Active disengagement costs US companies between $450 and $550 billion annually.
Does active disengagement at your company contribute to that shockingly high number? I’ve got bad news – it does. Every company does its share. Because we all have actively disengaged employees. Trust me, it’s just as disappointing to me.
Maybe just as disappointing is the number of engaged workers. Check out this statistic from Gallup:
“About one in eight workers…are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations…The bulk of employees worldwide…lack motivation and are less likely to invest discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes.”
One in eight workers.
Only one in eight workers are committed to their jobs on a level that surpasses making a paycheck. Thus, the real problem we need to solve: commitment. Commitment to the company, the work, the mission, and the team.
What drives commitment? Meaning.
David Brooks, New York Times columnist, and Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, argue that meaning is the driver of commitment. Think about it like this:
Do you do your job because you need the money? Or because you believe it’s meaningful?
The truth is this is never a binary decision: because it’s never work OR meaning. But if you regularly feel your work is meaningful you’re lucky. Most people don’t feel that way. That’s why only 29% of people are engaged at work. The other 71% work mostly because they have to. They leave their passions for their “free” time. Meanwhile, they spend a third of their days (or more) at their jobs.
It’s no wonder we see less and less “above and beyond” behavior at work… only one in eight people are really committed, and nearly 1/3 would fall into the active disengagement category. They would rather watch the village burn (after they leave the village, of course).
What can leaders do to create more meaning at work?
As a leader, you have the power to reduce active disengagement. You have more opportunity than anyone to make work meaningful for your team. Help them understand just how important their work is, how it directly improves the lives of others (coworkers, customers, or the rest of the world). Also, openly admire their craftsmanship and the quality of their work. Then appreciate their work.
Also talk to your teammates about what gives them meaning in their life outside of work. What are their passions? Is there a way to incorporate more of that into their work day? Even if you have to shift some things around—make room for meaningful work.
Here are three tips on how to increase meaning at work.
The first two are from the Brooks brothers (okay they’re not really brothers). The third one comes from the Approachability Playbook:
Attach work to ideals. David Brooks says he finds the pressure to churn out columns all the time “perpetually unsatisfying” (we know a thing or two about that around here). He finds satisfaction by remembering the big motivators. The “why” he writes the articles. Make sure your team knows why they do what they do. And this is especially true for the team members behind the scenes (I’m looking at you Meghan Jones – who does the initial draft of most of our articles, including the one you’re reading here).
Recognize meaningful moments. I love this one because it is so simple. “The meaning of jobs comes from moments.” The hardest part is for you to remember to recognize those moments yourself. And then express it. Press pause on meaningful moments. Take a little extra time in the break room to appreciate the latest achievement or thank a teammate for pitching in on a tough project. Celebrate a milestone or landing that new client. Focus on meaning, not tasks. Do it as often as you can.
Have meaningful conversations. These meaningful conversations don’t come easy to everyone. That’s why leaders love our crib sheet for meaningful conversations, the Three Questions Tool in our Approachable Leadership Toolkit. If you regularly talk to teammates about what they need, what gets in their way, and about their next goal, you will add daily meaning to their work.
Can you make a difference?
Everyone wants to feel they’re making a difference. After all, they want to feel valued. As their leader, you have many ways to express their value, to learn about what’s important to them. And to tie their work to the bigger mission of the company. Do it.
How often do you talk to coworkers about the meaning of their work? How often do you focus on it in your own work? These conversations don’t just make people feel good – they deliver real business results (like reducing active disengagement). Remember recent research shows employees of Approachable Leaders are 88% more likely to go “above and beyond” at work. Let us know what you think in the comments.
Criticism is inevitable because mistakes are inevitable. We will overlook things we should notice. Make bad decisions. Say things we shouldn’t. We fall short. We’re human.
Accepting this reality is the first step to responding to criticism with steady assurance, class, and understanding. The video above shows Steve Jobs doing just that.
Not only does Jobs show a terrific example of a leader carrying himself in the face of blunt criticism, he also provides a lesson on how a leader who is open to criticism can actually increase influence and build culture. He shows how giving others the space to express negative opinion – even if the criticism is unkind or unfair – can actually make the leader and the team stronger.
3 Lessons We Can Learn from How Steve Jobs Responds to Criticism
There are 3 things I really admire about how Jobs handled the exchange in the video:
Full Stop: You can tell Jobs knew he was about to get blistered. But before he said a word he sat down, took a deep breath, then grabbed a sip of water. He gathered his thoughts. Then he quietly began his reply.
