Working for the Best Companies

Fortune magazine’s recent “100 Best Companies to Work For” list made me curious as to how they determine such a list. I also wanted to know what traits these companies look for in potential employees.

The 100 Best Companies list was compiled through a partnership with the Great Places to Work institute, and they determine ranking based on the results from survey questions sent to a random sample of 260,000 employees from the 280 companies that participated.

To be eligible for the list, a company had to be at least seven years old and have more than 1,000 U.S. employees.

Two-thirds of the questions from the institute’s Trust Index Asseessment & Employee Survey were related to attitudes about management credibility, job satisfaction and camaraderie. The other third were based on responses to the institute’s Culture Audit, which includes detailed questions about pay and benefit programs and a series of open-ended questions about hiring practices, methods of internal communication, training, recognition programs and diversity efforts.

This is obviously not a list compiled based on popularity, exceptional salaries or who has the most celebrated CEO at a given time.

The goal of the list is to help “tie Trust Index metrics to your organization’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so that you can understand the relationship between your organization’s business goals and your employees’ workplace experiences.”

This sounds like a worthy goal, especially in light of recent news about the deplorable working conditions in the Foxconn factory in China.

Companies are are broken down into groups such as the number of employees and include sub-groups such as job growth, low turnover, no layoffs, percentage of women, percentage of minorities, and all stars—companies that have been on the list every year since its inception in 1998. This includes 13 companies like SAS Institute (3), Wegman’s Food Markets (4), REI (8), Goldman Sachs (33), Microsoft (76) and Nordstroms (61).

Best perks can include things like health care (14 of the companies pay 100% of their employee health-care premiums), child care, work-life balance, telecommuting, sabbaticals, and unusual perks (Google has nap pods and in-house eyebrow shaping).

In this economy perhaps most important is the category of who is hiring and most of these companies are now looking for talent. In fact, there are more than 56,000 openings currently available in these 100 companies.

Human resource and recruiting personnel at these companies say they are looking for candidates with traits like passion, attitude, communication skills, collaboration, an interest in learning and values that align with our organization.

Here are some examples:

At Google (1)“. . . in addition to looking for strong cognitive ability and meaningful work experience,” says Yolanda Mangolini, director, global diversity, talent & inclusion. “We also want people with interesting and unique accomplishments—sports, music, starting a business, or writing a book, for example. Cultural fit and diversity are very important to us.”

Whole Foods Market (32) say they hire for attitude and train for skill. “If we can find applicants who have strong customer service skills and high energy, and are enthusiastic about the organic and natural foods industry (and who love food), then they are a fit for us,” according to Janet Lapaire, CHRP team member service coordinator.

Adobe’s (41) VP of global talent acquisition Jeff Vijungco says, “We want candidates to share some of the biggest failures that have shaped who they are as a leader because we celebrate failures as defining moments in an employee’s professional development.”

Intel’s (46) greater Americas staffing manager Cindi Harper, says they look for candidates “with behavioral characteristics that extend beyond their specific educational training.”

Brent Bultema, director of recruitment strategies at Mayo Clinic (71) says “strong candidates are people whose personal values align with those of Mayo Clinic. Individuals who are collaborative, collegial, professional, respectful and passionate will be a good fit.”

“Cisco (90) looks for people who are strong collaborators and communicators,” says Bronwyn White, director of human resources. “We look for people with a track record of continuous learning and who are prepared to question the status quo within their discipline. We value flexibility and promote work-life integration while making sure that we focus on results.”

“I have the great fortune to work with people everyday that love what they do and where they work” says Jack McCarthy, a recruiter at CarMax (91). “We want to see that same passion from candidates throughout our entire interview process. My advice to candidates is along the same lines; figure out what you do really well and enjoy, and find a company that has the right culture fit.”

In addition to general technical competency for the specified job, all of these Top 100 Companies are looking for candidates who have behavioral competencies also known as emotional intelligence or EQ.

The EQ traits they look for can include things like interpersonal communication, collaboration, empathy, creative problem solving, and conflict negotiation and resolution. And these companies want people who fit in with their organization’s values and culture because that is what keeps them on this best companies list.

