Transformation.
-
The Executive Facilitation Series: The Secret to Success
The team at Emerson Human Capital have constructed and facilitated thousands of executive sessions. Here’s how we do executive facilitation differently.Executive Facilitation
Part 5: Use the Emerson difference as inspiration for your sessions.
The team at Emerson Human Capital have constructed and facilitated thousands of executive sessions. In this time we think we’ve learned a thing or two. Here’s how we do executive facilitation differently.
We say the thing.
Before the session, we uncover big issues and potential effects of the decisions coming out of the session. The first step is a conversation with the sponsor or lead executive. We ask things like, “If this meeting goes sideways, why might that happen? Personalities? Politics? Sensitive initiatives? What will the consequences be? This gets us ready to address any elephants that might wander into the room.
Before the session, we uncover big issues and potential effects of the decisions coming out of the session.
Then, as we conduct the session, we set up discussions and activities to remove obstacles and get the tough decisions made. We remind participants that they are the leaders of the organization, and if it were easy, anyone could do it. They won’t be successful unless they lean in and get through the hard stuff.
We make them better decision-makers.
Whenever possible, we combine team effectiveness and business strategy. While execs are together, why not get better at moving the ball forward? Synergy is the word. Sometimes, what comes between a leadership team and its business goals isn’t about facts and figures, it’s about emotional attachment to ideas, or bad team dynamics.
We design on the fly.
If you keep your eye on the prize, and your current agenda isn’t moving it closer, what do you do? You recalibrate and shift, live.
Nothing is more important than getting the group to its outcomes
As facilitators, we take in the vibe, synthesize what we’re getting from the group, and reassess the trajectory of the session Many times, we have redesigned an agenda or activities on a lunch break or after day one of a two-day session. Nothing is more important than getting the group to its outcomes – certainly not our precious agenda and pretty slides. We’re happy to revise them or ditch them and go to the whiteboard to get the right work done.
We don’t deliver a lecture.
A facilitator is not a presenter. He or she facilitates the group’s work. Our job is to manage the process, offer concepts and information, set up scenarios, facilitate discussion and work, get consensus on decisions, and prepare the team for the next steps.
We facilitate in the context of change.
Every executive working session is intended to make a difference, so we view it through the lens of change. We don’t see the working session as an event, but as part of a change process. So, as we plan the session, we plot a course by asking key questions: What Is the ultimate business result we need? What has to happen before, during, and after the session to make sure we get to that goal? And how do we make those results sustainable? Once we answer those questions, we conduct the session. We show participants the whole journey. We make sure we get the outcomes we intend out of the session. Then we define next steps, responsibilities, milestones, and metrics.
We bring our change experience into the room.
We’re not facilitators who happen to know something about organizational change. We’re change practitioners with decades of experience. That means we bring in real-life examples that illuminate the problem executives are trying to solve. We can also identify pitfalls, in the room, and help the group avoid them. And, of course, we set the group up to make real change from the outcomes of the session.
We’re not facilitators who happen to know something about organizational change. We’re change practitioners with decades of experience.
We use behavioral science to help the session count.
We don’t “deck and dash.” Coming out of the session, we are ready to help executives implement their decisions. We do that with the help of science-based methodology. For example, we create motivation profiles that help each group of stakeholders adopt the change. We use three levers that make change stick: making the change feel familiar, controlled, and successful. And we use the power of the organization’s “early adopters” to create momentum toward the goal.
Put another way, we don’t want to leave our clients with a really expensive three-ring binder. We leave them with real, sustainable change that has business impact. You can use these ideas to improve your outcomes too.
ICYMI: Executive Facilitation Series Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 & Part 6
-
Upskilling for Organizational Performance
In times of economic uncertainty, some organizations decide to freeze hiring. But the work doesn’t stop. Upskill and invest in your people. Here's where to start.Keep employees sharp during tough times.
In times of economic uncertainty, some organizations decide to freeze hiring. This is a great way to save money for better days.
But the work doesn’t stop. Your business needs to keep running smoothly and hitting its targets. Performance issues might go unaddressed and build up. Without the option to hire new perspectives and skill sets, the future can feel daunting.
You might be thinking, “Surely, there’s another way,” and you’re right. Upskill and invest in your people. But how do you start?
Competency Model
First, figure out what “good” looks like for your people and your organization. What knowledge, skills, and attitudes does each role need to succeed? This is the foundation for competency modeling. It’s the destination on your upskilling roadmap.
