Webinar: Keeping Employees Engaged During Uncertain Times

The following transcript was auto-generated from the video version of the webinar. Please excuse any typos / inaccuracies.

Keith Wolf:

All right. Welcome everybody. We’re excited to get started. I am Keith Wolf. I’m managing director of Murray resources and on behalf of our entire team here at Murray resources, I’d like to welcome you to our webinar today. So many of you attended last week’s high at HR webinars. It was on legal employment issues around COVID-19. We were delighted with the VBAC after the webinar, and we were thrilled to so many folks not valuable. If you happen to miss it, you can find the recording on our facebookPage@facebook.com forward slash Murray resources. So for today’s webinar, I’m very excited to introduce Don rain. Don is a world renowned speaker author, as well as the CEO of [inaudible] solutions, which is a science based human behavior. Consultancy. The measures employee engagement. Don is a former science advisor to Congress in a white house correspondent. And he draws from his diverse experience to guide business leaders in creating workplace cultures that sparked engagement and increased profitability.

Keith Wolf:

Now, we actually had Don speak at a live hot topics in HR event, back in the days where you could host live events. It was six years ago this month, and Don was one of the most popular speakers we’ve ever had. In fact, he was so well received. Then when we were planning our hot topics in HR all-star summit for the end of this year, Don was one of three speakers. We invited back to speak to our group. Now, unfortunately, that event has been pushed back to 2021, but the good news is that you’re going to hear Don today and you can do so from your office, your car at your desk, or even while you’re wearing bunny slippers. So Don’s talk today will be on keeping employees engaged during uncertain times. So before we get started, we have just a few housekeeping items to go over.

Keith Wolf:

So the webinar’s going to be 60. So we’re going to end sharply at 1:00 PM central, but that said, Don has volunteered to hang on until one 30 as sort of a bonus time to answer questions. So if you have questions or, or you’d like to hear, Dawn’s answer to those questions, feel free to stay on with us for those bonus 30 minutes. And I got this question a lot last time. So let me just make sure I clear this up. This is a webinar format, so we can not see you. We can not hear you. And in fact, I’m going to turn my camera off in just a minute when Don gets started. So don’t worry about making noise. We can’t hear it nor can we see you. And everybody’s going to be on mute. We have over 200 folks on this call and we will be sharing slides from the webinar. So everyone who registered will get those slides. And lastly, we will share the CE credits with everyone who attended a live event today. And you will receive an email on that tomorrow as well. So please look for that. Okay. So with that welcome, Don. Great to have you. You’re ready to go.

Don Rheem:

I’m ready to go. All good. Thank you very, very much Keith, for that introduction. And I want to just ask you all, if you could on your phones or perhaps also on your PC, but it’s gonna require you to bounce around. If you could go to menti.com, M E N T i.com. And this is a platform that I’m going to use to gather some information from you during the our time together. And in fact, I’m going to go ahead and go to the very first slide that I would love for you to answer this question, when you go to menti.com and enter in that code, you see at the top of this screen, 38 Oh (120) 138-0121. And I just want to ask you, what is your go to snack during the Workday this isn’t cause I’m going to talk about your go to snack, but I just want to make sure that you can get onto this platform because I do have another key question I’d like to ask you here as we move forward, okay, this is great protein bars.

Don Rheem:

Now I also highlight this platform. The actual website is meant to meet her.com. We’re not affiliated with them in any way, these three solutions, but I love using this as a way to make remote meeting meetings more interactive. So for example, if you’re having a zoom call with your team or the whole company or your department encourage you to use Mentimeter to ask some key questions of employees so that they can respond anonymously. This particular format on this Mentimeter page is a crowdsourcing format. So that as individual items get mentioned multiple times, they get bigger on the screen. So as you can just see here in just a matter of 60 seconds, we’ve got 58 responses already. The yen and their crowdsource chips are the biggest snacks followed by coffee, almonds, fruit there’s water. Apples is starting to fade peanuts, banana trail mix chocolate is your chocolate hummus.

Don Rheem:

This is great. Okay. So you’re obviously able to get on and I’m going to come back and ask you another question here related to the seminar in just a moment, but I am going to move forward and just get us started. As Keith said, I’m going to talk about how to engage employees during a turbulent times. And it’s not easy because there are lots of other stressors going on this, the whole notion of, of engaging people in a pandemic. And I like this image because it indicates not only the self protection that that people are trying to do, but the isolation as well. And so with this pandemic comes just a lot of added stress and isolation and everything that we do. And I’m want to unpack that from a neuroscience perspective. As Keith mentioned, my background is in the sciences.

Don Rheem:

I was a technical consultant to the science technology and space committee in the house of representatives. Then I was a science advisor and the secretary of the us department of health and human services. And what we bring in [inaudible] solutions to this whole leadership mix is to science-based neuroscience based approach to what drives people’s behavior when they’re at work. So here’s my Mentimeter question for you. What has your biggest challenge been with your team over the past few weeks? What is the biggest challenge been with your team over the past few weeks? And let’s just share what what these challenges have been among us in the group. And when you go back to your phone, you’ll have to advance through some slides to get to this question. Communication, lack of communication was already laid off before uncertainty barking dogs. And I should say there may be a few at my end this afternoon connecting with managers, keeping them motivated and engaged transparency, anxiety around layoffs, keeping up with the volume of requests, learning how to conduct riffs, remotely. That’s incredibly uncomfortable. The kids are always around over-scheduling training, request, kids, more communication, just being able to maintain the attention. Okay. 46 responses in a, so many details to learn, to do new things correctly. Absolutely. But communication, lack thereof, engaging with our team, feeling overworked, staying focused, calming fears.

Don Rheem:

So you can see this is a different format on the Mentimeter site that just lists each thing and you can scroll down through them. Someone said here just straight on fear, and I’ll definitely be talking about that. Overwork concentrated homeschooling accountability. Okay. So we’re seeing a lot of common themes here. And so I want to address these in the, in our time here together. So I’m going to keep moving forward. What, so at three solutions, we both measure engagement and we train managers on, on how to improve those levels. And then we, we provide resources for managers on how to do that when no one else is around, but we’re, we’re focused now on a couple of things here specifically inside the organization. And that is this generational issue or angle to the pandemic for the two newest generations in the workplace, gen Z anybody who’s 23 years of age or younger and, and millennials from 24 to 38, they’ve never experienced this level of disruption in their lives.

Don Rheem:

Yes, they did. Many of them started their careers in the recession. There was nine 11. I’m not saying that their lives have been easy, but they have not experienced extended time periods of relative deprivation and isolation. Like previous generations have around a world war or a depression. It’s also hit millennials, particularly hard. As a generation, they have a low savings rate, so they don’t have much of a cushion. Many of them were involved in the so-called gig economy and they’ve been hurt tremendously less likely to have a home, be saddled with the rent if you will. And it’s just been really, really hard on them. They, they also have very high expectations out of life. And many of those have been diminished and impacted, which has certainly increased their stress level. And we’ve gone from a situation where we were trying to get people engaged in the organization that is coming into bricks and mortar and buildings and facilities locations to now the issue is how do we keep them engaged when they’re alone isolated, working on their own.

Don Rheem:

And they don’t have that crowd engagement for us is we have, we have a very specific view on this cause it’s a very practical view, but also fits with the neurosciences. It’s an employee’s willingness to freely give discretionary effort to their employer. And what is discretionary effort? Just define it in a really simple way. Every employee knows what level of work that they have to deliver so that you or someone else in leadership, doesn’t pull them aside and say, Hey, what’s wrong. What’s up with you today. So they all know this minimum level of effort that they have to bring to get through the day, the week, the month, but every single one of them has an additional level of effort that represents what they’re fully capable of doing as a human being and the difference between what someone is fully capable of doing. And what they typically do when they get to work is what we call that.

