Month: May 2018

The Secret to an Irresistible Workplace—Interview with William Vanderbloemen

Posted on May 23, 2018 by - Articles, Change Management, Culture, Human Resources, Leading Organizations

Since founding the Vanderbloemen Search Group in 2010, William Vanderbloemen has coached thousands of organizational leaders and job candidates. He has also had a front-row seat to best practices and trends in organizational culture. In his new book, Culture Wins: The Roadmap to an Irresistible Workplace, he shares his insights. Recently, the Global Leadership Summit team had the chance to talk with him about his learnings.

WCA: What is it that makes culture so important to successful organizations?

William Vanderbloemen: Two out of three Americans hate their job. I wondered, “What would happen if we could flip that so two out of three Americans loved  their job?” I believe the result is, you wouldn’t have trouble getting employees to work a little harder and stay a little longer.

Millennials are the largest workforce right now. Boomers grew up with a desire to work at Ford for 25 or 35 years, get the gold watch and retire with the pension. But that is so foreign from the script inside a Millennial’s head. They think, “I may do some of this for a while and then some of that for a while.”

Millennials have creativity and vision. But as Boomers leave and Millennials storm-surge the workforce, there is little competitive advantage in keeping someone for 35 years. Instead, the question will be, “Can I build a workplace where Millennials will stay a couple of years longer than they would have otherwise?” 

When you add up the cost of hiring a new person after someone leaves—the loss of momentum and the hours you’ll spend training someone new—it’s a lot.  If you can reduce turnover, then you will win in your business over the next 10-15 years.

WCA: How do great leaders assess if their own culture is a toxic environment or a healthy one?

Vanderbloemen: They can’t on their own. A leader once told me, “The first day you’re the CEO is the last day you hear the truth.”

As a CEO, you can’t count on the people who work for you to tell you what’s real. There’s a power imbalance. They feel the need to please the boss. If any CEO thinks their culture is great, but they don’t have some forensics to back it up, you can’t count on their opinion.

When we interviewed over 150 CEOs of companies who are also winning awards for their culture, we wanted to discover, “Are there some best practices?”

We found there are about eight areas of health or toxicity that need to be measured objectively. If you are a leader who wants to know if your culture is toxic or healthy, find a free assessment at  https://info.vanderbloemen.com/culture-tool.

WCA: You say that great company cultures are marked by a commitment to innovation. How can leaders build innovation into their cultures?

Vanderbloemen: The companies that score poorly on innovation almost always score poorly on culture.

Recently, I was stretching after going for a jog. My youngest child, who was about three-years-old at the time, saw me struggling to touch my toes. She sat down next to me, tied herself into a human pretzel, stood up, laughed at me and then left the room. In that moment, it dawned on me that every day I’m alive, I become less flexible. That’s a biological truth, but it’s also a corporate truth.

The longer a leader has been in an organization and the longer an organization has been around, the higher the commitment has to be to ask the question, “How do we innovate?”  Innovation is an active commitment.

WCA: What is the difference between an organization that is simply fun and an organization that has a healthy culture?

Vanderbloemen: The word fun should not be the synonym for culture. If we have fun, that’s a great byproduct. However, it’s just a fruit of a very different root. Too often leaders equate fun with culture, so they try to build culture by giving away gifts to the top sales people at an organization or planning big parties where somebody ends up intoxicated, and something stupid happens. But that’s not culture. That’s just throwing money at events.

WCA: How do we celebrate our unique culture and enforce it in our organizations?

Vanderbloemen: If you find a book titled  “The Quick and Easy Way to Building a Great Culture,” don’t buy it. I was talking with a pastor recently, and I asked him, “How long did it take to clarify your culture?” The pastor responded that it took them almost a full year. It’s a slow process.

In Culture Wins, we outline a process to take your unique culture and truly drive it throughout your organization. You have to keep it from just being words on a page. We’ve found ways to drive culture through every part of an employee’s life cycle with us.

WCA: One of your culture tips is, “Chemistry is seasonal.” Tell us more about that. 

