How to Create a Culture of Accountability w/Robin Daniels

Welcome to Leadership Development News, Profiles and Practices of Top Performers. Leaders are the heartbeat of any organization. Let Kathy Greenberg and Relly Nadler share with you the pathway to becoming a top leader in your organization. Now, here are your hosts, Dr. Greenberg and Dr. Nadler.

Welcome to Leadership Development News, Profiles and Practices of top performers. I'm Dr. Rowan Adler. Dr. Kathy Greenberg, my co host for as we're entering into the 17th year at the beginning this show now is beginning of 2024. Kathy and I have been working with executives and helping them to perform in the top 10%. As we know from research, this top 10% is a tipping point. If you can, if you can get in the top 10%, you can get your team into the top 10%, you're going to be that much more profitable. People are going to be more engaged at work. And today we're going to talk about how to create a culture of accountability. And we're going to bring on Robin Daniels in a moment. He's got some great things to say. We'll give you his little bio in a moment. And you know, the two things that I would say and Kat will bring you on a second that I would say, every organization, if I come in as a consultant coach, I could predict two things that they always need to focus on. And one is accountability. Two is communication. Those are just common for who we are as humans. And so before we go on and talk a little bit more, Cathy, welcome to the show.

Hey, Relly, it's really great to start the new year with you and I'm very excited to hear more from our guests. I want to wish everybody out there a happy, happy, and a brave and courageous new year. We are jumping in here. Relly, I'm going to leave it to you to take us forward. And of course, everybody knows change happens, life happens. We have to all be resilient and emotionally fit. And that's going to be my word for 2024. Emotional fitness.

Okay, well, thank you for that. You brought in Emotional Brilliance, the title of the book that we had together. So now Emotional Fitness. I like it. Well, let me say a couple things before we bring in Robin. So we know that the start of this new year, there's so much going on in our world and uncertainty and you know, we're war in the Middle east and we still have things going on in Ukraine and people coming back to work. Everything is more now. And that's why this emotional fitness, emotional intelligence, emotional brilliance. How do we get in touch and handle everything that's going on for ourself and for others. And at this time of the year where this show is taking place, a lot of organizations are having their performance reviews. So a couple of companies I'm working with now are right in the middle of that. And performance reviews are really challenging for leaders. They're really challenging for the employee. Some of the current research from our friends at 6 seconds who have just done some research is about 66% of employees are dissatisfied with the reviews. And even a higher amount, 95% of managers are dissatisfied. Now, I think that could be from that they're uncomfortable doing it. They don't necessarily have all the data. And 13% of employees and managers think their system is useful. Only 13%. And CEOs even less, about 6%. And some of what we're going to talk about is accountability with Robin today. But also he's kind of got a system that I think will tap into these performance reviews. And if you're thinking about this, and we'll get more into this, what are some of the solutions? One, it shouldn't only be at the end of the year. They should be more frequent. Two, they're very subjective. And so I think some of the research. Kat, you'd like to get your comment on this. A study of 505,000 managers said, what's the biggest variance in the review? Well, it comes from the rater and their unconscious biases. As much as 62% of the variance comes from the rater. That they maybe not have all the data, they may be winging it. They have certain biases. They may have old thoughts about the individuals. And then only 21% is actually from the person being reviewed. And then also there's very hierarchical. So, Kat, maybe any quick comments before we bring Robin on?

Well, I'm going to make a couple of comments and it will definitely feed into our exciting conversation today with Robin. First, the thing I want to bring to everybody's mind here, and it's also great work by our friends at six seconds and and specifically Josh Friedman and his wife Patty. Is they actually researched in their State of the Heart report, which they've been doing for the last, I believe, eight to ten years, 233,000 people were interviewed. And they're looking at the emotional intelligence levels of the five generations that are currently in our workforce in, you know, across industries. And as you know, I'm focused on the military and law enforcement, although I do have a couple of Fortune 100 CEO clients right now. The genre is showing us that the emotional intelligence of generation Z and Millennials is anywhere from five to 10 points below the Boomers and the Gen Xers. So what that's sharing with us is that some of us have built in our capacity for resilience which creates ownership and responsibility, authenticity and vulnerability for creating psychological safety and others of us have not. And I would say that to the point you are making about the dissatisfaction people are having with their feedback, whether it's an annual feedback or semiannual feedback or just a meeting with your manager to start the year off on a good foot, people don't know how to take the feedback if it's not given to them in a language that they are familiar with. And we know that while we love these younger generations and you have children in that range, Raleigh I have a daughter in that range. They are very sensitive to the way information is shared with them. And so let me make one other comment and that is that in the law enforcement and military community, but specifically law enforcement, the word accountability is a very big buzzword right now. And the reason is because if we treated law enforcement professionals the way we treat physicians, we wouldn't be in this conundrum. And accountability means staying in the system long enough beyond the camera feed, beyond the media mess, beyond the messiness to hear the message. If they can stay in the system long enough to account for the responsibility they took in the moment to perform the way they were trained to, but possibly got side railed by their emotions, we would learn from those mistakes and move forward and train and measure the right things instead of penalizing them and punishing them for things we only see them do in front of a screen, in front of a video, in front of what we know now as social media. So that's my entree into management buzzwords, high performing teams, accountability, responsibility and all the other essential things that we need to embed in our cultures.

