‘The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.’ George Bernard Shaw.

This remains one of my favourite, and most used quotes because it strikes at the heart of so many issues. The latest CIPD Employee Outlook Survey provides startling evidence to the truth of the quote. It seems that what leaders and managers think they are saying, and what their staff think they are receiving are quite different. This has resulted in 72% of employees reporting a lack of leadership and management skills in their organisation.

Employee engagement is a term that is widely used at the moment. Its contribution to bottom line business performance is well documented, and a lot of leadership and management time and effort appear to be focusing on this, but is it really just another management fad? Now I am not for one moment wishing to suggest that employee engagement is not important. My concern is that the fads come and go. When an issue is in vogue and high profile everyone talks about it and makes appropriate noises about their part in it. Actions are taken to show that they are onboard; but is that another example of the reality gap at work?

How big is your reality gap?

Humans have a great tendency to over complicate things. It makes us feel clever and important. At the core of most things lie some simple truths. In the case of business success it is that successful and sustainable businesses recognise the need for good leadership and management skills, and are prepared to invest in developing those skills. Without those skills in place the other initiatives taking place in the business are doomed to be mediocre at best.

Here are some examples from the CIPD survey that will come as no surprise to many employees, but will for many managers.

80% of managers thought their staff were satisfied whilst only 58% of staff agreed.

90% of managers said they sometimes or always coached their people whilst only 40% of them agreed.

These are two examples of ‘gaps’ that will potentially have a significant impact on a business and are likely to be quite common. Take the coaching example. I meet a great many managers who claim to use coaching as part of their management approach. When observed in a coaching role what frequently occurs is a style that masquerades as coaching, but is really a sophisticated form of telling people what to do. Often the employee sees the gap much more clearly than the manager.

For ideas on how you can plug the reality gap in your business:

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They say a cat has nine lives, but surely business professionals have many more. How else could you have suffered the infamous ‘death by power point’ so many times and yet still be around to read this? A great many presenters still insist on making two fundamental errors when preparing visuals for their presentations. The first is using power point as their autocue. I have written about this before and it is one of my most re-tweeted articles so clearly readers (audience members) relate to the boredom that typically results from this approach.

The second error is to design the power point (or other package) slides so that they can be given to your audience at the end of the presentation as a handout. Now there is nothing wrong with giving handouts to your audience. They can provide useful memory joggers, or the additional detail that supports the key concepts you were simply and clearly presenting.

Presentation Visuals: Less is more

We could debate the merits of using power point as the medium to design your handouts, but that is not really the point of this article.

If you decide to use power point, or some other package to provide visual aids for your presentation then make sure they are only visual aids. In other words, anything on your slides should be clearly supporting the messages you are providing verbally. If you then want to provide handouts: design those separately.

One way to reduce the risk of falling into the autocue or handout traps is to make your visuals one of the last things you prepare. Too many people use power point to prepare their whole presentation which significantly increases the risk of including all the detail of your thinking.

I really like Guy Kawasaki’s 10 . 20 . 30 rule for keeping your presentations simple.

-          No more than 10 slides

-          No longer than 20 minutes

-          Nothing less than 30 point font

It’s not always easy to achieve, but is a great rule of thumb.

In summary:

• Keep visuals clear and simple that simply support what you are saying
• Remember power point is not your autocue
• Remember presentation visuals and handouts have a different purpose
• Make your visuals one of the last things you prepare

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Innovation is essential for continued survival. We are told that globalised markets generate increased competition. There is pressure on every element of business: sales, costs, quality, productivity, service, talent management. This pressure, along with the widespread economic downturn has led to the return of the people or profit mentality. The notion that you can either be good to your people or drive profit, but you cannot have both.

Research into employee engagement has shown that this clearly is not the case. People are what make any business successful. The more engaged your people, the stronger the correlation to improved business performance in all key areas.

We are all creative; yet so many of us claim not to be. In the workplace, a great deal of the creativity gets miss-directed or lost.  The challenge is that much of the miss-directed creativity can actually prove a business burden rather than a benefit.

Release employee thinking

What is creativity?