You have a competency model? Great, here are some questions for you:
- When was the last time you looked at it?
- Is it clearly tied to your organization’s go-to-market strategy?
- Is it role- and level-specific?
- Do you have skills mapped to your competencies?
- Have you defined proficiency levels for each of those skills?
- Have you identified observable, measurable behavior statements that reflect the relevant proficiency level?
If you answered yes to all these questions, congratulations! You have a comprehensive competency model, you’re ready to move to the next step.
First, figure out what “good” looks like for your people and your organization.
Learning Blueprint
With your end goal in mind, you can now start plotting a course: mapping learning moments to your competency model.
Start with what people need to know and do to exhibit proficiency in a skill. And keep in mind, they don’t need to know and do everything, all at once – that’s an easy way to overwhelm your learners. If you teach everything, it’s too hard to distinguish what is most critical that your learners must get right from what is mundane.
How do we make that distinction? Priorities, with an eye on business impact:
- Common: What do your learners do every day? They have to get that right.
- Critical: What must your learners do right to be successful right now?
- Catastrophic: What must your learners do to prevent disaster? There are hundreds of buttons in a cockpit, only two will cause a crash. Teach those two buttons early and often.
Cross-reference these impactful topics with how complex the subject is to learn. Your top-priority topics are where high impact and complexity intersect. Put the most effort there.
These prioritized topics become the foundation for your learning journey. Meeting them requires a curriculum full of learning moments, beyond just formal training.
Start with what people need to know and do to exhibit proficiency in a skill.
Learning Program
A comprehensive, continuous learning model demands a holistic collection of learning moments beyond formal training. Growth toward competence doesn’t happen just by sending people to training sessions, your learners need more. The reasoning here is that training is not the same as learning. Learning involves doing, reflecting, and then doing again; training is simply the preparation for the doing.
With this in mind, your program should embrace these elements:
- Education: Traditional training, whether it’s in the classroom, virtual instructor-led sessions, eLearning, micro video, etc.
- Experience: Application and practice, which might be in a simulation, in a controlled real-world activity, or on the job.
- Exposure: Social learning, whether as part of a cohort of peers learning from each other, working with a coach or mentor who provides context and perspective, or attending fireside chats or expert panels to broaden horizons and learn new applications.
- Environment: Tools, templates, and infrastructure to facilitate learning over time and support at time of need, within the flow of real work.
Interlace these four components into a deliberate sequence to form learning journeys for each role.
Growth toward competence doesn’t happen just by sending people to training sessions, your learners need more.
The Way Forward
If you got this far, then you have a route and now can take inventory:
- What are the strongest existing learning materials that you can slot into your journeys immediately?
- What’s pretty good, and just needs some modification?
- What do you have to build from scratch or curate from another source?
- What do you have that no longer serves the organization or your learners?
With these defined, you’re ready to hit the road and build your upskilling curriculum. But don’t stop at building; you also need to roll out the program. You can have the greatest learning program in the world, but if your learners don’t know about it, don’t care about it, or can’t easily access it, none of this effort will matter.
Wherever you’re at in your journey, know that you’re doing a good thing for your organization — building a learning culture and empowering your people. Know that there will be a return on this investment. (More on this to come!)
-
The Executive Facilitation Series: Being a Great Facilitator
Expert executive facilitation makes a group more powerful and productive. As a facilitator, elevate meetings by helping executives realize their potential.Executive Facilitation
Part 2: Are great facilitators born or made?
While there are no doubt some innate advantages, we lean toward the latter. Here are some tips to help you create compelling and productive sessions for your executive participants.
Take their point of view.
Execs are thinking about the needle they need to move. Do you know what’s important to the people in the room? Can you describe what they need out of the session, and what they want to do with it, going forward?
Find out. That’s your North Star. A good facilitator maintains focus on the executives’ ultimate goal and how the outcomes of the session will serve that goal.
Meet them at their level.
A good executive facilitator has a certain gravitas. A mismatch between the facilitator and participants undermines the process. Own the room so participants feel confident following you through the process.
How? That depends on your role.
- Are you an external facilitator? A contractor or a member of another function within the organization? You might have a little work to do, especially if participants don’t know you well. Establish credibility, both before and during the session. Remind participants of your CV, illustrate points with stories from your experience. and make sure your content is unimpeachably valid to an executive audience. If they feel you’re one of them, in some sense, things will run more smoothly.