Wow, that's great. And I know the work you're doing Kat, is so important and you can see the dilemma that are law enforcement is in around accountability. So let me just introduce Robin and then we'll jump into some of his tips and tools. So Robin is the Chief Business and product officer at LMS365. We'll get some more information about that. He has previously been 3 times the Chief Marketing Officer with more than 20 years experience in marketing and growth leadership roles at Salesforce, Box, LinkedIn, Matterport. We work so a lot of places that we've all heard about. He's done two and a half IPOs, several acquisitions, led companies through Hyper growth to become category leaders. He's also a mentor to several fast growing companies, including Uzard. I'm not sure I'm saying that company right. Customy cutover rhombus system Lapster. And his passion is creating winning teams and to do outstanding and meaningful work. So, Robin, welcome. We want to get your take on accountability and setting up an accountability culture.

Yay.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Congratulations on being on the air for 17 years. I just heard that. That is an amazing display of resilience right there.

This is longer than any marriage I've had. So Raleigh gets the award here.

Amazing.

Amazing, always. Kat always said that. So it used to be a radio show now, now we're a podcast. I mean, nothing's changed. But anyway, so give us a little background about, you know, some of your major influences in your life. I'd like to start with that. And then we got some questions that will zero in on, you know, your specialty around bringing accountability to CEOs and organizations.

No, thank you. First of all, thank you for having me. I mean, some of the data that you were just citing and you're opening here, it's just shocking. It just tells me we have a lot of work to do around engaging people, how we reward them and treat them and we'll get into all that. But just a little bit about me. I mean, I'm originally from Copenhagen, Denmark, but when I was 21, I bought a one way ticket. I bought a one way ticket to California. I didn't have a job, I didn't have a place to stay. I didn't know a single person. I'd actually never been. But I'm a nerd and I wanted to be with all in nerds of the world in Silicon Valley. So I moved over there and I applied to every job I could find. You know, figured I would give myself a few weeks before I would hightail it back to Denmark. And this was at the height of the dot com era. So everybody was hiring, even somebody who was 21 years old with no experience and really no network or really much experience in the world in any way. But I ended up applying for a lot of jobs. I ended up getting some decent offers and ended up taking a job in Silicon Valley there. And this was in February 2000 and a month after I got there because I thought to myself, oh, this wasn't so easy. I ended up getting a job and you know, it was actually easy. And I thought a month after I got there the whole market crashed and I just went, oh my God, what's happening? And that just led to this company didn't make it. And I ended up at another company that didn't make it. So but in the first year was rough because those of you who remember the dot com crash was pretty brutal. A lot of companies going under or having to lay off people. But when you zoom out over the arc of 20 years, more than 20 years, luckily I've had more successes than failures. I ended up being early days at Salesforce, then helping take box public, then was at LinkedIn and I was at WeWork when that was rising, but also when it ended in disaster. And then I recently took a company matterport public. And throughout that time, one of the things that I've just observed up close is, you know, with working for some of these companies is what makes companies function really well and how do the leaders perform and how do they act and what do they do and how can I learn from that? And of course take that with me in my journey. But also, of course, a lot of times I'm sure you've probably seen in your life as well, you oftentimes learn from what not to do. And you see some of these cultures that are toxic or that burns people out or stresses people out or treats people poorly. And I'm on a personal mission now. I would say after a couple of decades of how do I basically create a movement and an environment around making sure that people can show up every day to be the best version of themselves, do the best work of their life. And that has led me to this company, which I'm happy to talk about at some point. But really that's a smaller part around the overall mission of how do you just create a culture of empowerment and performance and motivation that really gets the best out of people. That's, I think, my overall purpose in life at this point.

A noble purpose.

And so to your question.

