217: Dean Jones — Boosting Employee Engagement

Hello, Dean Jones.

Hi, how are you? How are you? My friend, Bill Gagger.

I'm so good, so good to talk to you again. Hello again everyone to our listeners and viewers. Welcome and thanks again for joining us. You're listening. Watching the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and scaling coach, Bill Gallagher. So we bring you a new show topic at least once every week on everything to do from Scaling up. We've got over 220 shows or something like that by the time you're seeing this. And so we've got something on every topic and then some, like Dean here from the Gallup organization come back again because what they have is so great and compelling and changing. The show that came out as I recorded this morning was with Tom Peter. So we just have great people on all the time talking about great stuff that's really relevant for helping you grow and scale your company. Of course, if you need to find a coach or get help in this area, we're getting more requests than we ever have before as people navigate this particular crisis. And I imagine that we will still be in some version of this even as they cure or abate or like whatever happens for some time as we deal with the secondary effects. So if you need that, We've got over 200 around the world that we can help you with. I might even be a fit for you. Maybe you like the sound of my voice. Well, whatever it is, we will do our best to help you. All those tools, that kind of stuff are for scalingcoach.com we do regular public workshops on Scaling up, which include, and we use liberally the Gallup tools in our world. And so scalingcoach.com is where you find out all the back stuff and then get all the free tools. We'll even give you a copy of the book there for free if you haven't yet read it and you'd like to do just pay the shipping and handling. We'll ship it anywhere in the world, I think. And then of course, we've got workshops anyway. So, Dean Jones, welcome to the show, Dean. Dean and I go back like it's about 18 years now that we first met. I did a leadership class with Dean years ago. He walked to the front of the room. I'm like, awesome. I want to learn from this guy. He's willing to generate and be entertaining and be valuable and like find the right blend of that and be generous with his energy. And I was like, so, guys, you should know Dean really mentored me in the transition from CEO to Coach. And so at least some of my impact in the world with many, many thousands of people now is as a result of the example that you set on that morning.

You're very, very kind. You're very generous in saying that. You are a great CEO and you're a great coach. And so I. You know, I really appreciate it. You've always been very kind with me and very generous in letting me contribute to you in the ways that I have. I'm laughing because, you know, when my colleagues in the UK make fun of Americans, they always say that we say awesome. A lot. Of Americans always starts with awesome. So I'm laughing because it is actually a word I use a lot. So.

Which makes me quintessentially American and also puts us from a particular generation. Right. Like, you don't open with fire or lit. You don't agree by saying, bet.

I think we are Californians of a particular generation because we also still call everybody dude. And I don't think that. I don't think that's what the kids are doing anymore.

So after months, I finally spent two nights in a hotel. The last. In two different hotels the last two weeks.

Wow, that's great.

Right? And for months, I've been home. We were talking. We both travel a lot, working with people around the world. And, like, I haven't been on an airplane since March.

Yeah.

But I have been now two nights in a hotel. So we drove down the coast to take my daughter back to a new apartment in la. She's been living down in la, and she came out to shelter for a little while. Now she's sort of going back in. She works in kind of a safe environment. And so we took her down, but that meant we were gonna spend Father's Day weekend kind of driving down. So we drove down and we spent a night in a hotel.

It was weird.

And I'm really glad I had points. Cause if I'd paid cash for that place, I'd have been livid. Well, it's just like, nothing, right? No restaurants open. The pools aren't open, whatever. But the resort fee was still there on my bill, so I used some points. We stayed at this beautiful place called the Bacara down in Santa Barbara. Ye. Uh, it's just weird. Like, so they had some room service. And then. And then we drove on down. We stayed in west la, and. And then we drove quickly back home. But it was uncomfortable, surreal. Like, you know, it was just weird. And I'm like, oh, I don't. I. I didn't Totally feel at home and at ease. I mean they did their best to make it nice, but like I'm not super comfortable being hotels right now.

Yeah, I think it's interesting and we were talking about this before we started here this morning or today, but I don't know if I'll get on a plane. And that's really, you know, it's hard to think about that right now. And going from as I know you were as well, traveling all the time and traveling and comfortably like traveling all over the world to going to. Hey, you know, like, I don't think I'm going to be on a plane this year. And I also think to some degree when I look at it, everything that I'm reading, everything that I'm seeing, the research that I see around it, you know, for the foreseeable future, this is the way it's going to be. And I think the thing that you said at the beginning of the broadcast here, Bill, I think is right on, is that I think that there's some fundamental shifts that organizations are going to be making out of this that are really going to change the way we all work. I think organizations right now, if you look at lots of organizations, lots of organizational leaders, they're really questioning all the dollars that they spent on travel. I think there's lots of companies that are. Trips to see one client are probably off the table for a long, long.

