Posts Tagged ‘workplace satisfaction’
Short Term Listening at the Expense of Long Term Value: The Value of Listening Skills
Even people who know all the good listening techniques fail when they only pay attention for a brief period of time. They focus just long enough for the speaker to share partial information, opinions, problems, or ideas. These fly-by listeners don’t carve out time for the speaker to say all that needs to be considered, nor do they listen for implications, applications and unintended consequences.
For example, “’leadership by walking around” can lead to short term listening. The idea was to get managers out of their offices and into the cubicles of staff. Many managers complied by making rounds, much like a hospital physician. Yes, employees were visited, but the interactions were often hollow and pro-forma; thus not meeting the original expectation that the visit would result in real, meaningful conversations that lead to higher performance, better decisions, and enhanced relationships.
The causes of short term listening are expressed in these phrases:
I’ve heard it before.
I don’t have time.
This person’s rambling.
I know the answer.
Maybe a good idea, but we don’t have the resources.
My boss’ll never go for it.
Poor timing.
Out of my jurisdiction.
And the results show up as:
I’m frustrated, demotivated, disengaged.
What’s the use of creating new ideas if s/he won’t give me the time of day.
Tough. I’m going to do it anyway, even if I have to go it alone.
If s/he won’t think beyond the moment, I’ll find someone who will or I’ll jump levels.
Resources, that’s a crutch. I’ll just rearrange the budget to fund this initiative.
This proposal has not been heard before—guaranteed.
Tips to reduce short term listening:
- Set aside time to hear a complete message. It’s better to say, “I can’t pay attention right now, how about tomorrow morning at eight?” than “Walk down the hall with me on my way to a meeting to tell me what’s on your mind.”
- Paraphrase back to the speaker to check for understanding.
- Stop what you’re doing, grab a pen/computer/white board, and make notes.
Learn and practice the art of inquiry—a leader’s job entails getting to mutual understanding with employees, and that takes asking a lot of intelligent, probing questions, followed by even better ones. Employees generally know a leader has gotten to his/her position by having smarts and experience, so there’s no need to pontificate.
I like to think of listening as an investment in the bottom line. Done frequently and well, information is shared, understood, and acted upon. That requires a commitment of time, respect, and patience.
I have a plaque in my office that reads:
Yes, of course I have a minute for you
My Rates
$5.00…….Listen
$10.00…..Pretend Interest
$20.00…..Sympathize
$25.00…..Care
Organizational Entropy and Listening Skills
Cultural entropy is the amount of energy in an organisation that is consumed in unproductive work. It is a measure of the conflict, friction and frustration that exists within an organisation. Barrett Values Centre
We don’t usually link the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy, a fundamental law of physics, with Listening. That is, until we try to understand why billions of dollars are lost as a result of unproductive work.
The natural state of the world is disorder or entropy, but “entropy can only be overcome by an organizing energy from an external force…We are fighting to show a chaotic world a glimpse of that which provides the only hope for stifling her natural and powerful spiral into disorder.” J. Matthew Brunson, M.D.
That’s where listening comes in to play. It is the vital skill to stem the tide of counterproductive noise in the system.
Let’s take a very common example: selecting an item to be included in a budget.
Manager: We have some money remaining in the budget. It’s just enough to purchase the project management software we’ve wanted.
Direct Report: That would be great. I’ll talk to the vendor about costs and timing.
At that point it seems as though there’s order. But wait.
Another direct report says the money should go for additional headcount to ease burden on employees, customers lobby for price reduction, and the CFO wants to use the funds elsewhere.
Disorder. There’s no decision, players are frustrated, time has been wasted, and the issue has gotten complex.
Heeding Dr. Brunson’s advice, listening would have supplied sufficient energy to overcome the chaos that arose. The interaction devolved into a Ping-Pong match without any attempt to learn from one another to create shared meaning, the very essence of communication.
