Episode 47: THE Leadership Japan Series: Engagement Workshop
Intro: Greg: Konnichiwa and welcome to Episode 47 of THE Leadership Japan podcast. I’m your host in Tokyo, Dr. Greg Story, president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and much more importantly, you are a student of leadership, highly motivated to be the very best in your field. If you would like your own access to 102 years of the accumulated wisdom of Dale Carnegie training through free white-papers, guidebooks, reports, training videos, blogs, course information plus much more, then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com. Today, we are going to have a session on engagement. This was a workshop given about how to get more engaged employees.
Greg: …Great ideas and a bit of insight with some of the key aspects. And now I’ll get straight into it. A little bit about Dale Carnegie. I’m sure most of you have heard of Dale Carnegie. We’re celebrating our 101st year in operations. In 1912 we started in New York City. It’s quite remarkable - it started with one man, one class, and it’s now global. It’s incredible that it’s gone that well and that long and there’s pretty sound reasons for that. This book has been a big part of it and actually today we are collecting your meishi, your business cards and we are going to draw 3 lucky winners and we’ll give the choice of either Japanese or English, depending on what you would like to read the book in. We’ve got the Japanese version as well, “Hito wo Ugokasu”. Look forward to that.
This book has been very important in getting the idea of people relationships, people skills, implanted into business. It’s still a classic. It’s still selling tremendously. In fact people in the publishing business, and I’m mentioning Japan, and global, they tell me there are basically two super long-sellers in the publishing world. One is the bible. The other is this book. If you think about it, look back in say the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s, books that were very popular. They’re all gone. It’s still in the top ten, business, non-fiction genre. Still doing well because the need for better human relations is still with us. It still hasn’t changed. In fact on the Japanese side, it has sold 9 million copies in Japan. That is a lot of copies. So again, very successful and well accepted in Japan. It has been published in over 50 languages around the world.
We’re very fortunate that 90% of the biggest, most powerful, listed companies at least, Fortune 500 companies in the States use our training. And that’s a really great recommendation for what we do. And in Japan too, we’re very strong. And actually now, 91 countries-this is going to change to 97 in a few months, but it’s still 91. And I say one man, one class becomes 91 countries, in more than 50 languages –it’s quite remarkable. There is a strong reason for that and that is because it works, it’s universal and it’s timeless. So we’re very proud of that.
That brings us to one of our greatest fans. Many of you know Warren Buffet. He’s probably one of the most successful investors in history. And he is a tremendous fan. I don’t know about your company. Maybe you can afford to pay Warren Buffet to front for your enterprise. We can’t. He’s a billionaire multiple times over. He’s pretty expensive. But he does a lot of promotion about Dale Carnegie for free. The reason is very simple. When he was a young man, he was like the smartest man in his class, one of the very bright people at the university. He went out on his own and started a business. And he discovered that even though he was very bright and he was very great with investing, it was a different animal to get people to give you their money to invest. He discovered that communication skills, persuasion skills, people skills were critical. And he was struggling. He said, you know I killed myself at university. I’m at the top of my class. I’ve got these fantastic investment ideas. I’m going to make a lot of people a lot of money. And he has. He has made people a lot of money. But he wasn’t getting any takers. And he took the Dale Carnegie course at the suggestion of a friend, who said,“Warren take the Dale Carnegie course”. It changed his life. Changed his career. And he’s often being interviewed. This particular shot here, this is the CBS and he is actually pointing to his diploma. He mentions in the clip, “You know I don’t have my university graduation diploma on my wall. I have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate”. And the reason is that that actually is what launched his career.
In Japan we have some big fans - the ex-chairman of Coca-Cola Otani-san, ex-chairman of Google Morikami-san and the ex-president of Johnson and Johnson Atarashi-san are big promoters of Dale Carnegie. They do a lot of speaking, they do a lot of writing. Because again, when these gentlemen were younger, they got involved with Dale Carnegie as a participant and graduated from the course and it changed their career. It changed the trajectory of their success and they still recall that as being one of the big turning points in their life. So again, we don’t have to pay these gentlemen any money because they do it as a volunteer because they believe in it. So it’s very powerful for us.
Amazingly, I asked America, because we do, and you’ll do some today-a little questionnaire. But we have a sort of standard questionnaire for our courses. And we send these off to the States and they put it through this big machine to get the results. And we can check any course in any one of those 91 countries around the world, trainer against trainer. See how the total quality index is looking, how the scores were. Do some comparison. Make sure we are operating at the right level. And I don’t know why I’m so dumb, it’s taken me a long time to figure this out. I just realized the other day. Gee, you need to get some numbers on what’s the satisfaction rate. Because we see it course by course. Five years is a reasonable time. Five years is a long enough period of time. I’ll make it hard for myself - I’ll make it all courses: a two hour module, a half day, a day, three days, a week, the whole works, everything we do. No matter the degree of simplicity or complexity, put it together. I’ll do it for all instructors. Every one of our trainers. So five years, everything. What’s the satisfaction rate? And that’s the number that came back - 97.7%. I must say, I knew it was going to be high because I see the reports as they come in. But it is that high over a five year period. I was very proud to see that. That says something about the quality of this organization that has been created over the last 101 years. That says a lot about Dale Carnegie and the system that he has come up with.
So we are going to go into a little video. Who’s heard of Southwest Airlines? I think a lot of people have. Why are they well known? What’s Southwest Airlines well-known for? What are they good at?
Participant: Cheap tickets.
Greg: Cheap tickets? What else?
Participant: Hot pants.
Greg: Hot pants. That sounds good. What else? I want to make sure I heard that right.
Participant: They made a profit every year.
Greg: They made a profit every year. What else are they good for?
Participant: High quality.
Greg: High quality. High retention. High customersatisfaction.
Let’s have a look at this video and get some ideas about staff engagement? Are the staff at Southwest engaged?
Video: (male flight attendant) Good evening folks and welcome aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 372, service to Oklahoma City. Those of you who have flown us before know that we do things a little bit differently on Southwest. Some of us tell jokes, some of us sing, some of us just stand there and look beautiful. I unfortunately can do none of those. So here’s the one thing that I do know how to do. We’re going to shake things up a little bit. I need a little audience participation. Otherwise this is not going to go over well at all.
So here’s what I need. Especially you guys up front because you know what’s coming. All right. I need a V, all right. All I need you to do is stomp and clap and I’m going to do the rest because I’ve had 5 flights today and I cannot do the regular, boring announcement again. Otherwise I am going to put myself to sleep. So, you guys with me? All right. Stomp, clap. Stomp, clap. Stomp, clap. Stay on beat there. There you go. Keep that going.
This is Flight 372 on S-W-A.
The flight attendants are for serving you today.
Theresa in the middle, Dagan in the back,
My name is David and I’m here to tell you that
Shortly after takeoff, first this,
Soft drinks and coffee to quench your thirst.
But if you want another kind of drink then just holler.
Alcoholic beverages will be $4.
If a Monster energy drink is your plan
that will be $3 and you get the whole can.
We won’t take your cash, you got to pay with plastic.
If you have a coupon then that’s fantastic.
We know you’re ready to get to new places.
Open up the bins put away your suitcases,
Carry-on items go under the seats.
If you don’t want to use a bin, you have room by your feet.
If you have a seat in a row by the exit,
We’re going to talk to you so you might as well expect it.
You’ve got to help us outin case we need you.
If you don’t follow, then we’re gonna re-seat you.
Before we leave our advice is
Put away electronic devices.
Fasten your seatbelts then put your trays up.
Press the button to make the seatback raise up.
Sit back, relax, have a good time.
It’s all about y’all so I’m done with the rhyme.
Thank you for the fact that I wasn’t ignored. This is Southwest Airlines. Welcome aboard. (Clapping) Thank you very much for my beat-I appreciate that.
Greg: You will not get that on United Airlines, I guarantee you. Do you reckon that’s in the manual? Do you reckon he memorized that from the manual? I don’t think so. Do you think that Southwest Airlines says, ok from now on everyone’s gonna do a rap song? I don’t think so. Do you think that guy is engaged? Why do you think he’s engaged?
Participant: Passion?
Greg: He’s passionate, yeah. Was that creative? Who do you think wrote that rap son?
Participant: Himself?
Greg: He did right? Yes. He sat down and he thought that up. And does it take a bit of guts to get up in front of people and do that? Yeah. You have to have self-esteem. You have to have confidence to do that. Would we say the guy is engaged? Yes we would. So we would have to think of this as a great example. I’m not saying that I’m going to see my team at Dale Carnegie doing a rap thing in the future. I can’t see that in my future. Probably not in your future either. But the point is, if we want creativity, if we want innovation, there’s got to be an environment to encourage that. If there was a senior executive of Southwest Airlines on that flight and he heard that song. And he said, rap song? What? That’s the end of it right? That’s where the creativity is going to die right there. But in this company’s case it’s the other way around. They’re encouraging it. So it might be an extreme example. But it still says something about the capacity to tap in to the power in creativity of people in your teams.
So today, this is what we are going to do with our objectives. We are going to redefine employee engagement from the employee perspective. Now this is a very key word - the employee perspective. You know often in companies we have the management perspective. We have the financial perspective. We have the process perspective. We have the compliance perspective. What about the employee perspective? So we’re looking at engagement. We are going to start looking at this from the employee perspective, a different starting point perhaps, than normal. Have a look at your own ideas about what is employee engagement? What does that actually mean? I’m sure all of us would have our own individual opinions and they may be quite various from what we think that constitutes. Let’s start with ourselves. If you can’t understand yourself, it’s very hard to know what you are going to do with your team in terms of getting their engagement. Then we are going to try to look at what’s the relationship between engagement and team success. Then will look at some techniques at getting it.
