Organizational Silos Archives - Fierce

Don’t Tiptoe Around Toxic Employees — Face Issues with Confidence

Beth Wagner — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 14:47:29 +0000

Do you ever notice yourself or your team side-stepping “problem” employees, soft-pedaling critical feedback, or avoiding conversations all together?

Do you walk around with proverbial marks on your forehead from banging it against the wall over and over again, wishing those employees – the people in your work life that literally drive you crazy – would wake up tomorrow morning being new and improved?

Many leaders and companies today admit to suffering from a culture of “nice” where people are afraid to speak openly or confront others’ behavior. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as just wishing these individuals away. (If only it were!) Each day we wake up to the same frustrations with a new dent in the wall and another painful bump on the head.

Toxic employees are a reality in many workplaces, and they come with a heavy price.

Fierce surveyed over a thousand employees and executives in multiple organizations that ranged from healthcare to education, from manufacturing to the financial sector.

Here are a few highlights of our findings:

78% of employees say that negative attitudes are extremely debilitating to team morale.

17% of those surveyed say negative attitudes increase stress.

27% of employees say that negative attitudes decrease productivity.

While it is often easier to avoid or ignore toxicity in your organization, when it starts to impact corporate culture and well-being, it’s time to shift gears.

Let’s acknowledge what’s true: negative environments create workarounds. We tiptoe around the problem. We work hard to avoid the individual who is creating the toxicity. News flash, avoidance does not actually help the situation. In fact, if we were to be honest with ourselves, avoiding the issue only increases our own stress. It also increases our distraction level. And if we stop for a moment to do the math, we quickly realize just how much time is being taken away from getting the real work done. Stress, distraction, and lack of productivity – does this sound like the kind of company culture you want to be a part of? I didn’t think so.

So what can we do?

At Fierce, we have 7 Principles that serve as the cornerstone for how to engage in the most successful conversations to help tackle toxicity. One of them is this:

Take responsibility for your emotional wake

Check yourself – how are you showing up? It might not surprise you that any highly stressed or over-worked individual can begin to behave in ways that are viewed by others as negative. Modeling the same behavior you are looking to change is not contributing to your success. Consider your own impact. Ask yourself, “How do people feel about conversations with me after I leave the room?”

When we are not mindful of our wake, when we’re consumed by our own stress or overwork or disengagement, we can actually become the toxic employee we are trying to avoid. This principle helps us be more mindful of our own behavior – and then take responsibility for it.

So the first step is to check in with ourselves. What’s next? There are two Fierce conversations we need to invite in order to best deal with others who have not taken responsibility for their emotional wake.

Feedback

One of the best ways in which we deal with toxic, negative employees is by giving feedback and learning how to receive feedback in the moment to create awareness.

Feedback is when we name what we’re seeing and experiencing, in order to give the other person an opportunity to better understand themselves…and hopefully grow and change.

Too often, though, especially with toxic employees, we’ve let things go unchecked for a very long time. The negative environment has taken root. And now a different conversation is needed.

Confrontation

As Robert Redford once said, “Knowing something is easy, saying it out loud is the hard part.” Confrontation conversations are NOT easy. In fact, these are often the very conversations we put off, make excuses for, avoid, or tiptoe around. We are THAT uncomfortable with them. And there are legitimate reasons to be scared about having some conversations. Let’s be honest – some people do not react well when confronted, regardless of how eloquent and thoughtful you are. This is reality. However, what is also reality is that the cost of not having the conversation is much greater than the risk of it going badly. These needed conversations have a huge impact on performance. As the saying goes, we get what we tolerate. When we don’t confront behavior, we, our team, our culture continues to suffer.

So, if you feel a conversation is needed, then likely it is. And for those of you worried about the failed conversation, remember this – a careful conversation IS a failed conversation because it merely postpones the conversation that wants and needs to take place.