Well, thank you.

On who has influenced me? I mean, there's been so many. I mean, I feel like I've had a front row seat working for leaders such as Marc Benioff at Salesforce or Aaron Levy over at Fox. He was a phenomenal leader. Adam Newman over at WeWork, you know, he had his strengths and he had his flaws, but even started beforehand. One of the things, I grew up in Denmark to hippie parents and I was introduced to a lot of, I would say, self help and new age thinking at a very early age around how do you basically empower yourself and the people around you? And I was introduced to a lot of People, I think, who really made an influence in my life, who made a difference in my life, including people like Deepak Chopra, Anthony Robbins, people of kind of those, those with those who are really thinking about personal empowerment, but not just talking about, but actually going out and into the world. And so there's been a lot of influences, both I think in my private life, but also certainly in my, my professional life that's kind of led me to where I am today.

Wow, that's beautiful. And we're certainly familiar with him taking workshops with Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. We've had his co author for many of his books, Rudy Tanzi, on our show, who's got some real gems of stuff. So this is exciting. Glad to really have you. So tell us a little bit and again we'll start off general, but then we really want to hear about your.

Company and some of the things.

So just when you think about what's most important for leaders, let's say you mentioned a lot of key people you learned and if you had to say, like, if I'm listening to you and I'm an upcoming leader, what are the three or four things that should be in the front of my mind? It's a great question.

I've classified it this way. And so in the last couple of years, as I've gotten more requests for how do you to lead teams or to just inspire teams, one of the biggest questions I've gotten, and seems like you have it too, probably is how do you create a culture of high performance and how do you create a culture of accountability? And I think it really starts with this. There's kind of five core principles that I line up against. Number one, around clarity. Everything starts with providing crystal clear clarity to the people in your organization, your team, your direct line of reports. Without clarity, it's nearly impossible to show up every day and do great work. I know there's so many of course books and things written about motivation and all the things that go into that. And it's a complex issue. But I think at the end of the day, I think sometimes we can also overcomplicate. I think people in general that I found throughout my journey have high levels of motivation. When they have clarity around what it is that they need to work on, meaning the mission, the purpose of the job, or the company that they're working for, that's number one. And number two, if they feel like they're making a difference towards that purpose and mission every single day, the moment you don't have clarity and you don't really when you question yourself like why am I working on this thing? What is the point of it? Or we show up every day and you're like, I'm not really sure I'm making a difference towards whatever it is that we're working on. Both of those are huge motivation kills. So to come back to I think number one, clarity. Number two.

Go ahead.

Yes, go ahead.

I'm the professional interrupter here because I think we're going to have to go to a quick commercial break. So I'm going to let you finish that after the break. So we're leaving to go to our commercial. Thank you for being with us. Wonderful audience going on 17 years. You're listening to Leadership Development News. And when we come back, we'll continue this engaging conversation with Robin Daniels.

From the boardroom to you, Voice America Business Network.

Ictic like the hard working men and women that get up every day and do their job, the ones that stop at nothing to make sure that it's done right. It's not just an effort, it's not just know how. It's a way of life. ICTECH has been with you since 1998 and with the veteran community being behind you, we understand with quality, with passion, we follow you in this way of life. ICtech for those who get it. ICTECH is a proud sponsor of the Emotional Brilliance Academy where elearning is leading edge.

How can you be brilliant in the moment given the daily challenges you face at work and home? How can you enhance your strengths and limit your weaknesses? Dr. Greenberg and Dr. Nadler's mission is to help people be the best version of themselves at work and at home. With simple, trusted, evidence based tips and tools. They have combined forces applying the powerful science of emotional and social intelligence with the latest in eLearning and AI technology to bring you the Emotional Brilliance Academy. Through the leading Emotional Brilliance Academy programs, they help everyday leaders like you balance your emotions to better connect with people, enhance top performance, lead your teams and your organization. The Emotional Brilliance Academy gives you a common sense approach to enhance your effectiveness and happiness both on and off the job. Sign up for the program, enhance your skills and be your best self. For a free trial go to freetrial.emotionalbrilliance.com that's freetrial.emotionalbrrilliance.com EBA is powered by Fearless Leaders Group, the H2C Leadership foundation and True North Leadership.

When it comes to business, you'll find the experts here. Voice America Business Network. You're listening to leadership development profiles and practices of top performers with your hosts, Dr. Kathy Greenberg and Relly Nadler. We know you have leadership questions for these noted experts. So call us toll free at 1-866-47. That number again is 1-866-472-5790. Now let's get back to the show.