EQ traits are not easily conveyed via a resume and therefore it is vital that they be demonstrated throughout the interviewing process. If you are serious about joining one of these companies, keep this in mind as you navigate the opportunity.

Mindfulness in Leadership Development

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
–Shunryu Suzuki

In a recent Harvard Business Review blog, Polly LaBarre wrote about the wisdom of developing mindful leaders.

Much of the billions of dollars companies invest in leadership development fall short of success because the programs are so heavily focused on data/assessment gathering and so little on people and processes.

“What if, instead of stuffing people with curricula, models, and competencies, we focused on deepening their sense of purpose, expanding their capability to navigate difficulty and complexity, and enriching their emotional resilience?” ponders LaBarre.

“What if, instead of trying to fix people, we assumed that they were already full of potential and created an environment that promoted their long-term well-being?”

LaBarre cites the Personal Excellence Program (PEP) developed at biotechnology company Genentech in 2002 by CIO Todd Pierce and his coach, Pamella Weiss.

PEP begins with the premise that people are whole, not broken. By fully integrating the intellectual (head), emotional (heart) and somatic (body) intelligence, PEP is able to tap into people’s wholehearted engagement, helps them cultivate self-awareness, and supports them to develop mastery through embodied practice.

More than 800 Genentech employees have so far completed this program (primarily in the IT department) and it has dramatically improved employee engagement.

This includes:

• 10-20% increase in employee satisfaction;

• 12% increase in customer satisfaction;

• 50% percent improvement in employee communication, collaboration, conflict management and coaching; and

• 77% of PEP participants reported “significant measurable business impact” as a result of participating in PEP. This is almost three times the norm (25–30%), compared to dozens of similar programs studied.

In terms of a return on investment, evaluators found the program conservatively produced an estimated $1.50 to $2 for every dollar spent to deliver PEP.

“I thought PEP might be a strategy for people to develop a skill or quality,” said Pierce. “But what I see is that it is a strategy to help them be life-long learners and to increase their capacity for personal development and personal satisfaction in every area of their life.”

The PEP program takes place over a ten month period and includes three large group workshops, eight facilitated small group meetings, three individual coaching sessions and monthly peer coaching.

Participants choose a topic to focus on that is important to them, observe them selves in real time to gain insight and self-awareness, and then practice new behaviors to establish new habits and develop mastery.

Deliberate practice is the most significant indicator of success and this requires steady, consistent repetition over time, until new behaviors take root in the body as a new habit.

Mindfulness is about paying attention. It is about learning to observe one self in the context of day-to-day life to enable new insights and begin seeing yourself more clearly. The result is you can then make wiser choices. Increasing this self-awareness helps you cultivate the ability to act rather than react, enabling you to become response-able—even in the midst of high-stress situations.

“I think what makes PEP so successful is less about what we do than it is about the attitude we bring to how we do it,” says Weiss. “When we start from a place of beginner’s mind, and add a big dose of curiosity, patience and appreciation, learning happens because as human beings we are wired to learn and grow. In many ways, it comes down to doing less and trusting more in our innate capacities and vast potential.”

Leadership development programs should provide tangible, long lasting results and a program like PEP that engages the heart, mind and body is an example of one that appears to work.

Rather than seek a one-off, one-day solution for developing leaders in your organization, look for a longer term program with dynamic involvement that includes mindfulness and disciplined practice for changing behavior. Only then will you have a significant return on investment measured not only in dollars, but also in more engaged human capital.

10 Tips to Improve Workplace Communication

In the spirit of year-end top ten lists, here are my top ten tips to improve communication in the workplace—for this and every year. Better communication is important because it can provide more engaged employees, higher workplace morale, and greater efficiency and productivity.

As I wrote in a previous post on how to improve listening, communication skills include reading, writing, speaking and listening. All of these skills are important in most workplaces and each of them should be considered.

My top ten tips to improve workplace communication are as follows.

1.  Clear & Direct. Be certain the information you need to convey—whether it is spoken or written—is clear and directly communicated. Use language that is specific and unambiguous. Check that the receiver understands the message as you intended. Avoid acronyms when there’s a chance they will be unclear.

