Destination: Success | The Black Hole of Employee Engagement Initiatives
Does this sound familiar?
Company and organizational employee engagement surveys are conducted with the results tabulated by functional area and scores distributed to senior leadership, HR, and then to the functional leaders throughout the organization.
From the survey results, employee engagement priorities are established and company-wide employee engagement teams are often formed to provide senior leaders and managers insight and recommendations to close the identified gap of engagement. These engagement teams meet a couple times over a 30-60 day period to formulate recommendations, deliver those recommendations to management and senior leadership and then…..the sound of silence. The entire process seems to fall into the “black hole” of employee engagement. Another year of improved employee engagement missed.
1. The organization must enable an engagement performance environment with active senior leadership sponsorship and reinforcement. This level of sponsorship and ongoing visibility and commitment is critical.
2. Once the organization makes engagement a priority, then mid- and entry-level management must enable that environment of engagement. Each leader devotes time, energy, and coaching that supports a performance environment that is employee-led and actively engaged. Leaders must shift their actions and behaviors. We can't ask for employee feedback and recommendations if we don’t support and enable individual and team engagement.
3. And finally, engagement is all-day, every day, culture-instilled, and continually enabled. Employee engagement is not an event or project with time deadlines and milestones to be completed. It becomes what everyone walks into work and experiences.
Want better employee engagement? Then continually engage the employee!
And employee engagement doesn't just start and stop at the organization level. Come back the next couple weeks as we discuss, in finer detail, the importance of both team and individual engagement.
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Destination: Success | It's Time to Engage
If you want better team engagement, you better engage as a team. If you want better employee engagement, you better engage the employees. If you want better personal engagement, you better personally engage.
You know, we hear a lot about wanting more and or better team, employee, and personal engagement…and that is the problem, we hear a lot more talk about engagement rather than seeing active engagement.
For example, in your organization, is employee engagement really only talked about prior to and for the 45 days following the annual or bi-annual “employee engagement survey”, with little to no sustained follow-up beyond that? Does your culture “branding” mention a lot about team(s); things like “Together we win.”, “We are one.”, et cetera, but the actual daily “performance environment” is driven by functional silos, task-focused, and managed performance with very few opportunities to actually engage as a high-performance, employee-led team?
With a lot of talk about engagement and little to no focus on activities that cultivate and support true organization and or team engagement, do you find it personally difficult to actively engage? Lastly, do you feel like employees are just coming in with a purpose to achieve daily/weekly tasks instead of coming in each day to achieve a purpose?
If this is the case, the next three Destination: Success blogs will give you actions and best practices you can personally do and learn from to lead active engagement right where you are.
But don’t wait until next week, let’s start by looking at your sphere of influence so we know where the greatest opportunities for you to more actively engage exist.
https://www.cornerstonelearning.com/news/2018/01/30-authentic-relationships-1
https://www.cornerstonelearning.com/news/2018/02/06-not-all-relationships-created-equal
https://www.cornerstonelearning.com/news/2018/02/13-take-action
Destination Success: It’s time to engage!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Destination: Success | Decline Your invitation to the Island of Negativity
The dreaded Island of Negativity is where negative people go to thrive and attempt to expand their island’s territorial boundaries by recruiting negative converts to join them. These are the negative ones where things are always happening to them. They are the victims. They have made making excuses, placing blame, and justifying failure a core competency. You frequently hear from them, “It can’t be done.”, “That will never work.”, “It’s not my fault.”, and “That is just the way it is around here, nothing changes.”. Unfortunately, they can be found everywhere and can be relentless in their pursuit...if we let them.
As we know, negativity is one of the greatest detours on the journey to success. Don’t accept the invitation. Stay focused on making things happen, no matter what.
Control what you can control, influence what you can’t, and when you can’t control or influence something, move on.
When approached with the invitation to venture to the Island of Negativity, try these responses:
“No, I really don’t want to go there. Things may not be perfect and there are issues, but what can we do to make them better?”
“How I can I help?”
“What options do we have, and what can we do to reframe our focus to make a difference?”
“We need to positively engage with action, not talk. We can’t just let things drift.”
You know, the more people that decline their invitation to join the Island of Negativity the smaller the island gets and the lonelier the remaining inhabitants become. At some point they will be faced with the decision of having to leave the Island of Negativity behind or staying and becoming more and more isolated, ultimately becoming irrelevant and having to leave to find another organization where they can island build once more.
Today, lead where you are, don’t let negativity detour your destination: Success.
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
The 2017 Houston Astros: A Blueprint for Success
Congratulations to our hometown Houston Astros!
It has been over 55 years in the making, but 2017 calls the Houston Astros World Series Champions! And what an amazing impact the team has had on a city in the midst of recovering from Hurricane Harvey. In fact, the city went from flooding with over 40 inches of rain to over 1 million people flooding the streets of downtown Houston to welcome their world champions home.
So, what was the formula for the Astros success? (By the way it is a very similar formula used by the Chicago Cubs to win the 2016 World Series!) A formula that even Sports Illustrated recognized that, if followed, predicted this World Series win back in 2014 by putting the Astros on their cover claiming them the 2017 World Champs. They followed a blueprint for performance success that we use with our clients, Employee-led (player led), Leader Supported (manager guided) and organizationally enabled.