Welcome back to Leadership Development News. We're just digging into talking with Robin Daniels, how to create a culture of accountability. Robin has a website at lms365lms365.com and we'll have them talk a little bit more about that. But Robin, before the break, we asked you about kind of the top things for leaders to know. You said that there's five things. Number one was clarity around the mission and purpose. Number two was making a difference. How am I contributing to that mission and purpose?

So why don't you follow up with.

The other three things that you have?

Let's do it. So, yeah, number one is clarity. Number two is I would call focus or getting things done. The worst is definitely when you get to Friday night. And we've all had these days where you get to Friday night and you feel like, wow, this was such a crazy, busy week. But I don't really know if I made any difference on the big things that matter. So focus is key. Number three, I think accountability. And there's many different ways of accountability. We can, we can certainly dive in there as well, but accountability in terms of accountability to yourself, accountability to your team, accountability to the project that you're working on, and of course, accountability towards the mission of the company itself. And there's many different forms of that as well. But that's number three. The greatest teams in the world have a strong sense of accountability. The fourth principle, I would say, is really around creating a sense of urgency and not fake urgency, but having create a culture where there's a tenaciousness, relentlessness, and wanting to get to an outcome just to see things through to its completion. Not just letting things slip and slide all over until somebody gets pushes you because they're mad about not team assault. I think the best teams in the world that I've ever worked with are the ones that have this kind of relentless sense of urgency and forward momentum in a way that doesn't burn out people. That's not what I'm saying at all. But really kind of wanting to chase things down to deliver progress. And then the fifth principle, which oftentimes gets forgotten, especially in cultures that can be a little hard charging, is this culture of recognition, being able to recognize the work that each individual has done, that the team have done. And sometimes these are big public displays of recognition, but oftentimes I find it's actually the smaller things, saying, thank you, appreciating each other. You know, going on giving somebody a high five or sending a small gift or even an email or text message saying, hey, you did a really great job today. Those are the things that keep people really motivated. Because it raises the bar that in the sense that you want to do better next time and if you don't get that positive feedback and oftentimes people just over time lose a tremendous amount of motivation to actually show up every day and do incredible work.

I love that. You know, Robin, one of the things that we forget about and I think you write about in one of the articles that you sent to us, and I wish I had the full name, but for our audience, the link is you can get it by just Googling. Robin Daniels, Creating a Culture of Accountability. And one of the things that you say in this article, which I really love, because Relly and I live in this space, is making people responsible for their actions, their behaviors, their performance, and their decisions. And that's so important because in the world where Relly and I, you know, focus in emotional and social intelligence and.

Peak performance.

Behaviors are the keys. Because making decisions with emotions is a practical part of everybody's day, right? It's a habit that we create within ourselves. And if we don't understand the emotional fitness, I call it, of the behaviors, we can't relate them to the decisions appropriately so that we can do what you love to help people do best, which is increase their commitment to the work. So give us some goodness here on how you begin this effort to get people to recognize their actions, their behaviors, their performance, and their decisions are connected.