Simply, it is thinking beyond current boundaries; often referred to as ‘out of the box thinking’

From a creative perspective, the further away from the boundaries the idea is; the better. Einstein once said ‘if an idea is at first not absurd, there is no hope for it’.

Of course businesses are rarely looking for creativity for creativity’s sake. What they are really seeking is innovation.

What is innovation?

Innovation is creativity that adds value.  For a business, that value is typically aligned to the strategic plan.

How does employee creativity get miss-directed?

Well, in the quest for improved performance and profitability, we push our people hard and seek to control through simply telling them what to do. We send the message that coming up with ideas is clearly the task of senior management. But, have you ever noticed just how creative people get when faced with something they don’t like, or disagree with? In my experience, people are incredibly creative and resourceful in getting round a problem or situation they don’t want to deal with. Imagine harnessing that creative energy.

An engaged employee is far more likely to focus that creative energy into solving problems rather than avoiding them. Given the right tools and support, that can add tremendous value to your business.

For ideas on how you can build higher levels of employee engagement in your business:

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Ask most managers to describe their day job and you will get some very interesting responses. Few will directly mention performance management. Most will start to deliver a list of tasks that are something akin to a job description.

Performance management is misunderstood by many managers. Sometimes it is talked about in hushed tones and has a pretty negative connotation. If you are being ‘performance managed’ things are not going well and your days are numbered. It is even used as a threat.

In other instances performance management is thought of as the annual or semi annual process where you are given your new objectives for the following period. If you are lucky, there will be some form of brief discussion about the previous objectives. On a really good day the word development might crop up. At the end of this process the forms are returned to HR, you get on with your day job and the next time this session is mentioned is at the next review. There lies the real problem. Many managers see performance management as being owned by HR and so see it simply as a task that gets added to their list, ticked off and forgotten.

What makes it the day job?

The engaging manager

The minute you have responsibility for other people, and therefore delivering results through other people, managing performance is the fundamental reason your job exists. It is your purpose and so it really makes a lot of sense to be working on aspects of performance management every day. It is critical. The Sunday Times recently published the 2012 Best Companies to Work For list and one of the elements that correlated most strongly with the successful businesses was ‘having confidence in the leadership skills of your manager’. Managers have the potential to add massive value when they get the balance right.

What does this mean for managers?

Managers need to provide:

FOCUS

• Clear goals and strategy
• Clear and consistent priorities
• Clear performance measurement
• Clear motivations

 FEEDBACK

• Constantly seeking high quality performance feedback
• Constantly giving high quality performance feedback

 FLEXIBILITY

• Responding to changes that impact goals or strategy
• Responding to feedback

• Behavioural flexibility to communicate with, motivate and inspire people to succeed

 Why does it matter?

Consistently, studies and surveys on employee engagement highlight the critical role management and leadership approaches in day to day activity play in having an engaged workforce. Businesses with high levels of engagement deliver improved performance. According to the latest Gallup survey those improvements include:

Which of these would help your business the most?

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Someone once said that the definition of insanity is consistently doing the same things whilst expecting a different result. So very true we say, and then continue doing our own version of the same things. Managers continue to manage in the same old ways and then expect employee engagement levels to rise. Now that is insanity.

The Sunday Times has published the results of its 2012 100 best companies to work for survey. A total of 1082 companies and over 231,000 employees took part.  There are some great companies doing really good things and congratulations to all the winners.

Everybody benefits

There is no single formula to guarantee a highly engaged workforce, but let’s face it, with an 11% engaged employees national average there is still a lot of work to be done. What was striking about the findings was the critical part leadership and management consistently played in the most engaged companies. This is really no surprise.

In my experience many businesses and their managers still tend to follow the old command and control management practices. In a raw and perhaps untrained state, managers issue instructions and detailed task lists that they expect to be carried out. After some development managers become more sophisticated at telling, trying very hard to make it appear to be asking or consulting. They even come to believe that is what they are doing. In reality they are still seeking to control. A manager is a key influencer in an employee’s working life and as in all things; we tend to judge people by their behaviour rather than their intention. However it is dressed up, control still feels like control.

