Good evening everybody and welcome to tonight's webinar. Tonight it is my absolute pleasure to introduce Philip Dyer to you. Philip has a business career which has spanned 30 years and a broad range of sectors.
Whatever the business sector, his focus has always been on the people, identifying the barriers to personal growth and development and how this impacts on the organisational aspirations and ambitions. While Philip experience tends to international business businesses, his passion lies with owner-managed businesses. Often referred to as the backbone of the British economy.
A recent article written by Philip and published in the International Business and Economic Review focused on the complex nature of marketing and how it and often is misunderstood within small businesses. Philip is an entrepreneur in residence at the University of Central Lancashire and an honorary teaching fellow of the Lancaster University Management School. He's also a regular presenter on topics of well-being.
Philip also combines physical and mental well-being as a critical part of the growth process. Having seen too many negative examples of the impact of running your own business like excessive stress and lack of time. His emphasis is on taking care of the best assets you will ever own.
Those are your brain and your body. In response to an overwhelming need, Philip recently launched Healthy Leaders. Focusing on well-being to increase productivity and performance.
Philip in his spare time is a black belt in karate and a former karate champion, making physical well-being a lifestyle choice. And he still competes internationally in the sport of indoor rowing, achieving runner-up in the British Championship 2014 and he's currently preparing for the World Championships in 2019. Philip, what an introduction and I'm sure that we are going to all enjoy your presentation tonight.
So it's over to you. Thank you very much for that introduction, Bruce. Someone once said to me, you should always stop when you're ahead and it was such a good intro.
I feel like I should stop now. But what I will do is go ahead and introduce myself further. I'm passionate about business improvement as you pointed out.
The overarching objective of this Healthy Leaders programme is to improve your bottom line. If you get it right, you will also see remarkable benefits in all the other metrics and measures which dictate whether you prosper or not in this highly competitive market. But done properly.
You personally will also emerge healthier, less stressed, and much more in control of your life. And the good news is, there is little in the way of costs here. For many of you simply reflecting on this series of webinars and following the recommended actions will be sufficient.
Admittedly it's not easy, this programme simply relies on you doing things differently, not incrementally. There are no big upfront costs, you'll be pleased to hear. There are no major investments, no expensive advice, although of course, if you need assistance, please feel free to contact me.
As Bruce alluded to, I founded Health Leaders with the sole purpose of supporting and advising business owners and company managers with regards to 4 key strands of business life that are routinely neglected. None of the 4 modules of this programme are radical, earth shattering, or even new. But because we in the world of business in the 21st century are so busy in our working lives, few organisations have the foresight to fit them together.
But when you do, the rewards are often phenomenal. So healthy leaders, I aim to do, what I aim to do is to provide you with a window into the world of healthy leaders, with the objective of you either feeling that you are a healthy leader already, or you will aspire to become a healthy leader by the time I finish speaking. And all in 4 webinars.
In my thousands of conversations with business leaders from organisations big or small, public or private, I have never had anyone disagree with the logic behind healthy leaders. It makes sense and it works. In fact, it always works.
The challenge always comes from tackling the deeply ingrained habits that we all form within our lives. One of those habits is the fixation on the view that business is about hard metrics. This belief drives behaviours which negatively impact on your personal well-being and our colleagues' well-being, and ironically business performance.
What will you get on this programme? What are the deliverables? You will not achieve everything at once.
Over time, and with little patience, you'll find the desired change taking place. The beauty of this programme is that you can move at your own pace and progressively make lasting change. Ideally, this should be done as a team-based effort so that experiences can be exchanged and lessons shared.
So please share ideas we are exploring with your colleagues, but only when you feel comfortable with the proposition. Having gone through this process many times, I can tell you that this is not only effective, but highly stimulating and enjoyable. Our first deliverable is a better performing company.
Healthy leaders is not social engineering. Or a short-term back slapping attempt to merely improve morale. The process will ultimately influence the financial performance of the business.
If that does not occur, we're doing it wrong and we need to go back to basics. The second deliverable is a more manageable and less stressful environment around you. We hear so much of issues like burnout, nervous exhaustion, and so on within management and leadership roles.
