Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber wrote a wonderful short book entitled: The Art of Time.

Through routine, a guilty conscience, or simply a lack of reflection, we unconsciously deprive ourselves of a large part of our time…

In fact we usually do:

• What we enjoy doing before what we don’t enjoy doing,
• What goes quickly before what goes slowly,
• What is easy before what is hard for us,
• What is familiar before something new,
• What others have imposed on us before what we have chosen ourselves.

To have the time of your life, what would happen if you decided to consciously engage with the second half of each of these questions before the first half?

Employee Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #23

Do you hear what I hear?

Who are you listening to in relationship to employee engagement? You can listen to the work of management consultants or university professors but I encourage you to go to the source. Listen to the people in your family and workplace.

Here are 4 snippets I heard this week from family and friends in regards to employee engagement. I did not ask for any of these statements they simply came up in our conversations.

From my 15 year old son who washes dishes for a restaurant in Winnipeg

I really like working with that guy. We have fun, we don’t take it too seriously but we get the job done.

From a health care manager talking about a management colleague

She knows so much but she is letting the management of her staff get to her and treating them in a way that is creating more conflict rather than increased engagement. I worked in that unit and I had to make some unpopular decision but I kept informing the staff, letting them know the rationale, telling them how tough this was, and at the end they were even thanking me even though I had to ask so much extra from them.

From a real estate manager

I have a new direct report. He is good but I have to keep watching how I treat him. It took me a year to find him and I don’t want to have to look for someone else.

From my fifteen year old daughter at the end of 3 weeks of volunteer work with autistic children

I have learned so much from those children. They are so interesting and do such neat things. It is funny and a challenge but I love working with them.

Get Engaged:

1. If you really want to learn about grass roots employee engagement listen to the people in your family, social circles, and workplace every day. How engaged are they? What factors influence their engagement?
2. Listen to their perspective and determine how you can apply the learning to yourself or with other people at work.

Mike Morrison wrote The Other Side of the Card – A book about where your authentic leadership story begins. Click here to read a brief review of the book I wrote on my employee engagement blog.

He also writes an excellent informative and interesting newsletter. I just received it this week and asked Mike if I could reprint the newsletter on the Strength Based Leadership blog.

Here it is:

Much of the elusiveness of a leading through meaning approach is that by its nature it requires that we lean into the failure, pain, insecurity, and negative emotions that represent the critical learning opportunities on our leadership path. Our coaching insight for today is:

The world is not made up of things – it is made up of relationships.

We achieve results primarily through relationships. Relationships are truly the most effective pathway to the highest levels of commitment, creativity, and performance within organizations. The reason is that positive relationships have a transformational impact on the individual. They draw out the best in each of us. But here’s the bottom line for our organizations. Human capital is useless without relationships – particularly in our fast-paced, global economy. In fact, leaders can be best measured by their ability to create “social capital” – the sum total of all their relationships. It is through this network of relationships that their work is conducted. The undeniable truth is that where there are high levels of trust and mutual understanding between people, you will see meaning.

My message to leaders is actually quite simple: It’s the relationship……stupid. A little blunt? Maybe. Accurate? Absolutely. We underestimate by some huge margin the importance of relationships in our efforts to create meaning in our organizational lives. For a half-decade I have been involved in research on relationships between leaders and followers. The results have been both eye-opening and fascinating. My five-year journey can be reduced to three basic findings about leader- follower relationships that we better pay attention to:
1. Some form fast – but most don’t.
2. Followers overemphasize their importance.
3. Leaders underestimate their significance.

Some relationships form fast – most don’t. Some relationships form almost automatically but for the most part, relationship building activities are not easy to do (due to differences in style, values, etc.). A root issue is that we fail to fully understand the art of “relating” that is core to the science of relationship building. That’s a mistake. The essence of relating begins with the heightened awareness of others and is fueled by trust-building interactions – such as self-disclosures. As leaders, we need to be relentless relationship builders and be 100 times more deliberate about the “relating” to people.

Followers overemphasize the importance of relationships. It’s a key source of meaning in their lives. Traditionally, the balance of power rests with the boss. It often goes way beyond the obvious power differences – where the leader controls resources, information, and access to meaningful work. Followers look to the leader for validation of their personal worth to the organization. And that can’t come from an e-mail. It takes face time and a stable relationship for that to occur. Studies consistently point to the lost productivity attributed to “worrying about the relationship”.

Leaders underestimate the significance of relationships. It is clear that a great deal of interaction is required to explain, reassure, and facilitate actual elements of a follower’s performance. While facilitative-type behaviors are often prescribed as effective strategies for leaders in motivating their followers, the reality is that the broad challenges of the leader’s role and the lack of skill and insight into relationship building serve as formidable barriers. In the heat of the battle, “relating” and the creation of meaning gets lost to the perceived needs to command, control, and communicate.

Simply stated, our organization leaders need a better understanding of the dynamics of relationship formation and the determination and patience to put them into play.

You can sign up for Mike’s newsletter at theothersideofthecard.com. There is a hot link for Amazon for ordering the book at the site as well. Most importantly, you can reach Mike at mike@theothersideofthecard.com to keep the dialogue going.