Similar scenarios occur constantly throughout a business day, pushing an organization towards chaos instead of pulling it towards sensible order. Following are three pointers to control entropy:
1. Listen to your stakeholders. Look beyond analytics and talk to real people to get at what’s behind the numbers. If you observe demoralized people, don’t hide in your office or ask their manager what’s wrong, talk to the people with the problems. If you’re losing customers, don’t send a survey, go and spend time with them. If the players in the budget item case would have asked some good questions and checked the answers, an informed decision could have been reached efficiently without wasting time and eroding trust in one another.
2. Teach your employees how to listen. Listening is a means, not an end, but it still requires skill to do it well so the process of listening is transparent and the emphasis is on content. The Golden Rule we’ve so often been taught, “Do unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You,” isn’t applicable for listening. Instead, it is “Listen to Others as They Want to Be Heard.”
3. Listen for and monitor the level of organizational entropy. Redundancies, employee and customer turnover, re-dos, too many/too few people copied on memos, active rumor mill, and pipeline inconsistency, are all indicators of disorder that’s already entrenched and doing great harm. One role of a leader is to observe the horizon for signs of emerging entropy, and act swiftly to gain control.
Good listening is an energy-saver and a productivity enabler.
Listening Skills and Executive Personal Development, Part 3 of 3
The three questions posed to eleven executives who I know to be high-functioning, well-regarded, and thoughtful leaders:
- What prompted you to engage in a personal development journey?
- What did you learn about yourself?
- How has your personal development journey impacted your work?
During the interviews, I noticed that the respondents gave more complex answers to the third question. I’m not sure if it was because they were on a roll thinking and talking about personal development, or if it required more reflection in order to answer. Personally, I found it more challenging to slot the responses into categories, and I’m not so sure that the categories are what you, the reader, might have created. What’s most important is that we “listen” and relate their words to how we might answer the same question.
A great quote from one of the participants:
Diplomatic. I now say things like, “What might we do?” rather than “Here’s what we’ll do.” I guess those subtle changes have a big impact because I notice that people come to me with better and better ideas and questions. And the quality of work is steadily improving.
Question #3: How has your personal development journey impacted your work?
Building Relationships
- I started with good knowledge, and I was promoted because of it and my ability to develop others. With a lean organization, every person has to work at 100% of capacity.
- I believe I am much more tolerant of other people’s process of learning and am aware that others usually are not like me. I used to feel betrayed when people didn’t do tasks the way I would have or even wanted.
- One must recognize in others all that we see in ourselves, and visa versa.
- Level of comfort with me and me with others is better.
- I’m more of a mentor or coach than I was before I went on this journey.
Developing Skills
- Everything I learn I put in my tool kit.
- It’s influenced my messaging—not as abstract and more human-to-human.
- Working with you, my coach, was a turning point. I’m always aware of balancing advocacy with more inquiry. I guess I’m more conscious of what I’m doing.
- I began to ask the right questions to understand if the question posed to me was right in the first place.
- I absolutely changed from being a micro-manager to being a guide. Performance soared.
- Re-emphasis on goal setting—it’s the foundation for focus.
- Moved from telling to selling—my influencing skills are used to motivate others.
- Whew, it was hard to receive straightforward feedback, so in the past I lobbed it like a hand grenade. I thought people were out to get me. Now I know how to provide feedback in a positive manner—so many employees thank me for my honesty and care. Pretty much we’ve learned to talk about how to be at our best.
Changing Culture
- Building teams, developing others, and constantly seeking out experiences…became my motivation. Why? Because it worked.
- There’s a more human aspect that I bring to work in a very rational organization.
- Always had good thinking with people, now I have both good thinking and good feeling.
- When something goes awry, instead of acting shocked or angry, I see it as a point of perturbation and try to understand what might be the cause of the setback, not “who screwed up?”
Unexpected consequences
- Developed an appetite for learning and I always want more, often learning from what others do wrong is just as valuable.
- It’s given me an advantage over peers.
- Conceptual models help me understand–they are like a flashlight in the path of darkness.
- When you asked this, I thought first about skills, but really my personal development is to bring passion back to me and to my workplace. I love the work I do.
- I look back to my footprints to see where I’m going.
- I’m more than just a head going from meeting-to-meeting.
