The organization’s objective in bringing me in was to broaden and deepen the scope of work that the team performed, so some things needed to change.

And quickly.

Over two 1/2-day sessions (conducted a week apart), we explored different working styles and how we, as humans, often jump to conclusions and embrace our personal assumptions, sometimes without sufficient data. We learned and tested a model that would give the team members language and motivation to share more responsibility, define accountabilities, and become more self-empowered. The team practiced new methods of communicating, coming up with ways to help and support each other, and began to realize that making a choice about changing the conversation can change the outcome of the relationship.

It’s a simple beginning to a new way of being.

Here are three ways that the team members’ choices began to change the relationships across the team. These choices are important for any team and its members:

• Choose what you see. We’re all familiar with Rorschach images, those inkblots that everyone views differently. By choosing what you see, you’re acknowledging that what you see may not be what someone else sees, that their interpretation may be different than yours, yet equally valid. Covey says, “Seek first to understand; then seek to be understood.” By choosing to view a situation from another’s point of view, there just may be an even better outcome all around.
• Choose who shows up. There were moments in the offsite when the conversation took on a negative tone, focusing how other parts of the company were standing in the way of the team meeting its goals. But we all know that there will always be issues or roadblocks. We can show up as a victim or as a creator. By choosing to show up as creator, to declare what you want rather than what you can’t have or do, you put yourself—and the team—in a position to think creatively. The creator standpoint says that you “can do” rather than that you “can’t do.” Your peers, then, can contribute by creating a new way with you.
• Choose to collaborate. When an issue is important to address and the relationship is important to nurture, choose to work together to create a mutually beneficial outcome. Both sides may need to bend a bit to accommodate the other’s needs or wishes. By entering into a conversation space with an intention of good will and collaboration, you and your teammates will move towards building a more solid working relationship.

These choices—and they are choices—are made by each individual and by the group as a whole. And, once made, they have tremendous impact, again, on each individual and on the group as a whole.

What choices do you and your teams make each day?

A webinar that I’m currently taking, The Empowerment Dynamic (or TED), teaches us about shifts in our mindsets when we set our intentions on what we want, on creating something rather than solving a problem or focusing on what we don’t want. When we shift to an intention of creating something we want, we choose – personally choose – an energy and orientation on an outcome of “I Can Do It” rather than “I’m not as fast|able|agile as the gal or guy in front of me.” It may seem small, yet applying this to my running changes everything – my relationship with myself and my running goal, my relationship and conversation with other runners, and my relationship with how I perceive myself. I’m not focused on whether or not I’m the slowest one in the pack; rather my mindset is focused on bringing into being a newly created identity and outcome – I am a runner.

I experienced a breakthrough at our last clinic: I noticed that after the first two cycles of ”run three, walk two”, that I was not as tired or out of breath as I was the week before. Keeping with my slow and deliberate pace, I psyched myself to keep going to the next tree, then to the next crosswalk, and on and on. I wasn’t gasping for breath and my body wasn’t screaming to stop. The pace that I had developed for myself was serving me well.  I was doing it!

My new practice of running and the new habits I’m forming in the process have moved me beyond where I was a month ago. These are clearly baby steps that I’m taking (I’m not signing up for a marathon anytime too soon!) and I am setting my intention on an outcome – to finish the 5K race. My mindset is focused on what I want rather than what I don’t want. This is a subtle and powerful shift and distinction. What I’ve done, simply put, is to empower myself, to act as a leader for myself by focusing on the positive outcomes I want, and creating the intentions and energy to make those outcomes real. I’m realizing, too, that these ideas can strengthen the leaders I work with.  All leaders can benefit from such an approach, one that focuses on a “can do” mindset for yourself and your team members.

Try this over the next week. See how you might shift the language and your outlook on how you engage with your employees and teams. Where might you instill a “can do” mindset in your conversations? Ask them “what do we want” rather than “what don’t we want”, see what you notice, and comment back. I’ll be curious what breakthroughs you might experience!

Sounds like a good practice.

The person who introduced me to the upcycling world was Victoria Tane, a jeweler who takes estate sale and flea market finds and re-purposes them into beautiful, wearable works of art. When I first walked into her studio, I was greeted by displays of both beauty and whimsy: former pastry decorating tips transformed into fashionable necklaces; beads, old buttons and wire glued together into a brooch you could swear you saw on a fashion runway; unique headbands that, with a twist of the wrist, become geometric chokers. And all the items refashioned with new purpose.

Victoria’s work got me thinking. As leaders and as team development specialists, how often do we seek out the shiny and new when, if we stepped back just a bit, we might find exactly what we need right before our eyes—if only we are willing to look in a slightly different way, to look not only with purpose, but with repurpose?