How are your strengths perceived?

How do you perceive other people’s strengths?

Watch the short video below and as you watch the video also watch your attitude about the character in the video. How do you see him? Does judgement cloud your vision? Are you blown away by him at the end?

The video may take a short while to download but it is worth the wait.

A big thanks to Chris Brogan for his post on this in relationship to storytelling.

July has been a terrific month to further your strength based leadership through free educational seminars by some of the top leadership thinkers.

Marshall Goldsmith and Patricia Wheeler are hosting a one hour free teleforum with Peter Cairo on leadership. The forum is based on Cairo’s book: Head Heart and Guts: How the World’s Best Companies Develop Complete Leaders.

The 3 topics of discussion are:

1. Head Leadership: Re-Thinking and articulating your point of view
2. Heart Leadership: Developing compassion and keeping people committed
3. Guts Leadership: Developing the courage to make tough calls

The forum is Monday July 23rd at noon Eastern time.

Click here to register or for more information on the seminar.

Employees’ direct relationships with their bosses are one of the most important factors in fostering employee engagement. But what if the boss is bad, and that boss is you?

Joseph Libertia has written a fine short post on how to overcome Bad Boss syndrome with emotional intelligence. He cites the common statement that people don’t leave organizations, they leave leaders. Bad bosses are not always jerks or worse. Joseph listed some of the reasons for being a bad boss:

• Have a lot on your plate
• Are under pressure to perform
• May be in over your head
• Don’t know a better way
• Are scared
• Fight to stay in control
• Have you identity and value attached to the results you produce
• Don’t get the support you need

Joseph Liberti offers 5 solid suggestions on how to apply emotional intelligence to forge better relationships with your employees. He writes,

Solicit people’s feelings and just listen. A leader I once had as a coaching client started by simply asking, genuinely, “And how do you feel about that?” in conversations with direct reports about current issues. and improved relationships. You don’t have to fix them. Just hear them!

Go to Emotional Intelligence at Work to read Joseph’s other suggestions. While you are there, I encourage you to read more articles from his blog by clicking here.

Employee Engagement: Monday Morning Percolator #22

Are you flying with a six pack of employee engagement?

In this case, I don’t mean half a dozen beers.

The six essential instruments in a light aircraft are often referred to as the six pack:

• airspeed indicator
• attitude indicator
• altimeter
• turn coordinator
• heading indicator
• vertical speed indicator

Do you monitor 6 strong “indications” of your employee engagement to get you successfully to your destination?

1. Airspeed indicator – how fast can you move towards your goal?
2. Attitude indicator – is everyone maintaining a strong and positive attitude and avoiding too much wobble?
3. Altimeter – how high can you climb with fully engaged employees?
4. Turn coordinator – are you responsive to change to turn back to employee engagement if you begin to drift off course? Can you feel exhilarated while making a steep turn?
5. Heading indicator – do you stay vigilant about where you are headed?
6. Vertical speed indicator – how quickly can you climb to new levels of employee engagement?

Grab a coffee, jump into the workplace cockpit, and prepare to take off with these indicators of employee engagement.

Of course, you could also grab a six pack of beer or root beer and have a down-to-earth discussion about employee engagement with the team of people you work with.

We gather strengths as leaders through education.

This looks like the summer to get a good free leadership education. The last post outlined 6 free teleconferences from Marcus Buckingham. To further your education here is some information on a free Ken Blanchard Companies Seminar.

Free Webinar: Managing Up to Get What You Need
July 19, 2007
9:00–10:00 a.m. Pacific Time,
12:00–1:00 p.m. Eastern Time
5:00–6:00 p.m. GMT

What does it take to create a workforce that is able and willing to meet the challenges of today’s fast-paced and flatter organizations? It requires an organization that encourages the development of self leaders and individuals willing to assume the mantle of self leadership.

Self leaders have the mindset and a skill set to take responsibility and initiative for succeeding in their work-related role. In this fun and informative webcast, business author and consultant Susan Fowler from The Ken Blanchard Companies shares three important skills that every self leader must have:

• How to challenge assumed constraints at work
  
• How to celebrate your points of power
  
• How to collaborate with your manager for success

You will also learn how supervisors and managers can promote self leadership as a way to cope with the fact that there is less and less time for them to devote to their direct reports because of their own work expectations and ever-expanding numbers of direct reports.

Click Here if you would like to read a short article on managing up and learn how to register.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the free 6 week 1/2 hour series live teleconferences by Marcus Buckingham on putting your strengths to work. What a fantastic way to prepare over the summer for a strong September.

Click here to get all the details and to register. Make sure you purchase the book Go Put Your Strengths to Work to follow along!

Here is the schedule for the series including, dates and the pages covered:
July 12 – Intro & Step One: Pgs. 1 – 70
July 19 – Step Two: Pgs. 71-116
July 26 – Step Three: Pgs. 117-152
August 2 – Step Four: Pgs. 153-198
August 9 – Step Five: Pgs. 199-242
August 16 – Step Six: Pgs. 243-267

If you are not available for the live portion of this teleconference you can listen to the program at a later date.