Time in the future. Right. You know, I have a lot that are itching to go back and we're just starting to plan like hybrid events where we use a mix of online tools that we're now have like rapidly gotten very good at with a little bit of in person stuff and in outdoor settings. Yeah. Like all apart outside. But we could like see each other and, and then we'll be computers also. And so it's a work in progress.

It really is. I think we're all grappling with it. The thing that I think is cool is how this has been, you know, if there is something that's cool about a global pandemic, let me be clear, you know, let's just make sure we've.

Got the right content. The silver lining.

Yeah. If there's a benefit, as I think it's been a catalyst for a lot of the changes that needed to happen, that people being, you know, what this has, what this means is that we know that remote work works and we know that using platforms like the one we're using currently using platforms like this to connect really make a difference. Yes. We also it's interesting as organizations go back, it'll be interesting to see how quickly people want to go back to the office. We know that for a lot of people who are parents, once the childcare thing gets addressed, once we know our kids going back to school in the fall and like that, it'll be interesting to see for a lot of parents this actually works and they're able to adjust their schedule to make this work. So it'll be interesting to see how this evolves going forward and how this really shapes the way that we work.

It's for sure a little disorienting and weird.

Yeah. Yes, it is.

So we didn't say at the top. Dean is principal architect of Gallup's global client learning strategy and works with companies all over the world on their key business issues. He works in organizational development and performance and learning development, productivity, and over all of these kinds of things, working with Gallup's clients. And there's a big range the Gallup organization, it's not just a few tools, right?

Yeah. And certainly I don't. I would say, yeah, we do as an organization, we cover a lot of ground. We have a. Within the organization. Fundamentally, as we think about the world, we think about the world in terms of providing advice, analytics and learning. So we really try to be at work on some of the world's biggest problems. I will tell you that the area really inside Gallup, my role is really to function as a senior learning expert. So the work that I'm doing really is more narrow than all that I'm really thinking about every day. How do people develop and how do organizations address development in really meaningful ways. And a lot of that is really fueled by the research that we do. We do some of the world most compelling research. It sounds a little breathless to say that, but some of the research that we do is just being done by no other organization. And some of the insights we've generated really, really reshaped the way leaders think about the world. So it's cool to be in proximity to all that and also to be able to leverage that to help really shape organizations. So a lot of the work I do is around that. I'm directly responsible for our learning strategies and organizations. So that's the day to day work that I do.

That's really great. I think it's a privilege to be around an organization that has the mix of deep research with the other work that you do because too often it's like, well, this is what we sort of see and think and we read A couple articles and then we make big pronouncements and we add our own trademark terms to them and we're like, hey, seems to be working for that guy.

Exactly, exactly. And then there's no other.

Of validity. It's just kind of, well, let's try.

It is one of those things. And I think it, for us, I think it's one of the things that's really exciting is that when we're talking to someone about what they should do in their organization or how they should see the world or how they should. How we're influencing that organization strategy, it's not just somebody's good idea. It's not just a popular concept. It is really based on the research that we've done and that we're doing. And so everything's really grounded in empirical research. And so I think that makes it. I think that makes us certainly more trustworthy. And there's just a level of integrity we've got. We also are honestly quite cautious about not making those kind of pronouncements, not just saying, not making kind of shoot from the hip pronouncements that aren't based in really good solid research.

So we opened with. And the reason I thought it was great for our conversation to start with how our lives are impacted is because everybody's seeing things. And kind of similar. I was talking with a CEO recently and he was talking about how ground down he is by the pace and the nature of endless zoom meetings and phone calls and things like that, and not actually getting together with people and having a breakfast or taking a walk or having a face to face. And his first thought he didn't really think about like everybody else is in the same boat. Right?

Right.

I'm like, you actually should maybe acknowledge that to your team because you guys are probably all kind of struggling with that and probably make a big difference for you to talk about how it makes you feel. And they won't all feel the same way, but you'll open up the possibility of people talking about it and then grappling together with how to make it better and more survivable, productive, and satisf. Talk to us about what are you seeing? How is the workplace changing around the world and what are some of these things that you're seeing that's so important? So let's. I think that's where we should focus.

On, kind of dig in. Yeah. Let me talk about this in two ways. I'd like to talk about, you know, to your point, what we're seeing currently. And then I'D like to be able to then take a step back and talk about how we see that in the context of how the workplace is changing and how the workforce particularly is changing. So just in terms of what we're seeing right now, it's very, very interesting. One of the things that we measure, and we've been measuring now for several decades is employee engagement, is how engaged are employees inside of an organization. We're the ones that coined the term employee engagement. Most people don't recognize that that's a term that we actually coined it, and we coined it at the time some 20 some years ago to be able to distinguish it from employee satisfaction. And so we've got a unique perspective because we've been measuring it longer than anybody else, and we've been measuring it with roughly the same framework for longer than anybody else. So what it allows us to do is to be able to see changes. And it's interesting, most people, and I will tell you, when this thing hit, as we were talking to clients and people were asking us, does this mean that engagement in my organization is going to fall apart? And in fact, the interesting thing about employee engagement is it's typically not affected by macro level crises like this one. So that's kind of a weird thing to say. Like if we look back and we look at the last recession, we look at all the different, the different pandemics, the SARS crisis, we look at these kind of macro level crises, what we can see is it doesn't fundamentally change on a macro level engagement. Macro level engagement doesn't tend to spike or dip based on these kind of crises. At a micro level, there are fluctuations. And that anybody that has worked on employee engagement inside their organization, if you're a leader or an HR professional, or a manager or a learning leader inside of an organization, you've worked on engagement, you know that you've really got to invest in that every single day. You really have to be somebody who's, who's paying attention to that.