Fight Fire with… Ice: Jobs does not attack his critic. He uses humor to lighten the mood, then he pivots. Acknowledging the criticism that good technology got cut, he then calmly explains the tough choices. He humbly admits that some of these decisions will be mistakes. (For more tips on handling haters see this article).
Return to First Principles: The entire discussion becomes a window into the fundamental principles driving Jobs and Apple’s leaders. The relentless focus of the company would be on the experience of the user. This would mean hard choices. But it also gave a context for those choices. Jobs freely admits that following these principles will not always mean the right decisions:
“Some mistakes will be made along the way.” He says. “And that’s good. ‘Cause at least some decisions are being made along the way. And we’ll find the mistakes. We’ll fix them.”
Jobs embraced the criticism.
The thing I admire most about this exchange is that it stands as an example of how leaders at Apple should respond to criticism. It is a cultural “keystone” moment. Jobs shows that no leader of Apple is above criticism or untouchable. He illustrates through his behavior that he is open to criticism and negative feedback. He’s approachable.
The most cutting thing his critic suggests is that Jobs isn’t doing anything at the company. In less than 60 seconds jobs shows through his answer that he is doing a heck of a lot. He gives some very concrete examples about the types of choices a customer experience centered company must make. He lays out the tension between what technology can do and what is should do.
What if Jobs had fought fire with fire instead? The guy was clearly out of bounds. Nobody would think twice if Jobs gave him a public smack-down. He deserved one. But Jobs understood it wasn’t worth the cultural damage it would cause.
True leaders embrace criticism and feedback. When a leader kills the messenger with bad news, it destroys the culture. It creates fear. The team won’t try new things, bring up problems, suggest new ideas, or take chances. It sucks the life out of the culture. More important, it crushes performance and strangles innovation.
Encourage your team to give you feedback, especially when it is negative or critical. Practice responding to criticism like Steve Jobs. Take a deep breath. Respond calmly and humbly. Keep the focus on first principles. It won’t always feel great, but your team will thrive.
Have you been criticized for a decision? How did you react? How do you handle mistakes made by your team? What do you do to stay calm and centered in the face of criticism? Let us know in the comments.
Does your company struggle with change management? Do teammates give up on or resist change efforts?
Join the club. Failed change management is killing companies.
In today’s competitive marketplace change is inevitable. Poor change management isn’t an option. If you don’t constantly innovate and implement new processes you can’t compete.
Compounding that, in “internet time” the speed of change is breakneck. You can’t rest for even a second. An innovation at one competitor is quickly discovered. Even those companies that are great at coming up with innovations still aren’t out of the woods. Most innovations break down when we try to put them in place. In fact, one recent study found that only 56 percent of change initiatives meet their original goals and business purpose.
What can we as leaders do to get on the winning side of change?
There are two key areas where we as leaders can improve our change management. First, how we handle our “change portfolio” or the number of things we ask our teams to change at one time. With over half these projects failing we need a way to quickly stop the failures to focus on the winners. This is the strategic side.
Second, when we begin a change management project we must focus even more energy on our relationship with our team. Is it any wonder that our team is skeptical or resistant to change when more than half of our experiments end in failure? Our team sees each project as just the “flavor of the month.”
Let’s first look at the strategic side of change management.
The most interesting strategic model on change management I’ve seen in a while came out of Boston Consulting Group. A 2005 Harvard Business Review article entitled The Hard Side of Change Management describes the model. I disagree with one of the main arguments of the article – as I explain further below I don’t think you can separate the “hard” factors of change management from the so-called “soft” ones. But the DICE model they suggest is a great way to score the odds that any particular project will be successful.
Creating a process to score change projects lets you either kill projects that are likely to fail or alter a project to increase the odds of success. The advantage to these “hard” factors is that you can measure them, explain them and influence them. The most important obstacles to a successful change management project are the length of time needed to make it happen, the number of people you need to do it, and the overall results you expect to achieve.
The authors of the study Harold L. Sirkin, Perry Keenan, and Alan Jackson identified four “common denominators of change” during their 225-company, 11-year study. They looked at 1,000 change management initiatives and found, “not only has [their] correlation held, but no other factors (or combination of factors) have predicted outcomes as well.”