In our second module, we'll explore this in detail and learn how so much of this negativity may be self-inflicted and how to overcome it. The 3rd deliverable is personal, physical health and well-being. Here I will explore the principles around making us not just fit for work but fit for life.
Few businesses acknowledge the win-win opportunities here. The apparent absence of time or opportunity are just two of the barriers preventing people from leading a physical life. We will investigate how to incorporate a healthy lifestyle.
Alongside managing effectively, and we will explore those long ingrained habits. Which delivered the opposite and damaged both you and your business. The 4th deliverable is a sense of perspective leading to a balanced life.
Running successful small business can be at times excessively absorbing. The programme will encourage you to prioritise for long term benefit. So here are the 4 modules.
Once all of the modules have been delivered, I recommend that you go back and review each time to build your experience and understanding. We'll start here with culture. This module is based on the work carried out by Professor John Oliver OBE and covered in his book Growing Your Own Heroes, an excellent read.
As we progress through the modules, I will recommend books or TED Talks if you're familiar with those. In in the effort to enhance your experience and learning. The reasons I have adopted John's approach are, firstly, it is based around the needs of small business.
Although the techniques have been successfully used in large organisations, they're mostly used by smaller businesses and very successfully. Secondly, the approach is based on simplicity, deliberately, why make things complicated? The objective here is to gain trust and belief in the approach by those around you.
The more complex you make the change process seem. The more suspicious people will be. So the module is grounded in straightforward common sense.
And finally, More simply, it works. I've used this approach many times with fantastic results. The principles behind it are well established and proven.
It may be simple to understand, but it does need effort. But that effort will be well rewarded. So, it's a rhetorical question, how culture is important, how to optimise your culture.
Management in the 21st century. This is a simple point to put a profound one. Running a veterinary practise, successfully is as much about motivation and people skills as it is about the medicine.
Having a healthy culture is the foundation stone for success. We will start on the key area of developing a healthy culture. By simply asking ourselves what is management all about?
Life was seemingly so much simpler 30 years ago, so it seems. Managers told people what to do and when. They were there to look after the assets of the company.
How it was done was often immaterial. Many managers at that time were directive and autocratic. A few perhaps were paternalistic, but nevertheless still directive.
Few practised engagement, in fact, the hierarchical nature of many organisations actually sought to distance the managed from the managerial. This created barriers, many of which still persist in businesses today. Regardless of size, those old habits persist, unfortunately.
Attitudes to work have changed as well. Back in the day, people went to work mainly for money and security. These days, many employees demand much more.
Everything from intellectual stimulation satisfaction. Due to a sense of belonging. And the feeling of worthwhileness.
And you, as managers, as owners are expected to deliver that. So anybody in a position of authority. Whether over 2 people or 2000 has to possess a skill set capable of addressing all these needs.
These needs will vary from person to person based on their experience, their expectations, and their ambitions. What have we done to equip ourselves for the challenge? Have you really got to grips with this paradigm shift in the nature of work?
The default setting is financial. KPIs, key performance indicators, with the balance sheet deemed as perhaps more important than knowing how to motivate people. However, it is unarguable that because of all these changes, defining management's role today is far more about managing the people who manage the assets than managing the assets themselves.
We've got an interesting slide here. What determines culture? I'll read directly off the slide.
The only one thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you. And you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.
Extremely critical. Our starting point on our journey is firstly to understand how culture is created in an organisation. What are its key determinants so we can control and influence.
Interestingly, when I have asked this question with groups in the past, you get a fascinating array of responses. I often encounter references to external factors. Living in a city or in a rural community, climate, unemployment levels, affluence, and lots more besides making culture seemingly a fairly randomly generated phenomenon.
Fortunately, we have Edgar Sheen to thank for simplifying matters here. I mentioned earlier. His research indicates there are 6 factors which influence organisational culture.
Top leadership principles. Nature of business. Company values and policies.
Work ambience, clients and external parties, recruitment and selection. I'll go back to what Mr. Sheen had said.