Will you break down and distinguish then first the difference between satisfaction engagement? Because I think it's in the background. There's probably people making assumptions.

Yeah, no, that's a really, really great question, Bill. Employee engagement is really a measure of an employee's sort of psychological commitment to the organization. And really what it measures, you know, if you talk to our chief scientist, it really measures kind of two components, passion or enthusiasm and involvement. Right. So how passionate or enthusiastic is somebody and how involved and committed are they? And those kind of two things put together is really? What. And when we're thinking about that kind of psychological commitment, we're thinking about that different than someone just merely being satisfied with their job. You know, I always used to joke that, you know, if you're an employee and you say, hey, you know, I'm very satisfied with my work. They don't work me too hard. You know, they don't ask much to me. I get to sit near the window. It's great. I'm very satisfied. Right. That's different than somebody that says, gosh, I have tremendous passion around the work that I'm doing. And it really lights me up. And, you know, I can't wait to get. Get to work on a Monday. Because for me, my work really is an expression of who I am. Those are fundamentally different. And what we know is the thing that.

Well, you know, hang on, let me.

Let me bring that to life a.

Little bit with one of our client examples. So I was working with. I work with a lot of fair amount of tech. I'm not exclusive to tech, but I work with a fair amount of tech because my background and where we are.

Sure.

And a fair amount of tech and companies that are really up to something. Right. You don't hire me and spend the money and do the time of the kind of work we do. If you're not really out to accomplish something, so you want to dominate your category globally or in your region or something like that, or you want to do something completely new, or you're trying to hit, like, you know, some major, major milestone. A billion, Half a billion. There's something like a substantial goal that you want to get up. So there you are engaged in this. And I'm working with one of these kinds of companies, tech sector business, that kind of thing. And we're taking a break, and I always get feedback from my assistant. So I always have an assistant in our session. And they'll go like this to me in the back of the rank, because I can become serious and not smile. They'll give me time cues like, hey, you're 10 minutes behind, or, you know, things like that. So. So I'm getting feedback from them, and I'm always checking, okay, how's it going? And they'll tell me, oh, yeah, that guy in the corner is asleep, or, you know, or you're losing him, or. So I'm getting feedback. So we're on the break, and she's run off and gotten some stuff in the break room. And she comes back and she's giving me a little. She's like this place is so funny. Like you could tell those leaders are completely lit up by this whole thing. But as I'm hearing people in the break room and they don't realize who I am and what I'm doing, they're just complaining about the quality of snacks at this company and one is sharing how her sister works for a place that has much better snacks. And they're like, yeah. And then they're talking about all the other little amenities and the kind of stand up desks they have and like just this all little like BS stuff. And you know, you think back to like the dot com days and how much grief they got for air on chairs and foosball tables and things like that. But that still things like has been going on now, I don't know today as much. But that piece, when I hear satisfaction, satisfaction I hear that like do you have less to complain about? Is it cushy? Do they have dry cleaning and daycare and all that kind of nonsense that you get from like the really, really biggest companies? And I just, it always bugs me, right? Yeah, it's such nonsense. And I have another client who's just talking to me about like the motivation of the people because this company's poised for a big exit. And in all the people that were there now are going to participate in that exit because they're doing something on a global scale. And I'm like, it's really cool, but if you don't interrupt that conversation, then every fluctuation will have them be engaged, disengaged, engaged. But if you have them focused on what you're doing, that will create that event which is creating this global standard, then people will be in it no matter what. And you're going to like, we may win, we may have that, the world may implode, but you'll do the work that you're proud of like for the rest of your life. Something that really matters. Right? So that distinguishing, like wait, wait, don't let people get too down that road of money. That could or could not happen. And you want it, I want it to happen. But you know, I don't know. That's immediately the contrast of those things is like vividly clear to me completely.

And I think there were, you point out, a lot of organizations were trying to figure out how do we engage people in a meaningful way. And they were doing it in ways, you know, to your point of, you know, it was foosball tables and break rooms and lunches. They were trying that in some ways was sort of like, hey, we're going to bribe our way to engagement. And as opposed to that, we know that fundamentally engagement is driven by a finite number of things that are more substantive. It starts with people knowing what's expected of them. It starts with people having the materials and equipment to do their job. Right. One of the things we know that's most powerful is that people can say, hey, every day I have the opportunity to do what I do best. And so we know there's a set of things that actually legitimately create engagement. And that when leaders and managers and organizations focus on those things, they create a culture that is far superior to just buying people ping pong tables. And so it's incredibly powerful.

