By Dan Feely, TSI President and Managing Partner

Last month, I had an opportunity to go to the great city of Duluth, Minnesota to watch my favorite first daughter (not to be confused with my favorite 2nd or 3rd daughter) run her first marathon (shout out to Grandma’s Marathon). It was everything you would imagine a marathon to be – inspirational, motivational, emotional, and more.

After bouncing around to different marathon locations, the marathon app indicated our runner was nearing the last mile. So, we jockeyed for position in an area about 400 yards from the finish line hoping we could get a picture of and watch our favorite participant finish.

As we waited, we saw runners who were jubilant, fatigued and everywhere in between those extremes. Most, if not all runners, had their eyes fixed on the balloons marking the finish line that they’ve been dreaming about for the previous 26 miles. It was obvious that most, if not all, were using every bit of fuel they had left in their tank.

We spotted one runner, a guy who did not look well. I mean really unwell. His legs looked like they were made of rubber, and he was increasingly losing his balance with every step he took. Then he crashed. Literally, his legs gave out and he face planted on the pavement.

He did not look like he could get up, nor were any race volunteers in the area to attend to him.

Then, out of nowhere, two runners grabbed and lifted him up. One runner on each side, they grabbed his arms and lifted, dragged and pulled him along. They basically carried him the entire rest of the race.

I watched the entire thing. There were no introductions, no asking “do you need help”. Based on how quickly they jumped into action, I’m confident they didn’t talk about politics as a prerequisite to make sure they were aligned on volatile topics.

They simply helped a fellow human.

I have no idea whether these two competitors who helped this man were striving for a personal best, or simply striving to complete their first marathon. Regardless, I’m sure their stopping added several minutes to their time. With the finish line in sight, they very easily could have just run around him.

But they didn’t. They just did the right thing and sacrificed minutes on their time to do so.

Remarkable.

This event got me thinking about how divided so many of our communities, including our places of employment, are today.

But in a few easy steps, we can create a culture that rises above the rhetoric and divisiveness that it is so easy to get pulled in to.

1. Focus on what you have in common (i.e., common goals, perhaps a few shared values) with your team.
2. Pay no attention to the stuff that you don’t have in common.
3. Just help, add some value, bring something to the table, be a good team member.

The rest will take care of itself.

What perspectives can you add to this?  We’d love to hear from you and your digital transformation experiences.

Looking for more on culture? Go here and here

The post Culture Change 101 appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Jim Gallo is a Managing Partner at Gallo Associates, LLC. He is also a long-time friend and partner with Transforming Solutions.

Our Guest Contributor series aims to focus on new voices, new perspectives, and new stories of success. If you are interested in sharing your perspective or a story, please contact us.

Every morning, you can watch CNBC or any business channel and hear the constant drumbeat of the demise of office space. Offices are vacant, employees are at home, video meetings are all the rage, and not only do employees no longer have to sit in the morning rush hour, but they also don’t even have to buy new clothes or iron their shirts. Who could see wrinkles when just your face is on the screen? What could be better?

Each week for the last 15 months, the news outlets are reporting that companies in Chicago and other big cities will reduce their office counts by two-thirds. Rents will plummet. REITS will go broke, and office space is dead…

Well, probably not. It’s not time to back up the hearse just yet – and probably never will be. That’s because many companies are calling all their employees back – some quicker than others. But sooner or later, they want them back.

In an interview with Jamie Dimon, Chairman, and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, there is no human bonding when employees are working from home. He said, 

[Working from home] “doesn’t work for people who want to hustle, doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation. By September it will look just like it did before,” Dimon said at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council event last month. “We are getting blowback about coming back internally, but that’s life.”

Why Employees Like Working from Home (as Opposed to the Office)

I’ve spent a lot of hours behind the wheel in rush hour traffic, and there were times when it was at least three hours of my day. Working from home seems pretty appealing. I can sleep in, get out of the shower and dressed and join a 9:00 am Zoom call while my hair is still wet and no one would know. At 6:00 when the day is done, I wouldn’t have to rush home to catch my kids’ soccer games because I’ll be able to take them to the games. In addition to all that, I save gas money, put fewer miles on my car, have fewer maintenance costs, and it just gets better. Or does it?

