It indicates that stress is more about how you feel or think about things and only loosely connected to what’s actually happening. In other words, life is not stressful; it’s what we believe about life that is stressful.
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If you are in your 20s, you are hoping the answer to this question is a big, barefooted “Yes!” If you’re in your 50s, this is a goal you have secretly cherished while professing the opposite to your employees and kids. If you are in your 30s or 40s, you think this is just the propaganda of the lazy trying to weasel their way into a shorter work week; and if you’re 60 or above, you think this question is the beginning of the end of the world. But if it’s true – if embracing the Gen Y work ethic could actually have us working less while achieving more – we could crown Gen Y as the real “greatest generation,” leaving a lot of World War II survivors and baby boomer historians and journalists with disturbed looks on their faces.
Let’s be honest: Baby boomers have worked fewer hours, and in cushier conditions, than their parents did. They are much more educated than their parents, lived at home longer, got married later and wanted to automate so they could get better results with less effort. Have they produced fewer results than previous generations? Do we think of them as entitled and lazy?
It’s almost a pattern we can trace through the past century: Each generation expected long hours and hard work to bring prosperity but then saw those expectations disappointed somehow, leading the next generation to reexamine what success looks like. Until the 1920s, most Americans had jobs that required 12-hour workdays. They believed that if they worked hard enough, the value of their companies would rise with the power of their efforts – but in the 1930s the economy crashed. Nowadays, hardworking Gen Xers can be very critical of the Gen Y work ethic, even though Gen Xers themselves were viewed as slackers by baby boomers and faced the economic fallout of the early 2000s. My point is that people of every generation have tried to make things easier, still working pretty hard in their own way while facing the judgment of previous generations; but they haven’t seen long-lasting results. We seem to have a work ethic that is by all accounts noble but fails to sustain success.
How is Gen Y different? They are told they’re too confident in their abilities and think too highly of themselves. But wait a second…these are their bad traits? When did liking yourself and believing you can succeed regardless of circumstances become undesirable attributes? Well, it’s complicated, so stick with me on this. If you force a lot of self-esteem into a 5-year-old, you end up with some unwanted results. For example, a percentage of males who believe “I’m OK no matter what, so there is no need to be successful” don’t exhibit a lot of ambition. (Only about 40 percent of U.S. college freshmen are male – and although pursuing a college education is not an exclusive indicator of ambition, the trend is telling.) A percentage of females will believe “If I’m OK no matter what, then nothing is really ever my fault,” so they don’t have a basic level of personal accountability. (Interestingly, the women of Gen Y are much less likely to apologize than boomer women.)
Sometimes great things come at a cost that at first glance is too high to pay. Could the “I’m OK no matter what” mindset be siphoning some millennials’ potential to achieve? It’s possible that as many as a third of Gen Y may have been sacrificed to produce the most confident, empowered generation of all time. So what makes what’s left of this generation so great? They believe that every problem comes with its own set of solutions; they were taught to partner and collaborate to succeed. They were taught it is, in fact, possible for everyone to win. If you get a group of millennials together to deliberate, they end up with an agreement; if you ask a bunch of boomers to try to work out their problems, they just end up with some very sophisticated blaming techniques. (“I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m just saying that your ideas won’t work under these conditions!”) Just turn on your TV and watch the news; it’s full of gray-haired people in disagreement.
Most people in their 20s don’t need to be as right – or make others as wrong – as previous generations. They are also much less prejudiced and much more tolerant. This means that Gen Y could resolve political and religious differences that have existed for centuries. The collaboration worldwide will likely improve all economies. But it’s the desire to focus on working smart rather than working hard that will change the world forever. Free from the belief that effort and long hours are the foundation of innovation, they are uncovering new technologies to make more time in life for fun and to make their jobs meaningful and enjoyable.
People who don’t like their jobs don’t do a good job. That’s a fact, not a theory. More than any other generation, millennials will quit a job that leaves little time for the things they enjoy. For Gen Y to reach its potential (at work and in the world), they must find engagement in their workplace. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report, 70% of all employees are not engaged at work. Disengaged employees are much less productive, which has led more than a few top business consultants to consider disengagement the biggest issue in corporate America. In short, hard work is not as productive as liking your work, because your commitment and awareness are lower. Working long hours with maximum effort while you are emotionally disengaged also increases your chances of making mistakes, according to Evolve Performance Group, a research firm that has surveyed thousands of employees in 46 countries and 28 languages.
