Integrative Listening – Is Anyone Truly Listening Anymore?

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These days, it seems that the art of communication is being lost. All too often within society, conversations have become one-sided monologues with witnesses or even worse, people gathered together in one space while all looking at their devices.

When people stop talking in the workplace, morale drops followed by productivity. If leaders fail to address these problems, they will see good employees walk out the door. Employees leave positions where they feel they are not being heard or understood either by leaders or colleagues. While the cost of employee turnover is high, leaders who do nothing about it pay an even higher price.

Society seems to have perpetuated the strange theory that just because human beings breathe, they can communicate. Yet hang around any organization for even a short period of time and you’ll recognize that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Within the entire workplace spectrum, ineffective communication skills are ever-present. Colleagues bicker about the same topic only to find that essentially they are really saying the same thing, just from a different perspective. Others complain and argue to the point where they refuse to work with each other. Even further on the spectrum, others opt to remain silent and watch the system as it slowly breaks down into a disordered state.

Today’s work environments are diverse beyond the physical attributes of age, gender, and race. We must also consider each employee’s cultural roots, generational experiences, and how their spirituality affects more than how many personal days they take but rather how their beliefs lead them to interact with others. In organizations, the ability to successfully exchange relevant information becomes even more vital. Team members who communicate in an integrative manner look each other in the eyes and speak to the heart of the matter. They have learned strategies that allow them to observe the issue from a seamless framework without any animosity. They work to truly hear the people they are interacting with instead of just waiting them out so they can respond. They come from a place of empathy, working to understand where the other person is coming from, even if they don’t agree with why the person feels or thinks that way. They watch the speaker’s body language and listen to their tone of voice. They understand that communication is more than words in isolation. They learn to respond assertively, using “I messages”, owning their contribution to the process of communicating, and helping to involve the other parties in the process as well. As people practice and employ these skills, they begin to appreciate what the other person brings to the table; relationships based on trust develop leading to more cohesive teamwork. These communication skills are critical for the successful execution of organizational missions.

In his 1996 book, The Platinum Rule, Dr. Tony Allesandra discusses what he considers to be the Platinum Rule. “Do unto others as they’d like done unto them.” Distilled down to its essence, the Platinum Rule likens itself to respect for others. Moving away from a them-versus-us mentality and shifting to a focus on “us”, it becomes a useful tool to help build rapport, develop teams, and ultimately meet the organization’s mission. He also outlines four behavioral styles; director, socializer, relater, and thinker. In order for leaders and others to utilize Alessandra’s work effectively, they must recognize what their dominant style is as well as those of the others on their teams. Once they understand the other’s styles, they can learn to flex to them. Meeting people at their point of engagement gives a better chance of being “heard” by them. Managers who model these skills and provide a trusting environment, position their teams and organizations for greater success and growth.

In my book, How Not to Act Like a BLEEP at Work, we chronicle the development of Louise Jackson, a technically successful mid-level manager who struggles to be behaviorally proficient. As a director/thinker, Louise lacks empathy and emotional intelligence. She doesn’t recognize the need to meet her people where they are, leaving her team to pick up the pieces and support each other along the journey.

Leaders are becoming further tasked to garner more and more from their team members. Through the use of integrative-based communication strategies, many needless conflicts could be avoided early on. How much would that be worth to your project, program and institution?

About the Author

Melissa DaviesMelissa Davies is an internationally respected expert on developing workplace environments where people are able to show up better. She runs Wise Ways Consulting, which specializes in executive coaching, group facilitation, and high-engagement training. Melissa is also the author of How Not to Act Like a BLEEP at Work, a business parable that delivers examples and lessons on how to create a business environment where team members are able to show up with their best selves and contribute to meeting the organizational mission.

