Employee Engagement

Embracing Integrated Solutions for Effective Leadership

Conflict resolution within teams is a continuous occurrence. Yet, a compelling narrative in William Ury’s book, “Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict,” shifts our perspective toward a new approach to finding solutions.

A Librarian’s Lesson in Conflict Resolution

In a passage from William Ury’s book, a story unfolds about two students in a library opening and shutting a window. The two students found themselves in a heated conflict over their opposing needs for the window. The librarian in the room notices the two students arguing over this window. She decides to intervene to help resolve the conflict. She starts by asking one of the students why they kept opening the window. The librarian learns that this student wanted some fresh air in the library to help them study. She then turns to the other student who kept closing the window to ask why they wanted it closed. This student explains that the breeze from the open window was blowing their papers around making it hard for them to study. The librarian thinks for a moment and then decides to close the window. She walks to a different room and opens a window in that room. She explains that now the fresh air will come through the library but the draft from the window will no longer disturb the other student’s papers, ultimately this settles the conflict and everyone wins.

Compromise vs. Integrated Solutions

The author, William Ury goes on to explain that we often think that “compromise” is the solution to our conflicts, however, he explains that compromise comes from each party sacrificing something. A compromise in our story might look like keeping the window half open and half closed. Ultimately while this is a solution, it ensures that neither party is completely satisfied. William Ury suggests that there is a way for both parties to win and no one to lose. He uses the term “integrated solutions”.

Integrated Solutions

Integrated solutions refer to approaches in conflict resolution or problem-solving where the needs and interests of all parties are fully met without requiring compromise. Instead of each side giving something up, an integrated solution finds a way to satisfy everyone’s underlying needs, often through creative and innovative thinking. This approach encourages looking beyond the immediate conflict to understand the deeper concerns of each party, leading to outcomes where everyone feels they have won.

Why Use Integrated Solutions for Conflict Resolution and Problem-Solving

Using integrated solutions in conflict resolution and problem-solving is advantageous because it fosters a collaborative environment, encourages innovative thinking, and leads to sustainable and mutually beneficial outcomes. By focusing on the underlying needs and interests of all parties, integrated solutions avoid the drawbacks of compromise, where each side might have to give something up, potentially leading to dissatisfaction. Instead, this approach seeks to understand and address the root causes of conflicts, ensuring that solutions are comprehensive, inclusive, and supportive of stronger relationships and better problem-solving in the future.

Steps for Finding an Integrated Solution:

Empathetic Inquiry: Active listening to understand the needs of all parties involved with empathy.
Core Needs Assessment: Identifying fundamental needs beyond the initial stances. Dig a little deeper to understand the core of the conflict.
Innovative Brainstorming: Valuing creative solutions over compromises. When everyone wins, everyone is happy.
Synergistic Approaches: Finding solutions that simultaneously address multiple needs. Brainstorm possible solutions for each party and find where they overlap.

Post-Implementation Considerations:

Monitor and Evaluate: Assessing the solution’s effectiveness and its fit for the intended needs. If the solution isn’t working, try another solution.
Communicate Openly: Maintaining transparency and inviting feedback throughout the process. You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken.
Iterative Improvement: Making adjustments based on feedback and changing needs. Consider how this feedback can improve your understanding of the conflict or problem at hand.

Enhancing Team Involvement:

Consider getting your team involved in the brainstorming portion of the steps. This is a great way to improve your employee engagement. It helps by:

Encouraging Active Participation: Making team members feel valued.
Diversifying Perspectives: Enriching the solution pool with varied viewpoints.
Fostering Ownership: Increasing individual commitment to solutions.
Building Skills: Developing problem-solving and negotiation skills.
Promoting Innovation: Stimulating out-of-the-box thinking.

This approach leverages collective intelligence and cultivates a culture of collaboration and creativity, preparing teams to tackle future challenges with greater adeptness.

Give it a try with your team and let us know your feedback!

Highlight the value of the work and the person doing it

two women sitting at a desk in a corporate setting

Original Article by Gallup

Design a system to track and highlight every team member’s personal bests. Don’t just track individual performance, discuss and celebrate personal bests regularly.

The most powerful recognition highlights the value of the work AND the person doing it.

