Employee Engagement | Full Sail Leadership Academy

Can You Hear Me Now?

4 min read

Great leaders are often heralded for their public skills. Speaking. Writing. Vision casting. Innovation. All of these are good and necessary.

Yet we all know that they aren’t enough. Just like Katherine famously told Jack in the Broadway play, The Newsies.

“Being a boss doesn’t mean you have all the answers, just the brain to recognize the right one when you hear it.”

In the third installment of our Current Leadership series, we’re going to let the boat rest on the waters and consider how we can listen to our crew and hear the right answers.

Healthy Leaders Care About Their Employees

Nothing can replace caring about your crew. According to a recent study done by MIT, the number one reason for the Great Resignation isn’t about a paycheck.

It’s because of toxic cultures in the workplace.

The best leadership and listening techniques in the world, if not paired with authentic care for others, are manipulation at best. Employees feel that. And they are jumping ship.

When leaders don’t listen, everyone loses. This is why the reality TV series Undercover Boss resonated so deeply with so many.

Each episode had a different, successful boss go “undercover” and work with the regular employees. This experience transformed the boss’ perspective.

Employees were not only humanized, they often demonstrated wisdom and perspective beyond what the boss could see.

As a leader, you need to keep your eyes on the horizon. You have to hold in tension the goals of the company with the needs of the crew. While navigating unforeseen storms and obstacles.

This is why one of the greatest advantages you can give yourself as a leader is listening to your crew. You’re limited. You cannot see or know it all.

But when you care about your employees, believing that they have something to offer beyond what you can see, then you will want to listen to what others have to offer.

Creating Margin for Health in the Workplace

Listening well involves far more than conversation. Leadership expert, Patrick Lencioni, asserts that healthy teams need to have trust. And trust requires vulnerability.

Your ability and availability to listen will not do any good if your employees don’t feel valued.

Our workshops are an excellent tool to cultivate these qualities in your team.

You may be able to lead with confidence in your field. But are you comfortable following? In front of those you lead? How would you feel if you needed to rely on your team to sail on Lake Michigan?

Can you see how an out-of-the-office, team-building experience like sailing would increase trust, vulnerability, and appreciation on your team?

Our workshop can open a door to meaningful and ongoing communication within your team. This may require you to adjust how you budget your time.

Listening well may be more art than science. At least for a leader. You can have regularly scheduled meetings. Or perhaps “open door” hours.

But we all know that our best ideas don’t come on a predictable schedule. The burst of courage required to share an insight or expose an offense may not happen within the 15 minutes between the meeting reminder and the meeting.

Further, different people process things in different ways. Some of your employees are external processors who will only be able to understand what they think and how they feel while talking.

Others are internal processors. They will need the space to leave a conversation, think about how they feel, and circle back.

As a leader, you need to chart these choppy waters. You need to inspire confidence in your team while the wind is beating against them and waves are breaking over the bow of the organization.

You’ll need to manage your margin. Not just time, but energy. And not just for you, but for your organization.

Successful companies traverse many different seasons. Sometimes the wind fills your sails. At other times, there is no wind at all to drive your team forward.

One of the best ways you can discern the season you’re in is by listening to your crew.

Leading Within Your Limitations

People in general, but leaders in particular, don’t love their limitations. You dream big dreams. Like Jim Collins recommended, you have big, hairy, audacious goals.

Taking the time to listen well can feel like an obstacle to your productivity. Like sailing upwind.

Many leaders are under an enormous amount of pressure. How can you keep profits up, achieve goals, cultivate a healthy workplace, listen to your employees, and maintain a healthy work-life harmony for yourself?

For a ship to sail, many people need to fill different roles. The helmsman can’t also be the bowman. But in order to direct the rest of the crew, the helmsman needs to hear the bowman.

This is no easy task. That’s why we all need a Katherine in our lives from time to time. Not to add more to our plate, but to take something off.

Consider this post and offer the reorienting wake-up call that Katherine gave Jack. Maybe the one you need.

Creating the space to care for your team by listening to them well eventually eases much of the self-imposed pressure you feel.

Employees who know they are cared for don’t jump ship.
Employees who know they are cared for are more engaged.
Employees who know they are cared for perform better.

These intuitive, yet verifiable benefits are accessible to every leader. It doesn’t require innate brilliance or inherited billions. It just requires ears that will listen and a heart that cares.

If you cultivate a culture of care among your crew, good ideas will fill your sails and propel you to the horizon you dream of.

After all, being the boss doesn’t mean you’ve got all the good ideas. It’s just being able to know the right ones when you hear them.

Let’s Set Sail Together

The team at Full Sail Leadership Academy is eager to listen to you. We are ready to help you take your team to the next level.

Reach out to us today for a free 30-minute consultation and learn how we can help you sail to a brighter future.

March 8, 2022/by Tim Dittloff

Caring About Others in the Workplace (Going Beyond “Techniques”)

Employee Engagement, Leadership Development

5 min read

Have you ever looked out over the water and it seemed as though it was moving in one direction? Or another? Or maybe switching directions even as you watch?

Water currents don’t work that way. Streams flow in one direction. Even though major bodies of water like Lake Michigan may have a shift in current, the water generally flows in one direction.

The water on the surface can appear to move in one direction while the current underneath pulls in the other. A body of water may appear peaceful on the surface and yet it may have a strong undertow.

You can’t measure the force of a current by the surface alone. You need to know what’s happening in the deeper water.

Amid the Great Resignation, many leaders know they need help to navigate these troubled waters. We understand this anxiety and yet still see opportunity on the horizon.

In the second part of our current leadership series, we’re going to consider one of the most critical competencies for any leader: listening.

But we’re not going to focus on category or technique. An ocean of resources is already available for you on that.

We’re going to ask you to take a vulnerable risk. Will you look beneath the surface of your current listening skills and consider your motives?

Engaging the Heart of Your Employees

The greatest resource in your company is the people. Employees are not tools to be utilized to accomplish a purpose. They are human beings with a full life.

