If you let a person talk long enough you'll hear their true intentions.

—TUPAC SHAKUR

“Your voice makes a difference,” Barack Obama said, recounting an incident that took place during one of the lowest moments of his 2008 campaign for president. As a communicator, Obama's ability to inspire others and connect with a crowd has always been widely regarded as one of his strongest assets. But the story Obama was referencing in this instance was not an example of him providing inspiration, but instead of someone who inspired him and provided the future president with an experience that would define him as a political candidate and leader.¹

It was 2007, in the middle of his first presidential campaign, and things were not going well for Barack Obama. He had flown to Greenwood, South Carolina, for a campaign rally. His alarm had just gone off and he had wakened feeling sick and exhausted from the relentless pace of the campaign schedule. Opening the curtains to his hotel room, he looked out to see the weather was miserable and pouring down rain. He retrieved the newspaper from outside his hotel room and on the front page of the New York Times was a particularly negative story about him. After getting dressed, he walked outside and his umbrella blew open. He was soaking wet. Quite a start to the day.

After a 90-minute drive to the rally site, Obama and his aides arrived to discover an audience of fewer than 20 people who were not particularly enthusiastic to see him. As he did his best to mix and mingle—introducing himself, learning people's names—Obama heard a voice from the back of the room shout, “Fired up!” To his surprise, everyone in the crowd suddenly yelled, “Fired up!” And then the voice said, “Ready to go!” and everyone yelled back, “Ready to go!” Obama looked around, not sure what to make of this sudden, unrehearsed call-and-response session. Where was this voice coming from and what was happening? Obama scanned the back of the room and spotted a small, middle-aged woman. She had one gold tooth and was dressed colorfully, wearing a big church hat. The woman's name was Edith Childs and she was a member of the local NAACP branch, as well as a local private detective. As it turned out, Childs was known to do this chant at the different meetings that she frequently attended in her community. It was her trademark phrase and was intended to pump energy into a room and get people excited to be there.

As the chants went on, growing louder and more intense, Obama noticed something happening. After a while, he was starting to get fired up himself. His mood changed and his outlook and attitude felt different, better. “I started to feel like I'm ready to go,” recalled Obama. “And all those negative thoughts . . . started drifting away.”² Obama eventually adopted the phrase, “Fired up! Ready to go!” on the campaign trail and used it to energize his crowds and supporters. The phrase worked and carried him all the way to the White House. Edith Childs showed Obama that if you want others to be excited by your message, you need to project excitement yourself through intentional delivery. For a leader, passion can be contagious. And Childs provided Obama with another, even greater lesson when it comes to motivating and inspiring others. Said Obama, “It just goes to show you how one voice can change a room. And if it can change a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.”

As the previous story demonstrates, passion and purpose are powerful tools for a leader. In the workplace, passion can spread across teams, and studies have shown that people who attack their work with passion experience flow, a euphoric, effortless state of mind we will discuss in an upcoming chapter that is five times more productive than the norm.³ “Fired up! Ready to go!” served as a rallying cry for Obama and helped him mobilize a movement that eventually delivered him the presidency. Leaders in the corporate arena face challenges not unlike what Obama went through on the campaign trail, as every day brings new challenges and setbacks that must be managed and overcome.

Globalization and technology have changed the way corporations do business as well as how leaders communicate. Because of an increasingly flatter and more far-flung international workforce, it is important for bosses to understand and consider the different cultural differences and expectations that employees bring to the work environment and how to best motivate them. While organizations have been forced to evolve over the past decade, the workforce itself is starting to change as well. Currently, there are up to four different generations working together in the corporate arena—the Silent Generation, baby boomers, Generation X, and millennials (sometimes called Generation Y). Millennials have now overtaken baby boomers as America's largest living generation, with 53 million workers and growing. In fact, more than one in three workers now are millennials.⁴ And according to recent findings published by Deloitte, 66 percent of millennials are expected to leave their current jobs in the next three years and only 5 percent think they will still be in their current job in 10 years.⁵ This is a much different mindset from that of workers of past generations who often stayed in the same job or with the same company for decades. While all learners grow through similar means and methods, employees of different generations bring with them different values, different expectations, and different styles of working. Studies have shown that workers communicate and lead based on their generational backgrounds, therefore effective leaders must consider the attitudes and habits of each individual worker to inspire or motivate them. Failing to do so can inevitably lead to resentment, high turnover, and low morale.⁶