You know what's interesting and a reminder to me on that, so I naturally think about the purpose or the why of the business, the overall kind of never finished thing that's beyond even the bhag. And that's great, except if I don't know what my job is, I don't see that I matter. I don't have the tools to get my job done, then it doesn't matter. If I think the purpose is really great, it's like great, but there's not a place for me there. But if I see that I know who I am, what my role is, that it actually matters and that I can do it and then I'm supported to do it, then I have that like the why is really clear and I see my part of it. Right?

Yes, exactly. The thing that we know, two points on that, Bill. One of the things that we know through our research is one is, you know, sometimes people see engagement as purely just a cultural initiative in the organization. Hey, we're going to improve morale and. Or if people are going to feel better, which by the way is not to be underestimated. You know what I mean? Having people feel better at work, not to be underestimated, right?

Yeah.

But the piece that's so powerful about employee engagement to your point is that one is when it's measured correctly, it's predictive of performance. So that you know that when you go to work on employee engagement and you increase employee engagement, it's predictive of the performance you've got in business. Most of the measures are lagging measures. We're looking at the financial performance last quarter, right? We're looking at what the margin was last quarter as opposed to looking at measures that are predictive measures. And engagement when measured correctly is a predictive measure. The other piece that's so important is there are Strong correlations with business outcomes. So productivity, profitability, employee retention, customer retention. There are a whole host quality of significant measures that when you're measuring engagement accurately, you can see the direct tie between engagement and those business outcomes. And in fact great leaders and managers are using then engagement as they go to work on engagement. They're using it to drive the business forward.

Yeah. You know it's funny, one of my friends and former clients, this guy named Mike Simonson, I'll name him because this is cool, this is public what I'm going to say. Sometimes it's anonymous, right. This company, in this sector, they made a jillion dollars, Right. But in this case, so Mike, I worked with Mike a couple years ago. I did some stuff with his company, but he always struggled with this like this objective goal setting, planning kind of thing. It just didn't feel it didn't work for him, like psychologically. Right. And he sort of struggled in and out of it and he didn't kind of find his passion around it. But he recently took it from another angle. That kind of speaks to what you said. And he said, I'm going to focus on like love and affinity and fulfillment. And he got all fascinated with, you know, oxytocin and reducing cortisol and things like that. And what are the activities that manage kind of those brain chemical levels. And so he focused on like generating love and fulfillment and connection in his workplace for like a whole year. And he produced his best year ever.

Yeah.

You know, like you should just feel like we're, it's great now. You know, they're in a particular category of business. They have a tech oriented business that produces some financial information for the real estate industry. But like just bringing love and connection. Yeah. And affinity is massive. Right.

Yeah, we know. You know, it's funny, we know that one of the key things we ask when we survey employees about employee engagement, about their engagement levels, right. We ask people, do you have a best friend at work?

Yeah.

And in fact it's interesting as we work with clients, that single question is probably one of the most controversial for us because people are always pushed back. And honestly we've had a lot of people in the tech sector particularly who've pushed back on that question. You know, they've said, gosh, I don't want people to have a best friend at work. I want them competing with each other.

Right.

But one of the things that we know is that there's incredibly powerful correlations between asking that question and high, strong agreement with that question and high levels of Engagement in the organization. We know, in fact, that people that can say that they've got a best friend at work, that their team is more like their work group is more likely to be engaged. We also know that for individuals who would say they've got at least three best friends at work, they're more likely to have high quality of life. So when you look at the data, having those powerful connections on the team is part of, not exclusively, but part of what drives performance. So building, helping people foster those connections and build those connections are so important.

So it's interesting. Really, really interesting. So engagement and the importance of that has gone up and we're clear now?

Yeah. One of the things that, if you look at what's happening this time, one of the things you see is engagement is fairly stable. The other thing that you see is that wellbeing has really plummeted. So, well, being, particularly in the United States here, has really plummeted. And one of the things. So there's this weird dichotomy before pandemic.

Or as a result of pandemic.

As a result of the pandemic.

Right.

