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3 surprising tips on how to create more engaged & happy teams

Engaged and happy teams at work… how do you do it?

Until recently, I avoided pretty much any and every article attempting to address this question. Because I strongly believe happiness cannot – and should not – be a goal in and of itself. On top of that, I am convinced that merely having a bunch of happy employees walking down the hallways of your offices doesn’t necessarily equate having a successful company.

Then, just the other day, I saw an interview with Dan Buettner, the National Geographic Fellow. This successful explorer, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author travelled the world and discovered the 5 places on earth – dubbed Blue Zones – where people live the longest, healthiest lives, managing a vital lifestyle until well into their 80s, 90s or even 100s! And since health, vitality and happiness go hand in hand, Dan’s discovery of Blue Zones equally led him to learn a fascinating thing or two about happiness… to say the least!

That is why this interview with Dan Buettner triggered me to write this blog: because I found his analysis of happiness surprisingly refreshing.

But before I share with you his most valuable insights and tips, and translate them into work floor vocabulary for you, let me start off by asking you a question:

Your goal (surely enough!) is to lead a genuinely happy life. Below, there are 3 descriptions of life styles you could possibly lead. If you were to pick the one that would most accurately reflect a genuinely happy life for you, which one would you go for?

You choose to lead a life completely in line with your personal mission, a life that leaves you feeling satisfied. Your job truly reflects your personal values. You are happy, but don’t necessarily make loads of money.
You choose a job that requires you to work very hard and do your utmost, day after day. You make money accordingly (that is to say: an awful lot!) and the likelihood that you retire with a huge sum in your bank account is very high.
You choose to lead a life marked by fun and joyous times, in which personal contact plays an important role and you spend on average 6 to 7 hours a day with friends and family. In short, in principle not a day goes by without having enjoyed many intense moments of pleasure.

– If you choose option 1, Dan advises you to live in Denmark.
– If you choose option 2, then you are better off moving to Singapore.
– If you choose option 3, Costa Rica is your place to be.

The fact that these 3 different scenarios can make different people happy, goes to show that happiness is not a concept easily or simply defined: not everyone defines happiness in the same terms and, as such, happiness comes in many shapes and forms!

For starters, 50% of happiness comes down to genetics, according to Dan. Every one of us is hormonally endowed with a certain capacity for happiness: on a scale of 1 to 10, people with more “happiness genes” will give themselves a 9 out of 10 if they are experiencing an utmost happy day, while people with less “happiness genes” will only give themselves a 6 out of 10 when they are experiencing their utmost happy day.

This genetically determined range of happiness is more or less fixed, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are still left with another 50% which we can have an impact on with a view to maximise it! And when it comes to that remaining 50%, Dan draws a comparison between happiness and a cake recipe, for which you need several ingredients.

From the results of Dan’s research, I extracted those 3 ingredients that to me seemed most important and relevant, especially in a professional business context: PLEASURE, PURPOSE and PRIDE!

PLEASURE stands for your everyday positive emotions and experiences
PURPOSE stands for your passion, your drive and your sense of meaning and connection
PRIDE stands for your sense of satisfaction in the major areas of your life.

These are 3 ingredients which you can influence and play with. And doing so will allow you to maximise your chances of successfully translating the secret of the “Blue Zones” into a happier and more engaged workforce!

Let me tell you how…

1. Create a pleasant working environment

Dan says that “your environment, where you live or how you shape your surroundings, is the biggest, most important, and most impactful thing you can do to favour your own happiness”. His research has shown that people who live surrounded by nature, nearby water or in the mountains, tend to be a whole lot happier in life.

And since any average employee easily spends 8, 9 or even 10 hours a day at work, the least we can do is apply those findings to our working environments! Because there too functioning in a pleasant environment is crucial: an environment that lets the sunshine in, one that energises you, with inspiring quotes and pictures on the walls, decorated with a little bit of in-house nature, in a building constructed with natural and sustainable materials, … these details might seem trivial at first, but they make a world of difference when it comes to the happiness levels of your employees!

2. Work on a positive corporate culture

People who feel connected with the values and mission of the organisation they work for are not only happier, but also far more engaged.

That is why it is so tremendously important to recruit your people in function of those values and mission: an alignment here is priceless!

