Creating A Game Worth Playing

Part 8 of a continuing series on CEOing by Tom Voccola, Author, The Accidental CEO – A Leader’s Journey from Ego to Purpose

Last month we were talking about the universal belief in the workplace that says:

• All bosses are idiots

• All employees are helpless and hopeless

So what kind of feelings do you think this kind of belief is going to generate?

It triggers anger, resentment, fear and survival, and, according Naomi Eisenberfer, a leading social neuroscience researcher at UCLA, “when a leader creates a stressful workplace, employees unconsciously slip into a state of fear and survival. This sets up a threat response [in the individual employee] which is both mentally taxing and deadly to the productivity of a person. Because this response uses up oxygen and glucose from the blood, they are diverted from other parts of the brain, including working memory function, which processes new information and ideas. This impairs analytical thinking, creative insight and problem solving: in other words, just when people most need their sophisticated mental capabilities, the brain’s internal resources are taken away from them.”

There is a case to be made for positive leadership. And that happens when you are feeling clear and confident about the future yourself. Which brings us to the third CEOing Principle.

To be Powerful in the World, you must learn to Co-create and Master a Game Worth Playing.

To engage people, you are going to have to provide a picture of the future they can feel good about. I call it A Game Worth Playing. You need to inspire them, challenge them and call them forth to be the best they can be. You don’t do that by judging them. You do that by understanding that, as Deming said, “Nobody gives a hoot about profits.” What they care about is doing a good job!

So your company must be consciously designed to foster the emotional engagement one feels when they are part of something meaningful, feel challenged with respect and appreciated for their contribution. When people feel that kind of engagement they have no problem taking personal responsibility for the outcome, and doing a good job

You must do this for the employees as people! Not for the company or the bosses, not for the customer or for the shareholders, but for the employees so they feel connected with and in alignment with your dream, so they feel they are making a difference and a contribution.

Again, Naomi Eisenberfer from the UCLA neuroscience study, “…when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisions, support people’s efforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response [in the brain]. People become more effective, more open to ideas, and more creative.”

This is what W. Edwards Deming meant when he said “innovation comes from people who take joy in their work.” It’s your job to create the circumstances within which joy can occur.

Now there is a very practical and selfish reason why you want to do this.

In short, as a business owner you will face two possibilities:

• You can work for the business, or,

• Your business can work for you.

If you truly intend to be a successful entrepreneur, you will learn to work "on" the business not "in" the business as soon as you can. And that means being able to empower and trust people. (By this time you must have read the E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber. If not, I'm sure you can find a copy at your local library.)

The idea is to turn your employees into “colleagues” and your business into a cash machine that works whether you are there or not. If your business works without you, you have choice, you have freedom. You can keep it. You can sell it. You can grow it. You can do something else.

Next month, The Right People on the Bus

Background:
Entrepreneur, speaker, author and CEO Guide, Tom Voccola is the CEO of CEO2, a Chief Executive Consulting Firm specializing in the rapid transformation of corporate and organizational cultures. Tom is the co-founder and past Chairman of the Los Angeles area CEO Round Table for the American Electronics Association, and the author of The Accidental CEO – A Leader’s Journey from Ego to Purpose. His life’s work is to inspire a new generation of leaders who transcend ego and its fear based agenda. His work gives executives immediate and authentic access to new levels of power, influence and freedom within their organizations.

Relationships: To Control or Engage?

Part 7 of a continuing series on CEOing

As soon as you begin to think about having any kind of relationships in your life, you will be faced with the choice to control or engage others. This is true for your friends, family and of course, your employees.

Controlling things is a natural human tendency to keep things predictable. No one likes surprises, especially on the job, and so some owners, entrepreneurs and managers can be pretty insistent on having it done “their way” or, well, you know, something about the highway. The thought here, I suppose, is to frighten people into performance. Yet according to The Gallup Organization, a research firm that has tracked good and bad engagement practices for the past decade, these kinds of ego driven approaches have resulted in 74% of our managers being disengaged: not growing themselves, their people or their company.

Now I have nothing against firing people for non-performance. But as leaders our charge is to grow and engage people, and so far there has been precious little in the management conversation about how to actually do it. So let’s take a closer look at what it takes to engage people and let’s begin with a basic definition of what it means to be engaged.

Engage – v 1. to employ or hire

Well that’s not very engaging! It says people are engaged if they are simply employed or hired. Is there a more empowering definition of engagement? Yes, there is. Here’s our definition of engaged after asking over 3000 people what it meant to them to be engaged. See if you can relate to what they told us.

To be engaged is to feel…

• Part of something meaningful
• Challenged with respect
• Appreciated for my contribution
• Responsible for the outcome

The key to being engaged is how we feel about what we are doing. Given what we learned in the BEAR Model, (Beliefs > Emotions > Actions > Results) we know that how we feel depends upon what we believe. So what does the average employee believe about the workplace, exactly?

The work force currently believes: (Source: Dilbert Comic Strip)

• Bosses are idiots
• Employees are helpless and hopeless

Now these beliefs are not universally true, of course, but not being true has nothing to do with whether it’s believed or not or that it won’t affect performance. As leaders, knowing exactly how to uncover and then shift limiting beliefs into empowering ones is critical to begin the journey to a fully engaged workforce. Stay tuned as we explore how to uncover what’s really driving your people and your clients.

Next month: Creating a Game worth Playing.
Copyright 2009 Thomas A. Voccola All rights reserved

Background:
Entrepreneur, speaker, author and CEO Guide, Tom Voccola is the CEO of CEO2, a Chief Executive Consulting Firm specializing in the rapid transformation of corporate and organizational cultures. Tom is the co-founder and past Chairman of the Los Angeles area CEO Round Table for the American Electronics Association, and the author of The Accidental CEO – A Leader’s Journey from Ego to Purpose. His life’s work is to inspire a new generation of leaders who transcend ego and its fear based agenda. His work gives executives immediate and authentic access to new levels of power, influence and freedom within their organizations.