- I’m much more empathetic, less de-sensitized, and not nearly as exhausted.
- It’s so natural to go back to “obnoxious” tendencies, so my own development is to be aware and constantly modify behaviors.
Following are the names and titles of the executives who shared their insights:
- David Carder, VP, Executive Consultant, The Forum Corporation
- Ralph Chauvin, Vice President of Sales, North America, Perfetti van Melle USA
- Iain Duffin, Chairman Origo Service Group Edinburgh, Non Executive Director of the Scottish Leather Group, Director of IDD Associates Ltd.
- Carol Ryan Ertz, AVP, Enterprise Leadership Development, Unum Corporation
- Ron Griffiths, CEO Network Green Deal Ltd and RG Direct Associates Ltd.
- Larry Hart, Chair, Vistage International
- Jim Mikula, Managing Director, Hotel Madeline and Inn at Lost Creek, Telluride
- Susan Moseley, VP Member Service Corporation, NFIB
- Vivien Price, VP Solutions Design, The Forum Corporation
- Helaine Suval, President and Founder, Suval Consultants
- Frank van Dijk, Regional Marketing Leader, GE Oil & Gas
Listening Skills and Executive Personal Development, Part 1 of 3
During my debrief conversation with a senior executive who took our Hear! Hear? Your Listening Portfolio® assessment I was amazed at how much he knew about the brain. He told me that he decided some time ago to make changes in the way he interacted with people, and to do that he had to learn about many aspects of human development.
Our conversations so piqued my curiosity that I wanted to know what factors caused many of the leaders I’ve worked with to travel on their own personal development journey. So, I asked a dozen successful leaders I know if they would answer a couple of questions, and I promised it would take about 15 minutes.
Following is a compilation of their answers, without identifying who said what. There are recurring themes as well as one-offs. My goal is to share their interesting reflections for others to be able to examine how they might answer the questions.
The names and titles of the people who responded are at the end of the document. We all owe them a big “huzzah” for taking the time and effort to reflect and share a bit of their stories with us.
The questions:
- What prompted you to engage in a personal development journey?
- What did you learn about yourself?
- How has your personal development journey impacted your work?
Note: Some people stuck to all three questions, others went off in a different direction. Everyone answered the first question. Each of the three posts will address one question.
What prompted you to engage in a personal development journey?
Themes and quotes:
“Personal development occurs when you are exposed to new people and new challenges.”
Being a better person
- The more responsibility I have in my job, the more I want to be a good human being, father, husband/wife, manager
- I must learn about myself to be a role model for others
- I can’t stand executives who send others off to training without diving in themselves
- When I help others, I feel so much more valuable
- I had a boss (another said mentor) who made me realize I want to operate in a way that is beyond the norm
Lifelong commitment
- I don’t remember ever being any different
- Not one single thing prompted the journey, but I knew I was ready
- Life is a learning journey—that’s my philosophy
- I get a THRILL out of learning especially when I come upon something I don’t know so I can go learn it
- Einstein said his success was less about brilliance than about passion
- When I was a kid and in sports I did what the coach told me, and that lead to success, so I’ve done that ever since. Now I continue to earn the right to coach others.
Turning point
- You get to a point you want to learn more because there’s something propelling you to do better
- I switched out of teaching where I had the authority into HR working with front line people where I was not an authority. I had to help them succeed while learning to go from “sage on stage to guide on side.”
- I got to a point where I needed to know/learn more. It was like I entered a hallway and six doors opened, then they led to six more—like a Pandora’s box of learning
- Being put into new scenarios that are new/foreign. You have to develop, personally and professionally
- When I was 6-7 years old my grandfather said I was too young to saddle-break a horse. I had to show him I could—I’m still at it—conquering challenges
- I concluded I needed to be a different person to do the kind of work I wanted to do
- I took a job at a company that was #1 in sales training, and then I was tapped to be a sales trainer for them. That opportunity offered a lot of personal development for me and everyone I came to manage.
