Ibrahim Jabary, who was named “Innovator of the Year” in 2016 and 2017 by Elearning! Media Group, is the CEO of Gamelearn, which specializes in game-based learning for corporate training.  We had a chance to pick Ibrahim’s brain about the concepts behind game-based learning, and to hear his thoughts on what role this method will play in shaping the corporate leaders of the future.

Tell us a little about yourself. How did you become interested in the idea of using video games as a company training tool?

I had been working in the field of learning and development for more than 10 years. But there was a moment when I realized that in order to grow, achieve an economy of scale, and be truly global, we needed to move to e-learning. When researching what was on offer, we discovered that traditional e-learning had two very serious and widespread problems:

– It did not provide the opportunity to learn through experience and feedback, which is something everyone had come to expect from traditional training.

– It was not very engaging, and therefore, only 25% of students who began an online course managed to complete it.

The solution we came up with was the following:

– Use simulators to ensure experiential learning and to be able to provide personalized feedback to students.

– Use video games to gamify training and thus increase completion rates.

And the results proved us right. We are able to get students to learn without the need for classroom sessions, and we have achieved a completion rate of 94%. Scientific studies also confirm our theory. Time and time again, the findings are conclusive: video games facilitate the memorization and retention of knowledge, increase employee engagement, and obtain higher completion rates. It is actually very simple: when we play, we learn better.

What are some of the biggest challenges that companies face today when training millennials who have recently graduated from a college or university?

Millennials have changed the rules in many fields, and training is one of them. This generation wants more freedom to choose; they are a mobile generation, they want engaging courses, and they appreciate flexibility, transparency, and feedback. We have to adapt our LMS to the new demands of millennials, which include making it more social and more useful.

Many of these trends apply not only to millennials, but also to the whole workforce. Human resources departments have to understand that there are millions of courses out there that employees can access (through Google and MOCCs), so you have to focus on finding the best content for them. Times have changed, and so should corporate training.

When employees rely heavily on video games for their training, does that prevent them from experiencing the sense of camaraderie or collaboration that they would while undergoing conventional team-based training?

Not really. Many games can very easily become social games. For example, if there are rankings among colleagues, you can check how you are doing compared with other employees. This simple fact very often becomes a social experience in which workers get to know each other, compete, and talk during and after the games. In our game on customer service, we also allow users to give presents to other players and send messages to their colleagues. All this means is that it is possible to use video games and at the same time develop a sense of collaboration and camaraderie in your organization.

How does using video games to help train employees reduce corporate training costs without sacrificing the quality of an onboarding program?

On the one hand, game-based learning has all the advantages of e-learning. You can apply economies of scale and you have the ability to train thousands of employees at the same time all over the world. You don’t need to pay for flight tickets, hotel rooms, meals, travel time, and opportunity costs; everyone can play wherever they are and whenever they want, which is very valuable for multinational companies with workers on five continents.

On the other hand, thanks to advanced simulators and gamification techniques, video games have been scientifically proven to obtain higher completion rates, more engagement and better knowledge retention than traditional training. Our results demonstrate that not only is the quality of the training not compromised, but in many cases it is actually improved. Some 97% of our students recommend the courses and believe that what they learned was useful and can be applied to their job.

If a corporate executive were to say to you, “I don’t think computer training programs can succeed in teaching the important ‘soft skills’ that are needed in the real world,” how might you respond?

I would tell him that in the last few years, more than 1,000 corporations all over the world have managed to do this with spectacular results.

I would explain that in many professions, it is now commonplace to use simulators to train real skills such as piloting a plane, driving a vehicle, surgery, police operations, military interventions, responses to emergencies, and much more. We have proved that the same principle applies to soft skills such as negotiation, productivity, leadership, and customer service.

And, of course, I would invite this corporate executive to play one of our video games. I think he would very soon realize that video games can simulate real-world situations in great detail, and that they offer very useful and practical training. Furthermore, video games create a safe and cost-free environment. Players can practice all the acquired skills over and over without any risk to the company. So video games can not only “teach soft skills,” but they also allow employees to “practice” them.

How can a company assess the individual talents or potential of their employees based on how they perform during their video game training?