Just as it is for a leader, so it is for a team member. Work may be a crucial part of life, but it’s just one part of a bigger whole.

Do you care about the work-life harmony of the people on your team? When you correct an employee, do you consider how it will impact their relationships outside of work?

When you see an employee settling for being good when you know they could be great – do you factor in what may be going on in their home?

Of course, no leader should try to be the best friend or counselor to everyone on the team. No human being has the capacity for that.

Our question to you is simply this – do you care?

You can be filled with vision and insight, know exactly how to chart a course to success, even navigate choppy and turbulent waters with contagious confidence.

But how deeply do you care about your crew?

Reflect on some of your favorite leaders from your life. Maybe a boss, a teacher, or a coach.

Why did they leave a lasting impression on you? Was it their skill, insight, or humor? Or was it something deeper?

Could you sense that they cared about you? Could you tell that they wanted the best for you?

People will not care what you know until they know that you care.

Leadership Beneath the Surface

This is why mastering leadership techniques can fall short. Active listening. Reflective listening. Patience with silence. All of these skills are good. Necessary, even.

But the motivational current underneath the listening skill will be felt by the team. For better and worse.

That current will influence a culture among the team that will carry it in one direction or another. Regardless of how things look on the surface.

Emotional health, trust, and vulnerability cannot be cultivated by outward skill.

As the captain of a boat, there are times when I need to give commands. Even in rapid order. That’s ok – if my crew knows that I care about them. They’ll be more likely to absorb hard coaching if they know that I have their best interest in mind.

But if I bark out the best orders to chart the safest and most efficient course all the while being irritated or annoyed by my crew, they’ll feel it.

And eventually, they’ll jump ship.

Running with the Wind

Acquiring listening skills is easy. Cultivating emotional health is hard.

At first.

But when you genuinely care about the people in your life, the people on your team, you will want to listen. You will yearn to understand. You will desire to know how you can be supportive so that they can flourish.

When that is your motivation, the skills will come easily.

Especially listening.

Actively listening while not actually caring is like trying to sail without wind.

Hoist the sail, direct the rudder, strive with all your might. You’re not going to get far.

When the wind is blowing, though, and you have the tools and the team to harness its energy, magic happens.

Building a Winning Team

What is the “win” for your team? Revenue? Platform? Contracts?

Wherever you are going, the best way to get there is with a healthy team who knows they are cared for.

A recent study by the University of Warwick found that happiness led to a 12% spike in productivity, while unhappy workers proved 10% less productive.

As the research team put it, “We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity. Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings.”

At the Harvard Business Review, Emma Seppälä and Kim Cameron, studying numerous sources concluded this:

“A positive workplace is more successful over time because it increases positive emotions and well-being. This, in turn, improves people’s relationships with each other and amplifies their abilities and their creativity.

It buffers against negative experiences such as stress, thus improving employees’ ability to bounce back from challenges and difficulties while bolstering their health. And, it attracts employees, making them more loyal to the leader and to the organization as well as bringing out their best strengths.”

The evidence is staggering. No doubt it matches your personal experience. When you feel cared for, trust your leaders, and get along with your team – you perform better.

Let’s Set Sail Together

At Full Sail Leadership Academy, we are equipped to support you as you navigate these waters. Reach out today for a free 30-minute consultation and learn how we can help you sail to a brighter future.

If you listen, you’ll hear the wind picking up. Let us help you hone the skills you need so that you can capitalize on the opportunity on the horizon.

February 2, 2022/by Tim Dittloff

How Steward Leaders Identify and Prevent Burnout in the Workplace

Employee Engagement, Team Building

4 min read

Whether on a sailboat, in the workplace, or throughout life, I’ve learned there’s one critical mental health skill everyone must learn to encourage smooth sailing.

We must understand what factors around us are in our control and which are out of our control.

You have no time to debate whether something is in your control while navigating a sailboat through stormy waters. The whole crew’s safety rides on each sailor showing up focused and motivated.

That’s why as a sailboat captain, I must recognize which broader caretaking tasks are under my control.

If a sailor shows up visibly burned out for their time at watch, I must ensure their wellbeing comes first so the entire crew’s wellbeing won’t suffer.

What do you think would happen if I didn’t send that person down below for some rest?

Even one sailor’s lack of motivation, attention, energy, and cognitive function could lead to unthinkable disaster on the water.

Sadly, most corporate leaders never fully acknowledge that the mental and emotional wellbeing of their team falls under their realm of control.

Just like the sailor, one team member’s symptoms of burnout will create a ripple effect across the entire team. Not only will their own work suffer, but it will lead to further slowdowns and spread negativity throughout the entire workplace.

That’s why every true steward leader understands they’re at the helm of preventing burnout in the workplace.

Preventing Burnout in the Workplace is Key to Employee Engagement

You may have heard that employee burnout has reached record levels during the pandemic. Burned-out workers are not engaged in daily tasks, so this truly demonstrates the impact of preventing burnout in the workplace on productivity.

Plus, burnout spreads. Remote work environments prevent one team member from showing up to work visibly burned out and spreading the negativity to others. However, working from home also creates other stressors that workers might find particularly challenging. It all depends on the individual.

The same logic applies to every workplace, age group, and company: Prevent burnout in the first place and organization-wide productivity will skyrocket.

Preventing Burnout in the Workplace is a Steward Leader’s Responsibility

As a leader, it’s your job to prevent burnout in the workplace.

Specifically, preventing burnout in one team member so it doesn’t spread to the entire workplace – much like water that gets inside a sailboat.

I know what you’re thinking. “You’re saying it’s my job to watch every single person’s mental wellness, really now?” Yes. Leaders understand their role as the caretaker of everyone across their team.

It doesn’t mean becoming overly parental in everyone’s personal lives or emotions. It does, however, go back to understanding your own control over their mental and emotional wellbeing at work.

“But I don’t scream and punish people.” You don’t have to. Everyone struggles to meet the organization’s expectations and their own internalized work expectations that you’re responsible for enforcing.

You might be the kindest leader in the industry already, but you also must acknowledge your role as each team member’s psychological caretaker in the workplace.