Vanderbloemen: When I was a younger leader, I thought I was hiring people who would stay with us their whole life, and we’d go through the whole run together. And if anybody left, it meant they were either disloyal or they didn’t like me. I really took it personally.

It’s taken us awhile to realize that some of our jobs are built for a person’s season of life. We have some jobs here that are great as your first job right out of college, but then you get married, have a baby, and you realize that particular role isn’t going to work anymore. And that’s ok!

Chemistry is seasonal because people are living organisms. Just because someone works for you and the chemistry is working doesn’t mean that one day, when they leave you, your culture isn’t healthy. Maybe it just means they’ve changed. Maybe they have an aging parent they need to help out. Maybe they’ve had triplets. Maybe they’ve gotten an MBA, and you don’t have another spot up the ladder for them. That’s not bad. I think that liberates an entire workforce for everyone to hold things just a little more loosely. Whether you are in a business setting or a church, every job is interim work.

WCA: Why is it important for leaders to hire slowly?

Vanderbloemen: The number one mistake in staffing is that leaders tend to hire too quickly and fire too slowly. Hiring is an anxiety-ridden process. No matter how many times you hire, your anxiety level goes up when you’re hiring.

What ends up happening is you have leaders who hire someone they “know.” They think, “I have this friend who would be great at this.” Forget who you know. I’m all for hiring from within and building up your people. But too many times leaders wait too long to fill an open hole, and they’re under the gun. Then they get really anxious about all of these unknowns, and they hire someone who makes them “feel good.” But we need to slow down, maybe even have a third set of eyes look at this, then measure twice and cut once.

WCA: What is the most important quality you look for in a candidate?

Vanderbloemen: There’s a growing need for agility. Uber is less than six years old, and the iPhone just turned ten, yet these are things we “can’t live without.” The need for rapid change and the ability to deal with rapid change is growing quickly. People by nature are becoming less willing to change every day they’re alive. As I’m interviewing, I’m looking for agility.

There’s also a growing need for self-awareness. Socrates’ one piece of advice was, “Know thyself.” We’ve interviewed tens of thousands of candidates, and if you are self-aware, you are in the top one percent. Self-awareness is far and away the quality I’m looking for. I ask direct and sometimes indirect questions to figure out whether or not they realize what they’re doing.

4 Secrets to Overcoming Bias in your Hiring Practice

Posted on May 21, 2018 by - Articles, Human Resources, Leading Organizations

In my two decades of management and leadership, I have probably hired dozens of people and participated in hundreds of interviews. Interviewing and hiring are necessary parts of leading any organization and two of the most important things we do in any given week.

I believe interviewing and hiring are much more like dating than I’d care to admit.  And, if I’m being honest, I tend to “marry” interviewees far too quickly and for all the wrong reasons. I become infatuated by certain qualities and personality traits, whether they connect with the job I’m hiring for or not.

I’ve often bought into the lie that I’ll just know when I find the right person. Can you relate?

I look for the moment when I sit down to interview someone and the conversation flows, and we’re laughing and telling stories like two old friends from elementary school. Chances are, you’re going to hire someone you have that instant spark with.

Time after time, interview after interview, hire after hire, I find I’m guilty of unconscious bias in my hiring process. I hire the person I’ve fallen “in love” with rather than the person who is the best fit for the job. And far too often, the person I select is exactly like me. They look like me, talk like me, act like me and have a similar background to my own.

Because of my unconscious bias in hiring, not only do I begin building a team that looks and acts like me, I hire people who cannot take the organization any further than I can. And that leads to serious consequences like a stagnant organization, employee terminations that I don’t want to make and a negative impact on bottom-line measures.

In order to overcome these biases, we must take steps to ensure the process we’re working through is as objective as possible.

Use these four steps to establish a more objective hiring process:

  • Be clear

Is there a job description in place? Is there a personality trait that would work best in this position? What are the specific skills, experiences, training and education required for this role?

