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Understanding Diversity, Inclusion And Workplace Culture With Stacey Gordon

As leaders and entrepreneurs, we must be aware of work ethics and policies that would benefit the organization and make the site a better workplace for us and our employees. In this episode, the CEO of Rework Work, Stacey Gordon discusses diversity, equity, inclusion and workplace culture. She shares how she started in her career and what paved her way into pursuing the passion she has right now. Together with Dr. Diane Hamilton, Stacey delves into attaining a high level of business success. An executive advisor and diversity strategist, Stacey is the creator of the number one resume course at LinkedIn learning and an unconscious bias course which has consistently been the second-highest viewed course on the platform. Join in and learn what works in your organization, strategies you must focus on and the importance of a roadmap in your professional journey.

Continue reading “Understanding Diversity, Inclusion And Workplace Culture With Stacey Gordon” →

Engagement – Chapter Reading

Introduction

How committed are you to your job? Your company? Your employer? Do you actively take ideas to your boss to improve the way the business operates?

These are the types of questions human resource professionals and the corporate world put under the category of employee engagement, which has become a big and very expensive issue. Studies have shown, for example, that the vast majority of employees are either completely disengaged from their work, or only moderately engaged. That means that the remaining minority, who are considered actively engaged, are the ones keeping their company afloat. Not just in terms of generating the revenue, but solving the day-to-day problems, developing new products, coming up with new, innovative ideas; that is not a sustainable business model. It is for these reasons that business owners and human resource professionals are looking for ways to turn those numbers around.

So our question was, “How do our perceptions play in this dynamic?” What is it that we see, hear and feel that makes us more or less engaged in our work … in our company? The answer, we found out, is a lot! And surprisingly enough, it has little to do with the size of our paycheck each week.

To examine this, let’s begin with the brain.

David Lee, founder and principal at the human resource firm, HumanNature@Work, writes that, dating back to when cavemen were fighting for survival, the human brain has been hardwired to sense and remember negative things more than positive ones. It makes more of an impact on our brain when we see a snake than when we hear a bird singing. Positives are nice, but what can hurt us makes a stronger impression.

Fast-forward to today’s workplace. We appreciate the positive experiences that we enjoy in the workplace, but we never forget the negative ones. I might not remember the $500 bonus I received last year, but I’ll remember when my boss failed to mention my name when our project team was being recognized ten years ago.

When we are engaged, in our work and in our company, it’s because we’re being challenged; we’re being recognized; we are made to feel that we matter; we are appreciated; and we have opportunities to advance and feel we’re being well compensated.

We become disengaged usually for the exact opposite reasons … when we’re not appreciated, when we’re not challenged; when we’re not recognized; when we don’t think we matter. We become disengaged at work for many of the same reasons we become disengaged in our relationships. It’s the same human condition. Only in the workplace, there’s a paycheck involved. So, it’s easy to pin our lack of engagement on that.

Even when it is about the paycheck, it tends not to be about how much we make, but how equitable it is. Am I being paid fairly? Is my paycheck in line with what others make that perform the same job as me? And is there opportunity for advancement?

So, how do we recognize those indicators that keep us engaged or disengaged? We get the paycheck thing. That’s a tangible measure. But in the larger scheme of things, compensation seems to be less of a factor than you might think. What about all the other, more subtle things that we see and hear that cause us to be excited and committed to our work and our company, as opposed to having our eyes glued to job sites?

That is the focus of this chapter.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes

what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Voltaire

To begin, let’s go back a few years to the early years when the technology boom was first beginning to disrupt old businesses and create new ones. In 1996, when the automation revolution was in its infancy and beginning to create new technology-based business models, the bloodbaths began.

We were learning how to use technology to do things that humans once did. Workers were being replaced by machines. In an effort to remain viable, competitive and productive in the new information economy, companies began using terms like “corporate reengineering” to engineer massive layoffs. Terms like downsizing or right-sizing came into vogue, and usually with little or no regard for the turmoil that was left in their wake.

Companies that were once bastions of strength, stability and lifetime employment, were reduced, both in size and in reputation, to mere shells of their former selves. Companies that were once considered a source of “good jobs” were no longer.

But then, there were other companies that managed to maintain their sense of stability and their reputations as reliable places to work. What were they doing differently? The Bain Consulting Company wanted to know.

Frederick Reichheld and a team of his fellow Bain consultants first calculated the losses of these re-engineering efforts. The numbers showed that companies were losing customers (over half in less than five years), employees (more than half every four years), and investors (roughly half every year). The lost dollars that accompanied those losses were staggering.

After calculating the costs of the losses, they wanted to understand why they were occurring, and what could be done to reverse such an alarming trend. They began by examining those companies that were not experiencing those losses – companies such as Toyota, Lexus, State Farm, USAA, Chick-Fil-A and John Deere – to understand what they were doing that seemed to be making a difference.

What they found was captured in a book they called The Loyalty Effect, and it came down to one word … engagement.

The companies, such as Toyota, Lexus and State Farm, were all using different practices, but they were practices that were geared toward the same objectives … ensure that their customers, their employees, and their investors felt actively involved in the success of the company and its employees. In other words, engaged.

The practices the authors uncovered certainly included compensation. But, they went far beyond compensation to include basic, elementary items, such as training, career development, recognition and retention practices.

They also discovered that those massive re-engineering efforts that companies had engaged in had done little to achieve any tangible gains in corporate performance. The financial gains they had achieved by reducing their workforce were offset by all the same factors that Kevin Sheridan outlined in his book, Building a Magnetic Culture. They found that the massive disruptions corporations hoped would improve their efficiency through their re-engineering efforts and layoffs actually had the exact opposite impact on morale, attrition and productivity. Further, those companies no longer had the reputation of being “a desirable place to work.” They began to experience recruiting and retention problems. Even the employees they wanted to keep began to express second thoughts about their company.

The perceptions of employees and industry onlookers alike were working overtime, capturing the uncertainty of it all. Remember, the hard wiring of the brain … we enjoy the nice things we experience, but we never forget those negative perceptions.

Instead of those companies being the pantheons of performance and stability they once were, they were cultivating reputations of companies to stay away from, due to the perceived uncertainty and chaos.

In contrast, the authors found companies such as USAA were achieving far greater yields by, instead of laying off their workforce, actually investing in their workforce. Employee training, career development and recognition programs were cited as the major factor that caused the company to increase its productivity more than one hundred times, with only a fivefold increase in its workforce. Reichheld summarized his study of USAA by stating, “The Company invests in employment and compensation policies that make their employees want to stay and produce.”