What you can see is you get this weird dichotomy where engagement may not necessarily be lower, but certainly people are struggling with their wellbeing. And there's this kind of strange dichotomy. And what we've known as we go through this, what is interesting is we've looked at what's happening for organizations as they navigate through this time. In fact, I just did a webinar about this the other day is we know as organizations kind of go through this time, one of the things that we know is increases your probability of above average performance during a crisis like this and following a crisis like this is have you created a culture of engagement in your organization? So it's not just that it's predictive of success. We also know that it helps with what we describe as resiliency or business resiliency, your ability to navigate this kind of crisis and be able to emerge from it after the crisis with above average performance. In fact, we see that it's so interesting if you see people in the top two quartiles of our engagement database that the higher their levels of engagement in the organization, the greater the increase in above average performance following a crisis like this. And you see the inverse in the lower part of the database, right. You see organizations that have lower than average engagement levels are more likely to emerge with below average performance. So one of the things that sort of insulates organizations during a Time like this is really focusing on engagement. And probably the biggest question that we get as we've kind of presented this research and it's interesting research and part of why it's so interesting during this time is we've got consistent measures to be able to watch it over time. But there's lots of organizations will say, hey, does that mean it's too late? If I haven't been focusing on this or I haven't invested in this at all, does this mean that's too late? And we would always say, hey, it's never too late. It's never too late to be working on building engagement in your culture.

And.

Investing in that area.

So engagement is still important, clearly important. What about. And I want to come back to that. What about the well being side of it? What do you need to do? What's the company's need to deal with that that you say is more impaired?

Yeah, well, it's an interesting thing. I would say that we for. I'm looking for the book here, but a number of years ago, we did a significant amount of research around wellbeing and really started to look at well being holistically. I think many organizations, when they look at well being, they're looking at well being mostly through lens of physical well being. And one of the things that we could see is that there were a set of dimensions around wellbeing that influenced wellbeing. Not just physical wellbeing, but social wellbeing, community wellbeing, career wellbeing, financial wellbeing and so on. And that what we could see was that wellbeing became incredibly predictive of kind of on a macro level of some of the crises that you see in the world. One of the things that we do at Gallup was we ask a set of well being questions globally to be able to capture well being and report on well being on a regular basis. One of the exciting pieces of work that we do around the world is to really have a sense of what is the pulse of the world and what is the well being of the world.

And you say that's dropped in the U.S. in what? In any particular dimension or area?

No, just overall as we look. One of the key questions that we use. I'll give you this as an example. One of the key questions that we use to be able to talk about wellbeing is something, it's called the Cantrell. I'm gonna blow this here, but it's called the Cantrell Self Anchoring Scale. And yeah, it's exactly wasn't he in the office? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But, you know, it's an interesting question because it's designed to kind of have help, kind of capture, hey, where are you now? And where do you think you'll be? The cantrilla C A N T R I L I'm not a PhD researcher, so I may blow this a little bit, but the question essentially goes. Imagine a ladder with steps that are numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top.

Right.

The top represents the best possible life that you have. The bottom is your worst possible life. What step of the ladder do you think you're on? On? And where do you see yourself in a year or five years from now? It's an interesting thing, but just simply asking that question, it's not the only question we use to measure wellbeing, but simply asking that question, it helps people to be able to kind of anchor, okay, where am I now?

Right.

And where do I think I'll be? And we know certainly if people are, roughly Speaking, at about a 7 and above on that scale, that they're in a category that we would describe as thrive. Right?

Yeah.

And so it's also, by the way, a question that many of our executive coaches use in their coaching where they'll say, hey, gosh, you know, if you look at. Look at where you are right now in terms of your success as a leader, in terms of your effectiveness at leader, what. Where are you now? Where would you like to be? And what do you think is between you and that next rung or that next couple? Right. So it's a way of helping people to be able to anchor.

Right. So when I think about that and what I'm hearing now, so I don't actually talk to that many people. I broadcast out to an awful lot of people, then I touch base with a few, but they're in turn connected to a lot of people. So I do get kind of a overall pulse from really all over the world every month or every quarter. And it's not a formal thing, but I am hearing a mix of stress. Like, it's hard in all different ways. Right. Oh, I've got the kid. I can't get any focus at work because the kids are here and this home study is a nightmare and they're not really taking care of. It's not really going well. And then I hear anxiety about what might come, well, okay, we're okay. We've settled into something now, but is it going to really implode? When are the foreclosures and the evictions and the defaults going to happen. And then what will. Like, what are the sec. What's coming is that secondary kind of thing. So stress about managing stuff, except a certain amount of that is kind of settled in now for some, especially the kind of people that I'm talking to. And then some anxiety about what's still to come.

Yeah, of course. Of course. One of the things we measure is, and that we have been measuring during this time, particularly during this crisis, is the level of worry, stress, and loneliness that employees are experiencing.

Yeah.

And it is fascinating for me, it is one of the key things that can help alleviate that is regular feedback from a man.

Yeah.

As you look and you look at the data that says that looks at. First of all, the levels of worry, stress and loneliness are off the charts. So they are very, very high, relatively speaking. So if you look at this and this data, by the way, we have a section@gallup.com that's all the research we've done during this Covid crisis. So if you're interested in this, you can go to gallup.com, all that research is available. We've written articles about it. So there's a whole trove of research that's raised there. But the levels of worry, stress and loneliness are just incredibly high.

Right.