  • Be consistent

If there’s a phone screening, in-person interview, written test and personality assessment for one candidate, be sure to use it for all of your candidates. Write out specific questions to ask all of the candidates for the position. Using a rubric (scoring the interviewees in certain areas) for hiring is the best way to keep personal biases from clouding your judgment,  and it helps you achieve consistency in your practices.

  • Include others

Have trusted people handle an interview for you and give you their feedback. Call references from previous employers. At a minimum, share resumes and interview results with others, and dialogue with them to make sure you’re being as objective as you can be.

  • Take time

Don’t rush the process. And even when you think you’ve found the right person, take a day to think about it, and make sure you’re still as confident about the hire the next day. Often biases creep in, and bad hiring decisions are made when we feel like we’re rushed to fill a role.

Hiring the right person is vital to your organization’s health and success. We all have biases. However, if we work to overcome them, we will find the people we hire will be better, make a greater impact and work for us longer.

When Teachers Become Better Leaders, Students Win

Posted on May 21, 2018 by - Because of the GLS, Education, North America, Stories

Steve Perkins, 2014 Teacher of the Year in Indiana, felt called to be a teacher. “When I was a junior in high school, my Latin teacher said the first time anyone had been called a Christian was in Antioch,” Steve explains. “At the moment it was almost as if I heard the actual voice of Jesus saying, you could teach this subject and be a Christian presence in public schools. From that moment on, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.”

Leadership can make or break a student’s success

Since his early days of teaching, one thing has been clear to Steve. Leadership can make or break a student’s success. For this reason, since the late 90s, Steve has made The Global Leadership Summit a priority on his calendar. In fact, it is at the Summit where he re-dedicated his life to Christ, and recently gained invaluable inspiration for his next educational endeavor.

“My good friend, Mark Mittelberg (who incidentally led me in a prayer to rededicate my life to Christ during a Summit lunch break in 2001) and I have been talking about the need for an event that focuses on encouraging, inspiring and equipping teachers and students studying education to understand and live out their calling as salt and light in public schools,” says Steve. “During the 2017 Summit, I wrote in my notes:

God may be writing an end to the chapter you are good at so you can go to the next level.

Since being named Indiana Teacher of the Year in 2014, Steve has had opportunities to work with educators from all over Indiana, across the United States and around the world. “It can be easy for teachers to forget there is a world of policy, research, politics, advocacy, training and more outside the walls of their classroom,” says Steve. “To paraphrase Hamlet, it is all too easy to stay bound within the classroom and count oneself the king of infinite space.

“During the Summit that year, I called my friend, Gary Abud Jr., who is 2014 Michigan Teacher of the Year, and we began to dream of what could be. We are both passionate about education, distressed by its current state, inspired by great leadership, motivated by bad leadership and passionate to change things. He and I have enjoyed education leadership, but we are both burning to do more. I am entering my 27th year of teaching, but have been feeling a restlessness, wondering what God may be calling me to next. What would it mean to WOW this to life? This has led to new leadership ideas that I have been working on with a number of leaders.”

The need to build into our educators is critical

“Over the nearly 30 years of my career, I have watched the life in students and educators flicker and die,” says Steve. “From seemingly endless mandates no educator truly supports to incompetent or even malevolent leadership, to increased poverty, to a lack of balance with technology that has led to the well-researched consequences of depression and other mental problems, I see the life disappearing from our schools. Across the nation fewer new teaching licenses are being issued than ever before, as educators exit the profession at a higher rate.

“We need Christ-followers who are called to education to grasp fully the true nature and work of their calling. We need to equip them in being intentional in living out that calling for maximum Kingdom benefit.”

Leadership in the classroom extends beyond its four walls

Great leadership in the classroom has a ripple effect. It impacts the lives of students as well, and instills leadership wisdom into their lives and futures.

“I frequently talk with my students about leadership, especially when we are reading something like the war accounts of Julius Caesar,” says Steve. “I point out they will all lead something someday. It may be a Fortune 500 company, a little league team or a family, but they will lead, and they need to know how.