Some twenty years after the initial publication of The Loyalty Effect, technologies have improved, and business practices have evolved and changed. Yet, multiple studies continue to show top performing companies separate themselves from the also-rans, not by throwing money at their employees, but by engaging them.

I guess we do like being treated like we matter.

But, what about our workforce as it has shifted from Baby Boomers to Millennials and Gen-Xers? That is a problem of a different type. Being treated like we matter seems to be more important than ever.

Millennials, the author says, love even more feedback and recognition than their Boomer predecessors ever received, or expected. Sheridan calculated that millennials look for compliments regarding their work as many as 12-14 times per day. In stark contrast, Baby Boomers, who climbed the corporate ranks in a very different time and culture, neither sought out that level of feedback, nor expected it. And, as managers, they don’t feel compelled to provide that to their millennial employees.

Suck it up, Sheridan says. That’s the world of productivity and engagement in the millennial world. If you cannot provide feedback to your employees 14 times per day, you should at least target 6 to 8 times per day. It is not about being nice, he says. It is essential in retaining talent and increasing productivity. He says, employees today look for basically three things:

1. Recognition
2. Career Development, and
3. Their relationship with their supervisor.

In addition to the recognition, employees cite career development, as they are eager to learn, grow, and expand their horizons, and they look for companies that provide a robust career development program.

As far as their relationship with their boss, think about it this way: how many of us are actively engaged in our company’s performance, when we don’t like the person we work for? Again, studies show this is not about the issue of likability. It is about human nature. How enjoyable is it to go to work, knowing your boss is unengaging, uninterested in you and your career, and difficult to get along with? And what if your boss were the opposite of those things?

Another proponent of employee engagement who sees the direct correlation between perception and employee engagement is Dr. Bob Nelson. He is a consultant on the subject to literally hundreds of companies, and has authored some twenty-nine books on the topic, including 1001 Ways to Motivate Employees and The Management Bible.

In a recent interview on Dr. Diane Hamilton’s show, Nelson stated that the key to engagement is recognition. This is a practice that many Baby Boomer managers, who were not trained to provide that level of constant feedback, have difficulty with. “Search for moments of positive achievements,” Nelson says, “even small achievements, and recognize them immediately. Tomorrow or next week,” he continues, “is too late. You will have lost the moment. Delayed recognition could even have a negative impact.”

The author spoke of how he embraced the African proverb “Embutu” (or Ubuntu), roughly meaning, “I am because we are.”

The 2008 world champion Boston Celtics embraced the same philosophy, and even have the term engraved on their championship rings.

Earlier in this chapter, we mentioned the Gallup Organization and their numerous studies on the subject of engagement. Two of their consultants, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, conducted an extensive study to find the best management practices that tend to attract and retain talent and achieve high levels of productivity. They ask questions such as, “Should a good manager be able to identify good talent? Or should a good manager be able to groom talent? What prevents employee attrition, better pay or better management?”

Their massive study, conducted over a period of twenty-five years, was compiled into a book they entitled, First, Break All the Rules. The commonalities they found in high performing managers were that, first, they did not hesitate to break all the rules of conventional management practices, as the title of their book suggests.

Secondly, they placed a great deal of emphasis on the care, well-being and development of their employees. The third, Buckingham and Coffman concluded, is that employers should have a close relationship and are liked by their employees. The authors concluded:

“In today’s tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But these well-intentioned efforts often miss the mark. The front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. No matter how generous its pay or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer.”

The two authors further explained how the best managers select employees based on talent, as opposed to skills or experience. They set clear expectations and define the right outcomes rather than the right steps or process to follow. They motivate people and build on each person’s unique strengths rather than trying to fix their weaknesses. And, finally, they find the right fit for each person, as opposed to believing that promotion to management is automatically presumed to be the next rung on the organizational ladder.

Citing both corporate and individual performance metrics, Buckingham and Coffman concluded that the top performing companies all excelled at employee engagement and invest in their workforce. They say that an employee’s commitment to his or her work comes down to basic questions, such as, “Do I know what is expected of me at work?” or, “Do my opinions count?”

One final person we interviewed on the subject of engagement was Kevin Kruse. He is another popular spokesperson on the subject, and also the author of multiple books on the topic. One of his books is simply titled Employee Engagement. In a recent interview, he distilled the test for employers who want to assess their employees’ commitment to their work to four questions, using the acronym G.R.E.A.T.

Those questions are:

1. Growth – Do my employees feel they are growing in their work?
2. Recognition – Are they being recognized for their work?
3. Trust – Do they trust that they and the company are on the right track?
4. Communication – The means by which to engage in those discussions.

Kruse cited a number of simple, inexpensive examples of how to engage employees in these questions. He emphasized catching employees in laudable or even coachable moments to cite their behavior and let them know they are valued. He emphasized that employee engagement is neither expensive nor time consuming.

Using those four questions, are you or your employees actively engaged in their work? If no, then what can be done to engage the ambivalent, or the actively disengaged? Sheridan offered a sampling of three actions that could be taken:

1. Volunteer them for assignments or committees.
2. Mix them with workers that are actively engaged.
3. He or she may be in the wrong job. Consider moving them into a role more suitable to their skill set.

At the core of it all, from each of the experts we consulted, is the premise of being aware of your employees’ perceptions of their work, and finding ways to align the two.

Conclusion

Well, the first thing we learned is that perception has everything to do with employee engagement. Whether it’s our perception of the benefits we’ll derive from our work, or how much we like how our boss treats us, or whether it’s how much we like our co-workers and the environment, it is all based on our perceptions.

The second thing we learned goes back to the expression, “Little things mean a lot.” It is the slightest occurrence that can alter our perceptions about our co-workers or the workplace, which in turn can affect our level of engagement. Consider the employee who has been diligent and effective at his or her work and was next in line for the promotion that went to someone else … someone more junior and not regarded as particularly effective at their work.

Or inversely, the boss who says, “You know things are tight right now and a raise is out of the question. But I want to thank you for the long hours you’ve put in to help us get this project done. Here’s a gift certificate for you and your wife to go to dinner.”

The behaviors and activities that surround us in our workplace are continuously shaping and reshaping our perceptions. What we choose to do or not do with those perceptions is up to us.

Failure – Chapter Reading

Introduction

How do you respond to your failures? Though every individual has their own unique reaction to those occasions in which they failed, their reactions tend to go in one of two directions … Fight or flight … Embrace it, or run from it.