How to Load the Change Management DICE in Your Favor
They call these factors DICE. Think of it like this. If these four factors are in your favor, you’ve “loaded the dice” and increased the odds your change management project will succeed. The four factors are:
Duration. How quickly and regularly do you review progress on your change management project? Most companies focus too much on implementing a project quickly. They worry motivation will die out and the project will fail if it takes too long. Sirkin, Keenan, and Jackson found the opposite to be true. The longer projects took to implement, the more successful they were *so long as project review sessions were consistent and timely.* They recommend a formal review at least bimonthly. And don’t forget to set milestones.
Integrity. How much can you rely on your team to execute your change management project? What is their prior track record? Who is in charge and how many people are they going to lead? How good is that leader at managing competing priorities or helping their team get past the inevitable frustrations of change? All of these factors help you determine performance integrity. Companies often make the mistake of assigning a well-liked manager to be the team leader on a change management project. It makes sense. But you have to look closely at the qualities of the manager. Just because they get results under the current process doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask yourself, can they lead a change effort? This factor is the first place I part ways with the authors on the “hard” versus “soft” distinction in their model. There is no question performance integrity is critical to the success of your change management project, but the factors that help you determine it are mostly “soft” factors. Nevertheless, to calculate the odds of success you have to take a guess at the overall integrity of the team you are asking to implement.
Commitment. Who is the executive sponsor of the change management effort? This isn’t always the person with the biggest title, but the one who is most influential. Will they be able to keep morale up? Keep the team focused on the prize? There is a second component to this factor. How committed is the team to the success of the project? After all, the change impacts them most. Are they excited or fearful?
Again, the commitment of the sponsor and the team are also things I consider “soft” factors. It’s amazing how often leaders feel that they’ve communicated clearly or are being supportive when their team in the trenches feels the opposite. This is where leader approachability is so important (more on that below).
Effort. Don’t forget that change initiatives mean additional work. Your team is taking on responsibilities above and beyond their day-to-day roles. It’s “above and beyond” work. While necessary, it often creates hostility, frustration, and stress. You must help the team figure out how they’ll manage it all. Also roll up your sleeves and pitch in. How much effort is needed to bring this change management project home?
Often companies overlook, ignore or brush aside this critical factor. Don’t do that. If you have a role in change management I encourage you to check out the HBR article (the Wikipedia description of the DICE Framework is also helpful in describing how to analyze the math on your project).
What About The Human Side of Change?
Remember that initial statistic: at least 56% of change projects end in failure. When faced with the emotional toll of this pile of failure, many people just keep their head down and do things the way they’ve always been done. They prefer this even when they know that standing could eventually kill their job.
These frustrated and disengaged teammates don’t feel like they have any influence over the outcome. Why should they? Often people several levels above dream up the projects without any real input from below. As my friend Greg Hawks likes to say, they are treated like renters in the business, not owners. And if you don’t feel invested in the success of the change you are not likely to grit it out when things get tough (and they ALWAYS get tough).
That means you have to build very solid relationships with any team involved in a change management project. Whether you sponsor the project, lead the team or help execute as a teammate, you have an important role to play. You want to be the kind of leader (or teammate) who feels comfortable “shrinking the gap” and making it safe and comfortable to express frustration. Encourage others when things get tough. Don’t let your own frustrations (and you’ll have them) increase distance between you and the rest of the team.
As noted earlier, you really can’t separate the “hard” side of change management from the “soft” side. But you can look at them in a strategic way that also accounts for the people side of the equation. That gives you the best possible chance for success – without rolling the dice.
How successful have your change initiatives been in the past? Looking at the four DICE factors, where did the breakdown happen? How do you think soft skills like leader approachability affect the hard factors?
Learning to be vulnerable at work decreases workplace accidents.
I’ll admit it, this story had me scratching my head. I’ve spent a lot of time working with companies in tough safety environments. When I think of safety programs I think of systematic, uncompromising, and exact safety measures. I think of the men and women I’ve met in manufacturing, or those who move freight in warehouses and over the road, or who working on oil rigs or a hundred other dangerous jobs. They often spend up to the first 20 minutes of their day in a safety meeting reviewing the same procedures day in and day out trying to avoid workplace accidents.
Their jobs are dangerous. These safety procedures (and following them every time, especially when you don’t want to) are how you get home with all the parts you had when you left. Or how you get home at all.
But a recent study concludes that, when it comes to workplace accidents, it may be even more important to spend some time just being human. Consider this example.