Even more interesting, Harvard Business Review’s Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance outlines some basic keys to engagement as follows: (1) knowing my boss cares about me, (2) seeing a clear path to leadership and (3) knowing how my job helps the company be successful. Frequently cited by millennials, these engagement factors are all about feeling valuable in order to perform better at work – not about performing better so they can feel valued. That’s something to consider. Gallup surveys have shown this for 70 years; but still leaders have touted long hours, hard work and inflexible conditions, until recently, as we see Gen Y CEOs changing the model. What do you think the engagement levels are at Facebook and Google?
When Gen Y comes of age, based on what we have seen so far, they are likely to be the most productive workforce in history. It’s just that they might do it by showing up at 10 a.m., leaving at 5 p.m. (with a long lunch in there somewhere), and working late at night. The future never really looks exactly right to the people from the past. It may be possible that it took this many generations for mankind to figure out that hard work is what you do when you don’t really know how to succeed!
They don’t see a path that leads to better opportunity and pay. Telling someone that hard work and building relationships are key to getting promoted will no longer fly. Not only will this very reluctant dog not hunt; it’s possible that it never really picked up the scent to begin with. This single factor drives your most talented employees away while encouraging tenure among those who are short on talent and long on explanations. Your most talented people have options; they might have headhunters contacting them every week. But the people with no talent and drive — the ones who believe they don’t have a shot at a better life — are in for the long haul and will pledge their undying loyalty!
Solution: These days, employees under 40 years old need to understand exactly what is required to accomplish their goals. That means it’s in writing, it’s very clear, and it adheres to a time line (within a three-year period).
You have a very restrictive cell phone policy. You may have noticed that many young people seem to have their phone in hand. They don’t just have their phone with them; they, in fact, are with their phone. It’s not in their pocket or their purse; it’s part of their person. That’s right — left to our own devices, we literally walk around staring at our devices. If you want to punish a young person, just take his phone away. According to a study conducted by InsightExpress in 18 countries with 1,800 respondents, 75 percent of 18- to 30-year-olds spend as much time socializing online as they do in person. Forty-six percent say they use their phone to text during meals, and 30 percent text every time they go to the bathroom. Furthermore, a random sampling by Wynn Solutions (using 18- to 30-year-olds to ask the questions) showed the InsightExpress figures to be relatively low. Let’s get real: If you ask a person under 40 years old how many times a day he or she checks the phone, the honest answer is “I lose count.” A device you carry everywhere and check first thing in the morning and the last thing at night is an extension of who you are (as disturbingly science-fiction as that sounds).
Solution: So, it’s common sense that heavy phone restrictions could contribute to employee disengagement and job dissatisfaction. It may be important for safety reasons to manage cellphone usage in industrial areas, but if there is no danger of distraction, you can have phone breaks built in to work schedules or experiment with how much work loss vs benefits you receive from having a phone friendly workplace. Many organizations these days have a very hard time retaining top talent when the competition declares “It’s cool to use your phones.”
Your initial training programs lack clarity and engagement. We can learn a lot from an anonymous comment left by a heavily recruited 24-year-old new hire after completing a training program: “It seems like there were some missing parts in the training, which is strange because there were, like, way too many parts. It kind of makes me feel unqualified, but it’s more likely that the training just sucks.” All too often, training programs are poorly constructed and delivered by unskilled presenters.
Solution: New hires from among Gen Y were taught how to take tests rather than how to grasp broad concepts. As a result, they need extremely clear training programs that start with what success actually looks like (not just the steps to get there); they also learn best from short modules that can hold their attention. These young, eager-to-learn employees can quickly become disillusioned if they feel they’ll have to move forward without an ironclad grasp on how to do the job well.
They don’t feel heard by leadership. According to recent research from Gallup, 70 percent of employees polled say they are disengaged. If you can turn the tide here and create engagement with your employees, you increase the likelihood that they’ll stay.
Solution: To achieve this, consider having an outside source conduct surveys within your organization. Employees’ anonymous responses to specific questions will reflect what they think, how connected they feel, and what they believe about your organization and leaders. The results help you understand your own work culture well enough to identify what needs to be fixed. You can then build a plan that addresses your employees’ needs, whether that means designing more effective training, tweaking your social media policies, or improving interactions between workers and managers. As employees see their input transforming your culture, they’ll feel heard, they’ll perform better, and they will likely stay with you longer.