Organizational Accountability – Evaluating Organizational Culture, part 2

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StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability ArticleAn organization’s culture – its commonly shared values and beliefs – is both highly complex and interrelated. As such, no one cultural artifact should be used in isolation to describe an organization’s culture and each artifact contributes differently to the painting of the overall culture picture. Objectively viewing the collection of cultural artifacts and identifying their individual contribution significance is critically important to developing an accurate understanding of the organization’s culture.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

3 Simple Steps to Immediately Improve Your Business and Life

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If you want something done right, you do not have to do it yourself. The cliché about this is wrong — unless that something is the thing that you do best. This might sound counterintuitive but DIY can be a trap for small business owners who wear too many hats. The only hat they should wear is the one that focuses on the core of their business.

Doing anything else is a waste of time, and time is the most important startup capital small-business owners have. Still, many of them do know how valuable their time is, and it’s worth much more than they realize.

The following three things are easy steps you can take right now to address the No. 1 problem most small-business owners face: time and resource management. These steps apply whether you’re trying to build the next Facebook or just balance your life better so you can spend more time with the people you care about.

1) Realize that “cheap” is not the same as “efficient”: It might be cheap to do something yourself, but unless it’s something you’re an expert at it’s probably not efficient. You have to put a price on an hour of your time to better understand what you should and should not be doing. Otherwise, you’re wasting a lot of it — and that’s something no business can afford. Time is worth much more than money. Luckily, the age we live in offers more opportunities than ever to build a team of experts on a tight budget. Once you have, you’ll be able to focus on what’s most important.

2) Embrace the idea that little is the new large: Things just keep getting better for David while they get worse for Goliath. Today, being small and dexterous is the biggest advantage anyone can have — and many Fortune 500 companies can’t do keep up. Small businesses can compete with bigger competition in ways they never could before. All it takes is adopting the new tools that are available. Do so and you’ll race past your bigger and slower competition and take their market share. Let them be the modern-day equivalent textile weavers in the eighteenth century. The only way to survive is to stay nimble and forward-thinking. Strive to be the first in your niche to automate what used to be costly and tedious.

3) Harness the new value chain: New technology and the old wisdom of the assembly line go quite well together. It allows you to build a team that’s more efficient, cost-effective, and profitable than you may have thought possible. It allows you to build and lead a team that is never doing mindless labor. Once you have the right people in the right place — including yourself — each person will help your business grow more efficient than ever before because they will all be doing work specific to their skill sets, as well as the needs of your business. The promise of the digital age is being realized with affordable human and technological resources just a click away. Now, even the smallest business can afford to hire a receptionist, a bookkeeper, and a personal assistant at pennies on the dollar compared to what it used to cost. Outsource all your small yet important jobs. Never work on your website again. Hire an expert to do it. Never write a brochure again or send a tweet (unless you love tweeting). Sites such as Upwork have thousands of freelancers who can do all of this and more — and they’ll do it better than you can. That’s a blessing, too, because it means you can focus on making your business the best it can be.

Small-business owners rarely fail because of a lack of effort, will, or talent. Far too often, they fail because they fall into the DIY trap. Sometimes all it takes to go to the next level is managing your time and resources better. Take these steps today and you’ll see immediate improvement in your bottom line and your personal life.

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About the Author

Justin E. Crawford is the founder of Agents of Efficiency and author of the international bestselling book, Live Free or DIY. Justin has been featured in over 200 major media outlets, writing and speaking regularly on the issues of growth hacking and startup & small business operational process refinement.

Overcoming Catastrophe

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Your department just made a catastrophic blunder that cost your company money and reputational equity. How do you recover?
 
By the time two of my direct reports walked into my office one evening everyone else had gone home, which was just what the pair had in mind.

The news they carried was so bad, they didn’t want anyone to witness my reaction. And the reaction they expected was so bad they had spent hours in one of the manager’s office too afraid to break the news to me.

At the time I was director of an organization responsible for processing applications for energy efficiency programs. One such program had high public visibility and it was heavily regulated by the state.

We had only recently assumed responsibility for the program from another work group. During a routine (for us) internal audit of the program, one of the managers discovered substantial errors in the program’s enrollment process, errors that were not only embarrassing to the company but costly.