Some of the best practices that we’ve seen make the biggest impact are when individuals – and cultures – develop their feedback-giving and receiving skills at all levels and when they don’t avoid confrontation, but step into it with courage, skill, and grace. When that happens, a healthy culture is built – one that is conversation-rich.

It’s important to invite feedback or confrontation conversations with the people we view as toxic. You cannot ignore the problem and hope it goes away. I promise you it won’t, and it will continue to erode the culture and well-being of the organization and those who choose to show up every day.

When we have tough conversations, when we practice them to build our capacity and muscle, we can turn toxic employees into engaged team members. We can then create a culture we all want to be a part of.

Conversation Chaos in the Digital Age

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Tags: #Feedback, #Job Stress, #Organizational Silos, #Productivity, #Turnover

The post Don’t Tiptoe Around Toxic Employees — Face Issues with Confidence appeared first on Fierce.

3 Ways to Avoid Being Crushed by Rapid Business Growth

Fierce — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 07:00:00 +0000

Rapid business growth can be an incredibly exciting experience. It also usually tends to be VERY overwhelming for the business, its leaders and its employees.

If you want your business to maintain its growth AND be successful (of course you do!) it’s critical to get out in front of the typical potential challenges that accompany rapid business acceleration.

The first step all leaders must take is to realize that the way you’ve always done things at your organization simply won’t cut it anymore.

Imagine if your small company grows by, say, 120 percent — the average first-year growth for startups according to EQUIDAM. That means your current number of employees has probably more than doubled. Now, think about how your business currently runs.

Do you really think if you continue with your status quo that your business will continue to grow, and your employees will continue being happy? That everything will pleasantly stay the same and you don’t have to change anything?

It’d be great if that was the case, and if so, you should definitely share your secrets with the world. The hard truth is that scenario rarely happens.

Here’s a perfect example:

I had a call recently with a company experiencing a multitude of challenges due to their fast growth.

In this organization, many people had been catapulted into their first manager roles, out of necessity. This created many challenges for the individual managers as well as team members who didn’t feel they are getting what they need.

On top of that, new departments have been established, and silos are being formed because the communication channels are not clear. The employees, and even the leaders, began to think project-to-project and lost sight of the larger organizational outlook.

The company reorganized earlier this year to try to address these communication issues (which has helped in some areas), but they’re still experiencing siloed structures where people are sitting right next to each other and still aren’t collaborating the way they should.

Their biggest goal for bringing Fierce into the organization was to start breaking down some of the psychological walls that have been built due to landscape that was created from their rapid change.

WHERE GROWTH HURTS THE MOST

When new teams or departments form, there’s a risk of silos forming that didn’t exist prior to the business’ growth. Methods of communication may also need to shift, via:

Email
Slack/Teams/Collaboration software
In-Person Meetings
Instant Messenger
Project Management Platform
File Management Platforms
Sales CRM

What worked before may no longer be efficient or effective in an environment where expansion is happening quickly. Conversations between certain people or teams may need to happen now (if they’re newly formed), or more often.

Quick expansions can also, unfortunately, create psychological walls that negatively impact culture. The important aspect to remember is that tackling this issue is not just an issue reserved only for HR.

When communication suffers, so does the cultural health of the company, and it affects everyone. This can include lack of clarity around roles, frequent miscommunication, and decision making without collaboration.

When the conversations that need to happen aren’t happening, it leads to silos and separation that have a negative impact on culture.

As the company grows, leaders will need to develop the conversation skills needed to effectively manage the evolving needs of their teams and the organization. What we see often are internal promotions that are based on tenure, but many of these leaders being promoted don’t have the training or the skills to manage other people.

If you don’t have a strategy to accommodate the expansion of your company, it’s not a matter of if, but rather when and how it will cause problems for your organization. The more you grow, the more your problems will, too. Bottom line, you need a plan.