Change Your Mindset Towards Monitoring Stress and Caretaking in the Workplace

Now you’re probably wondering how a steward leader could manage the mental and emotional wellness of each person across a team.

First, think about the negative emotions within your control as a leader, specifically stress and overworking.

Just like the captain of a vessel must promote downtime and diversion to keep the crew fresh and alert, a corporate leader must monitor the stress levels across their team – both individually and holistically.

Doing so ensures you can prevent burnout in the workplace by plugging the leak at its source, keeping your team productive and enthusiastic.

Start by learning the key signs of burnout so you can identify and gently rectify them as they arise:

Cynical attitude
Overly critical of themselves or others
Irritability
Impatience
Lower energy than normal
Trouble concentrating and focusing
Disillusionment
Unable to sit still or constantly chatting
No satisfaction in their achievements

Sometimes this involves placing a team member in a new role with tasks suited for them. Others, it means talking to them about realistic expectations for themselves and the importance of self-care.

Stewards Use StrengthsFirst Leadership to Prevent Added Burnout in the Workplace

Ideally, you want to avoid creating the conditions that drive someone to burnout in the first place. A steward leader also understands that, like burnout, all types of negative emotion and energy spread.

If a captain pointed out the weaknesses of each crewmate constantly, the whole crew would sail in a state of perpetual fear and despair.

That’s why another critical part of stewardship, and preventing burnout, is adapting a StrengthsFirst mindset regarding yourself and your team.

With strengths leadership, we take time to learn each team member’s unique strengths. Make it your job to encourage each person’s strengths and help them to partner up with people that can offset areas that they are less strong in – anywhere you can.

This type of caretaking in the workplace – placing each team member in the right environment to thrive – is another psychological wellness component totally within our control as leaders.

It’s much easier to set your team up for productivity and avoid any burnout when each person’s working in “their element.”

Take the First Step Learning the StrengthsFirst Leadership Mindset and Transforming into a Steward

Becoming a steward leader with an eye to preventing burnout in the workplace doesn’t come overnight from reading a book or list of tips.

It takes dedication and time to change your mindset and communication style, especially the part that involves switching to the critical StrengthsFirst leadership.

A hands-on sailing workshop on the open water offers the perfect exposure to enhance your current leadership mindset and adapt the steward leader’s approach. That’s what we do at Full Sail Leadership, along with our comprehensive team-building program, to create a generation of steward leaders of all ages.

Join me and the Full Sail Leadership team for a workshop providing experience on the water and knowledge in the classroom. Sign up for a Full Sail Leadership workshop now! Or join us this Spring in the beautiful Florida Keys aboard the historic General Patton’s WhenandIf sailboat.

February 19, 2021/by Tim Dittloff

3 Reasons a Steward Mentality is the Secret to Leadership Development

Employee Engagement

steward mentality leadership development

5 min read

A few weeks ago, I was enjoying a weekend sail on Lake Michigan.

Waves of about seven feet tall crashed against the boat while the winds blew furiously and pulled us around.

I enjoy these rare conditions. While treacherous, I’m an experienced sailing instructor and licensed Coast Guard Captain who loves a fresh challenge.

My crew didn’t feel the same way – and I could tell.

Although I considered it an exhilarating experience, my crew felt unprepared, inexperienced, and concerned.

Instead of ignoring the crew’s fears and telling them to suck it up, I decided it was time to head back to harbor.

We had only been on the water for about two hours but as the captain, it was my job to mitigate the crew’s fears and ensure they feel safe.

A crew that feels unsafe and fearful puts everyone on board at risk.

That’s the true job of every leader – whether on a ship or at a Fortune 500 organization.

Leadership development must prioritize stewardship. A steward leader knows it’s his job to create a psychologically safe environment for everyone on the team. Only then is the team prepared to weather the rocky waters and come out the other side stronger than ever before.

Most People Approach Leadership Development the Wrong Way

Today’s leaders rarely consider themselves responsible for the mental and emotional well-being of everyone on their team.

Instead, most leaders create an environment that encourages fear to grow: they highlight worker shortcomings, ignore valuable contributions, and pit team members against each other.

Many times, this fear-based leadership development isn’t even intentional. For some of us, it’s all we know.

Unfortunately, this sets an organization up to fail.

Workers grow distrusting of each other and leadership. Engagement and productivity drop. No one feels valued so no one is invested in the organization’s well-being.

It’s no surprise that employee engagement reached historically low levels recently: 54% of workers are actively disengaged. More than half of workers have no psychological connection to their company, passion, or energy.

What is Steward Leadership?

A steward leader plays a caretaker role – both for the team and the organization. Steward leaders know that people function best when they feel respected, valued, and appreciated.

Steward leadership teaches us to prioritize the well-being of everyone on the team because they’ll feel empowered to care for the company.

Instead of looking at work as a means to an end, teams with steward leaders share celebrations over the company’s success and communicate to fix shortcomings.

Steward leadership development creates a healthy environment for everyone to thrive.

3 Reasons a Steward Mentality is the Secret to Successful Leadership Development

Fear is everywhere today. I’ve seen rampant fear destroy many companies even in the best economic times.

Every ship needs a fearless captain to care for the crew’s well-being so they can do their job without fear. With a steward leader at the helm, everyone aboard the vessel feels safe and prepared to work together in perfect harmony for the good of the team.

1. Steward Leaders are Committed to Their Team’s Well-being

A steward mentality changes how we define success and approach achieving it.

Stewards know a hungry, tired, and irritated crew can’t work together efficiently. If morale is low enough, they might not even get the boat to shore safely when the waters turn rocky.

Leaders with a steward mentality know that the success of their organization relies on the well-being of their team.

Of course, leaders must first ensure their workers’ basic needs are met (within reason): shelter, food, childcare, healthcare, etc. However, steward leaders must also prioritize their team’s emotional and mental well-being as well.

Autonomy, trust, appreciation, psychological safety – these all matter tremendously.

When leaders prioritize their team’s well-being from a holistic approach like this, workers can truly flourish because they feel valued. They feel invested in the organization’s outcome because the organization is invested in their well-being too.

