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You’ve spent a lot of time over the past five months putting out fires, managing crises, handling daily drama and just plain existing from day-to-day. That hasn’t allowed you much time to reflect.  Summer gives us a breather and more time to think proactively. Strategic thinking is what Magnetic leaders do. If we were coaching you, we’d encourage you to curiously and frequently engage in strategic thinking. We aren’t coaching you, but here’s some homework that we offer our clients. Before we tell you the homework, here’s one other quick hint about what we teach our clients. We teach our clients to activate their curiosity muscles regularly. As you ask yourself these questions, imagine evoking a puppy or baby's curiosity and doing it openly and non-judgmentally. Here’s the homework Take 5 minutes to note your answers to these two questions:
By the way ... we'd also encourage you to ask generic versions of these two questions every week curiously:
Creating a weekly reflective practice helps you be more proactive in your interactions with others and your work. That will help you to become a more Magnetic leader. When you take time to be a more Magnetic leader, you will create a Magnetic Workplace that re-engages, re-ignites and re-charges your team.
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 We get it! This is really big, and it's affecting all of our lives in ways we never imagined possible. If you are like most organizations, you've implemented your crisis management strategies. Crisis leads to tunnel vision. That's ok, and even necessary short term. Understandably, you're fixed on the current crisis and how to get through today, But you can't stay there long term. This crisis has become the new normal, at least for the foreseeable future. Your team won't survive long-term with crisis management leadership. It's time to regroup so that your team is strong through the crisis and afterwards. Here's the thing, even in this environment, your team can thrive. You don't have to wait until the crisis is over to move forward. How do you do that? There are 3 steps:
f you need help with this, we are here for you. We want to do our part. We are offering you a free 30-minute call with either Bill or Kathy. Email us back. Tell us who you'd prefer to talk to (we won't be jealous of each other) and tell us 3 times you are available. We will get back to you asap to set up your free call. Too many nonprofit leaders are overworked, overloaded and overwhelmed. That sucks the life out of them and their teams. At Magnetic Workplaces, we provide customized training and coaching that re-engages, re-ignites and re-charges leaders and teams.
Despite the fact that you lead in a poorly resourced sector, you can re-engage, re-ignite and re-charge your team.  The best leaders continue to grow and develop themselves. One way to do that is by reading!
Below we've listed our favourite leadership books. To be honest, this is an ever-evolving list as we are both avid readers and continue to find new gems! If you are looking for a particular topic, feel free to message us for more recommended books!  This is a 4 part series on the various points of a workplace culture. Find the four parts here: Workplace Culture, Toxic culture, Tolerable culture and a Magnetic Culture.
Is your workplace ideal? Probably not. Whose is? Most leaders, you included, probably recognize that your workplace is less than ideal. It may not be as bad as the toxic stories we’ve shared, and it may even be more than the barely tolerable ones we’ve described. However, strong, effective and impactful leaders are always looking to grow their team and improve their workplace culture - no matter where it stands now. We all want to be working at one of the Best Places to Work. Why? Because we want to work in places where we feel like we’re making a contribution, where we are wanted, where we are making a difference. That happens when we are part of a Magnetic Workplace - one that draws people to it. A place where people feel that they matter, they are cared about, and they are contributing to something bigger than themselves. In a Magnetic Workplace, employees are actively engaged in the organization’s work. In our experience, a magnetic workplace is characterized by:
In short, a Magnetic Workplace is that magical place where work becomes something more than a paycheque, where you willingly give your best effort, and where you know you belong. In one of our earliest blogs, we talked about a woman who got ready for work only to find out that it was her day off. She was so disappointed! Now we know that’s a stretch. Everybody needs time off to recharge and enjoy life. We call that having a work-life balance. And … isn’t that the sort of employee we’re all seeking - the one who is drawn to the organization because she feels she matters; she feels she’s making an important contribution to something bigger than herself. What we are talking about may sound Utopian to you or maybe expensive. However, we believe that to find and retain key personnel, today’s leaders must create the conditions that allow Magnetic Workplaces to thrive regardless of the circumstances. Each person’s experience with their organization is different. Yours is likely to be different from your co-workers. You may view life at work to be tolerable, while your colleague sees it as toxic, while a third colleague may believe the workplace isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty magnetic. Take a moment to score your experience in your workplace. Your scores reflect your perception of your workplace culture. Doing so will help you identify your starting point along the continuum as you do the work to move towards sustaining a Magnetic Workplace culture. This is a 4 part series on the various points of a workplace culture. Find the four parts here: Workplace Culture, Toxic culture, Tolerable culture and a Magnetic Culture. Claudia was frustrated with the ongoing staff retention issues and how it was impacting client services. Over the last six months, three of her key staff had left for better-paying jobs in other organizations. For the most part, they had taken jobs that were not steps up. In fact, one person actually took a job that represented a decrease in responsibility and authority. The latest staff survey sat on her desk and the results weren’t bad, but they weren’t stellar either.  When we sat down with Claudia to explore what was going on for her and her team, we took her through a quick clarifying exercise.