Taking Steps to Successfully Navigate Business Growth

Fortunately, the problems many companies face in the midst of rapid growth can be remedied, and your organization doesn’t have to go to the dark side. Here are some steps you can take:

1. When you see it, say it.

One way you can assist in this process whether you’re a leader or individual contributor, is to offer feedback at the moment. If, for example, a current method of communication isn’t working, provide an idea for a better method. If something you see is working or you’re happy with a recent change, offer praise for reinforcement.

If you or one of your team members are struggling with feedback, keep this in mind: More than 75 percent of employees believe that feedback is an incredibly valuable tool, according to PwC. That said, only 30 percent of people say they receive feedback…that’s a huge disconnect.

Feedback is an opportunity to see what we may not see, and a single conversation may be what saves your organization from chaos during this time of change. We recommend training and practicing what great feedback looks like.

2. Take a regular pulse.

If there’s currently no way of taking a company pulse or team diagnostic, that’s a BIG problem. It’s important to know what people are thinking and feeling, and to find out, you must seek regular input and feedback.

Sending out short surveys on a regular basis will help you determine the health of your culture and overall employee satisfaction.

Pulses will also help prevent “fires” via Glassdoor and the “dumping” of harsh truths during exit interviews. If employees don’t feel comfortable expressing themselves in the workplace, they will express themselves elsewhere or during an inopportune time, and it’s not always pretty. The question to ask is, how can we have these conversations sooner?

The most honest, transparent cultures where there’s a sense of psychological safety and trust address this question by communicating directly to employees. “We want to know what you think!” And, we want to offer avenues where you are able to share your thoughts honestly without fear of retaliation.

Keep in mind that there is some grain of truth in the feedback contained in pulses and surveys — AND be sure to take concerns to heart and put solutions in place as quickly as possible to address them.

Again, this is not just an HR issue. To implement solutions, leaders have to buy-in, as well as be informed and on the same page. This will require conversations to set intentions and next steps.

3. Build and nurture a leadership training program.

When companies need strong leaders to help navigate change, they may need the help of an external program to train leaders in how to do this. Our clients bring in Fierce because their leaders need to know how to coach, give feedback, and have confrontational conversations.

Training is also a great tool to help you avoid an important tipping point in your organization. For example, another organization I spoke with recently felt they had no choice but to fire one of its employees. They didn’t want to do this, but at the time, they didn’t see any other solution.

Consequently, it created a negative atmosphere within the company and was cancerous to the entire team. Bad culture move. And training could’ve prevented the entire situation from happening because employees would have had the communication skills to tackle these negative issues before they snowballed.

If your company is in the process of rapid growth, I can’t stress this enough: take action now rather than later.

It’s harder to create new pathways once bad cultural habits have formed. You have a chance RIGHT NOW to shift your culture in a positive direction now and prevent an unfortunate cultural catastrophe down the road.

CREATE A SAFE WORKPLACE CULTURE

Top talent leaving due to a culture of fear? Find out what conversation can help you make a change.

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Tags: #Accelerated Growth, #Inadequate Training, #Organizational Silos

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This is Why Your Workplace Culture is Toxic and How to Fix it

Fierce — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 07:00:00 +0000

A keg in the breakroom, fish tanks in the walls, happy hours, ping pong, cornhole, bean bag chairs…sounds like a fun work environment, right?

I don’t think anyone would complain about these types of perks. And I get why companies often incorporate them. They can be reflective of the company’s culture and values, and incentives like happy hour can give everyone a chance to get to know each other on a more personal level. But if you think a happy hour or a ping pong table is going to increase engagement, produce business results, and help retain talent, you may want to reassess your approach.

An issue arises when these incentives are put in place with the belief that they will somehow shift a company’s culture. I’m here to tell you they won’t. Lurking just beneath what looks like a fun place to work could be deep culture problems that fun perks cannot solve.

I once worked for a company that made a substantial effort to weave in these kinds of perks and communicated that the intention was to improve company culture. We went to happy hours, social events, and played games. But it wasn’t addressing the root cause of the cultural problems we were having: ineffective conversations.