Don Rheem:

Delta is what we refer to as discretionary effort. The practicality of that is this. Every employee comes to work every day, whether it’s in a building or at home at their kitchen table, with the discretionary effort. And when they volunteer that extra level of effort, this is when we get much higher levels of productivity, higher morale profitability goes up the accident rate declines quality issues decline because they’re more focused and they’re giving you closer to what they’re capable of. The other nice thing about this is when employees are giving their discretionary effort, yes, they’re working harder, but at the same time, they feel better about what they’re doing. And that’s the beauty of discretionary effort. When you do the things that trigger it, you’re actually making the work feel less like work and they’re enjoying it more and they’re, they’re doing it just at a higher level.

Don Rheem:

So what we focus on in our practice is how to get that discretionary effort. It’s a little different than the typical leadership approach. And, and as you all know you’re in leadership positions, they’re there right now. There are more than a thousand books in print on leadership. Very few of them are based on science, which means that it’s an interesting case study autobiography story, but how it unfolded for that author and their time and their company will never unfold same for anyone else, because it’s not science. It’s, it’s anecdotal, it’s subject to what they remembered, what they saw, what they noticed their own internal unconscious biases. And this is why we’ve had two decades of thousands of books on leadership. And yet the number of employees reporting to be engaged when they get to work, hasn’t budged. So two decades of books and leadership and the leadership genre, and it hasn’t really changed the nature of work for the vast majority of employees in the United States let alone globally.

Don Rheem:

So what we do differently is instead of trying to guess what it is, and look at a leader that was successful and then try to take them apart and to decide what it was that made them a great leader, which is interesting, but not science and not really helpful over the long run. We start with what we know drives human behavior at a neurological level. And it’s, it’s really the same for, for all of us. So that’s what we’re trying to get at is are these science-based conditions that we can create. And this is the, the, the short story. We now know the conditions where homo-sapiens fried, where they work at their best and their most likely to be operating at or close to their full capacity. So once you know what those conditions are, it’s fairly obvious that you would want to try to replicate those in the workplace so that you could get more from people while at the same time, they’re feeling better about what they do.

Don Rheem:

And just to put a finer point on this, pardon me for turning around and showing you might have back. But I did write the book on how to do this, that Forbes published, titled the thrive by design the neuroscience that drives high performance culture. So let’s get started to find out what this is all about. So when you measure engagement and we have our own proprietary tool that measures engagement in our client companies, but engagement looks like a bell curve. And this is what’s one of the most important things about engagement is not the answers to individual questions, which is what a lot of the surveys focus. They drill down on what was the score on this question? That question, the other question it’s really to put them into categories, levels of engagement, and we divide the bell curve into four categories. On the far left.

Don Rheem:

You have the actively disengaged. These are the employees that well, they quit. They just never told you, and they’re still showing up and collecting a paycheck. They’re totally checked out, have a very negative influence on the culture, in any team or any people that they interact with. Then you have the somewhat disengaged. This is the largest group. Typically in companies, I’ll go ahead and show you the percentages that somewhat disengaged or anywhere from 35 to 50% of employees, the engaged. Now, when we cross this center point, we get into those employees that are fairly consistently giving you their discretionary effort. And the first category are the engaged employees, typically 20 to 25%. And then on the far right, the, of the outliers, the positive outliers, the actively engaged also five to 15% of the same as the other side of the bell curve.

Don Rheem:

Now, one of the interesting things to do when you’ve measured your company, your organization, you now know how many employees you have in each of these categories. So what are some of the implications of that? Let’s just look at productivity. The actively disengaged employee on the far left, their productivity multiplier is 0.5. And what that means is you’ve paid them for an eight hour day, but they’re really giving you about four hours of real work, the somewhat disengaged their productivity multipliers 0.66. So you pay them for eight hours of work. They’re giving about five and a quarter for the engaged. It’s one for one that old saying a decent days to work for decent days pay it’s one. And then they actively engaged a remarkable group inside the organization, mentors models of positive, very productive behavior. They’re giving you one and a half days work.

Don Rheem:

So their multiplier is 1.5. So when you do these calculations, not only do you find out how much money you’re hemorrhaging by paying salaries that aren’t delivering any work, but you also discover this you’re actively engaged. Employees are three times more productive than you’re actively disengaged. And when you don’t know what that ratio is, let alone where they are. There’s not much you can do to shift a culture in a, in a quick and a meaningful way. And I’ll talk more about measuring in a little bit, but I did just want to set up this categorization. We refer to the actively engaged as A-players the engaged as be somewhat disengaged as your C players and the actively disengaged as your DS. The goal of course is to, is to create a center of gravity that pulls everyone to the right what’s happened. Now in the pandemic is the center of gravity is pulling people to the left.

Don Rheem:

Not because they’re any less loyalty you or they’ve all of a sudden woken up and they’re lazy, but there are all kinds of stressors in the brain that are robbing them of capacity that they have before this all started. And I will dig into that very specifically as we move forward. So what are the drivers of engagement? What’s driving these people over on the right side of the bell curve. And there’s really a two clear categories that we divide this into somewhere in the more cognitive or tactical that you see on the left. That capability is one broad category capability includes, do they have the right training, the right skills and tools to do the work you want them to do? If you have really good people in positions and ask them to do work, but don’t give them the resources to execute it efficiently and effectively, it becomes disengaging.

Don Rheem:

And then of course, focus to be engaged. We need to know what it is we’re supposed to do so that we can do it well and, and hopefully get some sort of recognition for doing it well. And there’s lots of information out there on this left side of the slide where we focus at [inaudible] solutions is on the right hand side, because this is where the leadership field is fairly bereft of an organizing theory around the role of emotion at work. But we focus on the nature of relationships wellbeing, safety, and trust recognition and validation and the role that it plays and then inspiration and motivation which I do put at the bottom of the list. I do think motivation and motivational speakers are probably one of the most overrated business assets that you can find or put in front of people tends to be very theorial like a sugar high, doesn’t have much of lasting impact typically.

Don Rheem:

So I’m much more interested in the quality of relationships than I am in Mo motivational talks or any of that kind of content. But if you have questions about that, I’m happy to talk about it, not against it just isn’t where I would start. So it’s really important to understand this role of emotion in the brain and what the agenda is. And I’m going to suggest something to you here as an organizing principle for this webinar. And that is this the brain very complex. There’s no question about its complexity. We have learned more about the brain in the last eight years, and we have in the previous thousand, and we know, for example, it’s a really busy place, more than 1.3 trillion transactions, a second take place in the brain, both chemical and electrical. This is an artist’s depiction of a synaptic connection. Imagine 1.3 trillion of these taking place inside the brain all day, every second of the day, it’s a really busy place.

Don Rheem:

We now know that we are only aware of about 2% of what our brain is doing. 98% of what the brain does is below your consciousness, the definition of the word clueless. And we really are clueless to the vast majority of functions that the brain is doing. And it’s probably okay. Cause it would be, we would absolutely be a dumbfounded and immobilized if we knew everything going on, but at the end of the day, the key thing for us to focus on is the role of emotion and emotion has, has been treated certainly by Western culture, as something that’s often irrational material, you can’t pinpoint it. And, and in fact, many business leaders have tried to keep emotion out of the workplace because they think that’s, what’s driving drama and conflict and all these other things. And if only we could just work in a purely rational environment where people would leave their emotions at home, which is completely delusional and impossible.

Don Rheem:

Instead of running from emotion, running away from it, I want managers and leaders to run toward it and embrace its role in the workplace because it is determining the quality of work that people do when they get there. Now here’s something we know, not only to all of us on this talk, right now we share 99.9% of our DNA with each other. We’re all, I mean the DNA 99.9% of our DNA is identical. We also share a common agenda that is our brain shares an agenda. What does the brain want? And what is the role of emotion and getting it. And that’s what I want to just take you through really quickly to give us an understanding of what the agenda is for the brain, because every brain begins the day with an agenda. And it’s the same for all of us at a certain level when you break it down to its most fundamental components.