You probably know that oil rigs are one of the most dangerous places to work on the planet. A recent NPR article spoke with Tommy Chreene, who remembered when he first started work on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico at the age of 15. It wasn’t out of the norm to see a man die on the job. One man, Chreene recalled, accidentally kicked a handle while exiting the platform. Unfortunately that handle held a large pipe in place. When the handle moved the tension in the pipe was released and it caught the man’s ankle.
“‘In about three seconds, it spun him around 80 times,’ Chreene says. A few feet from the man was a post, and ‘his head was hitting that post like a rotten tomato.'”
According to Chreene, he and his coworkers had about 15 minutes to grieve the loss of their friend before they had to get back to work. “I mean, that hole cost a lot of money,” Chreene says.
An unusual approach to reduce workplace accidents.
Fast forward to 1997. Shell began construction on the world’s deepest offshore well to date. Ursa would cost $1.45 billion and would stand 48 stories tall. At the time, nothing compared to the magnitude of this project.
Rick Fox was one of the men responsible for Ursa’s success. Having seen rigs in action and knowing that this rig was going to be exploring water deeper than any ever had, Fox knew things needed to change if he was to ensure the safety of the platform and the men who operated on it.
He began working with Claire Nuer, a leadership consultant and Holocaust survivor, on ensuring safety in such a dangerous environment. Fox was just beginning to discuss technical details like drilling schedules and man rotations when Nuer stopped him. She believed that the primary focus should be on “how the men dealt with their feelings.”
I don’t know how many oil rig workers you’ve met. But you can probably guess that opening up about their feelings isn’t high on their “favorite things to do” list. During the construction of Ursa, Fox put over one hundred of Shell’s oil rig workers through Nuer and others’ training programs. The purpose: get these men to open up to one another.
They did.
Robin Ely, Harvard professor, and Debra Meyerson, Stanford professor, decided to study Fox and Nuer’s experiment. What they found, recounted in their HBR article here, is that:
“By allowing themselves to become vulnerable to one another, [oil rig workers] had altered ‘their sense of who they were and could be as men.’
Ely says that as the men became more open with their feelings, other communication was starting to flow more freely. ‘Part of safety in an environment like that is being able to admit mistakes and being open to learning — to say, ‘I need help, I can’t lift this thing by myself, I’m not sure how to read this meter,’ [Ely] says. ‘That alone is about being vulnerable.'”
[Fox and Nuer] helped contribute to an 84 percent decline in Shell’s accident rate companywide, Ely says. ‘In that same period, the company’s level of productivity in terms of numbers of barrels and efficiency and reliability exceeded the industry’s previous benchmark.'”
Not only did learning to open up and be vulnerable with coworkers improve Shell’s safety rating. Workplace accidents plummeted while production increased. The men worked better together because they communicated better.
I know you probably don’t oversee oil rigs. But there’s a lesson we can all learn from this.
Being vulnerable with your team is a strength not a weakness.
Employees who know each other well care more for each other. They’re look out for each other and help out when someone gets in a bind. They enjoy their work more. They have more enthusiasm and are more engaged. Their comfort with each other improves problem solving and leads to more innovative ideas.
The results of this study are completely consistent with our research on leader approachability, which isn’t surprising. After all, the second part of our connection model teaches leaders to be more open and vulnerable with their team. Leaders who lead by this example see the same thing they saw on the Ursa – improved relationships AND improved business results.
Do you worry that someone on your team holds back and doesn’t speak up when they want to? Could any workplace accidents or production issues have been overcome if people just communicated a little better? How could your company culture encourage being vulnerable with others?
Trust is the most vital aspect of any relationship.
If you don’t trust someone it is extremely hard to get past that feeling and get any quality work done. Mistrust causes stress and distraction. It leads to politics and disengagement. And sometimes we find ourselves wanting to trust a leader or a coworker – but not feeling as though we can.
For some professions (the military, police and fire departments, heavy equipment operators, and healthcare professionals to name just a few) trust can be a matter of life or death. These leaders and teams must have trust for physical safety.
In most professions the stakes aren’t that high. But trust is still really important. For my team trust is essential for peace of mind. Without it we cannot perform our best.
I have a responsibility to my team to keep our business thriving. To make sure that they feel confident in our company and our mission. This is their livelihood. When they walk out these doors they go home to aging parents, kids who need schools supplies, homes that need maintained, friends and families that need support.