Millennials (those born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s) want flexible work schedules and a more casual work environment. They want their work to have purpose and serve their community or society in a positive way. Rebecca Ray and Evan Sinar have studied current research on younger workers and found “For millennial leaders, the prototypical leader is an inspiring coach, a compelling communicator and one whose choices and actions are informed by an intercultural perspective.”⁷ Millennials are used to technology and social media being an integral part of their lives and are comfortable with it being part of their work as well. They also hunger for feedback from bosses. One study found that 80 percent of millennials said they want regular feedback from their managers and 75 percent want mentors who will provide them with advice and guidance that can serve them in their lives and careers.⁸ Younger workers prefer a “flatter” organizational structure where titles and hierarchy are less important and most want to work in an environment where they feel a sense of belonging, where they are heard and their opinions matter. One study found that 76 percent of millennials think their bosses could actually learn something from them if they took the time to listen (compared to only 50 percent of baby boomers who felt the same).⁹ For bosses trying to motivate a younger team and create a positive and supportive work environment, adjusting their communication and leadership styles to accommodate these needs is essential.

Understanding Employee Engagement

The concept of employee engagement first appeared as a business concept in the 1990s, when William Kahn, a professor of organizational behavior at Boston University's School of Management, provided the first formal definition, calling it “the harnessing of organization members' selves to their work roles.”¹⁰ According to Kahn, employee engagement is how people “employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performances.”¹¹ Employee engagement does not mean employee happiness or even employee satisfaction. It means the level of emotional commitment and investment a worker has to the goals of an organization. Wellins and Concelman (2004) talked about employee engagement as “the illusive force that motivates employees to higher levels of performance” through the employee's “commitment, loyalty, productivity and ownership.”¹² Much of Kahn's work originated from the observations of Erving Goffman, the psychologist we discussed in previous chapters who viewed people as “social actors.” Goffman used the concept of “embracement” to describe the investment of self and energy a worker puts into their “role” and to what extent they “presented” or “absented” their selves during the “performance” at work.¹³ The less committed or attentive a worker was to the role they were meant to embrace, the less engaged they were as an employee.

You aren't a leader if you aren't creating new leaders.

—JA'MAL GREEN

Organizations have started paying attention to employee engagement in an effort to understand what motivates their workers so they can better influence them to drive performance. According to research, one way to improve employee engagement within an organization is to improve their manager's communication skills. According to 83 percent of respondents in a 2016 Association for Talent Management study, communication is the most important skill area required for managerial success.¹⁴ And this makes sense, as managers are tasked with putting strategic plans into action, securing employee buy-in, ensuring day-to-day operations run smoothly, and communicating progress up and down the organization. The ability for managers to effectively communicate in each of these instances is critical and research has shown that effective communication between workers and bosses has a direct influence on the level of productivity and job satisfaction seen within an organization.¹⁵

As a boss or leader, do your employees carry out your vision and follow your direction because they want to or because they have to? Do you lead them by inspiring them or by intimidating them? Every good relationship—including that of a boss and worker—should be perceived as equally beneficial to all parties. Think about it. If you are the boss or manager, you derive benefit from an employee who is punctual, skilled, collaborative, and delivers what they say they will deliver when it needs to be delivered. Conversely, if you are an employee, you find benefit as well if a boss or senior leader recognizes your hard work, appreciates your time and talent, and allows you to develop within the organization. Studies have shown that engaged employees are not only conscientious about their work and enthusiastic about what they do, they are also committed to maintaining a high level of performance within an organization.¹⁶ Good attitude equals good work. If you want to achieve the highest levels of motivation for a worker, research has shown that you must involve not only physical and cognitive effort, but also an emotional investment from workers as well.¹⁷ According to Kahn's findings, employee engagement rose when people were emotionally connected to their work and that work was aligned with the overall vision of the company.¹⁸ Think about how much easier it is to motivate a team member who is passionate about a task versus one who is detached, resistant, or apathetic.

