Workplace Culture by Design
Why is Our Workplace Generations Apart?
One manager TB asks:
“Yeah, given the differences between my Boomer and Millennial employees, they seem worlds apart. Why does it have to limit productivity and real satisfaction in our workplace?”
We would highly suggest that the generational differences has less to do about limiting productivity as it has more to do with the need to mash up strengths. As a leader if you focus on the gap, that’s exactly what you’ll end up with, gaps. Given the differences of experiences, contexts and employee skills that are brought to the workplace, naturally means that workers see the world from various angles. Savvy leaders strengthen their communication skills and seek to understand the strengths that each of those contexts can bring toward open innovation and finding solutions to complex challenges. But why do generational differences seem to fill so many workplaces with conflict? Common insecurities and the desire to be recognized for ideas often fuel the flame.
Some people believe that advancement is automatically based on tenure while the new workforce believes that what matters most is ones contribution, ideas and value creation. Is it about job titles? Or less about power and influence that leaders gain by becoming worthy of following? Are ideas worth implementing and customers delighted to share the good news about your organization?
The departments and workplaces that pursue happiness and thriving cultures do it because they want their businesses and relevant stakeholders to succeed. The little voice that may speak to a manager when conflict arises is met with confidence and positive self-talk until employees discover new areas of understanding and ways to make things happen. Great managers provide an environment where healthy conflict can succeed and fosters a clear focus on value creation and a whole lot less about one’s age, nationality, religion and/or gender.
Perhaps the real question for TB might be, “How can generations in the workplace come closer together as a community?”
Everything We Want Is Just Outside Our Comfort Zone – Keep Going Beyond
Is the first thought of your morning and the last worry of the evening dominating your day? Is it looming over your shoulder and robbing your leadership from experiencing greater depth, meaning and purpose in your work?
With big-hairy challenges facing today’s workplace in greater proportions, is there any wonder why many people leaders are just surviving the status-quo? Imagine for a moment if you were enabled to tackle the goliath that awaits you around every corner. Imagine overcoming your greatest challenge and experiencing the exhilaration by unlocking leadership potential and realizing outstanding results.
Even with the best of intentions you attempt to soar, but the goliath that keeps facing you speaks in a number of ways often prancing throughout the workplace: bringing you people you can’t ever please, temptations to work harder and longer, limited funding to train and develop your team, work that continues to be ignored or goes unrewarded, having to conduct several difficult conversations with your staff or boss, or having to publicly recognize employees which pulls you out of your comfort zone.
Is your workplace like many today that are hovering around the goliaths and ending up with mediocre results when they could have extraordinary? Are you tired of looking at this goliath?
Great News
You can make the courageous choice to not only face your goliath, but take it down! All great leaders have had to overcome their struggle (s). What seems to be your goliath today? Begin by taking the time to appropriately prepare your plan and identify supportive partners that will provide you with honest feedback and hold you accountable to achieving your goals.
Discover how to channel that energy that sits just outside your comfort zone in ways that will move action forward and help you to create positive results. Each time you move a beyond this zone, you increase your leadership potential.
How can you begin to see beyond the Goliaths and build an energizing workplace environment?
- Recognize & publicize – employees enjoy being rewarded beyond a paycheck. Find creative ways to celebrate the small wins and achievements that are meaningful to them. Share these positive achievements with other members of management and invite them to reach out to your team via email or phone to extend a congratulations or appreciation for their efforts. The small investment of time you make may create ripples of positive energy throughout your workplace.
Learn to uncover the hidden power of recognition and the messaging delivered by great leaders.
If recognizing others is uncomfortable for you, keep going beyond your zone and discover new ways to excel in this very important area of communication and leadership.
- Performance feedback – while most managers may not enjoy conducting performance appraisals, it is essential to embrace any discomfort and learn to excel in this role. Signing on to becoming a people leader brings the key responsibility of improving organizational capability. When you lead from the front in your department and deliver timely, honest, constructive feedback, you gain opportunity to build trust among employees and impact the organization’s long-term shareholder value.
