Gut + Science - Real Talk With Ceos On Culture, Data, And Decision-making

Truth You Can Act On: Know people’s motivation: We can’t treat all of our people the same. Everyone’s motivated in different ways and we have to know what’s there why. We have to spend time listening and understanding how your employees are motivated. Employees first: Customer service should be a top priority but it can’t take precedence over your employees. When you help your employees win they’ll walk through fire for you and your customers. Build on their strengths: Always look for the good in people and acknowledge what they’re doing well. You can build loyalty by leading with positivity. When we have a strong relationship with people they stop expecting you to be perfect and start focusing on how they can help bring the company’s vision to life. Full Shownotes: https://gutplusscience.com/tom-zupancic Book Recommendation: Dream Manager by Matthew Kelley Sponsors: LHD Benefits – LHD is a full-service employee benefits firm, that empowers their clients to make the best possible decisions for their e

Truth You Can Act On: Know people’s motivation: We can’t treat all of our people the same. Everyone’s motivated in different ways and we have to know what’s there why. We have to spend time listening and understanding how your employees are motivated. Employees first: Customer service should be a top priority but it can’t take precedence over your employees. When you help your employees win they’ll walk through fire for you and your customers. Build on their strengths: Always look for the good in people and acknowledge what they’re doing well. You can build loyalty by leading with positivity. When we have a strong relationship with people they stop expecting you to be perfect and start focusing on how they can help bring the company’s vision to life. Book Recommendation: Dream Manager by Matthew Kelley Sponsors: LHD Benefits – LHD is a full-service employee benefits firm, that empowers their clients to make the best possible decisions for their employees — to define optimal objectives, monitor outcomes,

Truth You Can Act On: Feel your culture. How? Clarity and consistency in messaging, a clear construct for leaders of all levels to make good decisions, and storytelling. Tell stories that reinforce the culture you’re trying to build. Build a healthy workplace. How? No matter the size of the organization, the steps are the same: Identify your goals, clearly communicate those goals, and empower and assist teams to work together to achieve them. Shift your values. How? Move from constitutional values to values that embody who you are. Be able to share your values in 20 seconds or less (the human attention span is shorter than ever). Seek employee feedback on crafting your values. For larger organizations, consider having a sample size give feedback versus the entire workforce. Lastly, make the change of values a movement and not a mandate. Full Shownotes: https://gutplusscience.com/dennis-murphy Book Recommendation: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Sponsors: Purple Ink - Purple Ink’s customized

Truth You Can Act On: Hire for attitude and beliefs. Don’t hire based on competency. Skills can be trained. Beliefs—not so much. What attitude are you looking for and what kind of mindset do you need in your people? Are you clear on that? Make sure you and your team know this before your next hire. Unlock discretionary energy. There are satisfied employees, engaged employees, and then there are employees who give discretionary energy in their role. Study the discretionary energy givers in your organization, and figure out ways to unlock that energy in the rest of your team. Build confidence and eliminate fear. In a healthy culture, employees feel confident, not fearful. We all strive for this, but how often do we take measurements to know where we truly stand? Do employees feel confident? Do they feel psychologically safe? Get a baseline, and then build on it. Full Shownotes: https://gutplusscience.com/mike-baer Book Recommendation: Essentialism by Greg McKeown Sponsors: Emplify - Are you still using

Truth You Can Act On: Put it on the calendar. Having regular, uninterrupted one-on-one meetings is a free and effective way to build relationships with your team members. For best results, schedule your meetings on a recurring basis. This could be weekly or bi-monthly; the key is consistency on the calendar. Have an agenda. Make sure your one-to-one meetings always have a structure. A good one to use is the SWAT format—Strengths, Weaknesses/Challenges, Opportunities for improvement and development, and Threats. Following this structure ensures an efficient conversation where all important discussion points are covered. Learn to listen. Listening is the key to being a good coach. Not only is it an easy way to build trust, but it also allows you to uncover frustrations and challenges before diving into possible solutions. So ask great questions, sit back, and listen up. Build in accountability. Accountability is the core of one-to-one meetings. Make sure you’re taking good notes and following through on what w

Truth You Can Act On: Have a culture class. Teach all employees about the culture and the vision of your organization. Clarify what the company is looking for in its employees, how they should behave, and how to work and operate as a collective whole towards the culture you’re striving for. Create a culture of excellence. This can be achieved through internal training and development of your people. Design a learning roadmap specific to your company and have the CEO and executives train and teach the employees. Mobilize advisory committees. Influence employee engagement by getting groups of people together to solve organizational problems and talk innovative ideas. The group should travel around to different locations getting employees across the company involved in decision-making. Record and publish the meetings and send them out to all employees. Consider traveling around to a new location each month with a different group of people. Talk about the problems employees bring to the meeting and discuss the r