Don Rheem:

And when we understand that we can create workplaces that help the brain achieve that, which is going to improve performance, guaranteed, because this is how the brain is hardwired. So let me take you on a little trip. It can be back in time or just a different geography, but I’m going to take you to East Africa. This is a photo of the Serengeti, whether it’s the Serengeti or the Maasai Mara, if you’ve ever been to East Africa, you’ve just seen hundreds and hundreds of miles and forests and Woodlands, Woodlands, not forest, I’m sorry of grasslands, just grazing lands. And it goes on forever. Now, one of the most prolific mammals in East Africa is the Willdabeast kind of studied ugly. No one would adopt this as a pet. But they’re one of the most prolific successful mammals there in terms of taking advantage of that ecosystem and reproducing.

Don Rheem:

Now here’s my question for you about Willdabeast. If you are Willdabeast, are you feeling safer or is your chance for success higher? If you’re alone by yourself seeking out that extra waterhole or that greener grass, or do your chances of success go way, way up. If you’re ensconced inside the hurt, where are you safest clearly inside the herd? This was a condition is not only true for Willdabeast over their their lifetime and evolution, but it was also true for homo-sapiens that started in the same environment. At least if you follow the DNA evidence at all ends up back in East Africa, but even for homosapians, the issue was if you could just outline one person, you lived another day, this condition of being in the group being considered to be 10 amount to a safety and security and living again was so pervasive for us as a species as homo-sapiens that it neuroscientists now say every fold of our cerebral matter is dedicated to being inside a group.

Don Rheem:

The short explanation is that homosapiens are at our core herd animals. We are hardwired to be in a group now that may not sound like regulatory to you, and it’s not necessarily, but the consequences of that are in the workplace. And this is what that means. It doesn’t just mean that we’re hard hardwired to congregate. What it means is we can only perform at our best at our full capacity if we can do so with others, that hump that homosapiens as, as a species are not designed to work alone. And in isolation, they’re designed to work in groups and have been since whenever you think we began. And I don’t really care when you think we began. But from that moment forward, this notion of being in a group was the biggest, most reliable solution to continuing your genetic heritage. It was what success was all about. And I like what one neuroscientist fellow I quote and reference a lot in my book, dr. Jim comb from the university of Virginia in Charlottesville, he has this wonderful, simple explanation that dominant ecology for human beings is other human beings. This is when we operate at our best. Now we don’t grow up in tight knit tribes anymore.

Don Rheem:

Okay. Packers fans, but that’s an exception, but, but so for the rest of us, we don’t grow up with these tight knit tribes, but where do we spend most of our time when we’re awake with other adults at work? And so in a very real sense work, the workplace is the new tribe for the 21st century homosapien. And the good news is for us as business leaders, employees are part of them is hardwired to go to work. That is to be with a group and it feels good to be the N word. And part of us is driven to be there. Now, of course, I know if you have a toxic boss, toxic environment that that all changes and shifts, but as a species, as a whole, we are herd animals and we operate at our best when we can do so with others. Now don’t mistake this with differences in personality, like extrovert versus introvert.

Don Rheem:

Some of you based just on the numbers, participating are introverts, and you’re saying, no, no, no, no. I like to be alone. And I, yes, you do. And that’s a personality characteristic. That’s not neurological wiring, but even introverts want to be a part of something just generally at a, at a safer distance. They still want to be a part of a family. They still want to have people that care and love them, know about them, validate them, but it’s just like, get too close or I don’t want too many of you and that’s, but that’s personality. That’s not like a shift in wiring. That’s not like an average homosapien. And the other thing I would throw in not to get into all, all sciency and cultural anthropology, but we, most people don’t realize there were quite a few humans on the human tree. It’s just that only homosapiens survive.

Don Rheem:

We are the only branch of the human tree that survived homo erectus. We’ve got the Neanderthal there, all these other groups, none of them made it through the hard times that it took to survive on this planet. And at some points, it was just brutal just to get through another day. But homosapiens did. Why, because many cultural anthropologists now agree that the reason we survived as a species is because we were uniquely capable of coming together in groups and tribes in order to get through adversity. So it’s just a part of who we are. So, all right, so let’s talk about this. I want to dig a little deeper into the brain. Just here’s this real simple depiction of the brain, but notice on the outside areas here in what’s called the anterior areas is the prefrontal cortex. That’s the part of your brain where you do all your thinking and analysis and problem solving.

Don Rheem:

That’s the part of your brain where you’re, you’re aware of because that’s where your thoughts are. But notice this part toward the center and the midbrain labeled the limbic system, the limbic system, it includes organs like the hippo found hypothalamus, the hippocampus and the amygdala, the limbic system is the epicenter of fight flight or freeze. This is where we make determinations of threat. For example, where we decide, do I need to, can I, can I run toward an embrace or do I need to run away and climb a tree? All of that happens here in the limbic system. And it happens incredibly quickly without any reference of any substantial, meaningful reference to the prefrontal cortex because this process of threat detection takes place in about three, 172nd. And the way the process is described as cue, what do I see? Tone? What does it mean, action?

Don Rheem:

What am I going to do? That happens in three, 172nd? That’s the essence of fight flight or freeze when threat is triggered, it doesn’t really go up and get considered much right away by the prefrontal cortex, meaning comes later. And the issue is that why, so, why aren’t we thoughtful in moments of high threat or stress? Because if you think about the danger, your dead, you have to react instantaneously and all of those homeless. So here’s the example dr. Jones shared with me. So let’s go back 10,000 years to homo sapiens out on the open savannas and and East Africa. And they look up and they see a pride of lion approaching. One of them screams like a baby and runs and climbs the highest tree that it can find. The other one who had come from a tribe across the Valley with a more developed prefrontal cortex, much more thoughtful.

Don Rheem:

It looks at them goes well, yeah, they’re kind of headed toward me, but there’s a watering hole over there. And there’s, there’s a herd of zebra over there. Some of them look pretty old. Maybe this has nothing to do with me who survived the screamer. Absolutely true. And that’s why all of us are descendants of homosapiens that had hypervigilant limbic systems that has what is called controlled precedents in the brain. This role of fear is is very, very powerful because it has controlled precedence. And some managers and leaders go done come on in the world is tough. And in the workplace is tough. These people, they just need to pull their adult pants up. And since up their cinch up their belt, here’s the problem with that delusional vision of how humans should react to stress the limbic system when it triggers threat.

Don Rheem:

And this is the biggest danger to us in the workplace. When the limbic system triggers threat, it starts hijacking metabolic energy from the rest of the brain. It steals energy from the preform anywhere. It can find it’s stealing metabolic capacity and the brain has limited capacity because it’s stuck inside your skull. So anytime the Olympic system, it starts pulling energy away to deal with a threat, either real or imagined the rest of the brain suffers. What does that mean in a practical sense for you at work? Our IQ drops our peripheral vision, implodes our ability to, uh, to be attuned to the needs of others around us, goes down. Our ability to focus and stay focused is diminished the, the level of effort that it takes to do tasks skyrockets. So everything feels harder. These are very real and important consequences inside the workplace. Human beings are not machines and they’re not human capital.

Don Rheem:

There’s a horrible phrase that was developed when human beings in the workplace were seen as interchangeable parts, like a machine part. They’re not, it’s a very sensitive instrument and it, and when we create the conditions where it was designed to thrive, it does every time. And so all we’re trying to do at [inaudible] is to help you create those conditions inside your organization, but let’s keep moving forward. So, as I was joking with dr. Cohen about the limbic system and wanting to come up with a metaphor or an image, and he said, well, well, think about this. It’s not very smart. I just said it doesn’t have its own IQ, but it is hypervigilant for threat. And he asked me to try to name something. I see every day in life that represents that I couldn’t get it. He finally just joked and told me, this is how they joke about it in the lab.