My job as a leader (and my greatest hope) is to make sure my team trusts that our work together will take care of them and their families. That our work of improving leaders will fulfill them and give them purpose. That they will take pride in the great work that we are accomplishing together.
People won’t trust you just because you want them to.
You must build it. Leadership trust is harder to come by than you would think. Each leader must show the team that they can be trusted. That they are worthy of trust.
And this is where we often fail. The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report found that one in three employees don’t trust their employer. Another study by EY found that number to be even higher, stating that “less than half of global respondents have a ‘great deal of trust’ in their current employers.”
We have some work to do. Steffen Maier’s article “7 Ways Managers Can Build Trust in the Workplace” is a great place to start. Maier’s 7 rules provide logical, easy to implement steps for improving trust with your employees. They are also excellent characteristics of Approachable Leaders.
7 Ways Managers Can Build Trust
Honesty is the best policy. It seems like we have to learn this one time and again. In your leadership, you’re most likely to deal with this when it comes time to delivering bad news. This may mean company-wide changes, a major issue with a client, or even things like not being flush enough to give out the bonuses your team has come to expect. Don’t leave them in the dark. Be real with them. Honest. Vulnerable.
Admit mistakes. We prefer humble people who will admit a mistake. This, Maier points out, is associated with the Pratfall Effect. When someone admits they messed up, especially when they don’t have to (consider those in leadership positions), they are more likely to be trusted.
Treat employees like people, not numbers. If your employees don’t feel like you care about them as people, how can they trust you? This is a main component of Approachable Leadership. Not only will your people trust you more if you’ve shown that you value them, they will work harder for you because of it. Being a leader who cares is the only kind of leader to be.
Give credit to your employees. Your employees work for you. Your personal opinion of their quality of work is the main thing that keeps them in a job. If you never tell them good job, how will they know? Tell them when they’ve done something to be proud of. When they’ve done something that you’re proud of. And tell them every chance you get.
Put yourself on the line for your team. In other words, be the leader. If your team is having an issue with another department or with a policy that needs addressed with the executive leadership, go to bat for them. If the higher-ups have an issue with your team, stick up for them. Take responsibility for your team. After all, they are your responsibility. If there’s been a failure or an oversight in your group, it’s more than likely there was a failure or oversight on your part first.
Teach your managers how to overcome bias. This one is all about playing favorites. No one likes that. All you do when you show bias toward one person or group is devalue others. Stop it. Not only will it make your team like you less, it will surely make them trust you less.
Make yourself vulnerable. Ask for feedback. A main component of Approachable Leadership is to learn to be vulnerable with your team. Vulnerability shows people that you’re just a real person with real problems too. This makes you more approachable. And leaders who are approachable have so many more opportunities to gain the trust of their employees because their employees come to them when they need help or guidance. Every time that happens, you have an opportunity to be a great leader and to show your team that they can trust you to be whatever you need to be for them.
Have you ever worked in an environment where you didn’t trust your coworkers or your boss? How did that feel? Did that affect the work environment? What do you do to help build trust with your team?
Companies that don’t innovate don’t grow. Innovation has always been an important tool. It is how established companies build markets or enter new ones. It is how entrepreneurs sneak up on bigger companies with brand new offerings (like the disruption Dollar Shave Club brought to the men’s razor market or Uber brought to transportation). In a world where the cost and barriers to enter markets is shrinking the next new thing is always just around the corner, making the ability to innovate even more important.
What is the key factor that determines whether your company will innovate? Your employees.
The good news is that you can create a culture where people innovate. George Barbee recently released 63 Innovation Nuggets. In Barbee’s 45 year business career, he was responsible for innovation with multiple Fortune 100 companies: General Electric, PepsiCo, IBM and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He knows how to build teams that innovate and thrive.
This white paper lays out twelve of those nuggets. I’m not going to go into all of them here, but I do want to discuss the ones that stuck out most to me.
Barbee begins by explaining that most of us are far more innovative than we think. The problem is we tend to associate “innovate” with “invent.” And while an invention is one way to innovate, there are many other ways. The simplest way to innovate is to pay attention, observe what’s around you and then transfer what you observed to another category where it can be applied.
When looked at in this way, anyone can innovate. More important, innovation can be taught.
You teach innovative thinking by helping people observe what they already know, then apply what they know in creative new ways.
What can leaders do to help people innovate? The foundation to all of this is making time to observe and creating a safe space for people to look for connections. Part of this deals with structure and the other part with culture. This is one of Barbee’s main points. Prioritize innovation. And encourage your team to do the same.
