The Bill Perry Show

In this Leading with a Limp podcast series, we talk about how leaders can effectively manage teams during times of conflict and move toward organizational health.

If you've been a leader for any length of time, you know that strife, betrayal, and even personal wounds will come. The secret to leading well isn't to avoid these painful times but to embrace them and heal. Creating an exceptionally healthy environment requires intentional, hard work. But do it, and your team will flourish.

In this episode, we focus on the necessity of handling hard conversations with employees well.

Awareness of our tendencies under stress gives you and your team the advantage when the need for difficult conversations arises. Individual stress profiles, such as those provided in a DISC or MBTI profile, offer you insight into what to expect from each other when the stakes are high.

Our own reactions under stress, and the reactions of those we live and work with, are rarely the product of the immediate moment. Unless the moment is an expression of malice or violence, our reactions are most often an extension of a deeper story. How we interpret moments of stress is often distorted by the lens of experience. This is why it is critical to know your team and to develop deep levels of employee trust. Take time, and be intentional to know their stories.

Managing your reactions is a function of your emotional intelligence. The good news is, this is an area that we can all grow in.

In the heat of a stressful conversation where the stakes are high, self-control may look like walking away, taking a time out. This is an acceptable strategy as long as you come back to the table and reframe the conversation in a solutions-oriented posture.

When conversations take a heated turn, consider these three steps:

1. Rehearse the objective.
2. Acknowledge feelings—honor what's in the emotional atmosphere.
3. Stick to the facts.

Navigating difficult conversations is awkward and uncomfortable for most of us, but the advantage goes to those who do it with grace!

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A valuable resource for additional thoughts on difficult conversations is Crucial Conversations by the team at VitalSmarts. It is loaded with examples and strategies for facilitating productive conversations when the stakes are high.

If you recognize conflict in your team or a limp in your leadership but don't know where to begin, let's talk. We offer a great diagnostic tool to determine the strengths and liabilities of your organization. It's a relatively pain-free process by which we obtain feedback from your team members to identify the roadblocks and blind spots in your pursuit of a healthy team.

Connect with me for a free, complimentary conversation about our organizational-health process. It won't cost you more than 30 minutes of your time to find out if some feedback would be valuable for you and your team.

If you haven't already, we'd love your feedback on the show. Leave a comment, a review, or even a topic you'd like to hear me cover.

Until next time, lead well!

Bill

In this Leading with a Limp podcast series, we talk about how leaders can effectively manage teams during times of conflict and move toward organizational health.

If you've been a leader for any time, you know that strife, betrayal, even personal wounds will come. The secret to leading well isn't to avoid these painful times but to embrace them and heal. Creating an exceptionally healthy environment requires intentional, hard work. But do it, and your team will flourish.

In this episode, we focus on how you as the leader can avoid developing a limp (or heal the one you already have) when you experience friendly fire from your team.

If you've never witnessed healthy conflict, your tendency during difficult times is likely to avoid, shove it under the rug, ignore. Unaddressed issues within your team lead to bitterness. Left unreconciled, these issues mar both our trust with each other and our ability to move forward with ease. We become awkward, uncomfortable. We might start to avoid the person with whom we have the breech. The seed for an unhealthy working environment has been planted, and it will begin to impact your financial bottom line: When trust goes down, time and expense go up.

The most important thing you can do is address the issue. Don't let it fester into a limp.

For long-term organizational health, develop your team's core values. Establishing team values will give you a playbook for mitigating conflict and miscommunication.

Core values are not slick words developed by your marketing team that live on your wall and website. Those do no good, and chances are your team has no idea what they say anyway.

True core values define the behaviors upon which your team agrees they will relate to each other—and they are vital to your organization's health.

Core values are pre-agreed behaviors: When conflict comes, this is how we are going to behave with each other, with clients, and with vendors. These day-to-day behaviors promote the best among your team, and they are so clear and rehearsed that any team member can recite them at any time.

It is healthy to have conflict in your team about project challenges because it will push everyone to improve; however, when conflict becomes personality-directed and even mean-spirited, team values are vital to keeping the team together.

Read more about developing core values.