The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. As you see, there's no mention of geography, no mention of local culture and nothing at all about anything outside the four walls of the organisation. The common denominator to all the major factors perceived to create your distinctive culture.
Is simply management behaviour. Conscious management behaviour and unconscious management behaviour. So what can we conclude for Mr.
Sheen? Well, firstly, if you have a dysfunctional culture in your company, then it's odds on that you and the other key influences are perceived to be operating dysfunctionally. Palpably true in the vast majority of instances.
The good news is that all you have to do to create a positive and proactive culture is to change the behavioural set of those around you in positions of major influence, starting probably with you. I'll repeat that sentence because I think it's quite a profound point. The good news is that all you have to do is to create a positive culture and proactive culture is to change the behavioural set of those around you in positions of major influence, starting with you.
There is no need for expensive team building exercises. No need for extensive and gimmicky employee training programmes. With the right guidance and mentoring, change is inevitable, and the more serious you are about changing how this small group of influences are are perceived, the swifter you will change the way they are perceived by those around them.
It could be that the prime determinant. The individual with the greatest input to your distinctive culture is just you. It is not going to be easy.
Note we talk as much about the perceptions of unconscious management behaviour as we do about the conscious kind. It is often difficult to determine the consequences and perceptions of the stuff we do deliberately. Imagine how difficult it is to gauge the impact of the stuff we do unconsciously.
The phrase to remember here is perception is reality. You may believe that these perceptions are simply wrong, but that is completely irrelevant. It's down to you to change that perception.
I'm minded here of something a middle manager once said to me, and I have toned this down because we have an audience. You might think you are the best boss in the world. If your colleagues think you are useless, then you are useless, and you will remain useless until you change their perceptions.
So fixing the culture, is how do we go about creating or fixing our culture? Well, going back to one of our earlier slides, we are going to do it simply. We are basically going to look at existing interactions with our colleagues and ask.
Are we using these interactions to motivate or inspire? What do you mean by interactions? These are any situation when you come into contact with any of your colleagues.
It could be as simple as saying good morning or good night. Or even by simply not saying good morning or good night. By realigning what we get out of these situations, we can be confident that we will progressively move forward.
Towards the elimination of dysfunctionality and negativity. Moving from a transactional environment, driven by stress and pressure. In an interactional environment given by collaboration and cooperation.
So we'll fix it by communicating differently. Recognise effectively, effectively. Embed values and behaviours into the organisational psyche.
Establish a motivational management style, create an ethos of constant improvement. Nothing here in that list stands out as radical, rocket science or beyond our comfort zone, but it's harder than you think. The reason why I suppose people refer to it as the art of communication.
Our journey to transform your organisational culture starts with communications. Paradoxically, most organisations, especially the bigger ones, spend too much time on communicating because they do it badly. The big, the big danger is that management only communicates what it thinks is important using vehicles and processes which it thinks is appropriate.
Within healthy leaders, we do not want to use communication just to inform. We want to add other dimensions such as motivating and inspiring. In time, you will learn to do this automatically, and hopefully, spontaneously.
But between now and then, it needs practise and plenty of it. We need to develop, this is the critical word, the habit. You need to increase your awareness of how you are perceived when you communicate and constantly look for signals to improve.
This approach was succinctly described. By the author Tom Peters as aggressive listening. Take something as simple as saying good morning or good night.
Is this simply perceived by those around you as merely going through the motions, or do you do it in a way which conveys warmth, sincerity and respect? Are you occasionally too busy or too preoccupied to actually acknowledge others at times? What impression does this convey?
Does the absence of an interaction create a perception of insignificance? That microsecond of contact is probably taken for granted by you, but it could be one of the fundamental constructs of your internal culture. Or communication principles.
Within healthy leaders, we want you to reflect continuously on all forms of communication and ask yourself. Am I perceived to be sincere and genuinely interested in what they have to say? Do I allow a flow of information, opinion and views to come the other way, or do I dominate the dialogue?