We are a training company and would therefore never use video games to assess a student. A large part of games’ ability to teach lies in the fact that they can get us to behave in a natural way, relax, and allow ourselves to be guided. If we use games to measure or assess people, we will lose this key factor.

But just because we don’t do it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. We are of the opinion that very soon, we will see video games being used as a tool to appraise and recruit staff at all levels.

How should a company go about convincing middle-aged or older employees to embrace the idea of using video games for corporate training?

There is this idea that video games are a teenager business, but that is not the case anymore. In countries like the US or the UK, the average age of a typical video game player is 35 years. From our experience, we can say that some of our biggest fans are employees over the age of 60. We all like to play, no matter what our age.

Furthermore, the main objective of a serious game is to teach, not to have fun. When employees start a game-based learning program, they realize that the video game is only a tool and that they are learning from the very beginning. Game-based learning has proven to be an extremely useful method for both millennials and older people.

What do you foresee for the future of video game-based corporate training?

The way I see it, game-based corporate training has just started. When we released our first serious game in 2009, game-based learning basically didn´t exist. We had to do a lot of explaining because learning and development professionals hadn’t even heard of it. But right now, the scene has changed dramatically: the question is not if you should use game-based learning, but how.

Nowadays, game-based learning is the trend with the highest growth in corporate training. With more and more companies betting on video games, we will be able to develop better and more sophisticated products. I am convinced that in the not-too-distant future, education will be turned on its head through the use of gamification and game-based learning. I believe that at all levels, from schools and universities through to companies and business schools, the vast majority of training will contain gamification and simulation components.

If your company could benefit from leadership training, check John’s speaking availability today!

Cris Beswick is recognized globally as a thought leader on innovation strategy, leadership, and culture, and is the co-author of Building a Culture of Innovation. We recently sat down with Cris to discuss the complex-yet-important process of committing to, establishing a culture of, and delivering organizational innovation.

Tell us a bit about your background. Why are you so passionate about organizational innovation?

I spent over a decade in the design and creative industry and have an absolute belief that design thinking, which fundamentally underpins innovation, can propel organizations forward, and make them truly exceptional. When we introduce the way designers approach problems into traditional organizations, it fundamentally changes the way they approach “how” they do things. It forces deeper questioning and empathy, and that builds an understanding of customers, problems, opportunities, wants, needs, etc. When we can help organizations behave in this way, incredible things happen.

If a corporate leader were to say to you, “I’m not concerned with boosting innovation throughout my company. I’ve got a research & development department for that,” how might you respond?

I think the first answer to that question is to at least start with an element of empathy for that leader’s perspective. It’s easy to wade straight in with the usual “But if you don’t innovate you’ll die!” rhetoric, but they may run a business where that kind of silo approach is the best approach in the context of what they are doing at present. However, the bigger picture is always one where we look at innovation as a “mix” of activity. The R&D approach to innovation will always be focused on new product development, as that’s the function of that department. However, the R&D team won’t be focused on operation efficiency, marketing, customer experience, or business models, so the key is to get leaders to see that innovation impacts all parts of the business – so that innovation happens everywhere, every day.

What is “innovation maturity,” and how does it impact the way companies operate?

Innovation maturity is a way of describing (and more importantly, measuring) an organization’s current capability, approach, and culture in the context of innovation. I’ve built several innovation maturity assessments for different companies all over the world, and the core thing it helps drive is an understanding of what’s holding innovation back at any given time. These assessments also help create a framework for the change that innovation requires, and they’re typically structured around defined maturity levels. A great example of a typical innovation maturity structure outlines four stages of maturity: Novice, Apprentice, Professional, and Innovation Leader.

When you can understand granular perspectives on the things leaders are doing or aren’t doing to drive innovation, or whether middle managers are providing the right resources and environment for innovation, or if communication and understanding around innovation is at the right level across the organization, then you can build interventions to remove those innovation barriers and increase the components that enable innovation.

How do you go about convincing the leaders of a decades-old company or organization that improved innovation is vital if they wish to experience continued success?

I think most leaders now recognize that innovation capability is crucial, so having to work too hard to convince them that they should look at building innovation as a core capability isn’t as common as it was even just a few years ago. The numerous surveys and annual reports done by some of the world’s leading consultancies every year show that senior teams and CEOs are placing innovation in the top few strategic imperatives, so the case for change is well understood.

