Welcome back. Alright, let's, let's talk about your
answers in the following way. What does the research tell us?
What do employees want? In my hypothesis, part of your answer in
the previous workshop related to your direct boss, how you're treated by your
direct boss or your manager. And if you're the entrepreneur in a small
business, it's how you treat your people. And what we know is, good intentions are
not enough. It's behavior.
Employees want to be listened to. Do you truly listen to an employee when
they have an idea? If an employee has an idea, do you say yes
but, or yes, but I tried this, or yes, but that won't work.
What does the response yes, but say to somebody?
It's a put down. Yes but you're wrong.
Yes but I know how to do it. Yes but I'm smarter than you.
Alright, yes but I thought about that long before you even woke up this morning,
okay. Instead of saying yes but, try yes and,
and have a short conversation. True story.
I have two very large public companies that come here to Darden and I teach their
managers and leaders in, in an exec education course.
And I was teaching this point, and we sent them away for three months to basically
try and practice some things. And what's, and these companies pay a lot
of money to Darden, okay. And what's so fascinating, is that every
time these companies, the leaders and managers come back and you ask them,
what's the number one thing that you did, which changed the environment, in your
team or in your group. And it was, I started not saying yes, but
and I started counting everyday the times I said yes and, and the more I said yes
and, instead of yes but, the better my employees were engaged, the happier they
were, the better ideas we got, the more collaboration.
People seemed to like it better. It works.
Employees want to have some input into how they do their jobs.
Everybody wants to sort of have some control over their destiny.
Okay, and if you think about it everyone's trying, to do the same thing.
To live a meaningful life, to make a difference.
Everyone's trying for their families and their children, to provide them more
opportunities and a better life than the parent had.
Alright? Everybody's seeking the same thing.
This is, they have a lot at stake. So, why not ask them a question?
Here's the test Jane. Here's the problem we're trying to solve.
How do you think we should do it? And have a conversation because if people
are part of the solution, they own the solution.
If people are given the solution and say do it this way, they don't own it, you
don't get to same type of buy in. They don't feel the same type of
ownership. They don't feel like they got some control
over their own destiny. They're not being listened to, okay?
And I know in managing a business, I been there.
It's chaotic, it's hectic, stuff is happening real fast.
But be in the moment and listen. And if you don't have the time to talk
right now, you can say Jim, I hear you. We got to get this done right now, we got
to put out this fire. Let's talk about it this afternoon or
let's talk about it during lunch or let's, we get a, we get a coffee.
And then actually talk about it because when you listen to people, you're saying,
I care. I care.
And if you look at high performance teams in different environments, teams where
people, if they make mistakes, people die. All right.
People who work in nuclear reactor plants, people who work on, aircraft carriers,
okay, people in the military, they will tell you that they do what they do and try
to do it very well because also. It's not only meaningful, but, but, to be
part of the team. To take care of their teammates in tough
situations. It's the same thing in a business.
We talked about this, caring about them as people.
People want to grow and advance. People want to be all they can be.
You saw this in the trilogy, our services case, where Randall, Randy Beauford said,
the most important money we can spend is to invest in developing our people,
nothing says Better that I care about you if I am willing to invest money and get
you training or give you training, give you new skills.
So what are you doing with your, and a small business can do this.
You can have 15 minute training session each morning before the business opens.
You can, remember. Each morning, they're called huddles.
Many of the small businesses that have been very successful and grown that I
studied have huddles, every day, either in the morning or the afternoon, and some
have both. 15 Minutes is all it takes, to teach, to
train, to raise new issues. Alright?
To talk about values, to talk about why we're doing this, because see this is,
this whole thing about employee engagement, it's not a checklist and you
do it once, And I got it and it stays? No.
You gotta work on it every day. Every day.
And then it becomes second nature to you, and because every day people can learn and
need that positive Reinforcement, there you go, whoops.
Employees want frequent and fair feedback, everybody wants to know how I'm doing?