Treat employees as valuable people with skills, rather than as people with valuable skills. Let me just say that again slowly. So we are sort of switching ideas with you, right? Treat or think of employees as valuable people with skills, rather than as people with valuable skills. See the difference? That’s a bit of a semantic difference in English. Just a different way of looking at our teams. We see them as valuable people and skills are part of the functionality of how they work. Rather than they are just a human asset. I love that term. Our human assets. As opposed to our laptops or our desks or something, our other assets. This is taking a different view. So we will now have a bit of a think about what an engaged employee looks like. I’m going to ask if you can find a pair or three people. Just where you are sitting. Just look for people around you. Have a little bit of a discussion together for a few minutes on what, if we were looking for someone who is engaged, what would that person be doing? What would they be saying? What would they look like? How do we identify amongst a huge range of individuals who is an engaged employee. How do you spot the ones who are engaged? What are you looking for? So please find someone to work with in pairs or threes and have a discussion about what that would look like?
(Talking)
Engagement definition? Anyone want to give me some ideas? How do I spot it? I’m on the hunt for an engaged employee. What am I looking for?
Participant: Do more than their position.
Greg: OK. They do more than their position. Yeah. What else?
Participant: ownership and initiative.
Greg: they have ownership and initiative. That’s great. What else?
Participant: They are coming up with fresh ideas.
Greg: coming up with fresh ideas. Great. What else?
Participant: smiling and having fun.
Greg: smiling and having fun. They look like they are happy, right? Yeah. That’s important. That’s a good one. What else? Ok. So they are able to bring other people with them. So their enthusiasm becomes infective with other people. What else? Initiative in taking conversations. Maybe raising ideas, raising points? Maybe questioning the system’s processes? Looking to improve. What else?
Participant: They feel they are rewarded in what they are doing.
Greg: Ah. How do they feel rewarded do you think? I get a salary. (Laughter)
Participant: They feel recognized.
Greg: They feel recognized. Ah, ok. So it’s not just money is it? It’s recognition. That’s a bit of a sore point, isn’t it?
Participant: They are looking for ways of being important. It goes beyond productivity. They are looking for some way they can find value in their contribution. It’s not just productivity or innovation so much. It’s just getting involved.
Greg: They want to get involved. They want to have more say in the direction of the organization. They want to have more responsibility for the success of the organization. They want to have more control of their work life. Now all of these things. We did a survey of engagement and these are some of the results that came up. This is done in America. Fully engaged came up as 29% bythe survey. Partially engaged is 45% and disengaged is 26%. How does that compare? Asimilar result from the Gallup Organization compared the same fully engaged, partially engaged, and disengaged in America. Their results are similar to ours – 29%, 54% and 17%. And Japan is interesting - 7% were fully engaged, 68% partially and 25 %, one in four, are actually disengaged. Then we did a little bit more comparison. This is the Dale Carnegie one-day extension and then the Gallup ones are on the right. Also Westing-Wright in the States also did some work on engagement as well. Their numbers again varied a little bit, but not that much. But the Gallup numbers still get us.
Participant: Mr. Story may I possibly ask one question?
Greg: Please.
Participant: Engagement. When we are talking about this. There these kind of feelings that you really cannot translate into Japanese? Engagement and….
Greg: That is a great point. We struggled, you know. Like when I said to do this engagement seminar, right? Well there’s katakana, but then it becomes meaningless. You are right it is a very difficult word to translate into Japanese. And believe me we have struggled to come up with a word. We cannot find a word in Japanese apart from the katakana of engagement. So it comes around to concepts. It’s very agonizing. The Japanese word is just not there. It’s suitable. There are lots of close words. Do you have a great word for us? What is it?
Participant: No, I don’t have a great word. But I am wondering if it’s about initiative? It’s like you were talking about them wanting more control in the organization. So what you are looking at is something that doesn’t seem to be culturally acceptable.
Greg: So taking initiative, taking responsibility is not culturally acceptable so there’s no word for it? That could be the case. We could not come up with a word, but we could come up with some ideas as you just did before about what it looks like. So even if there is no particular kanji that works for us. Just the katakana of engagement works, we can come up with some ideas around that.
I’ll show another one here which is Towers-Watson. They did a slightly different version: highly engaged, disengaged, unsupported at work, and detached. And so what they have talked about here is they’ve said if you are unsupported at work, you want to work harder but you are not given the tools, the resources or the support. So you have the desire but no one cares about you, basically. And this one, detached is, well you don’t have the desire. So when they looked at this split they came up with some interesting results between Japan and global in their comparison. So we see how things go there that there is some change. Now this is a definition that we came up with to try and explain what is employee engagement. Which comes back to your point about how do you get it into Japanese? We’ve basically given up trying to find a kanji for this so we are going to go for engagement in katakana. But let’s give it a meaning that’s relevant. This is the meaningwe’ve come up with – the emotional and intellectual commitment of employees to deliver higher performance. That’s our definition. On page 2 of your manuals, there’s a section there. Give it a go or just think about it - what’s your definition of engagement? Have a go at your definition. Have a think about that. We’ve got our definition. You might have a different take on it. Put down some ideas on what your opinion or personal definition of employee engagement. Ok, if you’ve got your definition down, please share it with the people you were working with before and get some feedback on how they looked at and how you’ve looked at it. Please share and just trade off your own definition. Please go ahead.
Normally you come to events and they say, turn your phone off, but we actually going to use your phones. Anyone packing their phone by chance. We’ve got a room full of iPhone holders. Turn it off. You can actually turn it off or we’re going to use our phones here to vote. It’s a polling question. So which of these do you think is going to have the greatest impact on employee engagement? So satisfaction with compensation and benefits; I get paid a big bonus, I’m motivated! Satisfaction with immediate manager; my boss is great! Support of work-life balance; hey I’ve got an aging parent; I’ve got kids, I’ve got things in my life outside work. Belief in senior leadership; these people are the captains of our ship - fortunately they’re good, they know where they are going. Opportunities for advancement; there is a career path for me in this company, I can see a future in this company. Pride in the organization; I am proud to hand out my business card with this company’s name on it. And finally, free popcorn! This is for Americans - free popcorn in the break room. If we were in Australia it would be free beer. (Laughter)
So what you can do, if you’ve got an app that allows you to take a photograph of that QR code there. If you haven’t, just punch that in to your browser. That’ll take you to a voting site.
(Talking)
Ok so we have 44 responses. The highest scoring one was number 6-pride in the organization. Second one was number 2-satisfaction with immediate management – 25%. And then we have 18%-opportunities for advancement. So that’s very interesting. (Talking)
What we found from our research, and it’s pretty close to what you’ve come up with, matches the Japanese. What we found is that these are the three drivers of engagement. And so we did this in the States. In fact we’ve completed the research for Japan. They are crunching the numbers in America right now. I’ll probably have the results in about two weeks’ time. I’ll be curious to see how that compares on the engagement you know not engaged, partially engaged scores. But interesting enough the Japanese group that did this, and yourselves too - very close in terms of those key indicators. We found these three drivers to be particularly important for engagement. Satisfaction with immediate manager, belief in the senior management, pride in the organization. And this satisfaction of the immediate manager is things around, you mentioned before, recognition. Recognition. How you feel you are being treated,you’re being valued. The belief in the senior leadership was, are the captains of this ship actually going in the right direction? Is this company going to be able to make the right decisions? Is senior leadership communicating to me where we are going with this or am I lost? I don’t know where are we going with this company?
We’ve got a client, where they are being bought and they don’t know by who and they are not quite sure when it is going to be completed. They’ve got a massive engagement problem. People are leaving. Good people are walking out the door because that company cannot provide any belief in senior leadership because they themselves do not know where they are going or what they are going to be doing. That may be an extreme case, but you may have the same problem - there is not enough clarity in the organization about where we are going with all this.
Defining pride in the organization. Right. So you feel some ownership. You feel you’ve got some say in where we are going. You feel invested with where we are going with this. So we found these three drivers to be particularly useful. And as I say, compared to your scores it’s pretty close. It’s not that far away, actually, when I look at it. The advancement one is about the only one that came up. So we think about that and well this is a good question. Why? Why is engagement important? You know these are drivers. At least three are very common. But what’s the importance of it? Also in our research, we found a few things. That engaged organizations out-perform by as much as 20%. They have better shareholder returns and they have lower turnover. Now very interestingly, we’ve been through quite a rough patch around the world, and America is no exception. Yet even despite that, retention is a core aspect in companies because the costs of replacing people are very high. The calculations are that it’s going to take 1.5 of a person’s salary in recruiting cost to replace them. There is a number of costs associated with that. There’s also a big cost, I’m talking about 11 billion of turnover affecting the cost of business. So its big money. So these elements give us some satisfaction that engagement is worth it. And that it’s important. Think about Japan. I was at a function yesterday, and I have to check this number but, the person who was speaking said that the expectation was, Japan’s current 5% unemployment rate in the next few years would go down to close to 2%. That has some major ramifications for companies. If you’re going to have less people available to do the work because of the declining population, well, retention is going to be critical because you are going to be losing people to somebody else. And you are going to be losing potential ones that could be highly engaged because someone else is going to keep them in their company because they’re been able to tap that engagement.
So we’ve had a rough patch in Japan so maybe it hasn’t been an issue. But even you see this year with university graduates for the first time in a long time they started to gain jobs relatively easily after graduation. It’s really a lucky draw in Japan when you graduate as to how easy it is to get a job afterwards. It’s been all up and down. We are now getting back to a stage where it looks like there’s more competition for graduates. So that will have a ramification in companies, particularly around retention. So we need to look at these things and think about where we are going to go with that.
So you know it’s critical. What does it mean though? In fact what you said before there is no Japanese word for engagement, right? This is a struggle. Well maybe we don’t have a word for it apart from katakana-ized version in English. But these are some things that we can see that actually tell us what it means. If they are fully engaged, they stay. They stay longer. They have built up a lot of information. They know the processes. They know the clients. They know the system. They’re very important pillars of your organization. As people come in and go out, they stay and they become the pull, the glue. They contribute to the bottom line because they are working well, they are working effectively. And they commit to productivity and quality.
Now Japan, especially in a white collar field is often criticized for low productivity. White collar workers in Japan generally have low productivity. You’ll go to a Japanese factory, a well-run factory, trust me they are working hard. They are working fast. But we don’t see that same degree of productivity, so easily, in white collar work. Also quality. As we get in a more competitive environment, being able to secure the quality of your brand, quality of your sales or product, becomes more and more important. So you want people who are fully engaged to have those attributes.