- Are you a member of the executive group you’re facilitating? Facilitating a group of your peers has its positives and negatives. The downside is that your own team might resist your efforts to impose process during the session. If you expect pushback, preview the rules before the meeting and then get verbal consensus as you start. On the “pro” side, you have built-in credibility and you’ll have an easier time maintaining focus on what’s important.
Deliver value.
Your role is to help the group produce something better than they could have on their own.
Here are the basics to help you get started.
- Define the session. What is the goal? What does success for the day look like? Which topics will be discussed and what topics won’t be discussed?
- Give people space. Remember, you’re not the presenter; you’re the facilitator. Even if you know a lot about the topic of the session, resist the urge to talk a lot. Also, recognize that some people need more space than others. Introverts need time to process before they chime in. You might need to call on them to get their input. And consider individual styles ahead of the session, so you can plan accordingly.
- Ask good questions. What is a “good” question? It challenges assumptions, plays devil’s advocate, draws out more information, gets at the “why”, or compares to other ideas for the purpose of prioritizing. Also, ask “Why now?” when discussing a strategic initiative; it will spark meaningful discussion.
- Listen. Often, it’s the emotion carried in the words that is most important to pick up on. That’s the area to explore. Great facilitators lead the group into discussion topics they have been avoiding—whether it’s the proverbial elephant in the room or just a touchy subject. Another effective tool is Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats Technique – Exploring your mind. It’s a great way to avoid groupthink and pressure-test the emerging conclusion. It also offers a boost to groups who are disengaged or filled with non-confrontational.
Often, it’s the emotion carried in the words that is most important to pick up on.
- Catch the valuable points. This is one of your most critical tasks. As a good facilitator, you are deeply knowledgeable on the subject and goals of the session. Use that filter to grab the key ideas as they float by in the flow of conversation. Maybe you can tag team: assign a scribe to capture these points on the whiteboard or pad.
- Connect some dots. It’s also up to you to make sense of what the group is offering up. Point out links between one participant’s comment and another’s. Categorize ideas against the session’s goals. Identify recurring themes, issues, or opportunities. As the facilitator, you need to be able to see the forest for the trees.
- Synthesize information. The purpose of an executive working session is to generate something new: a concept, model, strategy, plan, or action. What is it? Help the group see what’s emerging. What are we saying? What does that session outcome look like?
- Invite the group to shape the result. Show them what they came up with. Ask, “Is it right? How should we change it?” Ask the group both what they think and how they feel about it. “Give me one word to describe how you feel about this decision we’ve reached.” can uncover suppressed concerns about a solution. People overthink their answers to “what do you think?” questions whereas “How do you feel?” is typically answered more simply, directly and from the gut.
As the facilitator, you need to be able to see the forest for the trees.
- Check it against the session’s goals. Rewind to the beginning of the session. “What was the goal? What did we expect to accomplish today? Did we get there?”
- Draw out next steps. Help the group decide what should happen after the session, with an eye on the ultimate outcomes for the organization. Then determine responsibilities and timing. Finally, get verbal commitment to your plan.
- Define the message plan. Ask, “What decisions did we make that should be shared with the rest of the organization? What should not be shared outside of the group? What are the messages and who will deliver them?” Add those messaging items to the next steps plan.
Executive facilitation is about making the group more powerful and productive. It’s about guiding them toward meaningful outcomes that align with the organization’s goals. With thoughtful facilitation, you can elevate these meetings and help executives realize their potential as a strategic team.
ICYMI: Executive Facilitation Series Part 1, Part 3, Part 4 & Part 5
-
How to Be an Active Listener
How do we become good listeners? Active listening is a behavior we can improve and, like all behaviors, it requires both “being” and “doing.” Learn more.Active listening is a behavior we can improve.
You’re telling a colleague about something that happened yesterday. You finally drop the most surprising part of the story, and you’re met with a blank look and “uh-huh.” In that instant, you know they haven’t been listening. Their eyes shift from a point across the room back to your face and they realize they’ve been caught.
It doesn’t feel good, does it? It might feel even worse for your colleague, who realizes they have been outed as insincere, at best.
Next time, you might avoid confiding in that person. They might feel uncomfortable around you. It might not be a big deal, but it certainly didn’t make your relationship stronger.
Humans have a fundamental need to be seen and heard.