What can I do better? I'm a lot older than almost everybody
Watching this. And I can tell you something that I
learned years and years ago, when I was out there in the business world.
I went to my boss, and this is as I went up in the organization, it became every
quarter. I went every quarter to my boss.
And I said, as an example, Tom, what am I doing that I shouldn't be doing?
What am I not doing that you want me to be doing?
And what can I do to add more value to this organization?
I was saying give me feedback! Give me feedback!
I want to know what I'm doing wrong because I want to work on it.
And doing wrong could be things that I am actively doing or it can be, 'I'm not
doing some things that you want to do. Well think about that with your employees.
They want feedback because they want the chance, the opportunity, to be better.
They don't want surprises, OK? They want to know if they're not doing it
right. They want a fair chance to learn to do it.
And then they will understand if they can't do it And it consistently can't do
it, you've got to find somebody that will. And in those cases, okay, and I've been
involved in firing employees, lots of employees.
It's never easy. But I've never had an employee, look me in
the eye and say You didn't treat me fairly.
You didn't give me a chance. I didn't know about that.
You didn't give me the opportunity to have training to improvement.
In fact, many of the have said, you gave me a fair chance.
This is just not the right fit is it? That's where you want to be.
Employees want to be treated with respect, and it all comes back to care, it all
comes back. I hope you can figure out what that is,
okay, to heart. Great businesses have a heart and they
have a soul. Great businesses have entrepreneurs that
live that heart, that live that soul, and that's what I hope you see.
In this course, in the cases, Okay. Across the weeks.
And you see different styles. And different ways of doing it.
We talked a lot about leadership. And I want to delve into it for a little
bit. Thousands of books written on leadership I
have written one alright, but you know what many things in business it really is
pretty simple and I have come to believe alright, after forrty years, over forty
ears of experience that there is four fundamental.
Leadership principles. The Golden Rule, do unto others as you
would like them to do unto you. Take care of your people, lead by example
and always do what's right. To take care of your people.
This is important: I worked with a company that was a financial service company in
the southeast part of the United States; got to know the CEO really well; did a
case on his company in one of my books; wonderful man And we were together one day
and he said, he shared a story with me and he said, Ed, I hired this big consulting
firm. I won't use the name.
And he says, and I paid them millions of dollars, millions of dollars and I wanted
them to, and the question that I had for them was What's the key thing I need to do
to have a highly engaged, high-performance workforce?
And I said, yeah. His name was Jimmy.
What'd they say, Jimmy? And he leaned over the table to me like
this and he said, Ed. I paid millions of dollars for them to
tell me to take care of my people. But that's the key thing.
Take care of your people and how do you do that?
You treat em, the right way. You pay them fairly.
You give them opportunities to advance, to grow, to be all they can be.
And you make work fun, and you have lots of celebrations, lots of celebrations,
your going to have lots of gold stars, lots of gold stars, we talked about in
week one. About your second grade teacher, gold
star, emotional rewards, it could be small rewards.
Employee does a great job, maybe you give them a gift certificate to take their
family out for a pizza. Employees have been working long, long
hours? Maybe you send a gift home to a spouse and
children. Maybe sombody, you know small things.
Okay? With the Internet and with all of the new
technology, nothing says thank you more than a little handwritten note.
Few people do it, but when you do it has such impact.
Some has taken the time to write me a note saying thank you, wow.
How's that make you feel? Very good.
My, many leadership failures were failures of execution not failures of intention.
And I teach a course here that's basically good intentions are not enough.
It's behaviors. Now the reason leadership is so important.
Without leadership and treating employlees right in behaving, and you gotta get
microscopic folks. You gotta get microscopic.
All right. And a few tips on how to think about this.
Two concepts. Mental rehearsal and mental.
Replay. By mental rehearsal, okay.
Let me role play. I got a small business.
It doesn't matter the number of employees 7, 10, 20, 50.