What’s the difference between those who are partially engaged? Well, they concentrate on tasks, not outcomes. Has anyone worked in a Japanese company where people are still there at 10 o’clock at night? Are you one of them? And have you noticed that people are hanging around waiting for the kacho or bucho to go home? Seen that. Seen plenty of that, right? So they could go home earlier, they could have a much more productive work life. It’s a very low threshold over a long period of time. And that’s where the problem comes in terms of they are worried about the task, they are not so much worried about what am I producing. What’s the quality of what I am doing? I’m diligent. I’m loyal. I turn up. I’m radial. I don’t do much, I don’t produce much. But I’m loyal. Well that’s what you are getting with partially engaged. If you are happy with that, stick with that. But if your competitors get the completely engaged people who are actually getting outputs, we are going to have a big problem very shortly. And they want to be told what to do. This is very interesting.
We often have this discussion around a group, a tribe of Japanese people, who don’t want to think for themselves and they are happy to be told what to do. Now some people have that view, I don’t necessarily have that view, but that is often a view that is given to me. That’s why Japan is different. Oh that’s right, tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I don’t have to think. That maybe the case. That might not be the case. I am sure that if we get an engaged group in front of us who wants to think. Your point beforeabout thinking deeply. Where are we going with this? Where can I make a difference? How can I contribute? How can I take us to a more competitive level? There is a certain degree of engagement there that you’re not getting out of this group. They do it and they get paid and they go home. Now this is an American set up. But you can understand, a lot of people turn up in this country to get paid, work hard, diligent and go home. I mean this is the only country in the world where people stand on the street, in winter when it’s freezing cold and rainy, handing out tissue packs. If that was Australia, the whole boxes would be in the dump or somewhere, you know. (Laughter) They’d be down the pub with a nice rum or whiskey or something warming up. And here in Japan, very diligent you know. They turn up, they get paid. But we are talking about something beyond that. This is like a minimum. I’ll tell you something that’s partially engaged.
Now, we’ve got the disengaged. So in this group, well, sow seeds of negativity. This is the,“everything is wrong with this business, this industry, with this company, this section, the people in it, the boss”. Whiners, complainers. The world is dark and gloomy; the glass is only half full. I’m not happy and I’m going to spread my unhappiness as far and as wide as I can. And then you’ve got sabotage, maybe sabotage by non-active involvement. What happens to that first group, over time though, they are highly engaged, they want this organization to do well. They see the direction it should go. They think the senior manager is not going the right direction. They are doing their best to correct it, and they’re ignored. What happens? How long can they sustain that do you think? What happens after all their good ideas are dismissed, not recognized, ignored? They’re doing their best. They’re sincere. But they are not appreciated. How long does that last? They’ll go somewhere else, right? They’re part of your retention problem. You don’t want to lose those people because maybe senior management is not transparent enough. Maybe your management system is not inclusive enough. And the second one about,“these are productive people”. They could be in transactional roles - a trader, for example. They’re making lots of money. They may not need to involve a lot of people. They can be producers themselves. Do you want that person in charge of other people? Why not? They’re productive, they’re producing. Do you want them in charge of others? Are they ever going to be in the leadership? Who do you want in the leadership? Maybe you want a different animal. Maybe you want a different person. So yes there maybe someone who is disengaged, they don’t care, but they are doing well. And there may be a role for those people. But they are not someone who’s going to build a good leadership team. They are probably not someone who is going to contribute in other areas of the business. And usually are they very cooperative with other parts of the company? In the silos of the companies, are they the kind of guy or gal who goes out and works with the others of other groups? Usually no, so there is a gap between the company direction and their personal belief and conviction. And why did that come up? Why did you get like that?
Participant: They weren’t involved in the decision-making.
Greg: They weren’t involved in the decision making. Was there good communication about the why? Now, I’m sure many of us are leaders and managers. We’re all busy people. Anyone get a lot of email? Anyone doing a lot of meetings? So often our communication gets truncated down to very short sound bites about what we have to do to execute. And sometimes the why may be lost or forgotten or not articulated. So you just get told what’s going to happen. You’re not actually told why that’s important. And so over time, when you have that type of management and you start to get a lack of communication around where we’re going or why we are doing it, and people just get told, here are the numbers, hit these number. So it could be that they don’t feel engaged because they don’t really feel part of it. They don’t understand the point and they have their own views. So yes it could be the cultural assassin, it could also be other things as well.
Last one is, express mistrust and animosity-that’s pretty harsh. But has anyone ever whinged about their boss to somebody else? Come on, put your hands up. (Laughter) Every single one of you have done that, come on. You are doing it now, come on. We all do that. So when we are disaffected we tend to spread the disaffection. We want some sympathy. We want someone to listen to us. People in our work circle understand best the frustration we are facing, the problems we are facing. So they’re the best audience. It’s no good going home to your husband or your wife or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your parents and whinging to them. They don’t get it. They’re too far removed. It’s much better to do it with people you work with. They understand. Yes you’re right. Yes I know what you mean. It’s a very good audience for that. So they can have a big impact on that.
What I would like to do now is think about people you know. It doesn’t have to be people you work with with necessarily. It could be your friends. It could be someone you worked with in the past. It could be someone now. It could be your boss. It could be a supporter. It could be a colleague. Who you would say, this person is fully engaged. And think about someone who is actually not engaged. And we’ll leave this one out for the moment because we’ll get these extremes. Someone you think, wow, this person really they’re signed on. And this person, wow, they’re signed off. So in your groups again. Have a discussion and think about people you know and then talk about what are the attributes that you’re seeing there that differentiates one from the other. Let’s go. (Talking)
If there is someone in the room and you want to use a code name that’s quite acceptable. If you don’t want to say that person’s name, you just want to reference someone, that’s fine. Who did we find in our experience that we thought was wow, really engaged? Come on, anybody? Anyone find anyone really engaged? Yeah? Ok, what was engaging about that person?
Participant: Well, the reason I thought they were fully engaged was they put all their effort into the job. They really made a big effort in terms of the quality and the relationship with the customer. It was a training manager actually. And they were consulted a lot about everything. By people above that level. And also, they were trusted. So that was my analysis of that.
Greg: Good. Ok. Anything else…? Does that mean that only one person in this entire crowd…?
Participant: I was describing an internal IT person in our organization. And obviously, our organization is primarily a sales organization. There’s a lot of people that are very motivated by various things. But this lady, I didn’t think that boss was particularly inspiring to generate motivation. But she was always really really responsive to any requests, always happy, smiling.
Greg: I’m sorry did you say this was an IT person? (Laughter)
Participant: Yeah. Unfortunately she’s no longer with our organization. But she was with us for a while. And I think she did contribute because she had a very speedy response, trying to help people. And the definition fit her…
Greg: Why did she leave?
Participant: I think personal, like family reason. But that was the reason she gave to us. Whether that was the real reason…
Greg: What a gem. Anyone find an IT person like that, grab them! We are talking rare. Rare, rare.
Let’s switch it now and this is the good part, right. We can all deal with the really bad disengaged people. Any examples of people you work with who are disengaged? So has some accountability but isn’t totally signed on. Could be between the partially engaged that they do their job. You know they do their job but they may be somewhere in between those somewhere. He lapses into areas of negativity, between doing what he is expected, or she is expected to do. These are broad definitions. What we are looking for here is trying to understand what is the difference between these? Now let’s try to understand ourselves a little bit. How about where we are going with this? And just before we get there, and this came up before about the other part about the ages. We found that in the research that clients who were facing us, the general public, the consumers, have the lowest engagement. So obviously dealing with people as clients-that’s the hard part of the job. And basically the first five years goes up and then starts to stagnate. They show some age brackets. So 50’s and up they’re sort of up. 30’s and up they’re strongly engaged. 30’s, 40’s, partially 50’s. Starts to taper off. And then finally enthusiasm equals extra effort, equals organization success. These are what the researched items come up. How about yourselves? In your manuals, you have on page 4 and 5 a little self-assessment. So have a bit of a think about yourself? So when you look at your own score, how do you react to that? Do you think that score is reflective? Do you think that’s accurate? Just in your groups have a quick discussion. Is that score accurate? Do you think actually I am more engaged or I am less engaged? And also, what does your level of engagement mean for your team? So have a look at the score that you’ve given yourself. Is that about right or not and then think about and discuss what does your level of personal engagement do in terms of impact on the team? Either the team that you are part of or the team that you are the leader of? Please have a discussion on that. (Talking)
Let’s think about leadership. In parts of leadership and engagement. I’ve got some nice quotes here for you. Some of you will know Charlie Ergen. He’s actually having a nice fight with Samsung at the moment over Sprint. He’s trying to buy it in the States. And he owns a company actually called Dish. Here’s a quote from Frontier magazine. “He’s a street fighter. Works 24/7. The meanest company in America. A former professional poker player strikes fear into employees and baffles rivals. Staff clock in with a fingerprint scanner, so HR knows if they are late.” Pick up a few ideas for the HR people who are in the room, right? “I don’t hold myself up as a great manager.” Nice work for Charlie. He’s a billionaire by the way. Multiple billionaire. He’s been very successful. He’s made a huge amount of money. But how do you reckon the engagement level is for his team?
How about this other one? Yannick Nézet-Séguin? I reckon Canadians have learned to recognize this Canadian conductor. “Playing through fear is absolutely against the spirit of music making.” He’s a conductor, right? He’s in charge. “It shuts down the emotion. As a conductor you encourage people to express themselves as they would wish.” The person’s perspective we talked about earlier. You have a power of persuasion. You need to be sincere, honest, well prepared. Your power is psychological. There’s an interesting contrast between two leaders. And I can tell you, I definitely don’t want to work for Charlie. This is probably easier to absorb as an individual. Charlie is very rich and successful but how do we feel ourselves when we’re on the receiving end? He’s an entrepreneur and he owns the company. So he’s…I don’t know Charlie but from what I read he sounds like a pretty tough guy to work with. And so, yes he’s been very successful over the, literally over the bodies of the people who probably work for him. If you are in the process of being one of those people to make Charlie successful…It’s like…I’ll say…Dillon, you come in early, you go home late. Work diligent. Actually work weekends. Put in a big effort. Make a lot of sales. Really hit the numbers. I’m going to have a big bonus. Is that motivating? Now for these guys. Charlie is making a lot of money. What about the people who are in the team? Are they making more money? I don’t know. So it depends on what you like. Yes some people will be successful regardless.