What To Do

Design a system to track and highlight every team member’s personal bests. Don’t just track individual performance, discuss and celebrate personal bests regularly.

This type of recognition ensures that you acknowledge people’s best efforts and motivates people to do more.

Why This Is Important

Individuals who receive recognition and praise for doing good work are more productive, engaged and more likely to stay with their organization. Customers give these employees higher loyalty and satisfaction scores.

The most meaningful recognition highlights the value of the work and the person doing it.

Meaningful recognition – praise that highlights the value of the work and the person doing it – is rare. One in three workers strongly agree that their manager knows what they do best.

Talk to team members about the unique value they bring to the team and organization

Several coworkers sitting around a meeting table

Original Article by Gallup

Make it a goal over the next 30 days to uncover one strength for each of your team members and use it in a conversation with that person.

Employees are often unaware of their talents and strengths and unsure about how to take advantage of them. One of the most important things managers can do for their employees is to help them name, claim and aim what they do best.

What To Do

Make it a goal over the next 30 days to uncover one strength for each of your team members and use it in a conversation with that person.

This is what reinforcing a team member’s strengths might sound like:

“Mark, the explanation and story you told in our meeting yesterday really helped everyone understand what we are trying to do and why it is important. Your ability to understand difficult concepts and explain them to others is beneficial to the team. The way you connect a story to an issue makes everyone in the room smarter.”

Why This Is Important

People operating from their strengths produce significantly more at higher quality, and they build stronger, more engaging relationships with their customers.

Unfortunately, people often take their most powerful talents for granted, and many individuals are not fully aware of them.

The most effective managers help employees appreciate their strengths and understand how their strengths contribute to team and individual success.

How Managers Can Excel By Really Coaching Their Employees

Managers need to have more frequent, ongoing conversations with employees. But too many managers aren’t up to the task.

Gallup’s Pulse Survey

Dear Team UAMS,

At UAMS, employees are essential to our mission of providing excellent patient care, health care education, and research. As part of our Vision 2029, becoming the employer of choice is a key goal for us, and is central to retaining our talented employees and attracting new ones who will continue to sustain our high standards into the future. To achieve this objective, we must listen to all members of Team UAMS to further improve the employee experience.

First, we want to thank all of you who participated in the Employee Engagement Survey last spring. Your participation in the survey was instrumental in helping us understand the areas where we are succeeding and the areas where we need to focus our efforts to create an even better work experience for all members of Team UAMS.

Our Vision 2029 goal is for our engagement score to be in the 46th percentile by 2025. Your continued feedback is essential to achieve this. That is why we are pleased to announce that we will be conducting a Pulse Survey from March 27 through April 10. This pulse survey is specifically intended for teams that scored in the lower quartile of the Employee Engagement Survey from last June. This provides us an opportunity to identify areas for improvement and collaboration with your People and Culture Partner that is needed to reach our goal.

Employees hired prior to December 25, 2022 who work in the targeted teams will receive an email from Gallup with a link to participate. The online survey will be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Your opinions are completely confidential. Gallup will handle all submitted surveys, and Gallup will not disclose to UAMS the identities of any individual respondents.
The survey will ask you a series of questions about your personal experience working at UAMS.
The survey will take about 3-5 minutes to complete.

Team UAMS can be a catalyst for change as we preserve our core values: integrity, respect, diversity and health equity, teamwork, creativity, excellence, and safety. We will update you as we learn more from each other. Thank you in advance for your participation and your commitment to UAMS.

Sincerely,

Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA

UAMS Chancellor

Five Ways to Preserve Company Culture Amid Turnover

Woman in Blue Suit Jacket smiling at coworker

Article by Gallup | Original Source Link

When employees leave a company, many often take valuable attributes like knowledge and experience with them. But departing employees might also walk off with something more intangible: a piece of the company’s established corporate culture.

The latter is a serious problem, because culture is instrumental to an organization’s performance; it either facilitates and supports success or undermines and inhibits it. Together with purpose and brand, culture forms a core component of an organization’s identity. Companies can ill afford to have their vital and carefully created corporate cultures become victims of attrition.