2.  Actively Listen. Becoming an active listener means you make a conscious effort to truly hear what the other person is saying—in their words as well as their body language. Practice holding off thinking about how to respond or interrupting until you have thoroughly heard what they are saying. It should come as no surprise that the best communicators are also the best listeners.  

3.  Paraphrase. The goal of paraphrasing is to ensure you are clear about what has been said and let the speaker know that you care about what he or she is communicating. Both are equally important in effective communication. Use a variation on “What I hear you saying is . . .” to accomplish this.

4.  Face-to-Face. Whenever you have difficult information to convey or sometihing that could result in many questions, choose to have a direct face-to-face conversation. You will also have the huge benefit of non-verbal communication cues including tone of voice, facial expressions and other body language.

5.  Be Respectful. This means using the other person’s name, looking them in the eye, and nodding to aid in demonstrating you understand what they are saying. If you are communicating in writing, reread before sending your message to ensure that it could not be misinterpreted or taken as disrespectful. When on the phone, don’t multitask even if you think the person on the other end of the line does not know that you are.

6.  Message & Medium. Some of us are better communicating in writing and some are better at speaking. Some of us are better reading information and some at listening to information. In most cases, it depends on the message being delivered and received. When you need to deliver a message, consider whether it should be spoken or written depending on the content as well as the preference of your receiver.

7.  Tailor Conversation to Audience. Communicating with your boss, co-worker, customer or supplier may require a slightly different style. With your boss, be careful to pick the right time, and ask for what you need and what you expect they can reasonably deliver. For a co-worker, be direct, transparent, and open-minded. And if a customer or supplier calls with a problem, listen carefully, apologize if necessary even if it wasn’t your fault, and offer a solution.

8.  Effective Texting. More and more of our workplace communication is done via email, voice mail and text messaging. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these, depending on the message and the audience. Texting can be especially effective when a quick question or answer is required without further explanation or repeated follow up, e.g., “What time is the budget meeting?” But don’t text when it cannot effectively communicate your message.

9.  Make the Most of Meetings. Way too many of us spend time in meetings that are unproductive and often unnecessary. Demand that those calling a meeting provide an agenda, hold to the appointed start and end time, and have only the right people in attendance. Ensure that the work done in the meeting warrants the time and resources taken away from those working independently.

10. Stay Positive. Regardless of the conversation, try to keep it positive. Even the harshest feedback can and should be delivered in a positive, supportive, team-centric manner. Stay focused on behavior or performance and not character. When you are on the receiving end, avoid getting triggered by difficult messages. Keep in mind the bigger picture and the long term implications.

These ten tips for improving workplace communication can be implemented and perfected by anyone. Take an honest look at your own communication skills then choose one of the above to improve upon. 

The work you put into improving your communication skills will pay dividends both at work and at home.

Redefined Leadership through Greater Gender Diversity

Women have made great strides succeeding in every profession, yet still find little opportunity in the executive office and corporate boardrooms.

By 2009 women made up more than half of America’s labor force, however, only 12 women were CEOs or presidents of Fortune 500 companies and just 25 of Fortune 1000 companies.

Recently, former Ebay leader Meg Whitman was appointed CEO of HP and Virginia Rometty will soon take over as the first woman CEO of IBM. But these are anomalies as only 3.2% of CEOs in the 3,049 publicly traded companies analyzed by GMI were women.

According to a 2010 study, men hold 82% of seats in Fortune 100 corporate boardrooms and an even higher percentage in Fortune 500 companies. Women and minorities have actually been losing boardseats in large corporations since 2004.

A case could be made for increasing gender diversity not only to provide greater opportunities for women in business, but also to improve overall business.  This is not to say women necessarily make better leaders than men. I only suggest that the yardstick we use to identify successful business leaders may need to be recalibrated.

Leadership qualities in business include such personal behaviors as decisiveness, goal-directedness, and performance-orientation, and we should complement those with social behaviors like relational awareness, emotional intelligence, inclusion, empathy and intuition. These social behaviors are more often associated with women than men, but they can be learned by anyone.