And once that initial condition of having your values aligned is fulfilled, it is obviously just as important to imprint that PURPOSE that Dan refers to – that sense of meaning that is so vital to happiness – into the DNA of your people. Because the more people experience that feeling of completing meaningful tasks and positively contributing to the success of your organisation, the stronger they will feel connected and the happier they will be. Company values and messages merely decorating the walls of your headquarters without finding their way into the hearts of your employees are a complete waste of time, energy and resources.

Find out how to successfully imprint the values and mission of your organisation into the DNA of your people here.

3. Invest in social connection

According to Dan, people who get to regularly experience face-to-face contact are by far happier than people who spend their days staring at computer screens. In Costa Rica (1 of the “Blue Zones”), for example, buildings and cities are constructed and planned in such a way as to stimulate and increase face-to-face contact between people… and with success, one would have to conclude!

So, when it comes to company life, rely on social recognition to help people feel truly connected with each other, and create a positive and appreciative environment that facilitates this sense of connection! That way, you will automatically stimulate face-to-face contact between people and develop a working environment with positive people, who love each other, who believe in each other and who want the very best for each other. In short, a working environment in which friendships can flourish!

Because nothing is more horrible than having to spend your days working in a toxic environment, in which jealousy and harassment prosper. And that kind of environment doesn’t only make people unhappy! In the long term, it most definitely makes them fall ill too…

So now that you know the most important ingredients and know how to translate them successfully into a happier and more engaged workforce, you have no more excuse not to boost your company’s happiness levels! Create an environment in which people feel emotionally supported and safe, and are eager to come to work – day, after day, after day. In short: create your own Blue Zone!

With a lot of PLEASURE, PURPOSE and PRIDE, we will be happy to help you on your way…

Genuinely happy people do not just sit around being content. They make things happen. – Dan Buettner

Nathalie Arteel
Leading Angel Arteel Group
Author of the book “Dare live life”

More about Dan Buettner and his books.
Do the True Happiness Test and find out how happy you really are.

How to create a culture that performs

I recently came across the results of the 2017 study on organizational culture by Gartner. They researched how best to create a company culture that performs and drives ongoing business performance. It was an interesting read and I’d like to share the highlights with you.

Gartner found that only 31% of HR leaders agree their organizations have the necessary culture to drive future business performance. Despite the fact that 80% of organizations currently actively manage culture.

Three key gaps around company culture

Their analysis revealed companies face three issues when trying to get employees to demonstrate the needed culture.

Knowledge gap: employees lack awareness of the culture the organization needs (69% of organizations)
Mind-set gap: employees do not believe in the culture the organization needs or don’t believe culture matters (87% of organizations)
Behaviour gap: employees do not engage in behaviours related to the culture the organization needs (90% of organizations)

They also found that closing one gap does not close all three. Only improving all three simultaneously had impact. Which is logical because you want employees to know it, believe it and do it!

Three common challenges

Gartner found the combination of knowledge, mind-set and behaviour to be powerful. Organizations with alignment between these factors achieve higher performance against revenue goals and hiring/retention targets, increased employee performance, and more positive public reputations.

A further analysis revealed three common challenges, each of which affects knowledge, mind-set, and behaviour:

Few organizations really understand their culture.
Leaders aren’t driving the culture.
Employees can’t operationalize the culture.

To understand culture, use an employee-led diagnosis

Typically companies do a periodic – often yearly or once every two years – survey on culture satisfaction and HR or business leader interpretation. But this approach falls short due to a too narrow focus on satisfaction, outdated information and easily misinterpreted data.

To address these limitations, the best organizations are shifting to employee-led culture diagnosis by monitoring how employees experience the culture and involving employees directly in interpreting culture input.

One organization shared that they moved from measuring culture once a year to asking employees daily culture questions as they logged into their workstations. The results are available to managers in real time as long as four people on their teams participate on a given day. Leaders then have the autonomy to decide how they will use the daily feedback, but based on Gartner’s research, they will now consider empowering employees to be the ones who take action.

Make leaders drive culture by role modeling

The research identified three key elements of effective leader role modeling:

1. Say: what leaders communicate about culture (1% impact)
2. Behave: how leaders personally demonstrate the culture (5% impact)
3. Operate: how leaders manage business operations (e.g., budgets, processes, policies) in line with the culture (18% impact)

The addition of the “operate” element, which goes beyond simply focusing on what leaders say and do, reveals why so few organizations see desired results from their investments in leader role modeling.

