employee engagement posts

Emotional Intelligence and Teamwork

January 14th, 2010

Teamwork. You either love or you hate it. And for good reason. Effective teamwork requires a lot of emotional intelligence.

I’m thinking the folks over at Scotiabank have emotional intelligence in spades. They’ve launched a new initiative called “one team, one goal.” Here’s the amazing part: they have 69,000 team members, spread across 50 countries.

How are they going to find the glue that unifies all these different employees to get results? By putting emotional intelligence to work. Here’s what that means. An important principle in emotional intelligence is starting with what matters.

Scotiabank focused on finding a solution to connect people so that they would generate results they needed. They sat down as a leadership team and thought, Hey! We’ve got a lot of members, in a lot of different places, a lot of data, and we need to get one core result. What’s the glue? What’s going to hold the team together? What’s going to align all of the data and the people?

Applying the power of Emotional Intelligence, they got to the idea of developing a mentoring program in which top-tier level executives would nurture and teach second-tier executives. That became their glue and goal:  Develop new leaders.

Then it gets really exciting.

They started to think about this glue as a conversation about Scotiabank’s values, Scotiabank’s skills, and Scotiabank’s culture. They started teaching all that to this group of people, and it led to some robust conversations about problem solving.

Next thing you know this magical thing starts happening: the human element kicks in. People get electrified by ideas. They engage and connect. They solve problems and get results.

That’s emotional intelligence in action. You find the glue that will align people and data. For Scotiabank it was developing leadership through mentoring. For your team, it could be something different.

It’s interesting to note that Scotiabank is the only Canadian company to make the list of The Global Top Companies for Leaders. I’m guessing emotional intelligence has something to do with that. What do you think? How can you use emotional intelligence in your team and organization? What’s your glue?

Get “Talent needs to be nurtured” Financial Post Article

Who’s Crusin’ at Work? The truth of decreasing employee engagement

November 10th, 2009

Are you? “The Power of Full Engagement” provides Gallop statistics: after 6 months on the job, only 38% of employees remain engaged. After 3 years that figure actually drops to 22%. It brings up the question – how do you keep employees engaged at work?

In the last few months I have talked with a lot of my female friends who are high level executives. I was surprised to learn that many of them are making a conscious choice to ‘cruise at work’ and admit they are quite happy to do so.

(If you do not see a video above, click here to view it: http://bit.ly/1x5aoj)

What is cruisin’?
For these executives, cruisin’ means they have been with the company for a period of time and their expertise has been well established. They command a senior executive salary, complete with a full benefits package. Now, they just want to cruise – put it in low gear, continuing to reap the rewards but with minimal effort. They are tired of being fully engaged without appreciation. They can’t be bothered to push the envelope.

Personally, I find this quite sad.  As an entrepreneur, my life is about ‘what’s the next thing’ and ‘how can I do it better?’ I thrive on being fully engaged.

As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz say in “The Power of Full Engagement,”  ’making change that lasts requires a three step process’.

1. Define Purpose: explore how to find alignments between personal values and the values of the company,
2. Face the Truth: discuss the situation and explore how to re-engage,
3. Take Action: establish projects of greater interest.

Are you willing to share a ‘cruising’ story?

Need A Workplace Break? Start Smokin.’

October 13th, 2009

CEOs & leaders try to create a workplace culture to match their brand identity. However, management of productivity and results can sometimes set employees into a flurry of activity which, in turn, can detract from the espoused cultural norms.

The brutal fact is that in some workplaces the real cultural norms are – if you want to take a break, you need to start smokin’!

I received an email in response to my “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most unproductive of them all” post. The commenter (let’s call her Suzy) had the courage to blow the whistle on the unspoken norms in her workplace.

Suzy said the culture did not support the idea of taking a break here and there, going for lunch or just taking 5 minutes to walk around the office. Instead, she described how she found an outlet for a break with one of her smokin’ co-workers. She realized that the smoker took regular smoke breaks throughout the day. So she decided to share an outdoor break with the smoker. It was almost as if the habit of smoking allowed people to take a pause. During these short breaks, Suzy could re-group, re-energize and return to her desk being more focused and productive. The smoker has now left the team.

Suzy no longer has a reason to take a break, not being a smoker.

After reading my blog, Suzy checked her assumptions about the unspoken workplace norms with a couple of her co-workers. They agreed. One gent sheepishly revealed he felt the need to hide if he wanted to take a break.

What are the brutal facts of the workplace culture within your company? Are you allowed to take little breaks so you can be more productive? If you can’t, is your culture contributing to people burning-out?

Do you, CEOs, leaders and executives, have the courage to question the brutal facts of your espoused (this is what we say we do) workplace culture vs. the real culture (this is what we actually do)? Do you think that your culture is burning people out? If you want to find out, ask people anonymously. If the answer is no – great!

If you find out that your company has a burn-out culture. Are you willing to make the necessary changes – promoting individual productivity and team sustainability ?

And finally, please don’t start smoking just to take a break.

Mirror Mirror on the wall, who’s the most unproductive of them all?

October 01st, 2009

Right now you’re probably buried with work, right? Even so, you took a quick break to check out this post. But if you’re like most executives, you probably need more “time out” from your workload to recharge, build relationships and trust, and maintain maximum productivity.

