Improving Employee Engagement

By Andrew Messer AFIML, Manager of the Application Services Unit at the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA)

Every leader wants, or should want, an engaged team of people. Much has been written about how employee engagement is the key to customer engagement, because engaged employees care about their customers.

But engagement is not a switch you can flick. Employee engagement actually starts with leader engagement – people just won’t engage with a leader who has clocked off.

As leaders, we have to be intentional about this. We’ve got to be active and take the first step.

That’s why I make a point of asking my people these two questions, and not just once, but as often as it takes. These two questions are simple but they are empowering. They prompt people to think – sometimes about things they haven’t thought about much or enough.

 

Ask your people these two questions

    1. What do you want to achieve?
    2. How can I help you do that?

You’ll notice that the first question is not directly and specifically about what they want to achieve in their job – but the context of this conversation with a team member tends to guide their thinking this way.  It’s either about what they want to achieve in their job or in their career.

I get three main types of responses to this – “I don’t really know”, “I’ll have a think about that”, or a specific answer.  If they can’t provide a specific answer, then you can’t ask the second question – it just becomes a statement of intent.

It is our responsibility as leaders to help our people identify their goals and help them to achieve them. Sometimes people need a push to consider this, because it’s so easy for them to get comfortable.

But when your people get to a point where they can give a specific answer, it’s great to see how they light up when you ask the second question.

 

How does this help increase engagement?

These questions will help to increase your team’s engagement in three ways:

  • When people have thought about their goals and know they will be supported, their engagement is increased. They are going to come in to work more inspired by having a personal goal they can achieve and knowing they have a backer – you!
  • When you have offered to help people develop and you are sincere about following through, your engagement is increased. You can’t make this offer half-heartedly, you have to mean it and do it – but you will find it is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a leader.
  • And when you’ve done this process with your people, and you encourage them to lead the same way and do the same with their teams, their peoples’ engagement is increased. It’s incredible to watch this sort of thing move forwards and radiate outwards across a larger team.

And that is the beginning of developing an engaged culture, where personal and professional development becomes part of the DNA of your organisation.  And what leader doesn’t want that for their team?

 

 


Want to hear more on engaging and inspiring your team? Andrew will be speaking at our Brisbane Conference on the 2nd November 2017 about the ‘ability to inspire’. Book Now and don’t miss this insightful event!

 

 

 


What Makes The Leader of the Pack

 

Great leaders are workhorses, not show horses

By Sam Bell FIML
The Institute of Managers and Leaders  General Manager Corporate Services and Research 

 

In June ‘the suspended schoolboy turned disruptive CEO’ was finally removed from his post at CPA Australia. Alex Malley left the membership-based accounting body with a payout of $4.9 million of members’ equity, a board without a quorum and no obvious leadership succession plan.

It was a sad finale for Malley who, after seven-and-a-half years as CEO, arguably left CPA Australia in a sustainable financial position, with strong brand recognition and a growing international profile. No one should doubt Malley’s passion and commitment, although some may question his delivery method and other aspects of his leadership.

Malley also seemed to be able to do what others have failed to do – position the CPA qualification as a stepping stone to roles in management and leadership. And he was able to attract large cohorts of international students to the CPA brand. This undoubtedly propelled the organisation beyond its home market and gave many international students the hope of a job in Australia (even if the truth was that these jobs were rather more difficult to come by than they were perhaps led to believe).

Much of what Malley espoused about leadership related to his own experiences. Of course, it’s somewhat ironic then that his personal leadership style ultimately played a part in his untimely exit.

Leadership style is the way that a leader provides vision and direction, sets strategy and motivates people. This doesn’t mean that leaders should accept the status quo or shy away from change. Far from it. They must navigate choppy waters and create new directions in search of success. But this must always be about ensuring that the emphasis is on the organisation and not on them.

I can’t help but think that Malley’s leadership style falls short of what US business consultant Jim Collins would describe as that of a “Level 5 Leader”. Collins describes Level 5 leaders as those who espouse a “blend of extreme personal humility with intense professional will”.