Many businesses recognise that employee engagement is a key business issue with many real benefits on offer. Unfortunately, they fall into the trap of making little or no real change in their leadership and management approach. The rhetoric coming from the senior management of the business, which then cascades through the management structure, is very pro engagement. They make their ideal intentions very clear. However, as before, the employees will make their judgement on the actual behaviours they encounter day to day rather than top line management press releases.

There are far too many examples in the media of business leaders who have expressed great intentions of engaging their workforce and even their wider community who have then gone on to demonstrate high levels of  a short term personal gain focus above all else.

In theory engagement is simple – in order to encourage our people to engage, we have to be truly engaged ourselves; not just appearing to be.

Results from The Sunday Times 2012 best companies to work for survey demonstrate how businesses are tackling this challenge and provides some straight-forward advice on what employees believe separates those who succeed and those who struggle.

Having confidence in the leadership skills of your manager

Staff believing they have a positive future ahead of them

Having senior managers who listen rather than just tell people what to do

Not feeling the business takes advantage of them

Having faith in/being inspired by the leader of the business

Having senior managers who truly live the company values

Managers who support their team members and help them fulfil their potential

Having middle manager role models who care how satisfied team members are in their jobs

Treating everyone fairly

Loving the organisation and not wanting to leave for another job

The role of management is vital to getting the best out of people. In principle it appears simple, in reality it is a greater challenge, and the benefits are worth the effort.

How would your team rate you on the above criteria?

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Attitude is the key.

That’s it? Is it really that simple?  In essence, yes it is – but as I have said before simple does not mean easy.

You may have come across the phrase ‘attitude shapes behaviour’. In other words what you are thinking tends to have a direct impact on your behaviour. Your thoughts are reflected in the words you choose, your tone of voice, the variety in your vocal tone, your facial expressions, gestures and posture. A good attitude is the backbone of delivering customer satisfaction. The customer will be paying far more attention to these things than you might think, and a poor attitude will leak.

Here is a great example.

I had to make two financial transactions in the past week and each person I dealt with had a very different attitude. In the first instance I had managed to lock myself out of an account for a club I am treasurer of. Completely my fault, but when calling the customer helpline for assistance, I found myself getting increasingly frustrated by the hoops I was being asked to jump through in the name of security. Security is important, but not when it is so secure I can’t access my own account. The girl I was speaking to said all the things she was supposed to say. She was polite and walked me through the steps needed to get up and running. Yet, she also managed to sound completely disinterested in my plight, sounded bored and generally portrayed a very negative image of the company.

In contrast, my second transaction involved transferring some funds abroad. I had not used this account in some while and so had been locked out – this time by the company. The girl I spoke to could not have been more helpful. She also said all the right things. I again had to jump through all the security hoops and yet it seemed almost a pleasure to do so. The girl I was speaking to sounded very interested in my problem; she kept checking I was happy and whilst waiting for elements to process chatted and kept the conversation light. I was almost disappointed when all was complete and the call ended. A totally different experience from the first and I have little doubt that it was the attitude of each that made such a difference to me as the customer, and my perception of service and ultimately my customer satisfaction.

How to get double digit improvements in customer satisfaction.

Engaged people have a positive attitude and deliver improved business results

Studies linked to employee engagement have shown that businesses in the upper quartile of engagement levels see a 12% increase in customer satisfaction levels compared to those in the lower quartile of engagement. In general levels of engagement remain worryingly low. What does that do to service levels?

Engaged employees are much more likely to have a positive attitude towards customers and that builds customer satisfaction.

For ideas on how you can build higher levels of employee engagement and customer satisfaction in your business:

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Browsing through a number of blogs the other day, I came across a presentations based blog that was giving advice on choosing your presentation topic. Now this grabbed my attention. Not because of a catchy headline, or great picture; it grabbed my attention because I wasn’t sure how necessary the advice was.

In my experience, the great majority of presentations have a pre-determined presentation topic. You are presenting your findings from a research project you have undertaken; presenting the benefits of working with your business in a sales context; talking about specific friends and family at major events such as weddings, significant birthdays or retirements; you may be talking about a hobby or passion. Whichever way you look at it, I believe it is pretty rare to be asked to prepare and give a presentation to a group where you have a completely free hand on the presentation topic. You will normally know your subject well and deciding what to say, how to say it and keeping it simple will be the main challenges.