Don Rheem:

It’s like a squirrel dumb as dirt, just no intellect at all, but a twig drops. And that, that squirrel can be up the tree in about 30 seconds. So good example of hypervigilant. So what I want to do is just get you all in touch with your inner squirrel. What, what is those squirrel want? What does it after? Well, it wants to survive. How does it see survival through two key lenses, one being safe and that’s, that’s not rocket science. You all could guess that probably in your first gas about what, what the limbic system is really after is to be safe. The connection one is the one that’s relatively new, especially in leadership literature, it’s typically ignored and has been for decades. What we now know is that the limbic system, your inner squirrel will never feel safe if you’re alone and isolated. And there’s now a standardized test for what’s called emotional isolation.

Don Rheem:

And if you are emotionally isolated all kinds of terrible things happen to you. It’s equivalent to smoking more than two packs of cigarettes a day. It’s very damaging. Your physiology impacts your immune system. You don’t live as long. It’s just, it’s horrendous. What happens to you when you when you are living existing and in an environment where you don’t feel like you have safe and secure connections, it’s just devastating. So what we do, and we have a bootcamp for employees that we do, sorry, boot camp for managers to ship to, to help them respond to this. How can I respond to this hard wiring and my employees heads, what should I do about this? And so this is what we, we then show the, well, let’s break this down into something that makes it more practical. So the limbic system is according to dr.

Don Rheem:

Cohn, paraphrasing looking, of course it doesn’t have its own voice or consciousness, but essentially the data shows it’s asking two questions all day long. What’s next? And how am I doing what’s next? And how am I doing? What can you do to answer the question of what’s next, be consistent, be predictable, be clear and be inclusive. Now, why, why is this question perhaps more, more profound, but in a very simplistic way than you may think here’s how simple this is, what drives human behavior is not this complex algorithm. And it certainly doesn’t involve anything about your feelings for your mom or all this other ridiculous stuff. If you know, what’s next, do you feel more safe or less safe, clearly more safe, ask it in reverse. If you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you feel more safe or less safe, clearly less safe.

Don Rheem:

So the limbic system all day long wants to know what’s next. And when it does, when it learns what’s next, when it has a path, when it has clarity, when it understands that people’s behavior that it interacts with regularly is going to be consistent and predictable, that translates to safety, less of a risk assessment, fewer resources consumed to protect against the vagaries of a jerk boss or someone who’s borderline bipolar that they have to report to, which is the clinical term for that is crazy making. What we’re trying to create is a safe Haven for employees, not a coddling zone where people get away with murder, accountability actually increases engagement, but a workplace that is consistent and predictable above all. And especially when it comes to their manager or supervisor. So for you, and if most of you are in the HR space, obviously for you, how can you show up in a way that’s more consistent and predictable?

Don Rheem:

How can you help the leaders of the organization and managers be more consistent and predictable in what they do now? The other question is, how am I doing? And that’s not about ego. It’s really about this imperative that the brain knows that if it’s in a group safely, that it’s chances of success and survival go way, way up and the world just feels much safer. So how can managers answer to that question, validation and recognition, feedback and support, letting them know, excuse me, what it takes to succeed and to let them know that they’re valued. And when we, when we put these, just these eight items out and four on each side, we realized you could connect the dots. So we ask managers to consistently provide validation and recognition, be predictable in the way they give feedback and support. You really clear on what success looks like.

Don Rheem:

So employees can do those things. They know what to do, how to behave in order to be seen as successful, and then to include them in planning and the issues in meetings. Because when you include someone in a meeting, a conversation, a phone call, a zoom call, that is a tacit form of validation. You’re saying your opinion is important enough. I want you there. So this is just a real simple list in the bootcamp. We break it down into a lot more components, but for here today, I think this this is sufficient. So here’s our definition of emotion rather than this wild, crazy irrational material thing. It turns out that emotion is our internal GPS guiding our actions, behaviors, and thoughts toward a destination. The brain has been seeking every day since birth. The guidance is prolific subconscious and driven by the hardwired need for connection, validation, and predictability, and, and importantly, emotion has controlled precedence in your brain.

Don Rheem:

It is the most powerful driver of behavior in your brain. And again, if it triggers threat, it takes over all other brain functions and focuses on threat mitigation. So what we want to do our safe Haven is a workplace environment where people aren’t constantly a triggering threat, if you will now in the pandemic and COVID-19 which I’m going to talk about in the next series of slides. After I talk about measuring, I’m going to be very, very specific about this because obviously everybody’s a threat vigilance has gone up and what does that mean for their ability to stay focused and to do work? And for those that are home, it’s, it’s a double hit because not only are they working in the midst of pandemic, but they left the tribe. They’re now working in isolation at home without their teammates, often in an environment that’s not conducive to thoughtful predictable work times.

Don Rheem:

And, and just an environment of quiet and solitude to get the work done. I’m going to pause right now and ask Keith, are there any questions that have come in and I’ve actually, I can open the chat function here and look if we do have a question about, and this may be something you want to get to in a little bit, or if you’re ready now, but using goes to think of when you’re leading in the office after we return now, and that’s exactly where I’m going, and we’re going to focus on that in the next section. Great question.

Don Rheem:

Okay. I’m going to continue then. Okay. I want to talk about measuring for just a moment, because measuring is the key to getting a handle on this problem. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. So if, if engagement is important to you, you need to measure it. What is measuring bring to us? Well, it gives us a roadmap for growth. That is how, how can we grow? And we need staff to do that. I know there’s economic conditions now that that impact this, but even in these conditions, how can we grow with the people we have and making sure that they can stay focused, focused and be engaged and get the work done. It also brings science and data into the conversation about culture. Culture is as few as 10 years ago, a majority of CEOs would say, it’s not actionable. You can’t do anything about it.

Don Rheem:

It just is what it is. We now know that’s not true. You can both measure it and steer it in a new direction to to business benefit not with the typical leadership books they just, they don’t work. And those of you in HR, I’ve probably been through one leadership fad after another, and, and leadership gets excited about it and you do something, then it fades. And the actual metrics don’t change much of what goes on in the organization. At some point, we need to just wake up and say, Hey, this old model and the leadership genre just isn’t enough. Let’s use science instead of people’s personal opinions to decide what we should do to make our culture better, more productive, more profitable. It also sends a message to managers that this focus on engagement is serious and longterm, and it helps us identify leadership skills that people need going forward.

Don Rheem:

So just real quick, just to remind you this bell curve, again, these four categories of engagement, disengagement is debilitating inside organizations, and I know you all know that intellectually, but I did an interesting exercise recently. One of our boot camps I did at a teaching hospital in the Midwest, and I asked these leads department leads nurses and docs that were leadership in this. There was over 240 of them in the room. What does disengagement look like? And I got this wonderful Mentimeter screen. Well, it’s not wonderful. It’s, it’s horrible. But lots of content. And you can see the big vote getters in this hospital where negativity, gossip apathy complaining. But what is also interesting is what’s around the periphery. It’s a huge ecosystem of debilitative conditions, ambivalent sabotage, inefficient, making excuses only focusing on negatives, not accountable, challenged authority, disruptive, unhappy, lazy, absent anger, victim, poor quality work, insubordination calling in unmotivated, their appearance disrespect.

Don Rheem:

It impacts our recruitment. Confused. Apathy, tired just goes on and on and on. Do you think, and you all know in HR, and you’ve probably seen examples of all of this. This has a big impact on the nature of being at work. And this is where I want to introduce another simple concept about culture and what culture truly is the part of the word culture. The word, when it comes to work has been parsed in the district hundreds of different parts, and you go to Wikipedia or Google, and this means all these different things to different people. What we’re focused on in the workplace, three solutions is not all these fancy names and breakdowns and divvy it up into smaller parts, but rather what impacts people’s daily behavior. That’s what counts. So if you want to know what your culture is, either in your department, your work group, or your company, all you have to do is answer this one question. The answer to this question is your true culture.