“Leadership in the classroom is inevitable. A teacher will lead well or poorly, but every teacher leads. The Latin word for teacher is magister, or master of the subject. The Greek word is paidagogos, or one who leads children. True teachers are both. They must know well the subjects they teach and they must also be able to lead students through the challenges of learning. As for education in general, leadership is a vitally important topic.

“Having worked in schools for nearly three decades and having worked also with schools and educators across Indiana and around the world, I can bear witness that good building and district-level leadership can inspire both teachers and students to amazing things, and bad leadership can destroy even those with the best of ideas.”

Students win when teachers become better leaders, so if you’re a teacher, join us at the Summit!

“I attend the Summit because it is not a conference,” says Steve. “It is an experience. It will recharge your emotional, spiritual and leadership batteries as no other event can.”

Quality and Affordable Healthcare—Nthabiseng Legoete—GLS 2018 Faculty Spotlight

Posted on May 17, 2018 by - News & Updates, The Global Leadership Summit

Quality and Affordable Healthcare—Nthabiseng Legoete

Last year, The Global Leadership Summit in South Africa captured a video to share Nthabiseng Legoete’s story. We are thrilled to welcome Legoete to the 2018 Global Leadership Summit Faculty as she shares the story of how she provides quality health care to thousands of individuals in need every day. 

Watch the video below for a sneak peek into the remarkable story of how this visionary doctor is truly transforming lives.

Nthabiseng Legoete

Life is really hard for the typical resident of Diepsloot, South Africa, and inadequate healthcare compounds the problem.

Residents there do not have adequate access to even basic healthcare services, and there is a high prevalence of treatable diseases like tuberculosis and HIV. There are only two public health clinics, and they don’t have the necessary capacity to serve the people. To add insult to injury, the closest referral hospital from Diepsloot is nearly 40 kilometers away (approximately 25 miles).

I knew there was a need for an urgent intervention.

I’ve had the privilege to work as a doctor in both the private and public sectors. And I’ve had the privilege to understand the challenges of both.

I was faced with the inefficiencies and bad service that you receive in the public sector. My experience in the private sector was completely different; it ran like a well-oiled machine. It was well resourced, and it was efficient. However, it wasn’t accessible to everybody. The good healthcare service was only accessible to about 18% of South Africa’s population.

My life story thus far has therefore—in a big way—influenced and contributed to me opening QualiHealth with the urgency that I have.

On July 28, 2015, my uncle died. He had been ill for a month and was going to the clinic complaining of fatigue. All they gave him was vitamin B tablets. He eventually developed shortness of breath and contacted me. He lived quite far from me and by the time I intervened, he was at a stage where he was in quite bad heart failure. He needed ICU intervention, and subsequently he died.

The QualiHealth model is premised on three main pillars: affordability, convenience and quality. What ties all three of these pillars together is the use of technology. That’s what enables us to have affordable, convenient and high-quality service.

Looking back to the girl I was from a small town called Spring, I’ve come a long way. I had dreams of just being a doctor, but now I’m also living the dream of impacting lives and making a difference for people.

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Nthabiseng Legoete

Dr. Nthabiseng Legoete is a medical practitioner who is passionate about improving access to primary healthcare. Motivated by her faith and own family story, her vision is to make quality primary healthcare affordable for all global citizens in emerging markets. Legoete founded QualiHealth in Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently serving more than 600 patients a day at four facilities, in 2018 they are expected to grow to 30 facilities.

 

 

Re-thinking the Meaning of the Local Church in Inner-City Baltimore

Posted on May 16, 2018 by - Because of the GLS, Calling, Culture, North America, Stories

Matthew Kinsey has been involved in public service throughout his life, first as an EMT, then in emergency medicine where he worked in inner-city and suburban emergency rooms. This work led him to become a firefighter and paramedic in his home town of Baltimore, Maryland. Later, he became a pastor in his community after he retired from emergency medical work due to a hip injury. He now serves at Grace Redeemer Community Church, and recently planted a church in the inner city of Baltimore. Matthew credits The Global Leadership Summit and the GLSnext app for equipping him with the skills needed to bring his dream for his community to life.

