Engagement

Be Right or Be In Relationship – Your Choice

Every waking moment, you get to choose: you can be right or be in relationship. This is true everywhere: at work, at home, with your friends.

Life is that simple, and that difficult. Deciding that relationship is more important that being right means you consciously choose to “be wrong”, to be willing to let go of your hard-won truths. In almost all organizations, people are expected to be right – to make the sales forecast come true, to keep expenses to the budgeted amount, to spend only X minutes (or Y seconds) on a customer call… The Goal, Goldratt’s business novel that has sold more than 6 million copies, been translated into 21 languages, and taught in more than 200 colleges and universities, states, “The goal of a business is to make money.” The end of making money justifies the means of doing whatever it takes, as long as it is legal.

However, a little-heralded book (Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership, Sipe and Frick, 2009) demonstrates clearly that for-profit businesses that are based on relationship outperform numbers-based businesses by more than 2 to 1 (24% to 11% annual ROI). And Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” companies earned only 17.5% during the same period. The 11 servant-led companies include Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Marriott International, and FedEx.

Being right feeds the need to be in control. It manifests itself in power-over, in hierarchy, in fear. It assumes a zero-sum, win/lose, competitive world. It is based in competitive individualism, “it’s all about me.”

Being in relationship supports creativity and messiness and holism. It manifests itself in peer-to-peer, self-organized teams and groups, and in love (even in the workplace!) It creates a win/win, cooperative world, in which all persons benefit. It creates supportive community.

You can be right, or you can be in relationship. You get to choose, every waking moment.

I welcome your comments. gary@portlandconsultinggroup.com

Gary Langenwalter

Community

Last weekend my wife Janet and I visited many studios in the Art Harvest Studio Tour of Yamhill County. We spent Saturday in McMinnville, and Sunday in the Sheridan area. At each location, we were able to engage the artist(s) in dialogue. We learned a little of their history; we learned a little about their house or studio (some of which date to the early 1900s). We sampled the munchies they provided, from crackers and cheese to chocolate chip cookies to home-smoked ribs.

What differentiated this experience from a typical art show is that we were participating in building community. As these artists share their stories, there is connection, one human to another. Not a blinding flash or loud cymbals – just two people connecting. It is simple, quiet, effortless, even unobtrusive. Sort of like breathing. And in its effortlessness, its unobtrusiveness, it is profound, even sacred. Can something so quiet, so easy, so natural, be the glue that holds society together? I think the answer is “yes”. It is the sharing, one on one, that creates connection, that is the foundation of community. Community is neither you nor me. It is “us” – the connection. That easy, profound, natural connection.

And yes, this applies directly to the world of commerce as well. People appreciate being treated as persons of worth, rather than a means to a transaction. In commerce, just like the rest of our lives, people want to be connected, to be in community.

I’d appreciate feedback. You can post it here, or e-mail me at gary@portlandconsultinggroup.com

Gary Langenwalter

Humble bosses are best

One more study has confirmed that humble bosses are best. Actually, the word “boss” says it all. The most effective leaders are not “bosses” per se, but leaders who empower and energize those who work with them. A study from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University supports this. The researchers interviewed CEOs of 63 private companies in China, plus about 1000 managers who work for them. They concluded that humble bosses are strong bosses. Their research corroborates a book by Sipe and Frick, The Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership, which showed that companies whose CEOs practice servant leadership achieve a 24.5% return to shareholders, outperforming Jim Collins’ Good to Great companies which achieved 17.5% return to shareholders.

Gary Langenwalter

Portland Consulting Group

Helping Organizations Thrive

971-221-8155

www.portlandconsultinggroup.com

Their Faces Were Glowing!

I spent last Friday at YEACamp, an organization that teaches teens how to be successful change agents. The highlight of the day was when each camper stood in front of their 25 peers and 12 staff, gulped once, and then declared their action plan for the change that they want to bring about. When each camper finished, they remained standing to receive their much-deserved ovation. And they glowed! For most of them, their week at camp, culminating in this experience, is life-changing. It grounds them in understanding that they are a gift to the world, and that they can only be stopped if they allow it.

But, and there’s always a “but”, none of these youth can accomplish great things by themselves. It takes all of us, as a community, to continue to encourage them to greatness.

The same is true in our workplaces and our families and other organizations. We can choose to be supportive, helping each person become all they can be. Or we can choose to ignore people, leaving them to drift, unsupported. Or, we can choose to criticize, to find fault. It’s our choice. And our choice will determine the world that we and our children and our grandchildren live in.

I welcome feedback and conversation on this topic. 971-221-8155, gary@portlandconsultinggroup.com.

Gary Langenwalter

Leadership Worth Following

Typical change management programs focus on stakeholder management, getting “buy in” from others etc. While some of this is necessary, people are more likely to follow true leaders based on their conviction, confidence, and likelihood of success. This principle explores some of your underlying unexamined assumptions about leadership. In one of our workshops, you will identify your assumptions and beliefs regarding leadership and develop a leadership philosophy grounded in your core values. We can also have this conversation one on one.