What separates these leaders from the pack is, according to Collins, their “personality attributes”. There are the attributes that typify these leaders. They are self-confident enough to set up a succession plan; are humble and modest; show unwavering resolve and diligence — more plough horse than show horse. Last but not least, they give credit to others and take full responsibility for poor results. They also attribute much of their success to good luck rather than personal greatness.

Collins believed that for great leaders, leadership is more about who they are, rather than what they know. Contrast this with the now very public allegations of millions of dollars of CPA Australia funds being used for the promotion of a TV show and a book that didn’t seem to be too related to an professional membership body focused on accounting standards.

Whatever the truth of the CPA ‘case study’, I think that we would all agree that good leadership is not about the self-promotion of the leaders. Especially when it’s the leader who is making the decisions about the promotion. Indeed, Jim Collins found that it is precisely those CEOs, who create big public profiles, that tend to run the most unsuccessful companies.

This brings us nicely to the Institute’s new Chartered Manager designation, which assesses leadership qualities through a robust competency framework that doesn’t try to define a ‘preferred’ leadership style. It instead acknowledges that every individual has their own way of doing things. But the framework does capture the core competencies that are vital to developing your own leadership style and supporting your management skills. This is the thinking that lies at the heart of the new designation, which is sets out three core stages of management:

• How to manage yourself effectively — this should be learnt early on in your career and constantly developed.
• How to manage others and establish trust — these capabilities should be developed before you take on management roles ,but are typically developed at junior and middle management levels.
• How to manage the business and think strategically — this should be continually learnt and is most needed at senior levels.

I’m currently undertaking the Chartered Manager assessment and I’m finding the reflection process on my leadership style and skills to be extremely rewarding. It has also revealed the gaps in my knowledge and practice. It’s both extremely rewarding and personally challenging, as it should be.

Leadership isn’t supposed to be easy. In fact, self-promotion is the easy part of leadership. The real tough stuff is the actual leading.

A Bank of Knowledge

 

What makes Shayne Elliott and his trusted team tick?
The ANZ boss tells all

 

Self-acknowledged introvert Shayne Elliott seems one of the least likely big-bank chiefs, but his career has followed a path that is familiar to his fellow bankers. The ANZ CEO is a bank ‘lifer’, joining Citibank New Zealand as a management trainee in 1985. Within seven years he was the head of derivative sales in London. And after spells in the US and Egypt, he found himself in Australia in 2001, as the chief executive of Citibank, Corporate Bank. In 2009, he joined ANZ, becoming CFO in 2012. And in early 2016, he was appointed to the top spot at ANZ, where he leads a team of about 50,000 employees. CEO of the Institute of Managers and Leaders, David Pich, interviewed Shayne Elliott at a recent Outstanding Leaders event.

 

David Pich: How would you describe your own leadership style?
Shayne Elliott: Well, I think I’m probably an introvert. I’m actually quite shy although, funnily enough, I’m actually reasonably comfortable speaking to 500 people. I’d probably rather do that than speak to two, because there’s more distance when you’re speaking to a room [of people]. When I was CFO my team made fun of me – it was suggested that I do performance appraisals in a 500-seat auditorium, [as] that was a much more engaging conversation than having a one-on-one [with me]. I think there is a shift away from that big, charismatic, loud leadership style to one that is probably – and again, I’m not saying that’s wrong – to a more grounded, humble leader. I think good leaders are able to shift. Sometimes you do need to be really directive about what you’re doing, depending on what the crisis might be at the time, or the team. But at other times you need to be more visionary. So I think, actually, good leaders are able to change their style for the moment and the objective. But in general, my preferred style is to be quite consultative. I lead more by example and by describing what we’re trying to achieve.

