Have you ever dealt with bosses, teachers, or mentors, who seemed to act differently from what they professed? How did this sit with you? I imagine it was hard to take them seriously when they said one thing and did another. To be a better partner, leader, parent (to be a better human being, for that matter), you need to exemplify what you claim is important. Your actions need to be in alignment with your stated values and beliefs.
Our intentions, thoughts, and plans are pivotal, but they are only part of the change we seek. Knowing is not half the battle. It is less than half. I have seen many people in my work and personal life who have plenty of insight, but fail to thrive because they don’t apply it. True change happens when insight is applied through action. Remember this quote:
“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.” —C.G. Jung
9) Challenge authority and ask questions – Just because someone is in a position of authority doesn’t mean that they are in a position of truth. I am grateful for this lesson, which was ingrained in me at an early age. Thanks, Mom. If something doesn’t resonate with you, then ask questions, do your research, and discover the truth for yourself. Remember, it is okay to ask questions! If you don’t understand something, or if you want to challenge it, then do so. The longer you remain uncertain or ignorant, the longer you are at a disadvantage. You already know this intuitively. Consider reflecting on a time when you’ve felt uncertain, undecided, or generally clueless about a situation or concept. Remember that uncomfortable, scared, or frustrated feeling that you felt in your body? To reduce your own anxiety, be curious and ask questions.
10) Embrace abundance – What we focus on becomes a part of our mindset. A negative mindset (i.e. a focus on what is lacking, what isn’t working, what we fear, what isn’t available to us, etc.) can be countered with a simple shift in perspective. We get to choose how we make meaning and interpret situations. What if we convinced ourselves that there is plenty of opportunity, customers, resources, love, support, money, etc. out there for us and everyone else? What if we emphasized collaboration instead of competition? I think you’d be surprised at how much better you’d feel and consequently how many opportunities would present themselves. If you’re skeptical, test it out. Try assuming that there is abundance, and see what happens. Granted, this takes guts. I admit it’s not easy. Given the social, economic, political, and environmental challenges we face every day such a shift in perspective requires serious intention and maybe even some suspension of disbelief. To realize the full potential of this perspective, you must wholeheartedly embrace it. In our pursuit of positive change, embracing abundance is one of the most useful tools available to us.
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The first story in the chapter showed the courage it takes to look inward and make necessary changes. This next story explores the courage it takes to persist, even in despair. In my work, I have met individuals who, in the midst of internal battles, have shown a resilience that continues to inspire. This next story exemplifies that kind of resilience.
MOVING FORWARD
In 2012, I was working at a community mental health center as a therapist and crisis worker. The crisis work consisted of responding to various mental health emergencies in the community. I was often called in to offer help to people at their lowest point; some were overcome by great emotional pain, some were wrestling with delusions, and some were threatening violence. This kind of work takes a toll. In addition to work stress, I was dealing with the recent death of someone close to me and was feeling emotionally drained.
On a particularly tough day, I received a message that a student at the local high school was threatening to kill himself. I went out to do a safety check, an assessment of the situation to ensure that the individual doesn’t have the means or the intention to do harm to him/herself or others. Aiming to do my best, I had to chase away doubts that I would be able to offer the kid much value given the state I was in.
At the school, a counselor introduced me to the student (Andy) and then left us alone to talk. Feeling trapped by circumstances, Andy had convinced himself that suicide was his only option. We discussed life in general, the pressures of school, relationships, and family. We also talked about what was going well in his life, friends he had, his love of art and the college experience he looked forward to. Even with these positive things in his life, he had lost hope. His inability to identify the source of his despair only compounded it. Though I wasn’t sure if Andy was hiding the real cause of his pain or not, I could tell that his emotions were real, and in a sense, at least, I could relate to him right there in that moment.
After what seemed like an eternity of silence as I tried to come up with the perfect thing to say—something that would let him know he’s not alone in feeling overwhelmed by emotions, but also in a way that respected his unique experience—I realized that the best I could do would still fall short. So, I just looked at him and told him that sometimes we have to just keep moving forward. I don’t know if it sounded as lame then as it does now, but in the moment it seemed true. I think I was talking to myself as much as I was talking to him. We discussed the difficult truth that sometimes the answers, advice, or outcomes we want or think we need simply aren’t available. We talked about how in such situations, you need to keep pushing toward the changes ahead. Actually being in motion can also be a helpful distraction. It generates energy and reduces the feeling of being stuck that accompanies sadness. In time, moving physically helps us move on emotionally.
This is where having guts enters the picture. Sometimes acting courageously is about simply moving, even if you don’t know which way is “forward.” In this way, courage intersects with faith. This is another example of some of the seven dimensions converging as part of the change process.