Listening is respect; it lays the foundation for trust-based relationships and shared understanding, without which teams can’t succeed.
So how do we become good listeners? Active listening is a behavior we can improve and, like all behaviors, it requires both “being” and “doing.” Think of your being state as your attitude and intention. The doing state is observable behavior.
How to Be
- Be neutral. This is a variation on mindfulness, or non-judgmental awareness. Being human is messy; the person who is speaking has emotions and thoughts that might not seem logical or sensible to you. And they don’t have to! Don’t feel like you must respond right away. Suspend your judgment. First, just listen and try to understand.
- Be curious. Imagine the two of you are carrying backpacks into the conversation. The backpacks are full of experiences and habitual emotional responses built up over a lifetime. To listen well, take off your backpack. Forget yourself for a little while and experience what the other person is saying from their point of view.
- Be regulated. Sometimes we hear things that bring up our own discomfort. Try to regulate your physiology so you don’t react to your own internal responses. That will help you stay present. In other words, “practice the pause.”
What to Do
- Tune in. Eliminate distractions. If you’re face-to-face, start by turning off your devices. If you’re connecting remotely, turn on your camera and minimize other windows. Give yourself and the other person the gift of space they can fill with their message.
- Take in what is happening in front of you. As you listen, what are you seeing and perceiving? What kind of energy or mood state is this person demonstrating? What’s their rate of speech? How is their breathing? What are their gestures and eyes doing? Once you do that, you can confirm that you are beginning to understand. For example:
- Check in. Share something like, “I noticed you got quiet when you talked about your performance review” or, “When you talked about that project, you seemed excited.”
- Use their words. If someone says they’re frustrated, you can simply say, “Frustrated.” If someone says they enjoy project management, you can say, “You enjoy project management.”
- Sometimes people just want to vent. They’re not looking for a solution, but rather an open and safe space to hear themselves think. Before inserting your ideas or opinion, ask, “Do you want to be heard, or do you want me to offer feedback?” Then make good on their answer. And if you’re at a loss, ask, “How can I help?”
The more you practice, the stronger your active listening muscle will get. As you turn active listening into a daily habit, you’ll promote an inclusive and productive culture and more easily sustain high-performing relationships at work and in life.
-
The Executive Facilitation Series: How to Prepare
Are you planning an executive facilitation? First, answer these questions.Executive Facilitation
Part 1: Preparation
Executive facilitation is the process of engaging a group of leaders, in real time, to reach the best outcome. Put another way, it helps the right minds create something better than they could individually. The goal of executive facilitation is actionable synergy.
Are you planning executive facilitation? First, answer these questions.
Why are we spending time on this?
Executives are drowning in meetings. Pre-empt “This could have been an email” by testing your plan with a knowledgeable partner, like the sponsor of the effort or the senior executive involved.
Begin with the end in mind. What will you accomplish during the meeting? Are the outcomes input and ideas or decisions and plans? Will you end with a binding consensus on the way forward?
How are you going to get those outcomes? Do you need all that time? Do you need each of the people you’re inviting? Test the outcomes, materials, and facilitation approach ahead of time with the sponsor of the effort.
Your goal: the value of everything you do during the session will be crystal clear to the execs in the room.
Who are the players and what do they want?
Know your participants. Know the basics: their names, roles, titles, functions, and time with the company.
Then dig a little deeper. Understand their styles and motivations. Are they likely to speak up or not? Will they happily collaborate and hear others out? Do they have any particular motivations or affiliations that will affect the group’s work?
Ask the sponsor: If this meeting goes sideways, how will that happen? What are the potential road bumps? How should we get ahead of them?
All that intel will help you manage the group toward the outcomes they need. You might need to:
- Draw some participants out to make sure their ideas are in the mix.
- Help those with a minority opinion “hold space” during the discussion.
- Form breakout groups or pick discussion leaders to avoid trouble.
- Present or “plant” information to balance out someone with an agenda or maintain momentum.
What’s the scoop?
It’s important to ground yourself with information, especially if you’re an “outside” facilitator. Sometimes participants make assumptions that aren’t right. This can set the whole group in the wrong direction.
Another problem: you might not have all the information represented in the room. For example, maybe no one in the room represents “the work.” Often, non-executives have the best understanding of the implications of the decisions made in the room. But they’re not there. You, the facilitator, might have to bring that information to the session.
Do a little research.
