an employee?
• How does an employee know that their employer has really chosen them for the long haul?
• How does a company behave that has an authentic belief that its' employees are really its' capabilities?

You are certainly welcome to use your own criteria for defining engagement, and to share that with me as well. I'd welcome that opportunity, but be mindful this is not a debate. So, don't send me a "better definition" as I plan to continue using mine. 

My attention is on distinguishing and managing the factors, aspects, dimensions, whatever, that end up with people being and working somewhere as a matter of choice - and staying in that place for only so long as that is true.

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