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Aug 09
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692: How to Optimize Teams and Drive Engagement Using Data with Mike Zani

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Mike Zani says: "You need to modify yourself to get the most out of your people."

Mike Zani shares data-driven approaches to improving your team’s performance.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What businesses can learn about teams from baseball 
  2. The top two predictors of team performance
  3. Top three do’s and don’ts of effective teaming

About Mike

Mike Zani is the CEO of The Predictive Index, a talent optimization platform that uses over 60 years of proven science and software to help businesses design high-performing teams and cultures, make objective hiring decisions, and inspire greatness in people. Its 8,000+ clients include Bain Capital, Blue Cross Blue Shield, DoorDash, LVMH, Nissan, Omni Hotels, and VMware. Zani is also the co-founder and partner at Phoenix Strategy Investments, a private investment fund. An avid sailor, he was coach of the 1996 US Olympic Team. He holds a BS from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

Resources Mentioned

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Mike Zani Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mike, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Mike Zani
It’s great to be here. I think that’s an important task. Got to be awesome at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think so too. And you’ve really done some homework on how that happens and I’m excited to dig into that wisdom with The Predictive Index and your book The Science of Dream Teams. But, first, let’s hear about you coaching the 1996 U.S. Olympic Sailing Team. How’d that go?

Mike Zani
That was one of the most romantic times of my life where you’re living some bizarre dream with these amazing athletes, and Muhammad Ali lights the torch for the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta.

Pete Mockaitis
I remember that.

Mike Zani
It was pretty awe-inspiring. And you get to work with these amazing talents, coaching these athletes. But I think it was back then when I started down a people path, trying to figure out how to modify myself to get the most out of your athletes because everyone sort of learns differently and has different styles. And when do you use analogies? They work great for some people. When to be super literal with others? Who can handle negative feedback immediately? Some people can’t. And how to weave, come in where it’s not quite as negative, it sounds more like growth feedback? But it was that journey with those athletes that I think started me on this, and I did not know it at the time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, not that it’s all about the gold but I don’t actually recall how the 1996 U.S. Olympic Sailing Team did. How did we do?

Mike Zani
We had two medals out of ten events. It was actually pretty disappointing unfortunately.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. It was not as many as you hoped before.

Mike Zani
It wasn’t. And my star athletes, Kristina Farrar and Louise Van Voorhis, were in medal contention for nine of the ten days, and finished in fourth which is a very tough place to finish.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fourth, yeah. I hear you. Well, how did you cope with that?

Mike Zani
I think it’s different for the athletes. It definitely impacts them in different ways but I saw a lot of athletes who fell short of their goals and they never really sailed competitively again. They were doing it for this thing, to do something as unbelievable as the Olympics. They maybe weren’t doing it for the love of sailing. And that’s probably important, to have a love for what you do so that you keep doing it. You see those long-distance runners who, they may not run competitive marathons anymore but they still run 50 miles, 100 miles a week because that’s what they do.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, let’s dig into The Predictive Index. First of all, that’s a great name. I like predictions, I like index, and the name itself has a promise within it. What’s your organization all about?

Mike Zani
The Predictive Index helps companies sort of optimize their talent, and, we do it with a series of algorithms through assessments which feed the data model on the software, which gives companies the information they need, pre and post hire, ideally in their time of need. And we have about 700 certified partners who work with our clients to take that data from the software and from all of the algorithms and the assessments, and help bring it to life within organizations.

And the way I like to say it is every CEO has got a strategy, some good, some bad. Most have a one- to five-year financial plan to support that strategy but tragically few of them have a talent strategy. And strategies do not execute themselves. It’s the people who execute them. And it’s really surprising, most people have just boxes in Excel saying, “Hey, I’m hiring five people in Q1,” and there’s nothing about what type of people they need and what are the gaps, and how they’re going to fit on this team, and how do they change the culture, and are they high performers. And what about the ones who are there? How is it going to impact the ones that are already there? And that’s what talent optimization does.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what is the impact of using your platform versus just kind of, I guess, winging it or doing what everybody else does?

Mike Zani
Yeah, I think our number one competitor is not some other company. It’s people using the old way of doing things. Things like unstructured interviewing with resumes, which are among the greatest fiction in all of business. And somebody walks in and they have a neck tattoo and you just can’t get used to that or comfortable with that so you don’t hire them. And you hire people who sort of think the way you think or you promote people who think the way you think because you have more comfortable interactions with them as opposed to maybe creating more diverse teams.

So, I think when people aren’t doing this, some people get it right, more often than not, but that’s not very scalable. There are those gifted talent people who really invested in their own tools and frameworks. But this is really trying to make sure that you can bring it to every company, sort of a systems approach to, “How do you hire right? How do you build world-class teams? How do you make sure that the interactions between people are really optimized? How do you make sure you have an engaged and high-performing organization?” And even with all the tools, because people are messy, we still get it wrong 10%, 15%, 20% of the time. But it’s better than the two-thirds of the time that most people get it wrong and doing it the old way.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those are some interesting figures there in terms of how do we measure right versus wrong? And are those figures fairly accurate in terms of “Yeah, without this stuff, you probably expect to be right only a third of the time versus four-fifths of the time you could be right.”

Mike Zani
Yeah, it is hard to do that. Without really great performance analytics, it’s really hard to take it from the world of qualitative to quantitative. I think we can learn a lot from sports. In sports, 30 years ago, they used to do the same thing we did in business. Scouts used to go look at recruits in baseball stadiums and look for the five tools of, say, baseball: their running ability, throwing ability, hitting for power, hitting for average. And they would look at these tools and sometimes quantitative, most of the time it’s qualitative, and they got it wrong all the time. Five out of 100 players recruited made it to the major leagues.

And then they adopted sabermetrics using stats and analytics to predict, part of the name that you like, predictive index. How do you predict who’s going to be a higher probability to get to the major leagues and contribute? And not just contribute, it’s also contribute for the dollar, because not every team is the New York Yankees that can spend millions of dollars. It’s sort of you need to have performance for the buck.

And that attitude that sport took on, starting in baseball, they’re 30 years ahead of us in this process in terms of business because they’ve got great metrics, they’ve got great performance data. And until you have great metrics and performance data, you’re kind of guessing, “What was right? Is this a good team for this job to be done?” And we’re just starting to be able to get there so that you can have a learning machine so that you can hire, promote, manage, craft teams to super high performance and then track that performance, and, “We didn’t quite get that right. That was a good team but not a great team. Let’s keep working on that.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, so you’re summarizing a lot of your wisdom over the years in your book The Science of Dream Teams. It sounds like we’ve covered it here. But what’s sort of the big idea? Is that it’s all about using science and data to engineer dream teams? Or, how would you summarize your core thesis?

Mike Zani
I think it’s a journey on yourself. There’s really a call to action for each person who manages people, and I don’t just mean managing down. I mean, managing across and managing up, that you have to adopt this discipline to have great relationships, and it actually starts with yourself. You have to know yourself. Be self-aware. Know what the things you’re good at and try and play the game on those terms. But also, just as clearly, know the stuff that you’re not good at and make sure you understand those triggers.

I think once you become that self-aware leader, you can really start attracting talent to you. And even if you’re an individual contributor, the best managers want you on their team, and you can then do that. You’ve got a culture of performance. You’ve got a culture of being engaged. You’re one of those people who always add value when you’re around your team. And you can go on this journey.

And I think the book is really a call to action to change the discipline, to take it out of the old way of subjective, qualitative, and bring it into a newer way where you can start bringing data to the equation, and we’re really in the early steps of this. The data is just starting to come on and we’re just starting to create these learning machines and prediction so that you can articulate whether you’re going to be a good fit for XYZ role on this team, doing this strategy. And it’s great because it’s tantalizingly close and a lot of companies are getting there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so can you walk us through in practice, like we’re thinking, “Okay, we got a role, we got a candidate, or maybe we have many candidates, how do we choose? What are sort of the step-by-step here?”

Mike Zani
Let me give you an example. I know that you’re a former consultant, high-end consulting firm. Am I allowed to mention the name?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I’ve mentioned it too many times for some of our listeners, according to the surveys. I’m sorry about that, guys.

Mike Zani
Okay. So, Bain & Company. So, at Bain & Company, you’re constantly reassembling teams into work groups based on an engagement. You might have one partner on the project, a couple of managers, half a dozen, dozen consultants and associates, and you’re constantly reassembling these teams every few months depending on the work.

And what you’re trying to do is determine, “What is the work that needs to be done on this engagement?” and then, “Is this team a good fit for that work?” So, in order to do that, we’ve mapped behavioral analytics, psychometric tools, to strategy so that, let’s just say, you’re on that 10-person team. We’ll call it a 10-person team. And you can look at the team, “Are we homogenous behaviorally or are we heterogenous behaviorally? If so, what gaps do we have? Where are we homogenous?”

And then, we can actually find out, “Are we aligned on our strategy? What is our strategy? Are we aligned on it? And is that team, as it’s currently assembled, a good fit? Maybe it’s an okay fit.” And then you’re like, “Well, what are the gaps? Okay, there’s a couple of gaps. Can we stretch to get there? Is it an easy stretch? Is it a hard stretch? Can we augment this team with some other things? Can we actually change out a few players?”

And the reason I’m picking your consulting team, because changing out a player on a consulting team, you just go to another engagement. It’s not you’re getting fired. And it’s in these reassembling teams that you can create super teams for the work to be done because a team is not inherently good or bad, but they might be a good or bad fit.

Now, I use an example. If I took the senior team for Mass General Hospital, center of excellence hospital in Boston, heavy research, they’ve got some of the best doctors, some of the best research, tons of money, and they’re near the cutting edge but they also have The Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm,” so they’re inherently risk-intolerant. They are not going to be a good team to do a startup and they wouldn’t be a good team. If a private equity firm, like Bain Capital bought Mass General, so we’re going to do a rollup of every center of excellence in every major city.

The senior team that might’ve been great at running a single center of excellence is not going to be the team to run that rollup for the private equity firm trying to put together a massive organization because they’re not going to have the risk tolerance. They’re not the right team for that job. So, it’s like assemble the team to do the work they’re supposed to do and unlock that potential and find out where there are gaps. If a strategy changes, you’re like, “We’re going to need to stretch, add someone, take someone away.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we talked about the fit. I’m thinking, I’ve been playing some Tetris lately, so I see that in my mind’s eye. So, we’ve got what is demanded of the team, certain things are necessary. And then we’ve got what the individual teammates are bringing to the table. But how do we break down the whole universe of work into a manageable set of is it parameters or competencies? I’m thinking about the Korn Ferry list right now. So, how do you break it down? Like, how many parameters or drivers or factors are we looking at? And how do we measure folks on them?

Mike Zani
There are numerous, numerous parameters you could measure, and Korn Ferry’s competencies are a good form of measurement. You’ve got these frameworks that say, “What are the skills? What are the competencies needed?” But more than skills and competencies, one level higher in prediction, the number one predictor of workplace performance is cognitive fit for a role, making sure the person has the cognitive capabilities, the learning capacity, the ability to manage complexity to deal with the requirements of that role.

Pete Mockaitis
I guess with cognitive fit, what is it they call it, G, general intelligence? I mean, are there sort of multiple flavors of cognitive fit? Or is it just all sort of like raw smart that’s going to show up, like on the GRE type cognitive stuff?

Mike Zani
Actually, you bring up a really important element of cognitive science. If you do a short format test, like a 12-minute assessment, you can see the sub-facets of cognitive, sort of linguistic, mathematical, spatial, abstract reasoning. But you have to take a longer format cognitive assessment to be able to have high degrees of validity that those sub-facets, the importance.

But, in an ideal world, if you had the time, and not every organization wants to have their people take a 90-minute cognitive assessment. It might be too much load, but you would have diverse teams. Let’s just say you’re amazing mathematically but I’m really good spatially, and we’d be a great match. And then when we’re going to publish our findings, we’re like, “Well, who’s the person really good linguistically who can write this stuff really well?” and putting together diverse cognitive teams, and you might even have people who have gaps.

And the beautiful part, if you look at the sub-facets, language is the biggest bias in cognitive-based assessments because it picks up socioeconomics, especially in the United States, and it’s a testament of our education systems. But lower socioeconomic categories do worse in cognitive, especially in the verbal part, and that picks up race and ethnicity in the U.S. which needs to be corrected for, so you cannot use cognitive as a single variable disqualifier for a role or you’ll create bias on unfortunate points like race and ethnicity.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got to make sure we got the cognitive stuff. It’s like your brain can handle what’s going to be thrown at it, and so we might get a quick view in 12 minutes versus 90 minutes. By the way, what are these tools we’re using to assess in 12 minutes and 90 minutes?

Mike Zani
There’s thousands of cognitive assessments. Ours happens to be a short format that is used whether you’re a Subway sandwich artist or whether you’re a Ph.D. in biotech for Moderna. And, actually, it’s important because say, you are a Subway franchisee and you’re hiring temp workers, mostly high school and college kids for the summer, to be sandwich artists, the cognitive requirements for that role are not massively high.

But if you have a choice, you want the higher end of the range because you’re teaching them how to bake bread, how to make sandwiches, rules and processes, maybe it’s procedures for like a pandemic where you have sanitation requirements. But you don’t need the same cognitive requirements of the Ph.D. running a biotech firm. That’s legitimate. You need someone with cognitive requirements that are probably in the top decile, and you’re building those teams.

And this is no different than, “Hey, this person is fast.” You’re like, “They’re fast for a linebacker but they’re not fast for a wide receiver.” You have different requirements for the role.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And now I’m curious, can you have too much of a good thing in terms of if your sandwich artist has too much cognitive power, are they going to be bored and say, “This job is lame. I’m out of here” and bounce kind of quickly? Or, is your view like, “Hey, the more the better”?

Mike Zani
Actually, there was a famous lawsuit with a detective agency where they disqualified a candidate to be a detective because of too high of a cognitive, and it went to the, I think, the State Supreme Court. The police department was saying, “Hey, it takes like three years to make a good detective. There’s a lot of learning and the job is not as exciting as it is on TV. It’s actually a pretty mundane, boring job, high repetition.” And they’re like, “What we found is that high-cognitive people get frustrated at the pace and challenge of this job and move on, so we don’t want to train you for three years for you to leave and not be a productive asset,” if you will.

And so, it’s interesting, the actual scientific data does not say that you can have too high a cognitive that your performance goes down but the curve flattens. So, it’s not like if you’re three times as smart, if you’re 99.9 percentile versus 92, it’s going to be so indiscernibly different that it’s other factors that are predicting success. So, it does flatten out.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. And so then, I guess, it’s really down to personal preferences. First of all, what happened with the State Supreme Court case? How did they rule?

Mike Zani
You’re going to have read it in the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Mike Zani
I’m kidding. I’m kidding. No, the police department was exonerated. They had a process. They were looking at the data, and they said that, “In our estimation, people with this criteria will churn more, and we have a high cost of training.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that can happen. And so, generally, it seems like more is better but if it’s oodles and oodles more, you might have a different problem to contend with in terms of churn rate as opposed to performance. So, that’s the number one predictor, is the cognitive fit, “Do they got the mental horsepower to get it done?” And you’re about to tell us number two but then we went deep.

Mike Zani
Well, I think it’s behavioral fit, and some jobs have very tight criteria. You think of sales. The sales role, highly predictive, high dominance, low patience, great risk tolerance is highly predictive of sales success. And what’s interesting, three are subclasses of sales. You might have collaborative sales per big enterprises where one person is starting the sale process but you’re bringing in several other people to support it, like there might be sales engineering, there might be a customer service team that comes in. And that person is going to need more collaboration and more people skills to do that quarterbacking.

There could be highly technical sales which, if you’re selling data security, cutting-edge data security into the C-suite, CIO, and the tech teams, and the really brainiacs on the other side who are all introverted, you’re going to want a very introverted highly technical, high-detail oriented, high formality sales process. So, there’s sub-facets.