Talk to the sponsor or trusted experts to make sure the assumptions and data underpinning your outcomes are sound. In other words, make sure the group is having the right conversation.
How should participants prepare?
Participants need the why, when, where, who, and what.
- WHY — Give participants the vision: the outcomes of the session and what those outcomes will do for them and for the organization.
- WHEN and WHERE — Set clear expectations on time and place. Will you start on time? Will there be a buffer, like breakfast or lunch, before you start? Will you offer breaks? When should they expect to finish? Is it ok to join virtually or not?
- WHO — Let everyone know who else will come and what their work role is or whom they’re representing.
- WHAT — Give them a sense of how the day will go. Are there any big topics, activities, or ground rules? What decisions will be made? There’s a big difference between “We will discuss…” and “We will decide…” Let them know the stakes.
And tell them what to prepare or bring to the session. For example, do you need some participants to be ready to report on their areas of expertise? What form should it take? (Slides? Handouts? Written data on a whiteboard?) And make sure the sponsor or senior exec is ready to set up the purpose and expected outcomes of the session; if you’re an external facilitator, you should not do that.
Well begun is half done. Isn’t that what they say? It’s never more true than in executive facilitation. Set yourself up for success by doing the right prep work
ICYMI: Executive Facilitation Series Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 & Part 5
-
Five Questions to Ask When Implementing ERP
Enterprise resource planning can be an invasive and expensive undertaking. If you get these five things right, you’re on your way to a return on your investment.A global retailer once hired me to help install PeopleSoft—it was their 3rd attempt. Their pain is not uncommon. Enterprise resource planning, or ERP, is a vital management tool, but its implementation can often be a nightmare.
For example, the average cost of an ERP implementation is $4.5 million or 6% of revenue. The average time to implement is 1-3 years. (!) With these painful stats in mind, it makes sense the Wall Street Journal once described SAP implementation as a “corporate root canal.”
Here are five questions you need to ask and answer before implementing an ERP.
- Who is on the team? The most common mistake is to assign responsibility to IT and whichever department will use the system the most. Those two silos typically don’t appreciate the implications of their decisions on the groups who will input, maintain or receive outputs from the system. This can scuttle your ERP. Instead, get a cross-section of expertise on your team. Every group interacting with the system should be there.
Your ERP team should be made of your best employees—their decisions will impact how this system (and your business) will run for years.
- What one behavior drives the business case? If your team is serious about the business case, they must articulate what they need people to do in clear, tactical terms. Then focus, focus, focus; focus relentlessly on that. An IT firm spent millions on enterprise resource planning to help them make money on license renewals. The one activity they needed most from their sales team was to call clients the month before their contracts expired. Because they didn’t make that specific request, sales people didn’t do it consistently. The firm could not hit the business case; it was wholly based on “license renewals”—a lovely concept that no one acted upon.
- How are we managing first impressions of the system? Shteingart, Neiman & Lowenstein’s 2013 research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, shows that “first experience has a disproportionately large effect on subsequent actions,” something they labeled “outcome primacy.” In other words, first impressions matter. So the first employees who touch the system—starting with requirements definition—had better be wowed. Only someone in marketing should be giving the project a name. And if user acceptance testing sucks, stop implementation. As Kahneman and Tversky found, we feel the pain of loss more acutely than the pleasure of gain. We compulsively avoid anything that smacks of failure. Manage the employee experience as rigorously as you manage the project itself.
- Who will be our first users? In the 1960s, Everett Rogers published a book called the Diffusion of Innovations, which analyzed why certain ideas and products capture the public’s imagination. He mapped those who adopt the idea against a bell curve, showing that 3.5% of the target group are eager early adopters, and 13.5% are positively predisposed to change. You can use this to create momentum. If you want your ERP to look like a winner, find the early adopters. Enlist the 3.5% for system test, and the 13.5% for UAT. Pilot with these employees intentionally. They’ll make the system seem safe and successful to everyone else.
- How are we ensuring the system is employee-centric? Employees don’t think about the system. They think about their jobs. Training must be about how to use the system in the context of their jobs. What will they do, day to day? Where will new tasks and handoffs take place? Where are the data and tools they relied upon—which will stay and which will be replaced?
Generic ERP training is a waste of time and money. Train people to do their jobs, not use a system.
Enterprise resource planning is one of the most invasive and expensive undertakings your company will ever face – even if it’s “cloud-based” and “intuitive.” If you get these five things right, you’re ahead of the game and on your way to a return on your investment.