I also happen to believe that the presentation topic is not really that important. What I mean by this is that you can give a really good presentation on most topics providing you prepare well and use good presentation techniques. Of course, it will also depend on the context and the audience. I would not feel comfortable being asked to do a presentation on Government fiscal policy to an audience of senior economists. It would be hard for me to add any value for them, unless they wanted a layman’s impression or a more humorous take on the subject.

Choosing a presentation topic

If you do find yourself with a free hand, here are a few simple tips to help you choose your presentation topic.

• Determine the purpose of the presentation. Are you seeking to influence a decision, inform, persuade, entertain, demonstrate, or challenge?
• What key points are you wanting to make?
• How easy is it to gather data, stories and information on the topic?
• How could you grab audience attention?
• Is it something you are passionate or very interested in?

If you do get really stuck then you can do a demonstration type topic along the lines of ‘how to ……..’

Alternatively, you can give an informational presentation ‘Why I’m passionate about ………’

Generally, the topic is much less important than preparing well and knowing how to get your key messages received and understood.

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Linking the recent turmoil in Greece to employee engagement and leadership styles may seem a little farfetched at first. However, it does provide a thought provoking backdrop, albeit an exaggerated one, on how leadership style impacts employee engagement levels. It is very likely that the answers the Greek people gave for these 5 questions were very different when they joined the Eurozone, to the answers they would currently give.

Hopefully, you have not had to resort to using teargas on your people yet, and if you have, something’s gone very wrong, but reflecting on how your people would answer these questions is time well spent. Better still – ask them.

Engaged employees add value to your bottom line

People want to engage. They will constantly assess how engaged they feel (although they may label it differently) by either directly or indirectly asking themselves these simple questions:

 Do I fit?

Nobody likes to be the square peg in the round hole. People turn down job offers when they are not sure if the company is right for them, or their potential new manager made them uncomfortable in some way. Much like Greece, they may believe they fit at first, but things change and events happen. No prizes for guessing the current answer to this question.

 Am I clear on what’s expected of me?

Do I have clear objectives and do I know how my performance is being measured? Are those measures consistent and fair? Do I understand where I fit in the bigger picture? What sort of feedback do I receive on my performance and what opportunities do I get to give feedback to my managers and leaders, or does it feel like rioting is the only option?

 Do I feel supported?

The key word here is ‘feel’.  Not all actions taken by leaders, and claimed as support, are recognised as support by those on the receiving end. Too many leadership decisions are taken from a frame of self interest or self preservation. People tend to see through this very quickly. You may achieve some form of compliance, but are unlikely to have high levels of engagement.

 Do I feel valued?

How easy is it for me to contribute and are those contributions recognised and appreciated?  Am I happy to go the extra mile and proud of my work and the team/company I work for? When I speak, am I listened to?

 Am I inspired?

Do I look forward to going to work and have a spring in my step, excited about projects I am working on or simply keen to do my best each day. Am I constantly coming up with ideas to improve products and services or thinking of other ways to add value?

 Ask yourself these questions. You may be surprised at the answers you get.

Think about the answers people in your team would give. Consider asking them.

For ideas on how you can build higher levels of employee engagement in your business:

For help developing engaging managers

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When working with groups or individuals around the subject of leadership or leadership styles, it seems inevitable that I will explore the importance of values. Leadership is about influence and persuasion; and finding ways to inspire others to follow. Employee engagement is high on the corporate agenda at the moment and good leadership is an essential element in supporting engagement strategies. However, I find myself concerned that there is a growing disconnect between the espoused values of business leaders and actual expectations and behaviours.

Good leaders inspire followers

Business leaders have been in the news a lot recently: bankers over bonuses, Knighthoods being rescinded, high profile businesses collapsing due to mismanagement. There is public outcry about ‘fat cats’ and protests are growing about capitalist excesses.

Why the leadership concerns?

