Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

  • Enhancing Workplace Culture

    Enhancing Workplace Culture

    Written by guest blogger: Steve Graham

    A workplace culture is unique.  There are similar cultures, however, each one has individual attributes.  Great, good, bad, or downright horrible, each culture makes a statement about your organization.  In today’s highly connected society, word spreads fast about your values, mission, and the way you treat the people who work for you.  Culture will exist absent of a specific focus. Even the worst workplaces have a culture. These are often classified as, “toxic workplaces”.

    There is no shortage of literature about great workplaces, work culture, and even the toxic places.  In this article, I will explore those attributes common to the best work cultures. My goal is to offer ideas that will enhance the workplace environment.

    Culture is not a one-size-fits-all concept.  If you are trying to be Google, please stop!  Your industry sector, available talent, and even the geographic location are all influencers that help shape culture.  According to ERC, an HR consulting firm, allowing your culture to develop naturally, is one of the biggest mistakes organizations make.

    Leaders are the bedrock in shaping workplace cultures.  They set the tone for how culture is created.  People need to feel connected in their workplace. On average, most of us spend more time at work than at home.  Organizational Psychologist agrees, that workplace culture must provide the six universal human needs to thrive: respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth, and meaning.  In his book, Connection Culture, Michael Lee Stallard comments, “An organization’s culture reflects the predominant ways of thinking, behaving, and working.”

    As you think about these six universal human needs, reflect on how each connects to workplace culture:

    1. Respect: An environment that encourages open communication.
    2. Recognition: An environment that values accomplishments.
    3. Belonging: An environment that cultivates engagement.
    4. Autonomy: An environment that is free of micro-management.
    5. Personal Growth: An environment that promotes career development.
    6. Meaning: An environment that allows the expression of purpose.

    When exploring the attributes of enhancing culture in the workplace, there are commonalities that are present in organizations known for being great places to work.  In a recent article from Huffington Post, Dr. Michelle Rozen identifies seven characteristics of successful company cultures.  Dr. Rozen starts the list of characteristics with purpose.  Having a sense of why you do what you do is essential in a successful culture.  She comments about the role of purpose, “Purpose is an inspirational driver for engaging employees and communities. When a leader establishes a clear purpose for the organization, it will become the inspirational driver for engaging employees and so provide them with a concrete source for motivation.”

    Her list of characteristics also includes: communications, diversity, engagement, teamwork, and growth/development.  If the workplace has a focus on these characteristics, it is a foundation for a successful culture.  Take each of the characteristics and compare it against the six universal human needs. Are you balanced in your approach to each?  If not, this is a great place to start working on enhancement.

    The organization, Great Place To Work, recently published a book titled: A Great Place to Work For All.  Their publication illustrates the connection between great cultures and the impact on their bottom line. The importance of leadership in shaping culture was also discussed: “In the emerging economy, leaders have to create an outstanding culture for everyone, no matter who they are or what they do for the organization. They have to build Great Places to Work For All.”  Creating a culture that maximizes the human potential accelerates performance.   The research compiled by Great Place To Work is a powerful resource for creating an exceptional work culture and demonstrating how it is worth the investment.

    Enhancing workplace culture takes time.  It also takes a commitment to prioritizing resources to achieve the desired outcomes.  If you keep your people central to the mission, you will design a culture that works best for your organization.  There is nothing wrong with borrowing ideas from other organizations that have an exceptional culture.  Borrow it, but customize to fit your environment.   A workplace culture is like a personality, where authenticity is essential.  A “one-size-fits-all” or “cut and paste” approach will not work in the long run.

    The first step in enhancement is an evaluation of what you are doing and not doing.  Also, observe your competitors. What can you learn from them? Do they seem to have better talent? Do they experience lower turnover? Do they have a better public perception?   Resist the temptation to be something your organization is not.  A great culture is not about the perks.  This quote from IDEO, an international design and consulting firm founded in Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, sums it up: “Often, people want to write culture off as a slew of perks you might find at tech companies. But really, culture is about creating an environment that makes it possible for people to work together to come up with innovative products and ideas—the same products and ideas that drive revenue.”  Here is a suggested path to follow if you want a better workplace culture:

    1. Define who your organization is and live it every day!
    2. Establish an environment built on trust. If trust is not a core ingredient nothing else matters.  A Forbes article from Glenn Llopis, Design Your Workplace Culture To Go Beyond Engagement And Fuel Trust says, “Leaders who develop intimacy build trust by developing relationships with their people and placing employees at the center of an organization’s growth strategy.”
    3. Encourage open communications—break down barriers that impede progress.
    4. Develop people. Have a strategic focus on talent development.
    5. Offer flexibility. Offer an environment that meets the needs of your people.
    6. Recognize people the way they want to be recognized. Be consistent.
    7. Celebrate successes and support your people in failures.

