Every person you know has a story occurring at the center of their identity and their progress that is too often expressed as an unanswered question: How do I connect my driving purpose to what I am doing every day? We ask it in different ways, but at the core of who we are as human beings is the question that connects the invisible pieces of our hearts with the visible pieces of our actions.
True leadership requires the courage to let go of what’s good in order to receive what’s better. Whether it’s possessions, positions, or plans, holding loosely allows us to lead with open hands, ready for transformation, collaboration, and God’s greater purpose.
You did it! You started a business with nothing more than a dream and a willingness to roll up your sleeves. You worked hard, really hard, and the business grew. You didn’t know what you were doing half the time, but you figured it out. You made it up as you went, and now you’re leading your very own multi-million dollar business.
The fastest way to lose sight of your business is to stop listening to your customers. What you think is happening inside your company and what your customers are actually experiencing might be two completely different stories. Too often, leaders rely on assumptions instead of real feedback—and that gap can cost you growth, loyalty, and trust.
In this post, Convene Chair Mike Edwards shares how to check in with your customers in meaningful, non-intrusive ways—and how to turn their insights into quick, high-impact improvements.
Are business growth and your faith opposed? Christian leaders often find themselves at a crossroads, seeking to balance ambition with their faith-based values. The desire to scale operations and achieve greater impact can sometimes feel at odds with the principles of service, integrity, and stewardship that underpin their beliefs.
Yet, scaling a business and adhering to Christian values are not mutually exclusive. In fact, by integrating biblical wisdom with sound business practices, Christian leaders can unlock a path to sustainable growth that aligns with their faith and honors God's purpose for their endeavors.
When is your work at it’s best? When are you performing at the upper range of your capabilities? Take a minute. Think about that. What do you see? What images come to mind? What kind of feelings comes to mind? A common trait is relaxed focus. Free from distraction your energy is high, your attention focused. It is being in the zone.
Bobb Biehl is a proven personal coach. He has devoted his life to helping leaders like you clearly define and reach your dreams. He's an executive mentor and it's what he enjoys most! Since 1976, he's consulted personally with over 500 senior executives. In that time, he's met one-to-one with over 5,000 executives and invested an estimated 50,000 hours in private sessions with some of the finest leaders of our generation.
Bobb is a master of asking the right questions. Let's take a trip through the alphabet with Bobb as he asks you some of his most potent questions!
# - $2,000 / HOUR To focus on your largest boulders fast, ask yourself what professional activity you do that is worth $2,000 per hour. And, ask yourself what activity you do that is worth $20 per hour. en concentrate on the big items and try to eliminate the $20 items.
A - ASSUMPTIONS “All mis-communications are the result of di ering assumptions,” according to Dr. Jerry Ballard...and lead to frustration, pressure, and tension. To get to the bottom of a frustrating situation fast, remember this quote. Begin listing your assumptions.
B - BALANCE Life is a constant struggle for balance. Balance is a result of one word...schedule. Typically you determine your own schedule. Therefore, you schedule your own balance/imbalance. Plan basic balance into your life by scheduling many of the really important things into your life a year in advance (family vacations, personal retreats, time with parents, etc.) At this point in your life...it may be the only way to achieve any semblance of balance!
C - CREDIBILITY When your visibility exceeds your ability it destroys your credibility.
D - DELEGATION When you are doing something that someone else on your staff could do 80% as well, you are probably wasting your time. Learning to delegate effectively is even more important in determining the size of your contribution in life than your native intelligence is.
E - EXCITEMENT What are you really, really, really (yes, you need to repeat really 3 times) excited about today? This is a non-threatening but very profound question to ask a person. It is also a great question to ask each team member over lunch, dinner, or as a team discussion.
F - FUN Fun is “uninhibited spontaneity.” Things that are inhibited and not spontaneous seem boring. Think back to the last time you were having fun. Why was it so much fun? The activity was uninhibited and spontaneous.
G - GOD If God does not exist it changes everything! God does exist and that changes everything!
H - HEART “When you meet a man you judge him by his clothes...when you leave a man you judge him by his heart.” (An ancient Russian proverb)
I - IF, BEFORE YOU DIE If you could only accomplish three measurable things before you die, what three things would you accomplish?
L - LEADERSHIP IS Leadership is Knowing WHAT to do next... Knowing WHY that is important...and, Knowing HOW to bring the appropriate resources to bear on the need at hand.
As a leader keep asking yourself... What next? Why? Where will we get the resources?
M - MENTORING Ideally, Mentoring is a life-long relationship in which the mentor helps the protégé realize her/his God-given potential.
N - NEW NORMAL When major change comes to most people, they keep waiting for things to “get back to normal.” When this “I just want it the way it used to be” feeling hits you, or someone you love, remember the phrase a “New Normal.” It really helps in the adjustment to difficult new realities.