Do the personal and social pressures women face make it harder for them to succeed as leaders in a corporate environment? Countless factors may come into play for women including, maternal and domestic priorities, greater societal pressures, double-standard for behaviors in the office, and the burden of maintaining physical appearances.

The fact is that standards in the business world are still made and enforced by men, and this makes it difficult for women to reach the top in any corporation.

This is especially unfortunate as studies from McKinsey and Catalyst continually find that companies in the US and Europe with a high number of women executives and board members perform better organizationally and financially.

According to Catalyst research, the 25 Fortune 500 companies with the best records for promoting women to senior positions have 69 percent higher returns than the Fortune 500 median for their industry.

The results of a 2010 McKinsey Global Survey found 72 percent of executives say they “believe there is a direct connection between a company’s gender diversity and its financial success.” According to the study, companies with the highest levels of gender diversity also had higher returns on equity, operating results, and growth in market valuation than the averages in their respective sectors.

Research on collective intelligence by Christopher Chabris at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence and Anita Williams Woolley at Carnegie Mellon University found that the one predictor that a specific group will have high collective intelligence requires that at least half the chairs around the table are occupied by women.

According to Chabris and Woolley it is this superior social sensitivity in reading non-verbal cues and other people’s emotions, and fairness in taking turns that make the difference. Superior social sensitivity includes things like emotional intelligence, a holistic perspective, empathy and intuition.

These traits or “soft skills” are often marginalized or dismissed altogether in the business world. And though they are regularly associated as more feminine characteristics, effective soft skills have proven to be a powerful predictor of career success for both men and women.

Leslie Pratch is a clinical psychologist who headed research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business investigating the longer-term personality predictors of leadership. She found that gender-based expectations for behavior very much influence the styles and evaluations of leaders.

According to Pratch’s research, women are expected to display high levels of social qualities, including the need for affiliation, a tendency to be self-sacrificing, a concern for others, spontaneity, and emotional expressiveness. Men, on the other hand, are expected to show high levels of qualities associated with acting or exerting power, independence, assertiveness, self-confidence, and instrumental competence.

When applied to leadership, female-stereotypical forms of leadership are interpersonally oriented and collaborative, whereas male-stereotypical forms of leadership are task oriented and dominating.

At a time when strong leadership is so desperately needed, it may be necessary to redefine what it means to lead.

To be a successful company and thrive in a global economy, leaders need to lessen their grip on independence and domination, and embrace the distribution of power by engaging others in a collaborative manner to encourage diverse opinions that can bring about successful solutions.

This means hiring and promoting people who have both a task- and collaborative-orientation. In the near term, they may need to promote those people who primarily demonstrate relational intelligence, empathy and intuition to complement those who already demonstrate decisiveness, goal-directedness, and performance-orientation.

And this, more than likely, means hiring and promoting more women into leadership positions.

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Better Communication with a Direct Approach

An angry boss of an internet start-up firm is repeatedly coercing his employees to work long hours with the threat of losing jobs and the potential for vast riches if the company succeeds. If this man were to express his needs in a more respectful manner rather than through mandates, would he get more from his employees?

A recent report on NPR revealed that two-thirds of doctors say they do not discuss losing weight with their patients, even though the vast majority of Americans are obese or overweight. If doctors were clear and more direct about the dangers of being overweight, would this help their patients lose pounds and avoid diabetes?

A middle-manager in a major pharmaceutical company is talking behind another manager’s back with derogatory statements about her character, which undermines advancement opportunities for both. If this middle-manager were to speak directly to the other manager about the character concerns, would it help build a more honest relationship between the two and improve their advancement chances?

Communication that is aggressive, passive, or passive-aggressive cripples our ability to understand each other and work together well. And poor workplace communication results in conflict that can create uncertainty, resource hoarding, ineffective teamwork, and spreading rumors and gossip.

There are many descriptors for communication styles, but they typically fall into four categories: aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive and assertive. Rarely do any of us stay in one style all the time, but instead move in and out of them continually, though we may remain in one longer than the others.

When using an aggressive style there is manipulation involved. This often means hurting others through guilt or anger, and using intimidation and other control tactics. Though this style may be effective in the short term like when playing sports or fighting in a war, it will fail if used repeatedly in relationships in or out of the workplace.