Don Rheem:

What does it feel like to work here? What does it feel like to work here? The answer to that question is your true culture. Mind you, you can’t actually ask people that because it’s too in their face, but you get the general gist of this question. Now, why do we say that’s your true culture? Because that’s the only part of culture that’s impacting people’s behavior on a daily basis. How can I say that with confidence? Because we know that the way we feel determines how we behave 10 years ago, I would have been giving a webinar in this webinar. And I was said the way we think determines how we behave. And that’s why there were posters on the wall and employee handbooks. And we focused on all this cognitive content that we put in the office and give to employees. But in reality, at the end of the day, that stuff doesn’t control what people do on a daily basis.

Don Rheem:

The way they feel is what drives their behavior. So what we call the felt experience of being at work is, is the key factor. What is the felt experience and what controls and what are the impacts on that felt experience. And I’ll give you a clue. All of these things obviously impact the felt experience, but to make it practical for how to fix it. This is what we know that 70% of the variance of how engaged an employee is when they get to work during the day 70% of the variance on on how engaged someone is, is directly attributable to their immediate manager or supervisor. Just think about the implications of that, that 70% of the variance and how people perform is dependent upon a manager or supervisor. And we began to understand that the role of the manager is, is paramount. And actually culture takes a second, a second seat, a back seat to what happens and what managers are doing.

Don Rheem:

And w what I mean by that is you can have an awesome culture, you know, do whatever you do on Fridays, you stop at Friday and free meals and whatever have lots of perks and an awesome office space. But if in that great culture, I worked for a toxic manager the, the toxicity of the environment that I’m in, overwhelms all of these nice trappings that are around me. So think of it this way, that there is a culture writ large across your whole organization. Then there are sub cultures within departments or locations, and then there are, micro-cultures under every manager. And so when we measure engagement, you have to do it by manager because that’s the only actionable place to really create the kind of shifts and moves that you want. And let me show you some data about that. So we have a 28 question online survey that every employee in the organization takes, but we gathered the data by manager.

Don Rheem:

But first thing we want to just take a look at here is what happens over time, because we’re asked, can a D player become a C can a C become a B, can it be, become an AE? And the answer is yes, and here’s the proof. So this is our global data of all of our clients in their first five years. So you see in year one, the average level of engagement of employees was 45%, 55% were disengaged. And you can see the categories, the, in the color that is the DS or the dark red, the maroon, the CS, or the red, the BS, or the are the green, and then the dark green are your A’s. And you see what happens year over year, over year, not only is engagement going up year over year, over year, but the proportion of the engage that are a players goes way up and that’s, that’s the, that’s the journey you could be on.

Don Rheem:

Now, this is, this is all of our clients, not our best clients are our highest. We have two companies that have hit the highest level of engagement that we’ve ever measured. The high watermark is 81% of their employees are engaged. One of those companies that took them five years to get there. The other company was there in their first year, a truly remarkable company that just joined us in the fall. And they’re, they’re just sort of blowing the doors off of all of it and just great case studies and best practices coming out of that group. But what I was telling you about the managers is this next slide. I want to show you, this is real data from a sample company. So you can see that the company overall 53% of their employees were engaged 47% disengaged. But I look at this very first work group of, we call them manager one or work group one.

Don Rheem:

This work group was a hundred percent engaged. You look further down, you see this other work group work group four. It was a hundred percent disengaged, same company, same PayScale, same culture. What’s the only difference between these two work groups, the manager and this is what is just so key and important for us to understand. And these six employees in that work group are those employees that should be fired because they’re disengaged. No. if under a different leadership and they’re a different environment, they could be stellar performers. So the first thing we have to do is break this mythology that D players are there because they’re broken in bad people. In the majority of cases in our data, the deep players are in that category because of who they work for or who they work with. Not because they’re poor employees. So let’s focus on managers and that’s why you want to measure by manager.

Don Rheem:

So what I want to get to now I don’t see any additional questions unless Keith do you have any additional questions, Keith? I can pause here. We do. We actually have a, have a couple, and one is very relevant to your discussion on managers. This one says, what if manager, the manager pushes the employee to become disengaged? How do you hold managers accountable for employee engagement? Yeah. And the way you do that is you measure that’s. I just don’t know any other way to do it because managers are so good at talking their way out of stuff. Like if their work group underperforms, there’s a quality problem. They point in every direction, but at them they’re like Teflon coated. So the, the best way to hold the managers accountable to things, science and data. So most leadership approaches aren’t science.

Don Rheem:

So they say, well, that’s you, and that’s your opinion. That’s so, and so’s opinion. That’s not how I learned to do it. So we want to get away from the anecdotal leadership style, and we want to talk about science. And that’s why the approach we take, I think, is so much more effective. Our average increase in the number and the percentage of employees who are engaged in the first year is 23%. A Gallup says, you can only get five, but when you use science, you just get, you get remarkable results. You didn’t even think were possible. The other issue is the data that is here’s your data. When you go, when I go in and I’m often asked to go in and to do this, when I go to a company to do a debrief from our survey, they want me to go meet with his manager that got horrible scores.

Don Rheem:

I simply walk in and I, and I say, Mary, these high scores are the things you’re doing really well. And let’s, let’s talk about how you learned to do that. Cause these are really good scores. And we talked, you always start with a strength. Every manager has strengths and then opportunities. We don’t use any negative terminology in anything we do. So then I say, Mary, let’s talk about your opportunities. It looks like some of the biggest ones are around and you’re looking at the data. And I will tell you, I have never had a manager push back at me based on that approach ever. And, and we’ve measured thousands. So it’s, it’s a very powerful tool when you combine science with data. And my white note that I’m distinguishing between the two data by itself is not

Keith Wolf:

Science is just data.

Don Rheem:

It can be collected poorly. It could be interpreted incorrectly. So you need science

Keith Wolf:

It’s to help you see

Don Rheem:

Data through a new light that that’s actually predictive and practical. Another question, Keith, another one is where do I start? What are the key areas I should focus on when developing managers? If you go back to that slide after the squirrel of the survival safety and connection, and I asked with paraphrasing what the limbic system is doing all day, it’s asking the question, what’s next. And how am I doing the two most important words on that page are predictability and consistency, homo sapiens. That is the, that ranks even higher than positivity, which I was not happy about seeing that research, but quite literally, an employee will feel safer with a grumpy boss. Who’s grumpy all the time. Then they will, when a boss who’s material up and down left and right, and borderline bipolar. So, but I’m not advocating being a consistent grump, but predictability and consistency.

Don Rheem:

And I’m going to link that into some of the things I talk about next on what we should be doing in this crisis. And I better move on and save some of these questions actually for after, because I’m afraid I may lose people right at the top of the hour before we get to some of these other content. So the hard work ahead is focused on fear and stress, two slides on, on fear. And then I’m going to go into stress and just to give you a heads up, it’s possible. I might go until five after the hour, just on the content. I apologize. I’m understanding fear. I want us to embrace fear, not run from it and be afraid of it. But fear has controlled precedents in the brain because embedded in fear is threat. So if you’re wondering why people are so fearful and some managers talk about the irrational fear of my employees, it’s not irrational.

Don Rheem:

Fear is incredibly rational. It’s a very F is believed to be the very first of the five primary emotions that homosapians feel was fear because it’s so directly related to our survival. And it does have control precedents in the brain. It also wants us to PR our, our limbic system wants us to prepare for the worst. But when we do that, it kind of perpetuates the anxiety. Cause we’re always looking at the worst case scenario, which can lead to unhealthy coping on my gosh. There’s some products that might be short in the grocery store. I better go buy a year supply of toilet paper because the last thing I want to run out of is something that’s around that bodily function. So, but hoarding, toilet papers and example of unhealthy coping as it is all the other things you stocked up on so that other people couldn’t get it when they needed it, including cans of Lysol and whites.