Realizing the powerful need for hope in Baltimore.

If you work in emergency medical response in the inner city, one of the things you learn, if you do not become blind with apathy toward human suffering, is the powerful need for hope.

Baltimore has consistently ranked in the top 10 most dangerous cities in the US. There is so much fear here—a constant, pervasive, epidemic level of fear. Our community is an amalgam of several neighborhoods. It’s also fenced off—one way in, one way out—it reminds you more of a prison yard than a community. As I went deeper into getting to know our community better, I heard horrific stories, and God called me to build community here. Throughout my life, he was preparing me to do just that as I lived out my dream of serving Him.

God moved in my heart to re-think what it meant to be a church in a local setting.

One of the equipping stages I went through was to attend the National Church Adopt a School Initiative through the Urban Alternative, in Dallas, Texas.   And honestly, planting a church wasn’t first on my list of things to do. My heart was set on working in the community, and I had already begun efforts to move out into that work. But the Gospel and people God put in my way had a way of gently, but firmly pressing us into the direction Jesus would have us go. My wife encouraged me to think about it more, and I accepted an invitation from my pastor to submit an application to the North American Mission Board. I was accepted, and am now in the process of planting a church in a community in great need of both hope, and leadership.

The particular location I chose is in a section 8 community where folks do not have regular access to private transportation. My heart ached to see that even though sincere invitations were being made to join other “local” congregations, there was still no real sense of care for the community itself.

My dream is for the church to be in the community and for the community.

I want to see a Christ-centered community of disciples who seek to impact their neighborhood for Christ. So many churches have become commuter churches, not necessarily community churches. Whenever Christ is in a community, He transforms the community for the greater good. I believe the Gospel is as much about human flourishing as it is about salvation. Because God’s salvation through Jesus is so great, you cannot help but see humans flourish when Jesus is present in a neighborhood. I don’t think you can have one without the other.

The Summit encourages and equips us for the mission ahead.

In order to build a hope-giving, flourishing, Christ-centered community church, I realized there were some leadership gaps that needed to be filled both in my own leadership and in others in my community.

For the last two years I’ve had the GLSnext app on my phone and I loved all the excerpts. So when I found out there would be a local GLS satellite site in my neighborhood, it meant I didn’t have to incur the expense of traveling to the location. I was also able to bring two young men with me who had never before been exposed to leadership training, and had never been seen as leaders.

Each of us were reminded of the value of grit, empowerment through trust and viewing people as children of God. I’m applying what I learned to my church plant and how we serve our community.

I was most excited about what happened in the two young men I brought to the Summit.

These men were in two different places in life. One was a 30-year old facing court-related issues. He had been a certified auto mechanic prior to an episode in his life, which threatened to land him in prison. As you might expect, the prospect of prison was soul-crushing. After the GLS, he took a serious turn toward creating change in his life. Since then, he’s been liberated from a lot of fines and a looming sense of doom. He is now an independent auto-mechanic and is striking out as an entrepreneur.

The other young man is in his early 20’s and had been living a life that many inner-city young men have experienced. Even though he was a good student in high school, he was charged with possession of controlled substances. His growth in the workplace was hampered. After hearing Bryan Stevenson, something clicked. Shortly after the GLS, his focus turned toward applying for expungement and getting a steady job. His hope for the future became achievable. The following winter, he was awarded expungement, got a full time job and started new chapter in life.

Go to the Summit, and bring someone with you!

Take someone who you would never have thought to invest in before. Much of the leadership talk calls us to invest in those who are investing, which is often sound advice and a safe, smart choice when it comes to establishing and building a business or organizational structure. But, I would encourage pastors and potential attendees to the GLS to get out of the office, and spend some time building margin in our lives to find those one or two guys or gals who need the boost.

I hear the voice of Paul when he says, For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking (though they are powerful, necessary everyday things of everyday life—like running our organizations and businesses well) but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). Think of a diamond that’s still in the mine—not just in the rough. That, my friends, is adventure, excitement, a conviction of the basic holiness of people and joy in the Holy Spirit. Make a commitment to do it. There is someone God has already placed on your heart!