A couple of days later, there was a knock on my office door. It was the school counselor dropping by to tell me that Andy was doing better and to drop off a small package. I opened it up and found a piece of wood carved in the shape of an arrow with a message neatly burned into it: “keep moving forward.”
CHAPTER 15 ACTIVITY
Just reflect and enjoy.
SECTION SIX: ENVIRONMENTS
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
—Jim Rohn
You are the product of your environment. For clarity, in this context, environment includes many aspects of your experience: workplace, home, city, community, friendships, geographical location, culture, etc. All of these environments influence us to a greater or lesser degree. The people, places, and things we surround ourselves with impact our ability to create and maintain change.
If you feel as though you’ve worked through all of your patterns, challenges, and bad habits and still can’t reach the goals you seek, consider studying your environment. You have the choice to fill your life with people, places, and things that build you up or those that undermine you, feed doubt, or otherwise impede your development. Spending more time in nurturing environments increases your likelihood for creating the positive change you seek.
16
Inspiration and Engagement in the Workplace
“If you only had five hundred words to share, what wisdom would you want to pass on to humanity?” This was the prompt I was to answer for an article I once wrote for a website called Inspire Me Today.60
Of course, it is a complicated question, but it was fun to contemplate. My answer consisted of ways to build positive qualities, among them courage, congruence, and inspiration. In the end, though, I was left wondering, inspiration is so fleeting . . . how do we hold on to it, how do we make it last?
Since we spend a majority of our time in the workplace, it seems fitting to tailor the question accordingly: How do we make inspiration last at work? A corollary concern arises: How do we enhance engagement? These are concerns for any organization, regardless of industry, size, and location.
This section of the book is about how our environment impacts our ability to create the positive change we seek.
If our workplace (one of our most consistent environments) can be optimized for success, it will create forward momentum that can affect positive change in other areas of our lives. And we all are at our best, at work and at home, when we are inspired.
Whether we’re talking about a Global 500 company or a local, family-owned business, the means to inspire are the same. One especially promising way to engage and inspire is to align values. Such alignment requires accountability at the leadership level, by which I mean that the person at the top has to be willing to receive and act upon feedback from employees.
Certainly, inspiration is a challenge to sustain. As you probably know from experience, it is impossible for us to remain in a constant state of inspiration. It simply takes too much energy. But even considering our natural constraints, the idea of inspiring employees on a more regular basis should be of primary concern to companies. Again, critical to the matter is the workplace environment, which, if not vigilantly monitored, can foster fear, mistrust, and resentment. Companies must create an environment that fosters inspiration on a daily basis.
Here are four tips to inspire employees and encourage employee engagement:
1. Employee turnover is expensive, unproductive, and challenging. Keeping employees engaged and enthusiastic will reduce employee turnover and ultimately reduce costs and lost productivity for the company. According to Gallup, a whole slew of major performance outcomes are connected to engagement, including profitability, productivity, and customer ratings.61 Managers can elicit greater engagement from their employees by simply setting the examples themselves. When managers focus on building trust, rapport, and communication, they keep their employees emotionally engaged, thus driving results. Follow-up evaluations of managers may be necessary to ensure effectiveness.62
2. For most employees, one of the essential components of a positive work experience is feeling appreciated. By consistently acknowledging employees’ contributions, leaders can improve employees’ experiences and reduce the likelihood of turnover.63
3. Make sure management is leading with inspiration. In an IBM-conducted study about leadership in which 1700 chief executives from 64 countries were interviewed, it was found that inspirational leadership was one of three primary traits identified with steering organizations effectively.64 According to best-selling author Carmine Gallo, there are a number of ways leaders can inspire, including encouraging potential, reinforcing optimism, and inviting participation.65
4. Understanding the relationship between a company’s values and its employees’ values is important. One way to determine such a relationship is to move employees to positions that better utilize their strengths and are more closely aligned with their values. A glaring mismatch between employee and company values is likely to lead to either employee underperformance or employee departure. For example, if an employee values teamwork and believes that his/her employer does not approach problems collaboratively, the discrepancy will most likely diminish the employee’s engagement. If the match is unclear, consider bringing in consultants or coaches who can evaluate and help determine best options.
So, how does a company get leadership to understand the importance of employee engagement?
Human Resources departments and executives need to feel engaged in their work so they can experience the value of what they will be teaching to other leaders in the company. It’s a top-down approach. Modeling the behavior that is expected organization-wide is crucial. To ensure that they are engaged, leaders must determine that their personal values are aligned with the company’s and that their strengths and duties are in sync. When organizational leadership is disengaged, it is likely to impact company culture as a whole.