The passive style of communication is one of compliance with the hope of avoiding confrontation at all costs. Using the passive style means speaking very little and questioning even less. With this style of communication very little is accomplished and needs are unlikely to get met. In the workplace, this can stifle understanding and get in the way of moving forward.

Those in a passive-aggressive style avoid direct confrontation by remaining passive, but then use aggression—often behind someone’s back—in order to get even. This harmful communication style also uses manipulation and may lead to office politics and spreading negative rumors. It is also the most difficult to detect and deal with because it switches back and forth so often.

The most effective and healthiest form of communication is the assertive style. We all naturally communicate in this way when our self-esteem is intact because we have confidence. When using the assertive style we are able to communicate our needs with clarity and often look for win/win solutions with others.

Surprisingly, assertive communication is the style people use least often. This is unfortunate because when using assertive communication you:

• express your wants, needs, and feelings clearly, appropriately, and respectfully
• use “I” statements
• listen well without interrupting
• feel in control of yourself
• have good eye contact
• speak in a calm and clear tone of voice
• have a relaxed body posture
• feel connected to others
• feel competent and in control

You may notice that many of these are associated with being emotionally intelligent and thereby being able to navigate your relationships with self-reflection, self-regulation and empathy.

Assertiveness is based on mutual respect, and it’s an effective and diplomatic communication style. When you are assertive, you’re willing to stand up for your interests and easily express your thoughts and feelings. It also demonstrates that you are aware of the rights of others and are willing to work on resolving conflicts.

With assertive communication, a boss’s urgency could be better communicated to motivate his employees in a healthy manner, doctors could make a clear and compelling case for overweight patients at risk of getting diabetes, and middle-managers could stop sabbotaging careers by being more straight-forward with each other.

If you’re in conflict with someone at work, notice what kind of communication style you are using as well as the other person. See if you can make a conscious effort to change your style to be assertive. You may find that the other person will begin to reflect that same direct approach back to you and help resolve the conflict.

Using this direct assertive communication style more often in the workplace can dramatically improve engagement, teamwork and productivity.

Joe Paterno, Penn State and Leadership

What do recent events at Penn State and the firing of legendary football coach Joe Paterno say about the state of leadership today?

Many of the leaders at Penn State failed in various ways by failing to stop the heinous crime of child molestation. Assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is the guiltiest, of course, but other leaders share in the blame.

Sandusky was arrested last Saturday on 21 felony counts, including seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. These counts involve alleged abuse of eight young boys over a period of 15 years, including several incidents that allegedly took place at the university’s athletic facilities.

Athletic director Tim Curley and university administer Gary Schultz not only allegedly failed to report the sexual abuse of the children by coach Sandusky, but also made false statements about it to a grand jury.

Penn State university president, Graham Spanier, according to a grand jury report, stated he not only was made aware of the allegations, but approved Curley’s approach in dealing with it. Spanier, one of the longest-serving college presidents in the nation, then pledged his “unconditional support” to Curley and Schultz two days prior to when they both resigned.

Then there is assistant coach Mike McQueary, who was a graduate assistant when he personally witnessed Sandusky raping one of the victims and reported it to Paterno the following day back in March 2002. Curley told McQueary that Sandusky’s locker room keys would be taken away, but McQueary told no one else and took no further action.

Finally, Joe Paterno, the winningest head coach in college football, failed in his leadership because although he apparently reported the news to his boss, he never went to the police, never confronted Sandusky and never followed up to ensure it didn’t happen again.

True leadership requires ensuring that corrections are made when a crisis like this first comes to light. It’s not enough for a coach to simply report the crime to his superior. Eight young boys were victimized and these five Penn State leaders all played a role in contributing to the delay of Sandusky being charged and repeating his crimes.

Leadership requires stepping up to such ethical dilemmas and making tough decisions even when it may reflect poorly on oneself and/or one’s institution. Courageous leadership requires that controversial action is taken when it is the right thing to do, even if it is not in the best interests of the institution.

Imagine if our elected officials in congress could be this courageous. Here at this especially critical time for decisive action we have partisan bickering and an inability to do what is in the best interest of the American people.