Everywhere we turn, as we study the topic of perception and its relationship to leadership or success, we run into that question, “How do leaders perceive their failures, or more to the point, their fear of failure?” The answer seems to fall into that same, “half empty/half full” scenario.

Timothy Daniels and Anne Matthews were mid-level colleagues at a major technology firm and were given a very special assignment. The two were tasked to pay a visit to a high-profile customer who was very dissatisfied with a recent transaction with the firm. This was not the first time this customer had expressed unhappiness with the firm’s performance. Timothy and Anne’s task was to meet with the customer, let him vent, and then see what it would take to “make things right.”

During the entire two-hour drive to the customer’s site, Timothy was clearly anxious and apprehensive about the meeting. He was anticipating a very unpleasant meeting, saying to his colleague, “You know we’re gonna get our @$$#$ handed to us on a silver platter, and you and I are the ones that are gonna take the brunt of it!”

As her colleague continued drive and share his dire expectations, Anne just listened.

When they arrived, it didn’t take long for the pair to conclude Timothy was right. The customer didn’t hold back. The product didn’t work, he told them. The customer service was lousy. The delivery schedule lagged for more than a month. And the left hand didn’t seem to know what the right was doing. And those were just the highlights of his dissatisfaction. The customer kept the two of them in their chairs for almost two hours, detailing a history of their company’s poor performance, telling them he would never order from them again.

When Timothy finally got the chance to speak and ask him how their company could make things right, the customer’s response was, “By getting out of my office, and taking your product that doesn’t work with you!”

Whew! When they stopped for lunch on the drive back to the office, Timothy had nothing but a glass of water. He was emotionally spent from the grilling they had just received. He was further worried about how their boss was going to react when they would tell him they were unable to “make things right.” Again, Anne appeared unfazed by the experience. If she was nervous or anxious, it didn’t show. It was almost as if they had attended two different meetings.

As they were leaving the restaurant, Timothy said to her, “When we get back to the office, I’ll let you tell the boss. I’m not even sure I would know what to tell him.”

When they arrived back in the office, the two of them gathered in the conference room with the CEO and three other executives who were anxiously awaiting the update. They were already geared up to do what they had to do to make things right for the customer. They just didn’t know what it would cost them. The CEO started the meeting by saying to the two, “Well … ?”

Timothy immediately motioned to his partner to respond.

She began:

“We just had an extraordinary meeting. We learned more about ourselves as a company than I’ve learned in the five years I’ve been here. Here’s the skinny … we lost a customer, but we gained some invaluable feedback which, if we take it, is going to make us an even stronger, more competitive company.”

Timothy couldn’t believe his ears. He just came from what he described as the worst customer meeting he had ever been in, and his colleague called it “extraordinary.” As Anne continued, and the more he listened, the more he began to realize she was right, as did the executives. They were clearly disappointed by the loss of a customer, but were genuinely interested in the lessons learned as summarized by Anne. The CEO asked Anne to put those key points into a presentation and prepare to host one of the company’s “lunch and learn” sessions.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this

time, more intelligently. We celebrate our successes,

but our growth comes from our failures.

Henry Ford

What is it that makes some of us perceive failure as bad, something to avoid at all costs, and others see it as good? Where some people try to shove their failures into the deepest recesses of their minds, others speak of them with relish, almost as if to embrace them.

What about you? How do you treat your past failures when preparing a biography, curriculum vitae, or job resume? Chances are they never see the light of day. Our fear seems to be that if we expose any of our past failings, we will diminish our value, or worse, present ourselves as a “failure.”

Yet, our history is littered with successful leaders and entrepreneurs who cited multiple failures before eventually finding their success. From Abraham Lincoln, to Nelson Mandela, to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they each suffered multiple failures … enough to send most people packing. Yet, they managed to persevere right through the setbacks. What is the quality that enabled them to fight through their failures when most of us would have either given up and gone home, or chosen a different pursuit?

The answer, we found, does indeed fall into that half full/half empty characterization. But it gets portrayed in different ways. Let’s begin with the scientific view.

Offensive or Defensive?

Dr. Theo Tsaousides is a neuropsychologist, assistant professor, and author of the book Brainblocks: Overcoming the Seven Hidden Barriers to Success. He says the fear of failure or atychiphobia – try to pronounce that one, its scientific name – influences the type of goals you pursue, the kinds of strategies you use to achieve them, and the level of standards you set as indicators of success. He says, depending on your fear of failure, your actions are either offensive-minded, or defensive. In other words, your actions are either focused on achieving gains, or preventing losses.

Which are you?

For example, do you choose to work overtime because you don’t want to be perceived as a slacker and risk getting fired? Or, do you work overtime to finish a new project in pursuit of a promotion?

Tsaousides cites several examples of how individuals with a high fear of failure tend to behave differently. They tend to avoid situations that might put them in the spotlight and be evaluated or judged. For example, he says,

• They may avoid making a sales pitch to an important client for fear of not closing the deal.
• They may set lower standards for themselves, even though they know they can do better, to avoid failure.
• Instead of making a face-to-face visit to close the deal, for fear of being rejected, they may simply choose to just make a phone call to avoid the possibility of being told “no.”

In addition, he says, people with a fear of failure tend to intentionally create obstacles for themselves, which he calls self-handicapping, in the event they fail. For example, they may propose a sales call at a time when they know the client will be unavailable, or schedule a meeting knowing participants are unable to attend.

Dr. Tsaousides says, in the long run, this fear of failure could lead to more serious problems with a person’s physical and mental health, including feelings of fatigue, low energy and being emotionally drained. That, in turn, could lead to a general sense of dissatisfaction and self-destructive behaviors.

The fear of failure is perhaps the greatest inhibitor to pursuing difficult or challenging goals. It may keep you insulated from rejection or failings, but it can significantly limit what you choose to accomplish. In subtle, sometimes almost imperceptible ways, he says, our fear of failure can sabotage our careers, our relationships, or even our life goals.

If you fear that you may fall into this category, the first step in overcoming your fear of failure is getting a better understanding of what causes it and how it affects you. That begins with knowing which way you tend to lean … offensive or defensive.

In thinking about the answer to that question, let’s look at some variations of how effective leaders, entrepreneurs and others lean.

Forward or Backward

John C. Maxwell is one of the most prolific authors and gurus on the subject of leadership, and of his many books on the subject, one we liked is Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones to Success. In it, Maxwell says the single ingredient that separates high achievers from average people is how they perceive and respond to failure.