Stewards know the safety of their crew must come first.

2. Steward Leadership Sends Ripples of Strength Across the Entire Team

Steward leadership isn’t a positivity cult where we ignore flaws and force everyone to wear a happy face.

That mentality is dangerous because it means problems are bubbling below the water waiting for a chance to surface and cause widespread damage to the ship.

Steward leaders uphold core principles like honesty, open communication, and respect. All these principles are critical to building strength across the team because they make workers feel psychologically safe.

When a crew member knows he won’t be ridiculed or shouted at for addressing an issue with the boat, he’s more likely to speak up or take charge himself. If, on the other hand, he’s afraid of how his captain and crew will react, he might ignore the problem and hope no one notices – a dangerous situation.

An organization with honest communication and trust is a strong team.

When people know their voice will be respected, they’ll speak up out of respect for the organization’s best interests. Sometimes it’s easy, other times painful – but it’s always necessary for success.

3. Steward Leadership Improves Society as a Whole

Today, most corporate leaders suffer from a serious lack of object permanence.

Our innate sense of object permanence tells us that problems and conditions exist even when we can’t see or experience them at that very moment. Most leaders today, however, prefer to brush off or outright ignore problems that aren’t directly in front of their face.

In a way, this is a coping tool. If we acted on every problem no matter how small, we’d lose sight of our long-term goals and purpose.

However, this mentality also keeps leaders detached from their impact on society as a whole.

Let’s say an employee had an awful day at work at a job where they already don’t feel appreciated. Maybe they experienced a degrading performance review where someone pointed out all their flaws and ignored all the positive work they’ve achieved over the year.

Feeling down, this worker goes home and starts an argument with his wife. His wife feels upset the following day and can’t focus on her job properly.

As caretakers, stewards uplift people’s strengths instead of pointing out their weaknesses unless they become a severe problem. Society needs more of this mentality in general.

Every leader must ask themselves: Am I improving society through my leadership and guidance or am I creating more hurdles to overcome?

Humble Yourself to Serve Your Team as a Steward on the Open Sea

I’ve learned that while aboard a ship navigating the rocky waters, there’s no time for miscommunication, dishonesty, and fear. Lives would be put at risk.

I believe companies and organizations today face the same reality. Leadership development must cast stewardship in the starring role. Steward leadership is the only way to tackle today’s unparalleled challenges and not just overcome them but also grow from them together as a team.

My background in the corporate world and as a licensed Coast Guard Captain lead me to develop hands-on workshops that target the root causes of low engagement and morale. Chart the course for sustainable growth with Full Sail Leadership.

November 23, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

Don’t Let Fear Sabotage Your Team – Learn to Manage It and Adapt

Employee Engagement, Team Building

5 min read

Fear is everywhere.

In many ways, we wouldn’t survive without a healthy dose of fear.

Fear prevents us from walking into traffic or balancing on the edge of a cliff.

Originating in the amygdala, fear is a fundamental component of shrewd decision making.

But like any emotion, the key is balance and management.

If we lose control of how to manage our fears, they overtake us.

We stop taking risks. We internalize. We become stagnant.

On the other hand, without fear, we operate indiscriminately as if consequences don’t exist.

The same thing happens across teams – and it can sabotage an entire company’s success.

How Fear is Paralyzing Your Workplace

On a sailboat, fear can be everywhere we look: the unrelenting water, the wind, the unknown.

Even the reliance of other sailors can invoke fear – what if we can’t trust them to make the right choice in rough water?

The same is true of any business. Workers face different fears every day: unhappy clients, scolding from bosses, letting down other workers, potential layoffs.

Like on a sailboat, these fears can paralyze a workplace if they’re not confronted and managed.

Fear prevents us from making rational decisions. Over enough time, sustained fear can impact memory, emotions, and other psychological processes.

Think of the fight-or-flight response.

It’s useful if you accidentally step into the street, see a car barreling towards you, and quickly jump out of the road. But living in a sustained fight-or-flight state would cause intense generalized anxiety – everything becomes a threat.

Even in cases where our fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, we wouldn’t want it to cloud our judgment and overtake our actions completely. Jumping out of the way to avoid a car won’t help if you jump into another lane filled with traffic.

What Does Fear Look Like in Organizational Behavior?

Over time, sustained fear mismanagement leads to burnout.

Fear is also contagious. On a ship, we’ll isolate a sick sailor to prevent infecting the entire crew. An outbreak on a ship at sea is a disaster.

Within an organization, fear spreads like fire. It infects individual workers, departments, roles, processes, relationships, and revenue.

Here’s what a fear outbreak might look like across a business:

Personal fears: Letting down coworkers, missing deadlines, unprepared for meetings, alienation from goals and outcomes, etc.
Business fears: Departments in frequent disagreement, unclear goals, low confidence, lack of honest communication, low morale, etc.
Existential fears: Unstable markets and economic outlook, automation and AI, changing culture, layoffs, etc.

5 Strategies and Techniques to Manage Fear and Avoid Sabotage

You can’t avoid fear completely. It’s a healthy reaction to instability and danger.

Instead, focus on confronting and managing fear. Turn fear into a useful tool for communication, dedication, and growth.

1. Prioritize Psychological Safety

We’ve all been in situations where we feel psychologically unsafe.

Verbal abuse, gaslighting, emotional manipulation, lies – these all take their toll. Over time, we build unhealthy coping tools and adapt learned helplessness. We stop speaking up and setting boundaries.

On the sea, a lack of psychological safety is dangerous. Imagine if the first mate was afraid of stepping on toes so he didn’t alert the captain to an oncoming iceberg! That’s how the Titanic sunk!

The same is true of a workplace. If someone is afraid of being reprimanded or attacked, they’ll never speak up.

A psychologically safe environment is where:

People feel obligated to speak up when something’s wrong.
People are held accountable for their actions.
Disagreements aren’t inherently aggressive – certain words and actions are.
Asking for help isn’t viewed as annoying or poor character.
Decisions and risks are made for the good of the organization.