And, as it turns out, engaged employees are also very good for business. The energy and passion that a committed worker brings to their efforts can boost productivity and help grow an organization. An engaged employee will consistently outperform their disengaged peers and achieve new standards of excellence that can then serve as inspiration for other members of their team. If workers believe in the vision of an organization and are engaged in their work, studies show they will willingly take on additional responsibilities that are above and beyond their specific job description, thus creating a more collaborative and supportive work environment.¹⁹ According to Tamara Erickson, professor of organizational development at London Business School, “The younger generation tends to put a higher premium on the quality, experiences, and self-growth associated with work rather than money.”²⁰ A good manager needs to take this into account and do everything they can to create a culture that will be attractive to younger workers. When a team develops they will bring passion and purpose to their work and will go above and beyond to accomplish their goals. But that trust doesn't happen without attention being paid to the way individual stakeholders interact and communicate with each other. According to the National Wellness Institute, there are six dimensions that contribute to a person's individual wellness: spiritual, emotional, occupational, physical, social, and intellectual.²¹ As a manager, you can engage your workforce more effectively by a keen awareness of all six categories and by helping your workers integrate their lives across all six dimensions. This will not only allow the members of your team to stay motivated by facilitating a healthy work/life balance, it will also help them to avoid common work pitfalls such as burnout or boredom.

Numerous studies show that the best way to bolster emotional commitment is to increase communication. According to the Harvard Business Review, highly engaged organizations enjoy double the rate of success versus lower-engaged organizations.²² Think of what this could mean to the bottom line or a company's prospects for future growth. Studies have also found that an open and honest relationship between a supervisor and their subordinates affects their engagement level. Employees who get twice the number of one-on-one meetings with their manager relative to their peers are 67 percent less likely to be disengaged.²³ Conversely, in situations where managers don't meet with their workers on a frequent basis (or fail to provide on-the-job training), employees were four times more likely to be disengaged.²⁴ They were also twice as likely to view leadership unfavorably than those who met regularly with their managers.²⁵ The message here is a simple and powerful one: To better engage your employees, you have to start by listening to them.

Research has shown that more than half of workers who leave their job do so because of a poor relationship with their boss.²⁶ Often this dissatisfaction is a result of poor communication on the part of the manager—either overworking them or not recognizing their efforts. Research has shown that 78 percent of workers said that being recognized for their efforts motivates them and 69 percent said they would work harder if they were better recognized for their efforts.²⁷ Overworking an employee can be especially problematic when managing star employees. When a manager knows how skilled and disciplined their A players are, it is tempting to direct more and more work that person's way, knowing that they will always deliver a stellar performance or result. The problem with doing this is that it can be seen as a punishment by the star employee and can lead to burnout, resentment, or a feeling they are being taken advantage of because of their skills or work ethic. When managing a valuable employee such as this, it is vital to keep the channels of communication open at all times. Check in frequently to gauge their level of satisfaction at each stage of a project or task.

Another danger for managers is employee burnout. “Like employee engagement, burnout is personal,” says researcher Mollie Lombardi. “The threshold for fatigue and dissatisfaction can be very different from individual to individual, and often high performers who expect a lot of themselves may be even more prone to its impact. Managers need to stay on top of this and help their employees be aware of potential burnout before it's too late.”²⁸ New research out of Stanford has shown that productivity for workers declines sharply when their workweek exceeds 50 hours. And when their workweek exceeds 55 hours, productivity drops off so much you don't get anything out of employees working longer hours.²⁹

Another reason bosses fail their workers is they don't engage them creatively or challenge them intellectually. No two workers are exactly alike, so it is important to understand what drives them. What are their passions? What are their goals? What areas do they want to develop? By taking time as a manager to understand what excites each of your workers, you will have a better idea of how to engage them and keep them motivated. Most workers enjoy being challenged in their work, so a good manager will help them set goals that are lofty or perhaps even out of their comfort zone. By pushing their workers to achieve something even they didn't think was possible, a boss demonstrates they care about developing their workers' skills and talents. One of the greatest gifts a boss can provide to their workers is opportunity and the chance to learn, develop, and grow.

Leading a Team Through Change

As discussed in previous chapters, technology and globalization are sweeping us forward like the rapids of a rushing river. Great leaders are often called upon to provide clarity and to exhibit decisiveness amidst chaos. In his book The Actor and the Target, Declan Donnellan speaks of change like this: “Every living creature at every moment of its life has to deal with a situation which will either get better or worse. This better or worse might be infinitesimally small, but there will always be some degree of better or worse. All we can be sure of is change.”³⁰ This is not only true for every character in every play, it also is just as relevant for everyone who kicks off a meeting, sits down for a job interview, or presents their ideas to a boss or client. At the end of their communication, they will likely be better or worse off than before they began.