The Greatest Gift You Can Give

Children crave attention. A 4 year old will demand, “Daddy, Daddy, look at me! Mommy, Mommy, look at me!” Unfortunately, parents are not always able to pay attention when the child demands it; other items might take higher priority. When a child doesn’t get attention by being good, he or she might do something naughty. Any attention (even negative attention) is better than being ignored.

So what does this have to do with our organizations?

People crave to be seen. People need genuine recognition for who they are. Old or young, male or female, boomer or gen X or millenial – doesn’t matter. We are each wired to want to be recognized, to be seen.

Thus, the biggest gift you can give someone is to see them. You can see them for how they want to be seen, and/or for the potential and creativity and capability that you see in them. Even better, this is free. It costs the organization exactly zero dollars.

Best of all, you can ask others give you that gift as well.

This is the original win/win.

We’re all on a journey – so let’s support and celebrate our fellow travelers. And let’s be gentle and generous and give them the gift of being seen for who they really are and who they can be – courageous persons who are doing the best they can with what they’ve got. That’s what makes great teams great.

What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? Let me know. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

gary

gary@portlandconsultinggroup.com

Secret Sauce of Employee Engagement

One of my clients in rural Massachusetts wanted a team of mid-level managers and professionals to work nights and weekends to implement its new computer system. This caused the team members to miss their kids’ soccer games and other special family times. When the system was successfully implemented, the owner planned to pay for the new system by laying off half the team. The company was too far from any major population center for the laid off employees to commute to any new jobs, and the company was the only employer in town, so houses were worth almost nothing and could not be easily sold. Not so surprisingly, the software never met its goals, so the owner was not able to lay off any of the team.

The problem with employee engagement, as it is commonly viewed, is this: it’s all company-centric. Companies use every tool and technique in the book to try to engage their employees into enhancing the company’s well-being.

This also used to be true of how companies treated customers – customers were supposed to buy what the company wanted them to buy. However, companies finally learned that customers will buy what they want to buy, so companies have gotten much better at listening to their customers, so they can sell what the customers want. However, companies have not yet realized that they can do the same with their employees – that they can ask their employees what they really want, and help them get it.

In my consulting on 4 continents, I have found that there is a common thread the grounds what most people want: they want a good life for their children and their grandchildren. If that is the case in your organization, the question that would truly engage employees would look like this: “How can we use our products and services to help make the world a better play for our children and their children?”

Do you agree? Disagree? I would welcome feedback and pushback. I learned a long time ago that I only learn when somebody disagrees. My e-mail is gary@portlandconsultinggroup.com  Hope to hear from you.

Gary

1.971.221.8155

How To Build a Culture of Purpose

How To Build a Culture of Purpose:

What Erika does is very simple. She asks people if they had a good day. If they say yes, she ask them to identify the moment that made it good. She is basically asking them to name the purpose moment they experienced that made their day positive. That was the first step.

Secret of Employee Engagement

Many organizations are trying to improve employee engagement. Unfortunately, almost all of them are starting with an invalid assumption. They try to engage employees through a variety of methods, but their underlying assumption is that employees should be passionate about helping the organization achieve its goals. Period. As if achieving the organization’s goals is actually the primary passion of each employee. If they were to try to sell their products and services to the customers using the same mentality, they would fail.

What actually works is this: have a representative group of people from all levels and functions of the organization jointly create a culture that values the employees’ passion and purpose as well as the organization’s mission and goals. To be really radical, the organization could be open to revising its vision and mission to integrate the passion and purpose of its employees into its products and services. Such an organization does not have to worry about “motivating” its employees, or “engaging” its employees. They will be fully engaged and powerfully motivated, because the organization reflects their own personal values.

What’s going on in your organization that’s causing engagement?  What’s going on that causes disengagement?  I’d love to hear from you.

Gary Langenwalter, Managing Partner

Portland Consulting Group

Engagement in your Organization

What would your organization be like if 50-70% of your people, at all levels, were passionately engaged in your mission?

What would it be like to work in such an organization?

What results could it produce? How much of a difference would it make in the quality of life of the employees, the customers, the communities in which it operates?

Engagement is what we look for when we walk into an organization. We look for the smiles, the attitude. We look for people on the front lines who enjoy being there, who know that they are valued and trusted.

Not possible, you say? Not in this economy? Not here? I beg to differ. Look at the tens of thousands of people, all ages, races, genders, walks of life, who volunteer at various non-profits. They are engaged, or they wouldn’t be there.

Want to do a little dreaming, about how well your organization could be performing? About what your life could be like? We’d be honored to dream with you. (And, we can help those dreams become reality.)

Gary Langenwalter