Those who excel, he says, have the mindset that failure takes them a step closer to their ultimate objective. They embrace failure as a sign of progress. In some instances, he says, effective leaders almost get an adrenaline rush from failing, knowing that they’re getting closer to their goal.

Where others may want to bury their failures in the sand, hoping to hide them from judgmental eyes, successful leaders almost want to trumpet their failures as badges of honor. According to Maxwell, the typical entrepreneur fails 3-4 times before they get their first taste of success. As they go through their failures, not only do they persevere, they gain momentum, knowing they’re one step closer to the finish line. Successful entrepreneurs, he says, view failure as a friend, not an enemy. They also draw a big distinction between “failure” and “failing.” Failing is just a temporary event. Failure is a characterization of an individual. Failing, Maxwell says, is merely a waystation to one’s ultimate destination.

He reminds us that the essence of man is imperfection, so by definition, failing comes with the territory. Success is not the absence of failing. It is learning from your failings and changing your course. Those who refuse to embrace and learn from those mistakes, he says, wind up working for those who do.

In the end, Maxwell leaves us with a simple mantra, “Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.”

Reward or Punish

For most of us, our fear of failure can also stem from the possible outcome as a result. Somehow, we fear, we’re going to suffer because of having failed. Somehow, we’re going to be punished. Google, the search engine giant, after analyzing the many successes it experienced, actually began to reward failing.

Early in the company’s creation, the company realized that some of their greatest innovations came from projects that were initially deemed failures. They came to conclude, in fact, that failure was the foundation of their competitive advantage as a company. As a result, they wanted to find a way to encourage people to fail, without fear of retribution. In 2012, they found their answer in what was launched as Project Aristotle.

The project examined the behaviors of 180 of their strongest teams to figure out why some excelled beyond others. The study revealed that the more successful teams created a much more intimate and humane environment, one built on respect and mutual trust. That atmosphere of trust, they found, allowed team members to openly challenge one another and express their failings without fear of consequence or ridicule.

“Mistakes are inherent in our business and essential to our company’s creativity and innovation,” said one of the researchers. “How we react to those mistakes either encourages or discourages project members to openly discuss them.”

As a result of Project Aristotle, Google established a reward system for failures. Their belief was that by rewarding people to fail, it encouraged and incentivized them to take greater risks and pursue greater breakthroughs.

The company even took the idea one step further. They created Google X, which they described as their “moonshot factory,” where employees can create and collaborate on the most truly outlandish and audacious ideas. “We want to create the expectation that all ideas can be worth exploring,” the project creator said, “and that failures are simply learning opportunities that take us further toward realizing those ideas. In doing so, we want our employees to change their perception of failure and use it on their path to success. Failing is our enabler to achieve great things.”

The result? Google remains one of the most successful and innovative companies of our era, and if they continue their focus on failing, they’ll most likely continue to hold on to that title.

Confront or Avoid

As a young lawyer, Mahatma Gandhi traveled from India to South Africa when he was hired to handle a commercial dispute in that country on behalf of a local Indian trader. He had known of the country’s practice of apartheid, but didn’t realize how brutal or how denigrating the practice was until he experienced it firsthand. The legal dispute for which he was hired turned into a 21-year crusade in which he remained to fight the evil practice on behalf of all persons of color in the country.

In doing so, he quickly began to realize his biggest battles were not only with the South African government, but also with those same persons of color he hoped to help.

The government’s practices had become so prevalent and so instilled in the country’s black and Indian populations that they had settled into an acceptance of the practices which rendered them to be second-class citizens. Further, the government’s brutal reactions toward anyone who challenged those practices left the population fearful. The consequences could result in loss of property, beatings, jail or even death.

It is here that Gandhi cultivated and preached his strategy known as satyagraha (truth-force). He led the campaign to oppose the oppressive practices through peaceful, non-violent protests. The locals not only feared that the strategy would fail, but also that violent repercussions could result.

The diminutive, mild-mannered lawyer, in preaching the strategy of satyagraha (truth-force) and non-violent protests, told the locals they must confront their fears, including the risk of violence, to confront the wrongs of the government.

“As long as we keep running from our fears,” he told an audience of Indian leaders in the country, “they will keep chasing us, and they will keep winning. Success can only be found in confronting our fears.”

“Which do you choose,” he asked, “the truth and your dignity, or your fears?”

Velcro or Teflon

When hearing Velcro or Teflon, we think off these as two diametrically opposite creations; one creates the sensation of sticking to whatever it touches, while the other does just the opposite. Using that analogy, we learned from our study of the reticular activator in the brain that we have the ability to do both. So, our question is, which things do you allow to stick to you, and which things do you let slide off of you?

Consciously or subconsciously, we make choices about what sticks in our memory (Velcro), and what rolls off of us like water on a duck’s back, as the expression goes (Teflon).

For example, in the earlier scenario, after Timothy and Anne met with the irate customer, what was Timothy’s Velcro and what was Anne’s? Conversely, what was their Teflon? It appeared to us that while Timothy’s reticular activator was clinging to the scolding he heard from the customer, Anne’s was clinging to something very different … those valuable lessons.

That scolding probably stayed with Timothy into the night and long afterward. But to Anne, the scolding she heard was like Teflon. She had other, more meaningful things to cling to. What we remember and what we forget is a major factor in either contributing to or diminishing our fear of failure.

In an interview with Golf Magazine, Jack Nicklaus , the world-class golfer, was asked about his many victories, including those at the U.S. Open, the Masters and the British Open. Amazingly, Nicklaus was able to recount with a vivid memory each tournament and each shot on every hole. The interviewer then asked about tournaments he had lost, pointing out occasions when he hit bad shots in crucial moments. In multiple instances, Nicklaus replied, “I don’t remember that.”

Finally, the interviewer asked, “You mean to tell me that you remember the victories, but don’t recall the defeats?”

Nicklaus replied, “Of course I remembered them then. At the time, I obsessed over them. But when the tournament was finished, I went to the driving range and stayed til I corrected my mistakes. Then I forgot them.” The golfer explained, “You have to choose what you remember and what you forget.”

Nicklaus, as do most successful entrepreneurs and leaders, are masters at the concepts of Velcro and Teflon. Their strategy is a variation on “love them and leave them.” Theirs is what we call, “learn and leave.” Embrace the failures, learn from the failures, then leave them behind.

Which is your Velcro? And, which is your Teflon? The confidence-building victories? Or the times you failed?

As we previously learned, the reticular activator of your brain is currently working non-stop, whether you know it or not. It is filing away your Velcro moments, and using its Teflon abilities to discard the others. You have the power to determine which is which.