You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.

—EDWIN LOUIS COLE

Change can be an emotional process for team members, and if not managed and communicated properly, it can damage trust. Aristotle spoke about change way back in 350 BC, pointing out that if communication is meant to influence another person's behavior, it must be grounded in the desires and interests of the receiver. This idea hearkens back to the first step in our Pinnacle methodology: analyzing your audience. Poor change management can result in resentment, absenteeism, cynicism, distrust, confusion, conflict, and anger. According to Angela Kenyatta, CEO of Strategic Change Solutions, “A robust communication strategy must consider the communication needs of all key stakeholders, to keep them informed and engaged.” As human beings, we are naturally resistant to change because change shakes our foundation, making the future seem uncertain. It also creates the possibility to fail, which can create anxiety among the members of a team. Says Kenyatta, “Resistance is a natural and normal response to change and can be quite useful when understood as valuable feedback from those impacted by the change. This is why competencies such as active listening, inviting feedback, and leaning into ambiguity are of immeasurable value during periods of transformation when the stakes—and often tensions—are especially high.”³¹ Change also creates the opportunity for growth and development, and a good leader will remind others of this fact when difficulties arise. To be sure, organizational change is a process with many moving parts. It can be complicated or messy and doesn't occur overnight. But the process of creating a strategic plan to implement change is key to the long-term success of an organization. It is important to remember that not all organizations are the same and not all people deal with change in the same way. Additionally, different kinds of change require different strategies to gain employee acceptance and engagement. Because change often involves disruption, leaders communicating during organizational change should expect resistance from team members. This makes open and transparent communication a necessary tool for a team to embrace change and move forward together. When managing change, it is important to assess any situation and understand what you can change and what you cannot. Interestingly, 46 percent of change management efforts fail during execution, according to a Robert Half Management Resources survey.³² The reason? Lack of communication. According to Tim Hird, executive director for the company, 65 percent of respondents said that “communicating clearly and frequently” is the most important action to take when going through organizational change.³³ Common mistakes people make when managing change include:

• Not involving people at all levels in the change process
• A lack of vision and foresight from leadership
• Not appreciating that people have different reactions to change
• A lack of transparency with team members during the change process
• Improper system or framework to sustain the changes
• Not incorporating new strategies into a company's culture

The process of implementing organizational change is not always a smooth or easy one. One clear example of change that was not handled effectively, according to Angela Kenyatta, was the initial launch of the healthcare.gov website under Barack Obama. From the start, the web portal for the health insurance marketplace, commonly referred to as Obamacare, was plagued by problems. A series of technical snafus resulted in an absolutely abysmal experience for consumers who attempted to enroll during the first week the site was up. In addition to the poor end-user experience, the flawed launch generated bad press for an initiative that had already attracted numerous detractors. When the post-mortem of the launch was conducted to figure out exactly what had gone wrong, numerous instances of inadequate project scoping, process omissions, and lack of oversight were noted. To the credit of the Obama administration, the feedback from the initial launch was leveraged to make significant improvements which resulted in a more solid registration portal and a greatly improved user experience. By acknowledging and acting swiftly to correct early gaps, the site's bumpy start was overcome and the implementation ultimately became a stellar example of what's possible when the agility and resilience that wide-scale transformational efforts require is effectively applied.

For any type of change to be implemented effectively, three aspects of the change initiative are needed from the company and its leadership. First, there needs to be a high level of support for the initiative itself from leadership. Second, the support needs to be effectively communicated throughout the entire organization. Third, workers at all levels must be given the tools and authority needed to implement the change initiative. Think about the changes that have taken place within your organization recently. How have they affected the morale or engagement levels of your workers? Were the changes communicated clearly and did all levels have the support they needed from management to implement them effectively? As we have discussed previously, there are different types of change that can happen in an organization and understanding the differences of each can help a leader manage more effectively.

The three main types of changes that occur in an organization include:

Developmental change

1. This takes place when a process that currently exists is slowly and continually improved over time without any drastic or dramatic difference in the way an organization operates. For leaders, this is the easiest type of change to manage as it is the least disruptive to your workers. Examples of developmental change might include upgrading computer systems, utilizing new and improved software, changing vendors, etc. This type of change usually causes little stress to employees if communication has been clear throughout the process.