My reaction? A series of briefly worded questions asked in a calm demeanor. Do we know what caused the errors? Can they be fixed? Do you have a plan to fix them?

Yes and yes and yes were the responses.

Well, let’s put together an implementation plan for the fixes and take it to the boss for his approval.

Their relief at my reaction was so great they burst into laughter. “What? No emotional outburst? No recriminations? No blame? No panic? You don’t want us to go with you to see the boss?”

My reaction was heavily influenced by what a former boss modeled when I was party to a huge, high-profile faux pas. She took the blame for work that had been performed by others, including me.

I never forgot what she did; it taught me the importance of being supportive, not only for the people involved but also for the well-being of the organization. Moving forward, I was motivated to do my best work not cover my butt.

Now it was my turn to be supportive and in the weeks ahead the two managers not only fixed the problem that caused the errors, they created better tracking mechanisms and new procedures that improved the overall process.

Here are some important lessons I have learned as a leader when bouncing back from an organizational catastrophe:

Face the catastrophe head on… and promptly: Bad news does not get better because it’s older. Denial only delays the inevitable need to face the problem and adds nothing to solving the problem. Bringing the problem to light promptly means we can begin to develop potential solutions sooner rather than later.

I let my boss know immediately about the errors right after my meeting with the managers. I promised to bring him the expected fixes soon so that we could review them together. And because I was calm, he was calm.

Choose accountability: Accepting accountability means fessin’ up when others discover our mistakes and bring them to our attention; choosing accountability is telling others about our mistakes. When we choose accountability we seize control of what happens next, we are proactive participants in problem solving rather than victims of circumstances and the recipients of blame.

When my peers found out about the mistake, they were supportive. The director who led the organization in which the program previously resided offered to share the financial costs of the errors. We politely declined. Sharing the financial burden seemed like we were shifting, or at least sharing, the blame; nope, we weren’t going to do that.

Support the people: When errors occur, do not throw people under the bus, especially those who will help in the recovery. It’s one thing to hold people accountable, it’s another to blame and shame them.

By focusing on fixes not fault my managers went from people who were uncertain about their future to leaders who took pride in creating new ways of working that enhanced the process.

Remain confident: Despite the embarrassing nature of errors, do not shrink back into the shadows. Errors can erode confidence in our organization and what we do, hanging our heads only contributes to such an erosion.

Instead, we added the program’s performance metrics to our widely distributed performance dashboard. We knew we wouldn’t have anything to brag about for a few months while the fixes took hold but we weren’t going to live in the aftermath of a catastrophe. We were going to live in the land of solutions, because we were confident our senior leaders, our peers, and most importantly, our internal clients were confident.

No one wants to deal with the aftermath of a catastrophe but if we respond well, we can cope with catastrophe rather than be victimized by it.

About the Author

Greg WallaceAuthor, change agent and leadership trainer, Greg Wallace is CEO of The Wallace Group which consults organizations and leaders to implement change and transformation which produce results that meet the leader’s definition of success. Learn more about developing a personal model of leadership in his second book, “Transformation: the Power of Leading from Identity”.

Impact of Office Lighting on Employee Productivity

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Improving your business day to day and over the long-term can be expensive and involved. But there’s an easier way to make work life better for your employees immediately and without huge cost: light.

The light in your office has a direct impact on mood and energy, as well as physical ailments such as eye strain and headaches. Most offices have too much artificial light, which makes it difficult for employees to respond to various tasks with the necessary illumination.

The solutions to this work light problem might surprise you. For one, more sources that are controllable enables employees to adjust the light as needed. Glare-reduction strategies can help, too, as can swapping in halogen bulbs for other types. Use this graphic to learn more about this impactful way to change your employees work day.

Click the image to see the whole infographic by Quill.com.

Impact of Office Lighting on Employee Productivity

About the Author

Eugene FeyginEugene Feygin is a Program Manager at Quill.com. While he is not working, he enjoys traveling, taking photographs and using Instagram.