Why Employees Resent True Engagement

July 21st, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green
Employees Resent Engagement

Employees Resent Engagement

Recap of Leader Quick Tip: A truly engaged workforce is not a realistic goal

Why?

EMPLOYEES DON’T WANT TO BE TRULY ENGAGED! At least most of them don’t.

Being truly engaged isn’t worth the effort. Sure the company benefits from heightened employee engagement, but seldom do employees.

At least not in equal measure to what they give.

And besides, employees have a life outside of work. Getting more engaged means getting more work. Every employee knows this. The more they produce, the more they’re expected to produce.

No, employees don’t want to be truly engaged. Why? It’s simple. Leaders tend to have a one-way focus, and it’s not toward the employee. An “employee first” perspective is hard to find.

So how realistic is a “truly engaged” workforce? The answer is NOT VERY, and not surprisingly.

True engagement is not likely until management adopts a “true two-way street” attitude. This is where “truly engaged” begins… not with employee engagement surveys and initiatives.

If you want to really tackle employee engagement, give us a call at 678.576.5207.

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BSI Experts Lambast Traditional Employee Engagement Surveys

July 7th, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

Recap of Leadership Quick Tip: Engagement surveys are nothing more than employee opinion surveys by another name

employee-engagement-survey

Here’s how they are the same:

1. Survey items are around the same old employee satisfaction stuff;
2. Engagement surveys are completed anonymously too;
3. Data continue to be aggregated for reporting;
4. Survey results continue to show problems that are too pervasive, too elusive, too demanding, too costly, and too easy to let slide and
5. Good intentions to take action (based on results) lose momentum like usual.

Perhaps the biggest issue, aside from the surveys themselves, is this: If managers haven’t been held accountable to lead effectively in the past, who is going to hold them accountable now?
So what’s a leader to do, if you want to crank up employee engagement a notch or two on your team…

Call us for proven engagement solutions that work for your team or larger organization at 678-576-5207.

Martha Forlines and Thad Green

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Employees First and Customers Second??

June 23rd, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

Recap of leader quick tip: It’s easier to face disengagement (and more profitable) than live with it

Here’s a solution with a different spin.


It comes from Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, a global information technology services company, as reported at Forbes.com 06.18.10.

He recommends using a management approach called Employees First, Customers Second. Mr. Nayar stresses that this is not a human resources initiative, but a management approach.

“I don’t think that employee ‘satisfaction’ is something a company should strive for. Satisfaction is a passive state, isn’t it?”

“As for employee ‘engagement,’ that isn’t much better than satisfaction,” he says.

“What we want at HCL is passion.”

Mr. Nayar says this is working in HCL.

We know it works! We’ve been helping clients put employees first since 1991.

Maybe all of us should stop thinking about “engagement” and start focusing on ENGAGEMENT WITH PASSION!

To learn how we do this, go to our website at www. beliefsysteminstitute.com.

Martha Forlines and Thad Green

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BSI Offering First Bookinar on INSPIRING WOMEN…

June 9th, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

Quick Tip Recap: “What’s a bookinar?” … a revolutionary new way to experience collaborative learning! It combines traditional book learning with live teleseminar training and breakouts during the class, allowing each participant to leverage their unique learning style. Martha is conducting a series of virtual teleseminar classes where she teaches valuable lessons from the book, using our INSPIRING WOMEN application workbook. If you are JUST beginning your leadership quest or desiring to hasten your leadership journey, this is for YOU!

Inspiring Women: BECOMING Courageous, Wise Leaders

Inspiring Women... BECOMING Courageous, Wise Leaders

We know how busy everyone is serving your customers… no matter what business you are in. Often times you are not taking the time for your own development in all of this busy-ness. You may even have goals to improve your leadership skills this year, but still don’t have any plans to accomplish this in a time-efficient, cost-effective way.


Participate in our upcoming preview call next Tuesday, June 15th at 11:00 a.m. to learn more about our first ever bookinar, where we will cover more of the details about this process and we promise you will also gain some valuable insight into where you are in your own leadership journey.

