Next week, I'm honored to speak at the Iowa SHRM Conference in Des Moines, Iowa (October 9-11, 2019). My topic: Effective Intercultural Development Practices. In the video below, I offer a brief preview of my presentation.

​I hope you can come to the conference, though, as I'll go far more in-depth "in person!" If you are coming to the Iowa SHRM Conference, please come say hello!

Is HR courageous?

This is the question I ask HR professionals this week. With the invaluable help of two Drake University students, I am currently analyzing hundreds of responses on the importance of courage for HR professionals. I will present the findings at the International Leadership Association Conference in Ottawa, Canada, 24-27 October.

I go to the ILA every year and get a lot of energy from my colleagues in leadership. I have met fellow researchers, learned new models, and enhanced my teaching through the ILA. I am super excited to go and feel honored to be presenting! If you are also attending the ILA conference, please let me know, I would love to meet you while I'm there.

For more information on the ILA Conference visit THIS PAGE or click on the image below.

In the video below, I share our preliminary findings on the importance of courage. I also share an elegant moral behavior model by renowned moral psychologist Dr. James Rest. 

Have you ever felt at a "dead end job"? By "dead end," I do not necessarily mean a job where you could not get promoted. I mean a job where you stopped learning. 

As I conduct research for the book I plan to write on The Meaningful Leader® I often ask people to think of their "moments of disengagement." The way I refer to these moments is the time in which "you lost the light in your eye." It may not surprise you to hear that many of the stories I hear are about lousy managers - people who overreact to mistakes, lose control, ignore the needs of their employees and, even more commonly (and sadly) expect employees to leave their integrity and values at home.

A common theme, however, has to do with the loss of growth and hope. People feel like they have nothing else to give, nothing else to fight for. A common theme is boredom. 

Helping followers grow is a key part of a leader's job. So can you help your follower grow? Here are a few ideas:

• Have a conversation with your followers about their plans. What do they want to learn? What is their passion? You should be able to answer those questions for every single one of your followers.
• Provide clear and frequent feedback. Make sure people know how they can learn more. Feedback, by the way, often has a bad reputation. It is mistaken for "discipline" or "what happens when you do something wrong." Instead, feedback should be part of the leader's coaching efforts. You observe your followers and help them grow.
• Be a coach. If you do not know how, take a course, read some books, understand what coaching means. Often, coaching involves asking powerful questions that help our coachees find the solutions to their own problems. 
• Help your followers identify stretching goals and responsibilities. While you are at it, make sure that your followers' responsibilities match their level of authority. Otherwise, people are likely to feel stuck in their growth. Also, remember to delegate. If you fail to delegate, you will not only weaken your followers' ability to grow but also your own.

A final consideration as you help your followers grow: Avoid the control trap. Micromanagers, by definition, do not support their followers' development.  When you micromanage, you send a powerful message of lack of trust and fear of failure. 

Here is the question of the week: Think of a leader you had who helped you grow. You may consider a leader from your personal or professional life. What did this person do that was so powerful? What can you learn from your experience?​

Recommended Books

Coaching for Performance, John Whitmore
Co-active Coaching, Karen Kimsey-House
​Coaching Questions, Tony Stoltzfus
​Appreciative Coaching, Orem, Binkert, & Clancy
​Flow, The Psychology of Optimum Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

This week, our topic is Leading for Fit - helping our followers reach the best possible match between their jobs and their unique characteristics: talents, experiences, values, personality, etc. Watch the video, below, introducing the main concept. Then, enjoy some of the resources for further learning below!

The question of the week is: Does your organization include alternative routes or paths for success?

Find a Fit Bibliography HERE.
Find a Webinar on Fit and Career Advising HERE.
Read the book FLOW, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi​

Are you interested in leadership development following The Meaningful Leader® model? Please find out more about Linked:HR's Leadership Development services in THIS PAGE.

Last week, I discussed the problem caused by silos in the organization. When we work in silos, we fail to cooperate and fall into a competition "default." A related topic is information sharing.

Why might people not share information at work? There are various possible reasons:

• The system creates boxes. Organizational structures and silos pose barriers to communications. For example, virtual teams may not have a process in place to communicate effectively. Also, the current culture may discourage open communications. For example, too much may be considered "confidential" (even items that do not require confidentiality). Employees are only expected to share information on a "need to know basis" (and often we don't know what others need to know). 
• We like our boxes. Last week, I addressed social identity bias, our tendency to prefer members of our team.  Reasonably, people are more likely to speak with members of their own teams.
• We don't speak the languages of occupants of other boxes. I am not only referring to different national languages. We could speak different "cultural" languages pertaining to our organizational function (jargons, anyone?) or geographical location.  That said, international organizations may experience even more challenges.
• We don't know what we know. Thus, we may fail to share information simply because we do not realize others need it.

Engaging or meaningful leaders do not leave good communications to chance. Instead, they:

• Openly share information whenever possible
• Encourage their followers to share information
• Are good listeners, pay close attention to what their followers say
• Promote a culture of openness and transparency

I recently analyzed data from one of my own engagement surveys. The data set included 683 responses. I found positive and significant relationships between all components of engagement and answers to the items above. The overall correlation between the average of those items and engagement was .453. 