But then there are some roles, like product, that are completely open behaviorally. You can have success in product development with almost any behavioral profile but then you want to look at not the fit for the role. You want to look at fit for the team. Because if you already have eight people on this team, and maybe they’re all one profile, you don’t want more of that. You want some diversity, or the manager of that team might be like, “I’ve already got two of those. I can’t handle a third. They’re good but they’re a real handful with my personality, and I’m the manager of the team.” So, you start crafting and architecting.

But the short story is, some positions are really open from a behavioral benchmark and some are much tighter. And we provide companies tools so that they can actually create those benchmarks, as well as we feed them from our data source. We feed them suggestions, “For roles like these, we suggest these behavioral profiles,” but then we let them refine it for their companies.

Pete Mockaitis
And just as we sort of segmented cognitive fit into the four sub-facets, you talked about a behavioral profile. What are the ingredients or sub-facets that we can characterize people on as being high or low and that really matter?

Mike Zani
Each tool is different. Our tool measures four primary factors that are commonly found in the workplace: dominance, extroversion, patience, and formality. And we measure it in high or low on a normalized Bell curve. So, there’s someone who could be four standard deviations high dominance. And while you might want high dominance, you may not want that much.

And then we actually measure combinations of those factors. So, high dominance and low formality make you very risk-tolerant. Whereas, high formality and low dominance makes you highly execution-oriented and risk-intolerant. So, it’s not just the four factors that you measure but the interplay between them that’s really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, boy, this is fascinating, and so a lot of juicy conceptual stuff to ponder. I’d love it if we could maybe shift gears a bit, Mike, and hear some just, boom, best practices, whether someone is going to go deep into these fun assessments or they’re not. What are the things that professionals need to start doing and stop doing to have more dream teams according to science?

Mike Zani
I think the number one thing that people need to stop doing is overweighting their own opinion. Human beings are so good at heuristics. So, you can see a dog and, within milliseconds, know, “Is a type of dog that I want to pet? Or, is this a type of dog that I want to pull my hands back, and I’m concerned?” To even the point of, “Is this a dog that I should be running from?”

And so, we’re good at that heuristics, and false negatives are false positives happen all the time. We’re actually, we’re good at the heuristics but our rates of being right and wrong are really bad, so like about 50%. But if you run from a dog you shouldn’t have, then you just look silly, but you’re still safe. So, it’s a good thing and we’ve evolved it through evolution. But those same heuristics will say, “Is Pete giving me eye contact? He looks kind of shifty.” And that’s a false read, “Maybe when Pete is thinking, he’s introverted and looks to the side.” That doesn’t mean it’s good or bad.

So, people bring all of these conscious and unconscious bias to bear. And then, like driving, if you interview drivers, 90% of people think they’re above average at driving, which is impossible. I think the same holds true, 90% of people think they’re a good read of people, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m a good read. I would not hire this person. This is not a good idea.” And they’re wrong, and they have these biases. First and foremost, we need to get rid of that. And if you don’t get rid of that, you’re going to continue doing it in the third of the time getting it right.

I think the next thing people need to get rid of is the over-reliance on what we call the briefcase, which is the resume. There’s the head, the heart, and the briefcase. And the briefcase is the book of experience you’ve had, you’re like, “Pete, you’ve had three great jobs in customer service. You’ve had it at companies a lot like ours, and you’ve kept going up the line from individual contributor to manager to director. We want you to be the senior director of customer service at our firm.” And that makes sense. It sounds good but teaching someone customer service, literally if you break it down, takes a month.

And finding someone is a good manager really has nothing to do with their resume. So, you can throw out a lot of that resume because it’s a false reliance, you’re going, “Oh, this person must be great at customer service.” And there are roles that you need a lot of experience, “I want my surgeon to have done this surgery a few times before,” but most of the roles in business are not mission critical like surgeon.

You can train this and companies under-invest in their learning and development, so that you can hire thinner resumes and train, but don’t shortchange the behavior, the cognitive, and the passion, the heart, making sure they’re a good fit for your organization, and they have the type of cultural qualitative stuff that will succeed in your organization, that gets them up in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued by…so we talked about the cognitive and the behavioral, and so we got assessments for that. How do I get after whether they got the heart?

Mike Zani
It’s difficult. Those tests are really hard to do predictably. I want to pick on grit. I think grit is an amazingly cool sort of metric to try and get your arms around. So, Angela Duckworth wrote the book Grit, and I got to ask Angela, “How do you measure grit in mission-critical situations?” And she goes, “It’s very difficult because the test is easy to game. You ask questions like, ‘When faced with a challenge, do you roll into the fetal position or do you assault the hill?’”

Pete Mockaitis
Never. Always.

Mike Zani
And you’re like, “Hmm, I normally roll in a fetal position but I don’t want to tell you that so I’m going to check the climb the mountain.” Now, there are ways to test for grit. If you look at the Army and bootcamp, you take these rookies through bootcamp, and it’s really hard to fake bootcamp for whatever it is, 12 weeks. So, at the end of bootcamp, they know, they’re like, “This batch of people has a lot of grit. This middle, these, not so much.” But most people don’t have 12 weeks and a bootcamp to measure that factor.

But we coach people to have structured interview processes around their culture. So, you’re trying to get people to test themselves in or out of the culture, that if I realized that, let’s say I’m running a nonprofit mission-driven organization, and speaking with you, I’m realizing, “Pete, you seem pretty financially motivated.”

Pete Mockaitis
Cash is king, Mike.

Mike Zani
I’m like, “We do not pay top 50%.” That’s right. And I’m like, “If you’re not connected to this mission, you’re not going to make it here because you’re going to want to make money and have promotions beyond what social enterprises is willing to do at this time.” So, you need to really send like a beacon, your culture, your cultural mores, your way of working, and get people to be like, “I really want to be part of it,” or, “That scares me. I don’t want to be at all part of this.”

And people can start self-selecting in or out, but you really need to broadcast loudly and have some structured interviewing to help find out what’s at heart, and it’s still difficult. It’s easier with internal hires than with fresh material from the outside world.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s handy. Well, lay it on us, any other quick do’s and don’ts that we should keep in mind for getting more dream teams going?

Mike Zani
Yeah, I really think you need to train your managers to be good managers. I think the management construct is a little flawed. So, if you’re a good performer individual contributor, they start giving you resources. You manage a process at first and you hold people accountable to that process. You might manage a project and then you do a good job, and they give you more resources. Soon, you have people reporting to you and a little budget. And then you wake up in the morning, going, “Gosh, I got to manage my people. How do I do that?” So, you look back and you say, “Oh, I had a good manager once. I’m going to manage like them.”

And that just means that that manager managed you the way you wanted to be managed and that’s why you thought they were good. We need to teach managers to modify themselves to be flexible and pliable in their styles so they can actually get the most out of their people. And I go back all the way to the first comment about the Olympics when, even as a coach, even as a teacher, you need to modify yourself to get the most out of your people.

And I think when a manager realizes their job is to leverage their skills to get the most out of their people, that is what managers should do. We have to reinvest in the development of our management corps so they really can be world-class managers of people, so they can get the most out of their dream teams.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Well, Mike, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Mike Zani
No, I would say if you are unhappy with how stuff is being done, talent is being managed in your organization, look at your organization and find out, “Does the head of talent, whatever they’re called, chief people officer, chief human resources officer, are they reporting directly to the CEO or not?” I think that is the number one predictor of whether a company takes talent seriously. Because if you think the two most important assets in a modern business, first, people, 65% of an income statement of your expenses is people or people-related.

So, the new triumvirate is the CEO, the CFO, and the Chief People Officer. And that Chief People Officer better be reporting to the CEO because why wouldn’t the most important asset, 65% of your expenses, be reporting to the Chief Executive Officer? So, you can find out whether your organization is taking it seriously.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mike Zani
Yeah, Sir Francis Drake wrote this prayer when he had to tell his crew they were sailing around the world, and the only one who had ever done that before was Magellan, and most of them died.

I’m not going to quote the whole poem or prayer, but he does say, “Where the storms will show your mastery,” and I always hang onto that because I think when things really start going sideways, like the beginning of the pandemic, that you have to dig deep for the whole team the entirety. Like, the storm is going to show our mastery and we’re going to get through this, and we’re going to prove that all the work and all the talent that we have comes to bear right now.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Mike Zani
I’m going to go back to The Goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Mike Zani
The reason I like The Goal is once you learn that concept of looking for the bottleneck in everything you do, take a systems or operations approach, you actually see it everywhere. I see it with my kids, they’re like, “I need more socks.” I’m like, “No, you don’t. You need to wash your socks more.” I love The Goal. I have two boys; we have a lot of sock problems.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate, it gets quoted back to you often?

Mike Zani
There’s this concept that I mentioned in the book, and you may know the framework creator, Jim Allen. He’s a partner in the UK office of Bain, came up with, “Front of T-shirt, back of T-shirt.” And front of T-shirt is all the things that you’ve been given jobs for, your superlatives. You puff up your chest when you hear them and your mom would probably rattle them off. The back of T-shirt stuff is not as easily identifiable for the wearer of the shirt. But people who know the subject know the back of T-shirt and can say it just as loudly as the front but only when they walk away from you because it’s inappropriate to say it.

So, the really self-aware person looking for what’s on the back of your T-shirt, finding out these things that can manifest themselves at bad times and take you out. The reason Jim Allen brought this up is if you’re about to become a partner at a major consulting firm, the front of T-shirt is clear. You wouldn’t be there if you didn’t have a massive front of T-shirt. But it’s, “Are there things in the back that’s so out of control or egregious or triggered so frequently that we just can’t let you get to that next tenure level?”

And this framework has a lot of legs, and it’s in the book, I mentioned it. I give Jim Allen credit as often as I possibly can. But a lot of people really go on to that because going on a journey to find out, “What’s on your T-shirt? What’s on the front? What’s in the back? What are the triggers? How do they take me out? And how do I live with it because you’re never going to get rid of these things?”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Mike Zani
For the book, I would point them to DreamTeams.io, that’s the book’s website, and you can take some free assessments there, and read a sample chapter. For more about The Predictive Index, PredictiveIndex.com has a lot of content on talent optimization, all free that you can really start snacking on to start learning about this discipline change that we all need to go through.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Mike Zani
Yeah, create better workplaces. I think if we send home our workers more energized because they enjoy what they do, we’re going to create a better world, create better parents, spouses, homeschooling individuals, community members. So, create better workplaces. We spend too much time working there to let people go home de-energized and unhappy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Mike, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you much luck to be on many dream teams in your future.

Mike Zani
Pete, thank you for having me and I really appreciate the work that you do.

Jun 03
0

673: Maximizing Wellbeing at Work with Gallup’s Dr. Jim Harter

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Dr. Jim Harter says, "70% of the variance in team engagement is influenced by the manager."

Dr. Jim Harter shares the key practices that improve wellbeing at work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The five key ingredients to a thriving work life
  2. Top tips for developing each area of wellbeing
  3. What most organizations get wrong about wellbeing

About Jim

Jim Harter, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist for Gallup’s workplace management and wellbeing practices. He is coauthor of the No. 1 Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller, It’s the Manager. He is also the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller 12: The Elements of Great Managing.

Dr. Harter’s book, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, is based on a global study of what differentiates people who are thriving from those who are not. His research is featured in First, Break All the Rules, and he contributed the foreword to Gallup’s updated edition of this groundbreaking bestseller.

Dr. Harter is the primary researcher and author of the first large-scale, multi-organization study to investigate the relationships between work-unit employee engagement and business results. His work has appeared in many publications, including Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Time Magazine, and in academic articles and book chapters.

Dr. Harter received his doctorate in psychological and cultural studies in quantitative and qualitative methods from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors!

Dr. Jim Harter Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jim, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jim Harter
Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into much of your wisdom and research. I understand that your latest here has involved a hundred million plus people. What’s the story here?

Jim Harter
Well, we’ve had a chance to study workplaces all over the world for quite some time, to study individual strengths of people in the workplace. We’ve developed various tools for selecting people into the right jobs, and we’ve studied workplace environments extensively both inside organizations. So, think about thousands of organizations conducting census surveys and mapping the data down to the team level so that managers get a report on how they’re building a culture.

Then, also, we do polls of the entire globe, the only real-world poll of the entire globe, on issues like how engaged people are in their work, their wellbeing, how they think about their lives, and how they experience their days. And so, those accumulated interviews with people add up to actually, a hundred million is pretty conservative.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s interviews not survey responses. Interviews. That’s just huge. Hotdog! Well, while we’re here, I’ve got say the Gallup Engagement Research has been cited so many times by the hundreds of guests on the show that it’s just sort of an institution almost. And so, I’d love it if you could maybe, for everyone who’s wondering, how do we bucket it in terms of putting a person into the engaged, not engaged, and actively disengaged categories? How do we arrive there?

Jim Harter
Well, we started off by studying which elements of human nature at work predict performance outcomes and conducted very large-scale studies looking at which particular survey items predict not only how people feel about their jobs overall but also performance outcomes like productivity, whether they’re likely to stay or leave an organization; profitability, were their customers are getting served the right kind of way; safety incidents; absenteeism. We’d looked at all these kinds of outcomes and we found that there were 12 elements that best explain what a great workplace culture looks like.

And so, we had questions we tested over and over again. And so, there are 12 elements that go into that formula that we apply to get at the percentage of engaged, not engaged, actively disengaged. And the percentage that we come up with is really a high bar. If you look at our global data, only about 20% of people are engaged globally. And, in the US. we’re talking about 36% as of the end of 2020. The good news is those numbers have been going up.

And when we study organizations, we have seen them move from less than 20% engaged all the way up to over 70%. I say it’s a high bar because the criteria is performance. There’s a lot of organizations out there using other metrics like combining, on a one-to-five scale, the fours and fives together, and coming up with a percentage of favorable, oftentimes calling that engaged. That’s a pretty soft metric. That’s more like a satisfaction metric than a high bar kind of metric.

The reason for the high bar though, again, is it gets you to a real culture when you improve on it and it gets you to real performance outcomes when you improve on it.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s a high bar in terms of the robustness of the study. Is it also a high bar in terms of like the, I don’t know, strictness of the grading on the 12 questions? Or how do you think about that?

Jim Harter
Yeah, it is, because we looked at how each of those questions relate to performance outcomes. And so, if you think about like a on one-to-five scale, there’s a big difference between someone. I’ll give you an example of the question, “I know what is expected of me at work.” Only about half of the people globally can strongly agree to that. That means the other half are at least somewhat confused at what they’re supposed to do. Think about the problems that creates in the work environment when people just don’t know what to do next. That’s why managing is so important.

But a difference between a four and a five is very significant, and so we lean more toward people given those more…those strongly agree kinds of responses. It doesn’t mean that they have to strongly agree to every question, of course. But it’s a formula we apply based on how that scale relates to different performance outcomes. So, yeah, it’s a higher bar in terms of how we’ve determined, you can call them cutoffs, to determine whether you’re engaged or not, but there’s a reason. And the reason is it really gets an authentic culture when organizations improve on it. It gets into a very authentic culture where a leader can feel like they’ve got something reliable that they’ve built.

And it’s been particularly important to see this play out during crises. We’ve studied this research. We’ve conducted ten meta analyses now of how engagement predicts performance outcomes. But we’ve had a chance to study the relationship between engagement and performance during two previous recessions and now this one. And we find the correlation between engagement and performance is a little bit stronger during tough times.

And so, think of it as like an insurance policy, when the going gets tough, are your people going to get into more of a fight or flight mentality or are they going to be resilient and have your back because you’ve had their back?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. I’ve wanted to know that for a long, long time. I’ve seen the 12 questions, I’ve heard the 36% figure many times, and now we know that the 36% is a high bar. But I think it’s also a true bar in terms of if you just talked to your buddies, maybe a little over a third will say, “Yeah, I’m engaged. I dig it.” And others are like, “Yeah, it’s okay, I guess.”

