How to Empower Your Employees to Win | Helen Kupp

0:00Yes, we worked under extreme pressure in the middle of a crisis, quite honestly. But people found bright spots during that time, right? We saw a ton of benefits from working more flexibly. Things like better productivity, better work-life balance. We saw that there's just generally higher scores when people are given flexibility. And what that really comes down to is when people are trusted to get the work done, they, in general, have felt better about work overall. That's Helen Kupp. She's one of the co-founders of Future Forum and a co-author on the book How the Future Works, leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives.

0:49What Helen's describing is what we all went through with COVID. Employees found themselves disconnected from the office under all new sorts of stresses and strains, and yet still responsible for delivering incredible results in an economy that was really uncertain. And yet, we figured it out. Not only did we figure it out, we did better in some cases than most people even thought we could. And so the good examples of what I'm seeing leaders do is lean into that, lean into the uncertainty and say, we've been doing a version of this type of flexible working. How can we continue to iterate? How can we continue to experiment and listen to our employees, trust them and build a different way of working?

1:43That work is better for everyone as we go forward post pandemic 2023, whatever version of that future looks like for you as a business owner. Hi, I'm Joel Miller, Chief Product Officer here at Full Focus. And today we're talking about how to enhance employee experience and performance. First, we're going to have a conversation with our founder, Michael Hyatt, and our CEO, Megan Hyatt Miller, to discuss six ways that you can empower your employees. And then we're going to shift to a conversation with Helen Kupp to talk about how employers can create more flexible work environments to keep employee engagement high and get great results in the process.

2:41Quiet quitting became part of the business lexicon in 2022. According to Gallup, about 50 % of the U.S. workforce would qualify for the term. But what's interesting is this is a longer-term problem than 2022 or even the pandemic. Whether we're thinking about quiet quitting or employee engagement or the great resignation, we might be missing an overall trend. The share of employees voluntarily leaving their jobs has actually been going up pretty steadily since 2009. In fact, in 2020, people stayed in the workforce more than they had since 2017. The apparent jump in 2021 was really just the trend resuming its prior path.

3:34And that means that there's really an ongoing problem here that we need to get our heads around. There could be a lot of systemic issues in play that honestly are beyond the scope of this conversation. However, there are some things that are directly under the control of business owners, and that includes how they empower their teams and what they do in order to structure their work. Let's jump into our conversation with Michael and Megan now. So our clients ask us all the time, how do we keep our teams engaged? How do we get the most out of our people? How do we make sure that they're really doing the work and doing it with everything they've got?

4:14So we want to talk about six ways to empower your employees to win. Now, Megan, I want to ask you a question. At full focus, do we have this problem? Mostly, no, we don't. There have been times where I think we have done better or worse on engagement. It's always something we're focused on. And yet, I mean, this is next level skills in terms of leading a business. You know, it's one thing to have a product you're excited about. It's another thing to be able to build a team to help you execute and get that out. It's another thing entirely to be able to build a high performance team, which necessitates a high level of engagement.

4:56And I think that's something you're always working on. And I think probably for most business owners, after the stress of 2020, and even part of 2021, I mean, it's no wonder really that this happened, because I think there's sort of a collective burnout that people experienced emotionally, physically, you know, just through COVID and so forth that didn't necessarily have to do with work completely, but certainly showed up at work. And so I think we definitely had some of that as well. And I think the strategies, the ways that we're going to talk about today are things that we have successfully used over the years to continuously improve our engagement and maintain a high level of engagement regardless.

5:38But it's something we're always working to get better at. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but when we won the Inc. Magazine Best Places to Work, wasn't our employee engagement like 97 % they measured that? Yeah, I want to say it was 94%. But you might be right. We've won two years in a row. We haven't gotten the results yet for 2022. But yeah, I mean, we have a way above average level of engagement. I want to say something like 70 % is maybe normal or even pretty acceptable. Not to us. You know, we're trying to do something pretty extraordinary in this department. And, you know, this reminds me of something that you often say to our clients is that, you know, your dream, if it's big enough, is going to require a team.

6:20And so I think, you know, for you listening out there, if you have a big vision, you don't just need a team. You need a highly engaged team. So I think that's why this is relevant. If you really are serious about accomplishing your vision, you've got to have a team that's engaged. In case you're wondering what engagement means, when we think of engagement, we think of people on task bringing their full self to that task. So that's different than kind of scrolling through Facebook as you're on a Zoom call or writing an email while you're on a Zoom call. But you're basically disengaged from the task at hand.