The other side to that is, if I do have to work too hard to convince a senior team that innovation capability is something they should look at, they probably aren’t an organization that’s ready for someone like me to help them. When we talk about innovation as an outcome of “what” and more importantly “how” an organization does things, it requires strong and courageous leadership. This “innovation leadership” requires alignment at that level around what is needed to push an organization forward into the future.

In most companies today, which is the bigger problem: a lack of innovative thinking at the highest levels of management, or a failure to identify or discover innovative ideas created by front line employees or middle managers? 

I don’t think it’s a lack of “innovative thinking” at the senior level as much of a lack of understanding innovation and what it takes at the senior level. At its core, innovation only happens when enough people in an organization have the desire to solve problems and change things for the better for the future.

However, many businesses are still too eager to label themselves as innovative. But you cannot simply proclaim this quality. Putting a crown on my head doesn’t make me the King of England, and the same is true when it comes to professing “we are innovative” or “we have the most innovative product on the market.” The reality is, only customers can label an organization innovative as a byproduct of what they do and how they do it. That means innovation is really an outcome of lots of ingredients like behavior, habit, insight, collaboration, creativity, and so on.

As a former designer, I was measured on how well I applied things like design thinking, entrepreneurship, empathy, and customer-centricity, and I now find we’ve come full circle in that nearly every business area is using these tools to deliver genuinely different solutions – and in turn drive innovation and shape the future.

Finish this sentence: “If you want to create a company-wide culture of innovation, the most important action to take FIRST is…” 

Simple… build an innovation roadmap!

Since innovation is a byproduct of building an amazing organization, that means it’s about people, and culture is crucial. That also means it takes time to put the right things in place and change behaviors, actions, capabilities, and mindsets. It’s also crucial to start out from day one with a clear picture of what that journey looks like as linked to the existing company strategy. I’ve seen far too many organizations dive straight into “being innovative” without any clear strategy, roadmap for change, or leadership understanding around what and how to drive innovation. My approach with CEOs and senior leaders is around three core activities: establish an innovation strategy, enable the innovation leaders, and then (and only then) start to embed a culture of innovation across the organization.

What advice might you have for organizational leaders to help them convince entrenched, rigid, and/or narrow-minded employees and middle managers of the value of innovation?

One of the key things that most leaders need to address is that middle managers in most organizations are what I call the “innovation gatekeepers.” For many, leadership may be top-down, and innovation delivery may be bottom-up; but I think building a culture of innovation is “middle-out,” i.e. done at the middle-management layer so it radiates it out across all levels above and below. I think it’s here where innovation either flies or dies.  When you show middle managers how innovation can help them do their jobs better, they not only embrace it in their work, but also evangelize its value up and down the business.

The reality is, given the choice, most employees would love the opportunity to get involved in doing things differently, being creative, and (most importantly) solving the problems they see and face every day, especially for customers. The challenge is the people who manage the middle managers are the ones typically most under pressure to get those employees to deliver the core day-to-day business objectives. Yet the middle managers are also typically the layer that leaders pass the innovation baton to.

The reality is, middle managers have a unique understanding of the corporate strategy, day-to-day operations, and the relationship between the two sides of the business: leaders and employees. Furthermore, they are the ones who are most under pressure to deliver outcomes that positively impact the customer and the balance sheet.

Since many companies acknowledge the need for innovation, what are the traits and qualities of those who will actually accomplish this goal and succeed in the future? 

One specific challenge of innovation is its relative newness, especially for businesses that need and want to embrace it. When we talk about building a culture of innovation, there’s still a huge gap in understanding what that means. This is very different from fostering a culture of compliance or a culture of customer experience; those strategic objectives are very well-known. But when it comes to innovation, very few people know how to even define it for their organization, let alone democratize it and leverage it across the organization.

However, what we see when we look at organizations that have embraced innovation as a cultural capability and are delivering truly amazing things for customers is that they’ve understood not so much what they needed to learn, but what they needed to unlearn. And from my experience, the biggest proportion of unlearning is done within senior teams. All too often, it’s the core behaviors that are unconsciously embedded in their day-to-day work which end up being the most significant barriers to innovation.