When there is congruence between a leader’s personal values and those of the company, the workplace is usually much more inspiring for employees. For example, when a leader values giving back to the community and an organization establishes a strong philanthropic program, the leader tends to stay inspired and remain with the company. This seems relatively intuitive: if values match, then positive outcomes will result, but you may be surprised by how often this wisdom is neglected. One way to create this alignment is through crystal-clear communication. Often poor communication results in a whole host of negative consequences, including lack of accountability, finger-pointing among employees, indifference to customers, missed opportunities for innovation, and poor levels of collaboration. Mounting evidence underscores the importance of engagement, value alignment, and inspired employees in relation to business success.66
For example, according to a 2009 study by Towers Watson, companies whose workforce was assessed as “highly engaged” on the average improved operating income by 19 percent over a 12-month period. Companies found to have lower workforce engagement on the average saw a 32 percent decrease in operating income over the same period.67
For more data underscoring the value of addressing engagement and other human dynamic issues, see the extensive list of studies and statistics created by The Social Workplace.68
Now that we understand the primary importance of values in relation to engagement, we should dig a little deeper and ask: “What does this mean?” When considering value alignment, we need to first appraise our own values. Of course, articulating our values can be difficult. I have witnessed coaching clients, individuals as well as companies, struggle with identifying what is truly important to them. Working with a coach can be a great way to help explore your values if you are uncertain where to start.
What we value and what inspires us are unique parts of our reality. Take this story of inspiration, for example.
As I mentioned in Chapter 1, I visited Chile in 2009. On a scholarship from Rotary International’s Group Study Exchange Program, I traveled down with a small group of professionals from various fields as part of a cross-cultural exchange with a partner country. Our group, representing western North Carolina, was to trade places with one from the central region of Chile, the Santiago area.
We attended numerous Rotary meetings with our Chilean partners to discuss our professions and how they differed culturally between the two countries. In addition to attending social events, we also took expansive tours of museums, schools, government buildings, and the occasional winery. It was a fantastic adventure, full of rich connections, and lots of learning.
One of the many advantages of this scholarship was that we could stay in our host country for up to a month and the scholarship would still pay for the flight home. I took advantage of this perk.
As my colleagues and friends departed for the States, I connected with an old friend. We traveled north, stopping in coastal towns as we made our way to the Atacama Desert.
This desert is the driest non-polar desert on the planet. Imagine a rugged Martian landscape—cracked riverbeds and jagged rocks—and in the distance, soft rolling hills, and beyond that, the big blue void of sky. That pretty much captures it. Because of the unique arid climate, lack of light pollution, and high altitude, this desert is one of the best locations on the planet for stargazing. When we arrived in town, we visited one of these observatories.
On the observatory tour, our guide presented a nifty device, a hand-held laser-pointer that had a reach of over one mile. To the human eye, this magic, little device created the illusion that it was actually touching the stars and constellations that we heard described in detail.
The guide, Diego, was in his mid-twenties, enthusiastic, friendly, and very knowledgeable. He had a passion for astronomy, and he was pumped about an upcoming trip. He would be heading north just a few days later and would finally get to the other side of the equator. There he would see something he had been hearing about since he was a boy—The Big Dipper!
If you live north of the equator, you are no doubt familiar with The Big Dipper. If you’re like plenty of North Americans, it may be one of the only constellations that you know. Perhaps it was pointed out to you when you were a child. If so, it’s likely you have been able to recogni
ze it every time you look up into the night sky. This isn’t the case for all our friends south of the equator. They have a different sky to gaze upon.
Diego’s enthusiasm for something that to my friend and me seemed so commonplace was both amusing and touching. In a trip full of unforgettable experiences, this memory stands out. It made me consider how vastly one person’s experience differs from another’s. What we take for granted due to overexposure, others may see as a sort of miracle.
I remember Diego fondly. He taught me a great lesson in perspective, motivation, and inspiration. Here was a person truly engaged in his work. He had found the right match between his passions and career.
This encounter brought to mind a number of important questions.
How can our view of something (both figuratively and literally) impact our reality?
How does our perspective affect the things we take for granted?
How can we capitalize on the opportunity to shift our perspective and ignite inspiration?
How can we find opportunity to match more of our passion within our career?
How would a new career add more inspiration, engagement, and enjoyment to our day?
These are questions I am grateful to ask myself and others on a regular basis. I hope you are able to consider them deeply and honestly.
CHAPTER 16 ACTIVITY
This chapter’s activity is more of a reflection. Consider answering the following questions and then applying some of the insight you gain to your workplace experience. You can draw on the research from this chapter as well as on your experience, insight, and understanding of your environment. The hope is that, based on your insights, you can show your company how improving inspiration in your workplace will add value all across your organization. Answer the six questions below and take action!
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