Do you remember your failings and get a sinking feeling in your stomach that you’d like to forget? Or do you view them as another step toward your ultimate goal?

The choice is yours.

Conclusion

So, what have we learned here? Each of these scenarios takes a different slant on our perceptions about the fear of failure, but they all seem to have the same binary, half empty/half full nature to them. Run from failure, or embrace it! Offensive or defensive? Learn from it, or pretend it never happened. Velcro or Teflon.

Are your actions intended to prevent you from getting fired, or to seek a promotion? Do you voice your creative ideas at the risk of judgment or ridicule? Or, do you keep them to yourself? Do you hesitate to pursue new opportunities for fear of being rejected? Do you seek feedback from your boss to learn how you can be better? Or, do you shy away, because you fear what you might hear?

James E. Aarons, in his autobiographical book, Fear of Failure, reminds us that our typical response is to avoid that which is painful or uncomfortable. But growth, he says, is based on confronting what is uncomfortable.

There is an expression that architects use when renovating an old building, “If you can’t hide it, feature it.” If that ugly support beam standing in the middle of the room must remain for structural reasons, then figure out how to make it part of the architectural landscape.

The same applies to failure. As John Maxwell reminded us, given that man is fundamentally imperfect and failure comes with the territory, we may as well figure out how to use it and learn from it.

Fear – Chapter Reading

Fear, the first and most prominent of the four factors of FATE, is fully capable of blocking our curiosity, our pursuit of innovation, and our competitive advantage. Fear takes many different forms: dislikes, biases, opinions, and even bravado. But don’t be confused; each of these is a variation of fear, and each can bring us to a paralyzing halt. That “deer in the headlights” sensation affects more than just deer.

A part of our brain, the amygdala, signals any signs of threat or danger we may encounter. Such detection triggers the release into our bodies of large doses of chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol. While this function is essential to our survival, the amygdala has no ability to distinguish a real threat from an imaginary one. It doesn’t know if we’ve confronted a bear or misplaced our iPhone. As Jason Ma, founder, CEO, and chief mentor of ThreeEQ, said when he was on my show, “It just knows our thought was negative, which provokes a fight-or-flight reaction within us.”

For example, your amygdala remembers and stores in your brain the reaction you experienced in the third grade when you failed to answer the teacher’s question. It remembers how your colleagues looked at you when you made an off-the-wall suggestion, and it reminds you that the last time you attempted a three-point shot at the buzzer you missed.

Whereas your amygdala may be essential in warning you that spiders and snakes can be a threat, it can also put a damper on your curiosity and desire to explore new things.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fear, at its core, is a reluctance to delve into the unknown. The reasons for that can range from the sublimely ridiculous to the deadly serious. They include fear of failure, fear of making life-altering mistakes, fear of looking stupid or ignorant, and even fear of re-experiencing something negative from our childhood.

To this day, I resist certain vegetables because as a child I found them to be disgusting. The script in my head goes something like this, “I ate cooked carrots as a kid and remember them tasting mushy and nasty; hence, I no longer want to try new vegetables.” If you asked if I’d be interested in learning a new way to cook carrots, I must confess the answer would most likely be no.

Sally Helgesen, a noted consultant and author of The Female Vision, noted recently on my show, “A big fear that women, especially, share is that you’ll disappoint the expectations people have of you and that they’ll say, ‘That’s so unlike her.’”

The fact is, any fear, however ridiculous it seems, is completely capable of impeding our curiosity and innovation. Fortunately, most of our fears aren’t an impenetrable wall but are often like fragile panes of glass that can be shattered or overcome with a single action.

The term “fear” is defined as being overly cautious or reluctant to act to avoid consequences. In many instances, our fears are imaginary, something we anticipate could happen or might happen as opposed to what likely will happen. Insurance companies hire actuarial analysts to calculate the risks and probabilities of potential threats or occurrences. If something seems too risky, we tend to shy away from it.

Behavioral scientists and leadership coaches suggest the opposite. They encourage us to move toward the risk, not shy away. They remind us that a key difference between exceptional leaders and others is their high comfort level with delving into the unknown, exploring the uncomfortable.

Fear, in evolution, has a special prominence: perhaps more than any other emotion it is crucial for survival.

Daniel Goleman

***

Recently, I was swimming laps at my gym. By the side of the pool was a woman with her toddler. As small children tend to do, the child kept tugging at her mom to go toward the pool, only to be held back by her protective mother.

Eventually, the mother decided to let the child experience the water. Jumping in, she extended her arms to the child, urging her to jump. Repeatedly, the child excitedly ran up to the edge of the pool, but each time, she stopped just short of leaping into her mother’s arms. After several aborted attempts, the exasperated mother got out of the pool and led her daughter away.

The infant was clearly curious to experience the sensation of being in the water, but her fear of the unknown overcame her curiosity.

How many times have we, too, been curious to experience something unknown or to explore a new opportunity yet were too fearful of what might result if we followed through? Generally, we don’t fear physical harm, but rather we fear the risk of other kinds of discomfort.

To determine if fear is holding you back from discovering areas you might otherwise want to explore, ask yourself exactly what you fear. Is it the process or the outcome? Do you not believe you’re capable of doing a particular task or job? Do you need more information to make a decision? What’s at stake if you make a decision?

If you’re considering writing a book, do you fear having it scrutinized or judged? What if you consider doing something but are told it’s risky or scary? Would you accept this input at face value or explore what you want to do anyway?

What if you tried something and failed? Do you think you would look bad from someone else’s viewpoint? Are you worried about being overwhelmed with too much to do? Or worried you’d be putting all your eggs into one basket?

Our fear of failure tends to grind off our enthusiasm for risk taking and for entrepreneurship. We should be more in touch with what we get from our failures.

Tom Kolditz

Consider how you would deal with your answers to all these questions. Perhaps once you answer them, whatever is holding you back will become clearer, and you can address solving that problem directly.

Jay Samit, a leading Hollywood media executive, author of the book Disrupt You, and one of my favorite TED speakers, draws the distinction between fear of failing and fear of failure.

Fear of failing, he explained, means giving up; whereas fear of failure is more about learning how it won’t work. Failing is worse because it means you give up. Failure means you have found a way that something didn’t work, and you’ll continue to seek new ways.

It seems we live in a time of extreme scrutiny and judgment. Just ask people how much they care about how many “likes” they get on social media. If someone writes a critical comment about us online, we can be devastated. Perhaps we see what other people do on their social media sites and think we can’t compete with them, so why try? The reality is that most people post only the very best aspects of their lives online. If we try to compete with that, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

Steve Jobs

***

One of my relatives is highly creative. When I asked him why he hadn’t submitted his work for publication, he told me he didn’t want to be successful. I didn’t know how to react to that.

