In Great Company Page 2
As a recovering skeptic (it’s a daily battle), I fully expected the majority of people to suggest that the key factor for motivating great performance would be a massive salary increase, followed by flextime and fancy perks like foosball tables or swing sets in the cafeteria. Instead, an overwhelming number of people aligned around a factor that was far from what I expected: 9 out of 10 people said the one thing that would motivate high performance was a “feeling of respect.” They were looking for respect in the workplace. Well, what do you know?
“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. . . . All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”
—Jackie Robinson
This surprising finding set me on a learning journey. I went back to the 100 executives to ask them what respect really meant to them. I then talked to over 300 CEOs and chief human resources officers. I conducted countless pulse surveys. I spoke to colleagues and management experts, and I interviewed hundreds of other employees and executives at conferences and as part of my consulting work. I set up executive round tables and worked through these questions with participants.
What I learned through all of this inquiry and synthesis is that respect in the workplace is directly related to a feeling of emotional connectedness. People felt respected when there was an environment of mutual support, a bond of acceptance, values alignment, two-way dialogue, and reciprocal trust. I found that respect enables emotional connection, and emotional connection cultivates respect. This overlap between these two ideas came up again and again.
As I have continued to dig into emotional connectedness in particular, I have found that a great many people in the workplace feel out of sync with the values and practices of their organization. The issue goes beyond incentives. Instead, it is a general misunderstanding about what people want from work. And the disconnect cuts across organizational structure and company culture. We are giving people ways to work more independently through new technology, for example, yet they are yearning to be a part of something larger that connects them to others. We are enabling them to accomplish goals faster and move on, yet they want to collaborate and commit to a long-term purpose that they believe in. We are generating more precise systems for focused goal setting and performance management, yet people want to be trusted and empowered to act on their own to solve problems that mean something to them.
Overall, we are creating tools and programs aimed at delivering on the traditional notion of employee engagement, when what we should be focusing on is creating emotional connectedness. This is the core driver of the In Great Company approach. Emotional connectedness brings people together in the workplace as almost nothing else can. When employees are emotionally connected, they feel respected, and that drives high performance.
Emotional connectedness emerged in my research as a valuable lever for performance and engagement—and one that was largely unexplored.
I define emotional connectedness (EC) as the sense of belonging that people feel when they see that their work affects organizational outcomes positively and their work matters to their managers, colleagues, and the wider world. It is the motivating sense of satisfaction and intellectual alignment that results from feeling appreciated and part of a purpose that people believe in and have in common with colleagues.
The people in my 9/11 session tapped into the power of emotional connection, but the utility of this idea extends much further than one night or one group of executives. Whether they are producing car parts or conducting research that saves lives, people want to feel emotionally connected within the workplace. They want trust, support, and respect to be defining factors in the place where they spend so many of their waking hours. Emotional connectedness, as part of the larger In Great Company model in this book, offers the tools and mindset we need to bring people together in the workplace to feel happier and motivated to accomplish more with greater collaboration and creativity.
The High Cost of Low EC
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What I see in my everyday work with organizations is that many well-intentioned employee engagement programs are having an effect that is the opposite of what they intend. They are making it easier to work efficiently and independently, but they fail to engender satisfaction and happiness at work, and this naturally extends to customers.
THE SOUND OF APATHY IN THE WORKPLACE
These are some of the things people tell me about feeling disconnected in the workplace:
“My manager sends directions to me but doesn’t provide details, so I am left to read his mind. He gets angry when I don’t understand him.”
“I received a high rank on my annual performance review, but I don’t know if anything about my work is actually having an impact.”
“I think our business is doing well, but I don’t know what we stand for or what our strategy is. It feels empty.”
“I have an idea for a new way of providing extra value to customers based on their feedback to me, but I don’t know whom to tell.”
I will examine why we crave emotional connectedness in greater detail in Chapter 1, but the short explanation is that we humans have an innate desire to establish and maintain close ties to each other. The positive news for managers is that emotionally connected employees remain in their jobs longer, perform better, and connect more deeply with customers. And organizations can take that to the bank: the financial damage incurred to replace employees who leave or are “separated” is high and rising.