Whether it is heinous crimes within a prestigious college football program, insider trading in a multinational corporation, or sexual harassment by a presidential candidate, it appears that the larger or more powerful the person or institution, the more courageous leadership is required.

Powerful forces will always attempt to quell potential damage and that is why it takes so much courage and persistence by victims, witnesses and those who learn of the atrocity to come forward and see that justice is done. No matter where these people are in the organizational chart, they are the ones who can demonstrate such strong leadership.

And when those in true leadership positions fail to act, they must be removed.

Increased Productivity Requires Focused Attention & Changing Bad Habits

In today’s workplace people are working harder than ever, yet the results may not reflect this in a way that shows increased productivity. Part of it may be due to a lack of focus on getting results. And part may be because bad habits keep us from succeeding.

Getting results requires focusing on only that which matters. Self help author and motivational speaker Brian Tracy describes what he calls the “law of three” in business management. According to this law, aside from the three most important tasks or results you want to achieve, everything else contributes just 10 percent of actual results.

Unfortunately, most people spend 90 perecent of their time on activities that contribute very little and then wonder why they are making so little progress.

Tracy suggests you first determine the three most important results you must achieve in order to be successful. Typically, it’s one primary result with two supporting results that are essential in order to succeed in achieving the first. For example, the first could be sales volume, while the second and third would be effective marketing to attract qualified prospects and effective selling to convert prospects into customers.

Next you need to eliminate all the “busy work” you end up doing each day that gets in the way of focusing all your time and energy on these three results 90 percent of the time.

Take a critical look at your job description. Does it acurately reflect what the company needs you to do in order to succeed in your three most important results? If not, see if you can refine it and then present this to your manager. You are not looking to be confrontational, but you want to ensure your time and energy is used to produce results the company wants and needs from you.

The other side of the equation has to do with your own bad habits that may get in the way of reaching results. This is where you have to take an honest appraisal of yourself and identify what you do habitually that keeps you from staying focused on your three results.

“Success and failure are more a result of your habits than anything else,” says Tracy

If you can increase your good habits and reduce your bad habits, you will dramatically contribute to your success in life. This is easier said than done, of course. There is a saying that bad habits are like comfortable chairs—easy to get into, but hard to get out of.

Here are 12 steps for changing a bad habit:

1.      Make a Plan – Write this down; make the bad habit specific and describe what it looks and feels like to be gone.
2.      One at a Time – As tempting as it may be to take on more than one, stay focused so you can be successful with just one habit at a time.
3.      Take a Full 30 Days – There is no research to say exactly how long it takes to break a bad habit, but if this is something you do all the time then    30 days should be sufficient.
4.      Acknowledge Your Triggers – You know better than anyone what triggers your bad habit, so you must determine a strategy to avoid or counter them. And for each trigger, determine a good habit you can use in place of your bad habit.
5.      Avoid Environments/People That Trigger You – If there is a place or person that makes this habit more likely to show up, see if you can avoid it or them for awhile.
6.      Acknowledge Your Obstacles – You also know what gets in the way of changing your behavior better than anyone. So think of a creative strategy to overcome them.
7.      Ask for Help and Support – Don’t go about this without others to cheer you on and help you when you are weak.
8.      Become Aware of What You Tell Yourself – All too often what we say to ourselves can counter what we try to achieve. Be mindful of this inner dialogue and correct it if necessary.
9.     Stay Healthy – Take care of your physical health by eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise and plenty of sleep.
10.  Determine Disincentives for Failure – Make failing to change this habit detrimental in some way that will help you succeed.
11.  Give Yourself a Reward – Acknowledge and celebrate your success with a reward that will continually remind you of why you earned it.
12.  If you Fail, Start Again – Like learning anything new, it may take more than one attempt to succeed. Don’t get discouraged, find out what went wrong, correct it, and start over again.

Bad habits can often sabotage your attempt to focus on the most important work at hand. It takes courage and commitment to remove these bad habits, but once you do, you will be rewarded for a lifetime.

This combination of focused attention on your three most important results and removing habits that get in the way of succeeding are the keys to making your hard work lead to increased productivity.