In the U.S. today, there are a number of forces currently affecting culture flight from organizations. The past few years have seen steady, if not overwhelming, improvement in the job market, no matter which metric of employment data tracking you follow. The proverbial “Now Hiring” sign is appearing more frequently, and many workers are finding more opportunities to take their abilities elsewhere.

Additionally, organizations across all industries are prepping for the increasing exodus of retiring baby boomers. They represent a significant portion of the workforce at many organizations, a swath of long-tenured employees whose collective experience and accumulated knowledge are critical to organizational performance.

No matter their reasons for leaving, when experienced employees exit an organization, their departure may shift the company’s culture, even if only subtly. Certainly, human resources functions strive to refill any gaps in knowledge, experience and ability. But accounting for a potential hire’s impact on culture isn’t as easy as reviewing a section of her résumé. And neither is assuming that current employees, many of whom are newer to the company than the people they’re replacing, can step into these vacated roles and seamlessly maintain an organization’s culture.

Replacements are less likely to have an understanding of the cultural nuances within the organization. In turn, there is potential for a company’s culture — and more broadly its very identity — to unintentionally change with an influx of new employees and new leaders. In some cases company leaders may welcome culture change, but in others it creates a risk for losing what makes the organization a unique place to work. Either way, culture shift is yet another fluid and foundational aspect of an organization that should be measured and managed intentionally.

Gallup’s experience has shown five steps leaders should take to intentionally manage culture and minimize the potential risks brought by attrition.

1. Clarify the desired culture. What makes an organization stand out? Does it provide outstanding customer service? Does it offer a unique product or service? A passionate and committed workforce? Employees must clearly understand how their company wishes the marketplace to perceive the organization and how the culture promotes that perception. This starts with a real understanding of the organization’s purpose and how it translates to the brand.

At the most fundamental level, why does the organization exist? How does it want others to know or view it? Clear brand and purpose intentions are critical to creating a culture that aligns with and supports those desires.

2. Understand what shapes behaviors in the current culture. The behavior of employees at work and how they get work done defines a culture. Employees routinely receive communication, feedback, examples and other information that influences their behavior each day. It’s important to align these messages to ensure they support the organization’s desired culture. In some instances performance incentives have a large impact on behavior. In other cases it may be an organization’s mission or values that have a heavy influence on the way in which work gets accomplished. To create and sustain a consistent culture, the organization should understand the key drivers of its own culture.

3. Communicate intentionally about the culture. Once a company has clearly defined the desired culture of the organization and identified the key methods of influencing behavior, it must undertake deliberate activities to promote them. These activities can vary from leadership communication that articulates for employees what makes the organization unique to programs teaching employees how to connect the organization’s values with the work they do each day.

Selection and onboarding programs should be used to identify unique types of people and talents that are able to make their culture and brand come to life. For example, a client Gallup worked with in Australia measured not only the talent of applicants for open jobs, but also examined how those applicants’ personalities aligned with the desired culture of their organization. Subsequently, each hire they made naturally reinforced their culture. Intentional and consistent use of these and other drivers can reinforce the desired culture of the organization. Architects of the organization’s culture should also ensure they are communicating with all employees, but especially with those who may be replacing workers, and that this communication includes messages that clearly align with the desired identity.

4. Monitor the strength of the culture. How would a company know if attrition is weakening its culture? Would executives find out before it was too late? Companies must collect information about the status of their culture throughout the organization; you won’t know if you don’t ask. So, companies must be deliberate and focused when trying to understand from employees and leaders alike any strengths and challenges related to their company’s culture. This measurement should also be specifically tailored to a company’s unique culture, and not a standard measure that could be applied to any organization.

5. Include culture as a key component of transition plans. Coworkers and managers play an important role in establishing workplace culture. As current employees leave, organizations should create intentional plans to not only fill the void in output, but also to ensure the company’s culture is sustained. This may mean promoting a first-time manager to a new role. Or making an effort to make sure the manager not only has the talent to lead and engage her team, but also has the capability to do it in a way that maintains the desired culture of the organization.

