Issue No. 77 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features an important book on engagement and Bucket #6 (The Program Bucket) in my forthcoming book. Remember that you can delegate your reading to other team members and ask for mini-reviews at your weekly staff meetings. By now, your resource bookshelf should be bulging. That’s the sign of a healthy organization. And this reminder: to review the 75+ books I’ve recommended in back issues, visit the archives here.
20 Leadership Stories for Your Next 20 Staff Meetings
News Flash! Employee engagement is more than a hot trend—it’s on fire. Click on Michael Lee Stallard’s book title to order from Amazon, Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity.
According to Stallard, David Neeleman, the CEO of JetBlue Airways, “meets 95 percent of new employees on their first day of work. From day one he demonstrates that he values them. He also sets aside one day each week to travel on JetBlue flights where he serves beverages and gets down on his hands and knees to clean planes.” In 2002, JetBlue wanted to hire 2,000 team members and received 130,000 applications!
JetBlue models the “value” element of Stallard’s three-part connection culture: vision, value and voice. Don’t look for a simplistic been-there-done-that formula. This is deep, but practical. Here’s the big idea: “I’m convinced that unless the people in an organization have a strong sense of connection—a bond that promotes trust, cooperation and esprit de corps—they will never reach their potential as individuals, and the organization will never reach its potential.”
Like my other reviews on engagement books (The Three Signs of a Miserable Job and The Carrot Principle), the author points to studies by Gallup and others that disconnection and disengagement at work are at alarming rates. This book will help. The appendix includes 37 robust questions for assessing your organizational culture and connection.
Plus, a 63-page bonus section is worth the price of the book. The “Learn From 20 Great Leaders Over 20 Days” chapter features 20 stories (with application ideas) that are perfect for your weekly staff meetings. Some of the leaders who demonstrate the “Vision + Value + Voice = Connection” culture include Saddleback’s Rick Warren, Starbuck’s Howard Schultz, The Body Shop’s Anita Roddick, Frances Hesselbein, the retired CEO of the Girl Scouts, and an amazing array of historical figures such as General George Marshall and the Marquis de Lafayette.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1. Answer this question from the author, “Do your closest coworkers know you as a person, including your life outside work, what’s important to you, and what talents and skills you possess?”
2. Do you agree that disengagement and disconnection at work, across North America, is at epidemic levels? If so, what’s the solution?
Bucket #6 of 20: The Program Bucket - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
Over a 20-week period, I’m featuring one of the 20 buckets (core competencies) from my forthcoming book, Mastering the Management Buckets (pre-order now for April delivery). Ken Behr, president of ECFA, recommends the book with this comment, “…a great idea-generating tool and ready reference guide for the nonprofit manager.” Here’s the core competency in Bucket #6: The Program Bucket:
“We are zealots for program effectiveness and so we research and understand our customer before launching new programs, products or services. We measure program results. We feed our primary programs and drop the losers—all in the spirit of discerning where God is at work.”
Know your strengths, roll out from them, and then make sure others know them, too. If your donor letters or Sunday morning offering appeals are the 32nd verse of that old hymn, “Help Us Make It Through the Fiscal Year,” you won’t excite anyone. But if you focus on your strengths—your flagship programs, products and services, and how they are changing lives for the better—you’ll create momentum, loyalty and engaged donors, members and customers.
To roll out from your strengths, you need programs, products and services that you are well known for. Invest think time in identifying those programs that qualify for your strengths list, then create a thoughtful strategy to talk them up in your newsletters, on your website, at board meetings and presentations, and in your elevator speech. When someone asks, “How’s it going?” that’s your cue to talk about your strengths.
Introduce your team members to the 20 critical core competencies every business and nonprofit must master. Attend our Management Buckets Workshop Experience. Here are some of our 2008 dates:
• April 21, 2008 (Dallas) – Mastering the Management Buckets all-day workshop at Christian Management Association’s annual conference
• May 27, 2008 (Dallas) – Mastering the Management Buckets, half-day workshop at the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions annual convention
NEXT STEPS: I can help you integrate these leadership and management best practices into your unique setting and help you assess your competencies in the 20 management buckets. Email me at [email protected] or visit my website at www.JohnPearsonAssociates.com.
To bring a one-day or two-day Management Buckets Workshop Experience to your organization or city, call our office at 949/500-0334. Ditto for the six-hour Nonprofit Board Governance Workshop.
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