It’s not about creating a safe space where everyone says and does what they please without consequences. If people feel psychologically safe enough to say rude things or give detrimental advice, that’s not safe for others either.

That’s why accountability is critical.

2. Develop a Strength-Based Organizational Attitude

Everyone hates performance reviews, don’t they?

Why? Performance reviews or employee evaluations are frightening situations. They drum up all kinds of fearful thoughts like

Have I accomplished enough this year?
Are layoffs coming?
Is my raise on the line?
What did I do wrong this time?

I know this might be surprising, but no one likes to be reminded of their weaknesses. We all have weaknesses we could stand to improve. Unless they routinely make other people’s lives harder, then why are weaknesses even worth addressing?

Instead, eliminate fear by focusing on strengths.

Talk to team members about areas they truly excel – and what they dread.

Whether on a sailboat or at workplace, teams perform best when everyone plays up their personal strengths.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we should ignore major shortcomings to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. In most cases, however, we can avoid a situation where someone’s weaknesses are on full display by promoting the use of their strengths from the beginning.

3. Promote Positive Conflict and Accountability

Conflict is painted in a negative light far too often.

We’ve all seen relationships between two partners who never fight. It’s almost eerie – surely no one can avoid conflict forever.

Most times, a lack of conflict means people aren’t speaking up about problems.

Those problems just bubble below the surface until they pressurize and explode.

No matter the situation, people avoid conflict from fears of:

Being attacked or shouted down
Hurting another person’s feelings
Looking stupid or emotional
Failure to enforce boundaries

Many times, a worker is eager to express their grievances – at first. Later, when no one is held accountable, boundaries are ignored, and nothing changes, they stop speaking up. What’s the point?

Conflict turns positive when two things happen:

People trust they won’t be attacked or get anyone in trouble for speaking up.
Others are held accountable, respectfully, for their words and actions.

4. Build Trust to Learn About Their Fears

We can’t assume people will suddenly be comfortable speaking up after years of bad experiences.

If we want to know our team’s fears, we must ask them.

It takes time to earn trust. People need to know they’ll be respected before they’ll speak up. They need to know leaders will provide honest and transparent answers.

Team building exercises are excellent tools for jumpstarting a new culture centered around trust.

On a sailboat out on the open water, leaders and teams must work together toward a common goal in a way they never have before.

Teams can take that new attitude back with them to the workplace and apply the principles of trust.

Trust is paramount.

dailystoke.com

5. Offer Transparency and Stability in Times of Uncertainty

We’re all facing rocky waters right now with no end in sight.

Workers are anxious about layoffs, economic downturns, automation, and acquisitions.

Leadership owes them transparency and stability.

If you don’t know something, say so. Don’t sugar coat things.

At the same time, routines and rituals can help create a pillar of stability in troubled waters. Routine is your lighthouse.

Science shows rituals – no matter how small – calm our nerves. They offer a semblance of control when everything feels out of our control.

Ask any sailor. They’ll tell you their favorite ritual before embarking, like wearing a certain cap or putting on a life vest in a certain way.

Don’t Let Fear Run Your Life – Don’t Let It Dictate Organizational Behavior Either

I’ve seen countless businesses at the brink of succumbing to widespread fear. By fostering steward leadership, business leaders can turn an entire organization’s attitude around.

It won’t happen overnight. Effective team building takes time, effort, and dedication – especially from those in leadership positions.

Tackle business fears on the open water. Learn how Full Sail Leadership development and team building workshops can increase productivity and communication.

September 14, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

The Importance of Timely Communication

Employee Engagement

5 min read

When I was in college, I had a communication professor who always cared to lecture my colleagues and me on the timeless quality of effective communication.

He’d pound on the podium and say the best form of communication must be enduring, not fleeting. In his words, “communication should stand the test of time.” Communication is considered enduring (or timeless) if it could inspire people across generations. His favorite examples of such communications were speeches delivered in ancient Rome with lessons or perspectives that are still relevant today.

His other favorite examples were

John F. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you; rather ask what you can do for your country”
“I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

While my communication professor maintained good communication is timeless, my business professors disagreed. They argued it didn’t matter if your communication was timeless and thus theorized that the most important element of effective and useful communication was timely delivery.

Timely communication in your business or organization is key to the success or failure of any endeavor.

Timely Communication is not Just About Minutes and Hours

Timely communication can be defined as communication occurring sufficiently early and promptly. For communication to be truly timely, it should not only be useful but also occur at an opportune time. People in organizations need information early so they can act promptly. Moreover, when communication is timely in an organization or enterprise, its leaders can make the most of every opportunity.

It affords them the needed time to plan and analyze the information. Timely communication can, therefore, be said to help organizations make the most of every opportunity through informed decision-making.

Successful and seamless project management entails effective, smooth, and timely communication between the sales department, the project manager, and the leadership. Timely communication is key to your business’s productivity and bottom line. It’s also the secret of sailing effectively and safely on a racecourse, or simply while daysailing.

Sailing has a unique shared language. Learning that language is paramount to becoming a proficient sailor. Knowing how to execute through that language is even more important for sailing safely and efficiently. The power of shared language truly comes to life on a regatta race course or in stormy waters. To understand this, let’s look at something as basic as tacking (turning a boat so the bow passes through the wind) the boat.

When the skipper of a sailboat wants to tack their boat, the first thing they must do is check to see if the crew is ready to tack the boat. The skipper then gives a command that everyone in the crew understands – one that’s about as old as sailing itself. This command has endured because it is both timeless and timely.

Once the skipper knows their crew is ready, they give another long-standing command, which lets the crew know it’s time to perform certain duties: releasing the jib (the foresail on the boat), shifting positions in the boat, and trimming in the jib. This set of duties need to happen within split seconds of the command for safety and efficiency.

During a heated race, with boats in close quarters crossing each other, the need for effective and prompt communication becomes crucial.

What Gets in the Way of Timely Communication?