In some instances, departing employees may be role models in living out the organization’s values. Think about the person who actively volunteers in the community, or someone who is a public embodiment of some aspect of an organization’s identity. How can companies identify another team member who can continue to promote this aspect of the organization? And what about the exiting employees who may be key representatives of the brand to specific customers or clients? Organizations must identify and connect those customers with other employees who also embody and deliver the brand and experience, so as to keep customers engaged with the organization.

All organizations face risks when employees choose to leave. No matter the external job climate, it’s important for leaders to make intentional efforts to create a culture and organizational identity that is unique and resonates with employees and customers alike. Beyond simply finding workers who fill the knowledge and skill requirements of departing employees, organizations should make an intentional effort to ensure their desired culture and brand are maintained — and potentially strengthened — throughout this transition.

Strengths and Wellbeing: Regaining Balance When Life Changes

Photo of Woman Sitting on Wheelchair While Leaning on Wall

Article by Gallup | Original Source Link

Find out how you can use your strengths, paired with the five elements of wellbeing, to navigate major life transitions.

I’ve noticed a trend. More and more, it seems major change is at the heart of my clients’ current experiences.

Some are facing significant career change. Others are going to college or facing the empty-nest environment after sending children away for the first time. Divorce, death in the family, retirement, you name it. Change is all around us, and in a hyper-connected society, we are constantly reminded of shifts in our foundation.

Most of my clients long for something more solid to cling to as they struggle to find stability through big transitional times. Integrating strengths with concepts from the book Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, by bestselling authors Tom Rath and Jim Harter, Ph.D., seems to help them find balance as they work through the challenges in their life.

The five elements of wellbeing are:

Purpose wellbeing: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
Social wellbeing: having supportive relationships and love in your life
Financial wellbeing: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
Physical wellbeing: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily
Community wellbeing: liking where you live, feeling safe and having pride in your community

Helping clients think through their unique strengths and how they can marry them in new ways within these five elements creates a plan to follow. It provides a clearer target for where to aim their talents rather than simply asking people to improve upon their talents. The result is that they see their strengths through a different lens and feel more in control, and it gives many hope for a brighter future.

Let’s take Mary, for example. Her husband of 35 years passed away suddenly. They had run a business together. As you can imagine, she was not only grieving the loss of her husband but also the loss of her business partner who had some complementary strengths to her own. Mary’s top five are Achiever, Maximizer, Includer, Relator and Belief. Her late husband’s were Strategic, Analytical, Context, Achiever and Belief.

To help Mary through this difficult time, she and I worked together for a year on her wellbeing, putting a plan in place that used strengths as her vehicle for reaching her goals.

Mary’s Wellbeing Strengths Plan

Purpose wellbeing goal: Use my Achiever to set a measurable amount of think time with my daughter (spending time with daughter using Belief strength of family) twice a week who has my husband’s strengths of Strategic and Analytical. Check it off of my things-to-do list.
Social wellbeing goal: Use my Relator to ask one of my established friends to go out to dinner, a movie or a concert at least once on the weekend and use my Includer to invite one new friend to join us once a month.
Financial wellbeing goal: Use my Maximizer and Achiever to set stretch goals but realistic goals for myself financially.
Physical wellbeing goal: Use my Relator to ask my friend Ann to walk with me two mornings a week and grow our relationship at the same time.
Community wellbeing goal: Use my Belief of family and giving back by volunteering my time once a month at our city’s homeless shelter with my son.

With her wellness plan in place, Mary was able to go through a natural grieving process but with a strengths-based focus that allowed her to gain control and have hope. Mary says that the wellbeing structure paired with strengths helped her see past her short- term hurdles, which was very difficult, and start to make plans for a more balanced, positive future life.

Mary’s Successes

Each monthly coaching session brought a more confident Mary, engaged in her life and full of hope. Here are just a few of her accomplishments:

Mary spent time working in her business with her daughter who had the same two complementary strengths of Strategic and Analytical as Mary’s late husband. This partnership kept the financial side of the business going smoothly.
She redefined herself socially as a single person. Her goal of including one new friend to join established friends once during the month using her Relator and Includer helped her establish six new deeper relationships with other widowed women whom she had met through a grief support group at a local church.
Mary set challenging yet realistic goals for her personal financial situation using her Maximizer and Achiever. She was able to save enough money to take her three children and four grandchildren on a vacation to Disney World for four days and stay at a nice condominium near the Disney property.
She walked with her good friend Ann faithfully two mornings a week, even if it was pouring rain outside. She described it as her morning therapy and lost 22 pounds!
She discovered a love of spending time with her son volunteering at a homeless shelter. When she was with others who had more sorrow than she did, she made it her mission to put on a smile and make each person’s day as she served them a meal. Giving back to the community together brought her and her son closer in their common belief system and roles as mother and son.

