So How Do Leaders Impact Culture and Engagement?

More than 18,000 books have been published about leadership. As for my friends who are reading, I have not read them all, but I have read some. I have worked with many esteemed faculty members whose research and teaching focus was leadership. I have served in a leadership capacity with various organizations over the past thirty years. In addition, I have coached and taught leadership to multiple organizations over the years. So leadership is an exciting subject to pursue. 

Most People Leave a Job Because Of Their Supervisor Or Manager

In my last message, I shared, "Most people leave a job because of their supervisor or manager" This message was strongly communicated in the book, Leadership in Changing Times. In a recent survey by GoodHire via Pollfish, 82% of 3,000 workers surveyed from December 4-9 of 2021 said they would leave their jobs because of supervisors or managers. The top reasons they disliked their managers were micromanagement, dishonesty, or lack of honesty. McKinsey's 2022 Great Attrition research found that uncaring and uninspiring leaders were the top two reasons people chose to quit their jobs. 

I hope you find these first paragraphs as sad as I do. Regardless of which report you support, they are both tragic in building a positive culture. In a weak culture, Simon Sinek said we veer away from doing "the right thing" in favor of doing "the right thing for me." Humans identify with groups, tribes, and teams because we are social beings. When we identify with a culture, we say I belong to this group of people and align ourselves with a shared set of values and beliefs. However, something happens to us when there is a shift from character, values, or beliefs to the bottom line, numbers, ratios, or shareholder dividends. We begin to shift from our behavior-driven values, and we disengage. Senior leaders with the least turnover lead with purpose, problem-solving, and potential. According to the Deloitte Millennial Survey, the root cause of turnover today is that younger workers are unafraid to leave.

It All Starts With Leadership

The leader is responsible for building and supporting a positive organizational culture of win-win opportunities. And the blueprint for building this culture has changed over the last ten years and will continue to change.

As leaders, we must show our team members why they should stay every day. Again, this comes down to culture and engagement. I have been fortunate to have a dream team or two in my career. It is a great experience. One of the best books I have read to support the premise of a dream team was The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni. One of the best blueprints  I have used in hiring for the dream team has been a) hire the ideal person, best fit, not the convenient person, b) hire internally if possible, c) hire for ABC's which are attitude, behavior, and character, d) allow your team members do what they do best.

For years, my colleagues at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business and I taught the value of teams and how self-managed teams can improve productivity. I thought I understood the concept. Then, I visited Japan, and I saw the idea in action. Finally, I visited manufacturing plants around the country and saw it working. Productivity was improved through teams. But we have not begun to tap the capabilities of teams today.

Today a shift is taking place that will replace the traditional management structure or hierarchy. I was recently certified in Working Genius, which assesses those parts of the job that bring us joy. You know the sweet spot of the position where you can lose all sense of time. You are in the zone or "flow state." You are completely absorbed in your activity.

It is a magical space where you feel (pardon me) attuned to and with the universe. Other tasks are involved in our jobs that we, how shall I put this, we don't care for those tasks. These tasks suck the very life and energy out of us. If we as leaders can hire the right candidates and allow them to do what they do best, we can make our team members happy, and everyone's productivity will increase.

Identifying Talents of Your Team Members 

I work with companies to identify the talents of their team members through Genius, Competencies, and Frustrations. This process can improve productivity by 15% to 30% if fully embraced. I will share more about this later. 

Great Leaders Manage With Empathy And Expectations

Great leaders manage with empathy and expectations. This is where emotional intelligence becomes imperative. Emotional intelligence is more critical than Intellectual intelligence (more on this in the future). And the significant aspect of EQ is you can improve this attribute with practice, as author Angela Duckworth says – "deliberate practice." As leaders, we also want to manage the expectations/standards that we set for our team members.

Author Clint Pulver shared that connection is the link that forms when people experience a consistent, high level of trust, love, empathy, kindness, and care. We can strive to be this type of leader. Great leaders/mentors can communicate someone's potential and worth so clearly that the team member begins to recognize that potential and worth in themselves. 

Success Is Not About What You Accomplish But How You Inspire Others

Great leaders know that success is not about what you accomplish in your life. It's about what you inspire others to do, according to Terry Wildemann. I was working with a client in April, who said his goal was to be the best HR leader in the world. I reminded him he didn't need to be the best in the world, but he needed to be the best for the world; for the people he serves.

Our job as leaders, coaches, and mentors is to help others recognize their worth; we do this through recognition. We are also responsible for showing our team members their potential by providing growth opportunities. Growth opportunities come in many shapes and sizes, so we must build according to team members' needs.

Coming Up

In my next blog post, I will discuss what praise can look like and how fun it can be… I will also take you through the delivery of feedback that we often dread, but that is necessary to maintain the standards of our brand and culture.