Trapped Chilean Miners & Emergent Leadership

Visionary leaders like the late Steve Jobs don’t come along all that often, but strong leadership qualities can emerge in any of us and at any time. Sometimes it just takes a crisis before we see these exemplary skills come forward.

Think of Sir Ernest Shakleton who, after failing to succeed at his original goal in becoming the first to walk across the Antarctic continent, maintained order and optimism in his crew for nearly two years under extremely difficult circumstances to save all 28 men.

And more recently, those who led the 33 Chilean miners to safety one year ago this week, including Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, mining minister Laurence Golborne and shift supervisor Luis Urzula. Each of them took risks and rose to the challenge of what it means to be a strong leader.

On August 5, 2010 a private mine in the Atacama desert collapsed trapping 33 miners more than 2000 feet below the surface. It was a full 17 days before anyone knew that the 33 were still alive, but that didn’t keep people from immediately taking responsibility and planning a rescue operation.

Chilean President Pinera announced that the priority was to attempt a rescue, yet he set no firm deadline or date. He set a vision, but left it to others to define the roadmap. He also celebrated small wins along the way in order to keep everyone inspired. This clarity of vision and celebration of incremental victories along the way helped lead the way for everyone involved.

Mining minister Golborne said he felt immediately empowered once Pinera committed to the world that they would find the miners. He created two teams: one at the site working inside the mine, doing the drilling and preparing for the rescue; and another team in Santiago looking at different technologies to design the rescue. It was also vital that they began three different options concurrently and ended up succeeding with Plan B.

Shift supervisor Urzula demonstrated both competence and compassion leading the men inside the mine through this 69 day ordeal. He defined and enforced how all 33 would spend their days, and switched off electric lights to simulate night. Urzula rationed two days worth of food to last the 17 days before they were discovered, which amounted to one teaspoon of tuna and a half-glass of milk each 48 hours. All the men were forced to eat together and at the same time to maintain fairness and inclusiveness. Urzula as their leader was also the last to leave the mine.

Mario Gomez, the 62-year-old cheerleader and spiritual guide of the group, said after being rescued, “Sometimes you need something to happen to really reflect that you only have one life. I am changed, I am a different man.”

The leadership skills demonstrated by these brave men of Chile include clarity of purpose, focus, celebration of small victories, competence, compassion, communication, creativity, discipline, and teamwork. This event gave a billion people around the world something to be proud of and celebrate as we witnessed the miners being rescued.

Most of us will never face the challenges of these miners or the people helping to rescue them because our work is not as dangerous. But there are many opportunities in our workplace for taking a risk, stepping out of our comfort zone, and rising to the challenge of leadership.

This could be taking an unpopular position on a project that may put you at odds with others. It may mean speaking up for someone when you believe that person was treated unfairly. Or it may mean taking responsibility for something no one else is willing to do.

Whatever it is, there will be risks of failure and the possibility that you make look like a fool. But as Steve Jobs said in his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Leadership requires both courage and humility. Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to fully embrace this.

Engaged Employees Make all the Difference

Is employee engagement really important or is it just nice to have and something to think about once economic times improve?

The fact is companies with a high percentage of engaged employees are more profitable than those with fewer engaged workers. High engagement can improve employee retention and raise customer perceptions that directly lead to better financial performance.

Overall, most companies have about one-third of their employees fully engaged in their work. Yet recent surveys suggest that as many as four out of five workers would leave their current job if they could, but most think they would have trouble finding another one right now.

Engaged employees are those who are involved in and enthusiastic about their work. Those who are not engaged are satisfied but are not emotionally connected to their workplace and are less likely to put in extra effort. Those who are actively disengaged are emotionally disconnected from the work and workplace and jeopardize the performance of their teams. Their physical health may also be at risk.

A recent Gallup survey found that in the average big company only 33% of employees describe themselves as fully engaged in their work, 49% say they are not engaged and 18% say they are actively disengaged.

Gallup’s research found there is a strong relationship between engagement and high-performance outcomes which include customer loyalty, profitability, productivity, turnover, safety incidents, shrinkage, absenteeism, patient safety incidents, and quality (defects). They also learned that organizations with a high percentage of engaged employees have nearly four times the earnings per share growth rate compared to organizations in the same industry with lower enagement.

