Thoughts on 'The World's Broken Workplace'

Recently I was asked by a good friend and colleague if I remembered the research that was done by Jim Clifton of Gallup in June of 2017 and whether I considered the workplace had changed and the results might now be rather better. 

For those of you who have attended our personal leadership programmes and now doing all they can to live and breathe the principles that we teach may be able to answer that question better than I.  

However, let me comment on just one thing that I still find really scary... it is the fact that such a high percentage of people don’t like their managers... I would question if actually the basis for this is that they actually don’t know their managers. 

 Many of our most senior clients, CEO’s of very large corporations who have worked with us in many different companies, say that they found the very first exercise where you get to know each person at a human level - who each individual is and not just what they do so powerful. 

They get to know their team at a far deeper level and, even when they may have worked with some of these people for years when in a different role, they now begin to understand them in a different way, they begin to recognise them at a values level. This enables  them to work with them in a far more genuine and effective way plus it enables them to develop more of their potential.

I feel quite cynical about how managers are often promoted.  They do a good job as a salesman/engineer/marketeer and one day they are promoted to manager.  Typically they go home on a Friday as this salesman/engineer/marketeer and come back on the Monday as a manager and it is thought there will have been some sort of osmosis over the weekend as to how to demonstrate  new skills and behaviours! Sometimes years downstream they get sent on a management training programme! 

 When it happens in this way I believe that they now feel that they are meant to know more, make more important decisions, tell people what to do, take more responsibility and probably now not share their fears and worries or get too close to people who report to them.

There is so much that I could take from this research and why I am so passionate about leadership. There is nothing more important to changing an organisation culture than bringing in leadership at every level and there seems to be a belief that shifting culture is hard and takes a very long time.  Our experience over the last 25 years is that this is just not the case. 

If the person at the top truly believes in leadership then the culture can be changed fast, effectively and sustainably.

So ........ what to do? 

One strategy is that once you have your team in place have a session where you ‘introduce’ yourselves. 

Have some questions that each person is asked to answer along the lines of:-

Tell us all a bit about yourselves, where you live, your hobbies, your family etc.

What are 3 things you feel really great about in your life?

What are some of the things that you feel challenged by just now - work or home?

For this team to be a complete joy to work with what are the behaviours that you would like others to demonstrate?

For this team to be a complete joy to work with these are the behaviours that I choose to commit to demonstrate

There is one golden rule if you choose to do something like this and it is GOLDEN!  As the most senior person you go first. This is really key as, if you would like each individual to have the courage to be open with you then you need to demonstrate that you are prepared to do this first, especially if they currently don’t know you well, only your ‘work face’!

Now something I ask of you - for those of you who have read this research, have experienced our signature 3 day leadership programme, or even just watched my thoughts while sitting at my kitchen table, I would love to know what you think about what I’ve just shared.

Please share with your colleagues and let’s start a conversation to help our teams become more engaged.

Let's talk! Click here to send Penny your question or comment 

Read 'The World's Broken Workplace' here.