Core values are day-to-day behaviors that are clearly demonstrated among your team. Practically useful team values will have the following qualities:

1. They define how you are going to behave with each other, clients, and vendors.
2. They are clear and well-rehearsed so all team members can readily recall and understand behavioral expectations.
3. They are a team high priority, so if values are violated the parties involved will come together to examine what happened and why.

If there are breeches now—people you've harbored offense with, something simmering that you've left unaddressed—go back this week and have the awkward, but profitable, conversation. Reconcile. Watch trust go up, and watch trust and expense go down.

When new conflict arises, proactively address the issue at hand as soon as possible. This breeds trust and helps prevent offenses from festering. Don't let offenses go unchecked with your team.

Be willing to model this behavior as a leader. Have the humility to own your part and say, "Let's come back to the table, talk through the problem, and see if we can get back to the issues and the concepts." This is vulnerability-based trust, and it will give you a competitive edge. Your employees and peers will trust you when you are willing to model humility as a leader and admit when you could have handled things differently.

Do the hard work, and your team will flourish under your leadership.

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If you recognize conflict in your team or a limp in your leadership but don't know where to begin, let's talk. We offer a great diagnostic tool to determine the strengths and liabilities of your organization. It's a relatively pain-free process by which we obtain feedback from your team members to identify the roadblocks and blind spots in your pursuit of a healthy team.

Connect with me for a free, complimentary conversation about our organizational-health process. It won't cost you more than 30 minutes of your time to find out if some feedback would be valuable for you and your team.

If you haven't already, we'd love your feedback on the show. Leave a comment, review, or even a topic you'd like to hear me cover.

Until next time, lead well!

Bill

As leaders, we all have seasons that we're leading with a limp, that is when we've suffered a leadership injury, such as a betrayal or a loss of confidence in our team. The danger is, if left unresolved, our injury can cause our attitudes to calcify into patterns of highly-charged reactions. This erodes the harmony and trust within our team and leads to an unhealthy work environment.

You may be reacting to real offenses or even betrayal from employees or colleagues, but to heal the limp, it's imperative that you take a step back after the situation escalates to assess the real root cause. If you've overreacted with your team, you also need to repair any broken ties.

The first step is to reflect. In instances where you find your reactions getting the best of you, give yourself room to be self-aware:

1. Consider the root of your response and how it found its origin. How much of your reaction was fueled by perceived offenses, real offenses, and past offenses?
2. Look at the reaction from a new perspective and discern the message from the messenger.
3. Review the intensity of your reaction. Did the punishment fit the crime?

Self-reflection can shed light on past experiences and betrayals that cause you to put your armor up. In doing so, you may find opportunities to repair communication with your team and revisit shared values.

High-emotion situations are where core values can help. Core values are more than inspirational posters in the breakroom—they are a code of conduct. If you don't have core values for your organization already defined, create a list of shared values that are actionable and describe specific behaviors. Useful team values will directly address how you are going to live together in harmony and pursue peace with each other. From there productivity and creativity will ultimately flow.

If your limp has caused any over-reactions, work on rebuilding. Don't let offenses and perceptions fall by the wayside. Some leaders by default isolate themselves after uncomfortable situations. If you're leading a team, you can't isolate yourself or insulate against one individual without isolating or insulating against all. You need to address the problem.

Set an example as a leader and offer a genuine apology to the person you slighted. You can go back to your team member at that moment and offer words like "I'm sorry. I overreacted. That did not come off well, and that's not my intention toward you. That's not how we're committed to functioning together." Take time to listen to the other party. If the interaction is intense, bring someone you trust—not as ammunition to defend your stance—but to mediate and hear both sides of the story.

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If you recognize conflict in your team or a limp in your leadership but don't know where to begin, let's talk. We offer a great diagnostic tool to determine the strengths and liabilities of your organization. It's a relatively pain-free process by which we obtain feedback from your team members to identify the roadblocks and blind spots in your pursuit of a healthy team.

Connect with me for a free, complimentary conversation about our process. It won't cost you more than 30 minutes of your time to find out if some feedback would be valuable for you and your team.

Till next week: Better You. Better Team. Better Business. Better Life.

To create a healthy company culture, you need to get to know your employees' needs and wants. We're continuing our podcast series on what your team needs to thrive. This week: your team's need to feel valued.