If you attend a rudimentary class on communication, one of the things you’d learn is noise is the biggest inhibitor of effective communication. Interestingly, noise isn’t just competing sounds – it also includes distractions competing for the attention of any of the parties involved in a dialog.

Take two people in a quiet room as an example. While there’s a total absence of competing sounds, if one of them were lost in thought, chances are they wouldn’t hear the other person if they tried communicating something to them.

Similarly, an executive may be so focused on their emails or something equally intensive that they miss spoken communication from their teams. This is not a good thing because missed communication sometimes means loss of income opportunities. In other cases, it can lead to threats becoming more real.

When you’re sailing, noise includes not only the sounds of the rushing wind and roaring seas – it also includes distractions in the form of what’s going on in the minds of your crew. I have seen crew members dealing with serious family situations become so lost in their thoughts that they became a danger to the rest of the crew, by not communicating information timely. It was only by checking in with them that we realized what they had been going through. We quickly learned that checking in and caring improved the timeliness of communication.

5 Handy Tips for Better Communication

Here are a few pointers that can help your team develop timely communication:

1. Identify the Team and Know What is on Their Minds

According to an article published in Inc. (July 2016), “the first step to improving communication within a team is to specify just who belongs to that team in the first place. This might sound obvious. But one study found less than 10 percent of 120 surveyed teams were able to correctly identify who was part of their respective teams.”

Beyond identifying who is on the team, it is important to clarify each individual’s roles and responsibilities. Take time to learn what is going on in the hearts and lives of the people with these responsibilities. Doing so can help you capitalize on opportunities or avoid danger.

2. Develop and Practice Communication Procedures

Just like tacking a sailboat, outlining procedures for common communication needs will eliminate confusion by providing employees with a clear-cut plan of action.

It is not enough to create these procedures, send out a memo, and call it a day. You must consistently implement these processes for them to facilitate effective communication. Make sure everyone on your team is trained in these procedures and notify staff of any updates as they arise. Repetition and practice are the mother of learning.

3. Establish Your “Captain’s Hour”

At the end of every race – or at the end of every day of sailing during a passage – we do a check-in time where we discuss what went right, what went wrong, and what lessons we learned from the day. We call it “Captain’s Hour.”

As part of your procedures, it is a good idea to provide employees with platforms where they can share project updates, new ideas, questions and concerns, and so on.

4. Encourage Interaction

Time spent chatting by the coffee dispenser is not wasted. It is an investment in building positive relationships between coworkers.

When your team members know and care about each other, they are more likely to collaborate and share honest feedback.

5. Lead by Example

Model the communication styles you want to see by treating employees with respect, providing and asking for honest feedback, and celebrating teamwork. When you lead your team in these, you’re creating an environment that nurtures enhanced productivity, improved morale, and a healthier corporate culture.

Let’s set up a time to review your team’s communication strengths and connections.

There is no better time for that than now. You will be glad you made the investment when you see the improvement in timely communication.

May 29, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

To Steward is to Care, To Lead is to Steward

Employee Engagement, Team Building

4 min read

I tell people that I firmly believe that organizations need to approach the human resource function through the philosophy of co-stewardship.

When I discuss this, I get a sense of puzzled agreement. The concept seems to make sense to people, but when you press them on what they think the concept means, often they admit that they are not quite sure.

Sometimes the listener conjures up the idea of a church concept of giving money when they think of stewardship. When they do that, they falsely think that employees should be more sacrificial. This type of definition is only one-sided and fails to take in the management component of stewardship. It also completely misses the identity of the steward.

In understanding the identity of the stewarding company, owners and company team members can thrive together. This can lead to greater profits and productivity for the organization through improved employee engagement.

Blessed to be a Blessing

Life is fragile and temporary. Look down the road when a hearse goes by. There is never a U-Haul trailer following it because the person is taking their possessions with them. In the end, we don’t really own a thing. That’s especially true when it comes to the people that are in our lives. It is even more true if we are team leaders or company presidents. The people that work on our teams are entrusted to us by their family members.

As Bob Chapman of Barry-Wehmiller so accurately states it in Everybody Matters, “I realized (watching a wedding) that the people in our company are someone else’s mother or father, son or daughter”. He went on to say that how he treats the people that work in the company impacts how they treat their family members. This new way of thinking for Chapman led him to form the theory of Truly human leadership.

Bob’s new idea of human leadership took off and has become a hallmark of the Barry-Wehmiller culture for the past few decades. The organization is considered a top place to work not because of the perks that it provides employees but because of the caring and supportive environment.

“When we started caring about each team member, they started caring about each other,” Bob says. Chapman continues by saying, “We genuinely care about the people, and we show it through our actions.” I realized that every single one of Barry-Wehmiller’s team members is like that young lady in the wedding. Every single one of them is someone’s precious child, with hopes and dreams for a future through which they can realize their full potential. The power in that revelation was the realization that the people within our span of care are not objects. Some leaders view their people merely as the function they serve—she’s an engineer, he’s a mail clerk, he’s a machinist—and not as the precious human beings they are. When we realize that people are not objects, they are not tools for our success, we have begun to take our leadership to an entirely new level of understanding.” Spot on advice from America’s Number 1 Steward Leader.

Keeping up with the Gallups

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When a storm comes up on the open water, or in our organizations, there are two directions our human nature can take us:

fear and helplessness
or resilience and engagement.

If leaders have communicated vision, and lead with confidence, human beings are amazingly resilient. There is a documented “rally effect.” I have been in many foul weather races where the winds and waves were storming against the boat. It was the grit, confidence, and vision of the skipper that held the team together to safely and successfully complete the race.

Gallup recently published an article that described the four universal needs that followers have of leaders in times of crisis. These needs include:

Trust
Compassion
Stability
Hope

The storm of the coronavirus outbreak has blown uncertainty into our lives. Millions of people are required to work from home and millions of kids are learning their curriculums from home. The blending of work and home-life is even more complicated. All this has created unprecedented stress on employees’ wellbeing.

A key predictor of employees’ well-being is whether each employee believes that the organization is looking out for their best interest.