- I’d say that a super-challenging event often propels people towards self-examination. It could be a role in transition, derailment, surprising failure, no longer having all the answers—the trick is to recognize it’s happening
Feedback
- It’s hard to hear someone say you’re not very approachable or flexible. Those words, plus being told I had the makings of a great manager, propelled me into personal development.
- There’s no easy way to say this, but my boss told me, “You act like a jerk sometimes. Fix it if you want to be here next year.”
- I took a workshop, and when we were deep into it, the leader said, “You don’t flex your curiosity muscle.” That shifted everything for me.
- To recognize strengths and flaws in others, I had to see into myself first
- When people have gone through a good bit of a career with little disturbance, and then those reliable behaviors aren’t working anymore, they need to ask: how do I adapt, what do I need to change, what happened?
No option
- When I was nine I was sent off to boarding school, on my own and cut off from parents—sink or swim, and swim I did. I learned how to be self-reliant. Now I’m having to unlearn some of those behaviors to function at a higher level.
- Management sent me to a workshop that had a lot of personal development built in. While there I learned about myself and others. As a result I sought out a coach and continue the efforts.
- Immersion into another culture leaves little choice. The new culture can be another part of the world, department, company, and that change presents a whole other world to examine.
And a couple mentioned by only one person:
- Unplugging. Stepping away from the hyper-plugged in world allows something else to drop in. That changed direction.
- Many people will not admit to being quite lonely as a CEO or as President. It is refreshing to meet with Peers from sometimes very different backgrounds. One can hear from others what their main challenge and successes have been and more importantly how they dealt with these.
Following are the names and titles of the executives who shared their insights:
- David Carder, VP, Executive Consultant, The Forum Corporation
- Iain Duffin, Chairman Origo Service Group Edinburgh, Non Executive Director of the Scottish Leather Group and Director of IDD Associates Ltd.
- Carol Ryan Ertz, AVP, Enterprise Leadership Development, Unum Corporation
- Ron Griffiths, CEO Network Green Deal Ltd and RG Direct Association Ltd.
- Larry Hart, Chair, Vistage International
- Jim Mikula, Managing Director, Hotel Madeline and Inn at Lost Creek
- Susan Moseley, VP Member Service Corporation, NFIB
- Vivien Price, VP Solutions Design, The Forum Corporation
- Helaine Suval, President and Founder for Suval Consultants
- Frank van Dyke, Regional Marketing Leader, GE Oil & Gas
Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Listening Skills, Part 2
Last week we took a look at Patrick Lencioni’s brilliant book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, that is used widely to help teams diagnose their ailments, as well as how to get them team-healthy. I offered some examples of the first three dysfunctions and how at the core of many of the dysfunctions, is the lack of listening – a set of habits formed in the brain, body and emotions that we come to rely on at such a subconscious level that we aren’t aware of what we listen to/for and what we ignore.
Let’s look at last two of Lencioni’s five dysfunctions to analyze the role of listening in each.
Avoid Accountability: Low standards
Recently in a coaching session, my coachee, the team leader talked about being over-burdened because people on her team weren’t pulling their weight. I think she expected me to commiserate with her and say how challenging for her. Instead, I asked who was responsible for that sub-standard behavior, and when she pointed her finger at them, I turned it around and asked, “What if you’re the culprit?”
Our session was terrific once she caught on that it was she who accepted the lowest standard of performance as the norm. Case in point. One of the team members often missed deadlines. Prior to our work together, the team leader would fume and fuss, and do some of the work herself; but, in the end, she allowed the mediocre performance to perpetuate itself and spread like the disease it was.
Here’s a practice demonstration of how we changed the team dynamic:
Team Leader: Today is the report deadline, do you have it?
Employee: I have some of it, but not all. There were more parts to the assignment than I thought.
Team Leader: Here you go again. This is the last straw. I don’t know what to do when you do this over and over. Give it to me.
And so goes the established and poor pattern. Let’s look at a replay, done better.
Team Leader: The calendar shows today the report is due today. (observation) In what format can it be retrieved? (expectation and question)
Employee: Ah, I don’t quite have it finished.