    Workplace culture is important and takes time to develop.  Approach the process of enhancing workplace culture as ongoing.  It is never a completed task. Cultures must also evolve.  Keep the six universal human needs at the heart of your design.  Leaders are curators of culture. Be authentic. What works in Silicon Valley does not translate everywhere.  Workplace culture has a real connection to the bottom line, so treat it with the importance it deserves.  Observe your direct competitors. Often, they are most like you. There is value in understanding what works and does not within your competitive set.  Define your authentic self as an organization. Keep trust as a key element in designing the right culture. This will lead to innovation and a holistic relationship between your people and revenue.

     

    About the author: Steve Graham serves as Vice President for Marketing, HR Business Partner, and college instructor. He holds graduate degrees in management and higher education. As a life-long learner, he has additional graduate and professional education in executive & professional coaching, health care administration, and strategic human resource management.

    He is a certified HR professional with The Society for Human Resource Management, a certified coach with the International Coach Federation, and a Global Career Development Facilitator. His professional memberships include: The Society for Human Resource Management, the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration, Association for Talent Development, and International Coach Federation. LinkedIn.com/in/hstevegraham

  • Horizon Point’s Favorite Authors of the Year

    Horizon Point’s Favorite Authors of the Year

    We always do a book of the year and oftentimes a Top 10 list for certain types of books each year.   What I’ve found in my reading this year, though, is that there are some really good authors out there putting out more than one great read.

    They are thought leaders that write about things that span across the professional and personal and across industries and cultures.  They capture the heart and head with enjoyable prose and research-backed guidance. All help to guide better leadership, better workplaces, better homes, and better communities.

    Here are the authors we recommend putting on your 2019 reading list:

    Chip and Dan Heath.  These two wrote our book of the year – The Power Moments.  I’ve found their book Switch to be equally engaging and practical to apply.  I’m looking forward to reading the others they have out as well.

    Brene Brown.   A writer that gets to the heart of authenticity, Brene uses research and personal stories to create a narrative that is impactful. We read one of her books as a team and found that her voice may resonate more with women than men.  However, thinking about her voice whether it resonates with your gender or not, and reading prose of different mindsets is an important part of understanding others.  Men and women alike should pick up her work.

    Adam Grant.  Adam wrote our 2017 book of the Year, Originals. We also enjoyed hearing his insights at SHRM18, read about it here and here.

    Beyond Originals, his book Give and Take is powerful and we look forward to anything else he puts out on the market.

    Cy Wakeman.   I found myself saying “amen” over and over again and highlighting Cy’s work in both Reality-Based Leadership and No Ego, plotting ways to incorporate her insights into our leadership training content.  She gets that so much of what leaders deal with in the workplace is unnecessary drama and outlines practical ways, along with tools to use in the appendix of each book, to “ditch the drama.”

     

    Who is your top author for 2018?

     

     

  • Horizon Point’s Book of the Year

    Horizon Point’s Book of the Year

    In January, we declared this year the year of authenticity. Authenticity would be at the heart of what we would pursue as individuals and as a business.

    So, of course, we set out to find a book of the year about authenticity. There are a lot of books out there directly related to this, and we as a team read at least a few of them. But none of them quite fit what we were trying to pursue, of what we were meaning by living as an authentic leader and leading an authentic life.

    But, one favorite book stuck out for the year. We referenced it in more blog posts and kept coming back to it as a team, even though it was something we read in March of this year.

    This book, The Power of Moments, through research-backed analysis- describes how to create moments, or rich experiences through elevation, insight, pride, and connection.  It engages the reader in thinking about how to practically elevate themselves and others by creating more moments.

    Moments “rise above the routine and break the script”. They come from an action that creates insight. From practicing courage by pre-loading responses providing meaningful and personalized recognition, being obsessed with completion, and by creating shared purpose and meaning.

    Living authentically, we realized, comes from pursuing moments and helping create them for others.

    The ending of the book cites research on the five most common regrets of those who are dying. Number one on this list is not having the courage to live a life true to themselves instead of the life someone else expected them to live.  A life lacking in authenticity was the biggest regret, a life filled with minimal points of elevation, insight, pride, and connection.