In episode 18 we introduced the idea of growing healthier teams as a function of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In order, they are survival, safety, belonging, importance, and self-actualization. Highly engaged, connected team members become the norm in a culture where an individual's importance and value are reinforced and celebrated.

There are very few individuals who have the capacity to function at a high level of impact and influence without the support and encouragement of at least a small community of people who cheer for, encourage, and challenge them in their process.

Even those of us who function as independent entrepreneurs need a band of brothers and sisters, a community. That implies that we are willing to know and to be known. With your team, it's important they know that what matters to them matters to you. It really comes down to a very simple equation: a little time plus empathy equals the communication of importance and value.

We're introducing a key word to our leadership vocabulary: empathy. As Albert Einstein said, "Empathy is patiently and sincerely seeing the world through the other person's eyes. It is not learned in school; it is cultivated over a lifetime."

Empathy and sympathy are different. Sympathy is pity, and it's not a long-term motivator. Empathy is an understanding and a willingness to share the feelings of others. It says, "That sucks. I am so sorry," and "What do you need from me?"

I recently worked with a group of young leaders who said the number one behavior they valued in a team was empathy. Empathy communicates value.

How do you integrate empathy in your team? Train your leadership that empathy is a core leadership value. Set the standard that you as a team are going to communicate value and appreciation for every member and that you're going to do that by expressing genuine trust and empathy.

Integrating empathy, recognition, and appreciation into your engagement strategy must be intentional and consistent in order to get the return on investment. Whatever you do, don't try this simply as one more strategic initiative. If empathy and appreciation feel insincere, your team will pull back, become self-protective, and disengage.

If we want people to love their work, we're going to have to love the people. In the workplace, love values others. It's a deep appreciation, respect, and dignity for another. Start today by extending sincere empathy and offering recognition and appreciation for their contributions.

If you take care of your people, they will take care of your clients and your business.

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Healthy cultures should be a pressure relief for leaders: Drama is reduced, confusion is diminished, accountability improves, and the team focuses on results, not personal agendas.

If this sounds like heaven to you but you often find yourself doing a slow burn in hell, let's talk.

We offer a great diagnostic tool to determine the strengths and liabilities in your organization. It's a relatively pain-free process by which we obtain feedback from your team members to identify the roadblocks and blind spots in your pursuit of a healthy team.

Connect with me for a free, complimentary conversation about our process. It won't cost you more than 30 minutes of your time to find out if some feedback would be valuable for you and your team.

If you haven't already, we'd love your feedback on the show. Go to iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast platform and leave some love.

Till next week: "better you, better team, better business, better life."

What do your employees want most? In part five of this series, we uncover surprising findings on team culture and get to the heart of how you can make your employees happy.

In a study conducted by the University of Minnesota, managers and employees were asked to rank work-related needs like job security, good wages, promotion, help with personal problems, appreciation, and feeling in on things (desire for connection). Employees ranked these factors on how important they felt each issue was in the workplace. Managers ranked them according to how important they thought their employees would rank each issue.

The result? Leadership and employees had a completely different view of factors that mattered most at work. These three things mattered most to employees:

1. Appreciation
2. Feeling in on things, desire for connection
3. Help with personal problems

In contrast, those three things were at the bottom of the order in responses from leadership.

In this podcast episode, I talk about why leaders often overlook these factors. As a leader, you can save time and money by better understanding employee needs. Appreciation and recognition are the least expensive yet most effective tools in your battle for employee engagement and satisfaction.

Leaders often assume employees value survival and safety-level needs, such as good wages and job security, above other factors in the workplace. This is where the disconnect comes in. Employees' top needs often relate more to belonging, importance, and self-actualization.

Communicating a sense of belonging begins with being interested in your team members on an individual and personal level. Leaders can avoid high employee turnover and recruitment costs by fostering a sense of belonging and comradery in their teams.

How you can start to effectively meet your team's needs:

• Know the dos and don'ts of communicating appreciation. For appreciation to have value, it has to be specific and meaningful to employees. Appreciation that is too simplified or general can actually be counterproductive.

• Start conversations. Know your team members on an individual and personal basis so they feel a sense of belonging.
• Speak their language. Understand the 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace and how they can help your employees feel valued.
• Encourage connection. Create occasional opportunities for team members to have fun and connect around moments other than work.