6:56So we do the best work when we're fully engaged, when we're totally focused, when we're concentrated on what it is that we have to do. because then we can be creative and productive and all the rest. Okay. You know what I would add to that real quick? And I think this is kind of like a squishy thing, but I think it's important. I would say it, that you're bringing your heart to work. Okay. You know, you're not just bringing like your skills to work. You're bringing a level of passion and wholeheartedness that I think is easy to underestimate in a professional context. That's actually what I was trying to say, but you said it a thousand percent better.

7:33Typical.

7:41Okay, you ready to get started? Yeah. Six ways to empower your employees to win. And I want to suggest that the first and maybe the most important way to do this is to make work meaningful. In other words, your organization has to be purpose-driven. This is why it's worth the effort to come up with a mission statement, to identify your core values, and to come up with what we call a vision script, but a statement, basically a narrative about what it is that you want to see at some future date. Because this is what basically infuses purpose into your organization. And I think if there's one thing that we know about today's workers is that just showing up for a paycheck, not enough.

8:33There's got to be purpose. It's got to give meaning to their lives. And that's why we encourage business owners in particular to take the time. And I know it's hard work and it's not real active work. It's not like responding to fires and doing all the thousand and one things you have to do to run a business. but this is more reflective, more deliberative, more thoughtful, but it's so foundational. This lays the ideological foundation for your business and the reason that exists. And I think honestly does more to create employee engagement than anything else we're going to share. You know, I totally agree with this.

9:13And I was actually, this morning I was coaching a CEO client of mine and we were talking about just how critically important it is to always be linking the day-to-day work of your team back to the larger why. Because let's face it, whether you're the business owner or you're an intern in the company, however you fall in that hierarchy, sometimes we get lost in the day-to-day and we don't really know. Maybe we have this mission statement, maybe we have this vision, But how does the work I'm doing today, how does the reconciliation of last month's financials or the scheduling of this appointment or the setting up of the office or, you know, doing this presentation, how do those things make our mission happen?

10:01And what does it matter if the mission is accomplished? And it's really the job of the CEO of the business owner to constantly be connecting those dots so people find meaning in their work. And I think people get discouraged when, one, they don't see those connections and they also don't feel like their work is important or recognized. And so I think that's the other thing about being a CEO or a business owner is that you have the power to recognize people's work and build a culture of recognition, which really contributes to that sense of meaning. Yeah, and I think it's easy for business owners, because they're kind of steeped in this, or maybe they created it, or maybe it's just top of mind, to not feel like they've got to communicate it repeatedly to their teams.

10:44And I just had this question on a coaching call this morning where one of our clients said to me, they said, you know, I am so tired of talking about this. I'm just kind of burned out. And I told him the whole story that I always tell about my executive coach saying to me in the middle of the recession that when you're tired of talking about it, you're about half done. And I said to her, I said, you know, before you stand up in front of your employees, and she had about 55 employees. I said, before you stand up in front of your employees, you've got to ask why that stuff matters. You know, you've got to be connected to the why first.

11:19Everything rises or falls on your leadership. And then I said, you've got to be excited. And as it turns out, excitement is contagious, but so is boredom. You know, so is negativity. And so whatever you've got, your team is going to catch. So if you're excited about this and you just keep repeating it, I mean, there are new people coming in and out of your company all the time. People forget. And to quote Andy Stanley, vision leaks. And so if we're not the people that are giving voice to the vision, giving voice to the mission statement, the core values, for all intents and purposes, they don't exist.

12:02Okay, well, that leads us to way number two, which is to clarify your expectations. When you clarify your expectations, you're really empowering your employees to win and you're driving engagement. And here's what I see all the time that our clients struggle with, particularly when they're new to our coaching program, or, you know, when I'm coaching myself, is that we kind of want people to read our minds, you know, we we really sort of feel like if we get the right people that just sort of know what to do. And that's kind of like playing a football game without a playbook and without a scoreboard.

12:37And everybody plays better. And especially when you're talking about not just one person, but a group of people playing, you know, toward the same outcome together, Everybody plays better when they know what's expected of them and when that expectation is expressed explicitly and concretely as opposed to kind of implicitly and kind of abstractly, you know. And so, for example, one of the things that we do and that we teach our clients how to do is to use this tool we have called the Vision Caster, where you can really articulate the vision that you have for a project that you're going to go task someone with bringing to reality for you.

13:18And this is so, so helpful. I was actually just talking to some new clients about this this morning, just about, you know, how do you set somebody up to win? You've got to take the time to detail your expectations. It doesn't have to take a long time. But this is a really important discipline that you as the business owner are the only person who can do this. You know, if you don't clarify your expectations, it's not something you can really delegate. You've got to do it yourself for the people in particular that are reporting directly to you. But this is amazing to see how people engage emotionally, mentally, etc., when they know exactly what's expected of them.