    We hope you will pick up a copy of our recommended book of the year. We hope it will allow you to pursue in 2019 and beyond the authentic life. We wish you a life full of moments for yourself and for those you love and lead.

  • I Think It Was His Eyes That Got Me

    I Think It Was His Eyes That Got Me

    I think it was his eyes that got me. Deep brown, wide and curious with one a little lazy, I noticed he seemed a little lost in the mix. Or maybe what got me was that he was wearing the same Hulk Smash Halloween costume my kindergartener was wearing during their Halloween class party over two years ago.

    I was there as a mom trying to help with the chaos of five and six-year-olds amped up on candy and holiday excitement when I noticed him. The teacher had a neat pumpkin game where each child was given a small plastic pumpkin with a lowercase letter on the bottom of it. Each child was then supposed to go find the uppercase match also on the bottom of a plastic pumpkin hidden in the field by the school.

    I noticed the teacher quietly pull this precious boy aside and talk with him about what his letter was. He didn’t know his letters yet. His was a g.

    I couldn’t get the boy out of my head, so a week or so later, I emailed the teacher and asked if I could help him learn his letters. I know nothing about the best methods for educating young children, but I thought I could at least spend a little time on letters. How hard could that be?

    Two years have gone by. As you can see by this year’s Halloween photo, he trick-or-treated with us this year. His mom, my friend now, was working her second shift job and couldn’t take him. In those two years, we have learned his story, grown to love him and his family and are trying to help them with the challenges that poverty and, honestly, bad choices throw at people.

    You see, not long after I started working with him at school, I learned that his father was in jail, his mother had been in and out of jail (mostly out since he had been born). All on drug-related charges. Although she’d worked briefly at a gas station, she generated money to live off through the only thing she knew how to do easily- sell drugs.

    Over these couple of years, she’s opened her heart to me and I’ve come to see that things aren’t always what they seem on the surface. I’ve come to find that those that we most want to condemn in the world are in the situations they are in, yes because of poor choices, but also because of the lack of resources, and not just financial resources, that many of us often take for granted because they are so readily at our disposal.

    I’ve realized that the barriers I learned about and taught people about through the Facilitating Career Development curriculum are real barriers and often stacked on top of one another.

    Here are the barriers I’ve seen and the story of this family as we’ve tried to walk alongside them to overcome them:

    1. Past mistakes that can’t be erased or overcome even once people make a choice to live a different way. My friend made a choice about a year ago to stop living the way she was living. She decided she couldn’t go back to jail, couldn’t keep selling drugs to keep a roof over her family’s head.  We went to lunch and I heard her entire story, surprised at how candid and honest she was about her mistakes.  And also, I hate to admit, surprised at how her anxieties and fears were similar to my own. Mamas really just want a good life for their kids; it’s what we worry about the most.

    We went to the NCC after lunch.  There she got some clothes for a couple of her kids (she wouldn’t take any for herself because she said had what she needed) and we talked about a pathway out of her situation. Pamela and Tim and all the staff at the NCC are a great resource to walk alongside people to understand their situations, provide practical and accountable solutions, and have the patience and grace to stay the course with people.

    She needed help with the utility bill, and Pamela told me that this was how she knew she wasn’t dealing anymore. If she wanted to, Pamela said, she could get money fast to pay to keep the lights on through dealing again. She wasn’t doing it though. The NCC provided support to pay part of the utility bill.

    In between this happening and now, she’s been evicted from her rental home, lived with two of her children and a new grandbaby in an extended stay motel, moved in with her father where she and our brown-eyed boy slept on an air mattress in his one bedroom apartment and within the last month, they have moved into an apartment on their own where she is struggling to pay the rent.

    She’s held down a job now for more than four months, but the news came that her court date for charges dating back to 2015 was on the settlement docket. We went to court and waited her turn only for her case to be postponed till next year. Tim with the NCC sat and waited with us.

    It’s hard for me to understand how and why the judicial system takes so long. But even though she has started to make better choices, her past mistakes will shape her future. We don’t know what that will look like when her case comes back up again.

    While I’m not in any way saying people should not be held accountable for their mistakes, the fines and fees and punishments that go along with the judicial system hold people back from getting to a point of self-sufficiency. So do predatory lending practices and government systems that incentivize the opposite of good outcomes and self-sufficiency. This is most apparent for those who are trying to lead a different life than the one that got them into these systems. Which leads me to my next barrier.