In what Gallup calls world-class organizations, the ratio of engaged workers to actively disengaged workers is about 10:1. Whereas in average organizations, the ratio of engaged workers to actively disengaged workers is about 2:1.

All too often, employee engagement is viewed as an HR initiative to improve morale among employees when things aren’t going so well. These intiatives do little to raise the level of employee engagement, and sometimes they even undermine it. That’s because employee engagement is distinctively different from employee satisfaction, motivation and organizational culture.

In the best companies employee engagement is a strategic approach for driving improvement that is directly linked to achieving corporate goals and organizational change. It can lead to employees who are more emotionally attached, involved and fully commited to their organizations. And it can profoundly increase productivity.

Employee engagement should be an organization-wide effort, and so much of its execution is dependent on good managers. As I wrote about in a previous post, employees join an organization based on the reputation of the company or the quality of its products or service. But they most often leave because of their manager.

In a down economy when hiring is stagnant and organizations are trying to get the most out of the people they already have, managers can engage employees in many ways. This includes clarifying expectations, providing adequate resources, giving recognition, encouraging their professional development, helping them connect to the organization’s purpose, and measuring and discussing progress more often than once each year.

Managers who do these as part of an overall employee engagement strategy are more likely to produce high-quality work and retain employees.

At a time with high unemployment, stagnant wages and workers staying in their jobs only because they fear they cannot find something better, it is the perfect time to execute an employee engagement strategy to energize your people.

In most organizations employees are the biggest expense and, far and away, the greatest asset. Now is the time to invest in a strategy that will raise the number of fully engaged employees and increase your profitability. You’ll be glad you did both now and when the economy improves.

Character and Success

Can you succeed in your career and life if you haven’t first learned how to fail?

This is the prominent question in a recent New York Times Sunday Magazine article titled “What if the Secret to Success is Failure.”

The writer suggests character traits, including the ability to overcome failure, may be just as important, if not more so, than intellgence in order to graduate from college and succeed in a career and life.

A list of 24 character traits come from a book called “Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification,” by Martin Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Christopher Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan. The 800-page book is basically the “science of good character.”

Seligman and Peterson settled on 24 character strengths common to all cultures and eras after consulting works from Aristotle to Confucius, the Upanishads to the Torah, the Boy Scout Handbook to profiles of Pokémon characters. The list includes traits like love, humor, zest, bravery, citizenship, fairness, wisdom and integrity as well as things like social intelligence, kindness, self-regulation and gratitude.

Many would argue that character traits don’t belong in the classroom curriculum and that this should be the domain of parents and not teachers. Let’s face it, teachers have enough to handle at a time when American students academic scores are failing to keep pace with many students around the globe.

My own middle schooler is currently experiencing a great deal of anxiety over the increased demands sixth grade entails, and my wife and I can see that this anxiety is not strictly about the academics so much as the increased homework, internal pressure to do well, and the lack of mature coping skills.

And as difficult as it is for we as parents to watch our child struggle and possibly fail, it may be fundamentally important to her success that we do. We all know at some level that kids need a little hardship or challenge they can overcome in order to prove to themselves that they can do so. This may be the best—if not the only—way to build confidence in oneself.

So if overcoming failure and having certain character traits are so important to success, what does this say about the workplace? How often do these traits show up in a job description or are even mentioned during an interview?

A successful interviewer should certainly probe a candidate for a time when he or she failed at something, and then look for what was learned or how that experience led to improvement. If the candidate is unable to provide an example of failing, that alone should raise red flags.

Character traits are more difficult to uncover yet they can be ascertained through repeated interactions and requests for stories from previous work experiences as well as through detailed conversations with professional references. Ultimately, character traits may never be quantified enough to fully measure, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be looked for in a potential employee.

Many companies have a list of corporate values that include character traits that are consciously or unconsciously sought after in the people they hire. Knowing what these are and choosing to deliberately look for them in hiring should be emphasized.

What if your company looked for character traits like zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity in the people it hired? Would these be a good predictor of whether that employee succeeded or failed? I believe they would, but would love to know your thoughts.