On my commute in, my drive in, in the morning before I go in I think about it.
Okay? What are the problems, what are the areas
I want to focus on today? Now, that's going to bring me into contact
with what people? Am I going to have a talk with Jane?
Talk with Jim. Am I going to have a team meeting?
What do I want to accomplish in that meeting?
How am I going to have a positive impact in that meeting?
Okay? And I sort of rehearse.
If I got to have a difficult conversation, I rehearse.
Jim, we got to raise the performance. Here's the challenge, here's the issue and
you rehearse. What do I say if Jim says, well it's not
me? What do I say if Jim says, wait a minute,
I'm doing it like you told me last time? What do I, I rehearse in my mind, then I
go in and I go through my day. And guess what I need to do on my way
home. I need to replay like a film, okay.
You like sports events, the replay button. I got to press the replay button and say,
okay how did the meeting with Jane go this morning.
And I sort of replay it. And I say, did I have a positive impact?
What could I have done better? Did I do anything bad?
Did I do anything I need to go apologize for?
You start doing that every day and it becomes second nature.
Guess what? You become a better leader.
You become a better manager. You're more engaging.
Your people are more engaged. It works.
It works. Now, as your company grows, and you've got
managers managing employees Guess what? Your managers are going to treat their
employees like you treat the managers. It's what I call the domino effect.
Sorry, used the wrong end. The domino effect of leadership.
They just start falling like dominoes. How you behave.
How you behave with your managers, your managers think that's how they should
behave with their employees. Why?
'Cause you're the leader. You know what's right.
You're the boss. It has to be okay.
You're the owner. And that's how bad behaviors can take over
an organization. People think it's okay to treat other
people like they're treated by their boss. And, you know, the research shows,
language is important but over 80% of the message that you give somebody Is from
body language being told. Body language.
Tone. How many of you have a significant other,
a friend say, oh, tone. Tone.
My little seven year old granddaughter last time she came to visit.
Wasn't eating her vegetables. So, you know all grandparents have
nicknames, mine's Papi. Papi says to little Caroline.
Caroline, you don't eat your vegetables, no desert.
Little Caroline says, Papi, tone please tone.
She's right, because tone sends the message and tones, shuts people down, they
get scared. Because how we treat people, ladies and
gentlemen, how we talk to em, our body language, it all send messages and those
messages, basically have an emotional impact.
And when that emotional impact is negative, people do not process or listen
well or make good judgments and they're not creative.
Now, I'm not saying to be a wallflower. I'm not saying that everything is good all
the time. But you can make points, you can teach,
you can correct, you can give feedback, you can have high standards and deliver
those messages in a way that they will be actually received, and you see behavior
changes. It's an amazing thing in today's world.
Let me, let me, let me bend down here and just get my phone as an example.
How many times have you, in your life been talking to somebody or something and
somebody does this or, they're talking to you and they say, what message is that
sending to somebody? What message?
You just no matter what your words, you just said, this is more important than
you. Now, let me read you a message now you're
an entrepreneur that says, the plant is on fire, need your help.
Well, you do want to interrupt the conversation, but you say, excuse me,
we've got an emergency at the plant and I've got to leave.
You put it in perspective. Okay.
So, it's the little things. Not good.
The power of a smile. The power of a smile, the power of good to
see you, okay? The power of nice to have you here all
comes to play. Body language and tone, let's stop here.
On your piece of paper take a minute or two, two, three things you want to think
about two, three things you want to start self grading yourself off, is it maneuver
hersing, is it maneuver replay, is it[UNKNOWN], is it body language, is it
listening Is it sending messages positively?
What is it? Because, this applies if you're an
employee, if you're a student, if you're a partner, it applies because if you're a
human being, 'cause we're talking about how to be effective.
How to be effective with other people, how to be a good teammate, how to be a good
collaborator, how to engage people and inspire people, how to be a positive force
in a business and in your life. Take a minute or two.