 

DP: Talk us through some of the different styles in your leadership team, and how you interact with them.
SE: Over the last 18 months I had the opportunity to build my team. There are 12 of us on my direct team, and of that, a third came from outside the organisation, including two of them this calendar year. We have a couple of people we’ve promoted from within, and only one of the team has the same job they had a year ago. So I’ve got people who’ve been around a long time and really know what they’re doing, who don’t need a lot of hand holding or direction, and it’s more about just being clear about expectations. Then I’ve got some people who have never worked in a bank before so they need a lot more coaching and time. I have people with big opinions, and they think differently and challenge us all the time, and my job there is to actually give them space to be creative and listen to what they say. And then there are others who are naturally reserved, who need time, who digest a lot and are really thoughtful and quiet, and take time to come to a conclusion. I need to give them time and space, and not rush them, or rush the overall team to a decision without allowing them the benefit of that time to digest.

 

DP: There is an elephant in the room we need to get to: the bank levy. [Announced in the federal budget in May, it applies to ANZ, Westpac, National Australia Bank, Commonwealth and Macquarie. The policy was introduced on 1 July and is expected to raise $1.6 billion in the first year.] I’ve read much of what you said about the federal bank levy, and you seemed relatively fair about how you approached that. Your comments were very measured. The South Australian bank levy, when it was announced, raised some hackles. You’ve just used the word “immoral”. Or was it “unethical”? Would you like to explain that, and why you shot off the fence?
SE: I think the federal bank levy is wrong. I don’t think it’s good policy. I think it’s unfair to pick on an industry because they’re successful and say, “because people don’t like you, because you make a lot of money, we’ll tax it”. I don’t think that’s right. But, on the other hand, it has the support of all sides of politics. The people are represented by the parliament, and the parliament, across all parties, have agreed and support this. And so, our approach was to use our efforts to really have private conversations with the treasury and the government, to just talk through the implementation. We thought that was more effective than just banging the table. Actually, in my opinion, banging the table and shouting loudly would just reinforce people’s views that the banks are out of touch. Bringing in the state levy is different. Not everybody agrees with it. What is happening there is a wealth transfer underway from the rest of Australia to South Australia. I don’t think that’s right. And so what we said was, 94 per cent of our shareholders and customers do not live in South Australia [yet] they are being asked to absorb this. Because when people say, “Oh, you should absorb it,” that means the shareholders and the customers pay. It’s not a huge number. It’s not the money. It’s the principle. So we have to stand up for those stakeholders. That’s why we felt strongly about it, and felt we had to say something.

 

DP: One of the roles of a leader is to explain things in relatively simple terms for those who might not necessarily understand it. What do you think a few attributes of successful leaders are?
SE: Being able to listen and take feedback. I don’t just mean personal feedback. Yes, that’s important, but also ‘listen’ to what’s happening in the environment around you. One of the areas where leaders fail is in locking into a strategy or a view. The worst thing you can do is fall in love with your own strategy, because you rationalise staying the course when maybe you should listen and maybe you should change. Another [attribute of successful leaders] is having people who are very good at being self-aware, who understand their own weaknesses and mitigate that by hiring the right people in the team.

 

DP: Who are the leaders you have admired over your career?
SE: I’m not one of those people who has a big hero. I look at companies that I admire, and they tend to be those companies that I see as being talent factories. The obvious candidates are Procter & Gamble, GE and Hewlett-Packard. You could go there and learn how to be a manager and leader, and then go on to other companies. That’s extraordinary. The number of CEOs who’ve come out of those companies, Procter & Gamble and GE in particular, is extraordinary. At ANZ we want to be known for a number of things, but one of them is as a talent factory, and a company that creates great leaders. I think it’s a huge opportunity for us, actually, because I don’t think enough companies do pay attention to it.