    2. Transportation. I take for granted that I can get in my car at any time, never have a second thought if it will start and never worry about where gas money will come from. Transportation is a tremendous barrier for people trying to find and keep a job to lead to a better life.

    Because of my friend’s past, she owes fines and has to have a special kind of insurance to get her drivers license back. We are working on this.  In addition, once that is taken care of, the cost of a vehicle comes in. The NCC is working with her if and when we can get her license squared away to provide her with a vehicle she can pay the center for weekly. She will have to participate in drug testing on a regular basis to keep the vehicle.

    Right now, she is paying for a ride to and from work with a co-worker (at a price that is way more than what she should have to pay) and her daughter has a car that provides some transportation options at times.

    3. Childcare. Ever wondered what people with kids do when they have jobs that aren’t at times most people work? Second shifts start right about the time kids are getting out of school. If you don’t have family or your job doesn’t pay enough to cover the cost of child care, what do you do?  In addition, what do if you can find childcare and pay for it, but it ends well before your shift does?

    We’ve helped my friend to work around this barrier, but have you ever thought about these questions before? It’s a conundrum to work through.

    4. Finding and keeping a job (that also covers a minimum standard of living). I’m proud that my friend has been working towards sustainable employment. She worked at the chicken plant for a while but was let go for accumulating too many points for absences due to the health and legal issues of two of her children.

    She has a job she really likes now. She got it by her own efforts through a temporary agency. She has been hired on with the company in a permanent role that will start next month, which also comes with a raise and benefits.

    A weekly paycheck of approximately $300-400 might get you in a Kia, but it does not go far. It always seems to be a game of waiting for the next paycheck to come around because the money is always used to pay for basic necessities. And helping to understand what the most basic necessity is at the moment is also hard.

    I will say, it is hard to understand the mindset of spending when there isn’t money to spend. The NCC is working with my friend to help her understand how to budget and to provide small amounts of support to provide necessities when needed. The budgeting problem is tied to another barrier as well.

    5. Simply not knowing what you don’t know. I take for granted that my parents spoke openly with me as a child about what things cost and what we could and couldn’t afford. I had a savings account as a child, and my parents had incomes and saving habits that never led us to live paycheck to paycheck. I didn’t pick or chose my way into this, I was born into it. My friend was born into her situation and her brown-eyed boy was too. We are trying to create opportunities for exposure to a different way.

    In addition, with every problem, my friend has brought my way I have at least one person I can pick up the phone and call about trying to alleviate the problem. Take her legal problems. I know her attorney and the judges in Morgan County, and I have no problem contacting them due to our personal and professional connections.  If my friend has problems with school for one of her kids I pick up the phone and call my contacts at the central office or the principal of the school that her children attend.  I have known someone in my network I can immediately pick up the phone and call, and the NCC has been the most called upon resource. Again, I didn’t choose these connections, I was born into most of them.

    I thought everyone could just pick up the phone and call someone they know. They can’t, because they don’t know who and what they don’t know. I thought most everyone knows how to live within their means. When the means are so small and no one has taught you how to do that, a lot of people don’t or can’t.

    In all of this, the NCC has been the avenue of hope, prayer, accountability, and patience for my friend and me as we try to navigate and overcome these barriers. There are people in our community that are honestly trying and are overlooked or judged because of past mistakes and the environment they were born into. They just need a hand, a prayer and someone to walk alongside them to be their neighbor.

    And walking alongside people requires financial resources. Not handouts but hands up. I’ve found the NCC to be the best source for a hand-up for our neighbors.

    As we do at Horizon Point each year, we try to live our value of giving back. In an effort to continue to help people like my friend with the life skills, workplace skills, and love needed for success, we’ve chosen to partner with the NCC for Giving Tuesday.

    Horizon Point will match every donation dollar for dollar given to the NCC on Giving Tuesday up to $5000.00. We hope you will join us in changing our community one relationship and hand-up at a time. Help us make a big difference, please donate here.

    For more information on the Neighborhood Christian Center of Alabama, Inc. (NCC), visit their website here.

     

  • 4 Ways to Help Change Happen When Change is Hard

    4 Ways to Help Change Happen When Change is Hard

    “For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently.”

    from Switch by Chip and Dan Heath

    Change is all around us.  In our personal and professional lives, just when we might get to used to something, it changes.  Many of the most life-altering personal changes that we choose like marriage and children we tend to embrace and get excited about.  We put ourselves in these situations of change.

