Listening – Page 3 – The Consulting Artist

Letter to the Boss, from John Everyman

My search for interesting and useful stories about employee engagement take me to many places. I search all over, and sometimes the very best stuff is a lot closer than you think. Thanks to the wonder of the internet I’ve made lots of friends I’ve yet to meet, though I know a good deal of them better than I know some of my relatives!

One of those highly enjoyable meet ups that has come my way is with a guy named Craig. We share at least two common interest, guitars and engagement. Here is a link to a great story written by Craig as a letter, from the worker to the boss. In itself it’s a lovely tale about connectedness. Behind it is some really powerful stuff, like talent wars, career shifters, and people who need people. It’s also about retaining good people, and the payoff.

Craig concludes by saying, “If you manage to land good talent, you’d better work hard to hold on to it. What factors impact overall job satisfaction, and therefore retention? Forget the bottom level basic survival needs of the Maslow model. The work force is craving much more than just pay and benefits. I’m not a researcher, and I don’t care to list yet again the mountains of studies and data to validate this, but the studies are out there. Fact:

Companies with higher levels of engagement also experience greater profit, productivity and retention rates.

The bad news: you cannot buy engagement. The good news: engagement costs nothing.”

How To Be A Great Leader – It's Your Choice

Wow! Just when I thought it was all going to go quiet for Christmas, my friend Jonathan Wilson comes up with a powerful piece on leadership in response to a question on our LinkedIn group. Take it away Jonathan:

I have had the pleasure of working closely for airline entrepreneurs Sir Freddie Laker, Sir Michael Bishop and Sir Richard Branson. They were all very different but each shared similar qualities:

1. They learnt to simplify appropriately so that people knew what they were supposed to do and why it was fun and important to do it.

2. They learned to listen extraordinarily well with genuine interest and respect. Then they (mostly) acted on what they heard, especially if they heard it from a ‘junior’ member of the team.

3. They practised and developed very good memories.

4. They engendered a sustained sense of enthusiasm and made people feel they were very important.

5. They made people trust them enough to believe what they said and that they believed what they said themselves. They had the self-confidence to trust other people. Their confidence enabled them to take accountability and to hold others accountable without interfering with how their people discharged their responsibility. This meant that they delegated very well, which meant that they increased their personal power literally thousands of times over.

6. They were overwhelmingly positive, optimistic and future-focused.

7. They had all been, at least once, within days or hours of losing their businesses to bankers or bureaucrats without any vision beyond the procedure they were myopically, even blindly, following – and they had all learned from the experience

8. They were all motivated by something other than money. The money was merely a way of indicating the value they had created, but short-term profits were never important compared to capital growth, At the same time, they were always cash-conscious because cash is freedom. They did not try to motivate their staff with great financial rewards, but were personally generous.

9. They were much more active than reflective, but when they did pause to reflect, they showed pretty high self-awareness.

10. They were very persistent. Very persistent indeed.

I could go on (and on), but enough! I wish there was a secret code, some insight that people could bottle and have to keep, but I’m afraid that if there is one, I have never been able to find it, except perhaps these two insights:

1. Leadership is not something you have or don’t have. Leading is something that you can choose to do, or not do – and you make that choice anew every day and every moment of every day.

2. Practice, practice, practice.

Merry Christmas!

A Year of Change

Every year I’m fortunate to experience lots of change. I enjoy it. The mix of excitement, uncertainty, and the helpfulness of so many people I’m fortunate to know make for a thrilling journey.

2009 has been exceptional. My forays into the world of social media exploded as the Stop Doing Dumb Things to Customers blogging experiment went from strength to strength. Thousands of people tuned in and many have contributed and co-created too. This inspired me to try and improve the mix of employee, customer and social engagement offered through the blog, and through LinkedIn and through facebook, and beyond. I found real enjoyment in writing and it helped make some fantastic new connections, of which more in a minute.

In the summer of this year, I resigned from a successful and enjoyable 12.5 year career working for BT which encompassed sales, sustainability, change management and employee engagement. I’ve started a new business (well someone had to). It’s called What Goes Around Limited. I hope it will bring the very best of what I’ve learned and am learning about engagement, sustainability, leadership, trust and autonomy in pursuit of great service to an even wider audience. In the few short months that What Goes Around has been in existence, we’ve enjoyed some success, uncovered lots of opportunities and made plenty of mistakes. Sorry, I mean learned lots of valuable lessons.

Something I learned a few years ago (I think it happened when I became a father) which I want to amplify today is the power of sharing. My experience of large organisations has taught me that sharing is often spoken about, and rarely practiced. The old maxim knowledge is power only feels right to me when the knowledge is shared to create power with others. Yet too often knowledge is selfishly held close in the belief that it can create power over others, where its value is truly limited, and sometimes even dangerous. In the belief that we can co-create more real power and movement in 2010, I want to share just a few of the many people and things which have inspired me in this exceptional year of change.

Have a great Christmas, and an exciting New Year.

Doug Shaw
07736 518066
What Goes Around Limited
Registered in England. Company number 06997727

Inspiring people, places and things

Jonathan Wilson. Jonathan is one of the most fascinating people I know. Though I’ve known him for some years, I include him on this list because the new ideas and opportunities he introduces me to make it feel like I’m often meeting him for the first time. This year he showed me a great way to measure communication and performance within a team, and improve it.

Is Bad Behaviour Killing Big Business. My friend Katherine Wiid encouraged me to start what is now a growing network on LinkedIn full of interesting people sharing, learning and having some fun discussing stuff about behaviour. Click here and if you like what you see, please feel free to join in.

David Zinger. Katherine then introduced me to David Zinger’s employee engagement network. A growing, thriving network of people with a sincere interest in this exciting subject. David also runs davidzinger.com an interesting and useful site full of insight, cartoons, poetry, plans and the Zinger employee engagement model.

Life Without Pants. Through David Zinger’s network I met Shereen Qutob-Cabral. Shereen is an enthusiast and a motivator. She showed me the way to Life Without Pants and its owner Matt Cheuvront. Matt writes and collaborates wonderfully. Amongst the wonderful things you can find at Life Without Pants is a great read called the Inconvenience of Change. 38 bloggers coming together each with their own story and perspective on how to inspire change.

What Matters Now. After enjoying the great work on Life Without Pants, I went seeking more. I found What Matters Now, which is the work of more than 60 people with big ideas and something to say. It will inspire you to make some changes in 2010, and to keep doing work that matters. Please download it and share it with your colleagues.

Other folk who’ve given me a hand in 2009 include Chris Plush, Tony Mason, Walter Hicks, Gary Smailes, Pete Massey, Dan Pink, Kate Davies, Ross Clephane, Lyndon Wright, David MacLeod, David Shanks (who gave me the name What Goes Around Limited), Dave and Maggie Wheeler, Huw Williams, Joseph Bridgstock, Tamar Collis, Charlie Duff, my dad Paul and my darling wife Carole and lovely daughter Keira Joe. For every experience I recall there are more I can’t right now so my apologies if I’ve forgotten to acknowledge your help and co-creation this time, I hope to do better in the future.