Gallup research shows that employees ask themselves on a regular basis:

Does my leadership have a clear plan of action?
Do I feel well-prepared to do my job?
Does my supervisor keep me informed about what is going on?
Does my organization care about my wellbeing?

These questions can be boiled down into questions of co-stewardship. The employees ask themselves questions about how they are being stewarded (cared for), and they ask themselves if they are prepared for the job and will they do a good job for the company.

I believe that if leaders adopt Chapman’s wisdom, they will find that their team members begin to adopt an attitude that they are stewards of the company’s resources. Team members will become more engaged, waste less time, and accomplish the mission of the business.

Combining this with an understanding of Gallup’s research will lead us to unstoppable, winning organizations. It’s like the crew on a race boat. The skipper doesn’t own the crew, but he is a caretaker of the crew. The team doesn’t own the boat. They are a caretaker of the boat. Together they win!

April 15, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

Building Up Through Connection or Burning Out Through Incivility

Employee Engagement

4 min read

There is a dramatic increase in incivility in the workplace. This incivility leads to burnout and lowers employee engagement. Conversely, building up and connecting with team members improves employee engagement and profitability. This article gives examples from corporate America and the world of sailing to help you build connections.

It Starts with Stewardship

As a steward of the people that work on your team, you make the decision every day to either build people up or burn them out. This decision determines whether or not you build healthy connections. If you build up and connect with your team members, they are more likely to be fulfilled at work and in many cases, in their homes. Your decision can improve what was once considered the “backbone of society.” That may seem like a heavy burden to place upon leaders, but it exists whether or not leaders acknowledge it.

Building up and connecting has a dramatic impact on your bottom line

As connections grow, employee engagement rises. An increase in employee engagement results in an increase in profitability and productivity; this improves the bottom line. Taking action to build up your team members can be painless and free of financial costs.

Here are some examples from the business world and the world of sailing regattas.

What Corporate Research Says

Cisco Systems featured a recent article on the importance of something as basic as saying hello to co-workers and subordinates at work. The article talks about how the act of a simple hello led to greater inclusion in other meetings and events within the company. In another body of work, Georgetown professor and author Christine Porath’s research shows that workplace incivility has risen dramatically since 1998.

Porath’s work reports the following information:

As incivility rises in the workplace, 47% of those who were treated poorly decreased their time at work. 38% of those individuals said they intentionally decreased the quality of their work.
78% of those individuals reported feeling disrespected. The commitment to their organization dramatically declined.
Customer service decreases when employees are burnt out through incivility. In her research, Porath found that 25% of those who felt a lack of appreciation and disrespect took their out frustration on the customer.
Collaboration plummets when team members are treated rudely or maligned for sharing ideas. When this occurs, Porath found that workers are “three times less likely to help others and their willingness to share drops by more than half.”

I have seen companies where new top leaders issued edicts and orders before getting to know their people or the culture of the company. Workers that were facing crises and change in their families due to death or illness now had to deal with a crisis of change in long-standing work culture. The story did not end well for the leaders and many employees who provided valuable service left the companies. The wake of their leaving left a void in customer service in their markets. Each week, I hear reports from workers across a multitude of industries. The top leadership walks through the office or factory without the basics of saying hello. There is no use of words like please and thank you, or asking how someone’s day is going.

Lessons from Under Sail

Treating people with civility on the open water pays big dividends on racing teams, or when it comes to teaching people the basics of sailing.

I have been a crew member on boats that were designed purely for speed, yet these boats lost races to boats that were designed more as pleasure boats. The sleek design, the carbon-fiber mast, the state-of-the-art electronics failed to make a difference on the scoring sheet because the crew on board were mistreated, and the skippers failed to connect with his crew.

On the well-designed boats, crew members were threatened “not to screw up (by making a mistake).” There was little forgiveness, no encouragement to learn and grow, and no concern for the personal lives of the crew.

The older pleasure boats were a contrast in attitudes, and the attitudes made the difference.

The skippers on these boats truly care about the growth of their crews. When mistakes are made, there is forgiveness and a learning and growth opportunity. On top of this caring attitude, the skippers care about the personal lives of their crew. Turnover on the boats where the crew was not treated with civility was rampant, while turnover on the older pleasure boats was non-existent.

Sailing instructors that treat their students with respect graduate many more students than instructors that have higher degrees of incivility.

Building up employees impacts your bottom line

The bottom line is employee engagement. Employee engagement rises when the team has a greater connection to the vision of the organization, the values of the organization, and when they feel they have a voice in the organization. A sense of having a voice and being psychologically safe to voice opinions in the organization has a dramatically positive impact on the level of engagement. When we build up our team members, we increase transparency and build trust. These two factors also increase engagement.

The facts from Gallup show the bottom-line impact. What would you do with 21% more profitability and 59% less turnover?

Let’s have a conversation about how you can increase employee engagement in your organization. Contact me for a consultation.

January 21, 2020/by Tim Dittloff

Psychological Safety At Work and At Sea

Employee Engagement

3 min read

There has been a great amount of research on the benefits of a psychologically safe workforce and how it improves employee engagement.

When engagement improves, productivity and profitability improve, and lost-time incidents drop dramatically.

The process of teaching about psychologically safe workplaces is very similar to teaching safety on sailboats. The skipper’s number one job is to ensure the safety of his or her crew. This article will explore the similarities and discuss how you can apply principles from the world of racing on the high seas to work in your organization.

When team members are afraid to voice their opinion or ask a question, they view their workplace as an unsafe and dangerous place. The moment this happens, employees disengage from the dialog and the vision of the organization. These employees are like the sailing crew member who does not alert the skipper to danger because of fear of how the skipper will react. They put the vessel, and everyone on it, in peril.

Employees that disengage because they view the workplace as psychologically unsafe, can put their organization in jeopardy of losing business. As a result of a disengaged team member, key employees can vanish like valuable crew members to the sea of competitors.

Education and Experiential Learning is the Key

New workers learn their role in an organization best when they feel it is safe to admit they do not understand something completely. They ask questions to clarify their ambiguity. These same workers learn from mistakes when they are coached with care and concern versus condemnation and coercion.