4 Disciplines to Execute a Winnable Game

Posted on May 16, 2018 by - Articles, Culture, Execution, Leading Organizations, Performance Management

The 4 Disciplines of Execution are designed to create a winnable game. They give you the power to execute your most important goals in the face of competing priorities and distractions. The disciplines are powerful, yet simple. However, they are not simplistic. They can be tricky to apply and sustain, as they require us to work differently than we normally do.

Discipline 1: Focus on The Wildly Important

This discipline requires you to focus on less in order to accomplish more. You start by selecting one wildly important goal or WIG, instead of trying to work on a dozen goals all at once. We are not suggesting you ignore the work necessary to maintain your operation. We are suggesting you narrow your focus to work on what you want to improve significantly.

Most intelligent, ambitious people don’t want to do less, especially if it means saying no to good ideas. They are wired to do more, but there are always more good ideas than there is capacity to execute.

When you choose a wildly important goal, you identify the most important objective that won’t be achieved unless it gets special attention. In other words, your normal course of business won’t make it happen.

To define a WIG, identify where you are now, where you want to be and by when. Said differently, you define a starting line, a finish line and a deadline. Psychologically, it is very important to have a single measure of success. This is the discipline of focus, and it’s the first step in creating a winnable game.

Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures

No matter what you are trying to achieve, your success will be based on two kinds of measures: Lag and Lead. Lag measures track the success of your wildly important goal. Lags are measures you spend time losing sleep over. They are things like revenue, profit, quality and customer satisfaction. They are called lags because by the time you see them, the performance that drove them has already passed. You can’t do anything to fix them; they are history.

Lead measures track the critical activities that drive or lead to the lag measure. They predict success of the lag measure and are influenced directly by the team.

A common example of a lag measure is weight loss. Which activities or lead measures will lead to weight loss? Diet and exercise! Proper diet and exercise predict the success of weight loss, and they are activities we can directly influence.

Simple enough, but be careful. Even the smartest people fall into the trap of fixating on a lag measure that they can’t directly influence. This is because lags are easier to measure, and they represent the result we ultimately want. Think of a lead measure as a level that moves your wildly important goal.

Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

People play differently when they are keeping score. If you doubt this, watch a group of teenagers playing basketball. See how the game changes the minute score-keeping begins. It’s not a subtle change.

The lag and lead measures won’t have much meaning to the team, unless they can see the progress in real time. Bowling through a curtain is not that much fun. Discipline 3 is the discipline of engagement.

People perform best when they are emotionally engaged, and the highest level of engagement comes when people know the score—whether they are winning or losing the game. It’s that simple.

The best scoreboard is designed for and often by the players. A player’s scoreboard is quite different from the complex scoreboard that coaches love to make. If players know the score, if they can influence the lead measure and if the lead measure moves the lag measures, you know you have a winnable game. Disciplines 1, 2 and 3 are nothing more than a formula for creating a winnable game. Discipline 4 is how we play that game.

Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

The cadence of accountability is a rhythm of regular and frequent team meetings that focus on the wildly important goal. These meetings happen weekly, sometimes daily. Ideally, they last no more than 20 minutes. In that brief time, team members hold each other accountable for commitments made to move the score.

The secrets to Discipline 4, in addition to the weekly cadence, are the commitments that team members create in the meeting. One by one, team members answer a simple question: “What are the one or two most important things I can do this week that will have the biggest impact on the scoreboard?”

In the meeting, each team member reports first if they met last week’s commitments, second if the commitments move the lead or lag measures on the scoreboard and finally, which commitments they will make for the upcoming week.

People are more likely to commit to their own ideas than to orders from above. When individuals commit to their fellow team members, not only to the boss, the commitment goes beyond professional job performance to become a personal promise.

When the team sees they are having a direct impact on the wildly important goal, they know they are winning. And nothing drives morale and engagement more than winning.

This post was originally published on LinkedIn, here.