In a clique-ish way, relationships were flourishing. But these relationships were siloed within teams and weren’t representative of the organization as a whole. For example, in my department, culture grew “organically,” meaning we all bonded together without the insertion of cultural initiatives. Friendships grew naturally, and candor was the literal lifeblood of our team. Many of us stayed in the company longer than we would have because of these relationships. Regardless, turnover rates were still relatively high, and conversations around why people were leaving revealed a pretty unanimous reason: ineffective and missing conversations with leadership, all the way from C-suite to team leads.

It wasn’t that we didn’t like our leaders, or that we somehow knew how to have conversations better than they did. It’s that many people within the organization, across all levels, were lacking the communication skills required to create a more cohesive culture built on trust.

As individual contributors, many of us did not feel comfortable initiating conversations and sharing our true thoughts and feelings with our leaders because the behavior wasn’t being modeled. Many of the conversations that needed to happen weren’t happening, and engagement suffered as a result. Employees often bonded together in the face of this frustration and many water cooler conversations were happening, which only led to more separation between leaders and employees. Most of the conversations and important decisions taking place among leaders were being made behind closed doors, and leaders were not seeking input. This created a sense of separation and did nothing to build trust.

Here are some signs to look for to help identify if your organization’s culture is in need of a new approach:

Leaders are not seeking input from their teams on a regular basis.
Giving feedback is not a common or ongoing occurrence.
People are gossiping or excluding others from conversations.
Leaders are not being transparent with company goals, objectives, and finances.
Showing emotion is discouraged and considered unprofessional.
One-on-one conversations between individuals and leaders are rare.
Problems are not being discussed with the people who are needed to resolve them.

Everyone within an organization makes up the culture, not just leaders, and it’s the responsibility of every individual to be courageous and have the conversations that matter. When leaders do not model the behavior, it sends a message that perhaps the conversations we need to have may not be safe to have. There’s a lot at stake when this is the case. Employees don’t want to lose their jobs or be reprimanded over a conversation that didn’t go well. When all parties are trained in having skillful conversations, however, it produces better results and a better culture. I’ve witnessed this firsthand here at Fierce. Knowing what to talk about and how to talk about it makes all the difference in creating this sense of trust and safety.

Your employees may be having a good ol’ time with each other, but if the relationships between employees and leaders are underdeveloped or non-existent, it will still end in high turnover and dissatisfaction among employees.

If you want to transform your company culture, leaders need to know how to have conversations that matter. Here are a few that are mission critical:

1. Feedback – Leaders need to know how to deliver and request feedback in a way that facilitates development, improves performance, and encourages transparency. Anonymous or non-existent feedback is counterproductive to positive cultural change. Feedback needs to be an ongoing conversation, one that continually invites us to see what we may not see and invites others to see what they may not see.

2. Coach – When leaders can effectively coach without giving advice, it allows the coachee to gain powerful self-generated insights that will guide them to growth and solutions. Knowing the right questions to ask helps others chart their own developmental path and gain trust in themselves.

3. Confront – Confrontation is an essential conversation skill for leaders. To strengthen relationships and increase transparency, they need to know how to approach issues and go shoulder-to-shoulder instead of head-to-head. When the confrontations taking place with an organization are successful, it leads to a culture of greater psychological safety where people across all levels feel comfortable bringing issues to the table.

4. Team – When leaders request input from their teams, they not only make better decisions, but they also tear down any detrimental communication barriers that may exist between teams and leadership. When perspectives are actively sought out, it creates the type of open environment necessary for employees to feel comfortable sharing what they really think and feel.

5. Delegate – When delegation is done skillfully, it gives employees an opportunity to drive their own growth and discuss with their leaders in what areas they would like to grow. This then allows leaders to be proactive where they’re needed most and delegate some of their own tasks to their team members who are ready for a new challenge. Stress is mitigated when new tasks are chosen, rather than dictated from the top.