78% of organizations rely on leader role modeling as a key component of their culture strategies

Equip employees to apply culture in their day-to-day work

Finally, organizations must help employees operationalize the culture day to day. We know organizations invest in a high volume and variety of culture communication, but that investment has failed to remove two employee-cited barriers to living the culture day to day:

Translation barrier: employees struggle to translate the culture into the specific context of their day-to-day role.
Tensions barrier: employees frequently encounter cultural tensions they don’t know how to address.

Unsurprisingly, the number of employees who struggle with each of these barriers increases significantly as you move deeper into lower levels of organizations. If communication efforts haven’t addressed these challenges, what will?

The best organizations remove the translation barrier by moving ownership of context-specific
translation to employees themselves. An ideal way to accomplish this is to use a peer recognition system that empowers all employees to share examples of how to live the values and show appreciation for doing so.

Removing the tensions barrier does not necessarily mean removing tensions but rather ensuring employees are equipped to manage tensions they encounter in their work. Organizations can ensure employees are equipped to do so by providing training. This way you can help employees deal with a typical tension like for instance between quality and speed of work.

Do you want more tips on how to make your culture transformation succeed? Then be sure to read Culture transformation: 11 Lessons learned from 11 top consultancies.

Koen Schreurs
Helping HR & Management to boost company culture & engagement

The one secret most bosses never tell

We find a job. We work hard. We receive a promotion. But despite our career, there is one truth almost all leaders keep quiet about. They find it too awkward to talk about. Even when it shouldn’t matter, most leaders never address the subject. They think they’ll lose face.

What is this best kept secret?

It’s this: we first became manager because we were getting results, not because we were deemed good at leading others. We have technical knowledge and know how to go about getting the work done. But we never experienced or learned what it means to lead, inspire or motivate others.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of!

It happens to the best. Take David Novak for instance. He’s the former CEO of Yum Brands. Yum Brands is a fast food company that employs around 90000 employees in 135 countries. David is a humble man who never saw himself as a leader. And he’s not an exception, since 87% of managers wish they had received more training when they first took on the role. For more insights on the modern management deficit, please read Good Manager, Bad Manager.

It’s not new either

It was already put forward by Dr. Laurence Peter in his 1969 book The Peter Principle.

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

Even if Peter meant the book to be a satire, it was recently proved to be accurate. Early 2018, three professors from MIT and Yale wrote the paper Promotions and the Peter Principle. If companies only tried to promote the best potential managers, they should put less emphasis on current performance.

Dr. Benson – one of the authors – was surprised. “I expected that the best salespeople would become merely-good managers. After all, some skills translate to management and others don’t,” he said. “To see that the best salespeople were becoming the worst sales managers was surprising.”

Is it even a problem?

Actually, I don’t think so. Granted, many managers are promoted out of their comfort zone or even competency at that moment. But with help, most people can become good leaders. I firmly believe leaders are bred, not born. And David Novak apparently believes this as well. After all, he switched careers and founded oGoLead to build better leaders. Be sure to check out his views on the power of recognition as well. It’s a good read.

What can we do?

Assuming the Peter Principle is a reality in at least some cases, those bad managers do have a very negative impact on business. Because bad leaders tend to inflict talent casualties. So what can we do about it?

1. Being a top performer needs to carry more prestige.
Managers get more attention from the top team, enjoy greater prestige and have more opportunities for personal growth or career advancement. One way of addressing this is the double or parallel career path where technical and management ladders are treated more equally.

2. Decouple promotions to management from current performance.
Evaluate potential managers on leadership skills. Look at soft skills. Allow people to take on temporary leadership roles, e.g. in a project context. This will help you understand their capabilities. And it also allows the employees themselves time to discover if a new role is right for them.

3. If you’re newly promoted yourself, get humble fast.
Realize yourself the skill set that got you promoted may not be the one you need to excel as a leader. See yourself becoming a great leader as a journey. If it isn’t offered to you, find a start-to-lead training program that helps you inspire, coach and motivate people. Perhaps a good start would be to take the time to talk to each new team member. be sure to ask questions such as “How can I best help you to excel?” and “How can I best show my appreciation for the good work you do?”.

Koen Schreurs

Helping HR & Management to boost company culture & engagement

The best way to create a culture of feedback

Feedback is important. Feedback is lacking. We need more feedback. That’s a reasoning you often hear. And what do we do then? Since feedback is a skill, we obviously set up a training. That’s logical, after all. Isn’t it?