And what's fascinating for me is it reinforces the thing that we've been talking about, which is the importance of a manager in organizations, that one of the things you can see, and you can see it in a really compelling way, is that when employees are talking to their manager on a weekly basis, that the levels of worry, stress and loneliness decrease significantly, significantly, and the levels of engagement increase. And we know that in many cases, engagement is the thing that, as we've looked at the research, engagement is the thing that helps employees to be able to bounce back from a crisis like this. And it's interesting. The question that we've asked more than anything else is, do you have weekly feedback from your manager or is your manager keeping you informed about what's going on with the organization? Literally, it's not just, hey, do I have a manager and I'm connected to my manager, but on a weekly basis am I hearing from my manager and getting feedback? We know that if that's happening, I'm much less likely to experience high levels of worry, stress and loneliness. I would tell you also, for leaders, it reinforces the value of having a coach, the work that you do. Bill, I think having, you know, in many cases, leaders don't have a man, right? And particularly if you're an entrepreneur, you don't have a manager, but if you've got a coach, you've got to have somebody who's that sounding board that is going to help you to be able to navigate that. And we know one of the big things we've been talking about is the importance of managers assuming a coaching role, which is we're working with organizations all over the world to help their managers to be more like a coach.

So there's a couple of great things I think that I hear and to share from that. So I don't know. Last month I was doing one. So I do some stuff in depth with whole leadership teams, which is probably the bulk of the work. And then I do another fair amount with CEO Entrepreneur only. And I was doing one of our quarterly CEO Entrepreneur sessions. And everybody's on like this, right? They're on like a Zoom call. And they're all in different places and different backgrounds and, and things like that. And this. God, I forget if it was in the middle of it anyway, this woman just breaks down and she says, this is the first time in two months that anyone's been there for me. She said, I've been alone in this apartment in New York City for the last two months, taking care of everyone, our clients, my team, all that stuff all remotely, all over Zoom and phone and things like that, alone in an apartment in a city that, you know, that was. It was quite a bit more urgent in New York a month ago. And she just wept. I'm like, it's okay. Like, okay, you got a minute? There's. This is a generous group. Just be with it for a second. It's good. I got you. And she.

And then, you know that just let.

Like more of it out. Oh, yeah. And we've been saying since the beginning.

Look, if you done a.

If you do a daily huddle, add a second update. If you don't do any huddle, add one. Do regular check ins with your people. And I had many CEOs who said to me, but I don't have a plan yet. I'm like, it doesn't matter. You could say that. You could say, I don't have a plan. We're gonna figure this out together. We are. You guys are the best. I'm so grateful to have you. Like, we'll get through this. I'm here and I'm here for you. Right? Your job as the leader is not to have all the answers of the plan. It's simply to Lead, like look, I lead the team, I lead the cause. That's more of a stand and a commitment and a contribution than almost anything else. Like the team will figure out the plan so that getting in communication and connecting and sharing with people and just like embracing the state of the emotional state or whatever people are dealing with. Right, that's right.

That's right. And I think you know, for we know that when a manager functions as a coach for employees in the organization or when a leader has someone who's able to provide that kind of continuity, we know that there's all kinds of good things accrue. Right. You're more engaged, you're more likely to perform at a higher level. We know that there's this particular focus around that. But. But yeah, it's absolutely critical.

The other thing that I think I hear. So that's unlike the well being thing, like being in communication, embracing whatever's there, giving people room to move it. People are actually capable. I don't generally think that you have to so much fix things for them is just be give room for things like embrace what's going on and connect. And the second part is, is transferring whatever they used to do in the world of engagement and culture now to a new style of work. So if your company was always remote working, it's not been a big issue. But if you are used to everybody seeing everybody and having all these traditions and little touches that you maybe don't even think about, now you're just online and your dashboards on all and your meetings aren't online. You can't just bump into each other. Now you're trying to figure out like, how do I bring that engagement? Like figuring out how to transfer your culture and make it yours and bring it to life online. Is it serious? Is it playful, is it cerebral? Like what, what are the forms and how have you moved them from a physical to a remote kind of thing in person versus remote.

Yeah, I think it's interesting again, if you look at the research that's done, one of the things that's really interesting is that prior to all of this, if you worked in an office, you were much more likely to have a more solid connection with your manager. You are much more likely to have regular feedback, weekly feedback from your manager. If you didn't, if you worked from home, you were much less likely to be able to have that connection or that regular feedback. And so going into this, managers weren't set up really in a really compelling way to manage remote workers in the same way that they managed folks that were in the office. And so to your point about it wasn't a capacity that managers necessarily had or were focused on time.

Right.

