S2 E83: Showing Up as You, Inc.

The impact of the pandemic over this past year has hit everyone. While no one would argue that healthcare and frontline workers have felt it the hardest, the next largest industry might just be the change management professionals.  

These individuals have worked for years to persuade businesses and teams to embrace needed change in organizations. But few people and employers are comfortable trying new things when the comfortable, old way of doing things is still an option. 

But, in 2020, everything changed. 

Over the course of one weekend, office workers began working from home and supervisors struggled to figure out how to lead remote teams. Plans were upended. Goals revised. And change happened, over and over again, at an accelerated pace. Both personally and professionally. 

Nimble organizations embraced the changes, reacted quickly, and thrived.  

But the past 14 months have put a tremendous burden on everyone. Rapid changes aren’t something most people easily embrace.

It takes courage for a business to look at its small team culture at this point in time. And bravery to share the results with the team...especially when everyone is tired and overwhelmed.  

That’s where I found myself recently and the lessons learned are applicable to all businesses and teams. 

The best way to navigate organizational change is to show up as “You, Inc.” and that’s the topic of this podcast episode.

In this episode, you’ll get:

• A brave reveal for a small team culture 
• Why focusing my attention on the defeated was critical
• The exact reason building a workplace culture isn’t leadership’s job
• How you can take responsibility when there are limited growth opportunities 
• The 5 words that should be deleted from the dictionary (at least when it comes to business)

And, you’ll hear the worst thing a business can do after an annual employee engagement survey and what they should do instead.