Truth You Can Act On: Reward your employees. Create an employee of the month program that ties into your vision and values. Make sure that your rewards are awesome. Use Borshoff as an example, who gives premier garage parking to the winner of the “Awesome Borshoffer of the Month” award. Optimize your workspace. When redesigning your space, do research by asking your employees key questions to understand their needs. Build the space based on your employee feedback and not on the last Forbes article you read with cool pictures of an open concept and foosball tables. For Borshoff, this meant constructing different “creativity spaces”, allowing employees to find a place to work each day that will inspire them. Communicate authentically. As a leader, reflect on how you bring trust and authenticity in all of your life and written communications. Be proactive on this, thinking about it every day before you start. Then at the end of each day, reflect on how you did and what you could do to improve. Full Shownotes:

Truth You Can Act On: Eliminate silos. Shift from working in silos, or individual parts, to working as a whole organization. Silos create competition, egos, and bureaucracy. Instead, think of your organization as if it were a human body. It has different specialized parts, but it works as a whole. It must always be coordinated, connected, and in harmony. Teach servanthood. Spend time teaching and inspiring people in your organization on how they can serve others. Don’t just tell them what to do; lead by example. Make serving other people an instilled way of being. Live in the zone. Adopt a habit of getting yourself in the zone, helping others get in the zone, and always working to spend more time in the zone. This is where our very best work happens, and we should do whatever is necessary to maximize our time here. Utilize your leaders. Identify the best people in your organization to champion training and to teach the rest. There is nothing more effective than teaching your highly engaged and great communic

Truth You Can Act On: Hire the right people. The key to hiring is to focus on selecting individuals with strong character, attitude, and aptitude. These traits are hard, if not impossible, to teach. Technical skills, on the other hand, can easily be trained. Track goals and progress. Create accountability by implementing a system to break down objectives into measurable steps. In Steve’s system, every leader has a visible metrics board for their team, and each team has unique goals and a 90-day action plan. This action-plan is broken down further into the KPIs that track for individual and team clarity. Adopt a similar system for your organization to ensure everyone is clear on their role and how it fits into the goals of the company. Build employee ownership. Take some time in a quiet place to think about ways you can help employees feel like owners in your organization. After individual reflection, block time to brainstorm ideas with the entire leadership team. Then, actually put your ideas into action and

  Truth You Can Act On: Be aware. Self-awareness is key; it’s the foundation of emotional intelligence. So individuals, focus on learning and getting better at awareness. And leaders, bring teaching to the table to foster this ability to be more self-aware. Emotional intelligence training is something I can’t recommend enough. Maintain Balance. Make sure you’re taking enough time off work. Take advantage of your PTO time. Think about sabbaticals to rest and recharge. Incorporate personal time out. This is something we can be doing daily or weekly to build in personal breaks, even if it’s just a couple of minutes, to really regain and refresh. Know Your Seasons. Build in the time needed to refresh and maintain self-care. We all go through different seasons in life. Sometimes our work compliments these seasons, other times there’s conflict. Anticipate the busy seasons that come with your work life and plan ways to minimize potential conflict.  Full Shownotes: https://gutplusscience.com/pete-atherton Book Re

  Truth You Can Act On: Take daily 5 minute breaks for reflection. As a leader, focus on what you DO to show your gratitude and appreciation of those around you. To build a culture of gratitude, remember, it’s all the little things that leadership does to influence the rest of the tribe to smile more, bring positivity and kindness as a norm. Full Shownotes: https://gutplusscience.com/thanksgiving-2018/

Truth You Can Act On: Healthy Accountability. Too often we think of accountability as a negative term. Holding your team accountable doesn’t mean they’re in ‘trouble’. Instead, it should be viewed as an opportunity to achieve goals together. So when you think of accountability, first think of buy-in. What are the things that need to happen in order for us to achieve your goals? Once that’s answered, then your role as the leader is to help them reach their goals by holding them accountable for doing what they set out to accomplish. What do you stand for? In order to foster an engaged team, you have to first know your company’s values. Otherwise, you won’t know if you’re hiring the right people. You want the people who join your team to be obsessed with your company’s purpose, mission, and goals. Starting with the right-minded people is half the battle. Don't just have a meeting to have a meeting. In our conversation, Pete shares his insight on how to hold effective meetings so that time isn’t wasted and issue

Truth You Can Act On: Focus on humanizing your communication. Don't forget it's not what you say, it's how you say it. I encourage you to think through how you're communicating as a whole whether it's general communications or the more touchy subjects that obviously need more intimate communication around them. Really focusing on how big communication is and how it can impact your organization. Allow for on one-to one-interaction. I know that as a CEO or president, you can't be everywhere all the time. However, you can encourage your leaders to be more proactive with one-on-one time with the people on their team. Empower your managers or leaders to do the same thing so that you can really scale the opportunity and make the impact. Embrace authenticity. Be authentic regularly, especially in the world of millennials and the younger generations, they want to know the real you. The bottom line and all of that we try very hard to be connected to our people but we sometimes forget how much of an impact just talkin