That's a great question. If you think about most companies in the world, they have such values that they usually say that we run the business by. And then when you really dig deeper, most companies are honestly pretty poor at holding people accountable to those values. And I think the reason why and what I've come to the conclusion is that we have, as businesses and maybe as society, have relentlessly been chasing outcomes. And it's been outcomes at all costs. So it doesn't really matter the way you get there, the way you show up every day, nobody's holding you accountable to those things as long as you get the right outcome. And when I talk to the new generation, especially Gen Z millennials, even people in my peer group who are probably what Gen X. That's not the world where we want to live in. We don't want to live in an outcome at all cost world. We want to create a world where that really looks after each other and values the way that you get there. And so what I've created is this framework and I call this the accountability framework. And it goes something like this. I call it input plus output equals outcome. And what that means, just to be clear, input are the things that you put into something to get to the right outcome. So input could be the values that you have in your company, it could be the mindset that you have, the energy that you show up with. All these things that you control, all these things that you control 100% doesn't mean it's easy, but it doesn't change the fact that you control it 100%. The way that you show up to the office or to your team every single day is in your control 100%. Now, I have a teenage son. He's 17 years old. You know, sometimes he can be a jerk in the morning, right, and can affect me or somebody cuts me off in traffic or the bus is late or whatever it is. But it doesn't change the fact that you control the way you show up every single day. And I think if you're doing that in a way that really lifts everybody around you, that should be rewarded, then the second thing is output. Output. What does that mean? Input plus output equals outcome. So output are the things that you put out there. Maybe it's an HR policy, maybe it's a new marketing campaign, maybe it's a new sales program. Again, at the end of the day, I think these are things that you control 100%. Are you proud of what you're putting out there? Have you put in all the right levers of thought and meticulousness and due diligence and so on to make sure that you're proud of it, of what's going out there in the world and how people are receiving, doesn't mean it's always perfect, but you control it nonetheless, I think. And then equals outcome. And then outcome is something that you don't always control. And anybody, I think, who tells you that you can control the outcome, 100%, I think, are full of it. But of course, the more you control the input and the outcome and the output, the better your outcome will be. So, for example, if your goal is to reach 100 million in revenue next year, growing it from 80 million, well, you're going to get much closer to hitting that if you have the right input, meaning the right mindset, the right values, the right measurement, the right culture and all those things, plus you have the right output, then you're going to get much closer to hitting the outcome that you have. And the problem has been that we've only been rewarding and measuring people based on outcome. And in the new world that I think companies are creating right now, and what I've been coaching companies on and giving seminars on is really also rewarding on input and output. So if you have all these company values, all these values that you want people to act by and so on, and they're different for each company. Well, unless you're rewarding them and holding people accountable to them, then they're never going to live up to them. So I think that the new equation probably needs to be something like, you know, if somebody has, let's say, a bonus for the year, let's say it's $100,000 that they need to get. Well, maybe instead of just saying if long as you hit your target, that's going to all that matters. No, no. I think the better world is if you say if you're, we're going to give 25% based on your input, going to give you 25% based on your output, and maybe 50% based on your outcome, it's because, let me be clear, this is not an application of responsibility on goals or having numbers attached to what you need to achieve, but it's also recognizing that the ingredients that go into that are just as important as the outcome itself. And that's the world, when I speak to, again, the next generation that everybody wants to live in, where this is rewarded and not just where we were rewarding the brilliant jerks out there, the toxic people, because, hey, they're getting results, but nobody wants to work with them. You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah, yeah. We used to call those baby killers in my day. You know, anybody that had a fresh mind or a fresh idea, you know, when the, when the baby killer profit salesperson, right, came in to say, well, I'm looking at the quarterly reports here and you're not making your numbers, right? All those new people with the fresh minds, the fresh set of values being measured by somebody's paperwork and checklist versus those ingredients. Right? You can feel those ingredients. And the way you just presented that, I love that case study. And that's something that everybody can resonate with. I just have one question. If 25% is the input, 25% is the output, and 25% is the outcomes, which I love. Do we get the other 25% just for being great?

Maybe we should. I think it's more. I think it's 25% input, 25% output, and 50% outcome. Because again, it's not an application of not having goals. But of course, the better the ingredients that go into actually creating those goals. Again, if you want to create a. Let's say the goal is the outcome goal is to create an HR policy that motivates people and is best in class in your industry. Well, if you have the right ingredients going into that, you're going to probably hit that goal based on maybe employee, NPS or whatever it is that you're going to measure that outcome. But it can't be as simplistic as growth at all costs, outcome at all costs. I mean, we've seen where that has led us in the last couple of years with this idea of companies just going kind of bananas in a way that's not very healthy for the people who work there or the culture around them.

And this goes back, Rellie, to what you were asking, which is, you know, how can we improve this annual feedback process or getting feedback at all in what the leaders need to know? And, you know, Relly is great at asking these powerful questions and I would love your input here, both of you, Reli and Robin, if the ingredients and if it's the formula and if it's the HR policy to create that, and it can't just be growth for growth sake. How. How do you look at the behaviors that are required to manifest those, to manage those and to keep them committed to the work?