The only thing worse than failing to overcome the competition is realizing you don’t even have the right people to compete. As stated earlier, the best employees will exit and the bad workers will stay. So employee engagement tactics that create retention are foundational to all organizations. Regardless of great technologies like robotics, manufacturing software, and social media, it turns out you still have to have a bunch of people in your building to qualify as an organization. And, though younger workers desperately need their “tech-tools” to take us into the future, you don’t want to get stuck with the ones that don’t grasp how humans are involved IN that future!
I recently spoke at a convention with a really cool hologram technology that had the CEO materializing at multiple locations simultaneously like he was beaming down from the starship Enterprise. One youngish, not-so-bright AV guy commented, “Wow, this meeting does not even need actual people to succeed!” Hmmmmmm.
I had to ask: “So, without people, what would you be beaming onto the holography platform on the stage?”
“Well… that’s a good point, I guess. Maybe just some charts and cool graphics.”
Really? I pressed in. “So how long do you plan to have this job at the hotel?”
“Dude,” he replied, “my boss is like super-smart and took another job that he likes a lot better and now I’m the only person that knows how everything works. I would never leave here now. I can keep this job forever.”
Make sure your good people stay!
Having a culture that includes and supports all people is more than just a moral obligation. It is a critical and commonly overlooked ingredient for success. An alloy is stronger and has more applications than something made of just one material, and research shows the same is true for high-performance teams.
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Someone following someone because he wants to, not because he has to.
Have you ever been so right that no one would talk to you? If you criticize others’ ideas, they will almost never use yours, no matter how good they are.
Everybody knows something you don’t. “I disagree, but I am willing to listen.” Thinking you know everything is proof that you don’t.
You motivate people by listening to them; compassion and attention create dedication. When people feel heard and not judged, they will do more than just the minimum.
A high percentage of employees with difficult behavior may be getting unintentional negative consequences for doing a good job. Don’t reward an effective employee with someone else’s work.
People don’t change that much. Look for the value they have now. Don’t manage for the miracle; just because you found one diamond in the rough does not mean you are a magic manager. Some people just suck!
Look for the naturally recurring patterns that are needed to do the job. Some people are very articulate and experienced and yet have no ability. If they ask you to further explain the question you just asked them in an interview, tell them it’s their interpretation that’s important. You will now find out who they really are.
Top Leadership Keynote – Getting Great Results: Turning Talent Into Performance
Does it take time to build trust? The truth is that you have known people for five years who still don’t trust you, and you’ve known some for five minutes who do. Our research shows that trust is usually created by showing a detectable level of concern. When people truly believe you are concerned for them, they tend to think you possess good judgment. After all, if you care about them, you must know what you are doing.
So what is the fastest and most effective way to show people that you care and you’re competent? Make sure they feel heard, which is more than just listening. I call it listening like a leader.
You are not a leader unless you have followers; a leader without followers is called a failure. Regardless of your skills, if your staff doesn’t feel heard and doesn’t trust you, they will always do the minimum. They will watch the clock and be ready to leave at 4:45 every afternoon. They will do just enough each day to avoid getting fired, and they will hope the idea you came up with without their input fails. That’s right—you can spend your life delegating to people who want your projects to fail. How smart is that?
OK, you have to listen; I am sure you already know that. The issue is, how well do people really listen? Most studies show that 75 percent of the world’s population does not listen well.
Here is an insight that you won’t find in many books, keynote speeches or training programs. As a whole, we don’t listen very well and it’s not our fault! That’s right, I am sure you are used to hearing and reading that all of our communication problems are of our making. However, most experts agree that from birth to 5 years of age, we learn more than we will for the rest of our lives.
Even if you earn 15 doctorate degrees in your lifetime, you still acquired most of your knowledge in early childhood. In those formative years, if a child does not feel heard by the adults in its life, it does not possess good listening skills. The bottom line is that it’s hard to listen when no one ever listened to you.
Listening is not hereditary.
It’s an acquired skill.
Are we going to blame the parents? No! It’s difficult to listen to young children when we are trying to look out for their welfare. When my stepdaughter was five, she asked me if Dracula drives a taxi cab. I said, “Well…, I guess if it’s a night job. Uh, wait a minute! What kind of question is that?”
She also asked me if she could have a tattoo—not a fake, stick-on tattoo from an ice cream parlor vending machine, but a real one. I said, “No because you’re in kindergarten—and I’m taking the TV out of your room just for asking that question.”
People are more likely to follow your example than to follow your advice. We create better listeners by being better listeners.
Unfortunately, we don’t have much evidence of people returning from communication training programs as better listeners. It doesn’t take a lot of research to figure out that poor listeners get very little from seminars on listening.