Assuming he would be successful, I asked him why that would be a problem for him. He said he didn’t want to deal with having to talk with people about his success. It sounded to me like he thought dealing with being successful would be a lot of work.

It seems that a lot of people talk themselves out of doing things because they’re afraid it would involve too much work, or it might be too hard. How do they know if they don’t try? Some people work so hard at not working, that if they spent that much time and energy working, they would have a lot more to show for it.

I once interviewed Lolly Daskal, a woman described as one of the most influential leadership coaches of our time. She’s the author of The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness. During our interview, she told me that leaders often fear people will discover they’re not as smart as they appear to be or fear being exposed in some other way.

In one of her blogs, she lists fears that many of us in the professional world have confronted at one time or another. They are fears we must overcome to move forward in our careers or our lives. The list includes fear of:

Being criticized

Being a failure

Being a bad communicator

Making hard decisions

Not taking responsibility

Not getting it done

They say curiosity killed the cat. Conversely, our fears may not kill our curiosity, but they can certainly wound it. Fear resulting from our curiosity is as common as curiosity itself. That said, how is it that some people can overcome that fear and go boldly into the realm of the unknown while others cannot? What enables them to say yes to the following questions when others hesitate?

Should I:

Explore this new opportunity?

Invest in this stock or start-up?

Quit my job to pursue my lifelong dream?

Consider a new career?

Throw my hat in the ring for this new position?

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do . . . Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

One of my interviewees talked about continuing to be curious about what’s on the other side. Yet, until we overcome any fear that’s stopping us, it remains on the other side.

When I asked author, entrepreneur, and all-around maverick Yanik Silver about fear and curiosity, he told me, “Sometimes very traumatic things become alarm clocks, and other times they’re quiet moments in which you hear a nagging little voice that says, ‘There’s something more.’

“If you’re not feeling fully alive, if you’re feeling a little depressed, if you’re feeling frustrated, those are indications you’re not truly following your path. Then it’s up to you to do something about it. I believe following your heart is frequently scary, but it’s never wrong. You can point to times when you said, ‘I’m going to go do this.’ Maybe you didn’t even have a logical reason to do it, but in the end with an elevated viewpoint, you know it was the right move. Or it set up something else you never would have gotten to without going in that direction.”

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati found that 85% of what we worry about never happens. Also, 30% of the things feared happened in the past and cannot be changed, and 90% are insignificant issues.

Adam Kirk Smith, The Bravest You

Overcoming Our Fears

So, how do we overcome our fears? You may be surprised at the answer. It’s ironic, but according to scientists, the same curiosity that our fears can stymie is the antidote for overcoming our fears.

In short, they say, we need to be more childlike. As a child, researchers explain, curiosity is how we discover our world. It’s how we learn. We’re wide open to new experiences and unaware, and therefore unafraid, of the potential consequences. By the time we reach adulthood, we’ve experienced many of those consequences, so we’ve become more guarded, more conservative, in what we’re willing to explore or not explore. So, for example, how could I break through my fear of exploring vegetables and consider cooking carrots in a new way?

According to scientists, I need to start by accepting the possibility that not all vegetables are the same, and perhaps those mushy carrots I ate early in my childhood weren’t cooked in the best way. That single act of acceptance may be enough to encourage me to engage my curiosity about this whole mushy carrots thing. If I can get over my fear of reliving a negative experience from my past, scientists say, I’m more likely to be open to considering new and interesting recipes.

My thoughts immediately take me to the Bill Murray movie What About Bob? and its memorable line “Baby steps,” or the Nike slogan, Just do it!

The aforementioned Jay Samit stated in his TED talk, “Fear can either immobilize you or push you to challenge your perceived limits.” Fear of letting his children down was his only motivation. For example, he admitted that he talked about a pretend company to make him appear more successful. He also put an ad in the paper for a fake job that would attract résumés so he could see what people offered. His stories are found in his book, Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation.

But what if your fear is more substantive? What if your fear is closer to being an impenetrable wall than a pane of glass?

Author Elizabeth Gilbert inspired millions to choose a path of curiosity over that of fear. She delved into “how to overcome the fears and suffering that inevitably arise when we push at boundaries, embrace our curiosity and let go of fear.”

Many of us talk ourselves into settling for how things have always been done because we fear the repercussions of making a change. Change is hard for most of us. If not change, sometimes choice. We fear other people’s judgments if we make certain choices. They might make fun of us for trying something no one else has tried or tell us that it can’t be done because they would be afraid to try it themselves.

What do we actually fear? Mostly, we fear change. However, embracing change can lead to some of the most innovative ideas. Warren Berger explained in A More Beautiful Question that there is “a direct connection between curious inquiry and many of today’s most innovative entrepreneurs and designers. Design breakthroughs such as the Square credit card reader, Pandora internet radio, the Nest thermostat, and the business model for Airbnb all began with curious people wondering why a particular problem or human need existed and how it might best be addressed.”

Brian Grazer is one of the most successful producers in Hollywood, with film credits that include Splash, A Beautiful Mind, and Apollo 13, along with TV hits such as ‘24,’ ‘Arrested Development,’ ‘Parenthood,’ and the currently red-hot ‘Empire.’ So, what has helped Grazer climb to the top in one of the most competitive industries? Clearly, he has strong creative instincts and a great collaborative partner in Ron Howard, with whom Grazer co-founded Imagine Entertainment. But as Grazer sees it, one of his greatest assets—one that has fueled his success at every stage of his career—is his insatiable curiosity. ‘Curiosity is what gives energy and insight to everything else I do,’ Grazer wrote in his new book, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life.

When you take risks, you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.

Ellen DeGeneres

As Deborah Bowie stated so simply, “The opposite of fear is not bravery, but curiosity. When we know more, we fear less. That is true in every part of life—personal and professional.”

Ellen Langer asked Harvard college students to give unprepared speeches to an audience. She wanted to see whether being open and curious could transform public speaking anxiety. How? By asking speakers to change their mindset about what constitutes a mistake.

Langer randomly assigned students to one of three conditions:

the “mistakes are bad” condition, in which they were told not to make a mistake;

the “forgiveness” condition, in which they were reassured that mistakes were fine and instructed to purposely make a mistake; and

the “openness to novelty” condition, in which they were told to incorporate any mistakes they made into the speech itself and instructed to purposely make a mistake.