Hmm. It's a quick so. So it's interesting. I recently here, I think it was about two, maybe about three weeks ago or so on LinkedIn. I have a decent following, so I get good response when I post on LinkedIn. I asked a question in a poll. How often do you want to get feedback and encouragement or insight from your manager on a weekly basis, monthly, quarterly or yearly? And by far, people said weekly or monthly, not quarterly, not yearly. So it's obvious. It was kind of, I think, a leading question in some ways, because I had a feeling that was going to be the response. I think we've known this for years that in order to create the right culture or to create the right accountability, you need to have an environment where you're very transparent and open and honest with the people that you're working with every day. And that can be many different levels. There are people who work for you, there are people who work with you and there are people who work above you. But if you don't have a culture where you are giving feedback on a frequent basis and it becomes this thing that happens once a year like you were talking about in your opening that most people dread, I mean, I've led thousands of people across companies. Managers dread it, the employees dread it. It's not a fun experience for everyone because it becomes this big pent up thing that you've kind of been saving versus the next generation. Or maybe every, every modern worker, not just the next generation, wanted much more in real time so they can course correct. It's kind of like when your spouse, in many relationships, you know, when your spouse comes or your partner suddenly says, I wish you wouldn't do that thing, that's so annoying. I'm like, okay. Instead of getting mad, I usually go, why haven't you told me sooner so I could stop doing this thing? You know, I mean, everybody wants to improve. They want to be, to become a better version of themselves. And that happens a lot with giving feedback and giving real time or near real time feedback on a weekly monthly basis in a way that shows that we're in this together. Because when it becomes this yearly thing, it becomes very much a you versus me environment and becomes very, I think confrontational in many ways has been my where the employee feels sprung upon in some ways or surprised by some of the feedback. But if it's on a weekly basis, then it becomes, hey, we're in this together. I'm giving you this feedback because I want you to improve and you can also give feedback my way. And I can help you unblock some of the things that are stopping you from achieving greatness. And sometimes those are hard skills and sometimes they're soft skills. And mostly oftentimes there are softer skills that need to be improved. But doesn't change the fact if you give that on a much more frequent basis, then those people can instantly become a better version of themselves by knowing what to do.

So Rob, all those things, I want to kind of just hit on a couple things that you just said.

Sure.

The one earlier on I think was the control, what do we have control over? And that went to your input, output. I think, you know, that's huge because I think a lot of people at work don't feel like they have control. So how do you accentuate that? And then the idea of how often do you get feedback? You know, we know from Gallup on a couple different research, you know, ideally have you received praise and recognition once in the last seven days from their Q12. They have that and then some more recent research for them in the book Culture Shock they talk about. This is Gallup again. If you can have a one on one meeting once a week and if you're given feedback and then I'll kind of ask you about the feedback piece in a second. But if you can give them feedback those meetings because no one has time can be 15 to 30 minutes. If you're not given positive feedback or any kind of feedback, it may be longer. And I just heard that we're going to go to our next break. So Robin, when we come back, we can kind of zero in on feedback and then maybe any tips that you have around what we started with around the performance reviews. So we'll be right back. You're listening to leadership development News.

When it comes to business, you'll find the experts here. Voice America Business Network.

How can you be brilliant in the moment? Given the daily challenges you face at work and home, how can you enhance your strengths and limit your weaknesses? Dr. Greenberg and Dr. Nadler's mission is to help people be the best version of themselves at work and at home. With simple, trusted evidence based tips and tools. They have combined forces, applying the powerful science of emotional and social intelligence with the latest in eLearning and AI technology to bring you the Emotional Brilliance Academy. Through the leading Emotional Brilliance Academy programs, they help everyday leaders like you balance your emotions to better connect with people, enhance top performance, lead your teams and your organization. The Emotional Brilliance Academy gives you a common sense approach to enhance your effectiveness and happiness both on and off the job. Sign up for the program, enhance your skills and be your best self. For a free trial go to freetrial.emotional brilliance.com that's freetrial.emotional brilliance dot com EBA is powered by Fearless Leaders Group, the H2C Leadership foundation and True North Leadership.

Icy Tech. Like the hard working men and women, they get up every day and do their job. The ones that stop at nothing to make sure that it's done right. It's not just an effort. It's not just know how. It's a way of life. ICTECH has been with you since 1998. With the Veteran community being behind you, we understand with quality, with passion, we follow you in this way of life. ICtech for those who get it, ICTECH is a proud sponsor of the Emotional Brilliance Academy where eLearning is leading edge.

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Welcome back to Leadership Development News. We're having a delightful conversation with Robin Daniels from LMS360. When we went to the break, we were talking about how often people want to get feedback. And lucky for us, Robin has some very good feedback that he gets from his LinkedIn posts. Some of us are one of the, you know, followers of top voices on LinkedIn. And we were talking about this idea that it should be weekly or monthly and not quarterly or annually, and that transparency and feedback are what's going to get us to success and commitment. So as we go further, a little bit further into where you're going with your direction at LMS 360, Robin, why don't you pick it up there?