Don Rheem:

I was, it was funny. I went into a Costco two weeks ago and at the return counter, they had a big sign, no returns accepted for toilet paper, Lysol and wipes. Oh, and rice. You’re not bringing that stuff back because you all of a sudden realize that you bought more than you needed. And that’s as it should be. Anyway, those are all examples of unhealthy coping. It is contagious and it’s, and it’s easily and freely contagious. And those of you that are parents, there’s some interesting research out about how the children are picking up on this, a heightened level of fear in their parents. Just from your voice tone, the clipped way. You say things, the way you interact with your partner, all of those things are being picked up with kids. And here’s the thing about fear that I want managers to know the feeling is real.

Don Rheem:

So to talk about the irrational fear of misses, the point that the fear is very real. It’s the hardwired bodily function, a brain function that’s designed to help us survive, but the consequences we might imagine when we’re afraid may not be true. So this is when we’re talking about the difference between what’s possible and probable and your limbic system, wanting to prepare for the worst is going to go with what’s possible. Anything that’s possible, I need to be prepared for as opposed to what’s probable. And that’s a conversation you can have. It does fear of feelings are not facts that the feelings are real, but they’re not necessarily factual. That is these things we imagined may never happen. It leads to inaccurate, meaning around events and things, even an email from you might be misinterpreted just because of this heightened sense of fear.

Don Rheem:

Working from home increases, fear, it intensifies the separation impact, but fear is containable with human connection. The technical term is load sharing, but it is containable and it’s long lasting. We need to understand, and you need to share with your, your CEOs, that the things they do or have done over the last four weeks and we’ll do over the next six weeks, maybe with employees for the rest of their lives, fear based memories that is memories made amidst fear are deeply embedded in the brain and hard to lose because the brain doesn’t want to lose them because it views them as essential for survival. So what we say and do in this time, could we remember for a long, long time now? So that’s fear of primary emotion. Now, I just want to go into stressors. What are some of the key stressors right now that unique that we didn’t have in January and February?

Don Rheem:

Well, we have this invisible threat. Why is that so important? Then palpable to, to us as a species, the very first data the brain takes in is what it sees as that, that data has precedents in the brain. What it sees when you have an invisible threat that makes the limbic system just go into hyper, hyper vigilance, because you can’t see it. So what you can’t see, you can’t prepare for the duck away from fight flight or freeze. This change of routine is, is a stressor. I’m not going into work. I have to work with kids in the house. The only place I can find quiet is in the garage. Embracing a new norm is disorienting. This is the need to work in the middle of a pandemic. A lot of people just don’t want to work. They just want to sort of slide through the day because it just feels so stressful.

Don Rheem:

They’re worried about losing their own job for themselves or for others. Many of them already have personal capacity. Can I handle this? Am I capable of doing it? Some of you are wondering, can I really call people on the phone or on zoom to tell them that they’ve been, let go. I just don’t know if I can do this. So some of you may even be contemplating. Maybe I want to quit or get out of isolation. And separation is a stressor. It’s an embedded stressor because we’re not meant to be isolated as a species, fear of harm to myself or to loved ones parenting and partnering is, Oh my gosh domestic violence has shot up after this

Speaker 1:

Social distancing. Yes,

Don Rheem:

Started and people working from home and then just tolerating disorientation. It makes it harder. Now, what do these stressors do to us? Here are some of the outcomes. They compromise our immune system and that’s paramount right now. All of these stressors, the more stress we feel, the more compromised our immune system is we have less mental capacity. We just can’t get as many things done during the day. I have managers now that that are telling me that their employees are lazy because they’re not getting as much done as they used to. And I asked them to have a lot of grace because their employees don’t have the same mental capacity metabolic capacity to get the work done. So a little bit of grace is going to be important here. Faults and fears are elevated.

Speaker 1:

Brandon. This is

Don Rheem:

The way of saying this, the worst in us, the worst of our characteristics rise closer to the surface when we’re stressed like this. So if someone had an anger management issue, but they had it under control, no one really knew they had it. But now with all of these stressors, any combination of them, all of a sudden anger is as much more likely to be released. We’re staying. I had a CEO in a, in a in a zoom webinar this morning was CEOs say, God, my gosh, Don, you hit the nail on the head. I’ve been yelling at people for days, and I haven’t understood why. And it’s just, it’s just, this is a part of what happens. So we need to be self aware that it’s happening to us, but also normalize it, say, okay, I get why I’m not a bad person, but to be self-aware feeling depleted and exhausted as much more common difficulty focusing, feeling preoccupied.

Don Rheem:

And this just increased threat vigilance, by the way, on this one about feeling depleted and exhausted. Have you noticed in these zoom calls, walls, that you’re a lot more tired after these calls, it just feels more exhaustive it’s because connecting with people in a two dimensional medium, a screen requires additional brain circuitry for the brain to make sense out of what am I seeing? Is it truthful? This is the person that authentic our, my hearing what’s real. So all of that, it takes additional brain circuitry to process it, which means that people are more exhausted after it happens. Now, what can we do to mitigate the stress safety? The secure connections is top of the top of the list. Feeling connected to important. Others is really, really important. And this is where the team, the tribe is important to individuals. Don’t, don’t leave them out in the cold.

Don Rheem:

I don’t even like this phrase, social distancing, even though I think I just used it. The last thing we need right now is social distancing or social isolation. I’m sorry. Distancing is okay. But social isolation is the wrong term. It’s the opposite of what people need. And now against spatial distancing, social distancing, that’s right, fine, but not isolation. Consistency around job tasks. That is if you used to have meetings on, on on Monday morning, still have them on Monday morning just do them via zoom, predictability and clarity, strong leadership of from you is going to be essential. Your assurance, that things will be okay. So hope and reassurance, encouragement and then connection technology. Again, zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft teams, Skype. If you have a platform, we use the platform Slack inside my company makes it very, very easy conversations, getting too complicated.

Don Rheem:

You click a button and you’re looking at the person and you’re talking it through that connection technology helps us, even if it is more taxing metabolically to experience it, the experience is really, really important. We don’t want to let that go. What else can leaders do? A few things break the isolation with curiosity, caring, some form of connection and then view. And I want to explain you hear that it’s an acronym for validate, understand, and empathize. And this is getting into deeper and deeper tissue. If it will, when it comes to the connection with the individual, almost anyone can validate any manager at any skill level should be able to do the validating part that simply to connect with employees and to see them where they are possible thing you might say. I know that what we’re going through is rugged and this situation has an impact on you.

Don Rheem:

I know the situation is not ideal. It’s at the surface, but it’s important that I see you. And I see it’s hard now, understanding it’s getting to a deeper level. It’s not only I see you it’s now I understand you. I hear you. I get that. It can be hard to focus on the work with everything else going on. What do you need? You can say, you know, in the conversation, things are harder than they were before working from home is a challenge. Finding balance is elusive. These are come alongside, not just notice them in the experience, but step into the experience with them and let them know that you feel it too. So that’s into deeper tissue. Relationally. The deepest tissue is around empathy, and this is the thing that’s harder for many managers to do. And especially for many men that have difficulty on the empathetic side of their ability to express themselves, empathy is medicinal.

Don Rheem:

It mitigates, distress and anxiety. And it does that faster than any pharmaceutical. We want to let them know that feeling more distant from colleagues makes it harder to accomplish things. We worry about our family, friends and colleagues and we’re. And instead of saying, what do you need? Like in the understand one before now, we’re saying, how are you doing that? What do you need? That’s again, that’s, that’s good, but how are you doing? That’s just that deeper tissue that we want to get into, especially at a time now, when people feel more isolated, so they’re remote working, but in your conversation with them, you’re asking them these questions so that they feel felt, and that’s very, very important. Building relationships I’ve coming in on the last slides you guys know we’re losing some folks, load sharing, brings trust and respect, countability collaboration, and resilience build relationships, note, facial expressions, connect with them personally, ask them for feedback.