Speakers in all three conditions gave a talk in front of a room full of people and were told they would be judged on how well they performed.

The results? Speakers in the “openness-to-novelty” condition judged themselves as more comfortable and rated their performance better than speakers in the other conditions. Moreover, the audience also judged the speakers in the “openness-to-novelty” condition as being more composed, effective, creative, and intelligent than speakers in the other two conditions.

In another experiment, a Japanese company wanted to train its employees to be more effective in doing business with their American counterparts. Japanese people can be innately shy and reluctant to assert themselves, especially in strange situations. Therefore, the CEO embarked on an interesting project to train his employees to overcome their shyness. Leaders of the firm were directed to go out into the streets of Tokyo during the busiest time of the day and sing their favorite song to unsuspecting crowds as if they were street performers. The employees were told that to overcome their fears, they must confront them head-on. Within months, the CEO began to see a more comfortable, more assertive workforce when interacting with foreign customers.

When asked why it’s so important that we use curiosity to combat our fears, Richard Bandler, a leading author and self-help coach, said simply, “Because it beats the alternative! Curiosity is our means of survival. If we’re not curious, we don’t discover the world in which we live. We don’t discover solutions to our problems. We don’t improve. Like all organisms on planet earth, the fittest organisms are the ones that are able to adapt, and curiosity is the cornerstone of adaptation.”

In an interview with Brené Brown, who wrote the wonderful book Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone and others, she called fear a good thing, if we allow it. She described fear as “a sensation of vulnerability, which we tend to avoid.” However, she advised, “We’ve got to be vulnerable. The three most powerful words I ever learned in my life were, ‘I don’t know.’ Once I got comfortable with saying ‘I don’t know,’ remarkable things happened. It’s amazing how much you learn when you actually admit you don’t know.”

She added, “Courage starts with showing up—when we let ourselves be seen.”

Fear is the absolute opposite of curiosity. You don’t look at things. You don’t discover what works. You don’t find out what’s dangerous, and ultimately you don’t progress or even survive.

Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.

Elon Musk

***

I once had the opportunity to interview CEO and co-founder of FiREapps, Wolfgang Koester. His company helps corporations improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and reduce currency effects. He has over thirty years of extensive experience in currency markets and working with numerous global Fortune 1000 companies as well as government entities. He’s steeped in such topics as interest before taxes and depreciation analysis, and he suggested we talk about the latest bitcoin issues.

I was simply not in the same league regarding financial matters. I knew that if I were to conduct the interview, I’d have to be a lot smarter about those issues. I had three options. I could:

not conduct the interview (fear of being exposed),

interview the man, feeling clearly uninformed about complex currency and tax matters (and be exposed), or

pursue my curiosity to know more about such things as blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Fortunately, my curiosity was the antidote to my fear.

Behaviorists and business coaches alike encourage us not to shrink from the fear of the unknown or to allow our fears to shut down our curiosity. Instead, we’re told to embrace our fears, to become curious about them, to examine them, to study their origins, and to learn what the unknown provokes in us and why.

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

Sheryl Sandberg

As noted in previous chapters, highly successful leaders become comfortable exploring what makes them uncomfortable. This is the key to overcoming the first and mightiest of FATE.

As so many of my interviewees, leaders, and entrepreneurs have reminded me, to get closer to innovation means that we must get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Engagement – Chapter Reading

The term “engagement” could be misleading, especially in the context of this chapter.

Generally thought of as an individual’s level of enthusiasm for their job, in this context, employee engagement is about one’s emotional commitment to the organization and its goals. So then we ask:

How engaged are we in our current jobs?

How engaged are our employees in theirs?

How committed are they to their company and its goals?

The questions don’t stop there.

What actions can we take to re-engage the unengaged?

Why is the issue of employee engagement so important?

What is the link between engagement and curiosity?

I launched our quest to understand the issue of engagement in the workplace in my interview with Kevin Sheridan, a leading consultant in the field of employee engagement and author of Building a Magnetic Culture.

Sheridan cited a Gallup survey that concluded that “Dis-engaged employees and turnover cost companies over $500 billion per year.” According to Sheridan, that’s the massive amount of money companies lose in the form of employee disinterest, lost productivity, attrition, recruiting, retraining, and other costs associated with employee disengagement every year.

Citing numbers from multiple studies and surveys, Sheridan categorized employees into three buckets: actively engaged, ambivalent, or actively dis-engaged. Then he stated that those in the ambivalent bucket constitute about sixty percent of our workforce with another fifteen percent in the actively dis-engaged bucket.

These numbers mean that roughly three quarters of the U.S. workforce is either marginally engaged or completely unengaged in their jobs and the growth of their companies.

Based on this assessment, America’s workplace consists of more zombies than innovators and go-getters. Sheridan likens it to the walking dead.

***

Consider the influence of another radio show guest, Doug Conant, former CEO at Campbell’s Soup.

Doug’s story is included in many of the courses I teach. He is credited with turning around a poorly engaged culture by doing a multitude of things, including writing personal notes. When I asked him if he wrote to all his employees, he responded, “We went back and did the math. I wrote ten to twenty a day, six days a week, religiously, for fifty-two weeks a year. We did the math and at a minimum, it was 30,000 notes to Campbell employees. It felt like more.

“Because we only had 20,000 employees, virtually everybody in the company had a note or two from me. That includes executive assistants and receptionists pinned in their cubicle or desk somewhere. I acknowledged something they’d done to help us move the company forward,” said Conant.

Take a moment to reflect on your company’s situation. Where do your employees fall on the spectrum of being fully engaged versus totally disengaged? What’s the effect of these numbers on your company in lost productivity, attrition, recruiting, and training new employees?

What is the burden of your company’s managers to motivate employees and keep them focused on the tasks at hand?

In 1996, with the automation revolution in its infancy, company leaders were preoccupied with things such as corporate reengineering and massive layoffs to improve productivity. This was noted in The Loyalty Effect, a book by Senior Consultant at the Bain Company, Frederick F. Reichheld.

Reichheld wrote about working with a team of fellow consultants to calculate the bottom-line effect of companies losing customers (over half in less than five years), losing employees (more than half every four years), and losing investors (roughly half every year).

Reichheld’s objective was to calculate the cumulative costs of those losses, to understand why they were occurring, and to determine what could be done to reverse such an alarming trend. He examined other companies that were not experiencing those losses, including Toyota Lexus, State Farm, USAA, Chick-Fil-A, and John Deere. It became important to understand the practices these companies used that made the difference.