Team Leader: The lateness of the report puts undo burden on others who depend upon it to complete their part of the process. (impact) How will you rectify the situation? (inquiry)
Employee: I’m not sure. It’s almost done. How about I show it to you and maybe you can help me complete it in time.
Team Leader: Part of your job responsibility is to write this report. It’s not helping you, your colleagues, the department’s reputation, or my faith in your ability if I step in to save you. (observation) Now let’s turn our attention to addressing the issue at hand and how you will complete the report. (next steps). What ideas do you have? (inquiry)
When the Team Leader listens and bounces back with an inquiry, the onus is on the Employee to figure out how to be accountable. Scolding is parent-to-child and accomplishes nothing other than dependency and rebellion, neither if which belong in a work environment.
Inattention to Results: Status and Ego
It’s not unusual to find people with good ideas in a team, but when they are not heard, those people leave, or worse, stagnate. Just think, if you see ways to achieve results and they fall on deaf ears, you’ll soon lose interest, become self-centered, and might even become a saboteur.
It is possible to change all five dysfunctions if teams are given high-performance tools to boost skills and time to practice with one another and a coach.
I’m reminded about my first coaching request when I was a facilitator of a leadership program at General Motors, at least a hundred years ago. The man responsible for the training casually mentioned to me one day, “You seem to be good with people. There’s a team of executives that is a mess. Maybe you can help them. Don’t worry if you can’t, they can’t get worse.” What an invitation.
We worked together for a few months, and indeed they did improve. If I look back now at what I did, without having any coaching education, it’s clear that I listened, observed, and reflected. To this day when I watch a team in action, I say, “Here’s what I observed, is that how you want to perform?” Then we go to work.
Elon Musk, Simplicity and My Soapbox
Elon Musk at the Tesla grand opening in Menlo Park. Photo taken by Brian Solis.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, as reported in Time Magazine, June 18, 2012, successfully launched and landed a rocket, in record time and with streamlined resources. While I read the article I kept correlating the situation with my thinking about workplace productivity.
It’s perfectly clear to me that communication is a major factor in their ability to pull off such an impressive fete. I hope I can make the connection for you.
First of all, there’s Musk’s call for simplicity: “If you want to change something or fix something, just stalk to Elon. It keeps the signal-to-noise ration high.” When the lines of communication are narrow like that, there’s less room for misinterpretation. Think of how different it would be in many organizations if an employee has a question and can go to the person who is most equipped to answer it, rather than to someone designated on the org chart.
Simplicity also shows up in design. I’m not as interested in the mechanics of the rocket as I am in the process behind arriving at those mechanics. They’ve hired people from other venues who had to have prior experience with bloated and convoluted decision-making, so what’s different here that there’s so little bureaucracy? Musk says, People ask how it’s possible to be safer but also more cost-effective. It’s possible because complexity is the enemy of both.” At his three companies the norm is to ask questions, inquire, debate, prototype, problem-solve, challenge until everything is stripped down to the essence—the simplest form. From there they build, adding as little as possible to achieve the required results.
I know all this because Tesla Motors used to have a showroom here in Boulder, and I had the opportunity, as a member of International Business Circle, to spend an evening with some headquarters staff people and Elon on the phone (he could not attend in person because he was in a tobogganing accident). No doubt what he told us about the development of the Tesla automobiles applies to all his ventures.
Secondly, there’s consistency of purpose. I know some people who work at NASA and they talk about constant changes in messages, decisions, and priorities. In Musk’s case, although I don’t know this first-hand, there’s a clear direction and unwavering drive to arrive at it. “I believe,” says Musk, “that I have a design in mind that would enable the colonization of Mars.” Remind you of John F Kennedy’s famous race-to-the-moon speech?
Finally, there’s the Control issue. When I’m on my soapbox I say that Creativity loves Structure and hates Control. Most of the employees of SpaceX don’t have offices, including Musk, but they have discipline, rigor and priorities, so they don’t have to spend their creative juices trying to figure out boundaries. They don’t have creative constraints and rules, rules, rules, so there’s little that gets in their way towards innovation.
Streamlined, uncluttered, open communication is worth billions of dollars.