All my interactions are genuine unconstrained exchange of views, or simply one-sided monologue. Do I display signs of listening to people when they speak, or do I get distracted by the smartphone, the emails or other distractions? Am I able to listen with a perceived empathy?
Do I focus on relevance when I interact with people? Do I overdo the social content? Do I focus on things which are important to me?
Very few of us are great communicators. These people are rare. It looks natural, sincere and effective, but I know there is much reflection and practise behind this skill.
Having established the principles, we want you to consider a few techniques. These are ideal for small organisations and will not take long. If you want to explore further, more detail can be found in Professor Oliver's book.
For the moment, I want you to focus on a few simple routines which may help you to start your cultural journey. The first one is management by walking about. MBWA.
As we all, as you'll see later, accessibility and availability of key decision makers is very important for the cultural health of the firm. Management by walking about simply consists of walking the organisation routinely. Stopping to ask colleagues about their perspectives on what is going on.
It is vital that people are addressed by their names, adopt a position of familiarity, do not prolong the social side of the interchange. It may be interesting, but it's unlikely to be motivational. Focus on the job and the priorities.
The second technique is a simple device where occasionally you as the manager sit down with your colleagues and allow them to set the agenda. I usually start by asking what's troubling or challenging people today. Initially, these sessions can be a bit stilted as people feel uncomfortable through unfamiliarity.
But quickly you can get them engaged in the real strategic and operational factors important to the business. You can limit this to 30 to 40 minutes, perhaps on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. Done properly, this can raise engagement levels very quickly and effectively, as long as you follow through with specific actions.
Thus building confidence and trust in the process. It is also very useful in diminishing the impact effect of the rumour mill and the grapevine. Some organisations find the early morning huddle highly effective.
This is simply everybody getting together for 5 to 10 minutes before the business opens and discussing the challenges of the day. By involving everybody and seeking their opinions, a collective purpose can be established which will underpin teamwork. Finally, all employees need a bit of me time, with the subject matter is them.
Their needs, their ambitions, their challenges, and their achievements. Short 1 to 1, once or twice a year where the emphasis is almost exclusively about the employee and their perceptions can be highly effective in building morale. So, 4 very simple routines, which cost you very little and require a minimal time commitment, designed to get your culture moving fast towards positivity.
My life is all about visiting companies and trying to gauge their cultural health. One of the measures we use is how well employees feel valued. And here we have a major conundrum.
When managers are asked to rate themselves on expressing appreciation. The vast majority give themselves a rating of 75% plus. When we ask employees the reciprocal of this, whether they feel appreciated.
We often find ratings in the 30 to 48% bracket. A completely different perception. It took a fair few iterations to understand what is going on here, but eventually it became clear.
Whilst managers may well have been expressing gratitude in some form or another. In many instances, the sentiment was not shared by the recipient. Next slide will examine why.
However, within the context of the Healthy Leaders programme, recognition is another total no-brainer. With very little effort you can address a basic need in the vast majority of people to feel that they are doing a worthwhile job. And you will very quickly see a significant uplift in attitude and application.
Recognition is a complicated one. The first point we need to make here is that within the context of healthy leaders, recognition is used to motivate. It is not mere politeness, it is not common courtesy.
Everything we do within the cultural side of healthy leaders is designed around motivation. In order to motivate through recognition, the first prerequisite is therefore sincerity. You have to be perceived as being genuine, real and appreciative.
The easiest way of doing this is obvious. Be genuine, real and appreciative. However, for some of us, this may need some considerable practise.
Many in management feel uneasy about what may be perceived as the softer arts of motivation. Saying well done in the right manner can often take them out of their comfort zone, and they avoid situations like this. The good news here is that experiencing the benefits of successful recognition is often sufficient dispel this unease.
But in the meanwhile, practise, experiment, and observe both the person's reaction and your own. The second prerequisite is a little controversial, or perhaps. And it goes against the grain of conventional advice.
Never ever confuse recognition with reward. The attachment of financial or even pseudo-financial benefits might work the first time, but after repetition, it will soon be seen as an entitlement. The motivational element will disappear altogether or even become negative.