After asking some curious questions, Claudia was able to point out several key areas of concern:
After talking with Claudia, a key takeaway she seemed to land on was that many staff cared but didn’t believe they could change things on their own. She knew they were right. For Claudia, it is time to find out how she can somehow connect to their initial passion for the work together and create a better workplace culture. Like many organizations we’ve worked with, Claudia is dealing with a tolerable workplace culture. Her workplace isn’t toxic, but something is amiss. A tolerable workplace is not bad enough to leave, not good enough to give it your all; it’s one where half of the workers put in enough effort to keep their jobs, and the majority say they could do better. A tolerable workplace is characterized by:
In a tolerable workplace, people have simply been tolerating far too much for far too long. In a TOLERABLE workplace, employees are not engaged and that is a problem! Just as it was for Claudia. DO THIS: Take a moment to scan back over the story. Note how many of the descriptors could describe your current workplace culture. Perhaps more than you’d like? Tolerable workplaces are OK, but Magnetic Workplaces are so much better. They draw people in and they keep them there. Staff make an active choice to stay and they are actively engaged. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They don’t stay because it’s not bad enough to leave. We’ve helped hundreds of leaders re-engage their staff and reduce turnover. Next up … it’s time to learn about a Magnetic Workplace and how you can help create one. Quick! If You Have These Sure-Fire Signs of a Toxic Workplace, They Are Tanking Your Team!11/22/2019  This is a 4 part series on the various points of a workplace culture. Find the four parts here: Workplace Culture, Toxic culture, Tolerable culture and a Magnetic Culture. This story might sound familiar We were sitting with a client a couple of weeks ago, completing a review of the Magnetic Workplaces program. We’d just finished up a year with this organization and we wanted Jin and her team to identify the changes they’d gone through. We asked first...what was it like last November? Eduardo, the operations manager, started right away. He said, “I was ready to quit. Devinder, the senior accountant, jumped in, “Me too!” Jin and the rest of the team around the table were nodding their heads. That’s right. No one wanted to be here. It was nasty! When we asked them to describe what was happening, Jin noted that they were in a constant state of crisis and everyone felt it. “We were overloaded, overworked and overwhelmed,” said Jin. “It was no wonder everyone wanted to quit.” That strain on individuals meant their worst was coming out instead of their best. Sarcasm infiltrated staff meetings. Backbiting was the norm. There was constant conflict between departments and individuals. Kashmeer, the head of HR, said, “Sick time was off the charts. Add to that the high turnover rate, it meant there was never enough bodies.” “We suffered from chronic understaffing,” said Eduardo. “It felt like we were juggling shifts, clients, and responsibilities and something always got dropped. Everyone was suspicious of one another. We didn’t trust management, each other or for that matter ourselves.” Jin emphasized the turning point. She said, “We knew we’d hit rock bottom when the results from the staff survey came in. They were terrible! That’s when we, as the leadership team, found we were spending more time focusing on problem employees than the mission of the organization. That didn’t sit well with me.” Finally, Eduardo summed it up. “The work was sucking the life out of us. It was either turn it around or get out.” Jin finished, “We are so glad we decided to invest in turning it around. I remember when we met you two. It was so refreshing to hear that both of you had been in organizations like ours and found a way to make it work.” In a TOXIC workplace, employees are actively disengaged. This story describes a Toxic work environment. If you’ve been there, you know it well. A toxic workplace is one that sucks the energy out of the people who work there. It is characterized by negativity, inflexibility, distrust, lack of empathy, and high turnover. It’s unhealthy and destroys individuals and team connections. These organizations are ones that we find to be autocratic, ego-driven, demanding, energy-draining, disengaging, difficult to navigate, and perhaps even emotionally abusive. If you are in a toxic workplace, this story likely will hit you. If you’re not there now, you’ve probably been there at one time.