Jim Harter
And there’s a big chunk in the middle there where they’re just kind of if they get a better opportunity, they’ll take it with another organization. They show up, do the minimum required, not much else, but they’re not the people who really are going to be resilient during tough times and surpass the competition with innovative ideas during the good times.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And it’s encouraging that some workplaces have indeed gotten to 70% and that feels true as well in terms of if you talked to some folks at some amazing places, it’s like, “Yeah, the vast majority of people really are digging this here.” So, thank you. That was just an appetizer, an amuse-bouche to our main topic today. Wellbeing at Work is your latest. Kind of what’s the big idea here and some of the most intriguing discoveries from these many millions of interviews?

Jim Harter
Well, we wrote a wellbeing book back in 2010, and that one, we leveraged the global discoveries from that world poll I was talking about earlier. And the question we asked for that book was, and all the research we did leading up to it, was, “Are there some universal characteristics in people or elements that drive wellbeing in terms of people having a thriving overall life and experiencing really good days?

Well, we know that every region in the world is somewhat different culturally but we found there are five elements that were universal and consistently predicted thriving lives and great days for people where they had high interests, high enjoyment, lower levels of stress, worry, anger, or sadness, all those negative emotions we can list off.

And the five that we found, that writing was directed at individuals, “How do we help individuals live more thriving lives?” And the five are career wellbeing, social wellbeing, financial wellbeing, physical wellbeing, and community wellbeing. And they’re in an order for a purpose. This particular book, we decided to aim it at organizational leaders and managers, primarily because we see an issue right now where most organizations don’t have what we’d call a net thriving culture, where employees not only their work life in terms of their engagement, but also their overall life is either struggling or suffering.

And we saw this play out during the pandemic, in particular, where we saw drops in the percentage of thriving employees, in spikes in worry and stress in our global data. We’re seeing a continuous rise globally in the percentage of people that have negative emotions. And even before this pandemic, Pete, we were trending on what the new workforce was looking for. And one of the things the new workforce was looking for was a workplace that improves their overall life. It isn’t just a job. The separation between work and life had already started to fade away primarily because we carry these devices around with us that connect us to our work more often, maybe sometimes than we like, and sometimes we can connect with the work when we want to in our spare time.

But people in the younger generations, you can think about Millennial and Gen Z, expect their workplace to improve their lives. And all these trends that we saw pre-pandemic just got magnified. The number one perk people were asking for, pre-pandemic, was flex time. Boom! We had the great shift and a high percentage of people had that flex time. And there’s all kinds of things I can get into in terms of we trended a lot of data during COVID and continue to, so there’s a lot underneath that as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s interesting right there. I mean, hey, so we got our flex time but my hunch is that we’re not so much feeling a whole lot of wellbeing during pandemic times.

Jim Harter
Yes. It’s interesting. Pre-pandemic, the people who worked from home 100% of the time, and, by the way, that was only about 4% of the population who were 100% worked from home, and suddenly that jumped up to 48% full-time work from home after the great shift that we call it. And 70% of people in jobs, at least some of the time, and most of those some of the times were most of the time working from home. But the interesting thing was pre-pandemic, those people who worked from home 100% of the time, that 4%, they had lower levels of reported burnout.

During the pandemic, the 100% work-from-homers actually had higher levels of burnout than the others. So, there’s something there. As I talked to organizations, almost all of them that had a lot of work-from-home folks during COVID or continue to, are planning on some type of a hybrid type option going forward.

The good news there is the hybrid employees, pre-pandemic, were the ones that had the highest levels of engagement at work. So, there’s a factor inside engagement around autonomy that’s really important. And great managers find ways to build autonomy into jobs and, at the same time, get involved with people in setting goals and holding them accountable but still have autonomy and connectedness with them.

So, the solution part of all this really does sit not exclusively but highly with managers because they’re in the best position to know what people are going through and get close enough to people to know their individual situation.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, what are some of the key practices that contribute to teams and organizations becoming net thriving?

Jim Harter
At the organizational level, there are some, I think, really important foundational things you have to get right. I’ll come back to this later if you want me to, but there are some threats and some risks, there are barriers to organizations having a net thriving culture that if you don’t take care of those, you’re going to have some issues.

But one of the things is that it’s really important for organizations to think about those five elements of wellbeing that we listed. They’re all science-based. We know we can rely on them. If we work on those and improve them, we can make a big difference in people’s lives, and they’re all changeable to some extent. They’re areas everybody can work on.

But I would argue, the organizations need an organizational structure so that everything that they’re offering employees, they are aligning with at least one of those five elements or more so it makes sense to people, so people know why it exists and why it was developed by the organization. Too often, people might have programs, policies, perks that are offered by an organization, they either are unaware of it, or they don’t know why it exists, or just doesn’t come top of mind to them until there’s a crisis or something. So, the organizational structure is important.

It’s also important that the CEO is highly involved in building a net thriving culture. The reason for that is anytime we look at culture change, it’s owned from the top of the organization, not just stated but actually owned and an important value that the organization holds close. And we’re going to see more and more of that, I think, going forward with all the pressure on ESG, the Environmental, Social and Governance standards that are kind of finally coming to a head, I think, in terms of some more official standards. And at Gallup, we’ve been working on the people component of that, the social part you could say.

I think another thing that’s really important from a practice standpoint is to equip managers to move from a boss mentality to a coaching mentality, and equip them to have the right kinds of wellbeing conversations that don’t feel forced but rather are more natural. So, for them to have those natural conversations, there’s a progression that has to happen in terms of how they become upskilled.

I think, also, what organizations can do is develop a network of wellbeing coaches. And what I mean by that are people who’ve become experts in particular areas and gather best practices and share best practices. Part of that is peer to peer, I think, is really important. In the wellbeing space, people learn a lot from their peers because, “These are people like me. They’re not somebody who’s making a lot more money or whatever,” trying to tell them how to have higher wellbeing. It doesn’t have as high a credibility for them.

So, “Learning from people like me and getting ideas from people like me,” but collecting best practices and having some experts internally. An example would be there’s so much information out there about nutrition. You can look all over the place and you see little tiny studies that say something, and in the next month they say something else. I think organizations need someone who integrates the best science and teaches it back to employees so they know what they can rely on.

And then the other thing, I think, is important from a practice standpoint is to go through an audit how you’re doing things right now, your rules, your guidelines, how you communicate, your facilities, your incentive systems, how you recognize people, the different events and developmental opportunities you have available. Those can all be audited through the lens of, “Does this improve an individual wellbeing?” You can do it statistically, you can do it qualitatively, but just to go through and hold yourself accountable for everything that you’re doing right now and whether it’s really one utilized into, related to higher levels of wellbeing for people.

So, you can go to that level of detail on this but most organizations just want to start somewhere. And to start somewhere, you need to get some good measures in place and you need to see where you have variance, where you have some highs and lows, and start digging into what’s going on, and study some best practices inside your own organization. But, above all, equip your managers to have the right kinds of conversations to move on that boss to coach journey.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, when we think about some of the particular practices that the coaches are learning and sharing, could you maybe give us one or two inside each of the five elements of wellbeing that really make a world of difference for a relatively small amount of effort?

Jim Harter
Well, we’ll just go down the list. Career wellbeing, probably the simplest and most efficient practice you can get really good at is through strengths. So, Gallup has a tool. It’s called CliftonStrengths and it’s a scientific assessment that will list off your strengths, your 34 strengths and there’s all kinds of combinations that anybody could get, but the key is to understand what your strengths are individually.

And when I’m talking about strengths, I’m talking about innate kind of characteristic that are not likely to change significantly once we become adults. We still change and evolve but they’re less likely to change and evolve than something like how we view our workplace or skills. It’s more innate. So, leveraging your own strengths, knowing about them, and leveraging them. It just leads for more efficient activities inside organizations where people don’t try to be something that they’re not and they develop through who they are in unique ways.

So, that’s probably the most direct one on career wellbeing. When people are using their strengths, we’d measure these in the moment, they report much higher levels of energy when they can do what they do best. So, continually figuring that out and refining it, but that tool I’ve mentioned can give people a big head start there.

Social wellbeing, it starts with onboarding, I think, in organizations. We have to make it a priority during onboarding where people get to know other people right away. And I think that became a challenge for organizations that were doing onboarding during COVID. There wasn’t a lot of hiring going on but, going forward, I think organizations are going to have to have strategies for how they do that because the advantage on the social wellbeing front is there for people who already knew each other in working from home and remotely. That’s not difficult to connect on Zoom and to have conversations if you already know somebody and have worked with them for a long time, but it’s really the newer people where I think there’s a big gap there that needs to be filled.

But social wellbeing, we have a question we ask on our engagement survey called…it’s worded “I have a best friend at work.” It’s kind of controversial because not everybody thinks that that’s important in the workplace but it links to all kinds of outcomes so we kept it in there. That’s a social wellbeing component. And people ask me, “How do you change that? How do you effect that?” I would argue it’s the easiest of the engagement elements to act on because it requires creating situations where people have a chance to get to know one another and kind of getting out of the way and letting human nature take over. We’re human beings. We’re social. We tend to connect naturally if we know something about someone else. So, it’s not one you have to try to force or anything like that, but just a couple of thoughts there on social.

On financial, the financial wellbeing is about two things if we’re going to boil it down. It’s about reducing stress. It can be related to money, of course, but it’s not completely about the amount of money you make. It’s also about how you manage that money to reduce stress, daily stress, and increase longer-term security.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. How should I be spending my money to do that?

Jim Harter
Well, one thing is we have so much automation now, we don’t have to think about paying bills as much anymore, which helps a lot to reduce stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, when I have to write a check and I’m kind of irritated.

Jim Harter
Yeah, it is the activity of writing that check. So, automation can help. The other thing is once you take care of your basic needs, reduce stress, spending money on experiences, we’ve seen, other people seen, and the academic literature, spending on experiences less.

You develop stories, the stories might even evolve that you had during those experiences but they live on. Whereas, the physical purchases, while they’re nice for a short period of time, it kind of fades a bit. We’ve all kind of experienced that. But spending money on the right kinds of things so you’re building those stories and experiences with people, I think, is a really kind of creative way of prioritizing the extra money that you might blow on something else. So, I think that money management is a big factor, of course, but then kind of aiming it at, “How do I create more really good experiences with other people with the money?” Sometimes it’s your own individual experience but, in many cases, it’s experiences with other people.

Physical wellbeing. You might immediately think of physical wellbeing as disease burden or the lack of disease burden, and that’s certainly a part of it. Imagine your life in such a way where you reduce that. That became so apparent during COVID where the people who had less disease burden or just more resilient to the virus. And so, we had some of our researchers develop a model around that and it’s amazingly accurate at predicting mortality rates.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say disease burden, does that just mean I have a lot of diseases or how do we think about that?

Jim Harter
Well, it can range anywhere from obesity to heart disease, to preexisting condition, cancer. Hypertension, so even depression anxiety falls into disease burden but those are more psychological. But the point we try to make about physical wellbeing is that the end goal should be…because some of our disease burden, we can’t do anything about, it’s genetic, right?

So, the goal under the physical wellbeing umbrella should be that we manage our life, in whatever situation we’re in, to increase energy so that we can get things done that we want to get done. And the things that we can influence involve what we eat, involve the quality of sleep that we get, and the movement, our movement. We call this exercise now. The people that we studied, George Gallup did a study of, he called them the oldsters but they lived to be 95 plus. And one thing that they had in common was that they kept working, by the way, until their, many of them, 70s and 80s. They just kept working but they had jobs that required them to move around a lot, not just all farming jobs either. There are all kinds of different jobs but they moved a lot.

They also ate smaller meals. They had jobs that they loved. They loved their work. Their spare time was spent with family and friends. So, you can kind of see those five elements coming out. They lived in a variety of different types of communities, some urban, some rural, some suburban so the type of community wasn’t a differentiator. But I just thought that was interesting that a lot of what he learned back then studying these people who lived long lives, even though their practices weren’t identical to what we can do now. They had some of the same themes that stuck out.

Pete Mockaitis
And while we’re talking physical, so move more, that’s good. Any quick best practices associated with the sleeping better and the eating better?

Jim Harter
Well, one is both too much sleep and too little are both bad, that’s what all the research is showing. But it’s really the quality of the sleep that’s the key, if you wake up feeling well-rested, refreshed. I’m a big fan of the short power nap, going conscious for 10 minutes, that’s very refreshing. I reviewed some research that I found very interesting that said, that showed, actually there’s a YouTube on as well that shows visually there’s a fact with sleep that it’s the only organ in our body, apparently, where the waste cells only leave, only get drained out or cleaned out when we sleep. The rest of our body is continuously getting rid of wastes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the brain is the only organ?

Jim Harter
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah.

Jim Harter
And you can kind of feel that when you take a nap or wake up feeling well rested. I use sleep in my writing, not that I’m writing when I’m sleeping. I just kind of learned this trick where day one, I’ll kind of try to get my head all the information I can around the topic I’m writing on, and in the next morning, after I sleep on it, it somehow kind of gets integrated better, and it comes out a lot more smoothly where I’m kind of struggling day one to even write good sentences. But I think sleep is a really good one to just kind of think about how you do it and when you do it and how you manage that effectively.

On diet, to me, and again there’s all kinds of advice on diet, but to me, from what I’ve read, the two takeaways are try to reduce processed food and eat smaller amounts. The calorie thing is still a thing. It still means something. There’s been so much emphasis on what you eat but the amounts still matters, and that’s the hardest thing to manage, I think.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s physical. And how about community?

Jim Harter
Community, at a basic level, is about making sure you live in a safe area, having a safe place to live, and having housing that’s adequate for you and your family. And at a higher level, community wellbeing is about giving back, giving in a way that makes sense for you. And the giving part can vary by person. It can vary by stage of life, but organizations can really set people up for that by just sharing opportunities for giving, connecting people who have similar passions and interests together, and just providing a wide range of opportunities, and giving as an organization first.

So, “Here’s what we’re doing as an organization to contribute to our community and to society in general.” And many, probably most cases, organizations can do that through what they do in their work, their business, but outside of the work that they do, they can do it so many other ways as well. So, that’s an important one.

Neuroscientists found that the part of our brain that lights up when we get something, lights up even more when we give, so sort of the helper’s high. And so, again, I think organizations can play a huge role there and on all these elements by putting some defaults in place that make it easy for people to do what’s in their best intentions.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so we got some principles in terms of how organizations and leaders can facilitate some more good stuff happening and some specific practices for individuals. Can you share with us a cool story or example or a case study of a team or organization that went from, you know, not so much wellbeing to boatloads of wellbeing and how that unfolded?

Jim Harter
Well, those areas I listed off are the ones that I have seen leveraged the best. I think there’s still long ways to go for most organizations in the wellbeing front. So, for instance, on the career wellbeing component, we’ve seen people move from the bottom of our database over time all the way to the top decile of our database, top 10%. And they did that by being persistent, that’s one thing. But there’s kind of four patterns we saw in organizations that create change.

And one of them is, and I mentioned this earlier, it’s got to start strategically with the CEO and the board thinking about why they’re trying to create a net thriving culture or a highly engaged culture and articulate that and explain it to people so they know why it’s happening, that it’s not just a flavor of the month kind of thing, and it’s really a part of who we’re going to be as an organization.

Second, they had excellent communication. They just continuously communicated best practices and they continuously communicated “What we’re doing and why,” and it’s almost like over-communication so people know the why. And then all the way from when they’re fielding a survey to what they‘re going to do after it and how they’re going to create action plans and train managers.

The third is that manager piece. It’s upskilling managers from boss to coach is really important. And then the fourth pattern we saw was accountability. They make it clear that’s part of the manager’s job to engage their workers and to improve the lives of their workers. So, those are kind of some general patterns we saw but, yeah, we’ve seen organizations move from the bottom all the way to the top of the database. So, I know this stuff is changeable.

I think wellbeing is more difficult to change than engagement but you got to get the engagement part right first because that’s what I think as the nuts and bolts of managing. If you want to help individuals in your organization improve their lives, you’ve got to start by taking care of the work part of it because that builds trust where people aren’t second-guessing your intentions, and it builds more comfortable conversations so that managers and the individuals they’re managing can have open dialogue. And not everybody is going to want to talk about their whole life, and that’s fine, but it opens the door.