Real, open, honest conversations are what will allow leaders and employees to strengthen relationships, build trust, and tear down silos. When leaders initiate these conversations and model the behavior they want to see, it allows others to feel safe to speak up and shift their own behavior.

Games and booze-filled breakrooms do not determine the state of a culture. Relationships do. And the conversation is the relationship.

LOOKING TO CREATE A HEALTHY, LOW-STRESS WORKPLACE?

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Tags: #Organizational Silos, #Turnover, #Work Relationships

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Navigating Identity Politics: Insight for Leaders

Fierce — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 07:00:00 +0000

There is a phenomenon taking place where groups and individuals are shrinking rather than expanding their points of view, unwilling to consider someone else’s perspective outside of their own social group—at work, in friendships, and within families. Political differences and polarization are threatening inclusion. And these rifts are happening in all methods of communication, from social media to intimate one-on-ones. People are walking on eggshells and don’t want to rock the boat, withholding their thoughts and feelings with coworkers and loved ones for fear of being negatively labeled or “outed” from the group.

The 2016 election spurred a degree of social upheaval and we are still seeing its effects in the workplace today. Although identity politics—positions based on the interest of social groups—have always been a potential point of discord, never in my career have I witnessed opposing viewpoints surfacing so directly and with such vehemence as they have during these last couple of years.

What we’re witnessing in the workplace is what’s been referred to by Faith Popcorn, author and CEO of Marketing Consulting firm BrainReserve, as “micro-clanning”—the forming of small groups with shared interests. While this isn’t a bad thing in itself, the problem arises when these groups become “exclusive” to others, resulting in silos, discrimination, and a flat unwillingness to listen openly to other perspectives. In the workplace, this makes essential, inclusive conversations nearly impossible. It corrodes culture, innovation, and team dynamics by enforcing an “us vs. them” rather than “we” mindset.

I recently watched a TedX video that illustrates these ideas perfectly. Friends Caitlin Quattromani and Lauran Arledge (a Certified Fierce facilitator) discuss how their friendship has had its struggles due to their opposing political views. They were able to recognize that their friendship was stronger than their perspectives by checking their assumptions, asking each other questions, and engaging in open conversation about each other’s perspectives. As a result, they came to understand that their views didn’t have to hinder the connection that brought them together in the first place.

At Fierce, we recognize that people are more similar than they are different—the differences we have exist on the surface, and beneath it, there’s so much similarity between what we share and desire for our relationships and our lives. While we may have different opinions about how to get there, more often than not, our vision or “end goal” is the same.

Included in our 2018 predictions, we anticipate that we may see an uptick in identity politics causing relational challenges at work this year. Here are some important takeaways that will help leaders navigate the social dynamics in the workplace and strengthen workplace culture:

1. Encourage curiosity. In our relationships and within our organizations, it’s important to instill a mindset of curiosity rather than defensiveness. Rather than sticking to tightly-held assumptions, ask questions and dig deeper to gain a better understanding:

How do you feel about this?
Why do you feel that way?
What matters to you most in this situation?
From your perspective, what is the ideal outcome?

While asking questions is important, the most critical component of curiosity is listening from a place of empathy. Set aside the desire to “win” the conversation. When another person is speaking, listen fully with the intent to understand. Understanding should be the goal of our conversations.

2. Interrogate reality. Leaders need to engage and “stay awake” to what is happening within their teams and organizations. There are always multiple competing realities, and leadership needs to seek to understand the various contexts and perspectives within their teams. We can’t afford to turn a blind eye. When relational issues arise due to opposing points of view, leadership will need to initiate conversation and address the issues directly with everyone involved.

3. Invite conflict. Although a place of conflict isn’t where we want to be in the end, sometimes we have to invite disagreement in order to strengthen relationships and come up with the best possible solutions. We need to be promoting and not restricting dialogue, and we achieve this by using dialogue to welcome perspectives. If there is disagreement, it means people are sharing their thoughts and feelings, which is exactly what we need in our organizations. However, we do want to prevent conflicts from escalating and resolve ruptures so that these conflicts can be advantageous rather than detrimental when they occur.