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I want you and those alongside you on your journey to deeply enjoy the life you have been given. Feel welcome to drop me a line on social or email me if you would like to get started on creating a happier, healthier team.

As always, we're here to help you get to a "better you, better team, better business, better life."

Resources in this episode: Gary Chapman & Paul White's book, The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace.

Listen in to this week's episode for leadership tips to improve your company culture and make employees happy. First, address your team's safety, security, and social needs.

Leaders, you can prevent high employee turnover by first ensuring that your employees' needs are being met. Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes into play here and ranked in order, these needs are: survival, safety, belonging, importance, and self-actualization.

Starting at the basic level of survival, we're talking about the physiological needs of food, warmth, and shelter. After those are met, then we can address safety—also known here as job security, resources, and good health.

If your team members struggle with security or shelter, they won't have the bandwidth to appreciate the connection, even if you've created a work culture that offers a sense of belonging.

In reality, true team engagement doesn't begin until we can address level three in the hierarchy of needs: belonging. Belonging (the need for community) is identified by Gallup as one of the 12 factors of employee engagement. This is the need for friendship, family, or a sense of connection. How can you keep employees happy at this level? Employees in the belonging stage desire respect, recognition, and the ability to express strength and freedom.

Extending a sense of belonging is the foundation of employee and team engagement. If you really want to awaken engagement as a leader, don't just offer your team a sense of place. Offer them a voice.

Next is the need for self-actualization, a motivation to fulfill an inner potential. Team members at the self-actualization stage have the possibility for growth, and they crave the opportunity to express creativity and innovative ideas.

In this leadership podcast episode, I talk through three ways that you can meet employee needs and wants to grow a highly engaged organization:

• Start conversations. Ask your employees if their basic needs of survival and safety are being met. Albeit awkward at times, these conversations will offer your team a sense of belonging and could potentially help them find additional resources to address these needs.

• Encourage open communication. People only feel valued to the degree that they feel heard. When your team is voicing their opinions, listen for their strengths and recognize them for their contributions.

• Voice your appreciation. The height of team engagement will occur when each team member feels appreciated, recognized, and able to express their full potential. Your employees will add value to your team if they feel valued.

As always, feel welcome to drop me a line on social or email me if you would like to talk through your organizational and leadership challenges!

Are you a safe leader—meaning, can your team trust you not to respond in an exaggerated way when under stress? Or does your team walk on eggshells, fearing volatility or withdrawal when stress hits? If so, you're setting a culture that tells your team they aren't safe when times are tough.

We're continuing our dialogue on the top three things your employees need to thrive: safety, appreciation, and inclusion. Your team's number one need is a psychologically safe work environment, and that vibe always begins with you.

Your IQ and personality may be relatively set, but there's limitless room for growth in your emotional intelligence. In this episode, I cover these practical tips that can help you improve your self-management against the triggers that often provoke you and turn you into Mr. Hyde.

• Become aware of and take control of your self-talk.

• Breathe. Gather your presence and become aware of what is going on within you. That can help you bring control to difficult moments in lieu of just reacting.

• Count to ten. Even a small pause can help diffuse the internal chain reaction that can often trigger when on auto-pilot.

• Sleep on it. Give yourself the gift of space away from the situation to think clearly. If something is particularly difficult, it's okay to back out and ask for an overnight pause.

• Smile and laugh more.

• Clean up your sleep. Nothing is more critical to good self-management than getting good, quality sleep. Being well rested promotes a healthy reaction when under stress. Studies show that incomplete sleep cycles can drastically affect your emotional well-being.

• Visualize yourself succeeding. If I know I'm stepping into a particularly difficult encounter, my habit is to play out the worst case in my head before the situation happens. We are wired to anticipate the worst—it's what provokes our fight or flight—so it takes effort and energy to go against the default failure mantra. Instead, intentionally visualize yourself successfully responding or communicating. Imagine yourself having a calm response and coming up with a positive solution. Remind yourself that this can change.

• Put a mental recharge into your schedule. Take time every day to pause, get outside, and take a break.

• Get feedback. Speak to someone who is not emotionally invested in your problem.

• Pay attention to your judgmental self-talk. When faced with stressful situations, we frequently default to "I always" or "I never." Instead, turn these into "this time" or "sometimes."