But here is the problem. In most organizations we don’t encourage people to experiment or think creatively. Plus we are always focused on what has to get done right now. What can be put off? If you don’t make time to get above the forest just a little you will always be focused on the tree in front of you, which means you and your team will never stumble upon hot new ideas and your organization will suffer.
Perhaps the easiest place for leaders to start is in how we deal with “absurd” ideas. Barbee recommends teaching your team (and yourself) to “respect absurd ideas.” From Barbee:
“If we hear an absurd idea, we often have one of two reactions: first, it’s a stupid idea so we dismiss it and go onto another idea or topic, or second, it’s so far out there that it frees up other thinking and ideation. It is now less risky to bring out other unusual ideas.”
This is a critical leader behavior. If you react to any suggestion as being stupid you create a power gap and shut down future suggestions. On the other hand, if you make your team feel like all ideas are welcome (even the ones that seem “out there” at first glance) you encourage new and unusual ideas. Instead of belittling or ignoring ideas give your team “greater confidence in their own thinking and ideas.”
Want one simple way you can start encouraging innovation today?
Ask people a version of our second question of approachable leaders: What would make this better? Then encourage whatever your teammate says. If you either think their suggestion is “out there” or you just don’t understand where they’re coming from, ask questions. Look for connections between that idea and other areas. Have a conversation.
This is key to innovative thinking. And it’s not bad approachability advice. Here are two other nuggets Barbee recommends to improve innovation that also relate to approachability. In fact, approachable leaders do these two automatically.
Encourage Access Up and Down the Organization. First of all, it makes no sense to exclude anyone from your team from innovative thinking. Whether you lead 8 people or 800 people, you want your company to grow and thrive. Two heads are better than one (and 800 are better than two!) The problem most companies face is that when they grow it increases complexity and can decrease communication. This paradox kills companies (read our article on it here). If there is a disconnect between leaders who makes the decisions and the folks doing the work you are going to have a problem. You must encourage ideas from all levels of the organization (especially the front-line where people are closest to the work and the customer but most likely to feel distance from leaders). Want to innovate? Encourage conversation and connection.
Innovate Through Integration. This idea ties into the last one. Bring your whole team together. Unfortunately, this is where a lot of organizations struggle – HR doesn’t really work with sales and sales avoids engineering. People end up in a silo just telling themselves stories about what is happening in their silo of the company. The tragedy is that any one of these stories is an opportunity to spark an innovation. When your team isn’t together you lose these opportunities. So be more approachable. Encourage other leaders to be more approachable. This will change the culture and encourage more conversations and connections.
Research actually shows that people who rate their manager approachable are 88% more likely to make a suggestion or volunteer to pitch in outside their normal job. Behaviors like this improve cooperation, drive innovation and deliver better business results. (Learn more about the research behind approachability in our white paper.)
Can you think of any examples of innovations that happened in your company? Was there a connection or conversation that sparked the innovation? Raise your hand (virtually) if your team could be more innovative. Do you see the connection between creating a more supportive environment and innovative thinking? How do you think approachability fits into it?
Here is what others have to say about recent Approachable Leadership Keynotes and Workshops.
Great Interactive Session, New Techniques
"I recently attended the Approachable Leadership Session with Phil Wilson at the CUE Conference in Denver. It was a great session. I loved the interactive sessions, they really help you learn some new techniques. Phil does a great job involving the participants and keeping everything moving at a great pace. I am so enthralled with this training that I brought Phil to our location to put my troops thru the paces for approachable leadership!" Laurie Galmeyer, Director of Human Resources, ETFN
Masterful Approach Captured Audience
“Phil is masterful in his approach and paints a compelling vision. He has the ability to capture an audience’s attention and take them on a journey through images and anecdotes. Whether you have 1 or 100 supervisors in your organization, I would recommend Phil Wilson’s “Approachable Leadership” session. And learning how to live longer and make more money wasn’t so bad either.” W. Alex Koch, Manager of Positive Associate Relations, TJX
Demystifies Leadership, Use Lessons Every Day
“Your workshop demystified what connecting with another human being – whether an employee, client, or spouse – can be like. I’ve used his 3-question strategy every day, both in my personal and professional relationships, to become a better coach, sister, and friend.”
Lori Broyles, Business and Entrepreneurial Services Coordinator, Francis Tuttle Technology Center
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