And, at minimum, managers can direct people to the right resources and help them know what’s there from the organization. But, at maximum, managers become coaches that actually help people improve their lives, give them some advice, and connect them to the right other people who might be on the same path as them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, Jim, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Jim Harter
I talked earlier about some barriers or risks to improving a culture from maybe struggling to what we would call net thriving, where people in the organization not only have very positive views of their present life but also think the next five years will be even better. Those five elements I listed lead to that. But there are some barriers and they can kind of trick people, I think, a little bit.

Well, one of them, in particular, I’ll just list off a couple of them. One of them that I think maybe most commonly becomes a barrier are to assume that, “Our policies, programs, and perks will change your culture.” If that were the case, a lot of organizations wouldn’t have culture problems. I think policies, programs, and perks are very important but they won’t necessarily change your culture. What you need to change your culture are managers who are well skilled to lead other people because they’re, again, the ones closest to the lives in their organization.

And so, having poorly skilled managers is another big risk. And so, upskilling managers to move from boss to coach, I think, is really important. And that involves integrating several things that are kind of disparate in organizations right now. Over here, you might have a wellness program that’s offered to people. Over here, you might have employee engagement survey and program. Over here, you might have performance management. And over here, you might have learning and development. That boss-to- coach journey needs to bring all those things together so it makes sense to managers and so that it also leverages the strengths of each person. It’s a strengths-based journey where you’re starting off with who you are as an individual and building on top of that instead of trying to make everybody the same or trying to get people to become someone who they’re not.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jim Harter
One of my favorite quotes is one that was attributed to the great Albert Einstein, but I actually looked it up, he actually said this in a more complex way, but, “Make everything as simple as possible but not too simple.” I’m a researcher, and the complexity is already there so, to me, one of the things I learned along the way is, “We’ve got to make sure that the research is A-accurate but also not too simple, but also applicable and useful to people.” So, I really like that quote.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jim Harter
I’ve often referenced the Whitehall studies, the particular part of the Whitehall studies, were done over in Europe, where they tracked people longitudinally. And one subpart of those studies where they looked at mortality and heart disease and other future health issues. One subpart of that big study looked at workplaces, and they found that workplaces with better environments, they call it organizational justice, but workplaces with better environments, the concepts overlap with what we call engagement. Those better environments had lower risks of coronary heart disease and lower mortality rates, and they controlled for all sorts of things. So, I reference that a lot and I think it’s a really important research.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Jim Harter
I like Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. I think it just does an excellent job of bringing together two parts of wellbeing, the remembering self and experiencing self, which we talked about in wellbeing at work as well. I think it’s important to think about those two parts of how we experience life.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Jim Harter
This is kind of geeky but I leverage a lot Google Scholar and PubMed because they’re just great sources for finding things quickly and searching.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Jim Harter
I think that 10-minute power nap. I try to get it as many days as I can. It’s really important to kind of have a refreshing afternoon.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you frequently?

Jim Harter
Probably the one that I see quoted the most is “70% of the variance in team engagement is influenced by the manager.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jim Harter
You could go to Gallup.com and we have a whole series of new articles and findings coming out all the time, reports, or I’m on LinkedIn as well. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, that’s another place.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jim Harter
I would say make sure you know your strengths and have them clearly in mind, and the strengths of your coworkers. And one thing to build on that is you got to direct your strength at something. Make sure you have a minimum of one meaningful conversation per week.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jim, this has been fun. Thanks so much and much luck to you with all your good work on wellbeing.

Jim Harter
Thank you, Pete. Appreciate the invitation.

May 27
0

671: How to Make Change Happen Faster, Easier, and Better with Jake Jacobs

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Jake Jacobs reveals why organizational change doesn’t have to be difficult and provides  key levers that make the difference.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to keep change from becoming overwhelming 
  2. The hack to accelerate change 
  3. How leaders accidentally kill enthusiasm for change 

About Jake

Jake Jacobs helps organizations, teams, and individuals make monumental changes. He’s worked in 61 industries, from high tech to manufacturing. He’s consulted for 96 organizations, from Fortune 50 to community theaters and supported more than 210,000 people in changing strategy, creating cultures, and mergers and acquisitions. 

Jake has partnered with CEOs, front-line workers and middle management at Ford, Kraft and Marriott. He’s also helped create change in the City of New York, U.K.’s National Health Service, and the United States Army and Navy. 

Clients call Jake when they need faster, easier, better results. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors!

Jake Jacobs Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jake, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jake Jacobs
Thanks so much, Pete. I’m glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m glad to have you and I’ve got so many things I want to hear from you about how to leverage change but the first thing I want to hear from you is about your massive baseball card collection. What’s the story here?

Jake Jacobs
Well, first of all, we should tell your listeners it’s 45,000 cards, so for some people that’s considered massive; for others it’s just puny. But I started when I was about eight and just got the bubble gum and the packages, and then I hit about 15 and decided this was a potential way to send my kids to college at some point. And so I started ordering full sets and not opening them, which took the fun out of it but at 15 you’re kind of moving onto girls and other things. So, it sits actually in my parents’ basement, Pete, all 45,000. They’re not even with me. I moved into a house that I fell in love with a woman five doors down, so I can keep a ready eye on those cards.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. Now, 45,000 cards, how much space does that consume in a basement?

Jake Jacobs
It’s a healthy pile. It’s a healthy pile. I think it’d go about waist high. And if I did the splits, I’m not terribly flexible, but if I did the splits it’d probably be about that far wide.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. That’s substantial. And then, in the basement, are you worried about flooding? What’s the estimated value when you think on this collection here?

Jake Jacobs
No, you haven’t met my father so there’s no flooding in that basement, brother. And I do have several Mickey Mantles and one card when the Padres were going to move to Washington. Nobody remembers this, but in ’72 they were going to move to Washington and they printed 500 cards with Washington on the card and then they decided not to go to Washington, so I’ve got one of those 500 cards. So, who knows? Neither of my kids ended up going to college.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, hotdog. There are just so much there in terms of do you view these as an economic-type investment or do you go and look at them from time to time? I’m just fascinated by people with big collections.

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. On podcasts that I’m on, generally, Pete, I refer to the economic benefits because some people think that I’m crazy having that many baseball cards and possibly even immature. But in my place in the world, I have a heart connection to them because it brings me back to mark, row, sorting baseball cards, putting rubber bands around them with the teams in little pieces of paper, and so I don’t need to open them, and I figure, yes, they’d be worth more if I don’t open them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Fun. Well, so now we’re going to talk about leveraging change. I don’t have a great segue there. Just as sometimes teams change locations and then don’t change locations, some organizations fail to follow through with their changes.

Jake Jacobs
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, can you give us the rundown on when it comes to change in organizations, how often do those changes succeed versus fail and what’s behind that?

Jake Jacobs
Well, if you go by the Ready Reports, and in this is in the Harvard Business Review, this is in the Sloan journal, there’s all kinds of books that had been written on this, and the common number is 70% fall short of the objectives they set out to achieve. So, that doesn’t mean that they fell on their face, it just means that what set on to achieve, they didn’t. This is going to sound odd, but I actually, in 35 years of doing this work and had great mentors so this is not all on me, I had some of the mentors who started my field of organizational change, but I haven’t had a client disappointed.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Jake Jacobs
After all that time and all that work. And I think part of it, Pete, goes back to like a “Never say no” attitude. So, if we haven’t gotten done what we need to then we’re not done with the work that we set out to achieve. And so, that notion of continuous improvement and hanging in there, and so when I work with clients, we get very clear on the outcomes at the beginning and what the deliverables are, and that’s what we work to. And I don’t have a clock going. Some consultants track things by time, I track things by outcomes. So, if we’re short of the outcomes, then there’s work to be done.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Okay, cool. Well, sounds like a good consultant work. Good stuff. Well, so then you’ve packaged a good bit of your learnings and insights when it comes to change in your book, Leverage Change: 8 Ways to Achieve Faster, Easier, Better Results. So, can you maybe hit us with a power punch to start. What’s a particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discovery you’ve made in your decades of work on change when it comes to change? Like, what’s something most of us don’t know but should know about this?

Jake Jacobs
Sure. So, Pete, what I would say is that you, your listeners, people who’ve written about change, studied change, practice change, both been changed and changed others, that’s what they focus on is, “What’s going to be different? What’s changed? What’s going to be different?” And at face value it makes sense. I mean, it’s what you’re trying to accomplish so why wouldn’t you focus on it?

I talk with my clients about what not to change. Now this is a different perspective. It’s what I call a paradoxical approach. So, each of the levers in this book states a common problem that organizations and people bump up against when they’re trying to bring about successful change. And then I have a lever, or a strategic action, a high-impact action, people can take to remedy that problem.

So, in organizations where there’s too much change, a lot of people talk about change fatigue, it’s like, “Oh, there’s one more coming down the pipe,” and what people hope for is, “This, too, shall pass. So, maybe we can get another leader and survive this change effort.” And I have a lever that’s called “Pay attention to continuity,” so what not to change.

And what I tell clients, very simply, is to make a list of all those changes that are going to occur in their organization. And they make a list, it’s a couple of flipcharts long, and it gets a little depressing in the room because it’s overwhelming. You’re surrounding yourself by all of these things that you’ve got to do differently. Then I tell them, “All right, we’re going to change gears. Now, what I’d like you to do is make a list of all those things that are going to stay the same, that are based on continuity. This time I want you to make the list twice as long.”

Well, people have a lot of ideas once they start thinking about what’s going to keep going the way that it’s always been, whether it’s who they work with, how they get paid, where they work, I mean, all kinds of things stay the same. But once they see this continuity lever, it shifts the energy in the room, it shifts the purpose that people have, how driven they are going to work. It changes the organization.

And I think that all of this focus on change is good and right, and it’s half the story. And it’s like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together with half the pieces. You get a great picture of what’s on half that front of the board but you’ve missed half of reality. And so, that’s one that I think has been really powerful with people that I’ve worked with.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I mean, that sounds powerful right there in terms of just the feelings you get, when everything is changing, is kind of uncomfortable. It’s sort of like a rising sense of, I don’t know, dread, anxiety, overwhelm.

Jake Jacobs
Those are good words.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you think about all the stuff that’s going to stay the same, it almost feels like after that it’s like, “Oh, no big deal. Okay, so I still got the same boss, I still got the same colleagues, I still get paid the same amount at the same frequency, I go to the same office, I use the same computer. Oh, but a couple of the software programs we’re using to insert inventory orders, or whatever, is going to be different? Okay.” It’s like, “What are we so stressed out about? Game on.”

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. And it really is I think it’s an emotional thing. I think that change goes to the heart of empowerment. And I’ve had clients tell me, “Everybody minds being changed and that people don’t necessarily mind change.” And so, if I’ve got my hands on the steering wheel and I’m starting to make some decisions about my future and I see that some of those are repeating the past, the way I describe it is that people find much firmer footing on that continuity side of the cliff, if you will, and they get a much firmer push-off into the unknown future. And so, you can be a lot more confident about how far you’re going to get because you’ve paid attention to the continuity.

So, when I even have executives give townhalls or they do communications, I had a client once that literally, in the working sessions that we held, it was about a rapid growth strategy and they needed to change a lot of things about how they did business and their roles and relationships and all kinds of stuff. And, in the meeting itself, he made sure that every time they worked on an issue around change, they worked on the same side of the issue but dealing with continuity.

And it was a very powerful session because it gave people permission at some basic human level to reclaim what was theirs. And I think that envisioning and creating our future is the most powerful thing that we can have and making that possible by reminding people of the things that are going to stay the same makes a big difference.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Well, heck, Jake, let’s just get into it. That’s one lever and that’s beautiful. You’ve got eight of them. So, you tell me, should we just maybe do a quick overview and then dig deep into perhaps two or three more that make a world of difference for a lot of folks?

Jake Jacobs
Sure. I’ll tell you what the problems are that people bump up against and then just a short bit on the lever because I think there are a few that can lead to immediate action that people can take. Levers can be used by individuals, teams, organizations. They can be used with existing methods that people already have in place, and it’s like, “No, no, don’t give that up. Build on it and turbocharge it.”

They can be used at the beginning of a change effort or in the middle. They can even be used as informal tools where you don’t have a formal change effort but you’re just looking to do business a new way because the subtitle of the book says, 8 Ways to Achieve Faster, Easier, Better Results. So, if you’re into faster, easier, better results, these are good things for you.

And let me say one quick thing, Pete, because people may wonder, “Why levers? Like, what does this mean?” And it comes from a story about Archimedes who was a 3rd century BC Greek mathematician, and he was known for describing the power of leverage by saying, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and, single-handed, I shall move the world.”

And so, I believe people can move their worlds in the arena of change by taking these levers and putting them under with the right results with a fulcrum and making change, something that can be faster, easier, and better.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. All right. Well, let’s hear some levers. Well, problems and levers.

Jake Jacobs
So, “Change takes too long.” Now this is one that you hear a lot from leaders and there is a lever, and I think I can talk more about this, which is “Think and act as if the future were now,” right? That’s number two. We’ve got one, “People reject your approach because it’s not invented here.” So, a lot of people will say, “Have you ever done this in my industry? Have you ever done this with an organization my side? Have you ever done it…?” And the answer to that is “Design it yourself.” There’s a lever that talks about “Taking the best of what you’ve used and actually looking back at your own organization’s capabilities with change and putting that into place.” So, design it yourself.

There’s “People don’t know enough to make good decisions.” In a lot of organizations, leaders appear to be making decisions that don’t make sense to frontline employees, and frontline employees are taking actions that leaves to throw their hands up. And so, this whole notion about not knowing enough, I have a lever called “Create a common database,” and it addresses this directly. And I’ve got a great story about that one with a client, too.

Then we’ve got “All change efforts must begin from the top.” So, this is one of my favorite ones because every consultant will come in and they will say, “Start with the senior executive team, get them on board, then cascade this through the organization. One needs to be transformed before they transform others. This is the way it goes.” Well, I say start with impact, follow the energy. So, that means start where you can make a difference and then follow where people want to do the work. And that’s a very different model than the waterfall approach that’s quite common.

So many ask, “What’s in it for me?” So, anybody who’s been in an organization may recognize the “WIIFM” way of talking about this, that’s, “What’s in it for me?” laid out in letters. So, the “What’s in it for me?” a lot of people see this as a problem, asking the question, like selfish, like there’s something wrong with the person asking it. And I look and I say, “No, this is a normal human reaction. This is not unreasonable to be asking ‘What’s in it for me?’”

So, the lever that I developed to address this is called “Develop a future people will want to call their own.” And if I developed a future that I want to be part of, then the “What’s in it for me?” question comes off the table, no longer is an issue. People get to only do their routine work of their daily job. Now I’m not saying that that’s unimportant but what I’m saying is that people yearn to make a significant contribution in their lives whether it’s in their places of worship, in their families, in their communities. It’s also true at work. And so, finding ways for people to make a meaningful difference is another one of these levers.

And then the last one. So, “People’s plates are already full.” You hear this all the time at organizations, they’re like, “I don’t want to take on change. I’ve already got enough to do.” And I have a lever that reframes this to say, “Make change work part of daily work,” that it shouldn’t be another item on the agenda, it shouldn’t be the meeting on Friday afternoon. You should be looking at it every day in everything you do, and that will actually change both your paradigm of what’s going on but also your experience of it.

Pete Mockaitis
As opposed to this extra bolt-on thing, it is rather the thing.

Jake Jacobs
Yeah, and it’s part of it. I had a client that was a team and they were looking at improving their performance, and they did an assessment and I was working with them instead of somebody else, and so they were like, “Well, let’s put a sub-team together, a committee, and they’ll study this,” and all this extra work that people resisted.

And I said, “No, no, let’s make this part of your weekly meeting. Every week we’re going to do something that improves your performance, whatever it may be.” And we started out taking part of the next meeting with feedback and the boss getting feedback first, and deciding what to do differently. But rather than separating change as “Another event, another item, that I got to deal with,” make it part of daily work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, so let’s hear about the common database. You said you’ve got a great story there. Let’s hear it.