Sure. So it's obvious that people want more frequent feedback. I feel like we've known that for years. And if you ask most managers and even, let's say, executives, they would agree. I think it's just hard to know how to actually implement this in a way that doesn't become a burden on everybody who has to do it. And so of course, in order to create a culture of motivation, accountability, high performance where people can do incredible work every single day, there's a lot of things that go into that mindset, culture and so on. But one of the things that you also have to have is you have to have the right tools. This is where my company comes in. My company is LMS 365. And one of the things that we offer to companies around the world, we have about 2,000 clients around the world. 50% of our customers are in the US but one of the things that we offer to them is this product called weekly 10. And the reason why it's called weekly 10 is because it's meant to be a weekly check in that takes less than 10 minutes. And companies around the world are using that for incredible effect. And so what it does. Let me just kind of break that down for you really quickly. Every Friday, it asks you four simple questions. The question is, what have you achieved this week? That's number one. Number two, what's holding you back? Number three, how are you feeling on a scale of one to ten? And number four, who do you want to give kudos to who do you want to high five? And it's meant as a quick weekly check in. But the effect of doing this every single week from every employee, remarkable. So, for example, it does three things that are incredible. Number one, it gives you this moment of self reflection that course corrects and keeps yourself accountable whether or not you're working on the right things. Again, as we talked about earlier in the show, so oftentimes, and I've been so guilty of this myself, I get to Friday night, I felt like I've had the craziest week. I've been working, working, working. But when I'm honest with you myself and I look back, I don't really know if I've achieved anything towards the goals that I have. And those weeks honestly suck. And so this question of what have you achieved keeps yourself honest and you can course correct over time. If you keep seeing that you're off track of achieving things that really matter, you can course correct. So that's number one. Number two, it's an incredible way to get surface in real time or near real time. What's going on with the people who work for you in a way that makes it not confrontational but very helpful. So I have a decent amount of people who work for me at the company and I can see every Friday how people are feeling, what's holding them back from achieving the things they need to. And I can go over instead of pointing fingers at them and say, Joe, why are you not doing your job? Or Susan, what's going on here? I can say, hey, I see you're not bringing, how can I help? What can I do to unlock or unlock some things for you? And it just becomes a much better, more human conversation that's much friendlier, that creates an environment that says, we're in this together, I'm here to help you. I'm here to help make you successful, you motivated and so on. And then the final thing it does that's maybe the most remarkable of all is this sense of belonging. When we first deployed this in our own company, we're about 200 people in the first week of us deploying this for our 200 employees, we saw more than 1100 kudos flying around between employees. And we're a global company that have people in over six countries. None of us really sit together. In the US alone, we have 50 employees who are not in any single location. They're spread out over 23 states, I think it is. And when you see the kudos flying between each other, hey, this person did a good job, or this person helped me out this week. It creates such a sense of belonging. And it comes back to this bigger, bigger point. You know, any data you look at from Forbes or Gallup or McKinsey or HBR says the same thing, that two out of three people, or 70% of people want to quit their jobs. They're not motivated, they're not engaged. And the root cause of a lot of this, when you dig deeper into the research, oftentimes shows because people don't feel a sense of belonging to that nobody cares about their success, their happiness, their ultimate really kind of way that they become better versions of themselves. And it's such a small thing, this weekly kudos when you can see people who are calling each other out being helpful to each other. And of course, that's just a snapshot in the moment, but over time, when I can see every single week that this person, wow, Joe is being called out every single week because he's going above and beyond and Susan is constantly being called out by her peers. When it comes to the end of the year or the end of the quarter, I have this full snapshot of the people who are really going above and beyond and providing huge value to the business and to the team. And that's something that can then be rewarded in many different ways. And so it's a game changer. It's a complete game changer for us and certainly for the companies who are using us.

And then who sees that? I mean, so, I mean, some of it is between the bottom. I love, love what you're saying because it's just forcing a conversation. But are you able to with your software, pull out kudos and everybody sees kudos or how does that work?

Only the people who get mentioned. So if, let's say I have a team, there's, let's say 10 people on my team and they're each giving kudos to different people and only the person receiving the kudos can receive it. And I can only see the responses from my team members. But of course, you can run up and you can do a full analysis. You can have a full dashboard that says in the last last week we got 500 kudos across the team. This week we're up to 600. Now it's down to, you know, maybe 400. So you can constantly kind of trend it over time to get a mood on the, on the organization, how people are feeling. Again, coming back to the sense that again, it's not rocket science. I Think the best companies figured out if you create an environment where people are motivated and engaged, engaged, they'll do better work. And what happens when people do better work? Of course the business is going to benefit from that as well.

