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I recently spent a weekend at Walt Disney World. It sucked, and I loved it. It rained a gazillion inches for 48 straight hours. My shoes and socks got soaked twice. I walked 5 miles with squishy, cold, wet feet. My iPhone got water in the charger port, so I couldn’t charge my phone. It sucked. And I loved it.
It’ll be crowded and hot with long lines and tired feet, but I’m already excited about the next trip. All because of 3 basic business lessons we can all learn from Disney.
1. Moments are powerful.
Standing in the rain at Epcot at 9:00pm, waiting for fireworks to start, Felix tripped and fell. (Felix is the sweet toddler of my fellow Disney College Program Alumni, Daniela and her husband Sean.)
He was rattled and upset, but a nearby Cast Member immediately walked over and offered him a sticker of the Eiffel Tower from the France pavilion. That one little magic moment brought Felix so much joy, and he totally forgot about his big tumble.
2. Kool-Aid is good.
Cast Members are empowered to create magic moments from their very first day. Onboarding is all about “drinking the Kool-Aid“, and while it’s easy to roll our eyes at cliches like that, believing in a little magic actually is a secret sauce. At Disney, drinking the Kool-Aid and sharing it with guests from all over the world is a direct driver of business success. I’ve been a Cast Member, and I’ve been a guest, and the Kool-Aid’s always good.
3. Bright spots outshine the bruises.
We spent two full days walking a total of 18 miles around three theme parks. It rained the entire time. On back to back days, we had to walk around for hours with wet, squishy feet. And yet, I’d do it again right now. Felix got an Eiffel Tower sticker. My brother was celebrating his 29th birthday and got 97 “happy birthdays!” from Cast Members everywhere we went. My husband got to visit 8 countries and eat dinner at a German biergarten. The bright spots are so bright the other stuff doesn’t even matter.
The moral of the story is that doing the right thing for your customer or your guest or your service provider or your new hire, etc. creates bright spots and leads to repeat business, word-of-mouth business, and all the good stuff that companies spend lots of marketing dollars on. EPIC moments are powerful.
How are you creating powerful experiences for others?
Last week Emily complimented me in her blog post when she spoke of the struggles I have faced in the last year and my ability to persevere through them. (Thanks, Emily!) And she’s not wrong. I have been that way for as long as I can remember; not letting anything stop me or get in my way. My dad taught me to have determination and I am so grateful that he did. But that determination and perseverance go hand in hand with the ability to be vulnerable. And this is where I used to fall short, very short. It wasn’t until I joined the Horizon Point team that I learned it was okay to be vulnerable, to ask for help, and to let others handle the load when you can’t. And during my health struggles in the past year, they have helped carry the load, without hesitation.
Vulnerability isn’t a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. It’s the ability to acknowledge when you can’t do it alone, when you made a mistake, or when you fell short. As Brene Brown puts it “(T)he definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. But vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our most accurate measure of courage.”
I had to learn to be vulnerable, and here’s what I have learned:
If you show vulnerability, others will follow. If leaders allow themselves to be vulnerable with their teams, it creates a culture of trust and in turn those employees will learn that vulnerability is acceptable, encouraged, and expected within the team.
How you respond to the vulnerability of others is make or break. As a leader, you need to encourage and accept the vulnerability of others. How you react to the vulnerability shown to you can build trust or destroy trust. Allow for mistakes and use them as learning opportunities. Encourage employees to seek help when they are overwhelmed, be someone that they can vent to if needed (without negative repercussions). Understand that they have emotions and while you may not understand or agree with those emotions, acknowledge them.
Vulnerability in leadership leads to better, more productive teams. By allowing and encouraging vulnerability and modeling vulnerability to your team, it creates a team that is psychologically safe, that is comfortable raising concerns, mistakes, and ideas, that has a growth mindset. And research shows that teams that are psychologically safe are the most productive teams you can have.
I have a wonderful team at Horizon Point that I can be vulnerable and courageous with, that I can go to for help when I need it, can share ideas and concerns with without fear of repercussion, and that I can vent to when I’m having one of those days. And I know that they have by back, and in return, they know that I have theirs.
How have you as a leader shown vulnerability and courage to your team? And how have you responded to the vulnerability shown to you?
The President of ATD Birmingham (and my friend) recently shared insights on The Leadership Pipeline with a room full of talent development professionals. I’m sure he said many, many great things, but the one thing I remember (and have talked about nonstop since then) was the idea that the first rung on the ladder of leadership is the hardest to climb.