- Who is on the team? The most common mistake is to assign responsibility to IT and whichever department will use the system the most. Those two silos typically don’t appreciate the implications of their decisions on the groups who will input, maintain or receive outputs from the system. This can scuttle your ERP. Instead, get a cross-section of expertise on your team. Every group interacting with the system should be there.
-
Playing To Your Strengths
You may say, “I know what my strengths are.” Good. But recognizing your strengths is only the beginning. Use science-based strength assessments to grow in your job, career or even in your relationships.What can personality and strength assessments do for your organization?
Have you ever taken one of those tests that promises to reveal something about you? Why are they so irresistible? Maybe it’s because they’re the flipside of the academic and professional tests we’ve been subjected to all our lives. Instead of pointing out your mistakes, they reveal your virtues.
Don Clifton, an American psychologist, once asked himself, “Instead of asking what’s wrong with you, what would happen if we studied what was right with you?” And a powerful assessment was born.
Many organizations use assessments to help their employees understand the strengths they bring to their team and the company as a whole. Here are a few:
- The Birkman Method
- Disc Assessment
- The Enneagram
- Hexaco Personality Inventory
- The Holtzman Inkblot Technique
- Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- Process Communication Model
- The Revised Neo Personality Inventory (Neo Pi-R)
- The Winslow Personality Profile.
Working with corporate clients, I have used and taken several of these assessments, including the one sparked by Don Clifton’s epiphany: CliftonStrengths. Clifton founded Selection Research, Inc. which later acquired Gallup, where he became the chairman.
He observed, “Whenever you give people choices, you’ll hear some people say, ‘I want to do that’ and others might say, ‘Oh, I could never do that.’” The idea behind his strengths model is that we are all different and that’s a good thing.
CliftonStrengths is made up of 34 themes placed in four domains. What they’re really measuring is your talents. These talents make up your natural self. The talents become strengths when you invest some time in them.
You may say, “I know what my strengths are.” Good. But it’s also good to have some science behind that.
Gallup has studied human nature and behavior for more than 80 years. They’ve learned the key to personal development is to fully understand how to apply your greatest strengths in your everyday life. Gallup researchers have discovered that:
- People who focus on using their strengths are three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life.
- People who focus on using their strengths are six times as likely to be more engaged in their jobs. [Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder 2.0. New York: Gallup Press.]
People operating in their wheelhouse are happier, more engaged, and more productive. When they know their strengths and talents, and they’re allowed to use them, people:
- Look forward to going to work.
- Have more positive than negative interactions with coworkers, family, and friends.
- Have better interactions with customers.
- Share more positive feedback on their company. (e.g., They tell their friends they work for a great company.)
- Achieve more every day.
- And have more positive, creative, and innovative moments.
Beyond the world of work, there are compelling reasons for us to understand, appreciate, and intentionally use our strengths. Gallup’s research shows that a strengths-based approach improves a person’s confidence, direction, hope, and kindness toward others.
It’s important to recognize that CliftonStrengths, like some of the other assessments, is a development tool. Understanding your strengths is only the beginning. Use your findings to determine how to use your strengths to grow – in your job, career or even in your relationships.
Understanding strengths makes for better teams.
If you can, construct a team with complementary strengths. But, regardless of team composition, knowing each member’s strengths can help. For example, if your project needs brainstorming and innovation, pull in teammates who score high on “ideation.” If your project requires a lot of data review and interpretation, bring in those who are more “analytical.” Clifton suggested that individuals don’t have to be well-rounded, but teams do. So put your energy into creating a well-rounded TEAM.
Also, consider including the entire organization in a strengths assessment. This is not just a tool for the executive team. Arguably, ALL employees need to know who they are; teammates and leaders need to know how each employee can best contribute.
One of the most powerful outcomes of a strengths assessment is engagement.
Knowing and working to strengths makes people feel more valued and connected to the group. Engagement is a proxy to productivity. It’s a proxy for less absenteeism. It’s a proxy for satisfaction. As a result, you, your team, and your company are more aligned and powerful.
Have you used CliftonStrengths or any of the other assessments? What have you learned as a result? Have they helped you or your organization? If so, how? Email us at change@emersonhc.com to share your story.