13:57and they can measure their success based on those expectations. Yeah, that's so good. And I think the reason this is so important is that nobody can read your mind. And yet as leaders, we often act like people should be able to read our minds. And when they don't, we get frustrated or we get angry. You know, one of the things, Meg, that you and I learned from Dan Sullivan, and this is kind of an abbreviated version, but at the beginning of a relationship, when you onboard somebody, why not go ahead and tell them what you like in general and what you don't like, or how to be a hero with you and what makes you crazy?

14:34And so a couple of examples from my list is I hate open loops. So in other words, if I give an assignment and Jim, in my case, my executive assistant, if he doesn't come back and close the loop, then it makes me crazy. I where are we at on that project? And thankfully, you know, Jim, you and I stood in front of the entire employee workforce back in 2018. I looked just this morning and we gave our lists and they happened to be the same of what makes us crazy, how to be a hero with us. And that was on my list. And Jim really took that to heart, not just then, but even before that, he always closes loops.

15:15So what that looks like is that if he's in the middle of a project and he's not making progress, Like I've asked him to make a phone call on my behalf and they're not getting back to him. He will just give me a status report. Like, look, I've called him three times. I left messages. I still haven't heard back. Well, that just helps me to kind of let that go and go to the next thing instead of to just noodle on it forever. Another thing is I had on the positive side is I said, I really like it when you anticipate my needs so that I don't have to ask. Sometimes I don't even know. And so Jim is constantly out in front of me trying to anticipate my needs.

15:55What am I going to need for this meeting? What needs to be done before that meeting? What's the preparation for that meeting or that presentation or whatever? And 99 times out of 100 now, because we've been working together for almost eight years, he anticipates it. I rarely ask him for something that he doesn't say, oh, yeah, it's already taken care of. It's all part of clarifying your expectations, because the alternative is that you leave people again trying to guess. And nothing can be more frustrating than trying to guess what your boss really wants because most people, healthy people, want to please the people they're working for.

16:31I don't care if it's a client or a customer or your boss, but unless you give them some guidance, they just can't do it.

16:43Okay, that leads us to way number three. Focus on outcomes, not processes. Now, here's the thing. None of us like being micromanaged. I don't like it. I know, Megan, for a fact you don't like it. It's oppressive. It communicates distrust. It completely eliminates the opportunity for me to innovate and to be creative. And I just, at that point, I become a robot. So I don't want to be micromanaged. Neither does your team. and nothing will create disengagement like overmanaging people because they're like, well, what's the point? He or she is going to tell me everything I need to do. I don't really need to think about it.

17:26Instead, I want to stay focused on the outcomes. And it's a little bit like clarifying the expectations, but I want to be really clear about the outcome I want. And then I want to give the delegate the freedom to figure out the strategy or how they're going to accomplish it. Now, if it's something where they need some training or you've been doing it and you want it done roughly like you've been doing it, then great. Capture the workflow in some kind of document like Evernote or Notion or Google Docs or something else. Capture the workflow, the step-by-step, then turn it over to that person. Like I did this years ago, back before Nick was wonderfully producing our podcast, but I had another podcast producer.

18:11and so I decided that I was going to get out of doing my own production. And so I gave it to this producer and I said, look, here's what I've been doing. This is a step-by-step detailed thing. Every single move I use to produce the show and post it, use this as kind of the foundation, but feel free to discard it, improve upon it, whatever you need to do. And he was an experienced producer, so I didn't really need to give that to him, but I thought it'd be a good reference document. Yeah, I think this is a big deal. it also opens you up to somebody doing it better than you were doing. Very often things that we're delegating to people are things that really are not the highest and best use of us, but they might be the highest and best use of the person we're delegating to.

18:51And that may be where their kind of creative genius comes into play. And if you give them the freedom to be responsible for outcomes, not processes, then you're actually going to get a better outcome because their process is better than yours. So I think that's something that's easy to discount, but shouldn't be discounted because it's a real opportunity there.

19:17Okay, that leads us to way number four, which is to treat them like owners. And, you know, I think our best case scenario, as business owners is to have a company full of people who think about the business like we do that they are responsible for the business, whether it's making investments or delivering the budget or whatever, that they're thinking about it like we would think about it. That's what we want. So I think part of getting to that place is one, holding people accountable for outcomes and not processes like we're just talking about in way number three, but also making sure that your incentives align with what you're trying to accomplish.