We live in an age of sound bites. The focus is on a short, snappy messages and the phrase ‘spin doctor’ has somehow developed an element of respectability. It seems to me that sticking to a message, until found out, is now a commonly used strategy.  We then move back to the next line until that is also breeched; then we edge back again – ‘I didn’t know anything about that’ to ‘I was not copied in on that’ to ‘I can’t remember doing that’ etc, etc. It is driven by self preservation.

Many business leaders are rewarded handsomely for short term performance and so, understandably, skew strategic decisions in favour of hitting agreed targets. The reward gap between those at the top of an organisation and its average employee has grown massively over recent years. It isn’t just business leaders. Politicians appear to work in similar ways saying what they think people want to hear and getting those quick sound bites out there. In the UK politicians have been up in arms about banker’s bonuses and strikes over employee benefit and pension reductions, yet they consistently vote themselves increases in allowances, salaries and pension payments. Let’s not even mention the expenses scandal (whoops! – I just have).

In NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) practitioners look for congruence between values, beliefs and behaviour.  That is what seems to be lacking.

What can be done?

The good news, of course, is that we tend to hear about the high profile cases and good news is not what sells. It may be my concerns are unfounded. Equally, it is nothing new. Civilisations have been undone in the past due to the excesses of their leadership.

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about Level 5 leadership, which he describes as a blend of personal humility and professional will; leaders who channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It may be that we simply don’t hear enough about these people. I would be very interested to hear about any research that correlates level 5 style leaders to high levels of employee engagement.

What do you think?

Has there been a shift of style or has it always been so?

What will it take to shift the focus?

For strategies to develop leaders in your organisation;

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We make decisions all the time. Some of them are almost instant requiring little, if any, thought. Other decision making moments are much more important and can have far reaching consequences for many other people. In business, many of the decisions we take have a direct impact on our employees or colleagues and so clearly, decision making does impact employee engagement.

It almost goes without saying that poor decisions, or decisions that have adverse effects for employees, will also negatively impact employee engagement levels. However poor communication about decisions taken can also have a negative impact.

Two of the key steps in decision making are to:

 Clearly and objectively define the problem or situation and the decision need.

A poorly defined situation can lead to either bias, or a narrow band of possible solutions which significantly increases the risk of a poor decision being made.

Establish the criteria that will be used to determine the best decision.

Ideally, these will be divided into must have criteria and desirable to have criteria. In short, any possible decision that does not meet all the must have criteria is likely to be the wrong decision, or sometimes, the must have criteria are either unrealistic and should really be desirable or simply biased towards a preferred outcome.

However well reasoned the decision process may be, the moment of decision is really an emotionally driven one, and logic can get derailed at this point. Likewise, immediate responses to decisions are often emotional rather than rational, and it is here that an employee engagement trap waits.

People require meaning in order to make sense of what is happening around them. In the absence of a clear meaning, we will tend to create one and, for some reason, often default to the doomsday scenario. So, how does this impact employee engagement?

Two key questions employees ask themselves on the way to being engaged are:

Do I feel supported?

Do I feel valued?

Poorly communicated decisions impact employee engagement

It is important that when key decisions are communicated, the criteria used to make the decisions are, wherever possible, made clear to all involved. Failure to do this frequently results in people making their own judgements about the probable criteria, and rarely will they go for a positive interpretation.

The decision by Stephen Hester (CEO of royal Bank of Scotland) to waive this year’s bonus is a case in point. I have written about the fat cat link to employee engagement before, and I have no idea what the real criteria were behind Mr Hester’s decision. The fact that the decision was taken somewhat late in proceedings, and no clear and positive criteria have been forthcoming (any criteria I have seen reported tend to be very defensive), lead me to believe it was a forced decision. The interesting question is – what criteria will thousands of RBS staff facing possible redundancy and wage restraints decide were used to make the decision?

It has been suggested by the board that Mr Hester has made a significant impact on turning the business round. He will find that job much easier if he has a high degree of engagement from his people. I wonder how much harder he has made his task by the timing and communication of his latest decision?

For ideas on how you can build higher levels of employee engagement in your business:

For help developing engaging managers

CALL NOW on 0845 2177 071 or CONTACT US for more information.