For example, studies by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) show that every time a business needs to replace an employee, it costs an average of six to nine months’ salary1 (For a manager making $80,000 a year, that’s $40,000 to $60,000.) Other studies indicate that the price tag on ongoing employee turnover is even steeper at the executive level, showing that recruiting, training, and lost productivity can run as high as twice their annual salary.2
Perhaps most importantly, I would argue that holding on to employees who are emotionally adrift is perhaps pricier than replacing them when they decide to leave. For instance, people who feel isolated or marginalized are perpetual underperformers. In time, their inertia becomes contagious, and they drag others down with them. In some cases, disconnected leaders create a dysfunctional dynamic that sows discord across their team in a way that eventually extends to stakeholders and customers. In other cases, employees who are undermotivated are less likely to maintain the momentum required to complete projects and close sales. Meanwhile, their colleagues need to work harder to compensate, thereby elevating workplace stress and tension across the board.
In other words, creating emotional connectedness is cost-effective. It is far more productive than traditional engagement programs:
Attempts at employee engagement underperform. While 87 percent of organizations list engagement as one of their top priorities,3 only 15 percent of employees actually report feeling engaged in the workplace.4 In contrast, emotional connectedness is a lesser-known part of the employee experience that has a higher return on investment. For example, my study showed that employees who were emotionally connected as part of the larger In Great Company model were more likely to perform at higher levels than those who were not, by factor of 4.5
Employee engagement programs offer the wrong incentives. Most models promote what the organization can “give” to employees to engage them to perform better. For example, an analysis of 51 separate experiments found overwhelming evidence that “incentives may reduce an employee’s natural inclination to complete a task and derive pleasure from doing so.”6 My research corroborates this, showing that perk-based plans—even those based on financial incentives—fail to create legitimate buy-in from employees in the long term, despite the cost to employers. The In Great Company model focuses on the intersection between employee practices and organizational structure, whereby employees are given opportunities to work in ways that create a lasting emotional connection to the company. These practices provide a new context for teams and a ne
w contract for organizations to cocreate a positive culture that brings people together.
Leaders get lost in the typical engagement effort. Employee engagement programs are largely the responsibility of overworked HR departments. They focus on rolling out annual engagement surveys and providing employees with benefits and options. But very few are set up to ensure that leaders are able and equipped to deliver on what employees really want. Emotional connectedness starts at the top. In fact, leadership development, organizational culture, and management structure are the most important elements of being In Great Company.
I have titled this book In Great Company because people who feel genuine emotional connectedness have a deep and abiding love for their workplace. They know they are “In Great Company,” and they are therefore willing to contribute the discretionary effort required to take their work to the next level. For instance, my study shows that receiving respect, living the values espoused by the company, and creating a positive, functional, and collaborative community promote love of one’s workplace, which translates to increased performance and loyalty. All of these elements are a part of the In Great Company paradigm that we will explore throughout this book.
How to Be In Great Company: Five Elements That Spark Peak Performance
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We need to feel connected and respected. This simple statement is at the heart of the employee engagement conundrum. It epitomizes the disconnect that holds companies back from growth and causes individuals to languish and underperform.
It doesn’t need to be this way.
Based on long-term research, including four studies of over 3,500 employees, and more than 20 years of collected learnings from dialogue groups and peer coaching C-level executives in hundreds of Fortune 1000 organizations, the best way to achieve next-level engagement and increased productivity is not through salary bumps, Ping-Pong tables, free lunches, or even additional paid leave. It’s something much deeper and more intrinsic.
Our myth busting research shows that high performance and engagement occur when people are surrounded by like-minded colleagues who are set up to succeed together and empowered to pursue a common mission. We have found that when employees feel emotionally connected to the workplace and each other in this way, then many other things fall readily into place. When employees are emotionally connected, they become the hardworking brand ambassadors that every organization needs to succeed. With emotional connectedness, employees are happier and more willing to contribute extra effort. The best news of all? Emotionally connected employees love their employer, and (based on our survey) they are 94 percent more likely to want to perform better.7
But is this fabled state of emotional connectedness really possible? Not only is it possible, it is instrumental to the success of organizations. According to Bob Maresca, CEO of Bose Corporation, “Emotional connectedness undoubtedly inspires discretionary effort and passion from our employees and our customers.”8 Dozens of other top executives have told me the same thing.
The chapters that follow reveal the art and science of sparking a culture of emotional connectedness. With an approach that my colleagues and I field-tested in small, midsized, and Fortune 500 companies and over 40 peer benchmarking groups, this simple, scalable model is built on five dimensions that create psychological safety and a strong sense of belonging.