Transitional change

1. This is a little more intrusive than developmental change and involves eliminating an existing process and replacing it with one that is completely new. As a leader managing transitional change, it is important to clearly define what changes are occurring and, perhaps more importantly, why they are needed. Managing expectations and listening to the concerns of your team members is vital in this type of change. Examples of transitional change might include a corporate reorganization, merger, or the addition of a new product line. The success of transitional change often rests on how smoothly and efficiently the transitional phase is communicated by a company's leadership. Without constant and clear communication, employees can feel anxious or uncertain about their jobs and even the future of the company itself.

Transformational change

1. This is the most dramatic and sweeping type of change that can happen within a company and has a large emotional impact on a workforce. With transformational change, a company decides to change its basic underlying strategy and processes by which they have previously operated—often based on a change in supply and demand, lack of revenue, growing competition, or the emergence of new technologies in the field. In order to stay competitive in the marketplace, they choose to make radical changes to the way they have previously done business. Transformational change is usually enacted over time and can involve both developmental and transitional change. As a leader managing this type of operational change, being transparent with your intentions and involving all stakeholders from the start is essential for a successful transition.

Pat Wadors, the former Chief Human Resources Officer at LinkedIn, advises, “If the lines of communication are open from the beginning, you will earn [workers'] respect and trust much faster and your working relationship will benefit . . . let them know you are about listening and understanding, that your goal is to be as informed as possible about everything that is important in order to best help them overcome their challenges and achieve their goals.”³⁴ Studies have shown that “without effective employee communication, change is impossible and change management fails” and, conversely, if you involve your team members in the change process by soliciting their input, they will more readily engage with all aspects of the initiative as they happen.³⁵ Change is an unavoidable aspect of business. By embracing it and clearly communicating all aspects of it throughout your organization, you not only help employees cope and manage, you also build a pool of nimble, informed workers who can help drive growth and move an organization forward.

Engaging Your Team Members

As we have discussed previously, a good leader must define a vision and chart a path forward for the members of their team. George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, employs a favorite analogy when it comes to the collaborative process of a team or organization. He sees collaboration like a wagon train headed west—a group of like-minded pioneers, filled with purpose, on a long journey toward a common destination.³⁶ And as with any type of journey, detours and setbacks are likely to occur. But an effective, visionary leader manages these situational challenges and keeps everyone on board and headed in the same direction. A good boss will lead in a manner that allows team members to make their way without shoving them along or holding their hand at every turn. A good leader will create an environment that brings out the best in their people. Few workers enjoy a boss who breathes down their neck or micromanages every aspect of their work. Micromanaging your employees will almost surely result in your employees disengaging from you and the company. Workers want to feel trusted to make independent decisions. Empowering your team members by allowing them a certain level of creative freedom encourages them to contribute to the overall mission and allows them to grow and develop along the way.

Managers are responsible for putting strategic plans into action, ensuring day-to-day operations run smoothly, and communicating progress up and down the organization. Lack of communication between managers and direct reports can dramatically decrease employee engagement. In fact, according to Gallup, as much as 70 percent of the variance in a team's engagement levels can be traced to the manager's influence.³⁷ As author Daniel Goleman explains, “Quite simply, in any human group, the leader has maximal power to sway everyone's emotions . . . how well leaders manage their moods affects everyone else's moods, which becomes not just a private matter, but a factor in how well a business will do.”³⁸ A recent Society for Human Resource Management study revealed that 58 percent of employees say it's very important to have a good relationship with their manager,³⁹ yet only half of employees reported feeling respected by their boss.⁴⁰ The more trust you have with a team member, the more they feel empowered, the better your working relationship with them will be. The more time spent between a boss and employee, the deeper the connection and the more engaged they will be. According to Forbes contributor Mark Murphy, “Most people spend only half the time they should be spending interacting with their boss. People who do spend an optimal number of hours interacting with their direct leader (six hours per week) are 29 percent more inspired, 30 percent more engaged, 16 percent more innovative, and 15 percent more intrinsically motivated than those who spend only one hour per week.”⁴¹

When you talk, you are repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.