So we don’t listen and it prevents us from being effective leaders. If we can’t do much to improve our listening skills, we have to focus on what we can do in the condition we are in.
The key, then, is to focus on making sure people feel heard. And the first step requires recognizing and recovering from distractions.
One day, as I listened to an employee talk about his wants and needs, my mind started to wander. There he was, sharing his core issues, and I’m thinking to myself, “Look at the size of this guy’s head!” It was hard to focus. Once I was trying to listen to a prospect on a sales call when I noticed he had red hair, blonde eyebrows, and a black mustache. I remember thinking, “It’s Mr. Potato Face! Something has to be a stick-on; that’s not all him.”
After we recover from our own distractions, we have to deal with the real issues at hand. The first of these issues is what I refer to as “the pitch in your head.” It can be anything from a preconceived idea that a manager has about an employee, to a practiced presentation that you are dying to spew on your unsuspecting sales victims (prospects, I mean).
Sure, you ask a question just as you were taught to do in your sales or management training program—you know, a question like “Based on what criteria are your decisions made?” As they talk and you diligently pretend to listen, the pitch in your head starts to play; and when the prospect says something that strikes a chord in you, triggering how much you know, your pitch finds the pause it was looking for and off you go.
“I know exactly what you are talking about because I have had many people just like you with this exact same situation. As a matter of fact, it was this time last year and they even looked a lot like you.”
You then project your opinion, experience or spiel onto the person as a solution to his or her problem.
Instead of feeling heard, the person feels quickly judged, and communication does not take place. It was dead before the spew was finished.
The problem with this scenario is that you rob people of their uniqueness. When you tell them you know exactly what the problem is, they tend to want to show you how unique they are. You actually create your own resistance and prevent your skills and even your empathy from making their mark.
When people are talking, you are thinking about you or about what you can do to help them help you. It’s a natural thing for us to do, and it forces us to pitch hard and focus on convincing rather than on gaining agreement.
So what do the most effective people do differently?
They make sure the people they are dealing with feel heard and can retain their uniqueness. If you make people feel important, you will be important to them!
But an even bigger realization comes from all of this.
When you focus on how people feel about what they are saying, you increase the level of true concern you have for others. You actually start to become the person you thought you were pretending to be: A true leader!
[social_warfare]
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Do you have the best service, product, or skills in your area, yet for some reason you still are not getting the results you know you deserve? Hey! I thought if you were the best, you were supposed to eventually win. Let’s address the reality of why your products, services, or leadership styles–or those of your competitors–are selected.
Think of the top-selling hamburgers in the world. Are they the best hamburgers? No! So why are they chosen? Because there is more to success than being the best! Is that special sauce really special? No! It’s actually pretty gross! I’m not trying to criticize the fast food industry; it has combined two of the most desired things on the planet: Fast and Food.
The point is, success is more than being really good at what you do, it’s about being consistently chosen to do it. We like fast food because it meets a specific need. Some people under certain circumstances will trade quality for speed and if you can put a little special sauce on it even better.
Here’s an idea I’d like you to consider: There is no such thing as The Best! If the world agreed on what’s best, everybody would choose the best and nothing else would even be considered. Decision-making doesn’t work that way! People don’t necessarily choose what’s best… they choose what they are the most comfortable with whether it’s the best or not.
People will choose what they feel is the best. That’s right, I used the F word: Feel! People will buy into anything that they feel will serve them best. In business, that means people. People don’t buy or rent from companies or hire and promote a discrete skill set. People buy or rent from people and they hire and promote people. So what is it that everybody really wants?
Interviews off the record with top performing, business owners, managers, and sales people show something very different from just best practices.
Best practices tend to focus on the method, the tactics, and the knowledge. I want to make it very clear that we should be as good as we possibly can at what we do and get all the skills training we can get our hands on. It’s just that skill and knowledge are not enough in today’s world. Being sharp and good at what you do is just the price of admission. If someone is going to rent a chocolate fountain and a cement mixer (hopefully not for the same event) they expect you to be knowledgeable and the equipment to work.
The consistently chosen focus on the mindset, the approach, and the agenda we all have in common. Everybody wants the same three things: Love, Money, and Prestige. They want to be cared about, have some security and get credit for their efforts. So you have to ask yourself three questions:
I wish I could tell you that our research of thousands of top performers showed that the most skilled and knowledgeable were consistently the most successful. It did not indicate that at all.
The research showed that people make choices based on what they feel is best for them. It may not be the lowest price, the latest model, or the ideal career; but for some reason, they are sticking with it no matter what!