Don Rheem:

Are they getting the right message, be willing to be open and vulnerable? Create a felt sense of safety by being predictable and consistent, provide clarity, support collaboration, offer meaning and purpose. Don’t leave out conversations without mission and vision and core values. Those are things that don’t change even in a pandemic that could be a nice handhold for people to keep a grasp on and then build trust and connections. What else can you do? This is a conversation template to get into the deeper tissue, if you will. So evoke with curiosity, say, Hey, how are you doing with all of this? Now, once you’ve expressed that that curiosity, all you want to do now is listen, the present nod, lots of direct eye contact, pay attention, their facial expressions, to get a sense of how they’re doing now. Almost anybody can do that.

Don Rheem:

Ask, and then, listen, it’s just an example of expressing curiosity. It’s this next part that most managers don’t do? Not because they’re not capable, but because they just don’t have muscle memory doing it, but evoke again. So reflect on something you heard and be curious about it. You might just, for example, you said this is really hard on your children. What does that look like? So just dig a little deeper, that second evoking, that second instance of curiosity is where now they really are much more likely to feel felt in the experience. And remember, you’re not trying to solve the problem for them. You’re just trying to come alongside, understand and empathize. There’s some tactical support. I’ll leave this for you to review on the recorded one, but what can we provide them? Tactically equipment wise? And just as a real quick, when we were doing a pulse surveys for our clients, where every week they asked us three questions to their employees so that they can keep track of them.

Don Rheem:

Now that they’re all working at home. And when they asked them about gear that they need, this is the request they got. And it’s really cheap for under a thousand dollars. They were able to, this is a trade association and in Washington, but they were able to provide all of these things that our employees needed it and their employees were so grateful. And it wasn’t that it was, Hey, I got a folding table for 40 bucks. It was the fact that the CEO asked, created a mechanism for them to reply. They got quick approval and they could go out and literally get it the next day. Just an example of caring at a different level and an understanding of, for some people, they literally don’t have a desk at home. I’ve been doing these webinars for the last few weeks, and I see people in their bedrooms and their kitchen in their garage.

Don Rheem:

I’ve seen two in a closet. I’m finding a place to work. And at home is not easy for everyone. So what can you do to to help them get there? And then this last one, just time allocation, how you allocate your day take the time you used to spend commuting and, and use it to get video that is direct eyeball to eyeball contact with your employees. And remember you need to do it at the individual level, the team level, and then the company wide level, the whole tribe. So something else I’m going to do for you guys, we have for our clients it’s called the manager resource center.com that all of our clients are, are, are in where they get resources for managers. And we have a bunch of resources piling in related to working from home in COVID-19.

Don Rheem:

I’m not gonna talk a lot about the manager resource center, but these four resources I’ve pulled out of, we call it MRC the acronym, but I went into MRC to pull these four resources for you for this webinar. So if you just go to webinar dot E three solutions.com, you’ll get these four tools that you could use immediately to help you manage stress and anxiety, reflecting on uncertainty, a sample phrases for empathy, just to prime your pump. Maybe you can hand that around your managers get them started. And I’m going to go through the the kiss exercise for for time purposes. If you like this approach to science based approach to leadership, you think it might have some value for you and your work, your organization. I do podcast. So if you listen to the podcast, you get them, you should be able to find mine fried by design the podcast, science-based conversations, usually 15 minutes long about topics related to leadership and management.

Don Rheem:

That would be one option for you. And then you can go to Don rheem.com, which is the website that Forbes put together. When they publish the book. You can obviously get the book it’s available, wherever you get your books online. That’s my true email address, not a phony one. You can link in with me on LinkedIn to keep track of what we’re doing. Get additional resources and insights. If you follow tweets, you can follow me on Twitter because I tweet regularly. No, I don’t, I don’t even have a login, but someone on my team does, and they take things that I’ve written and they put them out on that social media network. I, again, I just haven’t mastered it. So there are lots of ways you can follow up with us. And, and especially those free resources@webinar.you three solutions.com. And without I’m going to turn it back over to Keith,

Speaker 1:

Who’s on mute.

Don Rheem:

There we go. Okay. Thank you so much, Don. Let’s go through some of the questions that we have here. I, you know, I’ve, I’ve heard you speak on this topic a few times and obviously never under a pandemic before, but every time I pick on pick up something different and it, the, the whole squirrel analogy I remember from six years ago and that is just, it’s so true. People wonder, you know, how am I doing what’s next? And I think about that all the time. So question here in terms of, you know, if you’re a manager and you’re trying to convey to somebody that they’re valued, how do you do so when you’re, when you’re unsure that yourself about the situation, and maybe you’re concerned about giving people a false sense of safety in the current environment, you know, you may be telling somebody how valued they are and for reasons beyond their control and a couple of weeks, maybe they ended up being laid off.

Don Rheem:

I mean, you’re trying to balance those two things with this uncertain environment. Yeah. The, even if, you know, they may be laid off in two weeks, let them know how valuable they are. And they, there’s a part of them that understands that in this environment in certain industries that can happen. But you don’t want to go silent on them. What a lot of managers do is they go silent. They don’t want to interact with the person. They feel guilty, they feel terrible. You can also reflect your own emotional state and that’s okay. I feel miserable about this. I feel horrible about what’s happening to us as a result of this. It’s had so much impact that my friends and family, and I know this impacts you as well. So just don’t be afraid to reflect how you’re impacted as well. It makes sense. Here’s another question.

Keith Wolf:

How do we motivate some to transition back to the office when others are working from home? So you’ve got this sort of dual issue where if some are able to work at home some aren’t and how do you motivate both those groups?

Don Rheem:

Yeah, it’s going to be tough. I think some of the, the toughest part of this pandemic is going to be the coming back. I mentioned fear-based memories, how they last for a long time with us. So you will find even when the health experts sound the all clear and Hey, everybody, you can go back to work. They’re going to be employed. You don’t want to go back to work, or when they do, they’re going to show up with a mask on with gloves on. And so what we’ve been telling our clients is, look, these the mask and the gloves, you can say, look, they’re not necessary. And they may not be, but their coping strategies for fear. So let people use these strategies that help them cope with the anxiety. And if a mask is what it takes for them to feel confident going into work, let them wear the mask, no shaming about using protective gear.

Don Rheem:

There are some people out there there seem to be some political issues involved in this. Or I don’t know if sometimes it seems to be even a religious overtones that all this stuff is unnecessary and ridiculous. And look that’s. I think as individuals, we can, we should make whatever decisions we monitoring, but don’t shame other people because they don’t share your view of the world. It just isn’t professional and it’s not helpful. So just know that people are going to respond differently. Another part of this in these pulse surveys that we’re doing for our clients, where they’re there, they’re asking questions that our employees, every week during this pandemic, there are employees that are starting to say, you know what? This is working for me at home. I spend, I don’t spend two hours commuting anymore. And I’m actually able to get more done because I’m not in meetings and I’m not pulled apart.

Don Rheem:

So I think I want it. I want to work remotely permanently going forward. So there will be some employees that will say, I don’t want to come back to work. And it’s not because of fear of a virus. It’s because they realize this lifestyle of working from home is better for me. And so when I, in fact have been telling my clients, these conversations are going to come up. You want to start thinking about them now and creating structure around the conversations. So when some people say, why do I have to come back to work? You want to have criteria. And especially if you’re an HR, you don’t want to be left answering this on your own because you’re going to look capricious and it’s going to look unfair. Cause some got it. And some didn’t start focusing on the principles behind the decisions that are going to be made. And that way, when people make requests, they go through this sort of principle filter that contains the con the discussion and creates more clarity. And by the way, consistency and predictability

Keith Wolf:

Makes sense. Okay. Another question that came in is have you seen any interesting ideas for a virtual morale boosting for employees? Anything that companies are

Don Rheem:

Doing that you’ve seen that you think is particularly interesting. Some companies are doing, you know, virtual cocktail hours or virtual parties or there they’re doing these things. The good part is people get to see each other, but we’re also already hearing just within a few weeks that employees say after the novelty of the first two, just doesn’t feel the same. So it, I don’t know of anything that is consistent in regular. What are some of our clients doing? Okay. To help people work from home. For example, you cannot schedule a on Wednesdays. The only meetings that can be scheduled are for teams that is you can’t schedule a meeting on Wednesday that involves members from other departments or other teams. So one day a week is dedicated just to the team focusing on itself. Then there are other times of day when there are no meetings are scheduled, calls are allowed.