Give yourself and those around you the gift of improved self-management. Set the pace, and model the behavior you want to see; then you will have the authority to hold those around you accountable for their unsafe behaviors.

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Have a burning leadership question you'd like us to cover? Email me or DM me on Instagram.

Are you a safe leader?

Can your team members approach you with concerns and challenges without being afraid of your response?

In this series, we're focusing on your employees' top three needs. Number two: a safe leader.

Job stress and anxiety don't come from the actual work but from uncaring and unaware leaders. As a leader, you can develop a team of happy employees who love their jobs. Do this by facilitating open communication, team productivity, and employee engagement.

In unhealthy work cultures, leaders are volatile and unpredictable. Ineffective leaders aren't always super angry or demeaning; sometimes they withdraw and stop offering support. I call this an eggshell culture, where people are very careful not to say what they are thinking.

In eggshell cultures, team members rarely offer creative or innovative suggestions. Meanwhile, leaders wonder why they don't get greater effort from their people. A truly engaged team won't be too careful to share their ideas. They will propel your vision and make real impact.

Courageous leaders recognize that the culture of their organization begins with them. Listen in for ways that you can make employees feel safe.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why research shows that employees would rather be unemployed than work with volatile leaders and managers.
• Ways that a healthy work culture and appreciation can reduce stress and anxiety at work.
• Tips for identifying your own stress responses and keeping your cool in high-pressure situations.
• How one firm motivated employees to produce higher-quality work and increased client satisfaction.

How is your company culture? Does your team have what it needs to feel safe?

I'm not talking about physical safety here. I'm asking if your organization's culture fosters an atmosphere of professional and emotional safety for your team. If you want to create a culture where employees are happy, engaged, and thriving, listen in.

For the next few weeks we're focusing on your employees' top three needs. Number one: a psychologically safe workplace.

An atmosphere in which your team feels protected, valued, and appreciated is paramount to every other desire your employees have. When they feel like they belong—they are free to relax and offer their best to your vision.

What does an unsafe company culture look like? It's a workplace where employees react out of fear, self-protection, and self-preservation. They're driven to protect themselves from leadership and each other. It's an exhausting environment.

Repeated studies show that being unhappy on the job, feeling unsafe and unappreciated, contributes to levels of anxiety and depression equal to or greater than the pain of unemployment.

Listen in for steps you can take today to change the culture around your office and help employees feel psychologically safe.

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I'm motivated to helping you grow a business that your team members would describe as "a great place to work." For us here at the Innovatus Group, our mission is all about the progression of "better you, better team, better business, better life."

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Resources in this episode:

Simon Sinek's book Leaders Eat Last https://amzn.to/2JKblEL

Leaders can easily fall prey to workplace stress and the demands of the team. This can cause them to sacrifice the creativity that fuels innovation and progress. In this podcast episode, I talk about how to find proactive solutions during times of stress by taking a pause and practicing intentional mindfulness.

We're wrapping up our "Be Good to Yourself" series, which is focused on why leaders truly need to take care of themselves before effectively caring for their teams.

In 1929 Coca-Cola introduced their marketing slogan, "The pause that refreshes." Though I'm not a fan of soda, this slogan offers insight into how you can become a better leader. Regular moments of pause and intentional reflection are critical to growing your capacities in leadership and life and doing both with all your heart.

Keeping up with the goals and demands of the workplace can lead managers to miss out on opportunities to give and receive necessary feedback. If that's not enough, the constant dinging and buzzing of our smartphones can add to the challenge of finding quiet moments to re-center.

The frenetic pace of our lives caps the voice of wisdom that is often only recognizable in a still, quiet moment. Listen in as I share how you can find those moments.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• The key benefits of taking a moment to pause and intentionally reflect.
• How a creative genius and holder of 200 patents, Dr. Elmer Gates, used pauses for enhanced productivity.

• Quick ways you can incorporate intentional reflection into your life without interfering with your daily routine.
• Strategies for thinking critically and creatively—instead of reactively—in crisis situations.

I'd love to hear your questions, thoughts, and comments. If you have a minute, drop me a line on social or email me with your name and questions, and I'll take some time in an upcoming episode to address some of your organizational and leadership challenges!

As always, my hope is to encourage you in the pursuit of a better you, better team, better business, better life!