Here’s the scoop… we are offering a four week bookinar series on our new book written for aspiring women leaders (or leaders of women that want to know how to best manage your aspiring women) beginning July 1st. Each week we will be covering valuable content from the book about

  • Developing confidence for extraordinary leadership
  • The 3 keys to leadership wisdom and
  • The courage to do what is right


The weekly sessions will last one and a half hours, with 30 to 45 minutes of teaching and 30 to 45 minutes of a break out session. Yes, you read this correctly, breakout sessions! We will be using a product that enables groups of four or five people to talk and work collaboratively on the lessons presented, and then share with the larger group as they desire to share. “Teach, practice and share” promises to speed up your learning, integration and application time.

Click here to register for the call. We will be using the Maestro teleseminar product for this call, so you can experience the collaborative learning this technology enables!

Martha Forlines and Thad Green

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Leading Differently Pays Off!

May 26th, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

Recap of Leader Quick Tip: Leading differently pays off

John Chambers Leading Differently

John Chambers. Photo Credit - Wikipedia

John Chambers, head of Cisco Systems, summarizes how he leads differently, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Decision making –Get the jump start on new know-how before others.
Management team—Build one that can help render swift and informed decisions.
Operating the company—Use empowerment and collaboration rather than command and control.
View of the universe—It’s all about education and the Internet.

Sounds simple, right?

Yeah, but the surface doesn’t tell you what the deep waters know.
It takes a lot of leadership know-how to be different and pull it off with great success.

Here at Belief System Institute, we’re all about DIFFERENT!
If you’re interested in DIFFERENT, see our website at beliefsysteminstitute.com or call Martha at 678.576.5207.

All the best to your success,
Martha Forlines and Thad Green

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Sally Ride’s Leadership Secrets

May 12th, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

Recap of Leader Quick Tip: Sally Ride puts listening as top quality of a good leader
There are other views.

1. “Leaders are supposed to tell, employees are to listen.”
2. “I don’t have time to run around listening to everybody!”
3. “I’d listen more if people had something worthwhile to say.”
4. “I get everything I need to know from my weekly (or daily) management reports.”

Why then does Sally Ride put so much emphasis on listening?

1. Leaders are faced with an information void. They don’t have enough information to lead effectively.
2. Listening does something technology can’t do—it lets you get inside a person’s head and shine a light on information you can’t get anywhere else.

If you don’t listen, where else will you get impressions, perceptions, opinions, observations, and experiences of savvy, experienced people on your team and in your larger organization?

What better way than listening can you uncover problems-causes-solutions, and wants, needs, and priorities of those you lead?

Why do leaders often shy away from listening?


1. Fear of hearing (mainly the truth)
2. Trust (employees don’t trust the leader, leader doesn’t trust employees)
3. Lack of training (how many active listen techniques can you name?)


How can you make listening work for you?


1. Line up some training for you and your managers
2. Get some coaching on how to listen and lead better
3. Consulting may be necessary to get people in low trust environments to open up


If you are interested in how we can help you close the information gap on your team or in your organization, call Martha at 678.576.5207.

All the best to your success,
Martha Forlines and Thad Green

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What do social media and leadership have in common?

April 28th, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

Recap of today’s leader Quick Tip: Expand your leadership resource pool by taking “asking and listening” to social media, as well as to your employees.

Want to get your questions answered by leadership experts from around the world?


Or maybe you’d like to have dialog with a leadership expert, such as an author, or consultant, or experienced leader.


Would you like some helpful hints, employee motivation quotes, or creative leadership ideas?

It’s as easy as can be. Social media is the key. If you want to know, ASK!

Social media gives you quick access to people like us who are willing to share a wealth of leadership expertise.

Here are a couple of recent examples.

One manager wanted to have dialog with us around employee engagement— “Have leaders forgotten about the importance of engagement during the downturn in the economy?”

Another asked our advice about the various behavior style instruments available.

Get in touch with us on LinkedIn, FaceBook or Twitter.

Follow our posts for nuggets of leadership wisdom on employee motivation and performance, or how to boost employee morale, for example.

Dialog with us on employee job satisfaction, the value of an employee engagement survey, and other issues of interest.

Ask us questions about executive coaching, leadership training, and improving employee engagement.

If you want to know, ASK! Simply go to any of our social media links below.

Connect with us:

Follow us on Twitter!Follow us on Twitter

Become a Facebook fan!Become a fan

Read the MailChimp blogConnect on LinkedIn


All the best to your success,

Martha Forlines and Thad Green

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Creating Ownership Can Be Tricky Business

April 14th, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

Recap Leader Quick Tip: There is a proven way to get employee ownership of projects and tasks

There are two common ways of doing this.