Truth You Can Act On: Remember What It’s Like to be a New Face: Put yourself in the shoes of your new hires. Imagine what their first days are like. Who is everybody? Who can they go to with questions? Where is everything located? Your job is to provide a clear roadmap to make the transition as painless as possible. Don’t make them figure everything out by themselves. Start the Onboarding Process With the First Interaction: If you want to hire engaged employees, don’t wait for their first day to start onboarding. Engaged employees have values that match with those of your culture. So, during your initial phone interview, ask what “culture” means to them. This will weed out anyone with a “culture disconnect” and make the rest of the onboarding process easier and more effective. Make Onboarding a Full Force Effort: Onboarding shouldn’t just involve your Operations or H.R. Department. It needs to be a culture-wide process. Create a culture that is welcoming to new hires and allow them to introduce themselves to

Truth You Can Act On: Inspire employees to connect and build relationships. Provide opportunities for growth starting immediately after an employees hire date. Ensure all employees at every level are involved in work bigger than themselves. Leaders can't care for people they don’t know. Build deep relationships and get to know your people Develop individual strategic plans with each employee you lead to help them achieve their dreams. Tie their involvement in your company to the dream they’re trying to achieve, and help them get there. Above all, relationships trump everything. This is where we find the most meaning. So whether that’s internally from leader to individual team member, or helping employees build relationships outside the company—the more relationships, the stronger the engagement. As a leader, get in the habit of sharing what you need help with. Asking for help shows you are human, and the vulnerability builds trust, which ultimately drives employee engagement. Full Shownotes: https://gutplu

Truth You Can Act On: Treat Employees Like Owners: Perception is reality, right? So be transparent and share yourself and what’s under the hood with your employees. This builds trust, which directly correlates to engagement. Educate: Knowledge is power, so taking the time to educate your people on the front end will save a lot of time on the back end. Plus, you will see employees taking more ownership when they’re more confident. Have Small Group Challenges: Have teams like departments, locations, or shifts own a challenge and break down the plan to achieve it. Incorporate weekly huddles to report progress. Stay focused and celebrate each win along the way. Expect to see energy grow among these groups. Provide Employee Stake in the Outcome: Understand what is important to the individual and align their reward (e.g. time off, more pay, time to volunteer, more responsibility) with something they get really excited about. Always circle back to the individual “why”. Full Shownotes: https://gutplusscience.com/r

Truth You Can Act On: Make a Diagnosis: Diagnose why people stay and why they leave. It’s important to have data to help truly understand the reality in your organization and stop relying on guesswork. There are so many different tools out there to help you gain that data and understanding. Beef Up Your HR Team: Don’t skimp on your HR team. Also, make sure they have a seat at the executive table. Think about it. Most executives agree working on turnover should be one of the top priorities in any organization. If that’s the case, we need to treat the workforce who manages this with super high priority as well Get to Know Your People: Try to understand the reality of the team members you’re leading and managing. One of the greatest training topics for your leaders should be helping them understand how to connect. Truly connecting with direct reports means building relationships and learning to listen and really understand what they need. Doing this effectively can help bring programs and solutions to life base

Truth You Can Act On: Drive Connection to Your Brand: Help your employees see the impact of the work you do and how you serve your customers. This can be done by sharing stories or, better yet, helping them actually go out into the world and experience the product or service you’re offering. Create a Vision Slogan: Develop your own version of “Awesome Places Awesome Props”. The best way to do this is by gathering your leadership team together to help co-create your vision slogan. This will increase leadership buy-in from the very beginning. Your slogan should encompass what you want your workplace to be, do, have, and give for your employees and for our customers. Try an Action Board: Get your team involved to collectively create an action board and review it on a weekly basis. You can borrow the components from Jonathon’s board to get you started: reflection and celebrating wins, identifying tools and resources the team needs, understanding the team’s focus for the upcoming week, and reinforcing each indivi

  Truth You Can Act On: Ask: Spend time asking employees for their feedback and practicing your listening skills. If you don't have a third-party tool helping you with this, it is highly recommended so you can gather honest and helpful feedback. This can truly help you solve problems and get better. Don’t forget to ensure you have a confidential tool your employees trust and to spend time truly reflecting on the data and feedback. Analyze: When you discover areas needing more insight, ask deeper questions to understand not just where and who has challenges, but why as well as their input on how to solve it. Again, spend lots of time listening, but also think through that analyze portion to know what questions to ask, so you can then spend time prioritizing and building a strategy. Hopefully, you have data that can partner with your gut and emotion. Data tells a story, it's factual, and it helps leaders on your team get on board. So we need to stop guessing. We need to take the data, feedback, and our gut and

Truth You Can Act On: Schedule a 45-Day Check-In: Do a 1-on-1 check-in with new employees to get feedback on their experience with the onboarding process. Sitting down with them, listening to what they have to say, and building a relationship will make a huge impact on their satisfaction. Gamify Your Business: Using an Open Book Management style is a great way to help employees get educated on foundation business principles. This approach will instill ownership by helping them understand the financials of the business, how the business runs, and how they play a part in its success. Practice Transparency: Transparency fuels accountability. This can be accomplished by posting scoreboard and stating goals for all to hear. Doing so will breed a feedback-driven environment where everyone is holding each other accountable. Build A Culture Club: Have a team of employees (apart from leadership) come together on a routine basis to come up with new ideas, get input from other employees, and make decisions around emplo