​In other words, leaders perceived to be good listeners, openly share information, encourage employees to do the same, and overall promote a culture of transparency were more likely to have an engaged team. I measured the following components of engagement:

• Energy - using our physical energy at work
• Focus - using our cognitive energy at work, focusing on the work we do, resisting distractions
• Passion - our enjoyment and appreciation for the work we do
• Pride - a sense of deep connection to the organization, willingness to recommend our organization to others, a sincere sense of pride in what the organization does
• Role expansion - our willingness to "go above and beyond" the call of duty

A caveat: As you may remember from the last course you took in Statistics (even if you took it many moons ago), correlation does not mean cause. I am not saying that open communications cause engagement - instead, my data suggest a relationship between a culture of transparency and open-communications environment and the employees' energy, focus, passion, role expansion, and pride. Here are a few possible reasons:

• People need resources to work well.  A lack of balance between resources and challenges is a clear recipe for burnout. Information is a critical work resource.
• Lack of transparency is likely to reduce trust. Inevitably, rumor mills will occupy the space left by a communication vaccuum. 
• Open communications increase feelings of safety. Engagement is tied to feelings of psychological safety. People need to bring their real selves to work.  When the environment is open and transparent, feelings of safety could increase.

This week, therefore, I have two questions for our community:

• What examples do you have of poor communications at work?
• What initiatives have you seen that enhanced communications in the workplace?

Try assigning a task to two or three teams in a training room. The task does not matter. You could ask people to build a structure to protect a city from (enter whatever catastrophe you can think of), solve a puzzle, or answer a set of questions.  Whatever the challenge, teams are not likely to collaborate with each other. At most, you'll succeed in inter-team collaboration - and that is, if you are lucky and engage in some reasonable preparation. 

Human beings are wired to prefer members of their teams. We feel comfortable inside our boxes, even if said boxes are recent (for example, even if we had not met the members of our team before). The problem: Members of effective organizations must work towards a common purpose.  Meaningful leaders, therefore, are able to break silos. They encourage their team members to work well with their team members and to collaborate with others. 

Here is my question this week: What are some effective interventions to encourage collaboration? What have you seen that works?

We often dicuss the importance of trust in the workplace and for good reason. Without trust, everything would need to be double and triple checked. Efficiency would disappear - and so would innovation.  

Trust, however, is not blind.  You should not trust me, for example, to handle the financial health of your organization - not because I lack integrity but because I know nothing about finances and would be the world's worst CFO. It's also perfectly reasonable to double check on the work of a very inexperienced intern learning the ropes of something new.

In this brief video, I share five components of trust: Benevolence, authenticity, reliability, fairness, and competence. This video is the first in a series of discussions on Meaningful Leadership - a collection of competencies that help forge an engaging environment for all employees.

Please share your experiences! Have you observed the five components of trust I mention in the video? 

In the wake of the heartbreaking mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, I asked Linked:HR members to follow Dr. Margaret Wheatley's advice and create an "Island of Sane Behavior." Watch the invitation below and share your comments. How can we create an environment of trust, safety, and acceptance, when the world around us is going crazy?

​In this very brief "flash learning style" vlog, I explain why personality at work matters and what it has to do with psychological safety, the feeling that one can bring one's whole self to work. I hope you enjoy it! Please comment! In your experience, does understanding personality enhance psychological safety?

One thing that occurs to me as I review my video is that there could be a "dark side" to the use of personailty in organizations: When personality testing becomes a weapon rather than a tool for success. Please:

• Use personality assessment and training for development purposes.
• Avoid promoting the idea that there is "one perfect personality trait" for a particular job. There really isn't.  Not only people can "stretch" their natural tendencies, but behaviors are often the result of a complex combination of personality traits, values, motivations, and the circumstances being experienced. 
• If you do use personality testing in your organization, remember that a person's personality results should be private. Do not coerce someone into sharing his or her results. 

With these precautions in place, personality work can do quite a bit of good. Your team can foster a culture of collaboration, appreciate each other's gifts, and learn neutral language to refer to personality differences. ​

I was recently interviewed by a long-time friend and colleague, Caryn Lee, on why I chose to use the Big Five Model of personality in my consulting, research, and with my graduate students at Drake University. For the sake of transparency: Over the years I made a clear choice for the Big Five and I have a business relationship with Ms. Lee.  That said, I did have various choices of tools and still use such tools when a client prefers them.  Frankly, I could have had a successful business with other personality tools. I chose a Big Five personality assessment for serious reasons, including increased accuracy, sound reputation among researchers, less chance to create a "self-fulfilling prophecy," and more connections opportunities for program participants.  You'll hear my reasons and story in this brief interview. If you prefer, you may also download and read the transcript. 

What do you think? Have you had any exposure to the Five Factor Model? For a free e-learning training (providing one SHRM credit) and the opportunity to receive a free comprehensive Narrative Big Five profile, please visit THIS PAGE.