Thank you for joining today’s Accelerate Your Performance Podcast. And thank you for having a desire to be your best at work and helping your organization achieve success. The podcast focuses on tactical actions to improve workplace culture and these tactics align to our Nine Principles® for Organizational Excellence.
Today, we’ll focus on “losing your way.”
Engaged employees are enthusiastic about their work, committed to doing a good job, committed to co-workers, and committed to helping the organization achieve positive results.
Disengaged employees usually come to work and will do the minimum required and tend to be looking to leave for a better option.
When we look at the latest Gallup survey research on Employee Engagement there is good news and bad news.
Good news: The percentage of engaged workers in the U.S. is as high as it’s ever been since Gallup started reporting this national figure in 2000.
Bad news: A little over ½ of our workers perceive they are “not engaged” with 13% reporting they are actively disengaged.
Why does this matter? Gallup also reports that organizations with higher employee engagement perform at higher levels. The organizations achieve higher profitability, better customer engagement, and better employee retention.
Most important, as leaders, we focus on employees because it’s the right thing to do.
Today, I hope to reinforce why attending to employees and checking our organizational engagement levels are important.
All of us have lost our way at some time or another. We were really excited or passionate about something, and then slowly felt the excitement dwindle until one day it was gone.
My childhood tennis story.
· Loved it
· Played with a toy my parents bought for me after hitting the tennis ball against the brick that at times hit the windows
· Loved Goolagong – one handed back hand
· Spent my allowance on buying tennis magazines to learn
· Tried out for the high school team – had coaches so I longed for the chance to get into the practice action when the coach came to practice
· FSU – running and watching team – wish it could be me
· In my 20s played tournaments – really good player story
· Last time I played tennis as a hobby. I started learning to play golf to replace tennis
What’s the point of this story? I was not able to nurture my passion without a coach, somebody to help me get better, encourage me when I needed it, change my approach to get positive results, and recognize me when being on target.
I wonder if we could shift the engaged worker results from 50% to that 100% mark if we as leaders were better coaches with our teams? I think we could.
What are three things we could start doing tomorrow to make this shift?
1. Know what our employees are passionate about.
2. Relate their passion to something they do at work.
3. If they seem to be lost, let them know we care, and ask them what they think the two of us could do together to get them back on track.
Tag office worker story. Let’s call her Lacy.
Describe Lacy - Friendly, smiles and has happy stickers around her cubicle.
Positivity for Lacy is meaningful. She made me smile and I felt open to engage in a conversation with her. Even while she was doing something on the computer to complete my paperwork, I wanted to stay engaged. In fact, I felt guilty if I started to look at my cell phone. I felt it would have been disrespectful to her.
The tag conversation about me breaking the law.
If I were Lacy’s leader, I would know Lacy and show her and others I know that positivity is critical to her.
Then, I would make sure her professional development and employee conversations connected to her passion. I would reinforce how important her positivity is to the organization, the customers and to her co-workers.
Finally, if Lacy happened to come to work with a less than positive approach in a consistent way, I would show care and concern and ask what I could do to help her and what would be helpful to her at work to keep her positive spirit and passion.
Why? Because Lacy is a model to her co-workers and provides great customer service. Think about this. Lacy, like many of our employees, comes to work doing the same job each day. It would be easy for her to lose her way doing the same thing day in and day out. What makes Lacy happy is connecting with people and – that she helps others. WOW! I would take a Lacy any day at work. Wouldn’t you?
How many Lacys lose their way when they don’t have a good coach? – someone to care about them, recognize what they’re passionate about, and change things up every now and then.
Years ago, I needed that one person to share my passion for tennis with me. When it didn’t occur, I lost my passion and left one sport for another, similar to the way people change from one job to another.
This week let’s do two things to keep ourselves and others from losing our way.
· First, do you have a story like my tennis story? Re-tell it to yourself and recall how it made you feel. Or, maybe you are in a job position where you are losing your way. Ask why to know how to keep from getting lost.
· Second, find an employee on your team that may have lost his or her passion.
o Let the employee know that what he is passionate about is important and why.
o Let him know how his passion connects to the work.
o Ask how you can help support him. Ask him, how can I be helpful to you? Let him know that what he cares about matters at work.
I promise that these simple acts will make a difference in the lives of others. You could be the catalyst that keeps people from losing their way. Be that leader; Be that co-worker.
Thank you for tuning in to Accelerate Your Performance. I look forward to connecting with you on our next Podcast where we will focus on “reigniting your passion.” Have a great week.