O - OPPORTUNITY “Last year’s unexpected success is next year’s opportunity.” —Dr. Peter F. Drucker
Have each person on your team identify what surprised her/him with how successful it was... then ask, “How can we take full advantage of this opportunity to make this area 10 times as successful next year?”
P - PROBLEMS - HUGE What one huge problem are you dealing with that you would happily pay 10% of your annual salary to have solved for you?
Q - QUESTIONS If you ask profound questions you get profound answers! If you ask shallow questions you get shallow answers! If you ask no questions you get no answers at all!
R - RAW REALITY If we just look at “raw reality” where are we?
S - SINGLE GREATEST STRENGTH What is your “SINGLE GREATEST STRENGTH”? What do you DO the very BEST? There are many things that you do “better than most.” But which do you do the very best? What does each member of your team do the very best? It is your responsibility to maximize that strength.
T - TIMING - GOD’S God’s timing is perfect... even when it differs from our plans.
U - UNIQUENESS What is our unique market/ministry position? What can we do that others can’t? How can we maximize our positive uniqueness?
V - VISUAL PERSPECTIVE Draw a picture of how you are feeling right now...this gives you “visual perspective” and can snap “fog” into focus very quickly!
W - WANT What do you really want from life? What do you really need to get there?
If you enjoyed this article full of leadership insights from Bobb Biehl, you'll enjoy hearing from him at our live learning venue even more! Join hundreds of leaders learning together how to operate their company well, all on a biblical platform at the Leadership Summit 2017 in Hilton Head, SC on May 3-5, 2017.
Can't make the Summit but crave more learning? Tune in to our Convene online leadership learning portal!
Everyone has regrets, but after a bad hire, those should have asked questions pile up quickly! While typically an employer thinks ahead of time what questions they want to ask someone in the interview process for a leadership role, hindsight can be painfully accurate. Here are some questions we as recruiters have heard employers muttering to themselves downstream from a bad hire:
What else should we know about you?
When we talk to your references what issues might they raise about you where you want us to hear your side first?
What have you done for self-improvement in the last five years?
What have we not asked that we should have?
How does this job fit in your career development? What experiences have most prepared for this next step?
For a few people Emotional Quotient (sometimes defined as the capacity of individuals to recognize their own, and other people's emotions) is natural but for most it needs to be honed and developed. When we ask the direct reports from your last job on a scale of 1 to 10 to rate your EQ, how might they respond? What would it be if we asked colleagues from your first job? How would you explain your growth in exercising your EQ?
Thinking back on the bosses you’ve had, what were the characteristics you liked and disliked? And why?
What kind of tasks should your superiors not give you to do, those you don’t enjoy or areas at which you do not excel?
Why might this be the right job for you? And what concerns do you have about it?
As you look back on your last three jobs, please list several employees you have mentored, and what has happened to them since?
If you enjoyed this article about the hiring process from executive search expert Bruce Dingman, you'll enjoy hearing him at our live learning venue even more! He'll be discussing topics around this subject and much more. Join hundreds of leaders learning together how to operate their company well, all on a biblical platform at the Leadership Summit 2017 in Hilton Head, SC on May 3-5.
Can't make the Summit but crave more learning? Tune in to our Convene online leadership learning portal!
This is the second part of a mini-series on the Why of Work. Read Part 1 here. So, how do leaders become meaning makers who shape abundant organizations?
Too often, we encounter leaders who formulate great strategies, structures, and processes but overlook the heart and soul that make abundant organizations which are meaningful places to work. The questions both leaders and followers wrestle with connect around the search for the why of work—the search for meaning, purpose. Finding that why infuses organizations with a sense of abundance—having enough and to spare of what matters most.
In life, meaning is tied less to belongings and more to emotional bonds, a sense of purpose, and using one’s skills to serve the needs of others. In organizations, meaning and abundance are more about what we do with what we have than about what we have to begin with or what we accumulate. They are more about finding the resources to deal with our challenges than about having unlimited resources to make work easy.
Work will always be work—sometimes monotonous or routine, sometimes stressful to the max—but we believe work can still contribute more than just money to our lives. Leaders can develop the resources to make employees work harder and to make work work for employees. There is a strong business case for helping people find meaning at work. As employees find meaning, they contribute to the broadest purposes for which organizations exist: creating value for customers, investors, and communities.
Leaders are meaning makers: they set direction that others aspire to; they help others participate in doing good work and good works; they communicate ideas and invest in practices that shape how people think, act, and feel. As organizations become an increasing part of the individual’s sense of identify and purpose, leaders play an increasing role in helping people shape the meaning of their lives.