-
Don’t Blow Your Onboarding
Bad onboarding is like being invited to a party where you don’t know anyone. Don’t blow it – be a good host and nail onboarding for your new hires. Here's how.Great onboarding, like a great party, gets one critical element right.
Remember the last boring, uncomfortable party you attended? Maybe you were invited to a party at which you didn’t really know anyone. You may have left thinking “No one seemed interested in learning about me. I spent the whole evening listening to people I don’t know talk to each other about themselves. And the host didn’t bother to introduce me to anyone.”
In many ways, onboarding is like being invited to a party where you don’t know anyone. Why does this matter? Because first impressions have an outsized impact on a person’s feelings and judgments. Humans are hard-wired to make quick judgments for evolutionary survival reasons and have a very difficult time moving off of those initial assessments, despite plenty of future evidence to the contrary. So if you blow the onboarding, it’s an uphill climb from there.
Arguably the most important outcome of a great onboarding experience is a sense of belonging.
The innate motivation to belong is deeply ingrained in our human biology. As noted by The Mayo Clinic, the sense of belonging is fundamental to the way humankind organizes itself.
At work, the impact of a sense of belonging for employees is significant. According to the Harvard Business Review, high belonging was linked to a whopping 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days.
So, now that we know how important onboarding and belonging are to business, let’s get back to the party.
If you don’t know anyone at the party, you’re left to navigate on your own, and no one seems particularly interested in you, you might wonder whether you should have showed up at all. Conversely, if someone introduces you to people, you share something about yourself, discover commonalities with those people, you might feel accepted.
Acceptance is essential to belonging. The difference between feeling connected to others and feeling a sense of belonging with others is acceptance. To feel accepted, you have to share your authentic self. Sharing means opening up, and that kind of vulnerability can be a bit tricky to foster in a work environment.
But there’s a solution: build it into the process. Most onboarding is focused on the organization’s “authentic self.” There’s a one-way flow of information to the new employee about company’s identity, including history, values, and norms. But what if we made onboarding a two-way street? Including the individual’s identity creates an exchange of information — an opportunity for acceptance and a growing sense of belonging.
Here are 3 ways to make your onboarding better by promoting a sense of belonging:
- Proactively introduce the new employee to fellow employees across the organization. The sooner you can eliminate the “stranger” awkwardness – because they don’t know people’s names and roles — the sooner they will feel that sense of belonging. Find creative ways to help new employees to remember names and faces. Of course, there’s an app for that! Check out Pingboard’s Who’s Who game.
- Self-expression. Design the onboarding to encourage the new employee to express their authentic selves. Ask them questions, inviting them to share. For example, are you presenting company history, core values, and vision? Ask them about their history, core values, and vision for their future. Invite the new employee to share their strengths and how they see themselves succeeding in their new role. And check in with them regularly to ask how they are feeling. Joining a new company can be an emotional rollercoaster; having someone acknowledge this and want to know how you are doing sends a very strong signal of acceptance.
- Find a way to explore the new employee’s personal background, hobbies, and passions. Then connect them to fellow employees who share similar interests. Create a “buddy” system that pairs a new employee with a veteran that has a few things in common. And make sure your buddy system has real impact: build frequent interactions between the buddies into the process over the first 90 days.
Effective onboarding, like the best parties, creates a sense of belonging. Happy hosting!
For more thoughts on onboarding, check out 4 Secret Thoughts of New Hires – Emerson Human Capital (emersonhc.com)
-
Three Factors to Consider in Cross-Cultural Change Projects
Culture matters when designing a change approach that impacts a global group. Start with these three factors.Change is hard for all of us, no matter where we sit in the world. However, when a change project spans multiple geographies and cultures, we must adapt our approach. Too often, global organizations disregard cultural nuances and fail to understand that the perception of change, organizational or otherwise, is not consistent across the world. They gloss over cultural norms and value systems and the initiative suffers.
Here are a few cultural factors that might impact your change projects and some recommendations on adjusting your approach.
Sharing Authority
Cultures share power differently. Some place all authority and decision-making at the top of the organization, while others distribute the power more evenly.
For example, I was working with an executive of a state-owned enterprise in China. They were launching a new ERP system to almost a million employees. We were discussing the best project management and governance approach. The executive said, “I don’t need any of that. I just tell people what to do and they do it.”
As it turns out, that wasn’t just the view of the executive, it was the view of the entire organization. Nothing got done unless and until he said it got done. This didn’t mean that workers had no point of view or that they didn’t want to be consulted. It only meant that no action would be taken unless it came from the top.