What’s Not To Like?

Many employees are simply better employees when in an office environment.

This one is true for me. Many workers are more efficient, more diligent, and they are not easily distracted when in the office. But move them to work from home and there is no shortage of things to take them away from the desk. Go in the kitchen and grab a snack. Pet the dog, feed the dog and walk the dog. Check social media. Throw the wet load of clothes in the dryer. And on it goes…

Working from home can be a lonely experience.

Most humans feed off the energy of others. Many have set up offices in their basements and they’re “down there” in solitude trying to stay alert, and productive. It’s difficult. 

Conversely, many people thrive in a collaborative work environment.

When brainstorming or problem solving, it’s much quicker to get up and walk into the office next to yours than it is to send an email arranging a Zoom call. And people who feed off of others excel when they see better positive body language and facial expressions.

When we go into an office, we can talk sports, we can talk weather, we can talk politics (or at least we used to). But most importantly, we can easily collaborate and brainstorm on ideas or problems in search of a solution. There are certain occupations where being by yourself is not the optimal way to get things done. In creative fields like marketing and advertising, can you imagine someone trying to come up with an ad campaign all by themselves? Of course not.

You may feel like you never get away from work.

Many studies have shown people are more productive at home. What they omit is, if they’re not commuting three hours a day, are they working those three hours? And is that a good thing? Many employees report they work eight-hour days or more, but it takes them sixteen hours to do it. Moreover, because you never get away from work, you have little work life-personal life boundaries. One of the nice things about going to work is leaving work because then your day is done.

On-Boarding new employees is especially difficult.

It’s very difficult to train someone on their job when you’re not face-to-face. New employees may have trouble grasping certain tasks and can spend (or waste) hours trying to solve them. They don’t know who to call or even how to reach them. So they’re at home, feeling pressure to be productive, and wait for help. This was one of Dimon’s main points: new employees have trouble or may never bond with a boss or peer, have no one to help build morale, no one to go to lunch or drinks after work, and in the end, nothing that mentally attaches them to the company. The net effect is the company will see higher turnover as new employees haven’t grown roots.

Many managers can’t manage what they can’t see.

It may sound old school but many managers simply don’t trust workers if they can’t see them. In a recent non-scientific survey of tech workers by Blind Blog, more than seventy percent of the respondents said they work six hours or less on an average day, more than 40 percent said they work less than four.

Maybe go Hybrid: A Mix of Office and WFH

Some companies are attempting a happy medium where workers come in 2-3 days per week. The theory is companies will reduce their office space. Employees, instead of going to their office every day, will come in two or three days a week and simply take any empty office. While this seems like a possible scenario, it seems wrought with pitfalls. If you’re working on a team, and some of the team members come back the next day while others stay home, the lack of continuity is going impede progress. In addition, you’ll have employees jockeying for the best window office.  Employees will have no office to call their “home away from home.” No family pictures. No Feng Shui. Nothing. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t like someone sitting at my desk.  

One recent projection for office occupancy by Moody’s estimates offices will return to their 2019 occupancy rate by 2026. I’m betting much sooner.

About the Author

Jim Gallo is a Managing Partner at Gallo Associates, LLC. and a long-time friend and partner with Transforming Solutions. Connect with Jim on LinkedIn.

The post Jim Gallo: A Moment of Silence for the Death of Office Space…or Maybe Not appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

In an effort to achieve your goals and realize your potential, it is crucial that you understand critical aspects of emotional intelligence, as well as understand how to apply them within your organization.

The Five Factors of Emotional Intelligence

1. Self Awareness
2. Self Regulation
3. Motivation (known as “a passion for work that goes beyond money and status”)
4. Empathy for Others
5. Social Skills, such as managing relationships building networks

Daniel Goleman, an American Psychologist, breaks emotional intelligence down into these five categories. In addition to his work, Andrea Ovans’ 2015 Harvard Business Review Article, “How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill”, looks at these five categories in how they relate to being a leader. She addresses cultural intelligence, as well as the connection between empathetic leaders and financial performance.

