The Arc - An Organization that CAREs
July 26, 2021 is the Americans with Disabilities Act’s 31st anniversary. In honor of the ADA anniversary, we are donating all profits from our Lead Where You Are book and eBook to The Arc from July 14th-31st.
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July 26, 2021 is the Americans with Disabilities Act’s 31st anniversary. In honor of the ADA anniversary, we are donating all profits from our Lead Where You Are book and eBook to The Arc from July 14th-31st.
The Arc is a disability awareness charity. Their mission is to promote and protect the human rights of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. They support individuals with disabilities with a goal of having full inclusion and participation in their communities. The organization works hard to ensure individuals get this full inclusion in their work, community, travel, worship, and every other aspect of their lives. The Arc has been driving change for 69 years and has over 1000 national programs. They offer various ways to get involved: You can visit their website to become a member, become a sponsor, donate, and even open your own chapter.
At Cornerstone Learning we believe in following the C.A.R.E model to achieve success and engaged performance. The Arc does an excellent job in following this model of clarity, alignment, resources, and enabling.
As a charitable organization, it is extremely important to obtain and sustain clarity throughout the organization. They do this by having a clear mission, clearly stated to the employees, volunteers, and donors. This mission, to create and spread awareness of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities to gain and receive fairness within their community, enhances individuals’ reason to believe in this organization. It encourages people to donate, encourages employees to keep working for an incredible and needed purpose, and encourages individuals with disabilities to keep striving for equality.
This organization also shows alignment within their organization. Everyone within this organization is striving for the same goal and everyone knows how to achieve success and why they should help this organization. Because all people (executive, employees, volunteers, and donors) are aligned, wanting this organization to be successful so individuals with disabilities can have equality, The Arc can be successful in its endeavor to spread disability awareness.
The Arc invests in resources to help their organization be successful. They talk to individuals with disabilities and assist them in getting successful careers, they provide fact sheets, and they host webinars. They provide training and educational resources to help encourage and benefit their employees.
The Arc enables top performance within their organization by maintaining a positive and helpful workplace and performance environment, and by following through on their stated strategies of building the movement, speaking truth to anyone who will listen, advocating, extending their reach, and innovating with new and improved programs. Ultimately, The Arc promotes equality, fairness, and inclusion within their teams, chapters, and webinars.
Thank you to all who purchase Lead Where You Are and donate to The Arc, building a community for all!
And don’t forget to visit https://thearc.org/ and read their new strategic vision: http://thearc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Strategic-Framework-for-the-Future-of-The-Arc-1.pdf
For free performance and engagement resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Team Performance: Form, Perform, Reform
If you want better employee engagement, what a better way than to engage your employees. And with the future of performance being a network of engagement and performance teams that form, perform and reform as needed to deliver results, it is key to have a model that provides a framework for team success from inception to disbanding.
Subscribe to the Lead Where You Are Podcast on all your favorite streaming outlets! Simply click one of the buttons below.
If you want better employee engagement, what a better way than to engage your employees. And with the future of performance being a network of engagement and performance teams that form, perform and reform as needed to deliver results, it is key to have a model that provides a framework for team success from inception to disbanding. The video below highlights the Engagement Team Life Cycle. It is a predicable team cycle that once understood can be accelerated and leveraged to provide focus and deliver next level team success.
For free performance and engagement resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Transforming Performance
Engagement is a by-product of an enhanced performance environment, an effective employee communications strategy, and a transparent, team-oriented work environment and culture.
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After working with many organization's on improving employee engagement with great success, we have come to one conclusion. Engagement is a by-product of an enhanced performance environment, an effective EMPLOYEE communications strategy, and a transparent, team-oriented work environment and culture. Sure, you can run employee engagement surveys, but the majority of the time these become disengagers. The surveys are run and then nothing truly gets done with the data. And yes, you can shoot out some snazzy employee PR statements that temporarily boost engagement, but it's not sustained. You need an enhanced performance environment, effective employee communications, and a team-oriented work environment to sustain it. Throw in a few pulse surveys throughout the year to help guide the needs, but let's not overload the employee's inboxes with these things.
So let's discuss enhancing performance environments and, in turn, transforming both organizational and individual performance. When we transform performance we are literally flipping the performance model for most organizations. We move away from top-down driven, compliance-oriented performance, to employee engaged performance, where the individuals are driving their own performance. This is done through what we call O-L-E Performance. That is, organization enabled, leader supported, and employee-led performance.