Steve Jobs is often held up as an example of a great American leader. But by all accounts, he was horrendous to work for. He was a brutal, vicious leader. And yet he was a great innovator. And he came up with new products which we are all using. So he’s a success. Now yes, there is always going to be outliers. Which one do you want to work for? It depends on who you want to work for. It depends how your people feel about working in your organization. There’s different ways to get motivation. The military. Fantastic. The military is fantastic about getting compliance. It’s a very strict will. It’s very hierarchical. It’s very set. It’s very clear with the rules. But when you have that kind of organization it will get you to a certain point. It depends on what you need. So I guess the answer here is what do you want? What’s your organization’s needs? If it is going to be very hierarchical, very high structured, is that going to work in the competitive business that you are in? I mean Charlie Ergen, as far as I understand, has been a tremendous deal-doer; he has made a lot of money through doing deals and people are being a means to that end. If you are one of those people, I wonder what the engagement scores look like at Dish?
Our research has highlighted something that is a bit different than what’s been common before. Most research on engagement is around the statistics of all, this is the engagement or this is the not engagement section or the partial engagement. It has tended not to look at what’s driving that. And this is where we started to look at the emotions behind engagement. And so exactly, Charlie Ergen, could not care less probably about the people. His emotional concept about people is probably close to zero. And there are lots of managers like that. What we found in the research, though, is that at this point in time, in this era that we are now in, that is changing. When I was growing up a leader had a very clear segregation between work and professional interests in a person. That person’s personal life was completely differentiated. They did not think that they could go into that person’s personal life because that was their life and this is just work. What the research has shown though is that people are changing, and what they want is to be valued. They want to feel valued. They want to feel valued and they want to feel appreciated and they want the bosses to have a bigger interest in their personal feelings, is what the research has shown. They want to feel that the boss cares about how they feel. They want to know the boss cares about their health. Which is maybe a bit different than before.
So when you lookat the survey, there are some interesting questions in here. There probably have not even been issues in the past. But in this modern day and age you know. My manager recognizes my contributions - not very common. I’m satisfied with the input into decisions - not so common. My manager is interested in me as a person - this is rather new. I mean we have not seen this in previous engagement studies. So we’ve looked at the driving emotions behind engagement. The sorts of things we’re encountering are that people have different expectations. And these other things too. Corporate philosophy reflects my values. My values and their values line up. That’s a bit different. My health and well-being are supported and encouraged. That’s also very new. In Japan, the statistics I read show that basically 10% of organizations have got people with severe depression. Severe depression. There’s another 20% on top of that with a mild degree of depression. Pretty big numbers in organizations. So the whole concept that I am the boss, and also here at work you are yourself and your private life– no contact is breaking down. And that is what we are doing here which we think is very interesting and very new -that people want to feel valued by their organization. This is a direct link to getting engagement. Whereas in the past maybe we didn’t think like that. This is where we see it coming out now. So when they feel valued it gives them confidence. It inspires them. They feel more enthusiastic. They feel more empowered. And the combination of all those things is going to lead us to a higher degree of engagement. So a good manager makes people feel valued. This leads to confidence, empowerment, enthusiasm and inspiration which in turn leads to engagement. We have not seen that connection but the research is now showing that. So this is something a little bit new for you. That you may not have thought about before. And a whole raft of things come back into leadership and management-how we interact with people. And that again is something I find very interesting. We combine that, the levels of engagement, disengaged here, partially engaged, fully engaged over there, and so you’ve got the esteemed employee feels today…the energized employee feels deeply involved. This is actually in the manual. The enthusiastic employee feels extremely enthusiastic. And then the person who is really engaged feels a sense of ownership and commitment to the return on investment. That’s at the highest level. So we put that baseand over-lay this with it being valued, having this confidence, inspired, enthusiastic, empowered. We see a big change in how we look at these in the past. This is on page 6 in you manuals. Page 6 and 7 and then again on page 8.
Put an X on where you think you are on the scale. Do you feel deeply involved? Do you feel extremely enthusiastic? Do you feel a sense of ownership, commitment? Where are you with an X? On one of those boxes. And a star against where your team is. How do you think you would rate your team on that scale? Are your team feeling a full sense of ownership and commitment? Are they extremely enthusiastic? Are they deeply involved? Do they feel valued? If they are not on any of those, that’s a different issue. But see, a star for where you think your team is and an X for where you think you are.
If emotions are leaning to higher engagement and if people need to feel valued, the trick of that. What does that mean for you as a leader or a manager or as an individual in an organization? Let’s have a little discussion. Give yourself a minute. Let’s get some feedback. So where did you place yourself? Where did you place your team? What other emotions do you think might be important operating here to get them to feel more engaged? Try that. (Talking)
What do you think about that? Is this relevant? Do you think this research is actually showing something that’s relevant? Is an emotional connection going to become more important for us to have an engaged people or not? What do you think?
Participant: Yes.
Greg: Why is that?
Participant: I think the link there, if you feel valued you will be engaged. It’s a step by step you’ve reached that…
Greg: So this logic works for you?
Participant: Very much.
Greg: You can see the flow there?
Participant: Absolutely.
Greg: Why would I feel valued? What would make me feel valued? What would trigger that?
Participant: Recognition?
Greg: Recognition, yeah. What else?
Participant: Validation.
Greg: Validation, yes. What else?
Participant: Self-confidence.
Greg: yes. What else?
Participant: Empowerment?
Greg: Empowerment? Yes.
Participant: Success.
Greg: Success, yes.
Participant: Comradery.
Greg: Comradery, yeah. Are there any other emotions, do you think, that might be relevant?
Participant: A deep sense of purpose.
Greg: A sense of purpose, yeah. A clear goal.
Participant: Respect.
Greg: Yeah. Respect.
Participant: Being trusted.
Greg: Ah yeah. Trust. How do we know those things? How do we know that we’re appreciated, respected, trusted? How do we know that?
Participant: Feedback?
Greg: Who do we get the feedback from?
Participant: Supervisors, bosses.
Greg: Immediate managers. Came up before, right? My relationship with my immediate manager. Becomes very critical at how I feel engaged. And I have confidence in the leadership of this organization. And I feel pride in my organization. These are driving my engagement. Now, flip it around. Do the people in your organization have pride? Do they feel the senior management know what they’re doing? Do they have a good relationship with their immediate manager? Does their immediate manager care about them? What people are saying is I am not a number. Famous, right? The famous movie. I am not a number, right? Remember that allusion to the prison. Got serious in the UK. I am not a number, I am a free man. Remember that movie that show? Ok. I am not a machine, I am not a number. I am not an asset. I am an individual. I want you to care how I feel. This is new. This is new. We didn’t have that before.
So things have moved, have changed. Now we get into a different base. What do we do as organizations to make sure that we are getting people engaged in that new environment? And so therefore all of those issues, those three issues, become those three critical drivers I mentioned before. Here’s some ideas that we’ve come up with. We’ve tried to combine our experience over the last 101 years of how to make people effective with each other with these ideas of power through the research. So if we talk about belief, and it’s actually in your manual, belief in the seeing the team. Well here are some factors. A list of the factors here that are critical to success. You talk about the immediate manager-what should they be doing?
You’ve all got a golden book. Now these are the 30 principles that Dale Carnegie came up with for effective human relations. And there are 30 stress management principles in the back of the book. And we took these and we’ve tried to go into an overlay with these issues around what would give people effective belief in senior management? Manager? Pride in your organization? Tried to do an overlay between them. So what I’d like you to do now is have a look at this list and think about whether these actually would make a difference? If your senior leadership asks for input. If they didn’t criticize people. Smile. Why would that be important? Respect. You mentioned respect before. Teamwork. Provide resources. Walks the talk. There’s consistency there. The immediate manager becomes interested. He asks questions, right? He’s a good listener. Empowers. Encourages. Supports decisions. Gives sincere appreciation. Shares personal success. All those things. Pride in the organization. So again, look at these and discuss whether these actually are going to work or not, and have effective engagement. So try that.
It’s a very simplistic thing to say that. I can say, “Be engaged! Come on, be engaged!” The Australian approach, yell louder. It doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. So what actually would that culture be? You have to think about that. What is that culture? Where does it come back to? Is it the leadership? What the immediate managers are doing? Pride in organization? How do you build that? And then measure it.
So lots of us have engagement scores. I wonder if you go back and look at your engagement questionnaire how many emotional points are actually being asked in those questionnaires. Go back and have a look at it and see what’s being asked. It may be that same engagement survey is just being forever the same survey. It’s probably global. And I wonder if it’s now out of date. Be very interesting to go back and look at it and ask ourselves, are we actually asking the right questions? And then of course the action plan to address any areas of disengagement - all very obvious. Interesting hold me accountable for approving it. In a lot of organizations this doesn’t really happen. The engagement scores come out and they stay where they are. Nothing ever seems to happen. And often it’s not supported at any level. Just a lot of moaning about a lot of numbers. Doesn’t go anywhere. Then finally recognized for your progress. These are very simple steps. You know before, on page 11, have a look at two useful ideas not from today. Get those down and then we’ll share them.
Interesting point - if you believe in the trigger, for a lot of these things to happen that a lot of employees feel value? If that is your starting point, if you don’t have that, then the other parts don’t flow. What makes people feel valued? There’s a whole raft of things that it comes back to: the immediate supervisor, belief in the direction of organization, senior leadership, and also pride in the organization, impact on how these pieces come together. We came back to this definition that we had – emotional. This is very new this emotional context is a new piece of research. An intellectual commitment to employees to deliver.
You have been a very energized two hours and I think that we had some great discussions. We had some great points. I look to see you at the next workshop or even better at a Dale Carnegie course. Thank you very much, thank you. (AppEpisode 47: THE Leadership Japan Series: Engagement Workshop
Intro: Greg: Konnichiwa and welcome to Episode 47 of THE Leadership Japan podcast. I’m your host in Tokyo, Dr. Greg Story, president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and much more importantly, you are a student of leadership, highly motivated to be the very best in your field. If you would like your own access to 102 years of the accumulated wisdom of Dale Carnegie training through free white-papers, guidebooks, reports, training videos, blogs, course information plus much more, then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com. Today, we are going to have a session on engagement. This was a workshop given about how to get more engaged employees.