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Transcript

Winston Faircloth: 0:00

Each person and even just one person can be culturally contagious. They can infect the team atmosphere with positivity or negativity in an instant. So employee culture is not just the leadership's job. It belongs to each person who chooses to work. Either multipliers it's Winston Faircloth, and this is for love of team. This is the podcast where at leaders simplify teamwork, helping you surround yourself with teammates doing the work, they love simplifying business processes so that you can serve more doing the work you love. So here's a shocking statistic. 64% of American workers say that they're looking for new job opportunities, or will consider moving jobs if approached by another company. Now this is according to a November 2020 study from Ceridian a human resources software and services firm. Now the studies found that it's younger workers who are the most likely to be on the move across the country with 75% of those under age 30. Either looking or open to new opportunities. And when asked the most important factor that keeps people with an employer, what do you think that is? Is it pay flexibility, work life balance, mentorship? Nope. Engaging work tops the list. And it's in this pandemic era that earlier this week, I had the opportunity to lead a session on workplace culture with the entire team from one of my clients, and they had just ramped up a benchmark employee culture survey, and were bravely revealing the results just two weeks after the survey close now I say bravely because some of the results Well, let's say they were unflattering. Yet given historic context in which this benchmark survey was conducted. The numbers were understandable. Let's go back 14 months ago to February 2020. Back then, work was pretty traditional. We had MBA OHS management by objectives with a stable organizational plan, which was aligned to a department plan which was aligned to individual work plans and work was mostly office based with lots of interaction and a regular rhythm of collaboration and meetings and get togethers. Fast forward to march 2020. And over a single weekend, this client went fully remote work from home or wfh became a new thing plans were shelved. Uncertainty was heightened roles both personally and professionally. Well, they became blurred and transformation and change rained changes that would have required months or years of talk and consideration and debate and collaboration. Well, these were tested and rolled out in real time business models were up ended and nimble organizations not only survived, but they thrived. But that also came at a tremendous cost. Because not everyone on the team reacts to the same way to change especially when it was coming at them from every potential angle. Think about it. Everything was up ended work family routines, connections, it today. Now 14 months later, normalcy seems possible once again. And so for this organization, taking the poults of a small team culture at this moment in time comes with both great risk and great responsibility. Now I've met virtually many of these team members. And the personalities range from the gamut of people who thrive and change and those who I would say are more like guardians of tradition. And yet the changes over the past 14 months have overwhelmed even the most ardent change advocates, people are tired, overwhelmed and beyond capacity. So to imagine taking on and receiving marks that would be comparable to traditional employee engagement metrics would they would play out? Well, yeah, that was kind of unrealistic. I agree. And yet, as with any group, that we work with any group of people, there's a bell curve of people and opinions on one side of the bell curve, a small percentage of supporters of change on the other side of the bell curve, a small percentage of detractors, and in the mighty middle, a vast majority of team members who could be persuaded either way, they were kind of in the middle. And so in this particular meeting, I was asked to provide a setup to the reveal of the employee survey results. I'm a coach. I'm a consultant with this organization. And so I decided in advance that I would focus my remarks squarely on that small bell curve of detractors on one side of the bell curve. See I've met many of them in prior sessions and If I had to characterize their demeanor, I would say that many seem resigned or defeated. And so I viewed My role at this moment of setting up this new set of benchmark results as helping them see possibilities beyond their circumstances. So I started by sharing with everyone that employee culture in employee culture, by the way, is one of the three pillars of transformation that this organization is considering. And I said, so employee culture was something that we proactively chose to work on, and that employee culture is not leadership's job. See, I believe that employee culture belongs to each person, the responsibility for employee culture belongs to each person who chooses to work here, every team member has a choice each morning, how they're going to show up to contribute or detract from a great team culture, and how each team member shows up and how each response to the unexpected has a ripple effect. Because right now, in this pandemic, and approaching post pandemic era, were at a place where everything cannot be known or planned in advance. And see, I think this ripple effect is particularly present in a culture of less than 50 people. Any person in an organization of this size can be culturally contagious, infecting the team atmosphere in an instant, they can infect it positively or negatively. Let me say that again, I think this is really important. Each person and even just one person can be culturally contagious. They can infect a team atmosphere with positivity or negativity in an instant. So employee culture is not just the leadership's job. It belongs to each person who chooses to work here and then shifting a moment since I knew that one of our less stellar results in this employee benchmark survey was less than stellar the result around perceived limited opportunities for growth. I shared a story from my own career, I asked, Would you like to know how I became the youngest VP of a major market in the history of our organization? Well, that probably got some folks attention, especially if they had marked down the question of limited opportunities for growth. And so I shared the story age 24 promoted over older, more experienced, and frankly, more capable team members running an eight figure annual giving campaign in a top 30 market mode. This is gonna be easy story to tell, we'll see. I've always viewed myself as the CEO of Winston Faircloth Inc, by the summer after my 24th birthday, I've been in my current position two and a half years. And in an organization of this size, there were not a ton of upward mobility paths. Within my group, there were eight people on our team with one leader, and yet I understood and I knew that my leader was well connected to many peers across the country. So I saw my mentor my leader as the pathway to growth. And on one particular day, I invited my leader to lunch, my treat. And after some small talk, I shared my career dilemma with my chief that said something to the effect of you and I both know, there's not a lot of career opportunity for here for me here. And then in a couple of years, I'm going to get bored, and I'm gonna start looking for something new. So I would like your help for when that time comes, I'd love to be positioned in the best possible place the best possible position so that I can compete for a vice president role at that time leading a team kind of like what we have here. So I asked, What are the projects responsibilities are experienced that a person competing for a role like that must have to earn such a title? I think he was a little taken aback that I was so forward with this question. But on another hand, I think he kind of appreciated the fact that I was thinking ahead and reaching out. And as he listed several kinds of experiences, I gravitated to certain projects he was bringing up. And at that launch, I asked for more responsibility to lead a particular training program, help recruit our temporary workers, whatever I needed to get gain that experience. So that would be eligible for a promotion sometime in the future. And I took on those roles. Well, my chief was on notice, I wanted to grow and I was willing to do the unglamorous work to be in a position for promotion down the road, but little did I know this conversation would trigger other changes. And six months later, my chief was promoted into a broader organizational role, and I was promoted into in his former role as VP of Once before my 25th birthday now was completely ready and equipped for that VP role. Heavens No. Any. Anyway, I was getting prepared for that role, but I wasn't completely completely prepared. But I will say that that steep learning curve of that first year and finding an ally with complementary skills to mind within the team, as my right hand person created a winning formula after that very first year. And we as a team, collectively, even with the people that I was promoted ahead of went on to lead the United States in back to back years of double digit annual growth amongst our major market peers going from $10 million in year one to $17 million in year five. And the last two years, we had 12% compounding growth. And this was not a stellar economic period that we were gaining this growth. But it was a combination of mastering that steep learning curve, matching myself with an ally who had complementary skills to mine, and then approaching my team as if they were themselves Inc, and seeking out ways I could help them grow in their career. And this is all from not waiting for somebody else to pick you and be in charge of your career by taking initiative finding Win Win opportunities and serve in your organization with excellence. This story is such a contrast to the detractors in the organization I was speaking to, and I doubled down, I had made my point, but then I want I wanted to say something directly to the detractors. And so I said, I believe the best teams are built when each person is working wholeheartedly at a higher and higher rate in their unique gifting, surrounded by others who are doing the same. Our organization is a collection of individual collaborators unified by common why and working towards a clear what. And if you're not going to bring your best you ink to this place, perhaps you should begin planning your exit. Now, because your leader is not responsible for your career you are you could hear a pin drop. Now this was easy for me to say because I'm their coach and not their colleague, yet. It's true. Nonetheless, we are individual collaborators unified by common y working towards a clear what and if we're not going to bring our best you into this place, we should begin planning our exit now because our leaders not responsible for our career we are. So I hope that the 64% of American workers who say they're looking for new job opportunities, or will consider moving jobs of approached by another company are going to be bringing their best you ink to the workplace because your leader is not responsible for your career you are and finding engaging the work that utilizes your unique gifting. and collaborating with others is the answer to a team that you love. As we as leaders have to create the culture in the environment for that success. It's a hard job, but it's an important work that we've got in front of us. And this is why I'm so passionate about eliminating certain words out of our leadership dictionary, like staff, employees, managers, directors, and my least favorite word delegation, all of us even the leaders, we are independent collaborators deciding choosing to bring our best talent gifts experiences, perspectives to a common purpose for a given season of time. Now, here's the moral of the story. After a difficult reveal of not so great results. The leadership of this organization held their collective breath as they asked for the team's reaction. One newer team member shared how she'd worked for another organization for almost a decade and how after each annual employee engagement survey, they never heard another word at her former employer. She shared that it was refreshing to see the results, warts and all, and that it showed great vulnerability to share so quickly after the survey had closed, brave, vulnerable, open. Wow, I cannot wait to see how this team responds over the next six months. This is the beginning of building a team that you love. And if you're looking for a business that you love, supported by a team that you love, what would be better than that. And if you'd like to get started on your love of team journey, I invite you to reach out to me by email. I'd love to hear your comments and questions about this episode. Or if you'd like to get started on your own for love team journey. Here's a couple ways to get connected. You can write me when wi n at when sites wi n si gh Tz comm with the subject line for love of ting tracker or shorten it FL o t tracker or here's an easier way text me with the word FL o t trackir 21754 894 61. That's my personal text number 1-754-800-9461 comments questions or if you'd like to get started on this journey, FL ot tracker. And finally, as I say on every time that we're together, leaders simplify teamwork, multiplying your impact your income and freedom and business people as friends. Let's go create teams we love