The innovation vanguard companies have realized that the traditional ways of doing business block innovation and just don’t work for the environment organizations must now compete in. To make sure these mistakes don’t pass to the future generation of leaders, I’ve worked with numerous CEOs, leadership teams and HR Directors to redesign their leadership development programs around the core behaviors of innovation.

Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to any of this, so the road to innovation will vary from one organization to the next. But unless CEOs and senior teams move on from making the decision and actually act to start building a strategic approach to innovation, then I would suggest they’d better be prepared to watch innovation-led competitors shape the future.

Want John Mattone to come speak at your company? Check out his speaking availability.

The concepts of credibility and integrity are closely aligned, and both are associated with wholeness and consistency. Defining credibility isn’t easy, but a credible person is someone you trust.

This is a person who has earned your trust because of their integrity (a wholeness of their views and actions), their competence, sound judgment, emotional intelligence, fairness, and plain likeability.

Naturally, organizations, whether business or otherwise, want credible leaders. Leaders that aren’t trusted render an organization at best less effective and at worst completely ineffective. It’s easy to assume that you have a credible bench of leaders, but do you? You’re wise to take a credibility inventory on a regular basis.

Why Is Credibility Important?

Since we’re not given the ability to see the future, we have to work with what we have right now, and learn from what has gone on in the past. A person’s credibility helps you determine how much you can trust them, and that’s incredibly important in business and employment relationships. It’s particularly important when someone is a leader, because their influence may be far-reaching. Credibility indicates someone will do what they say they will do, that they aren’t deceptive for their own gain, and that you can work with them, confident that your goals are in alignment.

How Can You Gauge Credibility of Leaders?

It’s not easy. Unfortunately, some people are very adept at fooling people into thinking they are credible when the opposite is true. But there are things you can do. One is simple fact checking. Follow up on the information listed on a resume. If someone has made a claim in the media, was it true? How do you know?

Measuring someone’s credibility requires that you establish a relationship with them. You don’t necessarily have to become best friends, but if, say, you’re going to trust someone to cut your hair, you want to know a little about their personality and whether they listen to you, and ideally, you’d like to see some of their previous work. Credibility also comes across in how they treat you. Is it a two-way relationship? Do they show you the respect they demand for themselves?

Finally, perhaps the surest measure of credibility is whether a person follows up on the promises they make. This covers the small stuff (“I’ll meet you there at 10:00.”) as well as the big stuff (“I’ll reorganize the staffing schedule to make it fairer.”) and everything in between.

Consequences When There Is a Credibility Gap

A credibility gap at top leadership levels is an enormous liability for any organization. CEOs make mistakes sometimes. The best ones “own” those mistakes and do what they can to rectify them. But when a leader lies outright, consistently makes promises that go un-kept, or otherwise demonstrates that they’re not what they say they are, you have a serious problem. Not only does it diminish that person as a leader, it damages your organization, your brand, and the morale of your people. And sometimes, it’s often the leader himself who is the last one standing, after all the damage has been done.

Executive Coaching and Credibility

Someone who is inherently duplicitous and believes in clawing their way to the top regardless of consequences probably can’t be coached into behaving with integrity. Fortunately, those people are relatively rare. But people can and do make it to the top echelons of companies and other organizations despite small credibility problems. Maybe they never show up on time and expect everyone else to work around it. Or maybe the deadlines they set can never be taken as hard and fast. These are credibility problems that can be helped with executive coaching.

Effective executive coaching begins with an honest inventory of where the client is at the starting point – good, bad, and indifferent. It also helps leaders understand the consequences of their actions better, and look forward to the many improvements that will result from closing credibility gaps. Finally, it puts lessons on credibility into practice, and with the help of an outstanding coach, those lessons are internalized and the right actions become automatic.

I have a lot of experience in leadership coaching, and I can tell you that the strongest leaders are the ones who recognize their shortcomings and are willing to overcome them. And that may be one of the strongest indicators of all that someone has credibility. If you’re interested in learning more about my leadership coaching services, please get in touch at any time and let’s talk.

Jo Geraghty, the director of Culture Consultancy,  has a global reputation as an expert in building high-performance cultures across multinational and fast-growth companies. We recently spoke with Jo about how to sculpt a corporate culture so that it is more effective in accomplishing organizational goals, as well as why leadership training is pivotal to a company’s success.