    At work, though, changes often occur, and we didn’t prompt them. They are unsettling and hard.

    We work a lot with clients helping them manage change.  In addition, when we are asked to come in to do training, whatever type it is, it is usually because the organization wants some type of change to occur.

    So how do we help people through change?  I think the first thing to do is acknowledge that change is exhausting and then build strategies to help people avoid or overcome that exhaustion.  As stated in Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, “Change is hard because people wear themselves out….What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.”

     

    Here are four ways to help fight that exhaustion to make change easier.

    1. Limit your choices.  Much has been written about highly successful people who always wear the same clothes and/or always eat the same things, day after day.  Take, for example, Steve Jobs and the standard uniform he wore:  black turtleneck and jeans. Or Nick Saban and his supposed diet of a Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie every morning for breakfast.  Why is this helpful?  Because if you don’t have to think about these things, it leaves you more mental energy to think about more important things.  Some practical things to do in limiting your choices:
    • Subscribe to services to limit your choices:  You may not want to eat an oatmeal pie every morning or wear the same thing every day.  Subscription-based services can help you limit your choices and also infuse variety in them. For example, meal services where meals are delivered to your door can be a good idea. What you eat is pre-chosen after you answer a few questions about preferences. These are saved and used to chart your weekly meals and you don’t have to think about your grocery list or if you forgot the key ingredient.  It is all right there. Subscriptions to clothing boxes (Trunk Club is my favorite), automatic reordering through Amazon, and other similar places can also help you cut the thinking out of everyday choices to help store up your mental reserves for more important things.
    • Set your three big to-dos for the day:  Your choices of to-dos are probably massive each day. Multiply that by weeks, months and years and it is a whole lot to wrap your mind around.  But, if you sit down each day (or week) and list the three things that are most important to get done that day, you are inadvertently limiting your choices of chasing multiple to-do rabbits.  I’m using Michael Hyatt’s FullFocus Planner to help me to do this.  Although some of the planners are overkill, I really like the set-up that prompts you to set three big rocks each day.  These should stem from the goals you set at the beginning of each quarter in the front of the planner.
    1. Scale the good.  Focus less on the bad.   Our minds are wired to problem solve.  While this is often a good thing, constant problem-solving mode zaps our energy and leads to fatigue.  To combat this mental default, sit down each week on your own or with your team and determine one thing that went right last week.   Use that to then focus your energy for the week of replicating that right instead of finding and fixing the wrong. Oftentimes this indirectly gets rid of a lot of problems.

    As it is stated in Switch, “Ask yourself, ‘What is the ratio of the time I spend solving problems to the time I spend scaling successes?’ We need to switch from archeological problem solving to bright-spot evangelizing.”

    1. Start behaving as though things are the new normal. I heard a clinical psychologist speak at a conference earlier in the week.   He described an activity he does with people who have come to him for marriage counseling.  In this, he asks the couple, what do people do in a happy marriage?  He said it takes a bit to get them actually listing behaviors, but when they get on this track, they list things like: they say I love you, go on dates, have sex, call to check in during the day, send flowers, cook each other meals, etc… You get the picture.  Then he tells them to pick one of these things and do it.  So, he makes them declare Thursday night date night (or hey, sex night) and asks them to commit to that.   He says, “Don’t try to be in love, just do what people in love do.”

    This obviously is tied to focusing on the good, not the bad as stated in number two, but it goes beyond that in building upon number one by not thinking about it. Just do it.  It builds in our automated sense to create habits, thus diminishing mental fatigue.

    1. Create change scripts.  If you are leading a change with a group of people, we find creating change scripts for communicating the changes to be very helpful.   We’ve created a format that outlines how to do this based on the way people process information. For example, most people start with the what when communicating change instead of the why, which immediately triggers the wrong part of the brain- hello panic- and then no one listens to the rest of what you have to say.

    You walk through filling in the blanks based on the outline, so it is designed to help limit the exhaustion and often paralysis that can come from thinking, “How on earth do I tell people this?”

    It also helps people stay on the same script, limiting confusion and assumptions that make change management harder than it has to be. If you’re interested in talking to us about this, reach out to us.

     

    Change is hard, but if you can limit the fatigue that comes from daily life that is compounded by the change process, you can help yourself and others navigate change more successfully.

    How do you keep your energy at a level at a place that allows you to navigate change effectively?