An awareness of your situation is the first step. You may see yourself in a toxic workplace, or you may be in a more tolerable one. A tolerable workplace is better than a toxic one, but not the endpoint we envision for you. Again, we want you to understand the continuum from toxic to tolerable and then to magnetic. It’s a journey.
Next up, we’ll explore tolerable workplaces. Then following that, we will describe a Magnetic Workplace. Then, it will be time to take the steps necessary to re-engage your team.  Have you ever noticed when you walk into your office, workplace or a meeting, you quickly get a feel for it? Perhaps it feels hurried or calm, or chaotic or organized. It’s almost like they have personalities. Your workplace has an intangible quality that makes something about it distinct and decidedly different, but difficult to define or describe. Regardless, you know whether you like it or not, want to be there or quickly run away. We call this sense of an organization its culture. An organization’s culture is a difficult concept to define or describe. It’s not clear or visual. It’s not something you put neat and tidy into a slide show. Culture is not something you can touch or feel. In fact, Herb Kelleher, the charismatic, maverick founder of Southwest Airlines once famously said, “Culture is admittedly difficult to define. I suppose in that respect it is somewhat akin to the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography. You know it when you see it.” And like Herb, we bet you have a gut sense of what your culture is all about. It is an innate sense that each person has about how things are done around here. Culture is the stuff that isn’t talked about, written down or even concretely understood but followed by everyone. An organization’s culture is often compared metaphorically to an iceberg. That’s because, just like an iceberg, some aspects are evident, like the style of your office setup. Other aspects are not so obvious, like when to ask the boss a question and when to stay quiet. To understand organizational culture, you must use your sixth sense - your intuition. We recently asked three different people for their reactions to their work environment.
On an average day, which reaction would be most like yours? You may say one, two or all three. The three reactions describe three distinct types of culture: ones that are toxic, tolerable or magnetic.  While these three types of cultures are representative of three points on a continuum, we find teams or organizations rarely stay in one place on it.
Any team, on any given day, will feel the culture shift dependent on a multitude of variables - some they can control and others they cannot. For example, one individual's mood or recently announced shifts in your industry’s regulations will impact how you will rate your culture today. We have days when we think our workplace is the best place on earth and other days when we can’t imagine staying there for another minute and still others where we can take it or leave it. The key is to find a way to have more days when we are excited to be on the job - times when we believe we’re really making a difference. DO THIS: Think about your workplace culture for a minute, and then consider the type of culture you desire. We bet you are looking for a bit more engagement, cohesion and meaningful work. We are right there with you. The first step is naming where you are. Next, it’s deciding where you want to be, then working on getting you there. Make my development the reason I stay. So says the title of chapter 25 of Gallup’s bestseller, It’s the Manager which was released earlier this year. And Gallup isn’t talking about the shiny new, off-the-rack, latest and greatest training fad that will use up every dollar you have. Their research has confirmed what we have known intuitively: If we want people to stay and thrive, we need to create the conditions that allow that to occur. We need to create Magnetic Workplaces that draw people in and keep them there.  It’s a simple formula really – create a magnetic work environment and as Ray from The Field of Dreams was told, if you build it, they will come. Well, maybe he didn’t say it just like that, but the sentiment was there. What Gallup has confirmed is that people on the front lines – particularly Millennials – want work that matters; they’re looking for opportunities to learn and grow. More importantly, they are leaving employers who don’t understand that in record numbers.