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. So, this was in a merger and acquisition. And in that merger and acquisition, they needed to get a lot of people on board with the culture change. One of the organizations, I’m not going to be mentioning the organizations, but was a little slower, a little less rigorous, and worse-performing, and the other one was on the better side of that coin. So, what we needed to do was get everybody up to speed on what was going on with the merger and acquisition.

What we had were meetings. This actually took place around the world 200 people at a time but they don’t have to. You could do this with 10 people around a table. But what we did is we taught the frontline people about convertible bonds and debt and floating interest rates and all these things that the CFO and their people should be paying attention to, but what they were asking of these frontline people would not make sense unless they understood these business terms.

And so, they got a mini-MBA as part of these sessions. And that’s about people knowing enough to make good decisions. And so, that common database, it’s different for everybody. I do these LinkedIn videos, and one of them that I put up recently was “Do you know something that somebody else should know? Don’t keep it a secret.” So, this basic question of, “Do I know something, Pete, that you should know to be able to do your job better?” then it’s my responsibility to reach out and make sure that you know it rather than being too busy with my own work or having these senior leaders say, “People aren’t getting on board.”

Well, they don’t have the information you do. They don’t understand what the payoff is if we make these numbers this year instead of next year, and how much money saved, and what their bonus could be, and all those questions, I think, in that situation, needed to be information everybody knew. So, you get a mini-MBA if you need it as part of the work that I do.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s intriguing, and I recall, boy, with my very first internships. My boss, Kevin, we were working in channel strategy for electrical components in terms of like, “How can we get distributors to sell more of our stuff,” basically is what we’re trying to figure out.

Jake Jacobs
Good internship.

Pete Mockaitis
And he mentioned, numerous times, how he did a training in finance, and that he thought of it again and again and again with regard to what shows up with like the share price and the earnings and the expectations, and how things bubble up. And I thought that was interesting in that that’s not sort of directly essential to know that, and, yet, everything you hear from the CEO just makes a bit more sense forever when you have that internalized. And I want to hear you elaborate on how the frontline workers understanding the convertible bonds improved what they were doing.

Jake Jacobs
Well, for one thing, it shifted their motivation immediately because if you understand that if you pay off that debt sooner, you save money for the company. And that money for the company, yeah, it’ll go into innovation, and it’ll go into next year’s budget, but some of it was going to go into their pocket. So, understanding the relationship between how fast they paid this debt off and what they could buy at Christmas was fundamental. They didn’t understand that.

And once they understood that the floating interest rate was there and why was it that they paid so much for this other company if it was underperforming, they understood what it meant to have those assets and what it meant to open new markets that they weren’t in previously on a global scale. And so, rather than just being US-based, they diversified their risks by going global and they diversified their customer base.

And all of these things which could’ve been on the rumor mill, which is very efficient, it’s one of the most effective communication strategies any organizations had, but around the rumor mill they were like, “We paid all this money for this company, and why did we? Look, they can’t even do their regular jobs right.” And that was the scuttlebutt on the street. And when they understood what that new business made possible for them, it made a lot more sense.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool in terms of immediate motivation for your compensation this year and what you can do as well as I think just enhancing some trust forever in terms of, “Okay, our senior leaders aren’t morons. In fact, they got a deep understanding of this thing, I’m just now learning about, that has implications for what we’re up to, okay. And I see how I fit into this.” So, even if there is not that direct connection to, “What can I buy at Christmas?” there’s a huge, I think, emotional energy lift that occurs there. So, that’s beautiful. Thank you.

Jake Jacobs
Sure. One other thing I’ll just jump in with, Pete, this is not just about people who don’t have to do with finance getting financial information. This is like even about what I do on my daily job and having information. So, years ago, there was something called open-book management that came out, and in plants and factories, they would post numbers on production numbers, and people hadn’t seen those before. They didn’t know what they were.

So, it’s not always this big leap in logic to say, “Well, we should teach somebody who’s on an oil platform enough to get an MBA.” But it’s like within your own team, do you know things that other people know? And like I said, if you’re keeping it a secret and you’re frustrated that your team is not performing well, then, I don’t know, it was Michael Jackson who said, “Take a look in the mirror and you might realize that you’ve got a lot more power in this situation than you thought you did.”

Pete Mockaitis
And just while we’re here, what are some things leaders ought not to disclose to more junior team members? Is more transparency, more openness always better? Or are there some guidelines, or limits, or times less is…?

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. So, there’s an approach that I take that really says you can have too much of a good thing, that there needs to be a balance between the sharing of information and the protection of information. And so, I worked with the Department of Defense and there was a lot of information they weren’t meant to share with other people. But if I have personal information about your performance, about the issues that you’re working on, about your family, about your development plan, there are a lot of things that I might know about you as a direct report of mine, and it’s probably not appropriate to be sharing all of that. It’s not helpful.

So, one of the things I would tell your listeners, and this answers the question simply, directly, and, I would argue, correctly, which is, “What do these people need to know to do a great job for this business and themselves?” And if you can answer yes to that 95% of the time, it’s a good thing to be talking about. And if sharing this is not going to make a profound difference for the performance of that team or that organization, like me talking about your personal issues, it doesn’t have a place in that, then they’re going to be safe sharing the information, and they’re going to be in a good place to protect what shouldn’t be shared.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, could you give us another story about a lever and action that made all the difference?

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. So, this is the one, when I talk about it, Pete, think it’s most unique. And it’s the one about change taking too long, that it being too slow, and leaders happen to complain about this a lot because they see what the benefits are, what needs to be different, and they’re trying to get things to move faster and they’re not for whatever reason. And I came up with this lever called “Think and act as if the future were now.”

So, what this means, it’s a paradigm shift, you got to think differently. Rather than the future being something that’s out there that will occur later, which sounds like common sense, what we’re going to do is we’re going to get some image of that future, however clear we can be, grab hold of that image of the future, pull it back into the present, and start thinking and acting as if that were our present now.

So, here’s a story that I have. There was a group of executives who were in deep debate, they had a day-long meeting set aside to figure out how to come up with a sales strategy in this new market, and they spent the whole morning arguing passionately about it, not as an unhealthy team. I mean, they listened to each other, but they came up with two answers to the question by lunch. And then people started to pick on sides and I could start to see this was not going to be a helpful way to spend the afternoon.

Now, this organization had said they wanted to create a participative culture. So, knowing my lever, I said to them, “Well, what could you do to create a more participative culture around this sales strategy issue?” Some of them looked around the table, didn’t know what to do, but there were a few of them who said, “Well, we’d probably get more salespeople involved in this conversation.” And that seemed to make sense to everybody.

So, they got out their version of a calendar, whatever it was at that point, and they started to make a meeting for next week when they would bring these people in. So, I saw this as a big, fat fastball down the middle, to go back to my baseball cards. And I thought, “All you got to do is swing,” because it’s going to make a lot of sense. And by that, I mean, I said, “Why wait for next week? You said you wanted to make a difference. And if you think and act as if the future were now, if you became that participative organization right here and right now at lunch, what would you do? Be in that future.”

And they said, “Well, we would grab the salespeople who were walking the halls here, and we would call up the ones that are out in the field, and we’d probably might even get some customers involved in this because we said we wanted to be bridging relationships with them.” And I said, “Great. Set it up for 1:00 o’clock, finish lunch, and let’s go to work.”

And what they found in the afternoon was this common database lever came into play, and a lot more people learned about what the issues were, and people on the frontlines talking about a new region of business, they had opened new regions before, they knew what was needed, they knew what was going to be a good or a bad idea.

And so, by learning that and by thinking and acting as if that participative organization was part of one that they were members of, they came up with an entirely different solution. It was a third solution that nobody in the morning had come up with but one that everybody in the room, customers included who were in on the phone, thought, “I got a lot more confidence in this being a path to take.” And what they found was they opened that new region faster than they’ve ever opened another region before, and it got to profitability faster than any region had before.

So, they came up with a good idea but it goes back, for me, to this, “Well, do we want to wait a week?” No, you lose time, you lose money, you lose energy, you lose political capital, all of these things. Why wait to get a better answer when you can start behaving as if you already knew it?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. And I think it’d be really fun if you are a salesperson in that afternoon who are just kind of surprised, pulled into a room full of senior executives, like, “Oh, okay. Well, I feel kind of special and important right now.”

Jake Jacobs
A little nervous too.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And then that creates all sorts of good things in terms of some of the other levers with regard to they all make meaningful difference in that work and bringing it together.

Jake Jacobs
Absolutely. Absolutely. And the levers, Pete, work together that way so you can focus on one and start to make gains on two more where you don’t have to think, “Well, let me find a meaningful way for people to contribute. Let me find a way to create a common database.” They were working on thinking as if the future were now, and they got freebies in terms of what the results were on those other two.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, can you tell us, Jake, what are some key things to not do when we’re trying to get a change going?

Jake Jacobs
Yes. So, one of them, I think, is the notion that people see change as something that happens to them instead of with them. And so, if you can engage people in conversations that matter about their future and talk about the meaningful difference that they can make, avoiding those conversations, being nervous about those conversations.

I once had a client, it was a plant, and they were going to close. It was in Cleveland, it was a casting plant, I won’t tell you the company, but it was going to close. And so, they held a big meeting, there were 300 people, to talk about it. And there’s one woman who stood up and she said, “Look, if closing this plant is going to create an opportunity for my son to work at the plant the next town over, I’m willing to close it here.” The place went dead silent and it’s like, “Was she serious?” I mean, that’s something that you’re not really supposed to be talking about. It doesn’t make sense to talk about and, yet, for her, she decided that that was important.

So, a lot of people, when they deal with change, emotion is something that’s off the table. You shouldn’t be talking about how people feel. And what she did is she put on the table, her bare to her soul, and I’ve worked with clients a lot of times. I had a leader once who basically said, “We’re not dealing with feelings; we deal with facts and figures in here.” And his people were dying because of the support they needed and they couldn’t even ask for it because they saw it as a sign of weakness.

And so, if you can create a culture in your team or your organization, where people can speak the truth, and including their emotions and put it on the table, even this woman, it was a safe enough environment for her to stand up and say, “Look, I’ll put my job on the line.” But I think, too often, we look at change as a project, and it’s got deadlines, and it’s milestones, and it’s got resources, and it gets very cold and calculated, and we’re dealing with human beings, and that’s not how we’re wired.

Sure, you’ve got to pay attention to all those things but if you’re not looking at people’s experience of the change and asking them, “What’s going to make it better?” you don’t have to have the answers, but if you ask them, they know most of the time what’s going to work better for them. And so, that ask, and then you got to listen. So, if you’re asking and don’t pay attention, you’re in worse shape than if you hadn’t asked in the first place.

Pete Mockaitis
“Man, you don’t care.”

Jake Jacobs
Right. Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football, and Lucy pulls the football out and Charlie Brown ends up on his backside. It’s like asking people what they need and then ignoring it entirely – not smart.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. So, this one is actually one that I’ve used a lot of ways in a lot of places. So, this comes from Thomas Jefferson and it goes back to 1820, and he said, “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves. And if we think they’re not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is to not take it from them but to inform their discretion.”

So, I think what he was saying is if people don’t know enough to be smart about decisions they need to make, then educate them. Help them make good decisions. Don’t take those decisions away from them. So, I’m a big believer in engagement in organizations for all the right reasons. It’s not right all the time but in a lot of organizations today, we err on the side of not informing discretion. So, I think that’s less of an issue for most people to deal with, but I think Thomas Jefferson in 1820 had it pretty darn well.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. My mentor’s mentor, Ron Lippitt, people don’t believe this but actually, was a significant player in the invention of flipcharts, being if you want to claim the fame. Ron was at the University of Michigan, and what he studied was the difference between what he called preferred futuring and problem-solving. So, what he did is he gave two groups the same situation. One of them was to go about it as solving a problem, “What’s wrong? What do we need to do to fix it?” The other, he came up with this thing called preferred futuring, which said, “We’re in our future and what did we do to get there?”

And what they found at the end of this study was that people who were in the problem-solving group had less energy at the end, greater blame on other people, and they had reduction of pain solutions. So, it’s like, “It won’t be as bad if we do this than it normally would.” The preferred futuring group was the exact opposite. They were more energized at the end, they took more ownership of the situation, and they found innovative solutions to their problems.

So, this preferred futuring is actually the precursor or the father of all the visioning work done in organizations today. Until that time when Ron did this experiment, problem-solving ruled the day, and this was in the ‘40s, but he had the insight to say, “Maybe there’s another way.” And now it’s so commonplace, people would look at you like they had their heads screwed on backwards if you didn’t think about what the vision for your organization was going to be.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Jake Jacobs
So, for me, I think that my favorite book is a book called The Practical Theorist. It was written by a guy named Al Marrow, and it was written about the founder of my field of organization change, his name was Kurt Lewin. And The Practical Theorist was saying, Lewin said, “There’s nothing so practical as a good theory.”

So, to me, it’s very concrete because I love the story. It’s very useful for the listeners. He was in Germany before World War II, and they used to sit and have coffee at the cafes, if you can imagine, and students would sit with them, and they had this wondering about, “Would the waitress remember the bill better before or after it was paid?”

And what they decided was it was going to be before it was paid. Other people decided after. So, they asked the waitress what it was before and what it was after. She could remember to the Deutsche Mark before it was paid, she had no idea what it was afterwards. A woman named Bluma Zeigarnik took this on as her doctoral thesis and it became known as The Zeigarnik Effect.

And what it says is that people have greater recall and motivation to go back to unfinished tasks. So, don’t tie a bow around something at the end of the day or the end of a meeting. Keep it open and you will find that people would be more motivated to go back to it the next day, or the next meeting, than if you finished something at the end of the meeting. So, a lot of times there’s this mad rush to get through the last slide or to get the last agenda item covered, and I would say don’t. Leave it for next time and you’ll find a lot more energy to work on it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s interesting. And, likewise, I think, for, I don’t know, books, movies, stories, TV shows, like if the story is not quite finished, it’s like, “Ooh, what’s going to happen?” You got to know and you keep going.

Jake Jacobs
Absolutely. I think a lot of sitcom writers probably studied Kurt Lewin before they got into sitcom-writing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. So, this one for me is that I find that listening is the most powerful tool that I have at my disposal and it’s readily available anytime, place, or with anyone. And when I say listening, I mean listening to see the world through their eyes. And so, I talk with my clients about four magic words that they can use whenever they’re in trouble. It’s like you get a little hot under the collar, you start breathing a little faster, you start interrupting the other person, like we all know what it looks like for our own version of that.

And I tell them, “As soon as you start to feel that happen, say, ‘Could you say more?’” And that gives an invitation to the other person that they have the floor still, and it creates a safe place for that person to go deeper into whatever it was that they were saying because you’re inviting them. So, when I give you an invitation, Pete, that says, “Could you say more?” you’re going to feel better about sharing it with me.

And the other thing it does is it interrupts that whole building of interruption and heat and breathing, all those things when we get a little ticked off. But when you say, “Could you say more?” well, one thing is they see Jake in their face saying, “Say it,” and hopefully your listeners will hear me next time they get in that situation. But it’s very practical advice. I think, like this guy who wrote the book “The Practical Theorist,” it’s like, “If you can’t put theory and put it into practice, then it’s not worth knowing in the first place.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget that you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. So, this one goes back to that lever about “Think and act as if the future were now.” I interviewed people to put on my website, clients, and half of them came back to me and said, “You know that thing you say about living in the future and making it happen today? That’s been really helpful.” And one of the people said, “Yeah, I went back to my team the next day and there was a guy, after I said that, who was like the chief engineer, had a whole list of things that he needed to start doing differently if he was going to operate and do business in new and better ways.”

And so, that has been something that a lot of people have come back to me and said, “You know, one thing, for sure, that I’ve taken away from my time with you is that quote and putting that quote into practice.”

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear it one more time.