The first time you shift from being an individual contributor to being a manager is like putting on a pair of glasses that no longer work. We know an upward move in our careers means upgraded responsibilities, but we don’t usually also upgrade our gear (glasses). So, even though we’re doing a new job, we still see our old job.
This got me thinking about other ways this metaphor applies to life. For example, if we are supposed to be brainstorming, or coming up with creative solutions, but we’re wearing the wrong glasses, we won’t even be able to see the new possibilities.
We talked earlier this year about armored leadership versus daring leadership, and I think the same concepts apply here. Being a knower and being right is a totally different mindset (pair of glasses) from being a learner and getting it right.
I think what I’m trying to say is it’s not so straightforward to shift from being a doer to being a learner, or getting stuff done to developing new ideas for how to do it. With our open the door theme this year, what I’m most excited about is opening the door to curiosity. Opening the door to new ways of working. Opening the door to different perspectives. Trying on new glasses.
Just last week, I talked with a group of HR professionals who are studying for the SHRM-CP exam. Our topic was learning and development in the context of an HR functional area. We spent a good amount of time defining a learning organization. Here’s a good overview via LinkedIn Newsletters written by Roopak Jain:
According to Peter Senge, the five characteristics of a learning organization are:
Systems thinking: The ability to see the system as a whole
Personal mastery: A commitment to continuous learning
Mental models: The ability to challenge common assumptions held by individuals and organizations
Shared vision: A common vision that is committed to and shared by everyone in the organization
Team learning: The drive to continue the process of enabling the capabilities to deliver results as a team
Individuals, organizations, and communities can all benefit from getting new glasses. Or inviting someone to the table with a different lens. If we only see things the way we’ve always seen things, how will we know what’s possible?
This ties in with all DEI initiatives, because we do have a history of lack of representation at the highest levels of decision-making and influence. If we study who has been represented in Fortune 500 CEOs, U.S. presidents, down to state governors, mayors, school board superintendents, small business owners, etc., we see how communities without diverse representation are less likely to thrive. At the core of many civic and business issues is a lack of perspective. It’s a great, big, complicated, beautiful, terrible, amazing world, and we all experience it differently.
At Horizon Point, we try every day to keep the door open to perspectives or experiences that are different from our own. We challenge our clients to do the same. We ask questions. We remain curious about the world around us and the lives and needs of our neighbors. We volunteer and support community organizations that are trying to improve where we live, where we work, and where we play.
If your door is already open to curiosity and new perspectives, how are you bringing others with you?
If you are realizing that you need to take the step and open the door, there’s no better time like the present. If you’re not sure where to get started, take a look at What We Do, and maybe we can help.
We subscribe to the newsletter from Appreciation at WorkTM and got one of the first announcements of the new, post-COVID research on professional appreciation. Right away, I asked the team if we could do a blog about it. New research!? Yes! Here’s the blurb we got:
Appreciation at Work has done peer-reviewed research and polling through and post-COVID. The result of this research is a completely new chapter on how to effectively show appreciation to remote and hybrid employees including topics such as:
the variety of remote work relationships
trust in remote work relationships
creating and maintaining a workplace culture
the employer/supervisor perspective
the employee perspective
the key to keeping remote employees
what neuroscience is showing
This edition also includes updated research (50+ citations) of data shared about the importance of appreciation and its positive impact on the functioning of businesses & organizations (including increased productivity and higher profitability when your employees feel appreciated.
I read it, loved it, laughed, cringed, and mostly just appreciated for the millionth time that Gary Chapman & Paul White adapted the Love Languages for professional relationships. They present their research on appreciation at work in a relatable, real life way. Here are some of my favorite quotes, classic and new:
“During the Great Resignation of 2022, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that employees were three times more likely to resign due to a lack of appreciation in comparison to financial compensation issues.”
“When leaders actively pursue teaching their team members how to communicate authentic appreciation in the ways desired by the recipients, the whole work culture improves. Interestingly, even managers and supervisors report they enjoy their work more. All of us thrive in an atmosphere of appreciation.”
“74% of employees never or rarely express gratitude to their boss.” (Reminder that appreciation is important up, down, and sideways!)
“There is a distinct difference between the Quality Time employees desire from their supervisor and what they value from co-workers. In response to this issue, we expanded the Motivating by Appreciation Inventory to allow individuals to indicate what actions they desire and from whom they want them.”
Acts of Service are about the other person, not about you. “Ask before you help. Don’t assume you know what help they want or need. If you are going to help, do it their way.”