Let’s Break Down the Five Factors of EQ

Self-Awareness:

Individuals often think of self-awareness as a few physical and emotional practices to regulate mood, body language, and tone. However, self-awareness extends to understanding how all of these factors are impacting others around you. In addition to understanding how to regulate yourself, take a few minutes every day to evaluate who you are working with, as well as the approach you need to take to manage your emotions in the settings you step foot in throughout the day. It can be easy to lose sight of this important practice, as a result of the hustle of work, meetings, and to-do lists.

Self-Regulation:

Self-regulation and self-awareness are a tag team. The actions you take to improve your emotional state are the key components to self-regulation. In order to improve your performance and the overall cohesiveness of your team, practice taking these actions daily. A tangible way to regulate yourself with your awareness is through the concept of ‘thinking before you speak’. It is one thing to be aware of how you may be affecting others, but it is a whole different battle to be able to act on that on awareness. In practice, pay attention to physical and verbal cues like body language, tone, and eye contact. These small adjustments from your team members can serve as hints to adjust your communication style.

As we continue to work with team members and other organizations who operate remotely, these cues remain the same; however, they can be more difficult to spot. Depending on the angle and nature of the virtual call, it may be difficult to read body language, tone, and eye contact. However, these cues are still present in the conversation and serve as your best hints to adjusting your communication style.

Motivation:

According to Daniel Goleman, motivation is “a passion for work that goes beyond money or status,” (Ovans 2015). This passion is important in terms of improving your position in the working world both short and long term. In an effort to maintain this passion, keep your goals (90-day, 12-month, 5-year, etc.) in mind. This will only serve to improve your position inside and outside the office. As you lead within your organization, don’t be afraid to share your passion behind these goals with others in your team. A shared level of awareness and drive will help realize personal and organizational performance metrics.

Empathy:

Empathy is the ability to identify with another person’s emotional state at a given moment and then react accordingly. However, this is easier said than done. The connection between emotional intelligence and empathy benefits both you and others simultaneously, with the right intentions behind it. For example, barriers in terms of authority, resource availability, and other factors can affect overall mood and willingness to perform. However, the ability to identify and name these barriers can benefit both parties involved. This concept extends beyond your immediate team. Empathy is also strongly correlated with how your organization understands customer service.

Social Skills:

Social skills can make or break your organization’s performance. In service-oriented organizations, beneficial social skills look like engaging on LinkedIn, networking with your community, and stepping outside of your comfort zone. Beyond extending your network, the people you surround yourself with will impact your everyday life. This impact stretches beyond your physical workspace or your organizational team. In a largely virtual and remote world, you also surround yourself with individuals online. The individuals who you follow, interact with, and build connections with will impact what you see on your feed. This, in turn, affects your everyday life.

So Now What?

This was a brief overview of emotional intelligence, as well as the five factors. However, there is so much more to understand and learn! If you are interested in continuing to explore this topic, we encourage you to dive deeper into the work of Daniel Goleman and others to learn more about your EQ.

Our Top Tips to Honing Your Emotional Intelligence Toolkit:

1. Pay attention to those communication cues we discussed earlier and then adjust accordingly
2. Consider how you are delivering your message, as well as what you are saying
3. Aim to understand others’ motivations and goals through asking good questions
4. Work to empathize with others and offer help if they want it
5. Network with others and recognize that every person you meet may benefit you in ways you couldn’t imagine (or vice versa!)
6. Use tangible tools and assessments to understand others’ perspectives even better. Check out TSI’s free and short Change Readiness Assessment to get started!

Emotional intelligence is a key player in not only our work lives, but our personal lives as well. Through these five factors, your organization has the opportunity to thrive. If you are wanting more guidance on what this could look like for your team, let us know!

The post How to Level-Up Your EQ With Five Critical Factors appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

A few years ago, I noticed something interesting with our clients who hired TSI to train them on process improvement and organizational change management skills and subsequently lead them in their own process improvement journey. Don’t tell anyone…but their culture actually began to change as a result of what they learned and started to apply in their own organizations.