But I know many cases where this approach didn’t work. They did not end up as a feedback-rich organisation. These training programs often do not deliver on their promise!

Reasons why feedback training fails

Feedback trainings highlight the importance and focus on the techniques on how best to deliver feedback. They explain why I-messages are better than You-messages. They instruct how to use tools like Situation-Behaviour-Feeling-Impact. They use roleplays and group discussions. They give tips to overcome barriers and develop habits. But still, they fail to create a culture of feedback.

In practice, there are three main reasons why managers don’t give feedback.
1. Managers find it just “easier not to react” (sic)
2. Managers assume the probability of behaviour change to be low
3. Managers prefer to avoid the tension it injects into the relationship

These reasons look at feedback from the angle of the interpersonal relationship with others. But also the operational context plays a role. Does the organizational or team culture stimulate giving feedback? Do influencers and other leaders practice it?

Even when given, (negative) feedback hardly works

Some people argue negative feedback has either no or a negative effect. In an interview, Charles Jacobs, puts it like this: “Negative feedback from a manager conflicts with our self-image, and so our minds reduce the dissonance in the easiest way possible, such as ignoring, discounting, or rationalizing away the feedback.”

A recent study at Harvard Business School found that negative feedback rarely leads to improvement because people tend to ‘shop for confirmation’: people who received criticism from peers looked for new relationships. Even though the negative feedback is supposed to help, it’s perceived as a threat. Shopping for confirmation is grounded in the idea that a positive view of one’s self requires social connections that help us sustain that view. If we don’t have them, we’ll look for them.

So, give up on feedback?

No. That’s not the best strategy. We expect employees to grow and improve. And feedback is necessary to do so. But at the same time, employees need to feel valued. They need appreciation for the value they bring to the organisation. So how can we create a culture of feedback?

No, start slow and by yourself

As leaders, what can we do to create a culture of feedback? We should start ourselves and start small.

1. Connect and create trust
Make sure you get to know your team members. Focus on the other for the other’s sake, not just as a means to one’s own ends. It’s not about your benefit of trying to be trusted. Show authentic interest and consider gained connection and trust as welcome outcomes of a more primary focus on the other.
At work, we often feel we should focus on task completion. But intentionally building social ties at work is important. A Google study found that managers who “express interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being” outperform others.

2. Make people feel valuable
Give positive feedback. Praise achievement. And praise effort when it leads to the goal of learning and improving. The power of positive feedback and recognition is clear. If you make people feel appreciated, supported to learn and safe to express themselves, your business will thrive.

3. Use feedforward instead of feedback
Feedback is often unsolicited and focused on the past. Marshall Goldsmith’s feedforward is the opposite. It is all about suggestions for the future. If you want to know more about it, watch the video below.

What do you do about feedback? What worked well in your company? Ever tried feedforward?

Koen Schreurs
Helping HR & Management to boost company culture & engagement

Five management tips from Circus Barones

How does a circus succeed in being successful today? The challenges for most circus companies to remain financially profitable are greater than ever before.

But not only do they have to survive financially, they also face important HR challenges.
How does such a circus attract new talent without an attractive salary package and with typical working hours well beyond a 9 to 5? And what if people get sick?
How can they survive at all in a world where children quickly find everything ‘boring’ and prefer to spend time on their PlayStation? And how do they deal with people who consider circus people as being ‘strange’ with different standards and habits than those in the normal world?

This and many other thoughts went through my mind when I attended a Circus Barones show with my family last week.
Contrary to expectations, the performance was almost sold out and I never got bored for two hours. What’s more, I was so impressed by the whole thing that the next day I went back to ask for an interview with circus director Richard Barones about his ‘secret’.

I would like to share with you the five aspects that make Circus Barones the most successful circus in Flanders and how the circus world can be a source of inspiration for our personal and professional lives.

1. A circus artist does not choose a job but a way of life

Richard comes from an Austrian family that has continued the circus tradition for 180 years. In 2002 he bought a small, old circus and started his own business. Today he works with his wife, three sons and a team of twenty permanent employees. Circus Barones has grown into a successful SME and yearly gives 220 performances in Belgium or the Netherlands.
“I am a life artist”, says Richard, “the people here don’t have a job but a life mission. You don’t work in a circus for the money, you work there because you feel connected to the mission and vision. You do it because you have a dream…”.