“Our research with over 375,000 employees found that Tangible Gifts is the least chosen language of appreciation.” So if you’re going to do it, it’s important to give gifts “primarily to those individuals who appreciate them” and “give a gift the person values”. (Lorrie wrote about HPC’s take on gifts in “A Few of Our Favorite Things”.)
“The surest way to find out the appropriateness of Physical Touch is simply to inquire.” Many people appreciate a good high five, fist bump, or handshake to celebrate a job well done. Just check with them first, and don’t hold it against them if they prefer not to touch.
Chapman & White also devote an entire chapter to the ROI of genuine appreciation. Take a look at these charts from the book:
Regarding remote and hybrid teams, Chapman & White basically say the needs are the same as fully in-person teams, but the intensity of certain needs are different. Here’s a snippet from the chapter on remote teams:
“In one study, prior to COVID-19, with almost 90,000 individuals who had taken our online assessment…we found that Words of Affirmation was the most desired appreciation language, followed by Quality Time and Acts of Service. But remote employees chose Quality Time as their primary language of appreciation more frequently (35% of employees) than workers on site (25%). The same pattern was found with employees both during the pandemic and afterwards.”
They go on to say, “…the single most important lesson we learned for effectively communicating appreciation to remote colleagues is that one must be more proactive than in face-to-face relationships. The most important factor is to understand, affirm, and relate to your colleagues as people.”
If you saw our new team video highlighting our operating values, or if you’re a longtime HPC friend, you know that People First is our number one value. We are all just people, with the same ups and downs, and the same desire to be loved, appreciated, and valued. If we were to sum up the 5 languages book(s) in the simplest terms, we’d say Be People First. Be people first toward yourselves, and be people first towards others.
If we remember to be People First, we just might get better at genuine appreciation all on our own.
For individuals or teams interested in learning more about The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, we highly suggest starting with the MBA InventoryTM, then reading the book (or listening to the audiobook). If you purchase the book, it comes with an access code to take the inventory. If you’d like to jump straight to the inventory, you can buy a single access code or codes for your entire team here. (I feel like it’s important for me to say that we’re not being paid to promote any of this, we just really like it.)
“If there’s something stirring in you now, and you know what it is, do that. There’s no need to overthink it. A mistake here and there isn’t going to kill you, so don’t waste time worrying about that. It’s infinitely better to fail with courage than to sit idle with fear, because only one of these gives you the slightest chance to live abundantly. And if you do fail, then the worst-case scenario is that you’ll learn something from it. You’re for sure not going to learn jack squat from sitting still and playing it safe.“
On his 40th birthday trip with friends, my husband sent me a picture of a paragraph from a book I gave him for Father’s Day the previous summer. He’s not a big reader, but sitting on a Dominican beach waiting for me to join him, he had finally started reading the Chip Gaines book I had given him several months earlier.
“This is so me,” he texted along with the paragraph where Chip described the joy and satisfaction he gets from working with his hands.
Today, as I pulled out the book to try to find the exact quote for this blog post, I found the note I wrote to him for Father’s Day stuck within its pages. Among other things, the note said, “I’m committed to whatever direction you feel God is leading you and us in, but I don’t ever want you to shy away from something because of lack of confidence or fear. Like he says in one of these books, ‘fear dressed up as wisdom provides very poor counsel.’ Let’s move forward with faith instead of fear, trusting God to lead us. I love you.”
You see, we’d been fighting a lot over the last year or so because he was working in a job and career that was making him miserable. I’m prone to catch on to misery quicker than he does, but he was finally starting to begin to admit it himself.
Although he loved- and still does- so many of the people he had the privilege of working with as well as aspects of the work, a variety of factors were leading to misery. One of which, I would realize later, was that although some of the people he led as a healthcare administrator got to work with their hands regularly, he didn’t. And he was at work so much, and devoted to spending time with our kids if he wasn’t, that he never got to heed the good advice of sabbathing with his hands because he worked with his mind. There wasn’t time to.
He’s one to grit his teeth and bare it, being brought up to believe that hard work- whether you like that work or not- is what makes you have worth and value. I had wanted him to quit for over a year, confident we could make it work financially if he did. But he was no “quitter.”
He was and is a smart, good looking guy (I know I’m biased, but he is). He is by all standards a privileged white male. He could do whatever he wanted.
No one ever told him growing up, “You know, you should find work that involves working with your hands because you seem to like to do that.” He didn’t take shop or any Career Tech classes for that matter in high school because he was taking all Advanced Placement ones. His GPA, ACT, and GMAT scores pointed him towards careers where he would sit behind a desk and or in meetings almost all day everyday and lead people. The whole world was telling him this was his path to success.