The first is to put on your thinking cap and figure out how to persuade the employee to take ownership.

Ask yourself questions like:Employee Task Ownership

  1. What does he want?
  2. What will excite him?
  3. What will entice him?

Then  ask yourself “How can I get buy in?”

It helps if you’ve tried this approach before.

Why? Because you know it takes a lot of time, and it never works very well.

This is good to know.

With the second approach, you don’t waste time guessing, you invest in the employee.

  1. Spell out what is involved in the project and the expected results
  2. Ask “What has to happen for you to take charge of this project and do a great job with it?”
  3. Listen for how motivated he will be with the project
  4. If his motivation is not strong, find out why, discuss and resolve

Remember, the conditions for motivation:

  1. “I can do the project.” (Belief-1)
  2. “Outcomes will be tied to my performance.” (Belief-2)
  3. “The outcomes will be satisfying if I get them.” (Belief-3)

If all three of these conditions are not met, motivation will suffer.

You can’t force ownership. It may be time to consider assigning the project to someone else.

If you’re looking for more information on creating ownership, see our new book, INSPIRING WOMEN: BECOMING Courageous, Wise Leaders.

If you’re interested in executive coaching, leadership consulting, leadership training, or boosting employee morale, call us at 678.576.5207.

Martha Forlines & Thad Green

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Employee Engagement Tops The List of Biggest Leadership Challenges

March 31st, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

A survey was conducted with participants in two March webinars conducted by Martha. She was introducing the book she and Thad co-authored, INSPIRING WOMEN . . . BECOMING Courageous, Wise Leaders.

In pre-webinar surveys, participants were asked to select their biggest leadership challenge today. Here are the results.

Biggest Leadership Challenge - Survey Results

Biggest Leadership Challenge - Survey Results

These results tell only part of the story. Here’s more.

Participants also could ask questions in advance that would be answered during the webinar. As you would expect, the most frequently asked questions were about engagement. Here is one of them along with our response.

How can you inspire employees to be highly engaged and highly focused on performance? We always say you have to ask each person what it will take! They will tell you and you will know what to do. Our mantra is “IF YOU WANT TO KNOW, ASK!” Of course, be prepared to listen and take note of what they want and need to be engaged, focused on performance, successful. Based on what they say, you may be able to respond immediately, or not. For example, “I need you to give me more feedback on my performance.” This you can do. “I need more resources to meet your expectations.” This may require more discussion. You get the drift.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW, ASK! Give it a try.

You can also ask us for more information about employee motivation programs, improving employee morale, leadership consulting, and leadership coaching Atlanta.

All the best to your success,

Martha Forlines & Thad Green

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Employee Engagement Strategy/Survey

March 17th, 2010 by Martha Forlines & Thad Green

RECAP of Leadership Quick Tip: preview our new employee engagement survey

Our new employee engagement survey

R U Engaged?

Has found its wings!

It’s off the ground and flying

Thanks to encouragement and wisdom

Of several of the 22 female executives

Interviewed for our recent book

INSPIRING WOMEN . . . BECOMING Courageous, Wise Leaders

For example, Georgia Power executive Leslie Siebert

Reminded us that “Motivation is the key to engagement”

Our work here at Belief System Institute

You Can't Guess What's in Someone's Head

You Can't Guess What's in Someone's Head

Began in 1991 around just that—motivation

So we’ve built our employee engagement survey

Around what we know best and what we know works

First, we know what works because

We’ve collected data from clients

From day one and the numbers don’t lie

Seventy percent (70%) of the employees

Who have completed our programs

Became more motivated and more engaged

And quickly improved their performance

Oh, and job satisfaction shot up too

70% is a staggering number

Second, the employee engagement survey

Is based on something we did to get

70% of the people to improve their results

The survey is not anonymous

And for good reason

It doesn’t help you as a leader

To know that 60% of those you lead

Want more feedback

Or more independence

Or more structure

If you don’t know who by name wants what

That only leaves you guessing

And resorting to blanket approaches

Like treating everybody the same way

When it’s a simple fact that

Everybody is different

Hence, R U Engaged? is not anonymous

Third, our employee engagement survey

Is based on the fact that

Employees are better at

Coming up with solutions to their own problems

Than we as their leaders usually are

They know why they are not engaged

And they know solutions that will work for them

This is how we’ve maintained the 70% rate over the years

Read the rest of this entry »

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