“Therefore, every time we recruit someone new, we will check to what extent that person chooses our mission and to what extent we can help realise this artist’s dream. Only then do we see how that person and his or her ‘act’ can add value to the circus.”

To what extent do you test during an interview how connected the candidate feels with your mission? And do you test whether you can help your employee’s dream come true?

2. Jobautonomy and trust are the basis of success

“I believe that you should give every artist the freedom to do his or her own job,” says Richard. “You can’t force artists, but you have to give them the opportunity to develop themselves further within a certain framework. If not, you undermine their creativity and passion.”

“Trust is also very important in our world. Not only giving confidence in the way the job is done, but it is also important to stimulate the trust between the employees themselves. People must be able to trust each other blindly when they bring an act together. They must therefore also be able to operate perfectly as a team.”

No greater contrast than between a company and a circus, you would say, but no: in the combination of individuality and group spirit, freedom and self-discipline that is inherent to the life of a circus artist, you undoubtedly recognise a dynamic that is inspiring for us all, both in our professional and personal relationships.

To what extent do you give trust and job control to your employees?

3. We are one big family

“Because we travel 365 days a year with a caravan of fifty vehicles, it is important that people really feel connected to each other. They have to fit within the group. After all, people live together day and night, so they have to get along well. What’s more, they have to support and encourage each other.”

“What matters is that you learn to live and work together. And that is a learning process that takes time and patience. In a circus you have extremely diverse and very free-spirited figures, who have to live together. They succeed by respecting each other’s freedom very informally, and by listening to each other.”

“We always look at the attitude and values of someone in the recruitment process. Self-reliance, teamwork, mental resilience, discipline and generosity are important values for us. Diplomas are only secondary.”

Do you dare to say that you have a strong team where people really feel connected with each other and stand up for each other?

4. Applause

“The most important reason why our artists go the extra mile every day is undoubtedly because of the applause they get from the audience every day.
If that were not the case, if the public were to boo them if an act wouldn’t succeed immediately, our employees would mentally break down.”

“The fact that the audience encourages them when an act doesn’t immediately succeed and the fact that sometimes three times in a row they applaud one performance, makes that the artists continue to give the best of themselves, time after time. Even when things sometimes go a bit more difficult.”

How much applause do you give to your employees? And to what extent do you express your confidence in your employees and encourage them if they fail the first time?

5. The show must go on

“Whatever happens, we cannot let the public wait. The show must go on.
We have to be able to count on each other. Generosity is therefore very important to us. This means giving the best of yourself at as many moments as possible. When we find people don’t share this mindset and the team fit isn’t as it should, the person is replaced.”

“And everyone knows that he or she is replaceable, even I myself”, says the director.
“How can we continuously reinvent ourselves so that we keep captivating the audience every year? How can we add extra value compared to last year? This mindset comes natural to everyone, because an artist must continue to grow by continuing to invest in himself in the first place. It is his or her own responsibility to continue to have job security next year.”

“And as a family we invest in the human side of the business by showing that our people are important. By regularly encouraging them, by expressing our faith in them, by appreciating them but also by being there for them when they have a difficult day”.

To what extent are your employees motivated to always give the best of themselves and to keep reinventing themselves?

Conclusion

Participating in a circus means going back to basics. It means living and working in a demanding and honest way, with dedication and unconditional commitment, with courage and daring. It means being given the space to develop yourself personally so that you can continue to grow.
It means learning to combine great freedom with strong self-discipline and concentration. It means being generous and taking your responsibility, it means learning to be self-reliant. It means daring to be yourself, expressing your personal style, and seamlessly integrating it into the whole.
Circuses can teach us something about mobilizing strong employee engagement, installing effective teamwork and building a ‘learning organization’.
In a circus you can’t hide and you learn what it means to be vulnerable and to be yourself.

Shouldn’t we all have to go back to basics with our HR policy?

I would like to thank Richard Barones and his team for inspiring me and my family.
It is so beautiful to see such passionate people who give the best of themselves every day, train hard and go for ‘excellence’ in everything they do.
It is also interesting to see how appreciation and encouragement play a crucial role in this so that they can always give ‘the best show of their life’.

I would like to encourage all readers to share this blog so that this circus and its artists get even more visibility.

Nathalie Arteel
Recognition expert – Entrepreneur

Author: admin