It was pretty easy for him to get there. He hardly studied for the GMAT and scored in the top 25%. Getting into graduate school to earn a Masters in Health Administration and an MBA wasn’t difficult for him. Did he enjoy doing it? Was he able to use his God given gifts and passions? Who knows? No one had ever said to him nor had he said to himself that that was the point or even a consideration.
But what had been so “easy” to get to had become unbearably hard because he hated it. A week after Father’s Day when I wrote that note, the decision was made. He would no longer have to grit his teeth and bare it. He’d been given the chance to figure out a route that hopefully would be more fulfilling and desirable, more prone to how he is designed.
By the 40th birthday trip, he’d taken some time to process and plan his next steps and self reflect, helping him realize what he needed. What he could offer. The path, whether the world told him he was crazy or not, involved working with his hands a whole lot more.
Of the two points I think I want to make in this post, one is this: in a world with multiple career paths, we often point others and ourselves down the wrong ones because we don’t allow them and ourselves to figure out what makes us tick. I think the general assumption has been we do this the most to those who are less privileged. To those that have to get a job to make ends meet, whatever job that may be. However miserable the job may be.
While this is certainly true, I think we do it just as much at the very opposite end of the spectrum. To the ones that seemingly have all the options in the world because of their privilege. Such is the misery of the smart, attractive white male. We decide for them and they decide based on what the world says successful careers are. All of which involve professional degrees and dress pants. And if we are honest, the privileged still live in a world where the stereotype is that successful men need to be in careers where their wife can stay home and raise kids and keep domestic life for a family running. Where she can work if she wants to, but heaven forbid would have to. It’s a different pressure than having to choose a job to be able to put food on the table, but it is actually of the same vein. Pressure to earn regardless of the cost.
But for my husband, the work all this led to was difficult in the form of it being a little bit like slow torture. It hadn’t always been like that, but the last time I had remembered talking to him at work and it sounded like he was enjoying it was when he called me back after being up the ceiling of an operating room trying to figure out why there was a leak. “You were up in the ceiling? In your dress pants?” I asked, “Isn’t there someone else that is supposed to do that?”
“I wanted to see it for myself,” he said. “I wanted to fix it.”
He wanted to fix it with his own two hands. Not just his mind. He’d been solving so many problems over the past 15 years with his mind and his hands were desperate to be put to use.
He still solves a lot of problems with his mind now, but he gets to use his hands to implement those solutions. And he is happier. And our family is happier. And by His hands, we are still fed. We have never been anywhere close to having to go without our daily bread.
Now, a year and half after this transition, he’s away this week fixing flooring at an investment property we have. (Not paying someone to fix the floors was another source of fighting for us until I realized doing it on his own was much like being in that operating room ceiling. He needed to do it with his own two hands. He needed to fix it himself.)
Earlier this year, he turned a house into a home for a family that had been living in a hotel for over two years. In a world where those who have made mistakes in the past can’t get financing or a chance to rent a decent home, he decided to change that. One property and one family at a time.
He built a swing set out back for their young kids to play on. “They need to be able to play outside,” he said. And then he went about building. Not buying a swing set kit to set up, but building a swing set with no plans, just his two hands working with his mind.
And for my second key point of this post and of what this whole post was originally designed to be about, he’s redone our home office. He designed it with his mind, and every single thing in the office he built himself from scratch with his own two hands. And it is beautiful. And functional.
Here are a couple of sneak peek pictures of it, but it will be featured on a new website he is “building” to showcase, in part, the work of his hands. The site is a little bit real estate, a little bit travel, and a whole lot of our family’s journey to capture what makes spaces and places home. We will post the full feature of the website next week as it goes live with advice on how to design a home office, or any office for that matter, without taking the home out of it.
BEFOREBy “his” handsAFTER
As you move into your work week, I hope you’ll take some time to think about what makes you tick and if that is provided at all in the work you do day in and day out. Do you get to build your equivalent of swings sets and office spaces? Because if you aren’t, you most likely aren’t building beautiful things that end up helping others live and work well either. It is a courageous and loving act instead of the fearful one. We all need to figure out what makes us tick, not because it is self-serving, but precisely because it is the exact opposite.
By his hands, my husband is serving, and by His hands, a gracious God has moved our transition that was plagued with fear and expectations of what we are supposed to do to one where we are doing what we are meant to do.