Too many leaders focus on where they are going and how to get there, without paying attention to how it feels to those on the journey with them. When leaders make work meaningful, they help create abundant organizations where employees operate on a value proposition based on meaning as well as money. Meaning becomes a multiplier of employee competence and commitment, a lead indicator of customer share, a source of investor confidence, and a factor in ensuring social responsibility in the community. Even hard-nose leaders become interested in meaning when they see its potential contribution to bottom-line realities. When leaders grasp the why of meaning, they then seek the how.
We hope to redefine leaders’ roles to include meaning making. We hope to promote for all of us who go to work day in and day out a sense of greater abundance because we have a clearer sense of the meaning of our labor. We hope to focus not only on what needs to be done but also on how it feels to do it. We hope to turn deficit-laden thinking into abundance metaphors and actions.
Meaning at work. Leaders need to put meaning to work to help their organizations succeed in the marketplace. The search for meaning adds value in two senses. First, people are meaning-making machines who find inherent value in making sense out of life. The meaning we make of an experience determines its impact on us and can turn disaster into opportunity, loss into hope, failure into learning, boredom into reflection. The meaning we create can make life feel rich and full, regardless of our circumstances or give us the courage to change our circumstances. When we find meaning in our work, we find meaning in life.
Abundant Organizations (AOs). We refer to a company that is meaningful as an abundant organization—a work setting in which individuals coordinate their aspirations and actions to create meaning for themselves, value for stakeholders, and hope for humanity. AOs have enough and to spare of the things that matter most: creativity, hope, resilience, determination, resourcefulness, and leadership. Yes, they are profitable, but rather than focus only on competition and scarcity, they focus on opportunity and synergy. They concentrate on bringing order, integrity, and purpose out of chaos and disintegration. Rather than restrict themselves to narrow, self-serving agendas, they integrate a diversity of human needs, experiences, and timetables—creating meaning for the employees who comprise them and the customers who keep them in business.
Market value of why. You intuitively know that you and your work team would be more productive, satisfied, and creative if work engaged not only your head and your hands but your heart and soul. When employees find meaning at work, they care enough about it to develop their competence; they work harder and are more productive; they stay longer and are more positive. And when employees are more positive, customers respond in kind. Employee attitude is a key indicator of customer attitude, and satisfied customers help the businesses they patronize to survive and thrive. Meaning reinforces employees’ passion for work because it ties what they do to a greater good that pays off in the marketplace. Passion for work is an intangible asset that has a direct impact on a firm’s market value. Meaningful work solves real problems, contributes real benefits, and adds real value to customers and investors. Employees who find meaning in their work are more satisfied, more engaged, and more productive. They work harder, smarter, more passionately and creatively. They learn and adapt. They’re more connected to customer needs. And they stick around. Leaders invest in meaning making not only because it is noble but also because it is profitable. Making sense can also make cents.
Leaders as meaning makers. How are abundant organizations created? This is the task of leadership. The crisis of meaning is always a crisis of leadership. Abundance is not only a prerogative for leaders of rich people, smart people, prestigious people, successful people. Meaning is not only in short supply for poor people, mediocre people, struggling people, hurting people. Great leaders recognize the vital importance of abundance and meaning to all stakeholders, including themselves. What do the best companies do to maintain outstanding performance? Of course they make money via excellent customer service and many other solid management practices or they would not survive. But they also tap into the elusive quality of meaning. In exceptional companies, leaders turn the meaning employees find in their work into sustained abundance. Though each company has a unique take on how to make this connection, all develop leaders who help employees find meaning at work that contributes to organizational success. Leaders have the task of creating a direction that is charged with meaning—one that resonates with not only the minds and hands but the hearts of those they lead.
Recessions of meaning. In both lean and prosperous times, an organization’s values are tested and forged, setting the stage for the future. Meaning is shaped or dissipated. Loyalties are won or lost. Talent and skill are honed or abandoned. Creativity and problem-solving skill are developed or undermined. And future sustainability is either ensured or threatened. We need AOs in deficit-dominated contexts that challenge our existing sense of meaning and in growth-dominated contexts that give rise to expansion. The search for meaning is more about how we think than about the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Deficit thinking can abound even amid plenty.
Prevalence of deficit thinking. When employees lose what they have come to count on and expect—be it a person, an income, a position, or security, identity, or direction—they are inclined to deficit thinking, a common problem when people stand to lose not only their personal treasures but also their retirement, colleagues, and jobs. Deficit thinking is probably inevitable, perhaps even helpful, in some situations, but when leaders’ thinking is dominated by an agenda of self-protection, deficit thinking itself becomes the burglar. It can lock us into a prison of our own making, a prison dominated by fear, isolation, disorientation, and competition for scarce resources. Even if we get back what we lost—even if the economy improves, the takeover is averted, or we end up with a better job than before—our deficit thinking can continue to cast an discomfiting spell over our lives. The thieves and robbers of crisis undermine the ability of leaders to foster abundance. Once we realize the precariousness of the things we depend on for security, security cannot be restored fully until our dependencies change. This is where great leaders come in.