- Make the tough calls – have you identified a member on the team whom after coaching and counseling demonstrates less than “A” level performance and organizational values? Stretch beyond your comfort zone and partner with human resources to address low-performance quickly. Build upon the performance potential in your area of responsibility by recognizing the impact both great performance and low performance has on the entire organizations’ ability to grow capability and achieve short/long-term objectives.
- Those who need encouragement often don’t risk asking for it. As a people leader, look around your workplace for someone who seems to be disconnected or on the sidelines. Infuse your best stuff to bring them back into the game. By redirecting your focus on others you’ll begin to find the secret to ridding the goliath’s in your workplace.
As you achieve progress in each of these areas, establish new goals and keep yourself stretching beyond your comfort zone. It will help the team stay energized, pro-active and ahead of the competition.
Change is Coming. Do You Have the Buy-in to Succeed?
Being a successful leader in today’s business environment is hard work to say the least. The shifting of many leadership roles with new accountabilities compounded with the pressure for organizations to do more with less, leaves savvy managers at a cross-road; challenged to integrate value in a new era of change. Few organizations seem to have optimized the change process itself in order to realize the full benefit that highly effective change management strategies provide.
Most organizations trying to execute strategy and achieve results in a hyper competitive marketplace find themselves struggling to run faster and execute with greater precision than ever before. Given the amount of downsizing, organizational restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, one would think that employees are becoming highly adept to change. In reality, many employees are becoming “change-weary” as the United States plans for an even slower than expected recovery. Employers need to pay particular attention to this as they begin to refocus and rebound for growth by addressing this issue head on. The success of any rebound strategy is ultimately dependent on strong front-line leadership and engaged employees. Employees may resist, adapt, or actively embrace plans for rebounding. The end result of these initiatives rests solely upon the efforts of our employees. Without their buy-in, initiatives to cultivate change will prove to be slow and painful for the organization. Competitors will fully take advantage of the time you are losing due to the lack of acceptance and embracement of strategic change from every level of your organization.
21stCentury leaders with solid business acumen many to need to add to their repertoire the inclusion of relational skills and key intangible practices that create human connection in the change process. The standard line-up of planning, focusing, setting goals and providing on-going internal communication is no longer enough to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. It’s critical to understand what drives the pulse of your people. What motivates them to take action and perform their job better than anyone else? What are your employees’ abilities and transferable skills that you as an organization have yet to recognize and harness? What are the intangible assets they possess that you need to not only encourage, but to provide an environment in which they can flourish and grow?
Keith Ferrazzi states in Who’s Got Your Back, “Life is about work, work is about life and both are about people.” Business is human, and the more we can connect with employees, the more we will facilitate a willingness to not only accept change, but to strengthen relationships across the organization. When a person in any level of management shows their genuine care and concern for their workers and their personal growth and input, the intangible imprint that they leave with that employee will enhance positive employee relations for a lifetime. Seemingly small gestures speak so much louder than words, and will remain with employees for years to come. Here are a few examples of simple acts of concern and kindness that resonate to this day. One senior vice president attended the funeral for an employee whose father passed away. A CEO of a health insurance company washed the car of an employee at work to express gratitude for his efforts in delighting a customer that day. Another executive sent flowers to the family of an employee for working long hours during a critical time. These simple acts send a powerful message and provide employees with an authentic view of the leader whom they follow. Traditionally, when a command and control style of leadership was more of the norm, displays of genuine empathy were perceived as a sign of weakness. In today’s new workplace, empathy is a competitive strength as companies navigate in an interconnected marketplace.
How might leaders embrace the intangibles, achieve stronger connection, and increase employees understanding of the changes ahead? Below are four tips that will prove helpful in navigating the new interconnected marketplace.
Be Truthful
Executives are wise to acknowledge the discomfort that comes with change, even as they reinforce the necessity for making the change and what may happen if changes are not adopted. It is critical that employers explain the business reasons why the change is needed and the consequences of not adopting the change; potential loss of customers, revenue, competitiveness and ultimately, jobs.