What he found was engagement, practices to ensure that a company’s customers, employees, and investors were actively engaged in the success of the company and its employees. The practices uncovered that affected levels of engagement included compensation and related practices and benefits. But the causes went far beyond these to include training, career development, and recognition and retention practices.

Reichheld also discovered that corporate reengineering and layoffs had done little to yield gains in corporate performance. He concluded that the massive disruptions corporations hoped would improve their efficiency through their reengineering and layoffs had the exact opposite effect on morale, attrition, and productivity.

In contrast, the author found that companies such as the insurer USAA were achieving far greater yields than others by investing in their workforces. Employee training, career development, and recognition programs were cited as major factors that caused USAA to increase its productivity a hundred times with only a fivefold increase in its workforce.

Reichheld summarized, USAA “invests in employment and compensation policies that make their employees want to stay and produce.”

Some twenty years after the initial publication of The Loyalty Effect, technologies have improved, and business practices have evolved and changed. Yet Kevin Sheridan, in Building a Magnetic Culture, cited the same formula that Reichheld found two decades earlier. The issue of poor employee engagement continues to separate top-performing companies from the also-rans.

***

In today’s world, exactly what is employee engagement, especially as the workplace continues its migration from the Baby Boomer culture to that of Gen Xers and Millennials?

Sheridan cited three simple factors:

Recognition

Career development

Employee relationships with supervisors

Millennials, Sheridan said, love feedback. They look for compliments regarding their work as many as twelve to fourteen times a day. Baby boomers climbed the corporate ranks in a very different time and culture. They neither expected that level of feedback in their own work nor do they feel compelled as managers to provide that feedback to their Millennial employees.

***

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Voltaire

“Suck it up,” said Sheridan. If you cannot provide feedback to your employees fourteen times per day, you should at least target six to eight times a day. And it’s not about being nice; it’s about retaining talent and increasing productivity.

Sheridan also cited career development as being equally critical. Employees are eager to learn, grow, and expand their horizons, and the companies that provide a robust career development program will excel.

The third driver the author cited is the employees’ relationship with their immediate supervisors. How many of us actively engage in our company’s performance if we don’t like the person we work for? Sheridan explained that this is not about the issue of likability; it’s about human nature.

Another proponent of employee engagement I interviewed is Dr. Bob Nelson. A consultant on the subject to literally hundreds of companies, he has authored twenty-nine books on the topic, including 1501 Ways to Motivate Employees and The Management Bible.

Nelson stated that the key to engagement is recognition. Echoing the same message as Sheridan, he said that employees (especially Gen Xers) look for constant recognition.

Similar to the sentiments Sheridan expressed, this practice wreaks havoc on many baby boomer managers who weren’t trained to provide that level of constant feedback.

“Search for moments of positive achievements,” Nelson advised, “even small achievements, and recognize them immediately. Tomorrow or next week is too late. You will have lost the moment. Delayed recognition could even have a negative impact.”

The author went on to share stories and anecdotes that demonstrated the bottom-line virtues of employee engagement and teaming and cited his experiences characterized by the African proverb Embutu (or Ubuntu), roughly meaning, “I am because we are.”

The 2008 world champion Boston Celtics embraced the same philosophy and even have the term engraved on their championship rings.

***

Management Practices to Attract and Retain Talent

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, management consultants for the Gallup Organization, conducted an extensive study to find the best management practices that attract and retain talent and achieve high levels of productivity. They ask questions such as, “Should a good manager be able to identify good talent? Or should a good manager be able to groom talent? What prevents employee attrition, better pay, or better management?”

Their massive study was conducted over twenty-five years and compiled into First, Break All the Rules.

Commonalities they found in high-performing managers were, first, they did not hesitate to break all the rules of conventional management practices, as the title of their book suggests. Second, they placed a great deal of emphasis on the care, well-being, and development of their employees.

Re-enforcing Sheridan’s third driver that employees should have a close relationship and are liked by their co-workers, Buckingham and Coffman concluded:

In today’s tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But these well-intentioned efforts often miss the mark. The front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. No matter how generous its pay or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer.

The authors further explained how the best managers select employees based on talent as opposed to skills or experience. Also, they:

set clear expectations;

define the right outcomes rather than the right steps or process to follow;

motivate people;

build on each person’s unique strengths rather than trying to fix weaknesses; and

find the right fit for each person as opposed to believing promotion to management is presumed to be the next rung on the organizational ladder.

Citing both corporate and individual performance metrics, Buckingham and Coffman concluded that the top-performing companies all excelled at employee engagement. They can determine an employee’s commitment to their company by asking twelve key questions, such as, do I know what is expected of me at work? And, do my opinions count?

In 2018, a Harvard Business Review study revealed that while eighty-three percent of executives believe curiosity is encouraged at their company, just fifty-two percent of other employees feel the same way. Leaders who recognize this are more likely to encourage their teams to explore and less likely to make false assumptions.

Kevin Kruse is another popular spokesperson on engagement and the author of multiple books on the topic, including Employee Engagement.

In my interview of him, he lauded the value of Buckingham and Coffman’s work but concluded that twelve questions were too difficult for managers to remember. Instead, he sought to simplify the questionnaire. Working with researchers, he distilled the twelve questions into four.

Growth: Do my employees feel they are growing in their work?

Recognition: Are they being recognized for their work?

Trust: Do they trust that they and the company are on the right track?

Communication: Are there means by which to engage in those discussions?

Kruse cited simple, inexpensive examples of how to engage employees in these questions. He emphasized catching them in laudable or even coachable moments to cite their behavior and let them know they are valued. He said that employee engagement is neither expensive nor time consuming when done well.

Using these four questions, are your employees actively engaged in their work? If the answer is no, then what can be done to engage the ambivalent or the actively disengaged?

Sheridan (Building a Magnetic Culture) offered a sampling of three actions that could be taken:

Volunteer them for assignments or committees.

Mix them with workers who are actively engaged.

Consider moving them into a role more suitable to their skill set, as they may be in the wrong job.

So, what is the relationship between engagement and curiosity? Simply stated, curiosity is the engine that propels employee engagement, by asking questions such as:

How can I improve in my job?

In what ways can I make this a better company?

What are my competitors doing?

What are the best practices in my industry?

What do thought leaders say?

It is your curiosity that will help you find the answers to each of these questions. Curiosity leads to motivation, which leads to engagement.

How engaged are your employees? The answer lies in the question, “How curious are your employees about their work?”

I am engaged; therefore, I am curious.

Anonymous