I have been a crew member on racing boats where the skipper and first mate belittled new crew members for mistakes and questions. When the new crew members held their questions or acted timidly due to fear of failing, accidents and dangerous situations usually followed close behind. Their fear and timidity put the other crew member’s lives at risk.

The investigation into the crash of Asiana Flight 214 in July 2013 concluded: “Among the other issues raised by the investigation are some that long have concerned aviation officials, including hesitancy by some pilots to abort a landing when things go awry or to challenge a captain’s actions.”

Three people died in this crash and 200 people were seriously injured.

In 2010, the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill occurred due to “a failure to share critical information from their onshore staff, as well as reports from their drilling partner” according to US Coast Guard reports. Sadly, eleven men lost their lives due to this communication failure and almost five million barrels of oil were discharged in the Gulf of Mexico.

Several years ago, I worked for a former three-star Army general. We were having a discussion of a potential move that would take me from managing a territory to working on the corporate staff marketing team. I was asked to name who would be key players on my potential staff and who may need to move on.

Knowing the General had his own opinion, I asked: “Sir, how candid can I be?”.

I will never forget his response when he said “In the military, we have a motto that says ‘lack of candor can kill'” I was then told that total candor is what he expected. This experience would turn out to be one of my best experiences in learning. Second only to the lessons learned while sailing.

The Teams on Course Model Prevails

In December of 2014, the $6 million dollar racing yacht “Vestas Wind” crashed onto a shoal in the Indian Ocean while traveling at a speed of 22 knots (25mph). The crew failed to check “old fashioned” paper charts and simply relied on what they saw on their chart plotter. Most importantly the navigator failed to communicate his lack of checking all the details until after the accident. They knew the mission but failed to share information.

Often sharing information falls apart when there is a lack of trust and respect.

The Full Sail Model

The Full Sail model teaches that shared language flows first from understanding and believing in the vision and mission.

Furthermore, it teaches that shared language must be rehearsed and continually practiced to build trust and respect. Once learners absorb these concepts in the classroom, they have the opportunity to anchor the learning by putting the concepts into practice while sailing.

Let’s start a dialog about the communication issues that may be holding you back from creating a psychologically safe workplace. Improving how your team views their ability to share ideas, opinions, or questions can have an impact on profitability and productivity. Contact me today!

December 4, 2019/by Tim Dittloff

What would you do with 21% more profit?

Employee Engagement, Team Building

3 min read

According to the Gallup organization, companies with greater employee engagement are 21% more profitable that those with lower employee engagement. Unfortunately, across the nation, 70-75% of all workers are disengaged from their work. Today, only 15% of all workers when surveyed score as completely engaged in their work. This article will address the costs of disengagement and will offer solutions to improve engagement.

Growing profits begins with identifying the costs

We can all wring our hands and complain about disengaged employees. We may even have a sense that their disengagement may be costing us in lack of productivity. It’s another story when we begin to measure the cost. Two studies (1) were recently discussed at a Franklin Covey facilitators workshop which revealed that for every $10,000 of employee salary, $3,400 was lost to disengaged workers. Put another way, 34% of all wages are lost through disengagement.

Following this logic, if a company’s average salary was $60,000 per year, each disengaged workers’ disengagement costs the company $20,400. If this is a better than average company and only 60% of the workforce is disengaged (versus Gallup’s 70-75%), a company with 100 employees, the bottom-line impact on the company is a loss of $1,224,000!

Values, Vision and Voice is only a starting point

Many organizations talk about their vision, and some even post their values on posters throughout the office. “I have an open-door policy”, has been uttered by mid- level managers and C- Suite executives alike, but when it is time for their staff to take advantage of the policy, it takes three weeks to get on the executive’s calendar. When the meeting happens, the exec is checking their text messages and emails. “Your opinion matters around here”, quickly becomes a trite saying without much belief among the staff.

Employee beliefs, trust and feelings become jaded when they see values compromised and vision clouded.

When the open-door policy seems like the “closed-door” policy, employees begin to feel isolated and engagement plummets. As engagement plummets, turnover increases and costs of recruitment and training the new staff begin to add up. This can be avoided by going beyond communicating about values, vision and voice and working on building a culture of connection and conviction.

Tom Peters had it right

Early in my business career, Tom Peters was the management guru to listen to. This was at the same time that hair bands ruled the radio and Top Gun, Back to the Future and The Breakfast Club ruled the big screen. I remember watching my VHS videotape during a training session as Peters screamed the virtues of MBWA. MBWA is an acronym for Managing By Wandering Around. Peters would go on to say that this managing by wandering around was just the start, much like values, vision and voice are the start. “Management is about arranging and telling, while leadership is about nurturing and enhancing” he was often quoted to say.

It is in the nurturing and enhancing that engagement grows and deepens.

Nurturing and enhancing is the way to build a connection between the employee and the organization. In turn, it is how seemingly sterile or aspirational values and vision become transformational, enduring convictions. The effort of nurturing and enhancing creates an affinity between the executive and employee and models how the relationships between staff should flow.

Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don’t keep it a secret.” ~ Mary Kay Ash

Validation… The Missing “V”

As true leaders nurture and enhance, they are also doing something very important, if not vital in the workplace. True leaders offer a form of validation to the people that they lead and serve alongside with. Employees want to feel like they are an important part of the team. They want to feel like their work matters to the organization and that their opinions matter to the people in leadership as well as their fellow teammates. Employees also want to feel a connection to people that they serve with on the team. It’s no accident that employees that respond in the affirmative that “I have a best friend in my place of work” have longer tenure and that they stay engaged in the important matters of the company.

Sailing to greater profits

There’s no better place to learn the importance of employee engagement and how to build greater team connections than on the deck of a sailboat. The lessons gained from sailing can help unify your team as well as open up the dialog about what is slowing down the progress to the vision, mission, shared language, trust and respect that are vital to success.

Let’s schedule a time for your team to get out on the water to grow together, relax together and create a breakthrough together. Who knows, it might just lead to greater productivity and profitability.