Greg: …Great ideas and a bit of insight with some of the key aspects. And now I’ll get straight into it. A little bit about Dale Carnegie. I’m sure most of you have heard of Dale Carnegie. We’re celebrating our 101st year in operations. In 1912 we started in New York City. It’s quite remarkable - it started with one man, one class, and it’s now global. It’s incredible that it’s gone that well and that long and there’s pretty sound reasons for that. This book has been a big part of it and actually today we are collecting your meishi, your business cards and we are going to draw 3 lucky winners and we’ll give the choice of either Japanese or English, depending on what you would like to read the book in. We’ve got the Japanese version as well, “Hito wo Ugokasu”. Look forward to that.
This book has been very important in getting the idea of people relationships, people skills, implanted into business. It’s still a classic. It’s still selling tremendously. In fact people in the publishing business, and I’m mentioning Japan, and global, they tell me there are basically two super long-sellers in the publishing world. One is the bible. The other is this book. If you think about it, look back in say the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s, books that were very popular. They’re all gone. It’s still in the top ten, business, non-fiction genre. Still doing well because the need for better human relations is still with us. It still hasn’t changed. In fact on the Japanese side, it has sold 9 million copies in Japan. That is a lot of copies. So again, very successful and well accepted in Japan. It has been published in over 50 languages around the world.
We’re very fortunate that 90% of the biggest, most powerful, listed companies at least, Fortune 500 companies in the States use our training. And that’s a really great recommendation for what we do. And in Japan too, we’re very strong. And actually now, 91 countries-this is going to change to 97 in a few months, but it’s still 91. And I say one man, one class becomes 91 countries, in more than 50 languages –it’s quite remarkable. There is a strong reason for that and that is because it works, it’s universal and it’s timeless. So we’re very proud of that.
That brings us to one of our greatest fans. Many of you know Warren Buffet. He’s probably one of the most successful investors in history. And he is a tremendous fan. I don’t know about your company. Maybe you can afford to pay Warren Buffet to front for your enterprise. We can’t. He’s a billionaire multiple times over. He’s pretty expensive. But he does a lot of promotion about Dale Carnegie for free. The reason is very simple. When he was a young man, he was like the smartest man in his class, one of the very bright people at the university. He went out on his own and started a business. And he discovered that even though he was very bright and he was very great with investing, it was a different animal to get people to give you their money to invest. He discovered that communication skills, persuasion skills, people skills were critical. And he was struggling. He said, you know I killed myself at university. I’m at the top of my class. I’ve got these fantastic investment ideas. I’m going to make a lot of people a lot of money. And he has. He has made people a lot of money. But he wasn’t getting any takers. And he took the Dale Carnegie course at the suggestion of a friend, who said,“Warren take the Dale Carnegie course”. It changed his life. Changed his career. And he’s often being interviewed. This particular shot here, this is the CBS and he is actually pointing to his diploma. He mentions in the clip, “You know I don’t have my university graduation diploma on my wall. I have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate”. And the reason is that that actually is what launched his career.
In Japan we have some big fans - the ex-chairman of Coca-Cola Otani-san, ex-chairman of Google Morikami-san and the ex-president of Johnson and Johnson Atarashi-san are big promoters of Dale Carnegie. They do a lot of speaking, they do a lot of writing. Because again, when these gentlemen were younger, they got involved with Dale Carnegie as a participant and graduated from the course and it changed their career. It changed the trajectory of their success and they still recall that as being one of the big turning points in their life. So again, we don’t have to pay these gentlemen any money because they do it as a volunteer because they believe in it. So it’s very powerful for us.
Amazingly, I asked America, because we do, and you’ll do some today-a little questionnaire. But we have a sort of standard questionnaire for our courses. And we send these off to the States and they put it through this big machine to get the results. And we can check any course in any one of those 91 countries around the world, trainer against trainer. See how the total quality index is looking, how the scores were. Do some comparison. Make sure we are operating at the right level. And I don’t know why I’m so dumb, it’s taken me a long time to figure this out. I just realized the other day. Gee, you need to get some numbers on what’s the satisfaction rate. Because we see it course by course. Five years is a reasonable time. Five years is a long enough period of time. I’ll make it hard for myself - I’ll make it all courses: a two hour module, a half day, a day, three days, a week, the whole works, everything we do. No matter the degree of simplicity or complexity, put it together. I’ll do it for all instructors. Every one of our trainers. So five years, everything. What’s the satisfaction rate? And that’s the number that came back - 97.7%. I must say, I knew it was going to be high because I see the reports as they come in. But it is that high over a five year period. I was very proud to see that. That says something about the quality of this organization that has been created over the last 101 years. That says a lot about Dale Carnegie and the system that he has come up with.
So we are going to go into a little video. Who’s heard of Southwest Airlines? I think a lot of people have. Why are they well known? What’s Southwest Airlines well-known for? What are they good at?
Participant: Cheap tickets.
Greg: Cheap tickets? What else?
Participant: Hot pants.
Greg: Hot pants. That sounds good. What else? I want to make sure I heard that right.
Participant: They made a profit every year.
Greg: They made a profit every year. What else are they good for?
Participant: High quality.
Greg: High quality. High retention. High customersatisfaction.
Let’s have a look at this video and get some ideas about staff engagement? Are the staff at Southwest engaged?
Video: (male flight attendant) Good evening folks and welcome aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 372, service to Oklahoma City. Those of you who have flown us before know that we do things a little bit differently on Southwest. Some of us tell jokes, some of us sing, some of us just stand there and look beautiful. I unfortunately can do none of those. So here’s the one thing that I do know how to do. We’re going to shake things up a little bit. I need a little audience participation. Otherwise this is not going to go over well at all.
So here’s what I need. Especially you guys up front because you know what’s coming. All right. I need a V, all right. All I need you to do is stomp and clap and I’m going to do the rest because I’ve had 5 flights today and I cannot do the regular, boring announcement again. Otherwise I am going to put myself to sleep. So, you guys with me? All right. Stomp, clap. Stomp, clap. Stomp, clap. Stay on beat there. There you go. Keep that going.
This is Flight 372 on S-W-A.
The flight attendants are for serving you today.
Theresa in the middle, Dagan in the back,
My name is David and I’m here to tell you that
Shortly after takeoff, first this,
Soft drinks and coffee to quench your thirst.
But if you want another kind of drink then just holler.
Alcoholic beverages will be $4.
If a Monster energy drink is your plan
that will be $3 and you get the whole can.
We won’t take your cash, you got to pay with plastic.
If you have a coupon then that’s fantastic.
We know you’re ready to get to new places.
Open up the bins put away your suitcases,
Carry-on items go under the seats.
If you don’t want to use a bin, you have room by your feet.
If you have a seat in a row by the exit,
We’re going to talk to you so you might as well expect it.
You’ve got to help us outin case we need you.
If you don’t follow, then we’re gonna re-seat you.
Before we leave our advice is
Put away electronic devices.
Fasten your seatbelts then put your trays up.
Press the button to make the seatback raise up.
Sit back, relax, have a good time.
It’s all about y’all so I’m done with the rhyme.
Thank you for the fact that I wasn’t ignored. This is Southwest Airlines. Welcome aboard. (Clapping) Thank you very much for my beat-I appreciate that.
Greg: You will not get that on United Airlines, I guarantee you. Do you reckon that’s in the manual? Do you reckon he memorized that from the manual? I don’t think so. Do you think that Southwest Airlines says, ok from now on everyone’s gonna do a rap song? I don’t think so. Do you think that guy is engaged? Why do you think he’s engaged?
Participant: Passion?
Greg: He’s passionate, yeah. Was that creative? Who do you think wrote that rap son?
Participant: Himself?
Greg: He did right? Yes. He sat down and he thought that up. And does it take a bit of guts to get up in front of people and do that? Yeah. You have to have self-esteem. You have to have confidence to do that. Would we say the guy is engaged? Yes we would. So we would have to think of this as a great example. I’m not saying that I’m going to see my team at Dale Carnegie doing a rap thing in the future. I can’t see that in my future. Probably not in your future either. But the point is, if we want creativity, if we want innovation, there’s got to be an environment to encourage that. If there was a senior executive of Southwest Airlines on that flight and he heard that song. And he said, rap song? What? That’s the end of it right? That’s where the creativity is going to die right there. But in this company’s case it’s the other way around. They’re encouraging it. So it might be an extreme example. But it still says something about the capacity to tap in to the power in creativity of people in your teams.
So today, this is what we are going to do with our objectives. We are going to redefine employee engagement from the employee perspective. Now this is a very key word - the employee perspective. You know often in companies we have the management perspective. We have the financial perspective. We have the process perspective. We have the compliance perspective. What about the employee perspective? So we’re looking at engagement. We are going to start looking at this from the employee perspective, a different starting point perhaps, than normal. Have a look at your own ideas about what is employee engagement? What does that actually mean? I’m sure all of us would have our own individual opinions and they may be quite various from what we think that constitutes. Let’s start with ourselves. If you can’t understand yourself, it’s very hard to know what you are going to do with your team in terms of getting their engagement. Then we are going to try to look at what’s the relationship between engagement and team success. Then will look at some techniques at getting it.
Treat employees as valuable people with skills, rather than as people with valuable skills. Let me just say that again slowly. So we are sort of switching ideas with you, right? Treat or think of employees as valuable people with skills, rather than as people with valuable skills. See the difference? That’s a bit of a semantic difference in English. Just a different way of looking at our teams. We see them as valuable people and skills are part of the functionality of how they work. Rather than they are just a human asset. I love that term. Our human assets. As opposed to our laptops or our desks or something, our other assets. This is taking a different view. So we will now have a bit of a think about what an engaged employee looks like. I’m going to ask if you can find a pair or three people. Just where you are sitting. Just look for people around you. Have a little bit of a discussion together for a few minutes on what, if we were looking for someone who is engaged, what would that person be doing? What would they be saying? What would they look like? How do we identify amongst a huge range of individuals who is an engaged employee. How do you spot the ones who are engaged? What are you looking for? So please find someone to work with in pairs or threes and have a discussion about what that would look like?