It’s really that simple … AND … that difficult. For many managers – particularly Baby Boomers and Generation Xs – this focus on relationships is the antithesis of their previous training. For the most part, their focus has been on task completion – meet the deadline, hit the quota, manage the quality, measure against the benchmark – and rightly so. Their jobs depended on that focus. Today, we understand that success depends on addressing both the organization’s tasks and the relationships that exist amongst those charged with completing those tasks. In addition, the relationship between workers, their co-workers and their managers is critical to long term job satisfaction, productivity and profitability. All of these important business results are dependent upon one thing: employee input. Team leaders, managers and others with decision-making power need to allow for meaningful input – and I don’t mean asking whether the lunch break should start at 11:30 or noon. Today’s workers are looking for meaningful consultation on processes and policies that affect them on a daily basis. And if they don’t get it from you, they’re perfectly happy to take their talents elsewhere … and they do … in ever-increasing numbers. Leaders that understand this phenomenon ask questions – questions that they do not know the answers to. They’re curious about the possibilities from another person’s perspective, recognizing that there are multiple, equally valid viewpoints on most subjects. They recognize that in today’s fast-paced, extraordinarily competitive, highly charged, constantly changing global environment, their true competitive advantage is their people. They know how to engage their people. They know how to build meaningful relationships and get the job done. Let us show you how this could works! (Names, as always, changed to protect the privacy of those involved.) How this applies to you Jessica recently completed some training. She was really excited to take the course as it was right up her alley. Jessica’s now been working for the last three weeks to apply and integrate what she’s learned with the realities of her caseload, but she’s frustrated. It’s not that she doesn’t understand how things should fit together - that’s not it at all - she just hasn’t yet had the experience to pull it all together. Davinder, her boss, has noticed that she’s been struggling and had been coaching her along. But it wasn’t working as effectively as he’d like. During his weekly mentorship call, he asked me how to help Jessica realize the potential he knew was there. I had been working with him on how to craft juicy questions and with some fundamental principles in mind, Davinder crafted these questions to ask Jessica.
Here’s my challenge to you: Use these questions with your people before the day is out and let us know how they reacted to your interest.
And the sign said "Long-haired freaky people need not apply"  In 1970, Les Emmerson of the Canadian rock group Five Man Electrical Band penned a classic tune that struck a chord with a generation of fans we would come to know as the Baby Boomers. The song was a hit and reached #3 on the Billboard Top 100 chart. The song was described as an anti-establishment anthem and began with lyrics that made it clear the young man asking about the job was not about to be told what he should look like or, by extension, what his values ought to be. Fast forward almost 50 years and that young man finds himself on the other side of the conversation. He’s the establishment. He’s the one concerned with the work habits, the values, and the motivation of his younger colleagues. Everywhere you look you find signs that today’s managers are frustrated by their seeming inability to understand and connect with younger generations of workers. Many of these managers were equally frustrated by their managers. In fact, many of the managers most concerned about the inability of younger generations to take their jobs seriously were part of the biggest social revolution the world has ever known – the 1960s. In many respects, what today’s managers are experiencing is a crisis of understanding. And it’s not the first time managers have wondered how to work with “the younger generation.” Each generation doesn't seem to understand the one before it and often it's because they look at the members of that generation through the only lens they know ... their own. It may be that managers are so comfortable with “tried and true” means of working with people that they don’t take the time in their over-the-top, always-on-the-go busy days to find out whether their methods are working – especially with Millennials. Learning to effectively work with Millennials is critical for today’s managers. Gostick and Elton in their bestselling 2018 book, The Best Team Wins, note that by next year, Millennials will be more than half of the working adults worldwide. 3 tips for getting the most out of Millennials
Oh. And by the way. If you’re interested in reliving four minutes of classic rock, here’s a link to Signs by the Five Man Electrical Band.
Click here to learn more on how you can create a Magnetic Workplace.
Do you spend most of your days running around, putting out fires, dealing with crises, attending meetings that are a waste of your time, making decisions others could have made?
If you are like most leaders, you are running around mindlessly instead of mindfully. In this session, you will learn 3 ways you can find time to pause and put the brakes on at work more often so you can more mindfully get out of crisis management and move into proactive leadership. 
Here’s the thing, this kind of frantic pace is NOT going to get you where you want to go as an individual or an organization.
If you want to know how to do it differently, you need to slow down in order to speed up. When you make time to pause, you:
How - Pausing to Become Curious Where do you find the time to pause?
For more help on finding time to pause, read this article from Kathy as she explains how to use pauses to access your inner wisdom. It's that inner wisdom that helps you lead more powerfully.
Awaken Your Inner Wisdom: Schedule PAUSES |
Articles by Bill Scott & Kathy ArcherSometimes the articles are written collaboratively. Other times, it's just one of us putting fingers to keyboard. We'll try to remember to tell you. Archives
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