This post is not about the work that we did. Not at all. It’s about the initiative that these teams took, the space that their leadership gave them, and the progress they made.

I discovered that by starting with more tactical needs like improving operating efficiency without any intentional ‘culture change’ initiative, culture change was happening. Starting with learning new skills, these organizations developed an individual and organizational sense of “self-awareness” and they paid attention to some interesting fundamentals of the process, such as:

• Who is currently involved in getting the work done versus who actually needs to be?
• What steps are being performed?
• Are most of these steps manual or automated?
• What do we do that adds little to no value to our organization?
• How do our handoffs work?
• Where do we fumble?
• Where do we thrive?

These are all critical questions around process improvement. However, the culture shift that occurs through the program of process improvement is most notable. Individuals and teams learned useful tools that equipped them to look at their world, and in turn their organization, differently.

When employees are empowered to make a change, this can build momentum within the organization and begin to change its DNA. You move from an organization that is operated, to a degree, in the dark, to one that has cast a spotlight on key opportunities for improvement.

The 4 E’s of the Teams That Get It

Through working with a variety of organizations, it is worth noting that the teams who embrace their new mindset and try to ‘move the needle’ on the culture scale, typically possess a combination of these four characteristics:

1. Energized – The process improvement pilot team members – some may be subject experts – who stand out simply radiate positivity. They learn with ‘fresh eyes’ and are willing to try, refine, and improve on new skills.
2. Empowered – This one is mostly the responsibility of senior leadership to allow the team to make changes absent of bureaucracy. In conjunction, the team needs to take that responsibility and do something useful with it. That does not mean that the process team has carte blanch authority, but they need some latitude to initiate change. How frustrating that must be for those in organizations who are given a chance to learn new skills but have no authority to make any changes.
3. Lack of Ego – Prima Donna ego’s kill culture change. The teams that I see thrive are typically diverse and absent of large egos that kill the culture. Process improvement team member selection is so critical, as they need both Attitude and Aptitude to be successful.
4. Engaged – This is no different than the person who ‘goes through the motions’ during their workouts and then gets frustrated they aren’t seeing any results; the engaged team, comprised of team members that challenge themselves and each other, is in a class by themselves.

The Quick Fix Mindset: Just Buy New Software

An alternative approach that we have also experienced is an interesting one. And, not surprisingly, it is an approach that we see far too often. The approach looks something like this – a group (a growing corporation, university or non-profit organization) has an aging technology platform and surrounding it, inefficient processes, and some degree of dysfunction in the organization structure. They aim to fix it by buying a new (and expensive) software product. Then, when it comes time to implement the new software product (an ERP, CRM, or other significant new enterprise application) the expectation is that this new shiny piece of software is a lever to transform their culture.

My software implementation friends – I feel your pain 🙂

This is an interesting approach. I’m sure it has worked somewhere along the line, but it is akin to purchasing that shiny new piece of workout equipment, thinking that it is going to turn you into a workout enthusiast.

This is exactly where tools and techniques pertaining to organizational change management collide with the needs and levers for culture change. Just like the workout equipment metaphor once you are clear on “your why” – doing some mental and emotional preparatory work – you will make gains.

How You Can Initiate Culture Change

1. Does your team or organization have any “bright spots” or isolated examples of wins that we can use to build some culture change momentum on?
2. What tensions and blind spots does your organization have that prevent it from moving to the culture that will allow it to thrive?
3. When you think about the key characteristics that are part of your organization’s DNA, consider which ones you want to build on and which you hope to move away from.
4. How can you illustrate the impact that those organizational ‘toxins’ have on your organization?

If you are a corporate or higher education practitioner (sorry consultant friends), consider attending our upcoming webinar on utilizing process improvement for cultural change within your organization.

Do you have other things that you and your organization consider when looking at characteristics and culture? We would love to hear them! Let us know what has worked or failed within your organization in the comments below.

For other related articles on culture, check out these posts on TSI Insights:

Why Culture Change is so Elusive (and What You Can Do)

Change Culture by Not Changing Culture

How Does a Culture of Change Turn Resistance into Growth?

The post How to Create Lasting Cultural Change Within Your Organization appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..