And I will tell you, during this time, and you see this in the literature, gosh, there just wasn't the same sensitivity to the kind of social isolation, the kind of loneliness, the kind of stress that working from home can provide. It's interesting for us because the right blend is, as you look at the data, you see that there's that stress when there's no work from home. You also see that stress when it's 100% work from home. That's a different kind of bag of. It's that kind of blend in the middle that tends to be there. 10 where there's flexibility around that, where there tends to be kind of the healthiest balance. The thing I'll tell you that we know, we know that there's three kind of core principles that if managers are employing those core principles around coaching people, that they're more likely to be effective. And it's something we've written about a lot. We know that the thing that we, we did a study where we started to look at what were the fundamental needs that employees had from their manager.

Right.

And we've looked at this through a couple different lenses that if you read our strengths based leadership book, we were talking about what do leaders need? What do people followers need from leaders?

Right. Yeah.

What are the things that people need from leaders? This is a little different. This is really what do people need from their immediate manager? And we really found four things that were really the critical things that employees needed from their managers. One was job clarity and priorities. One was ongoing feedback and communication. The third was accountability. Right. And the fourth was opportunities to learn and grow. And I will tell you, those first three are really the things that we know great managers know how to address. And they know how to address them in a way that where they've got a solid relationship with somebody, they're coaching somebody. It's in the context of a coaching relationship. They know how to create clarity. They know how to establish expectations in a way that's really powerful. They know how to continually coach someone. And we know that again, that coaching, you know, believe it or not, I mean, they're still in this day and age, people that, that only talk to their manager twice a year. You know, it's shocking. One of the Statistics is that 19% of employees in the US only receive feedback from their manager once a year. That's one in five employees only receive feedback from their manager once a year. It's almost a crime, Right? So we know that that second thing is that you're a manager that continually coaches people. And the third is, is that you create accountability. You know, how to motivate people. You know, and we know particularly people that are high performers, they want that kind of accountability. They want somebody who's going to sit and count up what they did and then provide the kind of recognition and support so they can continue to perform at a high level. The fourth thing I think. Let me say this, Bill. The fourth thing I think is probably the most important, and it's the thing that I think most organizations right now don't at, is that the number one thing that people are looking for when joining an organization and when staying with an organization is will there be opportunities to learn and grow in that organization? It used to be, and this is one of the ways that the workplace has just really fundamentally changed. It used to be that I went someplace else and got my development. You know, I went to college and grad school or trade school or post grad and got my development. And then I brought that to the workplace and was applying that in the workplace. The workforce looks at. The expectation around this has changed. The workforce looks at organizations through a different lens now. They're looking at the organization to say, can I be developed inside this organization? Are there opportunities for me to be developed? How will they advance who I am? Will I learn more about my inherent talents and be able to develop those into strengths in the work I do there? And organizations that are smart have shifted around this. So their value proposition to employees, the centerpiece of it is development. I'll go, if you come here, you will be developed. You will have opportunities to make a meaningful difference. You will grow as a function of being in our organization. And we know, you know, sometimes I think people want to blame millennials for this, right? But it really is not just limited to that generation. It's really all generations we know across the board. It is really a key thing in terms of people selecting, hey, where am I going to work? And it's a key thing in terms of retaining employees. And let me say one more thing that I think in the time that we're in, if this continues to perpetuate where everyone's working remotely, that we are, you know, in order to attract top talent, you know, you can. You can work for any firm in the world now on Zoom, you know what I mean?

It's like depending on your job job.

Depending on your job Right, Yeah, yeah, true, true. But you know, it's going to be interesting, you know, is that people are going to have more choices.