Organizations enable an enhanced performance environment by connecting everyone to a clear organizational purpose supported by clear organizational values. Organizations enable this by chartering and supporting employee-led teams that give the employees the power to develop recommendations that better and enhance the organization, culture, and, in the end, performance.
Leaders support an enhanced performance environment by evolving from top-down planning, directing, controlling and managing people and processes, to inspiring, enabling, facilitating and developing employee performance, accountability and change. Leaders should create and support the environments for active employee engagement and cultivate a Lead Where You Are performance environment, not attempt to manage their people and activities.
And finally, as mentioned above, in a traditional performance environment, much of the role and responsibility for ensuring performance results, conducting performance feedback, developing accountability and providing effective change management resides with formal leaders in the organization. In addition, training focused on developing core leadership skills, activities and behaviors is generally reserved for these leaders and not the general employee population. This leader-led performance model, unfortunately, limits true performance ownership and we limit the potential and impact of having everyone, no matter their title or position, lead from where they are. Develop an employee-led environment where employees don’t just submit an annual survey and wait for something to happen. If you want sustained performance, engage them at the very start. We have seen incredible results when organizations intentionally enable and support employee-led actions and activities.
OLE Performance is the key to shifting performance results from top-down driven to one that is enabled by the organization, leader supported, and owned and led by the employees. This performance transformation will lead to enhanced and sustained performance by the employees and the organization.
For free performance and engagement resources head over to our Resource Vault!
The Three I's of Performance: Initiative, Influence, Impact
Each of us can proactively move from waiting for those leader-led semi- or annual performance reviews to highly effective and targeted continuous performance connections by using a simple 3 I framework to focus and account for your performance actions, activities, and results: Initiative, Influence, and Impact.
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It’s your performance, your career, now take control.
The traditional model of semiannual or annual performance reviews conducted by managers is outdated and ineffective but very few organizations have formally changed how they “manage” employee performance. Over time, the evolution to a more ongoing, continuous development process will happen, but for most organizations that type of organizational change can take years.
Now is not the time to wait. Each of us can proactively move from waiting for those leader-led semi- or annual performance reviews to highly effective and targeted continuous performance connections by using a simple 3 I framework to focus and account for your performance actions, activities, and results: Initiative, Influence, and Impact.
Initiative: (noun) the power or opportunity to act or take charge before others do.
A primary driver for any performance success is consistently taking initiative. Don’t wait, take the initiative to:
Better clarify your role and responsibilities.
Define your goals and objectives.
Align your performance actions and activities.
Personally set performance expectations with your manager.
Schedule 30-40 minute connections, on an every 4-6 week cadence to review and plan your performance results.
Influence: (noun) the capacity to have an effect on the character, development or behavior on someone or something.
It’s not just what you accomplish but how you go about getting results is equally important. Every interaction is an opportunity to either positively or negatively influence the outcome. How we act, and more importantly, how we react can define our impact and the effectiveness of that impact.
As part of your continuous development consider:
Develop greater situational awareness.
Is your attitude consistent and does it promote positive interactions?
Are your daily behaviors aligned with organizational and team values?
Create authentic connections not just more communications.
Impact: (noun) the force of impression on one thing or another.
And finally, assessing and enhancing your overall impact. In your ongoing performance development, understanding, measuring, and enhancing your daily impact is critical to ensuring sustained value being delivered to your team and organization. It is your initiative combined with your influence that will determine your overall effectiveness and success.
Consider these focus areas that enhance overall impact:
Better self-awareness combined with better situational awareness.
Reflect each day on your personal daily contribution.
How are your actions and results supporting your team?
How and where can you accelerate your performance?
This 3 I performance framework can and will set you and your performance apart. As you look to focus and account for your performance actions, activities, and results, always remember to show initiative, gain influence, and provide impact.
For free performance and engagement resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Relics of Bygone Eras - 2nd Edition - Career Development
The traditional career path of linear career progression continues to be disrupted and evolve. For decades, employees looked to their employer to develop them and provide career advancement opportunities. If they completed required in-house training courses each year and paid their dues by doing what management asked, employees could follow a [fairly] predictable career path.
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“I am in line for a promotion this next year.”
“He/She is on a career fast track.”
“I will out for the next two weeks for training.”
In the past, these were very common phases you would hear and described what most people would point to as a sign of career development. Today, you don’t hear statements like these and the future and meaning of career development is vastly different than in years past.