—DALAI LAMA

And just as a leader can learn important lessons from an effective boss, they can also learn a great deal from ineffective bosses. It's a safe bet that most people, over the course of their career, can probably name someone they have worked for who was not up to the task. They lacked the ability to lead, to communicate a vision, or to motivate others. Working with poor leaders and observing their mistakes firsthand can provide valuable lessons on how you choose to lead. Billionaire and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban shared an experience he had with a bad boss early in his career that affected how he ran his businesses years later.⁴²

Cuban was living in Dallas, working as a bartender, when he landed his first sales job at a software company. “About nine months in,” said Cuban, “I got an opportunity to make a $15,000 sale . . . I called my boss, the CEO, and told him I was going to pick up the check. I thought he'd be thrilled. He wasn't. He told me not to do it. I thought: ‘Are you kidding me?’ I decided to do it anyway. I thought when I showed up with a $15,000 check, he'd be cool with it. Instead, when I came back to the office, he fired me on the spot. I had disobeyed him. He was one of those CEOs who is all pomp and circumstance, one of those guys who seems to scream: ‘Don't you know who I am?’ He tried hard to look and act the part of the CEO. He wore the right suits. But he had a huge flaw: He never did the work. He never demonstrated the initiative to go out to sell. I had realized by that time that ‘sales cures all.’ That's a phrase I still use to this day. He was my mentor, but not in the way you'd expect. Even now I think back to things he did, and I do the opposite.” The lesson here for rising leaders is to use every opportunity you encounter, the good and the bad, to learn from those around you—emulate the best qualities you observe and avoid the bad ones.

Here are four ways to maximize employee engagement within your organization.

Listen to feedback

1. One thing a leader can do to instantly improve communication and engage their workers is to talk less and listen more. Employees who feel listened to will reciprocate by listening to others. By doing so, you make your workers feel appreciated and understood, which increases their sense of loyalty to an organization. “Active listening is a powerful tool,” says Hollywood producer Peter Guber, “Because it emotionally connects you to your audience and makes them feel valued.”⁴³
2. When Barack Obama first took office in 2009, about two-thirds of his staff were men and female staffers often felt it difficult to get a seat at the table or have their voices heard. According to National Security Advisor Susan Rice, “It's not pleasant to have to appeal to a man to say, ‘Include me in that meeting.’” ⁴⁴ To address the problem of not feeling heard, a group of female staffers met privately and developed a simple strategy, which they called amplification—to make sure their voices were being heard. Here's how it worked: During a meeting or policy discussion, if a female staffer made a key point or important observation, other women in the room would repeat it and give credit to the staffer who made the point. Something like, “I think Jennifer's point here is a very important one. . .” or “Jennifer's observation is spot on and we should take it into consideration. . .” By doing this, female staffers were supporting each other by “amplifying” points that were being made—holding a microphone to them, so to speak—so male staffers in the room were forced to recognize the point that was just made as well as the person responsible for making it. Amplification can also help prevent male staffers from taking credit for a female staffer's idea at a later date or claiming it as their own. The technique worked and President Obama took notice, gradually including more female staffers in meetings. By the end of his second term, there was an equal split of men and women among his top aides, and half of all White House departments were headed by women. Think about how discussions during the meetings are conducted at your organization. Are there certain louder voices that are always being heard? Are there less assertive voices that sometimes get crowded out? If there are team members who struggle to advocate for their ideas or get drowned out by louder, more assertive voices, use this amplification process to help them be heard.

Set expectations

1. Employee engagement begins with alignment and making sure employees understand an organization's strategic goals and vision. What are the company's short-term and long-term priorities and how will they be accomplished? Employees need to be clear about how they can contribute their efforts to have the greatest impact. Most workers generally feel empowered by transparency, so give them clear and actionable guidance and feedback. Your team members are not mind readers—if you are unhappy with something they are doing you've got to let them know. Provide this type of information in a timely manner so they can make changes before it's too late. Keep the communication channels open and be clear about what you expect from them. According to a Gallup poll, employees were three times more likely to be engaged if their managers held regular meetings with them.⁴⁵ To create a strong company culture within your organization, adopt a leadership style in which every employee feels like they have a voice. Commit to transparency, and create an atmosphere of trust so that team members understand you are open to their ideas and input. Studies have shown that when bosses set clear expectations for their workers it can actually stimulate employee commitment levels to the organization itself by increasing the quality of task-related communications. This means the information should be timely—the right information getting to the right place at the right time.