19:54And I think this is a big deal. You know, for example, if you're trying to drive profit, then you don't want to incentivize revenue. You want to make sure that you're incentivizing the thing that you want more of. If you want to incentivize teamwork and one collective goal, financially speaking, then you don't want to have individual bonus plans based on individual metrics that are confusing and difficult to track or whatever. If you want to drive those financial metrics, you need a plan that people can understand well in terms of their incentives. It's not so opaque that they never know if the scoreboard says they're winning or losing.

20:30You know, that's not going to drive any kind of behavior. And so I think getting these incentives aligned with what you want. And, you know, like in our company, what we want, what we advise our clients to do is we want people to win when we win and lose if we lose. You know, that's the appropriate thing you want. You want people on the same side of the table as you are. And I think that that leads to greater alignment in other areas, which ultimately enables us to accomplish our goals through this kind of engagement. You know, another point of this, Megan, is that if you're treating somebody like an owner, you're going to be communicating regularly with them.

21:04You're not going to leave them in the dark. You're going to be reporting, for example, like you do with me, because I'm an owner, you're an owner. You report to me once a month, you and Rob, our CFO, of how we did financially the previous month. Why is that important? Because I'm an owner and I want to know. I don't want to be left in the dark. So that kind of information, that kind of communication, you can't overdo it. And it's important if you want people to respond like owners, you got to treat them like owners.

21:41Okay. That brings us to way number five, provide ongoing training. You know, one of my favorite books on this whole topic of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic is Daniel Pink's book, Drive. And one of the things he says people want is an opportunity to gain mastery. This is highly motivational to people. If they've got a craft, if they're a copywriter or they're a book editor or whatever it is they are inside of your company, financial manager, whatever, They want to grow in their skills and their abilities. And that sense of progress creates a sense of happiness and satisfaction. It also contributes to their own self-esteem.

22:25So I think as business owners, we need to invest in the ongoing training. That could take the form of a quarterly training session that you do for all the employees. We've certainly done a lot of that through the years where we brought in an outside resource and trained the whole team on something. It could also look like creating a budget for people so that they can enroll in courses or attend conferences or something else that will enhance their professional skills. And again, I think this is important to engagement. And I think it also communicates that I'm willing to invest in you and creates the reciprocal response of, great, I'm willing to invest and be engaged in the company.

23:07That's really good. And I wholeheartedly sign on to that. And that's something we prioritize here at Full Focus as well. Okay, that leads us to way number six, which is to give candid feedback. And this is the last way that we're going to discuss today. And this is one that I find within myself and also as I'm talking to our clients and other business owners, this can be a challenging one because most of us at some level are a little bit conflict avoidant. And we think about giving feedback, particularly if it's constructive feedback about where somebody needs to improve. We think about that like it's conflict.

23:46And we don't realize that actually people want that feedback. In some ways, Dad, for the reasons that you just mentioned, people want to get better at their jobs. They want to grow. That's a basic human need that we have to gain that mastery that you're talking about. And if you were, for example, on a sports team and you had a coach that never told you how you were doing or never gave you any guidance on how to improve, it would kind of be like, what's the point of the coach? You know, well, you are the coach in your business. And so my favorite book on this topic is Kim Scott's book, Radical Candor.

24:20I read that years ago, and it continues to be one of my favorite business books and one of my most recommended business books because she really lays out a strong case for giving feedback that is on the one hand kind, but is also candid and in real time. And I think most of us tend to delay feedback way too long. It's too kind to the point that it's actually not kind. You know, as Brene Brown says, clear is kind. It's not clear. It's not candid. And people are left in the dark about their own performance. And, you know, you and I believe strongly that we have an obligation to be good stewards of the people who are entrusted to us, which in our mind means that people come to us one way and hopefully in our stewardship, they actually become even more valuable so that when they go on to whatever the next thing is for them, that they get to take something with them, you know, that they are better than we found them at the beginning of their relationship with us.

25:18And so if we're not providing this kind of feedback, then they don't really have the opportunity to grow like they could. And I think people sense that when we're willing to take the risk of providing feedback in an honoring way, but in a clear and direct way, that we care about them, you know, that we value them, that we value their growth, that we value the relationship more than our own comfort. And so this is one of those areas that personally I'm always challenging myself to lean into. And it's, you know, I wish I could say that it's so easy now. And that wouldn't be true. I would say that it's still very challenging for me.

25:50I still feel nervous about it when I have to, or need to have a feedback kind of conversation with someone, which I try to do regularly. But I try to remember, as one of our shared executive coaches in the past, Eileen used to tell us, you know, we are taking a stand for the greatness in the people that we're leading. And we're not going to treat them like they're fragile. We're going to treat them like we see their potential and take a stand for that. And in doing so, we're going to provide the feedback they need to grow. You know, I think it's easy when you talk about giving candid feedback to think of that as only negative feedback.