How do you think this kind of work environment would effect listening skills?
Listening Skill Creates Energy
“I’m totally zapped. I’ve been in this meeting for two hours and I can hardly focus.”
“What a talker. I can’t even get in a word and it’s torture.”
“What’s my problem, I almost fall asleep on the phone whenever Ms. Boss calls.”
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to hear these remarks, and they might be the genesis of the well-meaning label Active Listening (AL). The point of AL is that the listener should be an equal partner in an interaction, not a passive bystander like the three people who made the above comments.
The problem with AL, as you’ve heard me say many times, is that it’s a one-size-fits-all model, and the techniques can easily be faked to make it appear that someone is listening.
My purpose in this post though is not to debunk AL; instead I want to focus on how deep, true listening creates energy for the speaker and receiver.
The reason the three people above find listening to be tiring is because they are actually not engaged in the interaction. They are not much more than a backboard—flat and absorbent.
Energized listening involves:
Increased space for exploration. The best negotiators tell us that the more they can get all sides to ask, “What if, how might we, other options,” the more likely it is that settlement can be made. When a negotiator (or any listener) is asked to look beyond polarized positions, the space for possibilities gets much larger.
Decreased ping-pong effect. What does happen though is that speaking and listening is often a power struggle—the person with the most power serves the “ball” first and the only way to keep up with the game is for the opponent to return an equally as powerful shot. The result is a game of one-upmanship with only challengers, but no winners.
Balanced Inquiry and Advocacy. No wonder people get weary when they’re only the receivers, and receivers of someone else’s diatribe at that. That speaker uses the engagement as a platform to advocate a position, with little regard for what anyone else might think about a subject.
Equalized Sender/Receiver expectations. When I worked as a consultant in the early days of Saturn Motor Division of GM, we helped them devise a process for holding meetings. The process was simple, clear and powerful; Tell, Sell, Consult, Consense. Everyone who came to a meeting knew their roles and responsibilities and was prepared to participate according to the pre-established expectations.
So, what are some tips to keep listening skills energetic?
- Establish Listening Ground Rules (posted 6.12.12). Unfortunately, people take listening for granted; therefore it is often sloppy and rife with bad habits.
- Hire a coach or facilitator to observe communication patterns and provide feedback about how the participants apply the ground rules
- While it’s crucial that people take turns talking and not talking over someone else, application should not be rote (e.g. going around the table the same direction until everyone is heard). Then the person who has just talked might have a tendency to tune out to wait for another turn to speak.
- Move around and/or take a break. Changing seats, standing every half hour, or any other physical change increases oxygen and blood flow.
- Have table toys that don’t interfere with listening, but will diffuse energy. I often have cartoons, brain-teasers and puzzles spread about the room for people to play with during breaks.
- Stop at least once per hour to recap progress towards goals and review of agenda if there is one. It feels good to see how much has already been achieved.
When the listener is involved in an interaction; that is, being engaged because the discussion is interesting and valuable, the results are often stimulating and rewarding. There’s little better than to hear; “Now that was time well spent.”
Tortoise and Hare Listening: Defining Listening Skills
Recently when I was conducting a webinar, one of the very insightful participants surfaced a great question: “What’s the right pace for good listening? Since we can listen faster than we can talk, what’s the best balance?” After some probing we determined that what he was really asking was just how much attention must be paid in an interaction before the interaction is too long and interest wanes.
While there’s not a formula for balancing listening to speaking, our webinar attendees did consider who wins the listening race—the tortoise-listener who moves slowly and deliberately, missing very little on the way to gaining complete understanding; or the hare-listener who moves swiftly in preparation to decision-making and action.
The tortoise-listener is the embodiment of the “move slow to go fast” rule. She asks many questions, gathers facts and data, digs for underlying motivations and concerns, and weaves it all together to develop the most comprehensive thorough understanding of the situation before making recommendations or developing a plan.
The hare-listener is seen more commonly in organizations. He asks just enough questions and gathers just enough evidence to make a decision or plan and recommend his ideas as the best path forward.