Yeah, yeah. And it's probably flipped back like with the unemployment, what it is, the companies that haven't navigated, the companies that go out will cut loose some people so there will be more people to compete with. So you're as an employee, the job is as an employer, you're going to have some more people and they're going to be some quality people in that mix. It's not just everybody who was a C player in everything got cut loose. Right? Yeah. So let me just underscore a couple of things you said. So first of all, in reference to the things that our listeners will know, job scorecard is the first piece. Do I know what my job is? What winning looks like? Is it clear, discreet, is it objective like that? So job scorecard is the first thing that we do there. Then we teach people and train people to do one on one every two weeks is our recommended cadence. So you've got a one on one with your supervisor every two weeks and as a supervisor leader, with your subordinates or with your team if you don't like that other language. Right. With your team every two weeks and you're covering about half the people every other week and then every now and then you miss one, fine. But you've got them like six touch points in a quarter and you're getting a lot of little feedback. And we're not saving up for that like big annual review where you find out not how you're doing but whether or not you're going to get a raise. And that whole world just sucks. Nobody thinks it does and people do it in a formulaic way that is a disaster. So then one of the most popular exercises that we ever do and again, I mean I could do it a couple times a year with teams and they still like of it is practical coaching skills. So we say everybody pick a challenge that you've got. So it's not like a mock or role play where we're talking about something hypothetical. No, I share my challenge with you and then you coach me and then we flip and then you coach me and we reverse it and then all the while somebody else observes. So we get to see it from recipient, from giver of coaching and then observing the interaction three ways. And we have people coach each other on something and they listen for what's the issue and what's the core challenge. And they use questions to get the person to think for themselves and they're offering almost no advice or they're resisting the temptation to offer advice and then they're helping the person to pick an area of focus and choose what they're going to do and then concluding, right, so that's kind of the flow, but bringing that into that one on one. So the coaching style is getting the person to think for themselves brings that those first two things that you talked about, right? And then third one was the accountability piece. And really if you don't have a regular cadence of meetings, a set of dashboards, if you're not setting priorities and objectives collectively all the time using either our priority system or OKR or some equivalent, then there's not really going to be a lot of accountability if you don't have a regular agenda for your weekly team meetings, daily huddles and things like that. So there's a look back to what gets done then what happens in the quarterly, annual, semiannual, whatever kind of planning sessions you've done to the day to day is completely like, I don't know, maybe something happened, maybe didn't. We went and did that thing, we put some paper in a binder and there it was. And then we look back at it next year and oh, look at that, we accomplished a half, you know, a couple of the things by accident, right? But when you bring that accountability that we're all looking and tracking on stuff on a regular basis, then, right, you're getting those first three things and the last piece is that, that look for development. And I think what I heard in that that's really critical is development is not merely we offer a range of professional education, right? It's the mix of training, learning, coaching and growth oriented opportunities within the company. So that I can see I'm part of something, there's room to grow in whatever way. Maybe I become a better subject matter expert, maybe I become more of a leader. It's something there's a path for me to develop as a human being in my career. Like that kind of thing that I think is so, so critical, especially as we see like my two kids are in their early 20s, neither one is a college graduate, they're both now highly successful. My daughter's work works with the leading artists around the world. She does all kinds, she's a photographer, creative artist, that kind of thing. And she does work related to musicians and other performers, the top names of like all the best folks out there that you're hearing on the radio and streaming and all, all that she's worked with Them, right? And she was all proud. She like had this new book, this book came up about an artist who rose and then died tragically who she was very, very close to. And like her photos and her quotes are all through this book about this artist and his meteoric rise. And then my son has raised a gajillion dollars and started two teams now and already had a couple of failures and growth things and he's on to the next thing. And like stunning, but all of it self directed. And I think we're seeing again and again like some of the biggest, most exciting companies no longer require an MBA from a major Ivy League thing. They no longer encourage it or support it for the most part. They're like, it's going to come in lots of non traditional ways, right. And we're seeing it and I especially notice it there with the kids. The kids, right. They're adults now. But you know, at the early stage my son taught himself calculus long before it came up in school. So that same thing, like the learning's gonna be non traditional but the development has got to be part of the whole culture.

That's right. That's right. And one of the things that we see is that learning and development have changed fundamentally and are changing fundamentally that we're. That one is that it used to be that when you thought about learning, learning was sort of this thing that was global. You know, like the company decided what you needed to learn. It was event based. You went to a formal event to be able to go get those things. Your job was to participate and master the things that were being taught. We now know that learning and development has really shifted. Learning is really on demand now. Now agile organizations want kind of flexible learning, right. And we also know that it's highly. Right now it's really much more learner centric. I decide what I want to learn and when I want to learn it. And it tends to. What's great about it is the integration into behavior is higher because the learning and development is happening much closer to where performance is happening, happening. I'm going to go do this, I want to go learn about it. So I want my learning to happen right now and it's relevant to the specific thing that I'm working on. It also tends to be more informal. So it's not this kind of formal event based thing like I'm going to go do this class. It's really about being able to consume the learning, whether it's micro learning or whether it's on demand learning. But I'm able to consume the learning in a much more informal way that's much more personal. And we also see in organizations, I mean, honestly, the best coach for every employee is a manager, so that we know learning should be happening locally and is most meaningful when it happens locally and the manager is there connected to performance. So the best performance coach for an employee is a great manager. And so it's why it's so critical to have managers that are equipped to be able to coach coach people.

So before we talk about some of the resources and where to go, let me just say if this is helpful to you and you can help us out in turn by liking it, subscribing it, passing it along to somebody else, if there's an aspect of it you're particularly digging on and you want to send us a note, send us an email to infocalingcoach.com Vern Harnish is the creator and author of the Scaling Up Framework that was originally the Rockefeller Habits. Our show is produced by Lucy Summers, the audio is edited by Albert Burge at podfly Productions, and our show notes are compiled by Ann Kodina and proofread by Tim McGowan. Now, if you want to get more of this, you want to register for one of our workshops, you want some of the free tools, any of that stuff, you'll go to scalingcoach.com where we have this and more. And if you want more stuff from Dean and the Gallup organization, enlarge some of the studies that we're referencing, some of the freely available. There's an awful lot of stuff available there@gallup.com, right?

Correct.

Thanks again to everyone for listening. Thanks, Dean, for joining us and sharing kind of what's going on in the world of well being, engagement and then the development of our teams. I think it's been super helpful. Thanks again everyone for listening. Keep scaring. Scaling Up.