Think about how this might impact the way we engage employees during a change project. In this instance, top-down is everything, so we might consider videos or other communications featuring executives. Regional alignment is still needed, but it’s less important than in cultures where authority is distributed more evenly.
Aversion to Risk
We all are risk-averse. After all, who likes uncertainty? It’s really the trade-off between risk and reward that matters.
Some cultures are more entrepreneurial by nature and are more willing to take risks if they believe the benefits will follow. That same spirit permeates the workplace; employees are more willing to change if they buy into the benefits. Messaging benefits is always important, but more so within risk-tolerant cultures.
In cultures where employees are less willing to give up certainty for future benefits, you might take a different tack. Here it’s important to create a new certainty – to make the point that the current state is not sustainable and that future stability relies on the change. Additionally, these cultures want to see more structure around the change. It must be highly engineered and deliver proof of a new order.
Collective Mindset
A few years back I was working on a project in the Philippines with a local businesswoman. She had a very successful consulting company and wanted help with her sales processes. After digging in, I was surprised to find out how many of her engagements were collaborations with her direct competitors. Not partnerships, but true collaborations where resources were traded back and forth and co-managed for the benefit of the client. Neither firm took advantage of the other, nor did they undermine the other’s position in the engagement. It was amazing to watch.
Cultures with a collective mindset value the contributions of the group over the individual. The opposite is true of individualistic cultures; in these cultures, a team-based recognition and reward structure might actually be demotivating and create conflict and distrust. It is critical to understand the collective vs. individualist mindset during the change process, particularly when we think about alignment and messaging.
In the United States, we have a more individualist approach and build our change interactions accordingly. We don’t tend to spend a lot of time and effort positioning the change’s value to the firm and to society in general. It’s about the WIIFM, and making sure individuals view the change as a positive step for themselves and their careers. In Sweden, however, this approach might feel unsettling or even shallow.
It’s important to understand what motivates people to change and those motivations might be completely different in a multi-culture change initiative.
Our culture impacts the way we view change and consequently how we should approach change management in multi-cultural implementations. In the end, change management is about changing behaviors. If we believe that behavior follows thought, then we first need to understand how cultural norms and values influence the way the organization thinks. In multi-cultural change initiatives, our interactions should motivate and support each culture according to its own set of values.
-
Three Thoughts on a Merger
Our thoughts on how to have a successful merger.Morgan Stanley and E*Trade. Bristol-Myers Squibb and Celgen. United Technologies and Raytheon. Regardless of investor reaction, mergers and acquisitions this big undoubtedly strike fear in the hearts of employees. And people have only so much focus and energy—when they’re in survival mode, they aren’t that great at their jobs. So what are responsible industry titans to do? We have some tips.
Start talking now.
It’s natural to want to delay messaging until there is perfect alignment and all facts are in order. But if you don’t communicate, you create a vacuum, and you know how nature feels about that. The space where your message should be will be overrun by rumors and falsehoods. So before the deal is done, start getting leadership aligned on a message. Start cascading it through both organizations as soon as possible. Research shows that during uncertain times, employees crave trust, stability, confidence, and empathy in their leaders. A consistent, compelling message is what they need.
Address the culture clash.
Too often leaders ignore company culture, both before the deal is signed and throughout the integration. We know that a single culture is difficult to shift. Combining the cultures of two organizations is double trouble.
The first step is to know you have a culture. We suggest using the PRIDE method. Assessments will create detailed pictures of both company cultures. Then, take a look at all plans through the culture goggles of each company’s employees. What works for one might not work for the other.
For example, let’s say the company you’re acquiring has an “everyman” culture. Maybe they are used to all-hands meetings to socialize every change. So do that. Find out which big changes went well for the company, and liken the acquisition to that experience, creating a feeling of familiarity and safety. And pay attention to words and symbols; for this organization you might do well with high-touch images and talk of family and community.
Accept resistance.
The bigger the change, the more hecklers you’ll have, and a merger is as big as it gets. So how do you confront the critics? You don’t. Focus your energy on the “sweet spot”—those employees who are open to change and who can influence your outcomes. Enlist them as project advocates. These grass-roots change agents can create momentum toward a successful merger.
In the very best of Ms and As, there are rough seas to navigate. You can ride the waves more easily by mastering communication, culture, and resistance.