Show appreciation

1. Recognizing the efforts and accomplishments of those around you goes a long way to employee engagement. As mentioned previously, a Gallup study found that 69 percent of people said they would work harder if they were recognized for their efforts.⁴⁶ If your team members do not feel appreciated, it's going to be hard for them to be engaged and motivated. Conversely, if employees feel valued and acknowledged for the work they have done, it has a direct effect on their brains and the emotions they feel. According to Alex Korb, a neuroscientist who has studied the brain extensively, “The benefits of gratitude start with the dopamine system, because feeling grateful activates the brain stem region that produces dopamine. Additionally, gratitude toward others increases activity in social dopamine circuits, which makes social interactions more enjoyable.”⁴⁷ This means that workers who feel acknowledged will feel more positively about the work they are doing and the collaboration with their coworkers. And a positive attitude can be contagious, as can a negative one. Resentment or apathy can serve as a poison within a team or company if people do not feel appreciated by their boss or an organization's leadership. A recent study from Oracle found a 60 percent increase in engagement simply by recognizing employees—acknowledging their great work or their accomplishments.⁴⁸ This statistic proves there is a definite benefit to recognizing employee achievement. As a boss, this can be done in many ways: an e-mail, a phone call, a gift card, a cash bonus, or a well-deserved promotion. Employees want to be seen as partners and they want their efforts to matter. Recognizing their work makes them feel valued. It also helps unify a team around a common goal and encourages others to succeed while reminding everyone they work for a winning and supportive organization.
2. When it comes to providing incentives as a reward for achievement, bigger is not always better. The size of the award or incentive may not always create the feeling of gratitude you seek. While common sense would suggest that the bigger the incentive, the more the engaged the person would be, that is not necessarily the case. Often a smaller incentive that is more easily attained can be even more effective than a larger one. Why? Because a larger incentive can end up creating increased anxiety in workers. In fact, one study that measured creativity, memory, and motor skills, found that a participant's performances sharply decreased when the incentive was large because it caused them to “choke under pressure.”⁴⁹ Also, it is critical to understand the objective you hope to accomplish by giving the award to make sure the incentive supports the overall mission of your company. Says Susan David, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, “If your goal is to motivate, you need to assess what the risks are to your game plan if you give a bonus to recognize outstanding work performance to only one person on the team versus everyone who participated.”⁵⁰ The danger you run into by recognizing only one person is that the rest of the team who contributed to the project's success may feel resentful or demoralized, and this may undermine your goals in awarding the incentive in the first place.

Empower others

1. Employees want a strong sense of purpose. They want a specific objective to accomplish and a clear vision to help guide them. They want support and also to be challenged. But they also want freedom. Everyone thrives on creativity, so give your team members the space to spread their wings. As we've stressed previously, they will be much happier working with you, than for you. One study of millennials found that 86 percent of these younger workers were more inclined to stay at a job longer if leadership provided them with an opportunity for personal development.⁵¹ This is a frequent requirement for today's workers and something a leader must account for if they hope to be effective.⁵² Recently, while working with William “Andy” Freels, President of Hyundai America Technical Center, Inc., he mentioned how it was often a challenge in his industry to retain young talent, especially skilled engineers. We asked him what these young engineers were looking for in the job—did they want more money? Better benefits? A lighter workload? As it turned out, it was none of those things. Instead, Freels pointed to the parking lot outside of his office window and said, “They want to be able to walk out there, open the door to one of those cars, and point to a knob or a button and say, ‘I designed that.’ It's important for them to have a strong connection between the work they spend their life doing and a result that has some effect in the world. Their designs become a part of other people's lives and that makes a difference.”⁵³

Statistics rarely drive me. Feelings, intuition, and gut instinct do.