(Talking)
Engagement definition? Anyone want to give me some ideas? How do I spot it? I’m on the hunt for an engaged employee. What am I looking for?
Participant: Do more than their position.
Greg: OK. They do more than their position. Yeah. What else?
Participant: ownership and initiative.
Greg: they have ownership and initiative. That’s great. What else?
Participant: They are coming up with fresh ideas.
Greg: coming up with fresh ideas. Great. What else?
Participant: smiling and having fun.
Greg: smiling and having fun. They look like they are happy, right? Yeah. That’s important. That’s a good one. What else? Ok. So they are able to bring other people with them. So their enthusiasm becomes infective with other people. What else? Initiative in taking conversations. Maybe raising ideas, raising points? Maybe questioning the system’s processes? Looking to improve. What else?
Participant: They feel they are rewarded in what they are doing.
Greg: Ah. How do they feel rewarded do you think? I get a salary. (Laughter)
Participant: They feel recognized.
Greg: They feel recognized. Ah, ok. So it’s not just money is it? It’s recognition. That’s a bit of a sore point, isn’t it?
Participant: They are looking for ways of being important. It goes beyond productivity. They are looking for some way they can find value in their contribution. It’s not just productivity or innovation so much. It’s just getting involved.
Greg: They want to get involved. They want to have more say in the direction of the organization. They want to have more responsibility for the success of the organization. They want to have more control of their work life. Now all of these things. We did a survey of engagement and these are some of the results that came up. This is done in America. Fully engaged came up as 29% bythe survey. Partially engaged is 45% and disengaged is 26%. How does that compare? Asimilar result from the Gallup Organization compared the same fully engaged, partially engaged, and disengaged in America. Their results are similar to ours – 29%, 54% and 17%. And Japan is interesting - 7% were fully engaged, 68% partially and 25 %, one in four, are actually disengaged. Then we did a little bit more comparison. This is the Dale Carnegie one-day extension and then the Gallup ones are on the right. Also Westing-Wright in the States also did some work on engagement as well. Their numbers again varied a little bit, but not that much. But the Gallup numbers still get us.
Participant: Mr. Story may I possibly ask one question?
Greg: Please.
Participant: Engagement. When we are talking about this. There these kind of feelings that you really cannot translate into Japanese? Engagement and….
Greg: That is a great point. We struggled, you know. Like when I said to do this engagement seminar, right? Well there’s katakana, but then it becomes meaningless. You are right it is a very difficult word to translate into Japanese. And believe me we have struggled to come up with a word. We cannot find a word in Japanese apart from the katakana of engagement. So it comes around to concepts. It’s very agonizing. The Japanese word is just not there. It’s suitable. There are lots of close words. Do you have a great word for us? What is it?
Participant: No, I don’t have a great word. But I am wondering if it’s about initiative? It’s like you were talking about them wanting more control in the organization. So what you are looking at is something that doesn’t seem to be culturally acceptable.
Greg: So taking initiative, taking responsibility is not culturally acceptable so there’s no word for it? That could be the case. We could not come up with a word, but we could come up with some ideas as you just did before about what it looks like. So even if there is no particular kanji that works for us. Just the katakana of engagement works, we can come up with some ideas around that.
I’ll show another one here which is Towers-Watson. They did a slightly different version: highly engaged, disengaged, unsupported at work, and detached. And so what they have talked about here is they’ve said if you are unsupported at work, you want to work harder but you are not given the tools, the resources or the support. So you have the desire but no one cares about you, basically. And this one, detached is, well you don’t have the desire. So when they looked at this split they came up with some interesting results between Japan and global in their comparison. So we see how things go there that there is some change. Now this is a definition that we came up with to try and explain what is employee engagement. Which comes back to your point about how do you get it into Japanese? We’ve basically given up trying to find a kanji for this so we are going to go for engagement in katakana. But let’s give it a meaning that’s relevant. This is the meaningwe’ve come up with – the emotional and intellectual commitment of employees to deliver higher performance. That’s our definition. On page 2 of your manuals, there’s a section there. Give it a go or just think about it - what’s your definition of engagement? Have a go at your definition. Have a think about that. We’ve got our definition. You might have a different take on it. Put down some ideas on what your opinion or personal definition of employee engagement. Ok, if you’ve got your definition down, please share it with the people you were working with before and get some feedback on how they looked at and how you’ve looked at it. Please share and just trade off your own definition. Please go ahead.
Normally you come to events and they say, turn your phone off, but we actually going to use your phones. Anyone packing their phone by chance. We’ve got a room full of iPhone holders. Turn it off. You can actually turn it off or we’re going to use our phones here to vote. It’s a polling question. So which of these do you think is going to have the greatest impact on employee engagement? So satisfaction with compensation and benefits; I get paid a big bonus, I’m motivated! Satisfaction with immediate manager; my boss is great! Support of work-life balance; hey I’ve got an aging parent; I’ve got kids, I’ve got things in my life outside work. Belief in senior leadership; these people are the captains of our ship - fortunately they’re good, they know where they are going. Opportunities for advancement; there is a career path for me in this company, I can see a future in this company. Pride in the organization; I am proud to hand out my business card with this company’s name on it. And finally, free popcorn! This is for Americans - free popcorn in the break room. If we were in Australia it would be free beer. (Laughter)
So what you can do, if you’ve got an app that allows you to take a photograph of that QR code there. If you haven’t, just punch that in to your browser. That’ll take you to a voting site.
(Talking)
Ok so we have 44 responses. The highest scoring one was number 6-pride in the organization. Second one was number 2-satisfaction with immediate management – 25%. And then we have 18%-opportunities for advancement. So that’s very interesting. (Talking)
What we found from our research, and it’s pretty close to what you’ve come up with, matches the Japanese. What we found is that these are the three drivers of engagement. And so we did this in the States. In fact we’ve completed the research for Japan. They are crunching the numbers in America right now. I’ll probably have the results in about two weeks’ time. I’ll be curious to see how that compares on the engagement you know not engaged, partially engaged scores. But interesting enough the Japanese group that did this, and yourselves too - very close in terms of those key indicators. We found these three drivers to be particularly important for engagement. Satisfaction with immediate manager, belief in the senior management, pride in the organization. And this satisfaction of the immediate manager is things around, you mentioned before, recognition. Recognition. How you feel you are being treated,you’re being valued. The belief in the senior leadership was, are the captains of this ship actually going in the right direction? Is this company going to be able to make the right decisions? Is senior leadership communicating to me where we are going with this or am I lost? I don’t know where are we going with this company?
We’ve got a client, where they are being bought and they don’t know by who and they are not quite sure when it is going to be completed. They’ve got a massive engagement problem. People are leaving. Good people are walking out the door because that company cannot provide any belief in senior leadership because they themselves do not know where they are going or what they are going to be doing. That may be an extreme case, but you may have the same problem - there is not enough clarity in the organization about where we are going with all this.
Defining pride in the organization. Right. So you feel some ownership. You feel you’ve got some say in where we are going. You feel invested with where we are going with this. So we found these three drivers to be particularly useful. And as I say, compared to your scores it’s pretty close. It’s not that far away, actually, when I look at it. The advancement one is about the only one that came up. So we think about that and well this is a good question. Why? Why is engagement important? You know these are drivers. At least three are very common. But what’s the importance of it? Also in our research, we found a few things. That engaged organizations out-perform by as much as 20%. They have better shareholder returns and they have lower turnover. Now very interestingly, we’ve been through quite a rough patch around the world, and America is no exception. Yet even despite that, retention is a core aspect in companies because the costs of replacing people are very high. The calculations are that it’s going to take 1.5 of a person’s salary in recruiting cost to replace them. There is a number of costs associated with that. There’s also a big cost, I’m talking about 11 billion of turnover affecting the cost of business. So its big money. So these elements give us some satisfaction that engagement is worth it. And that it’s important. Think about Japan. I was at a function yesterday, and I have to check this number but, the person who was speaking said that the expectation was, Japan’s current 5% unemployment rate in the next few years would go down to close to 2%. That has some major ramifications for companies. If you’re going to have less people available to do the work because of the declining population, well, retention is going to be critical because you are going to be losing people to somebody else. And you are going to be losing potential ones that could be highly engaged because someone else is going to keep them in their company because they’re been able to tap that engagement.
So we’ve had a rough patch in Japan so maybe it hasn’t been an issue. But even you see this year with university graduates for the first time in a long time they started to gain jobs relatively easily after graduation. It’s really a lucky draw in Japan when you graduate as to how easy it is to get a job afterwards. It’s been all up and down. We are now getting back to a stage where it looks like there’s more competition for graduates. So that will have a ramification in companies, particularly around retention. So we need to look at these things and think about where we are going to go with that.
So you know it’s critical. What does it mean though? In fact what you said before there is no Japanese word for engagement, right? This is a struggle. Well maybe we don’t have a word for it apart from katakana-ized version in English. But these are some things that we can see that actually tell us what it means. If they are fully engaged, they stay. They stay longer. They have built up a lot of information. They know the processes. They know the clients. They know the system. They’re very important pillars of your organization. As people come in and go out, they stay and they become the pull, the glue. They contribute to the bottom line because they are working well, they are working effectively. And they commit to productivity and quality.
Now Japan, especially in a white collar field is often criticized for low productivity. White collar workers in Japan generally have low productivity. You’ll go to a Japanese factory, a well-run factory, trust me they are working hard. They are working fast. But we don’t see that same degree of productivity, so easily, in white collar work. Also quality. As we get in a more competitive environment, being able to secure the quality of your brand, quality of your sales or product, becomes more and more important. So you want people who are fully engaged to have those attributes.