 

ANZ board chairman David Gonski

DP: Quite often I think that leaders, when they get into leadership positions, they forget or they overlook the importance of managing upwards. What’s your relationship like with the ANZ board and the chair David Gonski? How do you manage upwards?
SE: I think, unfortunately, that term ‘managing upwards’ has a really bad connotation. It sounds manipulative. And maybe there’s a better way of stating it. [As a leader] you actually have to manage all your stakeholders, and they’re [the board and chair] just an important one. The reason I stepped out earlier [during the interview] was because my chairman was on the phone. So I think answering their phone calls is a good start. You have to build a really strong working relationship. I’m really lucky with David [Gonski]. He is very open and transparent. He always answers his phone. We speak formally once a week. And there are weeks where we speak once a day and many times a day, like this week. So I think it’s just about having openness. I have really worked hard with my board. I’ve actually never had a board before [so] I asked some people for advice. The advice was that it’s better to over-communicate, keep people aware of what you’re doing and thinking. Make sure that, with the board in particular that you don’t get into a transactional relationship. [Make sure] there is time for reflection and discussion, and open dialogue.

 

“I’m really lucky with David Gonski. He is very open and transparent. I think it’s just about having openness. I have really worked hard with my board.”

 

DP:  You’ve talked about the importance of embracing social media. What do you see as the pitfalls of social media for leaders?
SE: Our business is digital. Money has actually been digital for a long time and all we’re doing today, when we talk about digital, is giving people the tools to be able to see , manage and move their money on their phones or in another digital way. So I think it’s important that our people are interested in technology. We’re not a technology company, we’re a bank. But a big chunk of what we do is about technology. You cannot be successful in banking today if you’re not interested in technology. I don’t think it’s acceptable to be a senior executive in a bank today and say, “I’m not on Twitter. I don’t use social media”. You’ve got to be there, because that’s the way that people live today, and that gives you all sorts of insights into people’s experience of life, and what they want. And more and more, our customers’ expectations of us are set by their experiences on social media. What are the pitfalls? Well, Donald Trump can probably tell you more about this than me, but the pitfalls are that it’s in real time. It’s really hard to retract. It’s fraught with danger.

 

DP:  How would you describe the culture at ANZ?
SE: It’s a learning culture, a culture that is interested in technology, and a culture that is, ultimately, diverse and welcoming and team-based. Banks historically have very compliant cultures. There’s a pretty good reason for that, because of what we do for a living. We’re good at following rules and, you know, that can sometimes get in the way of being a learning company and an innovative and technology-focused company. So that’s part of our challenge, getting the balance right.

 

Leaders can inspire or pollute teams…. what kind of leader are you?

By Phil Crenigan FIML, Managing Director, Executive Turning Point

The Background

As a Fellow of the Institute of Managers and Leaders I was delighted to accept an invitation to facilitate and lead their opening 2017 Leadership Outlook series on High Performing Teams and how to build them. This involved a significant commitment between February to April 2017 and took me to 17 locations: Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo, Canberra, Adelaide, Darwin, Hobart, Brisbane, Cairns, Toowoomba, Mackay, Rockhampton, Sunshine Coast and Townsville. In the process I was privileged to meet with 840 participants from every kind of business background imaginable. Big business and small business, private sector and public sector. I met with Leaders from mining, engineering, energy, private and public schools, professional services, including legal, dental, financial services and medical practices. Attendance was high from many local government teams, social services, tourism, not for profits and IT.  The one common denominator across this hugely diverse group, was their mutual interest in and need for, high performing teams.

The Context

Much of my work in the last eight years has been helping CEO’s, General Managers and Senior Executives build their own capability and self-awareness as Leaders and in turn to build extraordinary high performing capability around them. How to build high performance in teams is not taught at business school and rarely in our professional lives. (Indeed only a handful out of the 840 participants indicated that they had been through specific professional development to enable them to do this to a successful level.) Yet we all know what it feels like to be part of an extraordinary performing team and a highly dysfunctional group. As a Coach, I know that there are specific drivers and characteristics of high performing teams and this can be measured. I also know that where these drivers and characteristics are driven from the CEO downwards, engagement is high, people are inspired and performance and results in whatever endeavour the organisation is focussed on naturally follow. I provided these insights and tools at all of the sessions so participants could go away and do things immediately with their people.

