It's been a couple weeks since I last posted. I took some time away from everything to refocus on wellness and refresh myself. When I returned from my short vacation, I immediately got back to work and provided some Coaching training to another set of leaders in our company. Part of our coaching model, we have a skill called "encouragement." There was a word that stuck out to me while I was up there talking about how to encourage - hope. Encouragement brings hope, enables hope to grow, and keeps the general focus on the future. I often hear "hope is not a strategy" but there's been moments when I think, maybe hope is part of or maybe is the strategy.
There have been many occasions now in my last couple years where I have had people come up to me and say "I was thinking about quitting, but if this is the way we are going, I will stay and make it happen." What I interpret from this is "things are bad now, so bad that I am willing to just leave it all behind, but I am hopeful things can get better - let me help." Hope is a powerful thing. Hope allows us to brush off the idea that things can't get better, won't get better, and moves us into the direction of maybe it can be better and how can I help make it better.
In many organizations there has been a focus on morale and many use the Gallup engagement survey to help quantify this. Gallup, in a 2010 article, states that hope matters because people are "more likely to maintain they psychological commitment to their current workplace rather than hedge their bets by looking for other opportunities" (https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/143408/hope.aspx). When sitting with top executives you might often hear "turnover" or "retention" rates get brought up over and over, and often this creates some new process or program to keep people from leaving rather than digging into the connection between these metrics, morale, and our own leadership. I'm finding that even with the new processes we lose the idea of hope in our leadership model. As an example, an organization notices that a lot of their "non-career" staff is leaving within their first 6 months of employment. As a strategy, the organization performs surveys and finds that there is a lack of training, and so a new training program is instituted. The turnover metrics get better, but engagement scores do not. Turnover no longer is quite as high as it was, but it still lingers in the 20% mark. In this same organization, unplanned sick leave is high, and use of Leave without Pay is high. This translates into a metric called "employee availability" and the organization is showing low measures of it. In order to "fix" it, the organization establishes a new position, whose focus it is to set up individual interviews with these employees to ensure they know that they need to come to work. Policies are driven, and the metric gets better, yet engagement remains low. In each of these examples, the metric is "fixed" but looking at it holistically, I seem to have just allowed another problem to fester - disengagement. Disengagement can cost 34% of a person's salary according to Gallup. While this organization has ensured that people are coming to work and not quitting, what is actually happening to the business? It is slowly dying, rotting from the inside out.
I have also been noticing a lot of the disengagement is not relegated to the workroom floor, but stems from those in upper management. I have talked with managers who are beat down by metrics to the point where they have no hope. I get calls and emails asking for advice - often people in a dilemma of doing what they thing is right and what their upper management is telling them to do. When someone loses hope, they become exponentially more disengaged, frustrated, and the effect that has on an organization is quality and monetary loss.
How then would we lead with hope? Well, I think I have an example of how this can work.
My team has been hiring people recently, and through this hiring process we have seen high amounts of applicants. Applicants are scored based on how well their applications demonstrate the job requirements and from that a chosen set are scheduled for interviews. What happens to those that are not chosen for interviews? Well, the system sends out a generic email letting them know they were not selected and that's that. As I found out (as it happened to me as well) this can make people lose hope and have them believe that they are not "worth it." Knowing this, how can I establish hope as a leader? Well I tried something. I took all my notes from the application reviews and compiled a list of things that could help everyone get better at writing their applications. I emailed everyone who did not receive an interview with an explanation of the application process and the common things that kept people from getting an interview. I opened up time on my schedule for a couple weeks to allow people to receive one-on-one feedback if they wanted it. What I found was a very manageable amount of people took that opportunity, and I was able to connect with them on a very personal level. For me, I walked each of them through the thought process we had in the application process, and individually through each step of their application. People generally are hungry for feedback, and it's very easy to do when you create the environment for them to ask for it. After nearly all of these sessions, I asked for feedback on how I did. A common response was "I like that someone actually cares." Again, as a leader, one can interpret this as "you gave me hope that things can be better." I have no doubt in my mind that they will get better, but I wonder, as an organization, are they in an environment where hope drives them forward, or will they fall back into hopelessness?
Deming often talks about installing or substituting leadership rather than management by objective. He understood the psychology of people enough to realize that employees who take pride in their work, who want to be better, and who are hopeful that things can get better often create better products and services for the Customer. Leadership is part of the holistic strategy, and creating hope is a necessary skill of leadership. I've started reading Mark Graban's new book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More and one sentence in there got me thinking enough to write this post. In Chapter 1 he talks about the balanced scorecard including such metrics for safety, quality, delivery, cost, and morale. I think we often forget about that last part, and how important it is. For me, it takes the leadership skill of encouraging and providing hope. Hope is a strategy, to create an environment of hope so that we can all look forward to what can be better and work together to make things better. What are you doing to create an environment of hope? What else can I do to help others want to be better?