In order for issues to be resolved, they have to come to the surface first. While the process of resolving surfacing issues may not be easy or pleasant, it’s important that we recognize what’s taking place within our organizations and the role of identity politics so that we can address it head-on…one conversation at a time.

Tags: #Hostile Work Environment, #Organizational Silos, #Workplace Conflict

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Leading Business Problem #3: Lack of Transparency

Fierce — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 07:00:00 +0000

At Fierce, we often talk about the impact that withholding truths can have on an organization and the people within it. In our latest eBook, we call out lack of transparency as the third leading business problem businesses are facing today.

Our founder and CEO Susan Scott spoke at a TedXOverlake event. In her talk titled “The Case for Radical Transparency,” she addresses the common misconception that people can’t handle the truth. “My experience of most people,” she says, “is quite opposite of ‘we can’t handle the truth.’ There is something within us that responds to those who level with us. Who don’t suggest our compromises for us.”

The reason transparency is so important is that it goes hand in hand with trust. You can’t have one without the other. And without them, your workplace culture and relationships will suffer. Lies and secrets break trust, while honesty and transparency build trust. And when trust is created, it leads to a heightened sense of security and better employee performance.

According to Edelman Trust Barometer, 82% of employees don’t trust their boss to tell the truth. That’s huge. As you can imagine, this has a massive impact on culture. Where transparency is missing, so too is trust. When employees don’t trust their leaders or each other, it creates a feeling of unsafety, and as a result, they mirror leadership’s behavior by withholding what they really think and feel. Meanwhile, businesses lose out on a number of factors that drive results, including innovation, talent, and productivity to name a few.

Client Highlight

Prior to their work with Fierce, Wolverhampton Homes was an organization struggling with trust and transparency issues in their culture.

While staff showed considerable potential and enthusiasm, lack of trust was evident at all levels—between direct reports and managers, managers and senior leaders, senior leaders and individual contributors as well as among colleagues. This meant employees were not freely sharing information, open in collaboration, or candid during confrontation.

With the intention to transform their culture, they implemented a number of Fierce programs, including confrontation.

After the program rollout, they were able to make significant changes in both workplace culture and business. Staff engagement increased, and managers grew more confident in themselves and others. They also progressed from a 0-Star housing service with performance issues to an award-winning ALMO with the highest-possible ranking: 3 Stars.

“Fierce Conversations has made an amazing difference,” said Lesley Roberts, CEO of Wolverhampton Homes. “We now have a shared language and style of behavior which gets the best out of our terrific workforce. I am proud to say learning how to have Fierce Conversations has helped us attain 3 Stars with Excellent Prospects from the Audit Commission who recognized our strong leadership and massive cultural change.”

Learn more about their challenges, rollout, and results here.

In our eBook, we recommend three Fierce programs to increase transparency in your organization and create a culture of trust: Confrontation, Feedback, and Foundations.

Here’s a look at just some of what’s presented in these programs that will help grow a sense of trust in your organization.

Fierce Confrontation

1. Confront an issue without placing blame. One reason people often avoid confrontation is because we’re afraid of alienating the other person, blaming them, or damaging the relationship. The reality is that when confrontation is approached skillfully, it has the power to create the opposite—a relationship built on trust and honesty. Easily discern between the issue that needs to be resolved and the person you’re confronting so that you can both leave the conversation feeling connected and on a path towards a solution.

2. Keep the conversation on track when someone denies, defends, or deflects. Confrontation can stir up some uncomfortable feelings and fear-based reactions, often referred to as the amygdala hijack. Whether you’re being confronted or confronting someone else, gain the confrontation skills that will allow you to stay connected to the other person, despite the natural human tendency to defend ourselves when we’re confronted.