At the beginning of my journey, I was curious as to what we would discover. Would there be regional differences or different levels of emphasis by type of business? Are there great examples out there waiting to be discovered? What if we were able to codify the drivers and coach this for leaders to be successful? What are the barriers that prevent this and why? Most importantly, I was keen to test out the impact on people when they are in a high performing group and when they are not and how that plays out in their lives in a holistic sense. Finally, what is the role of the leader in all of this as they clearly have a role to play in inspiring others, don’t they’? The only preparation that participants were asked to think about prior was to think about a high performing team that they had been member of in their lives, to note the drivers around why and to recall their general disposition on life at the time. In addition, participants were asked to reflect on a bad team experience they had been a part of, make notes of the drivers around why, and also to reflect on the impact on their lives. This was the basis of the breakout session that has since taken place throughout the 17 locations in Australia. Within 45 minutes, 840 participants openly shared their reflections to both experiences, some with complete strangers and I now want to share with you their insights and the answers to my questions that became crystal clear as the tour progressed.

The Discoveries

i. High Performing Teams
As a coaching and facilitation technique with groups of people, describing “felt leadership” is a powerful conduit to insights and revelations. Participants told us, their learnings were visceral. They recalled examples of high performing teams with such strong recollections.

What the consolidated word heat map of high performing teams below confirms from 870 random examples across 17 locations are:

  1. The drivers are entirely similar which means we can codify what we need to focus on. This was the content of my third and final tool which was distributed after this exercise. It was accepted as a valid driver for every high-performance example from each participant. What the participants demonstrated to themselves is they actually know what drives high performance, because they articulated it in how it felt. Just like we remember the best teachers from 30 years ago in a heartbeat, personal recall on the high performing team experience was immediate, free flowing and energised.
  2. Being part of a high performing team had a direct and positive impact on all aspects of their lives. When it is good, it is all good and we have summaries from every table in every location. Inspired people make better partners, fathers and mothers and all round better humans in all that we do.
  3. The Leader has a clear role to play but so does purpose and direction, role clarity, continual improvement, shared values that are lived and inclusive and open transparent communication.
  4. All of the above resulted in highly engaged people and a strong enabling culture.

Workplace values that can influence a high performing team - Institute of Manager and Leadersii. Dysfunctional Teams

In turning to the dark side, the revelations were at time astonishing in their honesty and the impact on the lives of everybody. Without exception, every participant had a bad experience that was often described, as “the worst chapter of my life”, resulting in loss of relationships, confidence and esteem or health. For health read absenteeism, dread and depression. I would like every leader of people and in particular any CEO reading this article, to carefully read through this picture and to focus on the key words that are at the heart of this word map. One that certainly struck me as I worked through the tour was fear.

  1. These are the words that describe what it feels like to be in a dysfunctional team
    from 840 participants in 17 locations. Once again, it was only through the mechanism of sharing stories and / or experiences through what it “felt” like, were we able to establish this level of disclosure.
  2. The drivers in these dysfunctional teams include, inappropriate / incompetent leadership, absence of any plan, little or no trust, organisational acceptance of inappropriate behaviours, toxic culture.
  3. A profound negative impact on everybody outside of work and the worlds that they seek to play a role in.

I encourage every reader of this article to reflect themselves from their own experience how they felt when part of an extraordinary team and to note down the drivers and to do the same on a poorly led team. My sense and prediction is that your words will be in each of the pictures. The key question is what kind of leader are you and would your people agree….do you inspire or do you pollute?

Workplace values that can hinder team performance - Institute of Manager and Leaders

I would be delighted to hear from leaders and teams if this resonated, particularly CEO’s who want to make a difference going forward. It is never too late and your organisation will be more effective for it.

IML would like your input to understand what would help you move towards a high performing team and to increase your leadership capability in this area. Take our survey today and tell us what else you would like to see to take your team to the next level: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/high-performing-teams