—JASON FRIED

These feelings of having a purpose and doing work that makes a difference are not unique to any one generation or any one time in history. Most of us want to do work that matters—that contributes not only to the success of our company but also, in some way, to the betterment of society as a whole. Benjamin Franklin used to wake up every morning at 5 a.m. and ask himself the same question: “What good shall I do this day?” He then went about his work: reading, writing, inventing, building relationships. At night, before retiring to bed, Franklin concluded each day by asking himself, “What good have I done today?”⁵⁴ Connecting these two questions and then acting intentionally throughout his day, Franklin was able to accomplish amazing things such as inventing the lightning rod and bifocal glasses as well as exploring the phenomena of electricity. Research done by The Wharton School found that when people are able to connect their jobs to something meaningful, their productivity increases by as much as five times.⁵⁵

The Formula for the Perfect Pep Talk

We have all seen leaders who deliver inspiring messages that create urgency in the minds of their listeners that move them to action. Obvious examples include Steve Jobs's “How to Live Before You Die” speech at Stanford that gave us the famous phrase “Stay hungry. Stay foolish”; J.K. Rowling's “The “Fringe Benefits of Failure, and The Importance of Imagination” speech at Harvard, and John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address, in which he delivered the famous call to action: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” Speeches that inspire us do so by influencing our emotions. As a result, we see things differently and choose to act or think in new or more decisive ways as a result of hearing it. Think of classic movies such as Rudy or Any Given Sunday or The Wolf of Wall Street and you will see examples of speeches meant to motivate and inspire behavior change. While most people in the corporate arena don't have the same responsibilities as a world leader or professional football coach, we have the same objective: to motivate action in others. Whether you are a college basketball coach pumping up your team at halftime, a manager motivating your sales force to reach their monthly target, or a high school teacher helping a class rehearse a graduation ceremony, the ability to inspire change in others through the delivery of your message is a necessary tenet of effective leadership. But how does someone deliver an inspiring message—is there a scientific formula that can be utilized to craft a compelling message? As it turns out, there is.

Jacqueline and Milton Mayfield, a husband-and-wife team at Texas A&M International University have studied what is called motivating language theory (MLT) and how it can be applied in the business world for nearly three decades.⁵⁶ Throughout the process, they have consulted sports psychologists and military historians to better understand what makes a pep talk effective. What they found, based on scientific findings, was that most winning formulas include three key elements:

• Direction giving
• Expressions of empathy
• Meaning making

The evidence uncovered in their research convinced both researchers that once a leader understands these three elements, and the purposes they serve, they can employ them as a framework to craft more compelling messages. The “direction giving” section of a motivational speech is meant to provide information and instruction about how to accomplish a task and how the efforts or performance will be evaluated. If you are a basketball coach at halftime, you detail what adjustments your players need to make to win the game. If you are a sales manager, you suggest what tactics your team needs to focus on in order to hit their target sales number. If you are a teacher, you set benchmarks and deadlines to make sure the graduation ceremony is rehearsed and ready in time. The purpose of the direction giving section is to provide clarity, what the Mayfields described as “uncertainty-reducing language.”

The “expressions of empathy” section helps to connect a leader with their audience or listener by offering praise, encouragement, or gratitude. It could also be accomplished by acknowledging the difficulty of the task or the level of effort expended to date with phrases like, “No team has more heart than this one,” “This sales quota is something I know you can achieve,” or “The hard work you have done so far preparing for this ceremony is breathtaking.”

The final portion of the formula is “meaning-making”—employing language that drives home the importance of the task and seeing it through to a successful conclusion. This is where a leader can tie the objective of the work to the mission of the organization itself or the personal goals of the listener. If the basketball team wins the game, they will be remembered as a championship team. If the sales team hits their goal, then everyone receives a commission bonus. If the class pulls off the graduation ceremony, their parents will be proud of their accomplishment. In the meaning-making section of the speech a leader can even detail how accomplishing their objective will not only benefit themselves and their team, but will also make a difference in their community or even in their society at large.

Research shows that employing these types of simple, motivational speeches has a positive impact on the individuals receiving them.⁵⁷ Tiffanye Vargas, a sports psychology professor at California State University at Long Beach, has published extensive studies detailing which types of speeches are best at motivating athletes in different situations, and how these principles are also applicable in the business sector. Her research suggests that a coach's pregame remarks really do affect the performance and outlook of the athletes, with 90 percent of players saying they enjoy listening to pep talks and 65 percent saying the speeches have a direct effect on the way they play.⁵⁸ By understanding each element of the motivating language theory and structuring inspirational messages around the three steps of direction giving, expressions of empathy, and meaning making, a leader will better influence the emotions of others and be more likely to drive results and facilitate behavior change in a team or individual.