A highly engaged workforce will be much more productive, have significantly fewer injuries, deliver better product quality  and will do a much better job of taking care of your customers than a workforce that is not engaged or worse yet, actively disengaged. The organization’s culture will determine if employees are engaged, disengaged or actively disengaged. Every organization has a culture, but many organizations don’t spend much time considering the culture that they have and even less time actively developing a highly engaged culture despite the clear and obvious benefits. Having a productive culture with engaged employees isn’t just a matter of good fortune. It is a result of a conscious effort and a lot of hard work by the organization’s leadership and ideally starts at the top. Specific functions, departments and work teams can have their own engaged cultures but the organizational benefit and the sustainability at the smaller group sizes is harder to sustain if not supported and encouraged from the top and all across the organization. So, what can you do to grow and nurture an engaged culture? There are many resources available online and from companies like the Gallup Organization and the Connection Culture Group to help you take a planful approach to building the culture that results in a highly engaged workforce. The most important step is to determine what type of culture you desire and put a plan together to get your organization moving in the right direction. This will be a never-ending journey with many ups and downs but also many organizational and personal benefits along the way that will make the investment and the journey worthwhile. 

Sustained Superior Performance is the Holy Grail of every leader in charge of any type or organization large or small. Michael Lee Stallard makes a compelling case that Sustained Superior Performance is only achievable in a Connection Culture, which is also the title of his book where he states his case. Cultures of Control and Cultures of Indifference just can’t compete with the day-to-day results that occur in Cultures of Connection. The lifeblood of any organization is the people component and how energized the employees are to give their best effort to realize the organization’s goals and objectives. Cultures of Control typically rely on command-and-control tactics which require lots of close supervision and micromanagement to get people to produce the desired results. No micromanagement, no results. Cultures of Indifference are very common in today’s fast paced world where leaders are so task oriented that they don’t take the time to connect with their employees on a human level. “I’ve got work to do, I don’t have time to talk to my employees about their home life or feelings. They’re hear to get work done!” These are typical attitudes expressed by leaders in a Culture of Indifference. Stallard points out that to achieve Sustained Superior Performance, “an organization needs to intentionally develop both task excellence and relational excellence”. In other words, ‘we need to be excellent with the tasks we have to complete, and we must be excellent at building relationships with the people who complete the tasks’. A Connection Culture creates an environment where people are energized and engaged to the point where they care about results and work hard to achieve the desired outcomes by regularly giving their best effort and even frequently going above and beyond. The Gallup organization has empirical evidence that high engagement results in higher sales, higher productivity, better quality and so on. And perhaps most importantly, in the current very challenging labor market, higher engagement results in lower absenteeism and higher employee retention. So, if you’re a leader who is running so fast to make sure you hit your numbers that you have unintentionally created a Culture of Control or a Culture of Indifference, your best remedy is to slow down and connect with the people you lead on a human level to create a Culture of Connection.  

“What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.”

Stop the self-limiting beliefs and stop making excuses for why you don’t have the success you want in life and start taking action! Don’t worry about not having the perfect plan or whether you are good enough to get it done or that you don’t deserve it. Put all of that mental nonsense behind you and take action now!

Sustained Superior Performance is the Holy Grail of every leader in charge of any type or organization large or small. Michael Lee Stallard makes a compelling case that Sustained Superior Performance is only achievable in a Connection Culture, which is also the title of his book where he states his case. Cultures of Control and Cultures of Indifference just can’t compete with the day-to-day results that occur in Cultures of Connection. The lifeblood of any organization is the people component and how energized the employees are to give their best effort to realize the organization’s goals and objectives. Cultures of Control typically rely on command-and-control tactics which require lots of close supervision and micromanagement to get people to produce the desired results. No micromanagement, no results. Cultures of Indifference are very common in today’s fast paced world where leaders are so task oriented that they don’t take the time to connect with their employees on a human level. “I’ve got work to do, I don’t have time to talk to my employees about their home life or feelings. They’re hear to get work done!” These are typical attitudes expressed by leaders in a Culture of Indifference. Stallard points out that to achieve Sustained Superior Performance, “an organization needs to intentionally develop both task excellence and relational excellence”. In other words, ‘we need to be excellent with the tasks we have to complete, and we must be excellent at building relationships with the people who complete the tasks’. A Connection Culture creates an environment where people are energized and engaged to the point where they care about results and work hard to achieve the desired outcomes by regularly giving their best effort and even frequently going above and beyond. The Gallup organization has empirical evidence that high engagement results in higher sales, higher productivity, better quality and so on. And perhaps most importantly, in the current very challenging labor market, higher engagement results in lower absenteeism and higher employee retention. So, if you’re a leader who is running so fast to make sure you hit your numbers that you have unintentionally created a Culture of Control or a Culture of Indifference, your best remedy is to slow down and connect with the people you lead on a human level to create a Culture of Connection.  

It’s only February and you may be struggling to keep making progress on your 2023 goals. What’s happening? What’s getting in the way? The first and most important aspect to check is your own mental approach to owning your success or lack thereof. When you struggle to get the results you want, do you blame the circumstances or someone else for not following through as promised or do you look in the mirror and have a serious talk with yourself about what you’re going to do to get your goals back on track? Successful individuals look in the mirror and take 100% responsibility for their results and success in life. Blaming the circumstances or others may feel good at the time but those behaviors do nothing to put you on the road to success. In addition to taking ownership for your results, being thoughtful about how you respond to circumstances beyond your control will also produce better results. Jack Canfield shares a very powerful formula in his book, The Success Principles. The formula is very simple yet very powerful as it puts you in the best frame of mind for making progress towards the success you seek. The formular is E + R = O. The E is for event, the R is for response and the O is for outcome. We cannot control the events that occur in our lives, but we completely control our responses to the events. If you are not satisfied with the outcome you’re getting, you need to change your response. Changing your response may require getting out of your comfort zone and breaking old habits. We have conditioned responses to certain circumstances and often respond without really thinking through a new and better response to realize a new and better outcome. 

The foundation for all success is our ability to take 100% responsibility for our results and to carefully consider our responses to the challenging events that occur. Start taking 100% responsibility for your results and begin realizing the success you desire.

The key aspect of Servant Leadership that sets it apart from other popular leadership models is the concept of committing to serving others’ needs before serving your own personal needs. It is a sign of maturity and conviction not found in all people in leadership roles. I’m sure you can think of several ‘leaders’ that you’ve worked with or worked for that were more concerned with their own personal image, results and ascension up the corporate ladder than with creating lasting results and growing other leaders. The classic narcissistic leader is the complete opposite of the true servant leader. The narcissistic leaders love themselves more than others and believe others are only there to serve their personal needs. Servant leaders take the opposite approach of putting others’ needs first and treat all others with love and respect. Not the romantic type of love, rather the type of love where one is genuinely concerned with the well-being of others and putting others’ needs first. Take some time to reflect on what type of leader you have been and identify where you’ve been effective at acting as a servant leader and what behaviors you can change to be a more effective servant leader going forward. You will find your life and the lives of those you lead to be more productive and more enriched as well. Servant leadership is the most effective long-term approach to leading others.