Jake Jacobs
“Think and act as if the future were now.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And, Jake, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jake Jacobs
I would point them two places. One, my website JakeJacobsConsulting.com. The other thing that I would encourage them to do, if they’re not on LinkedIn, I’d get on it, but if they’re on it, look me up there, I’m Jake Jacobs. And I’ve got a short Jake on Change, two-minute videos, that I put up there, there’s articles, there’s quotes, there’s all kinds of materials because I believe you go into the world with open arms. And the more you share the more you receive. So, it’s really important to me to make sure that I continue to push my own thinking, and I continue to give whatever gifts I have to other people so it will help them create faster, easier, better results, whatever they may be working on.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jake Jacobs
Yeah. I think that the final challenge is for them to picture a day when the results they’re working on for their change effort are achieved, for them to picture a day when somebody who’s been resistant to their change work comes up to them and says, “I’m really glad I got involved. I’m excited about the future we’re creating,” and to picture a day wherein their organization, faster, easier, better results just become the way of doing business. It’s not something special or different. It’s just the way that we operate.

And if they could sit back and picture those days when those things are happening, I think they end up getting pulled into the future more by what Ron Lippitt would call their preferred future or vision, and less of it is about getting mired trying to solve today’s problems. It’s much better to get pulled forward than pushed from behind.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jake, thank you. This has been a treat. And I wish much luck in all the ways you achieve faster, easier, better results.

May 24
0

670: The Four Keys to Leading Successful Virtual Teams with Darleen DeRosa

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Darleen DeRosa discusses how to build top teams and deliver high-impact work while leading from a distance.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The quickest way to build trust in your team 
  2. How to ensure accountability with the ATC model 
  3. Simple, but effective ways to keep your team motivated 

 

About Darleen

Darleen DeRosa, Ph.D., is a consultant in Spencer Stuart’s Stamford office and a core member of the Life Sciences and Leadership Advisory Services practices. Darleen brings more than 15 years of consulting experience, with deep expertise in talent management, executive assessment, virtual teams, top team effectiveness and leadership development. Darleen works with leading companies to facilitate selection, succession management and leadership development initiatives. She is a trusted advisor to CEOs, CHROs and boards. 

Darleen earned her B.A. in psychology from the College of the Holy Cross and her M.A. and Ph.D. in social/organizational psychology from Temple University. Darleen is the co-author of Virtual Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance (with Richard Lepsinger), as well as other book chapters and journal articles on leadership. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors!

Darleen DeRosa Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Darleen, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Darleen DeRosa
Thanks, Pete. Thanks for hosting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, I’m excited to hear about Leading at a Distance insights. But, first, I want to hear about your love for deep-sea fishing.

Darleen DeRosa
I knew you were going to ask that. Well, people don’t know this and they’re often very surprised for whatever reason, I’m not going to read into that, but I love deep-sea fishing. And wherever I go, whether it’s Hawaii, here in Connecticut, we charter boats and we love to go fishing. And I probably go six or seven times a year. I don’t always catch anything crazy, I’ve never caught a marlin, or anything fantastic, but it is something that I love to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I have fond memories. I think I did deep-sea fishing exactly once for a bachelor party and the father of the bride fell into the water and it was a heroic rescue, so that story. You make memories when you go on those trips.

Darleen DeRosa
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to hear, we’re talking about leading at a distance. Can you share what’s perhaps one of the most surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made while researching this stuff and putting things together?

Darleen DeRosa
That’s a great question. And so, what’s very interesting is I wrote a book on virtual teams in 2011, and my co-author, Jim Citrin, keeps reminding me that that is the most, at that time, it was a very obscure topic even though, as you know, companies have been working remotely for quite some time, especially big companies that are more complex and more global in nature.

So, what was surprising, I guess most surprising to me, is that a lot hasn’t changed. Yes, technology, of course, has evolved and business is more complex and more dynamic, certainly, but, in general, what’s fascinating is that a lot of the best practices that we learned way back 10 years ago actually hold true now and have just become even more important. And so, that’s very interesting to me that there’s not a lot of major profound differences in what we found.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is noteworthy in and of itself. You’d think that we, as workers, would have learned a couple of lessons in a decade. So, share with us, what are some of those kind of foundational things that are still at play and maybe overlooked?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah. So, it’s interesting, there’s a number of things, and we try to make the book really practical. What I really wanted to do here, was have a practical hands-on guide for anyone, anyone who’s managing telecommuters, whether you’re managing remote teams, whether you’re a CEO who’s managing a large complex organization with distributed employees. So, we wanted to make it very pragmatic.

And, interestingly, the topics ranged from everything like, “How do you build trust remotely?” to “How do you coach and hold people accountable who you don’t see?” But one of the things that hasn’t changed, as I was mentioning, even from our early research in 2010, is what we found is that, back then anyway, the best-in-class leaders who are managing remotely do a great job balancing the relationship side of things, the interpersonal components, with the tasks and sort of execution-oriented behaviors. In other words, they don’t overly weigh any one of those and they’re really good at managing that big continuum. So, it’s a big complex role.

And what we do know is that managing virtually is hard. It’s harder than managing people who are co-located in the same room. And leaders have really had to adapt a lot, especially in this current environment where you’re leading through technology, but the best-in-class leaders really do a great job at that, balancing that continuum, and we call that RAMP. So, we frame it as the best-in-class leaders are really good at relationships, which is the R; they hold people accountable, which is the A; they know how to motivate people through a screen basically, people they don’t see, or through a phone; and they can use process, things like technology, which is the P, to engage and try to replicate what they would do if they were in person.

So, that’s one framework that a lot of our clients find practical but like the fact that it’s research-based and comes from data on what differentiates best-in-class virtual leaders.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you tell us a cool story about a virtual leader who was struggling and then employed some of this stuff and had a transformation?

Darleen DeRosa
Absolutely. So, we have a number of those but one of the things, and, again, it’s surprising how we fall back on some of our bad behaviors, and we all do this. We all succumb to sort of those bad habits. Especially, in COVID now, I think people have gotten better but we were working with the CHRO of a global hospitality company and he was so focused on results and he had a very large distributed team. And one of the things that he wasn’t really cognizant of was, “How do you build relationships and trust with your team members but also with one another?”

And so, we talked to him about, “Here are some ways on that RAMP continuum to focus on building trust, and how you infuse collaboration and relationships from a distance.” And so, he started doing simple things, things that you would think, “Well, we should all be doing that anyway.” Like, once or twice a week, he blocked time in his calendar proactively to just give people feedback. He had recognition sessions to thank people on the team. He also would call people, and he actually called these care calls, where he would randomly call people and just check in, no agenda, no real need, but just to say “Hey, how can I support you?”

And his engagement scores and the team’s performance, over a period of time, of course, changed dramatically and were much more positive. So, again, it’s a good example of if we focused too much on any one thing, and we’re not very balanced in how we engage and lead, it can become almost like a strength overdone.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear some of those best practice approaches there for each of those four components: the relationships, the accountability, the motivation, and the process. What are some top things people should start doing and stop doing?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah. So, on relationships, and this is by far, when we asked people, “What is the biggest challenge you’re facing?” in our most recent survey for the book, it was that sense of connectivity. So, in other words, if I were to bump into you in the hallway, Pete, or in the lunch room, we could have that spontaneous interaction, and virtually you don’t have that. It’s lacking.

And so, some of our clients have started using apps like Donut, which sounds a little funny, but what it does is it randomly pairs employees with one another all around the world for 15 minutes once or twice a month, and it allows you to create that spontaneous interaction. And some people might think that’s a little strange but it really does replicate, and, again, it’s one example of replicating what you would do if you were in person. So, having a lot of these virtual lunches, building time into your meetings for watercooler conversation.

The chief technology officer that we interviewed at Starbucks for the book, talked about she started using fun warmups at the beginning of her calls, playing Kahoot!, doing Wordles, or Pictionary, putting people in breakouts to do really fun activities. It’s those simple things that really go a long way for relationships. So, those are just a few examples. Again, simple but highly effective.

Pete Mockaitis
And I don’t think I’ve ever played Kahoot! before. What does this consist of?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah, they’re like little quizzes and you could make them up. They’re all random topics. They’re just little fun games. And, again, it sounds crazy but it’s just something to get people to get to know one another, because when you’re building trust virtually, it takes a lot longer. So, what we tell leaders is, “The one thing you can control when you’re working virtually is what’s called task-based trust.” In other words, the most important thing as a leader when you’re managing remotely is to help your people get to know one another and find that they are credible and they’re going to deliver on commitments, and that’s really important.

And, actually, this trust is different in a virtual setting. So, basically, invest in building that task-based trust early on and it will go a long way because it takes a long time to build interpersonal trust when you’re not face to face. So, that’s just, again, a very simple technique but something that best-in-class virtual leaders consistently apply.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when it comes to building task-based trust, I guess I’m not quite seeing the connection between how the games accomplishes that. Or are there additional practices for accelerating that?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah. Well, it gets people to know familiarity with your background, who you are as a person, your experiences. So, a lot of the games can be around getting to know people so it sounds like it’s task-based but the idea is that it helps build credibility and are simple ways, again, everything together builds trust. But creating fun, not focusing so much on the work, and focusing more on the people is really, really critical.

So, again, we’re not telling people, “Don’t focus on interpersonal trust virtually,” but if you want to get the biggest ROI, initially, helping people learn about one another’s background through, again, it could be fun games, it could be little polls in your virtual meetings, those things have a tremendous impact on trust.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s interesting, and maybe it’s a matter of the terminology we’re using here, but it seems like if we’re getting to know each other better, that’s fun. It has some connections. I know there’s a face and a name and a person and a story behind that. I guess I’m not quite seeing how that makes me think, “And that guy is going to rock out and deliver on the thing I’m going to ask of him or her.”

Darleen DeRosa
Well, yeah, it definitely is the fun component and that’s what I was starting to talk about early when I mentioned the relationship-building piece, the R in RAMP. But, again, it’s almost like it has a dual purpose. So, when people are playing those fun games, especially if people are just getting to know one another, because, basically, no matter what, people are sharing their experiences, who they are through these polls, these chat exercises.

A lot of our clients do fun chats in their meetings, things like, “What’s the first you can’t wait to do after COVID?” “What’s your favorite hobby?” So, it is a way to get to know one another, and sometimes the questions are around projects, which is very linked to task-based trust. So, again, when we think of trust virtually, it’s the combination of task-based trust and interpersonal trust that matters, but it’s easier and quicker to focus on the task-based trust early on. And you can do that through building people’s credibility and helping people get to know their colleagues.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. And then when it comes to accountability, how do we make that all the better?

Darleen DeRosa
So, this is actually a pretty hot topic virtually because, as you can imagine, it’s hard to know what people are doing. And so, the biggest mistake that we see leaders make is they don’t trust and empower their employees. Now, COVID has been a great example because, in many industries, productivity is actually up right now. It could be masking extreme burnout and fatigue, which is actually well-publicized right now, but, in all seriousness, many people are productive. And I think this COVID environment right now has led some leaders who were very skeptical about working virtually to realize that it actually can work.

And one mistake that leaders make is they’re so focused on when people work, “Is it 9:00 to 5:00? Are they available? Are they doing something with their kids when they’re supposed to be working?” and that actually is a myth, and people will be productive, but you have to empower them and find ways to check in and hold them accountable, of course, but just by empowering them alone, you get higher levels of productivity.

So, you’ve got to change your metrics with accountability. You can’t look at when people are working. You have to look at their output, which is much more important. And that’s why many companies have now started to really change the way they measure performance because it’s much different in a virtual setting.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. So, the clock is not going to be your guide in terms of seeing, “Are people performing well?” And so, what are some of the best approaches to do those check-ins and see the output flowing?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah, some companies use software and different technologies to help measure output but, in general, the advice that I give leaders is, “You have to work harder at setting very clear goals for people.” And one of the things we know is more challenging virtually is making sure that people understand the priorities. So, in a more dynamic virtual setting, priorities shift, and if you’re not seeing people in the office where you could do a quick check-in with them, you’ve got to find ways to replicate that virtually.

So, setting clear goals and then being clear about what good looks like, what’s the deliverable, what’s the timeline, and then having checkpoints to actually check in with people. And we call this the ATC model. Again, lots of models today, Pete. But we call this the ATC model because it’s simple and people get it. And what we tell people is, much like an air traffic controller who’s managing numerous flights, “You’ve got to help your people manage a tremendous workload and priorities that are shifting fairly quickly.”

So, the A is really being clear about what it looks like, what’s the product, and being super clear about that with people up front. So, what’s the action and who’s accountable? Sometimes we see leaders say, “The team should do this,” but no one really knows who’s actually on point for that and who’s taking full ownership. The T is timetable, so, “Is it next quarter? Is it May 1st?” Like, what’s the real deadline and being very clear about that.

And then, finally, checkpoints, which is the most important, in my opinion, is, depending on the tenure and experience of that employee, you may need to check in with them more or less frequently, but actually have a conversation with the person to say, “Here’s what we’re going to be working on. When should we touch base? Would it make sense to touch base in two weeks? Next week?” And for people who you’ve known for a long time and might be high performers, you might not need as many checkpoints. For others, where this might be a newer task or developmental task, you might need to check in more frequently. So, the ATC model is a very simple way to make sure that you’re setting people up for success virtually.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, you mentioned some software tools, and I find that intriguing because I guess it will probably vary quite a bit based on what work you’re doing. But it’s really kind of hard to measure one’s true value-add contribution. I don’t know, like if I were to say, hey, lines of code as a metric, or words produced, or invoices processed, in some ways that can be counterproductive to have automated software kind of counting that sort of thing. So, what are the software solutions and what are they doing?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah, a lot of it is things like Teams, which now has a lot of like optionality in there for tracking projects and milestones and things like that. A lot of clients use Basecamp, as one example. But it’s less about tracking, like literally what you’re doing, and more about helping the team members stay on track together when they’re working virtually. So, it’s much more collaborative to help track and measure the team’s performance.

So, to store documents, to have the timeline up there, to keep track of things, to have version control for things that people might be working on together. So, technology has continued to evolve significantly, as you know, over the last decade, and I think it will continue to evolve even more in the next five or six years alone. So, those are just some simple things that some organizations are using but, clearly, depending on the role, the complexity of the job, and the industry, there’s a lot of variability.

Professional services, that’s not how we’re measured. It’s more we’re measured on how we deliver to clients. We’re measured on our productivity. But we have internal software to track that, just as one example.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about the motivation?

Darleen DeRosa
Yes, I love this topic because this is very challenging virtually. So, first of all, you’ve to set people up for success, but what we do know is that motivation takes on a different meaning virtually. It’s harder. Virtual colleagues and employees face very unique challenges. And you probably have seen this in this year alone where it’s particularly difficult for people because people are feeling isolated, there’s much less work-life balance with the blur between work and home being gone, so managers have to think differently and really try to be proactive at checking in with people.

People are exhausted and people are burnt out. Again, I’m making a generalization but this is pretty well documented in all the research. So, encouraging people to take breaks and schedule time for their own personal development is very important. Don’t have meetings just to have a meeting. Having meetings for status updates is one of my pet peeves and it’s very unproductive. Encouraging people to get off video. Non-stop video or that Zoom fatigue that you’ve probably read about, Pete, is real because it’s cognitively draining to sit there and stare at a camera all day.

So, encouraging people to take a walk and just talk on the phone is really good. Again, these are just a few simple ideas but really checking in with people, depending on where they are in their own personal development journey is important, and finding time and encouraging people to make time for non-work interaction, the relationship piece that I talked about, is really important.

The other thing that’s very important virtually is you’ve got to recognize people. So, clearly, recognition is important but many leaders are so busy that they’re not doing it proactively. So, one tip I’ll give to senior leaders that I’m coaching is, “Block time in your calendar, even if it’s once a month, and call it your time to recognize people. Send him notes. You can send gift cards,” a Grubhub Gift Card, for example. Again, it doesn’t have to be monetary. Just send someone a text to thank them. It’s simple things that really go a long way to recognize the team.