That's wonderful. And so there's a company that I work with called Magnusworks.com and we're right now in the law enforcement industry. We will be moving into other industries. But one of the things that we do, Robin, that's very similar, that's showing a high impact that really validates what you're saying is, is they do two check ins a week, one beginning of the week, one at the end of the week and they are given three questions. One is a me question and one is a we question. How am I doing? How are we doing? And that leads them to provide their feedback as you just described. But it's all anonymous. And so we keep it anonymous unless there is a kudos that is being directed at someone because it's important for people to know that they feel a part of a community. But it's not a let's tell everybody what's not going well because that's going to create mistrust, low morale and toxic office culture. Right. And the combination of that is anybody's worst nightmare. So that anonymity is very important and you can be, you can feel attached and belonging to something without necessarily having that information be so, you know, so visible to everybody in the process.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of both systems. I'm a big fan of there being room and space for anonymous feedback and insight because you need to give people safe space, space especially when you have cultures you're trying to fix or problems or maybe people as we all know. But I'm also a big fan of our system is not anonymous. You know, you can see of course it's basically from each individual, even myself. Mine go up to the CEO of our business. So ours is not anonymous and there's, I think there has to be room for both and they serve very, very different purposes in my mind. You know, a lot of the usually roles I've been in, I have done the anonymous surveys and sometimes it's been more quarterly or every six months, which it still has a lot of power because you have to give people of course a safe space because you don't want retaliation and all kinds. But at the same time also from a weekly basis I'm going to be helpful for the employees to make them again a better version of themselves which is ultimately I think the job of a manager or a leader, then getting the real time feedback of both what's going well and what's not going so well means you can action that much quicker in the moment.

So, Robert, we're going to end in a minute, but it sounds like you've done a lot of writing around promotion. And so maybe just, you know, one of our last questions, just say, say a couple kind of key tips about, you know, people that want to get promoted.

Yeah, I mean, the number one question I get as a leader is how do I get promoted? And so I thought a lot about this. There are really three components that go into getting somebody promoted or getting somebody to the next level. Number one, you have to be able to crush your goals. What does that mean? That means that you have to have crystal clear clarity on what your goals are. It's impossible to achieve or overachieve if you don't have clarity on what you're trying to achieve against. So number one is crushing your goals, but you have to have clarity around that and that becomes back to you and your manager to provide that. Number two, the second factor in getting promoted is acting as if you're already at the next level. So let's say you're a senior manager and you want to get to a director level or you're a director and you want to get to a vp. Well, start modeling your behavior after people who are at the next level. Take initiative, take ownership, start taking on more responsibility. Those people who rise to the top are usually the people who are stepping up with the right initiative, mindset and energy. And so start doing that. That's the second thing. And then the third thing, the all important thing is around creating a chorus of support around yourself. Not in a way that's trying to kiss butt and so on, but really showing up every day and becoming a helpful member of the team and the company. So when it comes time to getting promoted, because all these promotion decisions in my experience are never singular, it's never just me putting my finger in the air and saying, oh, I think this person needs to get promoted. It should be us sitting with a bunch of peers, leaders, HR team, and talking about who deserves promotions and so on based on a lot of different things. And I can always tell whether or not that person has a course of support around them, whether or not they will get promoted if they don't. Getting a promotion through is very hard. But when they do and a person's name comes up and they go, oh, yeah, Susan. Everybody loves working with Susan. She's amazing. She's a team member that shows up for team every single day. She's helpful. She's, she performs well. I can always tell the conversation's going towards the right direction. So it's those three things are all important. Clarity and crushing your goals, of course. And then of course, acting as if you're at the next level. And then, of course, most importantly, having a chorus of support around you. Beautiful.

Absolutely beautiful.

That's great. I'll make one quick comment and then we'll bring it to a close. That third one in particular, I don't think people do, you know. And so Kat and I are always talking about your, your key, your key peers. Often peers are seen, you know, as competitors. And are you building relationships with your peers? They're great managing up. Sometimes they're great managing down. They're not necessarily great managing across.

So true. So true.

Well, we're, we're all out there looking for those okrs every day. And it sounds like, you know, you're hard accountability and soft accountability measures are going to help us all promote a better workforce. Thank you so much, Robin.

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

And you can get more information From Robin's website, lms365.com you've been listening to leadership development news. Continue to tune in to tune up your performance. Thanks, everybody.

You've been listening to leadership development news profile and practices of top performers with your hosts Kathy Greenberg and Relly Nadler. We sincerely hope that you gained some great ideas and inspiration on how to elevate your leadership skills. Join us again next Monday at noon Eastern Time and 9:00am Pacific Time right here on the Voice America Business channel.