For more information on our ELO model for performance, please download our whitepaper here.
The quest for this 2017 Championship began over 55 years ago but really accelerated when Jim Crane, the current owner, purchased the Astros in November of 2011 and began to enable success. He first hired Jeff Luhnow from the St. Louis Cardinals in December 2011 to be his General Manager. Jeff’s formula for success truly mirror’s our organizational model for our client’s performance, Employee-Led (player-led), Leader Supported (Manager support), and Organization Enabled (Astros ownership and GM). You cultivate a purpose driven culture, enable success by investing in your talent, providing that talent with the right and best resources, and support them with leadership, not management, that develops the leader in everyone in the organization regardless of role or position, from an MVP player to a groundskeeper. The players will tell you, the goal each day did not focus on winning, the focus was on making each other great. If each of us will do that, then success and winning is the natural result.
Jeff then further enabled the organization by hiring A.J. Hinch, a leader that promotes and cultivates the very culture Luhnow was trying to develop. A.J. inspires, brings energy, connects with, and develops each and every player. He doesn't direct, control, or manage his players. He supports them and shows confidence in them even when they struggle. He knows and relates to each and every player, understanding that each brings a unique and special talent and contributes in different ways.
The right talent, guided by the right purpose, supported by the right leader, enables the right success.
Finally, A.J. enables success by letting his players lead, not controlling them. He is there to guide and support, not to micromanage them. The players go out each day with their task to contribute to a larger more meaningful purpose, to make each other great! And when new talent is added to the roster throughout the year, it is the culture and players that lead the way to guide and ensure success of each and every member of the Astros organization. The right talent, guided by the right purpose, supported by the right leader, enables the right success. The Houston Astros followed a very familiar blueprint for success; Employee-led, Leader Supported, and Organization Enabled. Want to know how this model for success might work in your organization? Click here to find out.
Congratulations to our Houston Astros, 2017 World Series Champions!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in developing a dynamic and customized blue print to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
What's the Purpose?
Why do I do what I do day in and day out, and to what end? Ever ask that question?
You know, most people unfortunately get up in the morning with the main purpose of going into work and delivering on a set of predetermined tasks, responding to the inevitable urgent fire drills and going home at whatever time you can complete that days' tasks.
It is no wonder that according to the most recent State of the American Workplace study conducted by the Gallup organization only 33% of U.S. employees are truly engaged at work. While 16% of employees are actively disengaged, that leaves 51% of us not engaged, showing up to work and existing to complete our daily tasks.
If this is the case for you and or your organization it is time to find your purpose! If you want better personal and organizational engagement you better get engaged! Once engaged, dig deep to find your personal purpose and then align it with your organizations purpose.
Unfortunately, often the main purpose heard throughout an organization may sound like, “Our purpose is to; (and you pick from the options) make a profit, drive shareholder value, or possibly be the best, low cost provider in the industry.” Now, while these are vitally important to any organization, they don’t drive engagement, they often do contribute to compliant, task-driven cultures and behaviors.
If you want better personal and organizational engagement, you better get engaged!
Without true engagement you and the organization will lose that “reason to believe” in the future and, over a period of time, the opportunity to sustain a profit and drive shareholder value will be lost while best and brightest talent leave to go to organizations that have a compelling purpose and connect it to everyone.
So what is your purpose? What do you believe in? What does or will excite you when you come into work each day? Do you believe that what you do makes a difference, if not, how can it? And finally, does the work you do help contribute to your personal purpose?
Without answers to these questions people and organizations tend to drift. Like a rudderless boat we drift from one wave to the next letting random currents steer our path.
So move from drifting like nearly 70% of the workforce, get engaged, define your personal purpose, actively work on an employee engagement team that defines, or refines your organizations purpose.
With a purpose, anything is possible!
To find out about purpose look to the fourth shift “From Drifting to Purpose” in the new book LeaderShift on sale now at Amazon.
Upcoming Posts
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AUGUST 29 - From Customer Duty to Customer Passion
SEPTEMBER 5 - From Fighting Change to Guiding Change
NOW AVAILABLE!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in developing a dynamic and customized blue print to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
The Evolution of Organizational Performance
How organizations achieve and sustain success is evolving. This much is clear to all of us. Just look at the time line dating back to before the industrial age and it is apparent that what’s important, the focus, motivation, accountability and the drivers of success have evolved and continue to evolve at an even faster pace.
So is your organization evolving as well or are you stuck in the past trying to compete for talent and results? Is your organization moving to an employee-led, leader supported, and organizational enabled performance model? Are your leaders making that leadershift in actions and behaviors required to lead more effectively in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive performance environment? Is every employee from the very top to entry level appropriately trained, equipped with expectations set to lead where they are?
It is going to take time to evolve your organization. Start by asking the tough questions. Do we have a performance culture by design or are our results by default? Are we leading change or trying to survive and manage it? Who truly owns performance, your leaders or everyone in the organization?
Organizational Performance is evolving, what is your next step?
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in developing a dynamic and customized blue print to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.