What’s the difference between those who are partially engaged? Well, they concentrate on tasks, not outcomes. Has anyone worked in a Japanese company where people are still there at 10 o’clock at night? Are you one of them? And have you noticed that people are hanging around waiting for the kacho or bucho to go home? Seen that. Seen plenty of that, right? So they could go home earlier, they could have a much more productive work life. It’s a very low threshold over a long period of time. And that’s where the problem comes in terms of they are worried about the task, they are not so much worried about what am I producing. What’s the quality of what I am doing? I’m diligent. I’m loyal. I turn up. I’m radial. I don’t do much, I don’t produce much. But I’m loyal. Well that’s what you are getting with partially engaged. If you are happy with that, stick with that. But if your competitors get the completely engaged people who are actually getting outputs, we are going to have a big problem very shortly. And they want to be told what to do. This is very interesting.
We often have this discussion around a group, a tribe of Japanese people, who don’t want to think for themselves and they are happy to be told what to do. Now some people have that view, I don’t necessarily have that view, but that is often a view that is given to me. That’s why Japan is different. Oh that’s right, tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I don’t have to think. That maybe the case. That might not be the case. I am sure that if we get an engaged group in front of us who wants to think. Your point beforeabout thinking deeply. Where are we going with this? Where can I make a difference? How can I contribute? How can I take us to a more competitive level? There is a certain degree of engagement there that you’re not getting out of this group. They do it and they get paid and they go home. Now this is an American set up. But you can understand, a lot of people turn up in this country to get paid, work hard, diligent and go home. I mean this is the only country in the world where people stand on the street, in winter when it’s freezing cold and rainy, handing out tissue packs. If that was Australia, the whole boxes would be in the dump or somewhere, you know. (Laughter) They’d be down the pub with a nice rum or whiskey or something warming up. And here in Japan, very diligent you know. They turn up, they get paid. But we are talking about something beyond that. This is like a minimum. I’ll tell you something that’s partially engaged.
Now, we’ve got the disengaged. So in this group, well, sow seeds of negativity. This is the,“everything is wrong with this business, this industry, with this company, this section, the people in it, the boss”. Whiners, complainers. The world is dark and gloomy; the glass is only half full. I’m not happy and I’m going to spread my unhappiness as far and as wide as I can. And then you’ve got sabotage, maybe sabotage by non-active involvement. What happens to that first group, over time though, they are highly engaged, they want this organization to do well. They see the direction it should go. They think the senior manager is not going the right direction. They are doing their best to correct it, and they’re ignored. What happens? How long can they sustain that do you think? What happens after all their good ideas are dismissed, not recognized, ignored? They’re doing their best. They’re sincere. But they are not appreciated. How long does that last? They’ll go somewhere else, right? They’re part of your retention problem. You don’t want to lose those people because maybe senior management is not transparent enough. Maybe your management system is not inclusive enough. And the second one about,“these are productive people”. They could be in transactional roles - a trader, for example. They’re making lots of money. They may not need to involve a lot of people. They can be producers themselves. Do you want that person in charge of other people? Why not? They’re productive, they’re producing. Do you want them in charge of others? Are they ever going to be in the leadership? Who do you want in the leadership? Maybe you want a different animal. Maybe you want a different person. So yes there maybe someone who is disengaged, they don’t care, but they are doing well. And there may be a role for those people. But they are not someone who’s going to build a good leadership team. They are probably not someone who is going to contribute in other areas of the business. And usually are they very cooperative with other parts of the company? In the silos of the companies, are they the kind of guy or gal who goes out and works with the others of other groups? Usually no, so there is a gap between the company direction and their personal belief and conviction. And why did that come up? Why did you get like that?
Participant: They weren’t involved in the decision-making.
Greg: They weren’t involved in the decision making. Was there good communication about the why? Now, I’m sure many of us are leaders and managers. We’re all busy people. Anyone get a lot of email? Anyone doing a lot of meetings? So often our communication gets truncated down to very short sound bites about what we have to do to execute. And sometimes the why may be lost or forgotten or not articulated. So you just get told what’s going to happen. You’re not actually told why that’s important. And so over time, when you have that type of management and you start to get a lack of communication around where we’re going or why we are doing it, and people just get told, here are the numbers, hit these number. So it could be that they don’t feel engaged because they don’t really feel part of it. They don’t understand the point and they have their own views. So yes it could be the cultural assassin, it could also be other things as well.
Last one is, express mistrust and animosity-that’s pretty harsh. But has anyone ever whinged about their boss to somebody else? Come on, put your hands up. (Laughter) Every single one of you have done that, come on. You are doing it now, come on. We all do that. So when we are disaffected we tend to spread the disaffection. We want some sympathy. We want someone to listen to us. People in our work circle understand best the frustration we are facing, the problems we are facing. So they’re the best audience. It’s no good going home to your husband or your wife or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your parents and whinging to them. They don’t get it. They’re too far removed. It’s much better to do it with people you work with. They understand. Yes you’re right. Yes I know what you mean. It’s a very good audience for that. So they can have a big impact on that.
What I would like to do now is think about people you know. It doesn’t have to be people you work with with necessarily. It could be your friends. It could be someone you worked with in the past. It could be someone now. It could be your boss. It could be a supporter. It could be a colleague. Who you would say, this person is fully engaged. And think about someone who is actually not engaged. And we’ll leave this one out for the moment because we’ll get these extremes. Someone you think, wow, this person really they’re signed on. And this person, wow, they’re signed off. So in your groups again. Have a discussion and think about people you know and then talk about what are the attributes that you’re seeing there that differentiates one from the other. Let’s go. (Talking)
If there is someone in the room and you want to use a code name that’s quite acceptable. If you don’t want to say that person’s name, you just want to reference someone, that’s fine. Who did we find in our experience that we thought was wow, really engaged? Come on, anybody? Anyone find anyone really engaged? Yeah? Ok, what was engaging about that person?
Participant: Well, the reason I thought they were fully engaged was they put all their effort into the job. They really made a big effort in terms of the quality and the relationship with the customer. It was a training manager actually. And they were consulted a lot about everything. By people above that level. And also, they were trusted. So that was my analysis of that.
Greg: Good. Ok. Anything else…? Does that mean that only one person in this entire crowd…?
Participant: I was describing an internal IT person in our organization. And obviously, our organization is primarily a sales organization. There’s a lot of people that are very motivated by various things. But this lady, I didn’t think that boss was particularly inspiring to generate motivation. But she was always really really responsive to any requests, always happy, smiling.
Greg: I’m sorry did you say this was an IT person? (Laughter)
Participant: Yeah. Unfortunately she’s no longer with our organization. But she was with us for a while. And I think she did contribute because she had a very speedy response, trying to help people. And the definition fit her…
Greg: Why did she leave?
Participant: I think personal, like family reason. But that was the reason she gave to us. Whether that was the real reason…
Greg: What a gem. Anyone find an IT person like that, grab them! We are talking rare. Rare, rare.
Let’s switch it now and this is the good part, right. We can all deal with the really bad disengaged people. Any examples of people you work with who are disengaged? So has some accountability but isn’t totally signed on. Could be between the partially engaged that they do their job. You know they do their job but they may be somewhere in between those somewhere. He lapses into areas of negativity, between doing what he is expected, or she is expected to do. These are broad definitions. What we are looking for here is trying to understand what is the difference between these? Now let’s try to understand ourselves a little bit. How about where we are going with this? And just before we get there, and this came up before about the other part about the ages. We found that in the research that clients who were facing us, the general public, the consumers, have the lowest engagement. So obviously dealing with people as clients-that’s the hard part of the job. And basically the first five years goes up and then starts to stagnate. They show some age brackets. So 50’s and up they’re sort of up. 30’s and up they’re strongly engaged. 30’s, 40’s, partially 50’s. Starts to taper off. And then finally enthusiasm equals extra effort, equals organization success. These are what the researched items come up. How about yourselves? In your manuals, you have on page 4 and 5 a little self-assessment. So have a bit of a think about yourself? So when you look at your own score, how do you react to that? Do you think that score is reflective? Do you think that’s accurate? Just in your groups have a quick discussion. Is that score accurate? Do you think actually I am more engaged or I am less engaged? And also, what does your level of engagement mean for your team? So have a look at the score that you’ve given yourself. Is that about right or not and then think about and discuss what does your level of personal engagement do in terms of impact on the team? Either the team that you are part of or the team that you are the leader of? Please have a discussion on that. (Talking)
Let’s think about leadership. In parts of leadership and engagement. I’ve got some nice quotes here for you. Some of you will know Charlie Ergen. He’s actually having a nice fight with Samsung at the moment over Sprint. He’s trying to buy it in the States. And he owns a company actually called Dish. Here’s a quote from Frontier magazine. “He’s a street fighter. Works 24/7. The meanest company in America. A former professional poker player strikes fear into employees and baffles rivals. Staff clock in with a fingerprint scanner, so HR knows if they are late.” Pick up a few ideas for the HR people who are in the room, right? “I don’t hold myself up as a great manager.” Nice work for Charlie. He’s a billionaire by the way. Multiple billionaire. He’s been very successful. He’s made a huge amount of money. But how do you reckon the engagement level is for his team?
How about this other one? Yannick Nézet-Séguin? I reckon Canadians have learned to recognize this Canadian conductor. “Playing through fear is absolutely against the spirit of music making.” He’s a conductor, right? He’s in charge. “It shuts down the emotion. As a conductor you encourage people to express themselves as they would wish.” The person’s perspective we talked about earlier. You have a power of persuasion. You need to be sincere, honest, well prepared. Your power is psychological. There’s an interesting contrast between two leaders. And I can tell you, I definitely don’t want to work for Charlie. This is probably easier to absorb as an individual. Charlie is very rich and successful but how do we feel ourselves when we’re on the receiving end? He’s an entrepreneur and he owns the company. So he’s…I don’t know Charlie but from what I read he sounds like a pretty tough guy to work with. And so, yes he’s been very successful over the, literally over the bodies of the people who probably work for him. If you are in the process of being one of those people to make Charlie successful…It’s like…I’ll say…Dillon, you come in early, you go home late. Work diligent. Actually work weekends. Put in a big effort. Make a lot of sales. Really hit the numbers. I’m going to have a big bonus. Is that motivating? Now for these guys. Charlie is making a lot of money. What about the people who are in the team? Are they making more money? I don’t know. So it depends on what you like. Yes some people will be successful regardless.