3. Enrich relationships with honesty and respect. When someone is honest with us and willing to overcome the discomfort of confronting the issue, we learn to trust that they’ll tell us the truth. When leaders and employees know how to confront skillfully, it influences not only the one-on-one relationship but the health of the company culture as well. Keep each other’s best interest at heart while also addressing and resolving the issue at hand.

Fierce Feedback

1. Avoid anonymous feedback. Imagine if the results came back from an anonymous survey and you learned that someone has an issue with you or your performance. Who is it, you might wonder, and why don’t they feel comfortable enough to tell me? If someone you work with has an issue with your performance, having the honest feedback conversation provides them, and you, an opportunity to build trust through transparency. Anonymous feedback leads to the opposite, causing people to hide their true feelings behind an “anonymous” label. Learn how to give honest feedback so that you can strengthen trust and come out from hiding.

2. Debunk the myth of positive vs. constructive feedback. There’s a myth that some feedback is constructive while other feedback is positive, and that’s just not true. All feedback should have the intention of being constructive and providing information that the other person can use to grow. If we know how to set intentions that are clear and go into a feedback conversation with the skills to address what’s working well and what isn’t, we naturally increase our own levels of transparency.

3. Request feedback. Whether you’re a leader or individual contributor, there’s gold to be discovered when you request feedback. This communicates to the other person, “I care what you think, and I want to know how I can improve” and invites them to be transparent with us. Learn how to request honest feedback in a way that helps establish two-way trust with the other person.

Fierce Foundations

1. Create a new foundation built on trust. Laying the groundwork for a common language goes a long way in improving communication and increasing transparency by removing the barriers that are preventing you from having the important conversations. Lay the groundwork for transformation across your organization by teaching what to talk about and how to talk about it in a way that removes old assumptions, sparks new insight, and builds trust through understanding.

2. Identify and address mokitas. Mokita is a Papua New Guinean term for something that everyone knows but no one talks about. Papua New Guineans measure the health of their tribes by how many mokitas they have. The fewer mokitas, the healthier the tribe. When mokitas are present, it’s also likely that truths are being withheld and problems that we’re conscious of are being left unaddressed. Learn how to address mokitas head-on and speak candidly about unresolved issues in a way that will strengthen the health of your relationships and your organization’s culture.

3. Identify your most valuable currency. When we keep our minds (and hearts) focused on our relationships with those around us, we can let go of the excuses and stories we tell ourselves about needing to withhold information, tell lies, or make our organizations “opaque.” When relationships are the central currency within your company, it has the power to completely transform the culture and establish a new one based first and foremost on trust.

The truth is that we can handle the truth. And the success of our cultures, our relationships, and our organizations depends on our willingness to share our own truth with the people in our lives.

It’s important for leaders to be transparent with their teams when it comes to finances, emotions, and intentions. Read more on the problem and its solutions in our eBook Fierce Insight into 6 Leading Problems Businesses Face Today—and How to Solve Them.

Tags: #Confused Priorities, #Organizational Silos, #Personal Agendas

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Strengths-Based Employee Development: The Business Results

Fierce — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 08:00:00 +0000

This week’s Fierce resource was originally published by Gallup and explains the business impact of a “strengths-based” employee development program.

It is a well-known fact that employees are craving more on-the-job career development, and for the most part, are not receiving it. Common excuses and bottlenecks include, gaining support from company managers and leaders, fear of losing top performers, and not enough time and resources. Top performers are more likely to leave if they are not getting the career development that they are seeking, and the cost of losing those employees is much higher than employee development programs.

“Gallup estimates that only about one in 10 people naturally possess high talent to manage, and organizations name the wrong person as manager about 80% of the time.”

Per Gallup, part of the disconnect is that the wrong people are put into management roles and thus are not creating the right environment in which employees feel engaged. A new trend in employee growth, termed strengths-based development, focuses on developing strengths versus improving weaknesses. The idea behind this is that people innately enjoy working on things they are good at and are more productive when they are doing those things. The results for companies that have implemented strength-based management practices are astounding.