I use a quote here which is a very old quote. It's because this is an ancient problem. What starts out as gratitude soon becomes dependency and quickly becomes entitlement.
That quote is from Cicero. A Roman orator 2000 years ago. So this has been a problem for a very long time.
So rely entirely on verbal recognition and your newfound ability to sound sincere because you're being sincere. The third stipulation is also against the conventional grain, I feel. We strongly recommend that you never thank any individual in front of others.
You can do it carefully with groups, but for individuals, it is safest to do it face to face in confidence. That way, if you congratulate the wrong person, it won't matter as much and it avoids embarrassment for the recipient. So no emails, no notes, just verbally face to face.
Need for timeliness and relevance will be fairly self-evident. We do not want to leave good deeds unrecognised for too long. Finally, The vexed question of how often should we express our appreciation.
There is no firm rule here, but leaving it too long will undermine the motivational aspect. Once a day is too often, once a year perhaps too little. Our general guidance is that every conscientious employee in your business should be told that they are doing a good job at least once every 6 to 8 weeks.
This may seem initially daunting, but the process can be completed effectively in a few seconds. As an example, hi Caroline, I know I asked you to do that little job, that project last week. Well, the feedback has been great.
Thank you so much. I do appreciate it. Takes less than 10 seconds to say, but in that time, you've done everything and hopefully created a motivation which will last for a lot longer.
Just do it. It'll be well worth. Relatively little effort.
For the behaviours, our third pillar of the healthy leader's culture is that we have termed behaviours or values in any organisation, big or small. There has to be a value system, whether it be defined or not. In many companies, this system is simply interpreted from the behaviours of the key principles.
However, this is too random for our purposes. We want to move quickly towards a healthy ambience, and to do that, we need some guidance or milestones. This does not have to be complicated and a protracted process, as long as we follow a few simple rules on the journey.
The workforce must identify with the outcome and all the consequences. To do so means the behaviour set is relevant. Keeping it to a few words, a one word statements about the desired behaviour or management.
And the desired behaviour of employees. These statements are generated by the workforce, not management. That way it becomes an aspiration.
Which they can identify with. Once identified, these behaviours become visible. You can put them on the wall.
One company I know made a mural of them on the office wall. You can use them as screensavers. You are only limited by your imagination.
Your objective is to have almost a comfortable subliminal awareness of your value system, which allows people to test their own behaviours and that of others against a norm. There is nothing punitive about the list. There is no ongoing monitoring, it simply becomes a topic of conversation.
If this seems a little vague and unstructured, then that's fine. Occasionally we have to put away the hammers and rely on a little subtlety class. Or behavioural guide, here are some examples.
As we said, there is rarely anything new or radical in these exercises. So I'm always inclined here to plagiarise with impunity. He will see qualities extracted from other concerns.
What you could easily do is to get a cross section of employees in a room, explain the purpose and simply say, could these be used as our value or behaviour system, or what would you suggest would be more appropriate? By having a short discussion within a few hours, you could have the framework of something which may be useful for many years. For management style, the final link in our cultural chain is management style.
We did highlight the need earlier for an ethos of continuous improvement, that will come after you build your foundation on the 1st 4 simple constructs. Management style is the most important element. We covered some of the rationale earlier as we discussed why the demands on management have changed fundamentally over the past 30 years.
Although the practise in many areas hasn't. You are there to motivate your team. That is the prime objective in managing.
Your ability Excuse me. Your ability to motivate is linked to how your behaviours are perceived. Both consciously and unconsciously.
You therefore have to train yourself to have an almost spontaneous response in any interaction. Most of us do this readily with customers. We now have to do this with those around us 24/7.
Measuring our performance here is difficult, especially in small businesses. The only answer is to talk, listen and reflect. Reading the recommended book might help as well.
Building your knowledge and understanding, embedding the required habits. However, as a guide, Above we display some of the qualities of a healthy leader which you may want to test yourself against. This should be enough for an initial reflection.