Provide Safety
It is important to create an environment where employees feel comfortable in asking questions, especially the tough ones. Even if one doesn’t know all the answers, the trust factor will be strengthened when a leader sets the right expectations that they will share what they are able to share as relevant information becomes available. Build in pro-active strategies to enable ongoing, two-way dialogue and ensures communication efforts remain on course.
Resist Temptation
While many people find change motivating and readily identify the positive aspects of making the change, in reality some changes themselves may not be favorable at all. Ensure your key message communicates respect to the workforce by balancing both the pain points with reasonable optimism and reinforces the broader change message. Sending the “one big happy family” message may invoke feelings of distrust. Partner with a designated internal communications team to manage communications regarding the change, speaking with one voice and solid message, will maintain the authenticity of the message and reinforce the manager’s credibility.
Teach Others
Ensuring daily workplace communications support the values of the company, and highlighting how an employee’s contribution demonstrated those values, will aid in reinforcing the desired behaviors following the change. Recognize the individuals and teams who are doing the hard work that positive change always demands. Find creative ways to celebrate small victories and share good news.
Finally, leaders who take a holistic and practical approach to planning the next change initiative will be better able to mitigate unforeseen risks and strengthen relationships with all employees, thereby improving the chances for successful execution and outcomes.
©2010 The Infusion Group™ LLC. All rights reserved. The Infusion Group ™ LLC delights in partnering with individuals, leaders and organizations in connecting people with their business vision to what matters most.
Three Decisions That Affect Others’ Energy in the Workplace
Read the latest headlines and you may find yourself looking to book a far-away and much needed vacation in another country. The challenges continue and while the workplace is full of conversation regarding economic instability and a host of other topics, understanding our reactions to those around us may be impacting more than we realize.
Are you an infuser or a de-fuser? Very often employees in the workplace place emphasis on how others reactions impact them. However, a key to thriving in your position may lie upon the reflection on how our individual actions affect the whole organization. In today’s “do more with less” reality, taking the time to reflect and assess may seem like a luxury, but given the continued disengagement of workers the activity and the outcomes it could improve is long overdue.
According to in-depth research conducted by the University of Virginia, understanding how one’s behavior affects the energy of others and gaining an ability to make decisions that modify one’s behavior in ways that promote energy, can have significant impact on employee well-being, productivity, and business performance.
While de-fusers can be valuable in minimizing conflict in the workplace, they hold a common attribute of being single-minded on task accomplishment. Infusers tend to accomplish as much or more and do so with an awareness of the people around them. Infusers see their work as a balance of tasks and relationships, and this becomes evident in the number of decisions and actions that demonstrate genuine care and concern for others throughout a given work day. These decisions and actions are unscripted and are often not lengthy encounters during the day, but serve as part of their foundational being.
How can you begin to create a foundation of energy? Consider the following questions regarding behaviors:
- When you are feeling buried in work, do you make time to engage with other people around you and not just converse as a means to an end? How relationships are weaved into the development of your day-to-day actions? When you make an effort to show concern for others and connect outside of work roles, you begin promoting an environment of trust.
- Do you follow through in doing what you say you were going to do? People become very energized by a task or goal if they believe in the integrity of the other person making the request or involved in the process. Once an infusion is made creating energy, people begin to let their guard down and give permission to feeling enthusiastic. This guard comes down only if people trust others to follow through.
- Do you allow political or dysfunctional behavior to enter into your decisions or actions? Do you address tough issues with integrity, authenticity and sincerity? Employees become infused when they stand in the presence of others who stand for something larger than themselves. When the pursuits are focused on doing the right things and not for exclusive gain, employees become energized.
Having concern for others and making connections in the workplace demonstrates a level of respect and brings dignity to the organization. Consistency in behavior builds trust in a work relationship and serves as the context for which energy can be created.
Will you make the decision to infuse today?
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©2010 All rights reserved. The Infusion Group™ LLC Judy White, SPHR, GPHR, HCS is the President of Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina based The Infusion Group ™ LLC (http://www.theinfusiongroupllc.com) and delights in partnering with individuals, leaders and organizations in connecting people with their business vision to what matters most.