The five elements are the core of In Great Company, and they are proven to be critical for elevating workplace outcomes including engagement and productivity (Figure I.2). Explored in depth in Chapters 3 through 7, they are ubiquitous, implementation focused, and far more effective then expensive perks. It is these five elements of EC that come together to spark the effect and feeling that we are In Great Company and performing at our peak in the workplace:
FIGURE I.2 The SPARK Model for Peak Performance: The Five Elements of EC
1. Systemic collaboration: Collaboration is a common business buzzword, but systemic collaboration is different. It gets to the core of true and functional collaboration—where collaboration becomes a part of the inner workings of the organization and its decision-making processes. Employees are In Great Company when they work in small teams and cocreate results using open communication channels, where information and advice for being better in the future are shared freely and frequently. This way of working creates a connection almost by definition. Taking the idea further to establish an emotional connection requires the right rule setting and structure. We’ll show with examples from companies including Atlassian and KeyBank that all teams need several specific practices to cocreate a sustained connection that drives results.
2. Positive future: Employees are In Great Company in progress-focused cultures that foster innovation and passion. Because positivity is a cultural contagion, emotional connectedness is achieved when individuals use it in a unified way to move forward together to achieve results. Although positivity may seem like a by-product of emotional connectedness, our study showed that it is also a powerful catalyst for creating an emotionally connected culture. With guiding examples including Big River Steel and WD-40, I will explore the elements of positivity that are emblematic best practices of the In Great Company model.
3. Alignment of values: Employees are In Great Company in organizations that place an emphasis on higher-order qualities such as honesty, integrity, and resonance with personal beliefs. The emotional connection is established when leaders and peers all embrace common values and everyone holds each other equally accountable. Granular practices include things as simple as doing what you say you are going to do or speaking truth instead of avoidance and more conceptually complicated practices such as living the values and ethics the company espouses. I will provide the critical tools to put these ideals into practice as well as numerous stories and best practices from Patagonia and Johnson & Johnson.
4. Respect: I will show that the sense of emotional connectedness becomes far deeper in environments where respect is established as a type of social currency that is exchanged reciprocally. Making respect a part of the organization’s ethos and talent management processes—as Starbucks and Wegmans have—is essential to applying this dimension. I will show why respect is perhaps the most important of the five elements (according to our research, feeling genuinely respected is the number 1 reason people love their workplace and feel that they are In Great Company), and I position it as the element that catalyzes all of the others to drive peak performance. Respect is the match that sparks the flame in the In Great Company model, and it informs the practices that are central to keeping people connected and engaged.
5. Killer achievement: Achievements feels hollow unless both the individual and organization experience a benefit. Killer achievement delivers a combination of financial and emotional upside that amplifies the effect for everyone. Employees are In Great Company in a workplace where people are empowered to focus on the customers and critical goals and when extraneous minutia is eliminated. In this case, emotional connectedness is markedly deepened when people have objectives that are simply stated and the system removes competing interests that block the path to success. The factors critical to this dimension are identifying and measuring the elements that are most important to the organization and allowing easy options for executive coaching, leadership, and organization development. We will look at Netflix and Best Buy, among many other guiding examples of the achievement element, where people create killer outcomes that keep the organization relevant, strong, and innovative.
These five practices, as part of the larger In Great Company context, provide a new framework for teams and organizations to co-create a positive culture that brings people together. As we will see, the success of each of these elements is in the frequency of follow-up and measurement of change that occur as a result of practice and development. With real examples from my work with companies that serve to bring these elements to life, this book places employees in the driver’s seat and makes them active participants in their own quest for satisfaction
and high performance.
The best practices in this book are the ubiquitous drivers of a culture that create intensely positive feelings within the workplace, engage people to produce more, and ultimately provide greater profit. The chapters ahead offer not only a research-based roadmap for making emotional connectedness manageable but also the tools we need right now to bridge the engagement divide and keep people striving to work together to create a workplace where everyone is In Great Company.
About the Chapters
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Chapter 1: Before we examine the elements of In Great Company, Chapter 1 digs deeper into emotional connectedness and interacts with key concepts, including psychological safety, affective commitment, and emotional intelligence. Understanding these conceptual underpinnings will make it easier for you to apply this new model and use it to create a results-driven workplace where people love to be.
Chapter 2: The next step in execution is for you to examine the In Great Company model all together through the lens of leadership. “The Emotionally Connected Leader” looks at how you can make the most of In Great Company by setting the tone from the top down. Creating emotional connectedness is everyone’s job, but leadership buy-in and focus will be your most critical element of success.
Chapters 3 through 7: Each chapter explores a single element individually and in depth, including why it works and how to apply it. For each element, a Best Practices Playbook guides you on how to implement each component of the In Great Company model.
Chapter 8: With all of the knowledge, examples, and advice at your fingertips and fresh in your mind, Chapter 8, “Conclusion,” points you to the “Five Things to Do Right Now” to be In Great Company on day one.