Firstly, Always be careful to subdue your ego and display humility. This can be challenging at times. When talking to your colleagues, be careful not to dilute their achievements by overclaiming credit for your contribution.
I suggest you avoid I or even we when talking about success. Use you as in you did it. Give them the credit.
It costs nothing and will be appreciated. Secondly, always greet people with a smile on your face. Manage your attitude and be consistent.
Never walk past people without acknowledgement, even when busy. Take a positive and constructive stance at all times. It might even make you feel better.
Put your game face on. It does work. Delegation is a rare skill.
Always when faced with an issue, start the debate with what do you think about it, or what would you do? If you know the answer, ask them if they've thought about it, what do they think about it as a solution. When you delegate, be as specific as possible about what you want them to do.
What their terms of reference and boundaries look like, and be sure to make sure they understand the consequences of going wrong. You don't have to know all the answers, be the expert in all things. Give your team space.
The grapevine Is the key indicator of communication failure. I know many successful managers who use the grapevine routinely to assess what is going on in the general mood of the workforce. Listen to it and ask yourself why the official communication channel has proved less effective than the informal one.
Most of us talk too much and listen too little. Learn how to listen. Remember, Tom Peters and aggressive listening.
Make a habit of paying attention. Is that favourite word of mine, make a habit of paying attention. Use eye contact and make sure your body language sends out consistent signals.
Slouching, wandering about, or a general air of distraction or impatience can nullify the motivation potential. Learn how to extract opinions, not kill them. Make sure you are seen as both accessible and available.
Managing by walking about can be highly effective, but it does have its dangers. Make sure you don't get to tread the same path all the time. Always speaking to the same people.
Finally, learn how to handle poor performance. In my experience, failing to address poor performance is the biggest frustration in most organisations with management. But always chastise in private, never in public.
And that, in a nutshell, is how to tackle culture from a healthy leader's perspective. We will go on to other modules in our next webinar. To summarise.
Motivation is the key to extraordinary performance. Your culture is entirely based on the workforce sections of your conscious and critically unconscious behaviours. You can optimise this culture with a few simple habits based on the 4 elements noted earlier.
Communication, recognition, behaviours and management style. Use these to build your platform for continuous improvement. The concept is simple, easy to understand, and easy to explain.
But adapting it isn't. To be effective, it has to be built in. It has to become a habit.
Part of your autonomic system. Culture is a 24/7 365 challenge. Make it be the way you do your job all of the time.
The rewards are significant. Above all, enjoy it and you will succeed. The joy of seeing the morale of the organisation escalate is one of the great pleasures of management.
And remember it works. So be a healthy leader and lead the way. Thank you.
Thank you, Philip. That was very, very worthwhile information that you were giving to us there. It's just interesting because like you have been around for for over 30 years, so have I in this game and .
It's interesting how things have changed in time, you know. And from a veterinary perspective, 30 years ago you could tell a client to do something and they would do it. Nowadays, they pick up their smartphone and check and see what Dr.
Google says. Yeah, you, you're very, very much exposed by technology. Yeah, and it's just, it's interesting that that that personal touch that you're talking about and and being real and, and not trying to fake it is so important because it, it's, it's strange how staff and, and clients alike all seem to sniff out when you're not being genuine.
Oh yeah, completely being authentic and sincere, they're not things that you can fake. People pick it up very quickly, and if you have that sincerity in the actions that you portray, the words that you use, it has a profound impact on the recipient. It does make a difference if you say, I hope that you're well, as opposed to just gliding past somebody and and passing a comment.
So that's that, being personally aware of self when you're dealing with other people. Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I particularly liked the bit where you were talking about you know, it it doesn't matter how good you think you think you are, it's how good other people think you are, and it's it's perception is, you know, is reality.
It is and the the number and I've lost count the number of organisations where I've heard profanity is used by the the senior management team when they're talking about their employees because clearly the employees are the problem. And then you realise that actually you've got to drive it home, that it's their own behaviour, and the perception is based on the behaviours of the senior management team, and that's where it always starts, top down, never starts bottom up. So that perception perception reality is is the the most powerful quote that I have, I think.