Steve Jobs is often held up as an example of a great American leader. But by all accounts, he was horrendous to work for. He was a brutal, vicious leader. And yet he was a great innovator. And he came up with new products which we are all using. So he’s a success. Now yes, there is always going to be outliers. Which one do you want to work for? It depends on who you want to work for. It depends how your people feel about working in your organization. There’s different ways to get motivation. The military. Fantastic. The military is fantastic about getting compliance. It’s a very strict will. It’s very hierarchical. It’s very set. It’s very clear with the rules. But when you have that kind of organization it will get you to a certain point. It depends on what you need. So I guess the answer here is what do you want? What’s your organization’s needs? If it is going to be very hierarchical, very high structured, is that going to work in the competitive business that you are in? I mean Charlie Ergen, as far as I understand, has been a tremendous deal-doer; he has made a lot of money through doing deals and people are being a means to that end. If you are one of those people, I wonder what the engagement scores look like at Dish?
Our research has highlighted something that is a bit different than what’s been common before. Most research on engagement is around the statistics of all, this is the engagement or this is the not engagement section or the partial engagement. It has tended not to look at what’s driving that. And this is where we started to look at the emotions behind engagement. And so exactly, Charlie Ergen, could not care less probably about the people. His emotional concept about people is probably close to zero. And there are lots of managers like that. What we found in the research, though, is that at this point in time, in this era that we are now in, that is changing. When I was growing up a leader had a very clear segregation between work and professional interests in a person. That person’s personal life was completely differentiated. They did not think that they could go into that person’s personal life because that was their life and this is just work. What the research has shown though is that people are changing, and what they want is to be valued. They want to feel valued. They want to feel valued and they want to feel appreciated and they want the bosses to have a bigger interest in their personal feelings, is what the research has shown. They want to feel that the boss cares about how they feel. They want to know the boss cares about their health. Which is maybe a bit different than before.
So when you lookat the survey, there are some interesting questions in here. There probably have not even been issues in the past. But in this modern day and age you know. My manager recognizes my contributions - not very common. I’m satisfied with the input into decisions - not so common. My manager is interested in me as a person - this is rather new. I mean we have not seen this in previous engagement studies. So we’ve looked at the driving emotions behind engagement. The sorts of things we’re encountering are that people have different expectations. And these other things too. Corporate philosophy reflects my values. My values and their values line up. That’s a bit different. My health and well-being are supported and encouraged. That’s also very new. In Japan, the statistics I read show that basically 10% of organizations have got people with severe depression. Severe depression. There’s another 20% on top of that with a mild degree of depression. Pretty big numbers in organizations. So the whole concept that I am the boss, and also here at work you are yourself and your private life– no contact is breaking down. And that is what we are doing here which we think is very interesting and very new -that people want to feel valued by their organization. This is a direct link to getting engagement. Whereas in the past maybe we didn’t think like that. This is where we see it coming out now. So when they feel valued it gives them confidence. It inspires them. They feel more enthusiastic. They feel more empowered. And the combination of all those things is going to lead us to a higher degree of engagement. So a good manager makes people feel valued. This leads to confidence, empowerment, enthusiasm and inspiration which in turn leads to engagement. We have not seen that connection but the research is now showing that. So this is something a little bit new for you. That you may not have thought about before. And a whole raft of things come back into leadership and management-how we interact with people. And that again is something I find very interesting. We combine that, the levels of engagement, disengaged here, partially engaged, fully engaged over there, and so you’ve got the esteemed employee feels today…the energized employee feels deeply involved. This is actually in the manual. The enthusiastic employee feels extremely enthusiastic. And then the person who is really engaged feels a sense of ownership and commitment to the return on investment. That’s at the highest level. So we put that baseand over-lay this with it being valued, having this confidence, inspired, enthusiastic, empowered. We see a big change in how we look at these in the past. This is on page 6 in you manuals. Page 6 and 7 and then again on page 8.
Put an X on where you think you are on the scale. Do you feel deeply involved? Do you feel extremely enthusiastic? Do you feel a sense of ownership, commitment? Where are you with an X? On one of those boxes. And a star against where your team is. How do you think you would rate your team on that scale? Are your team feeling a full sense of ownership and commitment? Are they extremely enthusiastic? Are they deeply involved? Do they feel valued? If they are not on any of those, that’s a different issue. But see, a star for where you think your team is and an X for where you think you are.
If emotions are leaning to higher engagement and if people need to feel valued, the trick of that. What does that mean for you as a leader or a manager or as an individual in an organization? Let’s have a little discussion. Give yourself a minute. Let’s get some feedback. So where did you place yourself? Where did you place your team? What other emotions do you think might be important operating here to get them to feel more engaged? Try that. (Talking)
What do you think about that? Is this relevant? Do you think this research is actually showing something that’s relevant? Is an emotional connection going to become more important for us to have an engaged people or not? What do you think?
Participant: Yes.
Greg: Why is that?
Participant: I think the link there, if you feel valued you will be engaged. It’s a step by step you’ve reached that…
Greg: So this logic works for you?
Participant: Very much.
Greg: You can see the flow there?
Participant: Absolutely.
Greg: Why would I feel valued? What would make me feel valued? What would trigger that?
Participant: Recognition?
Greg: Recognition, yeah. What else?
Participant: Validation.
Greg: Validation, yes. What else?
Participant: Self-confidence.
Greg: yes. What else?
Participant: Empowerment?
Greg: Empowerment? Yes.
Participant: Success.
Greg: Success, yes.
Participant: Comradery.
Greg: Comradery, yeah. Are there any other emotions, do you think, that might be relevant?
Participant: A deep sense of purpose.
Greg: A sense of purpose, yeah. A clear goal.
Participant: Respect.
Greg: Yeah. Respect.
Participant: Being trusted.
Greg: Ah yeah. Trust. How do we know those things? How do we know that we’re appreciated, respected, trusted? How do we know that?
Participant: Feedback?
Greg: Who do we get the feedback from?
Participant: Supervisors, bosses.
Greg: Immediate managers. Came up before, right? My relationship with my immediate manager. Becomes very critical at how I feel engaged. And I have confidence in the leadership of this organization. And I feel pride in my organization. These are driving my engagement. Now, flip it around. Do the people in your organization have pride? Do they feel the senior management know what they’re doing? Do they have a good relationship with their immediate manager? Does their immediate manager care about them? What people are saying is I am not a number. Famous, right? The famous movie. I am not a number, right? Remember that allusion to the prison. Got serious in the UK. I am not a number, I am a free man. Remember that movie that show? Ok. I am not a machine, I am not a number. I am not an asset. I am an individual. I want you to care how I feel. This is new. This is new. We didn’t have that before.
So things have moved, have changed. Now we get into a different base. What do we do as organizations to make sure that we are getting people engaged in that new environment? And so therefore all of those issues, those three issues, become those three critical drivers I mentioned before. Here’s some ideas that we’ve come up with. We’ve tried to combine our experience over the last 101 years of how to make people effective with each other with these ideas of power through the research. So if we talk about belief, and it’s actually in your manual, belief in the seeing the team. Well here are some factors. A list of the factors here that are critical to success. You talk about the immediate manager-what should they be doing?
You’ve all got a golden book. Now these are the 30 principles that Dale Carnegie came up with for effective human relations. And there are 30 stress management principles in the back of the book. And we took these and we’ve tried to go into an overlay with these issues around what would give people effective belief in senior management? Manager? Pride in your organization? Tried to do an overlay between them. So what I’d like you to do now is have a look at this list and think about whether these actually would make a difference? If your senior leadership asks for input. If they didn’t criticize people. Smile. Why would that be important? Respect. You mentioned respect before. Teamwork. Provide resources. Walks the talk. There’s consistency there. The immediate manager becomes interested. He asks questions, right? He’s a good listener. Empowers. Encourages. Supports decisions. Gives sincere appreciation. Shares personal success. All those things. Pride in the organization. So again, look at these and discuss whether these actually are going to work or not, and have effective engagement. So try that.
It’s a very simplistic thing to say that. I can say, “Be engaged! Come on, be engaged!” The Australian approach, yell louder. It doesn’t necessarily get you anywhere. So what actually would that culture be? You have to think about that. What is that culture? Where does it come back to? Is it the leadership? What the immediate managers are doing? Pride in organization? How do you build that? And then measure it.
So lots of us have engagement scores. I wonder if you go back and look at your engagement questionnaire how many emotional points are actually being asked in those questionnaires. Go back and have a look at it and see what’s being asked. It may be that same engagement survey is just being forever the same survey. It’s probably global. And I wonder if it’s now out of date. Be very interesting to go back and look at it and ask ourselves, are we actually asking the right questions? And then of course the action plan to address any areas of disengagement - all very obvious. Interesting hold me accountable for approving it. In a lot of organizations this doesn’t really happen. The engagement scores come out and they stay where they are. Nothing ever seems to happen. And often it’s not supported at any level. Just a lot of moaning about a lot of numbers. Doesn’t go anywhere. Then finally recognized for your progress. These are very simple steps. You know before, on page 11, have a look at two useful ideas not from today. Get those down and then we’ll share them.
Interesting point - if you believe in the trigger, for a lot of these things to happen that a lot of employees feel value? If that is your starting point, if you don’t have that, then the other parts don’t flow. What makes people feel valued? There’s a whole raft of things that it comes back to: the immediate supervisor, belief in the direction of organization, senior leadership, and also pride in the organization, impact on how these pieces come together. We came back to this definition that we had – emotional. This is very new this emotional context is a new piece of research. An intellectual commitment to employees to deliver.
You have been a very energized two hours and I think that we had some great discussions. We had some great points. I look to see you at the next workshop or even better at a Dale Carnegie course. Thank you very much, thank you. (Applause)
Closing: Thank you for joining THE Leadership Japan podcast. Remember to access your Dale Carnegie training, free white papers, guidebooks, training videos, blogs, course information, plus everything else, then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.lause)
Closing: Thank you for joining THE Leadership Japan podcast. Remember to access your Dale Carnegie training, free white papers, guidebooks, training videos, blogs, course information, plus everything else, then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.