Right now I’m working with a client at a pivotal point in her career. She is an expert in what she does and is well-respected. She believes she might be ready to take the next step in her career. However, if she sought new opportunities, her absence would leave a huge gap in her group, a simple fact that has created an impasse for her. The friction between her wish for promotion and the group’s need for her to stay where she is very much needed has caused a rift in their relationship. Her loyalty is beginning to wane.

The issue I see is one of opportunity: the organization should consider upcycling this leader’s skills, taking what she’s really good at and repurposing those skills somewhere else in the organization.  By rewarding her expertise and refashioning her capabilities, she achieves upward mobility while the organization retains important talent. Employee retention and engagement equals cost savings—and much more—for the company.

What leadership capabilities and talents can be upcycled in your organization? Are there those hidden jewels amongst your teams that can be refashioned and repurposed to address critical business and talent needs? In taking the time to see people and their skills in a slightly different way, you may find just what you are looking for!

I know that probably sounds strange, so perhaps I’d better explain.  I recently signed up for a virtual writing class, something to keep me sharp and to teach me how to come up with new ideas whenever I feel the specter of writer’s block hovering just behind me. For this particular exercise, we were instructed to look at our arm and write whatever comes to mind. At first I thought, “Huh?? It’s my arm!” My arm, after all, has been attached to me since I was born. It swings into view on a regular basis. What could I possibly see that I hadn’t seen before?

Was I surprised!

The first thoughts that came to me were simple, shallow ones, generating words that I’m sure you would expect:  length, width, markings, color – the words that would describe the surface, what I can easily see when I glance at my arm.  “Hmmm, new freckle,” I thought to myself. “Need to keep a watch on that. And my hand is beginning to show it’s age a bit….” Those types of things.

Then something happened. I began to see my arm in a new way.

This was the limb that held my child as he grew up, that cradles my dog when she’s afraid. It helps me grab onto a tree and pull myself up a steep terrain when I hike and wraps around my husband’s neck to let him know that I care. My arm, over the years, may have changed in the way it looks, but it continues to give back to me in ways that I probably took for granted.

How often do we see our employees that way, the way I initially looked at my arm, as something that’s always been there but never really, deeply seen? Perhaps they’ve been working with us for a long time and we don’t really notice them as they were or as they’ve grown. If you were to really look at your employees – beyond the surface features like their tenure, skill, and ability – what would you see? What largely unseen—but deeply important—qualities do they have that, when you reflect on them, you appreciate and value, perhaps couldn’t or wouldn’t want to live without?

Take a moment and look at your employees with simple appreciation. What do they inspire that you may have overlooked?

Still, regardless of how much attention we in HR pay to the issue, it continues to warrant concern.  A recent survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that only 52% of employees felt “plugged in” at work.

But, is that the end of the story? What’s going on with other 48%?

Years ago my husband worked for the CEO of a small company who had a mantra of sorts around employee engagement.  “You can quit or you can stay,” he would say, “but you can’t quit and stay.”  That phrase has stuck with me all these years.  So: what about those employees who appear to be staying and working and engaging, but, underneath it all, have at least a few toes already crossing the exit door’s threshold?  How do we identify those signals and, more importantly, work to create what I like to call a “Stay Culture?”

Here are the three clues I often advise others to look for:

1. Connection – How connected is the work that your people are doing with what’s important to them? These days, more and more Gen Y’ers actively voice their opinions about the need for meaning in their work, for a sense of connection between what they do and what they value. You could be pumping out widgets, but if the end result is that those widgets are being used for purposes that speak to core values, then your employees’ connection to their work will be deepened.
2. Contribution – How do you and your employees “show up” at work? (notice I said “at” work and not “to” work) This is less about the time on the clock – although a willingness to go above and beyond is often a sign of engagement – and more about stepping up to contribute in ways that go outside the job description. There is a balance, of course, but when you see your folks raising their hand to volunteer to learn about something new or taking on a leadership role for a project, this is a staying sign.
3. Conversation – How many times do your employees strike up a conversation with you, trying to get to know you more, trying, in fact, to engage? How open and inclusive is your culture of feedback and engagement? Sometimes employees actually try to engage but are turned back. The reasons may be valid—deadlines, urgencies, customer issues—but we should pay particular attention to these attempts to reach out. Ignoring such attempts can easily result in employees who “quit and stay.”

There may be other factors that could be at play that help to create a “stay culture”. What have you experienced in your organization that helps to create an engaged “stay” mindset?