The traditional career path of linear career progression continues to be disrupted and evolve. For decades, employees looked to their employer to develop them and provide career advancement opportunities. If they completed required in-house training courses each year and paid their dues by doing what management asked, employees could follow a [fairly] predictable career path.
That was until competitive landscapes changed in the 80’s and forced organizations to significantly downsize, thereby limiting career advancement opportunities. The “career ladder” started to fall.
Now, as the workplace has been completely disrupted by a global pandemic, predictable career paths are nonexistent and the path to career success relies on each individual proactively identifying and cultivating their unique ability, knowledge, experience and talents that are valuable and easily transferable.
No matter where you are in the organization, from mailroom, manufacturing, finance or accounting, the sales organization to the C-suite, an individual’s career growth and success will be based on your ability to take the initiative to personally learn, grow, and develop, find opportunities to apply your unique talents, experience and knowledge that add significant value to your employer, no matter the workplace location.
Now more than ever, look to identify what unique talents and skills you possess, find opportunities to hone those skills, develop new talents and experiences and create, where possible, opportunities internally and externally to proactively step up and step in to apply those talents.
While most are waiting to see what happens next, those that accept that the future has changed forever will seize this moment and take control of their career development, chart their own path, and cultivate personal career success.
And for more detailed information about how to lead your own performance be sure to check out our Lead Where You Are book or online training! Both have greater insights and give you an actual plan to begin leading where you are.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
The New Performance Environment - Performance Connections
The old performance management model of the manager setting goals, establishing expectations and giving semi- and or annual performance reviews with little or no feedback along the way is an ineffective performance model. True performance is all about clarity, alignment, action and feedback.
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Let's get straight into what a performance connection accomplishes.
New Expectations
Expected Accomplishments
Expected Challenges
Opportunities to Accelerate or Change
Barriers to Success
What’s Next to Accomplish Success
You should be able to articulate all of these after each performance connection.
Now imagine it's 1999 and you're a young buyer for an up and coming retailer. You just had your first annual review and had glowing remarks from your three different superiors. You have met all your annual goals and have been spot on with the purchases for your first 8 months on the job. Your're told, "Just keep doing what you're doing!" And that's what you do. Over the entire next year you continue what had made you such a company hit in your first annual review. You have been riding high from that review and are looking forward to your second annual review, only this time you are completely caught off guard. The same superiors that had been singing your praises last year are now utterly dissappointed with the work you have done over the past year. How could this be? You did exactly what you were told to do and hadn't been told anything to the contrary. You're told that you just aren't performing like you have been expected to and you need to pick it up. Six months later and you're let go. Not only do you have to go in search of a new job, but the retailer that put the initial effort into you to train you now has to spend time and resources to find and train a new buyer. It's a lose-lose scenario.
Could this have been prevented? Absolutely. This young buyer didn't all of the sudden lose her ability to purchase efficiently and effectively. A lack of communication and feedback is what created this scenario, a costly disservice to both the employee and the employer.
And this is where the performance connection comes in.
The old performance management model of the manager setting goals, establishing expectations and giving semi- and or annual performance reviews with little or no feedback along the way is an ineffective performance model, and it has been for over 40 years. It is your performance and your career, and now it is time to take control of it. It is time to flip the performance model. True performance is all about clarity, alignment, action and feedback. We do this by establishing and leading ongoing performance connections with our superiors.
Truly sustaining that next level of performance success in this complex and ever-changing business environment requires ongoing performance connections, not just once or twice a year review cycles.
These connections are employee-led, not manager-led, and consist of 15 to 20 minute conversations, held every four to six weeks. They establish an ongoing dialogue of feedback focused on performance clarity, alignment and accountability, with a goal of mutually agreed upon performance expectations.
If you invest time in conducting these performance connections consistently and frequently there should be no surprises at the end of the year. You gain and provide clarity along the way and you ensure that you stay aligned and connected on your performance. In the end, you and your leader should leave with greater performance clarity, complete alignment, clear accountability on your commitments, and an understanding of what to expect and the future desired impact. You walk away from each connection with all of the items mentioned at the beginning, answered.
Always remember, it's your performance and your career. You can take control of it.
And for more detailed information about how to lead your own performance be sure to check out our Lead Where You Are book or online training! Both have greater insights and give you an actual plan to begin leading where you are.