One of my clients, it’s a pharma company, they have guest speakers come in, they have recognition sessions where they actually get the team to talk about, like, a colleague who’s been helpful to them. And, again, it sounds really simple but these are critical drivers of motivation when you’re working remotely.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And how about process?

Darleen DeRosa
So, process, the most simple thing about process is technology, that’s what we think about. So, there’s a bunch of processes that fit in the P but the one that’s probably most relevant here is match your technology to your task. So, I talked earlier about using technology well. What we learned is that best-in-class virtual teams don’t necessarily have the most sophisticated technology, they just know how to use it.

So, really, as a leader, what’s most important is if you’re going to have a meeting, don’t have a meeting for a status update, that’s just one simple example. Don’t use email to coach someone. And, again, it sounds crazy but I see this all the time. So, you’ve got to be very thoughtful when you’re working virtually about how you use technology appropriately depending on what your goal is and what you’re trying to accomplish.

So, if you’re going to have a tough conversation with someone or you’re going to give someone feedback, do it by video or phone, obviously. It has to be that high-touch environment. So, really being thoughtful about that and making sure that teams are not overwhelmed by technology, that everyone is using the same thing, that’s very important. So, those are just a few quick examples. But this idea of Zoom fatigue is very real.

And I don’t know if you’ve seen like the articles in Forbes, in Fortune, and the Times, HBR actually has an article on this. Basically, people are sick of video. And I think many organizations went to the extreme with video in COVID because they were unsure how to connect with people, but being thoughtful about video, encouraging people to take breaks, some of our clients are doing video-free Fridays, or video-free half days. So, for those of us who are on video nonstop, it actually really matters. So, being thoughtful about how people are working is really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Darleen DeRosa
So, I think one of my favorite quotes, is from this book Illusions by Richard Bach, and it’s this quote that says something like, not verbatim, but something like, “Every person, all the events of your life are there because you’ve drawn them there, and what you choose to do with them is up to you.” And I love that because, throughout my career as a psychologist, I really believe that we have some control over how we respond to things, how we handle stress, how we handle all of those types of things that really build our resilience, so I’ve loved that quote even from more than a decade ago.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Darleen DeRosa
I think one of the ones that has been the most profound for me was one that what I read about in grad school, so a long time ago when I was doing my dissertation on virtual team work. And it was a study that looked at trust and how you build trust virtually. It’s exactly what I was talking about before. It was one of the first studies, it was pretty old at that time even, but it still rings true about, “How do you build that swift trust or that task-based task virtually?” and that it’s actually more important.

And that, again, it’s interesting because I never realized, way back then, how much of this would be part of what I do day to day many years later, this idea of studying virtual teams and helping leaders be more successful remotely.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a favorite book?

Darleen DeRosa
One of the books that I love that has been profound in my CEO succession practice is The Leadership Pipeline mostly because I’ve always been fascinated with “How do you identify high-potential leaders?” So, besides the virtual team stuff that I do, that’s a huge part of my work and I’ve been fascinated with, “How do you identify people who have potential to do more? What does that really look like?” and then building assessments around that. So, it is a bit specific but it also has been a big part of the work that I’ve been doing over the last decade.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m just kind of curious. And what are some of the top telltale signs that someone has great potential?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah, that’s a good question and one that we continue to try to evolve on, Pete, over time. But definitely, people who take initiative, which isn’t a surprise; people who are engaged and advocate for their organization; people who have learning agility, which is one of the most important predictors of leadership potential, so someone who’s put in unfamiliar situations who can really thrive; and then, lastly, someone who’s self-aware. So, self-awareness and then they’re able to flex and adapt and learn very quickly. So, I think, again, these are just some of the dimensions that I think are quite well documented when we think about what really defines people who have the potential to do more over time.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Darleen DeRosa
Honestly, right now, video conferencing because, besides all the virtual team stuff that I do, I am on video every day. So, using Microsoft Teams and other technologies I use constantly. But the other thing that I do, and I’ve been using a lot more, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with these tools, but in a lot of my training work where I do leadership development with top teams and companies, we’ve been experimenting and using collaborative software technologies to help teams brainstorm, share ideas, whiteboard, and also have fun while they’re working together in our leadership development virtual classrooms.

So, we’ve been using tools like Mural and Miro which are really fun, innovative, collaborative tools that help people. It almost replicates what you do if you had people around the conference room table, so I love those two.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you frequently?

Darleen DeRosa
I think one of the things, this was in an article that I wrote in the Wall Street Journal years ago, and it was this idea of out of sight but not out of mind. And it’s the notion, at that time when I was writing this article, it was something that I said and is now very widely quoted. And, at the time, I was writing about “How do you, as a leader, own your career? And even if you’re not in the same office or geography as your boss, how do you win over a boss who’s remote?”

And I started talking about this idea of out of sight but not out of mind. You’ve got to work a little harder at it. And I do really believe, and it’s a great lesson for all of us, that being virtual or hybrid in this kind of some of us in the office, some of us not, really requires more initiative and ownership, as like us managing our time, managing our calendars, and taking initiative to reach out and not just rely on our boss or manager reaching out to us. And I think that’s really important.

And I think it’s actually more true than ever because most organizations, about 80% of companies, are going to land in what we call a hybrid environment where you’ve got some people in the office and some people at home. And, frankly, that is the most challenging environment to manage in because of lack of equity, some people feeling like they’re not next to their boss, they might not get cool projects so they might not get promoted. So, that is the hardest model to manage in but it’s going to be the one where most organizations land.

And so, I think this idea of trying to create an even playing field is going to be really critical for all of us as leaders in the next decade.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Darleen DeRosa
They can go to my LinkedIn page. They can go to the SpencerStuart website. We’re actually going to be putting up some pretty cool self-assessments and technologies, or quizzes rather, that people can use as the book launches. So, the SpencerStuart has a Leading at a Distance page that people can go to as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Darleen DeRosa
I would say get feedback. That is something that I believe is true. Again, super simple but let me end with this one statistic. In our first study in 2011, this was based on 50 global virtual teams that we ended up publishing in the book, more than two-thirds of the leaders were not seen as effective by their boss and other stakeholders, and they had no idea.

So, the biggest learning, again, under this idea of taking initiative and really owning your own career, it’s important to ask for feedback, and most of us don’t do it because we don’t want to hear it necessarily, but even if you don’t want to hear it, people might be thinking it. And so, what I would encourage us to do is to step outside of our comfort zone and check in with people more because it’s more important in a virtual setting where you can actually course-correct and make some improvements.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Darleen, this has been a treat. I wish you all the best as you lead from a distance.

Darleen DeRosa
All right. Thanks so much, Pete. Appreciate it.

Apr 05
0

656: The Five Things that Leaders Do with Jim Kouzes

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Jim Kouzes says: "The best leaders are the best learners."

Jim Kouzes discusses how everyday professionals can make an impact regardless of their title, role, or setting.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The definitive answer to the question, “Are leaders born or made?”
  2. The four components to building a compelling vision
  3. Easy ways to sustain your team’s motivation

About Jim

Jim Kouzes is the coauthor of the award-winning and best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge, and over a dozen other books on leadership, including the 2021 book, Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership. He is also a Fellow of the Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University. The Wall Street Journal named Jim one of the ten best executive educators in the U.S., and he has received the Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance Award from the Association for Talent Development, among many other professional honors.

Resources mentioned in the show:

Jim Kouzes Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jim, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jim Kouzes
Hey, Pete, thank you for the opportunity to chat with you today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your goods. But, first, I want to hear about your experience as JFK’s honor guard. What is the story here?

Jim Kouzes
Well, I was an Eagle Scout at 15 years of age and I guess back then that was a rare occurrence.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s pretty young, 15 versus 18.

Jim Kouzes
Yeah, 15 years old. And so, they asked a few of us, I think it was about a dozen, two groups of six, who were stationed at the base of the reviewing stand where President Kennedy and his family and some of his Cabinet and the spouses stood, and watched as the parade went by. This was when he was right in front of the White House years and years ago. And I stood there in the very, very below freezing cold. When I talk about it, to feel the frigid cold in my feet, it was so cold.

And it was one of those experiences in life that you can vividly remember, and as Kennedy unveiled his various initiatives, the Peace Corps was one of those, and I think it was that event that really inspired me both to join the Peace Corps but dedicate my life to service and education. And so, I joined the Peace Corps after university and that began this career that I’ve been in since, really, 1967.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. That’s cool. Did you get to shake hands or were you just sort of standing there with the honor guard duties?

Jim Kouzes
No, we later were invited to the White House.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Jim Kouzes
So, yes, we did meet the President and the First Lady much later after the inauguration.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, your career is storied. We were chatting, before I pushed record, that I read your book The Student Leadership Challenge when I was a student 15 plus years ago, and you’re still cranking out the hits. So, I’m excited to dig into your latest Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership. But maybe, first, could you share what have you discovered that is perhaps the most surprising and fascinating thing about leadership from all your decades of research? Like, is there something the average professional doesn’t quite seem to grasp about leadership?

Jim Kouzes
Well, there are a couple of things that come to mind immediately, Pete. The first of those is the most frequently-asked question we get, “Is leadership born or made?” And we’ve been asked that question since the very first edition and we still get asked that every time we speak or do a seminar or workshop or a class. And so, Barry and I have done the research on this, my co-author Barry Posner and I, and we have determined, based on our extensive research, that every leader we have ever met is born.

Pete Mockaitis
They emerge from the womb. Okay.

Jim Kouzes
Never known one not to be born unless it’s a fictional character that was made up in somebody’s mind. And so, that’s really not the question to be asked. The question to be asked is, “Can leadership be learned regardless of what you might be born with?” And the answer to that question is definitively yes. I wouldn’t have stayed in this career this long if it wasn’t.

And I think that reveals an assumption that people tend to make, that leadership is something special that only a few people have and you’re either born with it or you’re not, it’s a gift from the gods, it’s in your DNA, and it’s only a few people, a few charismatic individuals that might have the ability, or people who have lucky circumstances early on in their lives.

And we’ve found that that’s just not the case. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why we wrote this book directed at everyday leaders. Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership is really about the fact that, and I say fact and I’ll give you some data in a minute, that supports the notion that we all have some capability to lead regardless of our circumstances. And I think that’s probably one of the most significant things we found in our research.

Just to give you some data, we looked, Pete, at the data from our leadership practices inventory which, as you may know from your reading of The Student Leadership Challenge is the assessment we use to determine whether people are engaged with these practices or not. And what we found was that the number of people who exhibit zero leadership capability, that is they actually scored the lowest score on our inventory, from observer standpoint the number is 0.00013%.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Jim Kouzes
So, that means 99.99987% of people have some leadership capability. Now, that doesn’t mean that everyone is at the 10 level of leadership, which is the highest number you can get on our scale. That is not the majority of the people, or the majority, or somewhere in the middle but it does indicate that most people, only one in one million people do not have leadership capability, and most people, 99.99987%, or 999,999 people have some leadership capability. And the issue really is then, “Can you increase the frequency with which you use leadership behaviors?” And, again, the answer to that is definitively yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to dig into some of the particulars of how that’s done. But maybe could you kick us off with an inspiring example of an everyday professional who, indeed, went ahead and exercised some extraordinary leadership?

Jim Kouzes
Absolutely. One of the people that I’ve had the opportunity to follow not only in writing the book but subsequently, in fact, this person, Erin Bern McKelroy…

Pete Mockaitis
Fine name.

Jim Kouzes
…and I would be doing a session together tomorrow, a virtual session together tomorrow, because we’ve stayed in touch. And Erin, during the pandemic, like all of us, was sitting at home on her couch feeling very anxious. Not anxious about the pandemic but anxious about what she was going to do to help her community during this difficult time.

And, given her background with the community, she was very service-minded, she had been involved in a lot of activities in her community in the Midwest, she decided that she had to do something about it as someone who is deeply involved in her community. And what she told us is that, she said, “I turned to my core values and took an internal audit of my heart and my mind.” And what came up for her was that service to others was the most important thing to her.

And so, she asked herself, “What can I do to be of service to others during this time?” And she came up with an initiative that would enable local restaurants, which were currently not open, to serve frontline workers and first responders by preparing meals for that group with funding that would be raised with the community.

And so, as a result of that effort, they raised $50,000. It doesn’t sound like a lot but given this small community that she lived in, it was considerable from 542 residents and 40 local establishments participated in preparing meals and delivering meals, and 8,130 frontline workers and first responders benefitted from that service. That’s just one example of many.

And she had no title, she had no position, people knew her in the community because she was involved but she wasn’t the manager, she wasn’t the boss. She was just someone who felt the need to take initiative during a challenging time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. Yeah, perfect in terms of example right there, someone who didn’t have that authority and, yet, made some big things happen very cleverly, helping multiple people in need of help in some great way. So, very cool. Well, then can you walk us through, how is that done? You’ve got your five practices of leadership model. Should we start there or how would you think about discussing the how?

Jim Kouzes
Yeah, I think that is the organizing framework for the book. And what we did was we took a look at data to validate this premise that we all have some leadership capability regardless of title, regardless of position, regardless of authority. We took the data from peer leaders only. So, these were people who had direct reports, these were individuals who were part of a team, part of a community, were not the boss of anyone, and, yet, were observed by others as leaders.

We took that data and we looked at the extent to which they engaged in these five practices and whether or not those individuals had a positive impact. And what we discovered, and we report out in the book with several graphs to illustrate this in data and story, is that individuals who are peers, who lead other peers, who exhibit these five practices more frequently are viewed by others as effective leaders and have an impact on their sense of whether they’re making a difference, the extent to which they understand the purpose and the vision, to the extent to which they are willing to work hard when necessary, those kinds of outcome measures, or engagement measures as some people call them.

And so, what we did in this book was to tell stories, like the one about Erin Bern plus the data around these five practices, which are model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart.

Pete Mockaitis
They’re bringing back fond memories, Jim. Bring this back in the days, like, “Yeah, that holds up. Those do sound like the five things that make up leadership,” which is huge in and of itself because leadership is such a big amorphous fuzzy word, like, “How does one do that?” “Well, this is how you do it, these five practices.”

Jim Kouzes
Yes, absolutely. Like in Erin’s example, for example, I mentioned how she said she did an audit of her values. One of the things that exemplary leaders do, we call it model the way, is, first, clarify what’s important to them, their values and beliefs, and then they set an example for others by living them out. She came up with a vision of what could be, she saw this picture in her mind of these people working together to provide service to frontline workers and to first responders, engaging people in the local community who were providing food through their restaurants or the kitchens.

And she had this picture in her head, she was able to then envision it, and then inspire others to share it. And then, because it was a challenging time, they searched for innovative ways to do this because people were all locked down, and they experimented and took some risks, we call it challenge the process, and she involved a team of people to make this happen, we call that enable others to act. And along the way, they celebrated their little small wins as they went through this process, they encouraged each other’s hearts.

And as a consequence of that, Erin recently was awarded, in her local community through their leadership program in their local community, leader of the year as a result of that experience. So, that’s how individual peers live out these five practices.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s lovely in terms of that one story, we kind of walked through all five of those. So, then maybe we could spend a couple minutes on each of them. In terms of model the way, it starts with getting clear on values, beliefs, what’s important to you, and then living it. Any pro tips on how we can get a boatload of clarity on those dimensions without taking decades?

Jim Kouzes
Yeah, without taking decades. We’ve written a few books about this. Well, let me just give you a couple of those. Let’s take clarify values. And one of them is a little technique we can try on our own is imagine the following scenario, imagine you’re going to be away from your team that you’re wanting to lead or currently leading. You’re going to be away from your team for, let’s say, three months, and you’re going to be not able to communicate with that team while they’re doing their work in any way whatsoever but you can leave them a one-page memo, we call it credo memo, prior to being incommunicado.

What would you tell people are the principles by which they should conduct themselves in their work during your absence? What are the values and beliefs that should guide their decisions and actions? Write that one-page memo to your team.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. And it’s probably not going to have much to do with the specific software tools they should be using.