Yeah, yeah. I'm just gonna unmute Anthony. He's he's going to come in here.
Anthony, have I unmuted you there? I think I'm OK now. I'm unmuted, thanks for that, .
Thanks for that, Bruce, that was er really good the questions as well, but Phillip, that was excellent, thank you so much. I mean I've just got a few ones. What was the book at the beginning you were talking about, John Oliver was it?
It's the book is called Growing Your Own Heroes by John Oliver OBE and John Oliver was the formerly was the chief executive of Leyland Trucks. And the the the extremely short version of that story is that it wasn't a very well performing company. He led a management buyout, it turned into an extremely well performing company, he sold it.
That is the short version. The reason why it became an extremely well performing company was because we got to grips with the, the process of employee radical employee engagement, engaged the whole organisation, just changed, transformed the business, became a beacon. It became the Europe's number one manufacturing company, and it was definitely one of the UK's sick manufacturing companies before then.
Leyland had a reputation for just building bad trucks, didn't it really, and then obviously you had that turnaround, which is amazing, . Yeah, no, no, you were talking about behaviours and, and we talk a little bit about values. Is that very similar really, behaviours, values as words?
Well, when, when you, when you establish a, a value set within an organisation, if you take as an example, trust, and you reference that as a, as a keyword or a key value, then what helps people to actually get to grips with it is to actually define in terms of a behaviour, how that would be perceived. What does that look like? That you're always on time and that you tell somebody if you're going to be late.
It could be an example, there's a behaviour attached to that particular value. So it, it's, you say values and behaviours, you'd attach the two together as opposed to being the same as. So it's, it's a question of show me rather than tell me.
Yeah, you know, so, for those of you that are old enough to remember, the, the famous debacle with Enron, which is a big American corporation, you can look it up on on the internet. Enron was a multi-billion corporation and had an amazing value set. It's fantastic with behaviours attached to it.
And it was the prime example of this is what I'm saying, but it wasn't what we were doing. So the, the end result was that the company collapsed and lots of shareholders lost their money and it was a a dreadful debacle, thousands of people lost their jobs. But it's pointless developing a value set if it, if it doesn't actually represent how you behave and how you think.
But it's not just window dressing, it is actually something that you live by. Philip, how do you, how do you suggest that organisations, or, or leaders in an organisation get that feedback? Because you, you can't just go to an employee and ask them.
They, they're gonna lie through their teeth because they're worried about their job. In in terms when you say feedback, you mean the honest feedback about, about the company. Yeah, the company and the leadership and the, and the, you know, how they feel about things that you put in place that you personally may feel are, are really, really worthwhile doing.
But you don't really know because as I say, the employees are never gonna tell you that what you've done is, is garbage. Yeah, they, you're right, sadly there is that fear element that exists that ultimately when people want to try and protect their job, they'll say what they think is required to be said. The best way to do it is .
To actually get a third party and that deals with it privately. So, when I say privately, it, it's, private and confidential. So often, I've, I've recently started working with an organisation.
They've got around about 400 employees, and what I do is interview a sample of those people, but it's private and confidential, and then feed back. To the management, but ask them deep questions about the way that the organisation runs, how it behaves, and then think back, and there's always a gap. Mm.
So, I mean, if there wasn't a gap, they wouldn't be inviting me to speak. Yeah. What what about things, I mean there's so much technology nowadays, you know, you can do anonymous survey monkey surveys of the staff and that sort of thing.
Do you find those are effective? Well, survey, I mean, only recently, one company was working and said, oh we, we, we did a survey on SurveyMonkey and it it doesn't seem to tally with what you've discovered. The truth is that I would say the first, the first and best form of communication is 1 to 1.
Or if you're sitting with somebody and you trust that person, so it is confidential, they will share with you only, not only physically. But emotionally how they're feeling about the role that they're in, and you can do that in 1520 minutes. Yeah, yeah.