As a strengths coach, is it my job to be insatiably curious about what is right with people. Adding elements of wellbeing helps me focus my curiosity and helps my clients define a solid strategy for navigating change.

Employee Recognition: Low Cost, High Impact

Article by Gallup | Original Source Link

Recognizing good work is a powerful, cost-effective method of improving organizational performance — yet it is underused.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Top performers need to know their efforts are recognized and valued
Employee recognition isn’t one-size-fits-all
Money isn’t the only, or even the top, form of recognition

In today’s war for talent, organizations and leaders are looking for strategies to attract and retain their top performers while increasing organic growth and employee productivity. From offering new perks to designing flexible workplaces, company efforts to optimize the workplace are as strong as ever.

But in their search for new ideas and approaches, organizations could be overlooking one of the most easily executed strategies: employee recognition.

According to Gallup’s analysis, only one in three workers in the U.S. strongly agree that they received recognition or praise for doing good work in the past seven days. At any given company, it’s not uncommon for employees to feel that their best efforts are routinely ignored. Further, employees who do not feel adequately recognized are twice as likely to say they’ll quit in the next year.

This element of engagement and performance might be one of the greatest missed opportunities for leaders and managers.

Workplace recognition motivates, provides a sense of accomplishment and makes employees feel valued for their work. Recognition not only boosts individual employee engagement, but it also has been found to increase productivity and loyalty to the company, leading to higher retention.

Beyond communicating appreciation and providing motivation to the recognized employee, the act of recognition also sends messages to other employees about what success looks like. In this way, recognition is both a tool for personal reward and an opportunity to reinforce the desired culture of the organization to other employees.

Acknowledging the Individual

Gallup’s data reveal that the most effective recognition is honest, authentic and individualized to how each employee wants to be recognized. Acknowledging employees’ best work can be a low-cost endeavor — it can be as small as a personal note or a thank-you card. But the key is to know what makes it meaningful and memorable for the employee, and who is doing the recognizing.

In a recent Gallup workplace survey, employees were asked to recall who gave them their most meaningful and memorable recognition. The data revealed the most memorable recognition comes most often from an employee’s manager (28%), followed by a high-level leader or CEO (24%), the manager’s manager (12%), a customer (10%) and peers (9%). Worth mentioning, 17% cited “other” as the source of their most memorable recognition.

What’s most surprising about these findings? Nearly one-quarter said the most memorable recognition comes from a high-level leader or CEO. Employees will remember personal feedback from the CEO — even a small amount of time a high-ranking leader takes to show appreciation can yield a positive impression on an employee. In fact, acknowledgment from a CEO could become a career highlight.

When asked what types of recognition were the most memorable, respondents emphasized six methods in particular — and money isn’t the only (or the top) form of recognition:

public recognition or acknowledgment via an award, certificate or commendation
private recognition from a boss, peer or customer
receiving or obtaining a high level of achievement through evaluations or reviews
promotion or increase in scope of work or responsibility to show trust
monetary award such as a trip, prize or pay increase
personal satisfaction or pride in work

Recognition From All Sides

The best managers promote a recognition-rich environment, with praise coming from every direction and everyone aware of how others like to receive appreciation. This type of employee feedback should be frequent — Gallup recommends every seven days — and timely to ensure that the employee knows the significance of the recent achievement and to reinforce company values.

The criteria for recognition should align with the purpose, brand and culture of the company and should reflect its aspirational identity to inspire others. Rewarding employees who are not top performers could adversely affect high performers’ motivation. As such, companies need to state specific standards for awards to avoid any backlash.

Great managers know that they can never give too much recognition as long as it’s honest and deserved. Acknowledging an employee’s best work goes a long way toward making him or her feel valued and can lead to other desirable workplace outcomes.