Jim Kouzes
Exactly. What are the principles that should guide their decisions and actions? And do it in one page. That forces people to have to think in short memorable ways in which they can communicate to others what they should use as guidelines for doing their work and making their decisions. That’s very effective. I’ll use other techniques like values cards. We have people do card sorts. But any way in which you can explore your head and your heart, as Erin talked about, and your soul, and think about, “What do I really believe in and what do I hope other people will believe in as we conduct our work?”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, could you give us a couple examples of that verbiage? I mean, when you say values, it could just be a word like integrity, or humility, courage, innovation. Or, how are you thinking about values and how they’re expressed here?

Jim Kouzes
Well, I’ll offer a couple of examples. Because there are about 150 values words in the English language and not all of them are understood similarly so you can’t hold 150 values simultaneously and have people follow those guidelines. It’s just too many. So, five to seven that will help people to understand. And integrity might be one of them but go the next step and ask yourself, “What does integrity look like to you? What does it look like in practice?”

So, integrity might look like to you in practice that, “When we’re with each other and we’re doing our work, we’re always straightforward and honest about what’s going on. We give each other honest feedback even when it’s tough, even when it’s challenging, but we do it in a way that’s empathetic and not critical of other person but really ways in which they can take that feedback and act on it.” So, we have to go the next step from the one-word integrity to give an illustration of what that might look like in practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. So, that’s modeling the way. And how does one inspire a shared vision?

Jim Kouzes
Well, let’s take another technique that we like to use, and I call it the life technique, L-I-F-E. Think about the following scenario. At the end of the year, you’re going to be awarded leader of the year, and people who are your friends, your peers, your colleagues, your team members, your family are going to be there celebrating with you this award, and they’re going to be telling stories about you, and they’re going to tell about the lessons they learned from you, the ideals you stood for, the feelings that you have, that they have when around you, and the evidence that you’ve made a difference, you’ve had an impact.

L for lessons, I is for ideals, F is for feelings, and E is for evidence, L-I-F-E. If you’re hearing other people talk about you, what do you hope they would be saying about the lessons they learned, the ideals you stood for, the feelings they had when around you, and the evidence that you made a difference? Apply that to yourself, write that down, and then apply that to your team.

If your team is going to get team of the year, what would you hope others would say would be the lessons people learned from you, the ideals your team stood for, the feelings that people had when they were around your team, and the evidence that you made a difference? That kind of exercise helps people to think more deeply about how they hope to have an impact on others, how they hope to be seen by others. It helps them to see more clearly how they would envision themselves in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that so much and this is also kind of making me think of Stephen Covey, begin with the end in mind, and like a eulogy, like what you want people to say even at your funeral, like if you win the leader of the year award, but you can even zoom out into other context to make it spark things.

And that reminds me, well, I did a brief stint of nonprofit consulting at The Bridgespan Group, and when we did our sort of farewells, someone said about me, I was very touched, and she said, with regard to me, and working and leading, collaborating, that I never made her feel dumb. And I thought, “Well, thank you. That’s a really kind thing to say about somebody that you work with,” because I don’t know about you, Jim, but I felt dumb a lot of times working with a lot of people. And that is, that’s something that you remember and it sticks with you as does the lessons, the ideals, and the evidence of the impact. And I think that’s a really nice tidy summation there.

Jim Kouzes
Pete, one of the things that’s most challenging for people to do, we have found from our research, is be forward-looking, and inspire a shared vision is the lowest-scoring practice of all the five practices. So, inspire a shared vision is extremely challenging for people to do. And, in fact, we found this find that this is probably the only practice which is correlated somewhat with age, meaning younger people are not as forward-looking as those with more experience.

Part of that is you’ve had more experience in the workplace and you do understand that you don’t get instant results in an organization. It takes a while to complete a project and so you need to be thinking ahead, particularly when you’re managing or supervising or leading other people. You need to think potential years down the road.

And so, it is a skill that’s developed over time but we can build that skill the more we begin to imagine scenarios out into the future and what we hope things will look like at the end. And so, we can draw on our past about things that we’ve accomplished in the past and kind of go back and review them to see how they went for us and what the end results were, reminding us that we can start at year one, and in year three, something gets realized, and imagine what went on during that time.

And then, coming to the present and reflect on what’s going on right now that is in need of some action, what are the trends, what’s happening, that can inform our vision today. And then let’s look into the future and project ahead and say, “Well, what’s going to be the impact of what’s happening right now down the road?” People do that all the time. Who would’ve known that you and I would be communicating this way 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, or 20 years ago? And, yet, here we are, using this technology that someone invented a while back.

One short little example of this, Barry Posner and I wrote the first edition of The Leadership Challenge starting in 1983 up through 1985 and did some editing and got published in 1987. We wrote the first edition of The Leadership Challenge using a software program called Kermit. It was available only to people at universities, it was only available to people in research institutions. It wasn’t publicly available. It was an internet program that allowed us to share files over the internet.

Today, people just assume that’s the way it’s been all along because we’re doing it all the time. But when we first started writing, there was no such thing as the internet publicly available. But somebody imagined that we could be doing this kind of thing now. What do you, as you’re working in your community and you’re thinking about what you can do, what is it that you imagine could happen if members of your community took an initiative to deal with a particular challenge?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. Well, now, let’s talk about the third step there, challenge the process. How do we do that well?

Jim Kouzes
Well, challenge the process is essentially about searching for opportunities by kind of seizing the initiative. Again, going back to Erin Bern McKelroy’s personal best leadership experience that she told us about during the pandemic. She was sitting there on her couch just feeling anxious about wanting to do something because she’s always been involved with the community. So, she seized the initiative to do something and, also, by looking outward for ways to improve.

So, looking out in the community and ask yourself, “Well, how could we make this happen? We can get people from food service organizations, or restaurants and kitchens and commercial kitchens, and ask them to be involved. And then who could we be serving? Well, who’s the most important population in need?”

So, she looked outside, not just in her own head, but she looked outside in the community for ideas about what could be done to improve, then she ran that by some people who were close to her to test these ideas, and then they set up little experiments to try it out, then things began to work and come together. So, it’s about searching for opportunities by seizing the initiative and looking outward for innovative ways to improve. And then, by experimenting and taking risks, by constantly generating little ideas that can help them to take action on that vision that they had.

Pete Mockaitis
Any pro tips for sparking more ideas when you’re in the heat of things?

Jim Kouzes
So, here’s one idea that I think anyone can use that will help them be more curious and more innovative and creative. The idea, actually, talking about looking outward for ideas, came to us from a participant in a workshop. We had this idea of sitting down and asking your team at least once a week, “What have you done over the last week to improve so that you’re better this week than you were a week ago?”

And so, we offered that suggestion, and one of the participants in the workshop followed through and implemented that idea and came back to us four weeks later, and said, “You know what happened? The first time I asked my team to think about this question, ‘What have you learned in the last week to improve? What have you done in the last week to improve so that you’re better this week than you were a week ago?’ The first time that I asked that question,” he said, “…no one had an answer. They kind of looked at me silly, and said, ‘He’s been to a workshop. This will pass.’”

He said, “The second week, about 25%, 30% of the people had a response. Those conscientious folks who thought maybe I’d ask this question again, 75% had it the third week. You know what happened on the fourth week? They asked me what I had done in the last week to improve so I was better than I was a week ago.” So, we knew that that worked. It stuck.

So, you need to come up with some way in which you ask a question or you set up a situation in which people have to think about what they’ve done to improve, to learn, to innovate, to create. You can take people shopping for ideas. Think about organizations that do things not identical to yours but if you’re in the service business, other people in the service business that you might go and observe, who seem to be very creative and innovative. Go shopping for ideas from other people. Anything that we can do to get people to exercise curiosity about themselves and about others will be helpful to improving.

So, I like that technique of asking people, “What have you learned in the last week, or what have you done in the last week to improve so you’re better this week than you were a week ago?”

Pete Mockaitis
But it’s also, in and of itself, illustrative about how change can unfold. At first, it’s like, “Okay, blowing this guy off.” And then the second time, a couple people get on board. And then, with that consistency, there it goes, you’re off to the races.

Jim Kouzes
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you tell us now about the fourth practice there, enable others to act?

Jim Kouzes
Absolutely. So, enable others to act is about two things. It’s about fostering collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships, and then about strengthening individuals by increasing their self-determination and developing their confidence. So, here’s another technique or method that can be helpful, again, one of those things that you can do almost instantaneously.

Whenever you are engaged in an interaction with another person or a group of people, whether it’s one people, ten people, or a hundred people, ask yourself the following question prior to the interaction, “What can I do in this interaction with this person or a group of people that will make them feel more powerful, efficacious, strong, and capable after we’re through with this interaction than when we started? What’s one thing I can do to make other people feel stronger, more capable, better and more capable than maybe even they thought they were?”

It might be simply to listen to that person or that group of people. It might be to offer a suggestion. It might be to say, “Well, I know somebody who might be able to help you with this.” It might be, “You know, I think there’s a development experience that would be useful to you here. Let me see if I can get you connected with someone who can help you with that.”

Anything that you can do to make other people feel more powerful, whether it’s in a one-minute interaction, or a one-hour interaction, or longer, is something that will help other people feel stronger and more trusting of you because you’re paying attention to them and their needs.

Pete Mockaitis
And let’s talk about the opposite of that. How might a well-intentioned everyday leader accidentally or unintentionally disable others from acting?

Jim Kouzes
Let me give you a specific example to frame this because I think it’s really important that we talk about this. This is probably one of the most important topics we can discuss, “How do we make other people feel enabled or how do we make them feel disabled?”

So, in response to that question, here’s a study, one of my favorite studies that I think will help to frame this. So, researchers were doing an experiment on collaboration and trust using what’s called the prisoner’s dilemma. It’s a zero-sum game that’s often used in experiments on cooperation and collaboration.

And they set up the experiment in a very unique way. They told people that one group of people, half the participants in this experiment, that they were playing the Wall Street Game. And they told others, the other half, that they were playing the Community Game. What they were really looking at was the extent to which people would cooperate. The rules of the game were the same, were identical, and the only difference was the name of the game – Wall Street Game, Community Game.

Who would you guess was more cooperative, those playing the Wall Street Game or the Community Game?

Pete Mockaitis
I would guess the Community Game.

Jim Kouzes
Exactly. And that’s the point. The only difference was the name of the game not the game itself. But those who played the Wall Street Game, only about 37% were cooperative on their initial move and subsequent moves. Those playing the Community Game were 70% cooperative, and that continued throughout the game.

We, as leaders, have impact in just one or two words so when we speak as leaders, we, essentially, are like viruses, to use a current example. We spread things and we can either spread positive behaviors or negative behaviors in just a couple of words. And, as leaders, we need to really reflect on the language we’re using in order to have a positive impact in people because we know that that positive impact will produce better results.

So, do you want to be playing the Wall Street Game? If you want to be playing the Wall Street Game where people are uncooperative with each other and try to compete and beat the other person and never have a win-win solution, then call it the Wall Street Game. But if you want people to be cooperative, you need to play the Community Game.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you.

Jim Kouzes
So, again, I think that helps to frame our understanding of this concept. It is a lot about language and behavior. As leaders, you have to be the first to trust. You have to be the person who creates a climate of trust for others, makes it possible for people to cooperate in a trusting manner. So, take a cue from that research that you are having an impact, either positive or negative, you’re either being transformational or toxic. Which do you choose to be?

Pete Mockaitis
And, finally, how do we go about encouraging the heart?

Jim Kouzes
Encouraging the heart is, again, about a couple of things. One is about recognizing contribution from individuals. What have people done that you can show your appreciation for? And, secondly, celebrating the values and the victories as a group of people. So, we need both to recognize individuals for what they do as well as we have to celebrate, as teams, the milestones we’ve reached and the values we’ve been consistent with.

One of my favorite examples comes from Tom Malone, he wasn’t an everyday leader in this particular case but he was a great example to all everyday leaders, to all leaders. He had a small…a medium-sized factory. And, as the owner of the company, he would often walk the floor. It was a relatively small organization and so he had the chance regularly to walk the floor. And one day, he saw one of his manufacturing employees put a part in a refrigerator, in the freezer of a refrigerator, and he was really curious about that.

So, he went up to this individual, he said, “Lala, excuse me, I’m really confused. Why did you put that part in the freezer?” And he said, “Well, I put it in the freezer because it was a little too large to fit in the hole,” this was a rod that went into a component. “The rod was a little too big and I knew if I put it in the freezer, it would shrink a little bit and be able to fit into the part. I wouldn’t be wasting either part.”

And then Tom realized that Lala, is what his name was, put this part in the freezer because he was committed to the value of zero rejects called the total quality control. And later, at a celebration, which they had weekly on the floor, Tom called this out, told this story and said, “He is an example of the kind of person we’re looking for who stays dedicated both to his job, to our value of zero reject quality, and to the productivity of this organization.”

So, as a leader, be out there and about looking for individuals who are doing things that you can then tell stories about. And when you tell that story, you’re communicating to others who are part of that team that they are individually making a contribution, and “Here’s one of your colleagues, one of your peers, who’s done that. This is an example to you of the kind of behavior that we’re looking for throughout this organization.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, Jim, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jim Kouzes
I would only say that you’ve done a great job, Pete, with your questions, but I think the thing that I want to emphasize and I want to say most, Pete, is that every person has a capability to improve their leadership skills and abilities. And using the five practices of exemplary leadership as a guide, find ways in which you can more frequently engage in modeling, inspiring, challenging, enabling and encouraging.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jim Kouzes
Quote from one of the people we interviewed early on, Don Bennett, who, in response to a question of “How did you do that, Don? How did you climb 14,410 feet on one leg and two crutches to the top of Mount Rainier?” and He looked down at his one leg, the first amputee to climb Mount Rainier, and said, “One hop at a time.”

I think of that quote every day when I’m stuck somewhere, and if I may add a second quote from Don. When I said to Don, “You were the first amputee ever to climb Mount Rainier, the first to do it. What was the most important lesson you learned from climbing that mountain?” And he said, “You can’t do it alone.”

People often think about leadership as an individual solo act that is just unique to the person, but Don made me recognize very early on in our research that it really is not about what one person does. It is about what a team of people does together. Any leader who claims credit personally for accomplishments is not going to have the kind of impact that a leader like Don who attributes his success to the team.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Jim Kouzes
My current favorite, Pete, is the newest book from Adam Grant.

Pete Mockaitis
Think Again.

Jim Kouzes
You got it. You knew that book.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s a great Kindle as well.

Jim Kouzes
Yeah. I’m sure you have the same stack or a similar stack. Yeah, but Think Again is a wonderful new book. Highly recommend it to anyone. And I think, particularly around this notion of challenging the process, it’ll help us all to recognize that we all have blind spots, we all are always in need of thinking again about the way in which we think.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Jim Kouzes
You know, one of my favorite tools is Grammarly.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Jim Kouzes
As a write, I use it all the time. Again, I work alone writing, and there’s often not an editor nearby, but I just run my texts through Grammarly, and say, “Oh, yeah, I see how I could do that better here.” So, that probably is my favorite tool that I use in my day-to-day work.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a favorite nugget, something you share that people quote back to you again and again?

Jim Kouzes
I would say that there are a couple of them. One is “Credibility is the foundation of leadership.” “If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message,” is often something that people recall from our work. People also frequently say, “The best leaders are the best learners,” another line which we wrote. But I think my favorite is, “Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.”

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jim Kouzes
I think the best way to find out the scope of everything that we are up to these days is the LeadershipChallenge.com. So, LeadershipChallenge.com website, which is where we have programs and books and activities. And then follow me at Twitter @Jim_Kouzes.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jim Kouzes
I would say that my challenge is the following to all of us as leaders, whether with a title or as peers, that our wish, ours, mine and Barry’s, is that you make the most of every opportunity to lead, that you stretch yourself, and be willing to learn continually from the challenges in front of you, and that you step out to the edge of your capabilities, and then ask a little bit more of yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Jim, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and adventure in your extraordinary leadership.

Jim Kouzes
Pete, thank you very much. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk with you. So, we’ll sign off and I hope that we get to do this again. Love them and lead them.