Now, in terms of survey monkey, you could have 500 people knocking something out in 10 minutes and then you get some statistics back and maybe some qualitative stuff as well. You cannot beat the 1 to 1. Now I know that that's impractical with maybe an organisation with thousands of employees, but I think focus groups and samples that you can take by dipping in and having real conversations is, is, is not replaceable.
Yeah. The other thing that I found interesting that I'd wanted to ask you to elaborate a little bit on was one of your bullet points was listen to the, the grapevine, the the the slander mill. Yeah.
It's, it's being aware, the grapevine is extremely, extremely active in organisations that are dysfunctional. But it doesn't have, it doesn't have the the, the fuel, it doesn't have the, it's not fed sufficiently when the communication style is effective. Ah.
So, so you can diminish the impact because by and large grapevine starts to go in all manner of different directions just as a grapevine does do these trainings, so. Being aware of what's being said gives you an indicator that perhaps your communication style isn't effective, we don't trust you. There can't be a gap between what you say and what you do.
That makes sense. It really does. Bruce, can I just ask you another question please?
Oh. You, you used Philip the, the quote from Cicero, what starts as gratitude, just, I didn't catch it all. Ah right, OK, let me, let me just pull that out.
What starts as gratitude? Dependence. And ends up Oh, now you've confused me as well.
What starts as gratitude. Becomes dependent and ends up in, they, they kind of say that they should have. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm looking for Cicero, the ancient so what so what starts out as gratitude soon becomes dependency.
And quickly becomes entitlements and problematically, there's some fantastic research by MIT on motivation through financial reward or the the the fact that it doesn't motivate people. And I have this debate many, many times where people provide bonuses to their employees, people start, as an example, people start spending their bonus at Christmas because they always know they get a bonus. That's an entitlement.
Yeah. So then the, the owner, I've met many owners of businesses where they've been having a lean time but still feel compelled to give the bonus because the team are expecting it. And so they don't go through the ebb and flow of the of the business cycle.
They just expect the employees just expect it. And that's not their fault, it's just that they've set up that expectancy. And it becomes an entitlement.
Now, that's not the same as John points out in his book. You've got to understand the difference between recognition and, and reward. And I think that's so important as you know, a lot of surveys show that.
You know, people just want you to recognise the good work they're doing, that is so important, isn't it, as you've said. It's 100% the the requirement, a personal requirement to know that you're doing something right within your business. So, the, the simple thing, the, the one managing director that I met, it was a small business, it was about 20 people in it.
And he, he never er told anybody they're doing anything good, he just said that they know that they're doing a good job because I'm not telling them off. And so when I asked, when I asked, when I interviewed everybody in this particular instance, does, does your MD show your appreciation? And there was a pause, everybody paused and and said, I think so.
And so can you elaborate it for me and and then they would say, well he's never actually said anything, but he's not shouted at me either. And that was what we were facing. Now, a little bit of drilling under the surface, you, you discover that the MD, the way the MD was brought up, his father never congratulated him on anything, he just told him off, and he felt that patting somebody or congratulating them or thanking them was patronising.
Yeah. But, but yeah, the appreciation, yeah, but the appreciation that everybody had when he said, I'm sorry, because we, this took a little while, but he, he apologised to everybody in the team meeting, everybody for their work. Well, they, they all floated out of the room.
Yeah. He said, I can't believe that they felt so strongly about it. I said that's, that's emotions for you.
We're obviously we're not 1 to 1 at the moment because Bruce is here, but I just wanted to say thank you so much for a fantastic webinar. I feel I should take you to one side and just be one. I don't wanna, I'm trying to learn properly, but it's been excellent, it's been really thought provoking and enjoyable.
So thank you, but I'll pass you back to Bruce. I appreciate that. Thank you very much, Anthony.
Anthony's absolutely right there. Philip, it has been very, very thought provoking and I can't wait for the rest of the, the series to follow on to the next steps and everything else. So, thank you so much for your time tonight.
I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure talking and have a good evening.
Yeah, and to all the folks that listened tonight and to the recording, I hope you enjoyed as much as I did to Dawn my controller in the background who's always making things look seamless. Thank you very much. And from my side, it's good night until the next time.