Can’t you see them both in a meeting? The hare loses patience with the plodding approach of the tortoise, rolls his eyes, fidgets in his seat, checks email, and tunes out. The tortoise looks stoic, ignores the hare’s obvious frustration, and continues to seek more information. Both are convinced they’re right and that the other doesn’t listen. By the end of the meeting, one usually wears down the other, collaboration hasn’t happened, and it’s doubtful they’ve arrived at the best results.
Our webinar group decided the only way to get these two polar opposites to work effectively together is to acknowledge their differences at the start and develop some listening ground rules. (I need to think about what those ground rules might be and I’ll write them up in the next post—it would be great if we could develop a community list.) When teams have taken Hear! Hear? and seen their group reports, they inevitably come away with much deeper appreciation of how their listening styles impact communication. The tortoises and the hares can talk about the consequences of too much inspection or too much speed and how to balance their tendencies to arrive at best fit for the situation.
Too fast and the hare-listeners finish ahead of everyone else, alone and without enough fuel to run the next race. Too slow and the tortoise-listeners cross the finish line after everyone else has gone on to the next race.
The Classic Trap of Experience—Listening Case
Jonathan, the senior VP of Sales, and Francesca, the senior VP of Marketing, have had a contentious relationship for the year Jonathan has been in his job. At first their peers thought it was a matter of getting clear about roles, responsibilities and territory, and that it would smooth over, especially since working with Francesca was never a problem.
Yesterday at an Executive Committee meeting, Francesca presented three ideas for a new marketing campaign and asked the EC for feedback. Jonathan swiveled in his chair and said, “There’s nothing new here. We did almost the exact same things at my last company without success. Why didn’t you come to me beforehand? I could have saved you a lot of time and effort.”
Everyone in the room was stunned. The CEO pulled himself together and said, “Jonathan, let’s hear Francesca out, then we can discuss the ideas. Your response seems hasty.”
Unfortunately, interactions like those happen much too often in the workplace. Of course, there’s more than one explanation for what happened, but a big one is that Experience gets in the way of Listening. Because Jonathan sees himself as an expert, he reverts to what he knows and closes off new information that doesn’t match with anything in his past that has brought success.
Some considerations:
- New information is perceived to be a threat to what has been tried and made true
- Prior experience has been repeated enough to be trusted
- It takes time and effort to assimilate new information
- Success speaks for itself; there’s no need to start again from the beginning
- Reputation is built upon replicating winners
What advice do you have for the people in this case?
Scary Statistics about How Employees View the Workplace
While I’m skeptical when shown absolute numbers about the condition of the workplace, I do accept the premise behind them: few people are really happy at work.
Following are some of the dismal figures from studies:
Towers-Watson, Global Workforce Study
- 20% are engaged (they don’t say though that 80% are disengaged)
- 50% don’t feel inspired by leaders
- 53% don’t feel leaders are trustworthy
- 58% don’t think senior management cares about talent development
- 61% don’t think leaders deal effectively with poor performers
- 62% don’t feel leaders have interest in their well-being
Gallup, Workplace Study
- 49% are not engaged and 18% are actively disengaged
- $350 billion per year cost of disengaged workers to the US economy
Great Places to Work Institute
650% ROI to stockholders from the organizations on their list
There is:
- Low turnover
- High engagement
- Constant innovation and agility
- Ever-growing customer satisfaction
The numbers in these studies don’t tend to change year-after-year, nor do the questions asked that determine the answers. Still, some other findings do support the results. When people are exchanged from the best to the worst places to work, they change. There’s evidence that says when top performers are put into a low performing environment, they gradually falter and fail. But there aren’t a lot of studies done on the poor performers going to a top-notch outfit. Have you known people who said they were failing where they worked before coming to your organization and flourishing? Share those stories.
I tend to believe that the purpose in life and leadership is creating value. I once heard a very inspiring motto that I feel is the best way to articulate that belief and be a positive influence, anywhere/anytime.
What choice can I make and action can I take, in this moment, to create the greatest value?
My choice was to write this post to you, someone who is not one of the negative statistics, but someone who adds value.