Leaders spearhead the search for meaning in both good times and bad. In up markets, when talent is scarce, meaning matters because employees are essentially volunteers who can choose where to allocate their time and energy.
Employees who felt mistreated during a down market or whose meaning at work is found only in crisis containment are more likely to leave when things settle down and they have options. So, as we get ready for work, are we paying attention to the meaning we find in the work we do. As HR professionals coach leaders, are they not only focusing on the technical leadership roles, but leaders as meaning makers. Will our company build abundance by focusing on meaning as well as money. Making meaning makes both sense and cents.
---
If you enjoyed this article by Dave and Wendy Ulrich about the meaning of work, you'll enjoy them at our live learning venue even more! They will be discussing topics around this subject and much more. Join hundreds of leaders learning together how to operate their company well, all on a biblical platform at the Leadership Summit 2017 in Hilton Head, SC.
Can't make the Summit but crave more learning? Tune in to our Convene online leadership learning portal!
This morning, you got out of bed and got ready for work. You may have found a sense of meaning, purpose, even abundance in your work today--or found world-weary tedium, frustration, and despair. Which was it for you, and for the people you lead? What difference did your sense of work make in how you approached your work? In recent weeks, you have also visited a number of companies as a customer … from shopping at a grocery store, retail chain, restaurant to dealing with your company’s suppliers. How long, as a customer, before you sense the attitude of employees in these companies? How does the employee attitude in these companies affect your attitude as a customer?
Your personal approach to work will affect how your customers will approach you at work. When you bring a sense of meaning and purpose to work, you create an abundant organization where people work to build, grow, and explore possibilities more than use what they have.
An abundant organization exists when employees find meaning, when stakeholders get value, and when the organization offers hope for society.
When employees find meaning, they have a sense of why they are working. Friedrich Nietzsche notes: “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” People who have a why to work can bear with almost any how. Organizations are primary settings not only for accomplishing assignments but also for finding an abiding sense of meaning in life. Work is a universal setting in which to pursue our universal search for meaning. Great leaders have the capacity to help employees find meaning from the work that they do. We were in a hotel recently and talked to the person responsible for setting up for meetings (tables, chairs, media). He was curious about our group, who we were and what we did. He sincerely asked what he could do to make sure our group had a good experience. Another hotel had a meeting logistics person who told us how they would set up for our meeting. The first person finds meaning in helping clients have a good experience. The second person wants our group to meet his criteria. As customers, we have frequently used the first hotel. Abundant organizations exist when leaders help employees find meaning from the work that they do.
As noted above, abundant organizations connect employees with customers so that employees have a line of sight of how their work impacts customers. The first hotelier above knew our names, worked to know our needs, and adapted to meet what we wanted. He found abundance in his work by serving others. The financial impact of abundant organizations is compelling:
Over a 10 year period (1998 to 2008) “best companies to work for” have a 6.8 % stock appreciation vs. 1.0% for the average firm.
Over a 7 year period, the most admired firms in Fortune’s list of admired companies had double the market returns of competitors.
The probability of an Initial Public Offering (new company) succeeding goes from 60 to 79% when the new company invests in its people.
61 hospitals in the UK had a 7% decline in death rate when they invested in the well-being of their staff.
A one-standard-deviation increase in high performance work practices yields $27,044 increase in sales per employee and $3,814 increase in profit per employee.
So, abundant organizations make meaning meaningful for employees inside and customers and investors outside.
But abundant organizations also matter to society at large. Increasingly, organizations shape performance and reputations of countries and communities. Business competitiveness often precedes social welfare. Abundant organizations go beyond making money to shape positive communities. Whole Foods Market, a grocery store chain with nearly 300 stores, has committed to community service:
We are committed to helping take care of the world around us, and our active support of organic farming and sustainable agriculture helps protect our planet. And while we assist our global neighbors through our Whole Planet Foundation’s micro-lending operations, we also step out the back door of each of our stores to support food banks, sponsor neighborhood events and donate to local non-profit groups. (source http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/)
When company’s use their organization investments to address broader society problems, they create abundance, or more, in terms of meaning and purpose.
So, how do leaders become meaning makers who shape abundant organizations? That will have to wait until Thursday's post.
---
If you enjoyed this article by Dave and Wendy Ulrich about the meaning of work, you'll enjoy them at our live learning venue even more! They will be discussing topics around this subject and much more. Join hundreds of leaders learning together how to operate their company well, all on a biblical platform at the Leadership Summit 2017 in Hilton Head, SC.
Can't make the Summit but crave more learning? Tune in to our Convene online leadership learning portal!