“Almost seven in 10 employees (67%) who strongly agree that their manager focuses on their strengths or positive characteristics are engaged. When employees strongly disagree with this statement, the percentage of workers who are engaged in their work plummets to 2%.”

It is time for companies to shift the way they approach career development and understand that it is something they need to have to retain top talent.

Read the full article.

Tags: #Confused Priorities, #Organizational Silos, #Unproductive Employees

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Workplace Appreciation: How to Create Warm Fuzzies

Fierce — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 08:00:00 +0000

“The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.” -William James

Who can honestly say they don’t appreciate a warm fuzzy from time to time?

This past holiday season at the Fierce office, we participated in a gratitude exercise where each person was instructed to express their appreciation for their randomly-assigned gratitude partner. We were given the name of our partner beforehand and then met as an entire company to verbally deliver our gratitude. As you can imagine, the room was filled with an abundance of warm fuzzies that day—warm fuzzies that gave us a burst of energy and a feeling of unity as we transitioned into the new year.

Sometimes we operate in the workplace not knowing whether our efforts are noticed by others. When our efforts are noticed, the acknowledgment we receive has the power to increase our motivation by letting us know we’re respected and seen.

It also makes us want to stick around and work harder. A survey from Glassdoor reveals that 53% of employees admit they would stay longer at their company if they felt more appreciation from their boss, and 81% of employees report they’re motivated to work harder when their boss shows appreciation for their work.

Aside from stats and warm fuzzies, showing appreciation simply lets people know they’re valued. And in the workplace, nothing is more important than feeling like your presence matters. Here are a few easy ways you can actively create an environment of appreciation in your workplace.

When You See it, Say it

Appreciation shouldn’t just be reserved for special occasions. Instead, it should be handed out freely any time the opportunity arises. When Steven from the planning department goes above and beyond to produce a quality deliverable, or Margo the assistant quickly prepares a room for an important meeting, acknowledge their efforts as they occur, in the moment.

Bring a Gift

Although verbal communication is often the most effective way to express appreciation, gifts can be a fun way to accompany your message. If you want to show appreciation for a specific person, consider giving a gift card or taking them out for lunch. If you want to show appreciation company-wide, bring in a baked good or even something quirky like an office plant. If you decide on a gift, make sure to express either verbally or in writing that the gift is intended to be a show of appreciation to those on the receiving end.

Facilitate a Gratitude Exercise

Consider implementing an exercise like the one we carried out here at Fierce. Another idea—originally mentioned in a previous blog where Fierce’s President listed some helpful gratitude exercises—is to create a card for every participant in the exercise and pass each card around so that everyone can write their words of appreciation on each person’s card, and then meet with everyone later to read the cards aloud.

Leave a Personalized Thank You Note

Communicating face to face is often the most impactful way to strengthen relationships, but sometimes leaving a note can be an equal alternative, especially for those of us who express ourselves most accurately through writing. Writing a note also has the added benefit of longevity—a meaningful thank you note can be read again and again, creating reinforcement of your appreciation for years to come.

Have a Conversation

Sometimes the actions or behaviors of others move us deeply, and a quick “thank you” just doesn’t suffice. If that’s the case, set up a one-on-one meeting with the person or people you want to thank. Be specific in these conversations, and if you’re feeling courageous, be vulnerable. Explain how their words, behaviors or actions had a positive emotional impact on you. For example, if Cynthia from accounting took on a last-minute make-or-break project and delivered it with a can-do attitude, you might start out by mentioning the behavior that moved you, and the emotion you felt as a result of her efforts (relieved, excited, inspired, etc.).

Don’t let the opportunity pass you by to spread warmth and show gratitude, both for yourself and those around you.

What’s your favorite way to show appreciation?

Tags: #Demoralization, #Organizational Silos, #Uninspired

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