Believe it or not, most executives are not nearly as productive as they could be. So if you have another 80 seconds right now, check out this video on the importance of increasing productivity and building trusting relationships by simply taking a time-out within each day.

Quick Tips:

• For 30 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon. shut off all electronic devices. Unplug from the business imperative that you must always be in touch. Instead be in touch for energized pockets of time,
• Make personal contact with people. Have 5-minute check-ins. Walk around, say “hello”, “how is it going?”,
• Peak at the ‘paper’ in the reception area – get the scope on who is waiting for a meeting with one of your colleagues and why?
• Take a colleague for a coffee or lunch. You can re-energize, build relationships, solve business problems and have fun all at the same time!

What else do you do during the day to recharge and improve your productivity? Let me know.

Own your side of the dialogue!

September 01st, 2009

There are incredible benefits to leveraging diversity in organizations. Broad expertise, knowledge and judgment can create major communication challenges or outstanding opportunities!. To benefit from diversity, we need to work together and be effective in navigating our differences.  We can do this by taking more ownership of our side of the communication, our side of the two-way dialogue.

I recently worked with an extremely talented CEO who was visually impaired.  To improve communication and team effectiveness within his organization, I facilitated a number of teaming experiences in which his associates were blind-folded. Once they experienced what “visually impaired” truly meant, they started to utilize different ways of communicating to complete the task at hand. They also started to recognize how their CEO had to work differently to get things done.  They had more empathy for him. End result, they became more aware of how they could increase their communication with him by being more responsible to their side of the dialogue.

I’m now working on a team with a deaf woman, and it has been a most incredible learning experience for me. I’ve learned to adjust my own communication style, to apply different techniques in an effort to respect the wonderful diversity she brings to the group.

• I have realized our ‘communication loop’ reflective listening competence; in which the receiver of the communication re-phases what they heard from the sender, is as effective when she re-types as when we re-phase,
• I have learned how ‘instant chat’ can trump email for effective communication,
• I have learned to write more in my blog posts as opposed to simply uploading a video,

The most important thing I’ve learned is that I have to be responsible for my part of the communication, for my part in this relationship.  So I’ve started to learn expressions in sign language. Even though I am not great, not perfect, she can still understand when I say, “Good morning, how are you?” She can understand when I say, “Can you repeat, I don’t understand.” She starts to be able to communicate with me because I am working to improve my side of the dialogue.  As a manager, leader and co-worker I have to draw people out and help them understand the message I’m delivering.

For me, diversity just means we are different. We’re different because we have limitations. We’re different because we have strengths. We’re different because we come from different places and we have been brought up with different norms.

It takes self-awareness and initiative to recognize these kinds of communication challenges and courage to make them opportunities. When you consider the diversity in your teams, can you see opportunities to improve the way you communicate? Can you take more ownership of your side of the dialogue and become more effective in the process?

Emotional Intelligence Series #7: Leadership Assertiveness and the Importance of the Vision!

June 28th, 2009

Sorry about the volume of this video – some of it was shot in studio and some outside; audio levels vary.

In April, I participated in Habitat for Humanity’s Toronto Women’s Build. I was in a group of 60 business leaders gathering to give back, to have a fun day and to somehow swing a hammer to build one of sixteen new homes for families in need.

As eager business women with type A personalities, we were all juiced and ready to jump in!

Habitat for Humanity gave us the overall vision of the day. Our project manager then started us with some tactical direction – it excited all of us for a short period of time.  Then we all became very ineffective.  Our participation slowed and motivation waned.

A fellow entrepreneur, Joan, saved the day with her high level of Emotional Intelligence:

1. Self Awareness in her ineffectiveness,
2. Self Management in her ability to manage her frustration and,
3. Her courage to act with Leadership Assertiveness; simply requesting that the project manager share the tasks vision.

Watch this video – a great case study for team effectiveness. Consider the following:

1. Describe the project/task vision. All of us need to understand where we are going so that we can get there.
2. Provide direction then support. Provide detailed direction to the newbies on your team (like us — highly motivated but lacking in task specific competence in how to build a house). Provide support when you recognize effectiveness is declining.
3. Encourage your team members to uplead. Joan exercised her leadership assertiveness in asking our project manager to explain the vision of the task – this is ‘upleading’,
4. As a leader, respond to the upleading immediately. If a member of your team behaves with a positive uplead – grab it and act immediately. Our project manager did just that! She led us to the sample home and showed us the needed end result.

Overcome the Forgetting Curve – Make Training Presentations More Memorable

April 19th, 2009

Are you throwing your time and money away with training presentations that are quickly forgotten?  Check out this video on making training presentations more effective for your team.  You’ll learn:

1. How fast we forget.
2. What it takes to retain knowledge.
3. How to stop wasting time and money on training.
4. How just 10 minutes of review can help your team “overcome the forgetting curve” and boost your ROI.

There’s a strong ROI case for making time to review presentation material after the fact.  According to the Ebbinghaus Curve + Article: University of Waterloo, within 24 hours of getting new information, participants who spend 10 minutes reviewing it will raise the curve almost to 100% again. A week later, it only takes 5 minutes to “reactivate” the same material and again raise the curve. By day 30, your brain will only need 2-4 minutes to give you the feedback, “Yes, I know that…”

What do you think?