Don Rheem:

And, and, and another association here in DC is told their managers, there will be nothing scheduled under any conditions before 9:00 AM or after 5:00 PM. We’re just not going to do that to our people that are already pushed to the limits. So they’re telling managers, you can’t do it then. And also no meetings scheduled for Friday after one, after 1:00 PM. And some are going to every other Friday, you stopped work at 1:00 PM on Friday, even though they’re remote and already at home. So we don’t expect you to do any work. So no meetings, no work. The most it’s a valuable thing I think we can do right now is to help people cope with the stress that they’re feeling through things like this. I don’t know, virtually of any sort of party or anything else. There are some online games that people are using where you can have people get involved in it, the game that’s like solving this trees and puzzles and things.

Don Rheem:

And, and some people really liked that. I’m not an expert in it. We’re not advocating anything in particular. Okay. Thank you. We got another question around this person said is he’s fascinated with the role in motion within the workplace and its implications if we ignore it. And he’s just curious if, what you think about Renee Brown’s research on shame. If you’ve seen that. I don’t know. Yeah. I, I have, I have a lot of respect for her work. I see, I see everything through a very specific lens and it’s, again, it’s around what is referred to as adult attachment. So all of these other conditions, whether it’s shame or the things that, you know, very well known authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel, I think, talk about that really good thing that they’re doing is they’re talking about specific research and in some detail, but this is one of the challenges of science in science, the focus always on the smallest increment, I’m an expert on shame.

Don Rheem:

I’m an expert on, on accountability and all of that. And we need those expertise. I’m not putting that down at all, but at some point we have to step back and say, look, we are not just random generating machines that are generating random ideas and thoughts and emotions. There’s a very specific agenda in the brain and all of these wonderful pieces of research and data need to be combined with, with a a comprehensive construct for why we do what we do and it’s to be connected that any data, any information around human behavior that ignores the connection component runs the risk of being misinterpreted, not wrong, just misinterpreted.

Keith Wolf:

Okay. Got another question around understanding people’s personal situations at home and how should we change our expectations for accountability? If someone has kids, someone’s got a spouse situation, should you know, how much should we think about that in terms of the job performance?

Don Rheem:

Yeah, we should think about it a lot. And whereas before you could say, you know, this needs to be done by the end of the week. Now it needs to be, do you think you can get this done by the end of the week? What’s the best timeframe for you? What, what are reasonable expectations for your ability to get this done? And we’re just going to have to have a lot of grace more than we’ve probably ever demonstrated before. Again, you know, these fear based memories, if managers come down hard in a hierarchical punitive way around tasks and accountability during this time, that will never be forgotten likely by those employees. So this is the time to be empathetic, to go for the deep tissue to understand the situation they’re in, but not allow them. And this is one of the challenges of the people on the left side of the bell curve, but just engaged.

Don Rheem:

They will use this as an opportunity to be unproductive and that’s different. And so for those, any of you that are working with that and struggling with that in, in the, in my book and chapter eight on accountability, I talk about some of the most prevalent mindsets victim mentality learned helplessness, grudge, collecting. These are all studied mindsets, and I show a managers how to work with people that are stuck in that space to get them out. So on the one hand, we’re worried about the disengaged taking advantage. On the other hand, we want to make sure our engaged employees who tend to be more resilient, have what they need to continue to work at the level that they want.

Keith Wolf:

Okay. Makes sense. Another question here, you sort of, you alluded to this a little earlier, but Preston has a question around it. So once people hear that someone has been allowed to work from home, they all want to know. So one person said, well, what about us? Aren’t they worried about us and this person’s company to not allow

Don Rheem:

The entire company to work at home due to the type of business that they have. Yeah, this is, look, this was rugged before the pandemic. So we have a number of manufacturers as clients. And in that environment, the white collar workers, accounting, marketing Steven sales can work from home and would get, and would have permission to work at home just cause it’s been a big push over the last four or five years. The people on the manufacturing floor obviously can’t work from home. But it turned into an issue of fairness. And this is, this is going to be one of the big rubs is around equity and fairness. And how do we do it in a way that feels fair? And that’s gonna, that’s gonna be the hard part because so many of these decisions are going to be subjective and they’re going to be based on might even be based on a person’s medical condition or underlying conditions that we can’t share with others, for reasons of privacy.

Don Rheem:

So let’s say we know someone was a chain smoker for 30 years, they’re older and slightly obese and they’re asking, Hey, can I work from home an extra three months? I’m in a high risk group. And we’re going to say, well, yeah, of course let’s, if we can do that. Other employees who may not understand all of those contingencies are going to view that as unfair or favoritism. So this is going to be hard, but this goes back to what I just said about creating context around this. If an advance, you start in, in HR and leaders start talking about who are we going to allow? Some people will be allowed to work from home. What, what are the conditions where we’re most likely to let someone work from home, underlying conditions, this, that, and the other and state what they are. Because then when, when the when the young millennial who wants to work from home is turned down, there’s now some principles, some construct around why that happened.

Don Rheem:

They don’t have underlying conditions, they don’t have this, they don’t have that. And so start doing that now, before you start making your decisions of who does get to stay home and who doesn’t, and there will be some employees who just say, I don’t ever want to come back. And if, and if you, if you don’t let me keep doing this, I’m going to look for work elsewhere. And I know that seems a little ridiculous right now when there’s, you know, 30 million people unemployed, but when the economy starts coming back together especially regionally where there’s going to be differential impacts on talent about availability there, aren’t going to be some of those expectations. Right? Okay. Well, thank you for that. And I think we have managed to gets all the questions and I’ve seen, so that’s that’s great. I do want to we have this slide for thanking folks for attending.

Don Rheem:

I do want to point out just briefly, there are two additional slides in the Mentimeter that go for just giving us some feedback on how to do it. And look, someone said, keep to the scheduled hour, that would be a, a one on the Enneagram who’s ticked off that it couldn’t all be in an hour. I understand that. And I tried to warn and predict that before it happens, so they would have less anxiety, but that apparently wasn’t wasn’t enough. So and it is recorded so they could always come back and hear the rest later that, listen, I want to thank all the participants for hanging in there. I hope this was helpful if we at [inaudible] solutions can be helpful to you in any way, please do. And I know that that Keith and his group is also ready to help everybody.

Don Rheem:

This is what Keith Murray resources and [inaudible] solutions, what we’ve dedicated our companies to doing is helping you to get through situations like this. So Keith I’ll, we’ll turn it back over to you and thanks everyone for tuning in. Yeah, no, thank you, Don. This is not easy to keep folks attention for an entire hour remotely in a little bit more. So thank you so much. I really enjoy listening to you and something that there’s so many things that resonated with me, but one of them is these fear-based memories. You know, it’s, those will never forget them, you know, what’s happening right now. So that’s, that’s definitely something to keep in mind. All right. So we’ll continue to, to host these webinars, as long as folks are finding them valuable and the feedback so far has been great. So thank you everybody for tuning in and look for the slides and the CE credits and the recording. So thanks again and until next time. Thank you. Thanks Dom. Right. Thank you all LinkedIn with me, stay in touch.