Tell us about your background. Why are you so passionate about corporate cultures? 

It’s quite simple really. From working with a variety of clients from start-ups through to multinationals, I’ve seen over and over again the way in which corporate culture can make the difference between success and failure. I guess because I started out with Goldman Sachs, I am more attuned to the banking and finance arena; and time and time again in the recent decade, we’ve seen far too many instances of culture failures leading to all sorts of things – including misselling.

Those failures and others like them have been a lesson for all of us about the importance of strong culture in driving outcomes. You don’t get strong culture without engaged people, and I’m a firm believer in the importance of people in business and engaging them in the strategy and values in order to deliver innovation and customer excellence. Your engaged employees can be your greatest advocates for success.

What is a “trigger signal,” and how might it indicate the need for a change in corporate culture? 

I’ve always believed that if the leadership team feels that there is something wrong, then there generally is. But some of the key trigger points are significant changes in corporate direction (such as mergers and acquisitions), a move into new product lines, or a change of leadership. Then on the employee side, you may be looking at a rise in staff turnover, increased absences due to illness, disagreements between individuals or departments, or sudden silences when a member of the management team walks by. Apart from that, you also have things like increased wastage, a reduction in productivity, customer dissatisfaction, and so on. And even if none of these apply, leaders should still be keeping their finger on the pulse of culture to make sure that it stays relevant in a changing marketplace.

Is it often difficult to effect change at companies in longstanding industries like investment houses, banks, or law offices? 

It can be, but you can also see the same challenges in fast growth scale-ups or in businesses of any size or longevity. It’s easy to point the finger and say that for banks or law offices, the challenge to change is harder because they are so heavily regulated; but that’s really a cop-out. When the culture isn’t right, the regulators are not only pleased to see change, they demand change.

Take innovation, for example. The financial regulators in the UK actively encourage businesses to come to them with innovative ideas and look to work with those businesses in order to help them to bring in new products and methods of working. What is difficult is when the CEO and the leadership team don’t assimilate the change into their daily decisions and actions. If it’s not on the top team’s agenda, it’s not going to be in the culture. The desire for change has to start at the top, and the leadership has to create the conditions which will allow change to happen.

How can a leadership team convince employees that a “change programme” is not just a euphemism for massive layoffs? 

It’s all about communication and people engagement.  Naturally, whenever any change is in the offing -whether it be an internal culture change, merger, or acquisition – people are inevitably going to be concerned. And this is where it comes down to employee engagement again and the relationship between the employees and the leadership. If people are really engaged in delivering good outcomes for the business, and if they trust the leadership to make the right decisions, then they will trust in the changes which the leaders are making. After that, it’s all about the 5Cs of communication; being clear, concise, consistent, continuous, and congruent.

If a new CEO or similar corporate leader wants to change the culture at his or her company, what should he or she avoid doing at all costs

Let’s start with the old adage, “Don’t do what I do, do what I say.” Telling people to act in one way and then doing something completely different yourself is a sure-fire way of convincing people that you don’t really support the change that you’re trying to bring in. This includes launching an initiative and then expecting the business to get on with it while you move on to the next best thing.

Then there is the classic, “From now on we’re all going to be (blank)” You may have spent ages planning, investigating, and drawing up the new shape of the organization, but it is unfair to your people to expect them to be instantly enthusiastic about a new concept which you’ve just thrown at them. You have had time to get used to the idea; so help them to get used to it as well.

Finish this sentence: “The biggest reason to implement a leadership training program within a company is…” 

…its future.  There is a lovely story that I heard in which one person asks, “Why should I bother to train people when they’re only going to leave?” to which the reply is, “What happens if you don’t train them and they stay?” Leadership is a journey, and if you want strong leaders to deliver a strong future, then you can’t start training soon enough.

Apart from that, lots of the skills required for leadership such as communication, listening, taking ownership, seeing the bigger picture, and so on are the same skills which you need all of your people to display within an innovation culture. So by training your people for the future, the business is also benefiting now.

If a corporate employee were to say to you, “I won’t participate in my company’s leadership training initiative because I have no plans or desires to be an executive at this company,” how might you respond? 

My first reaction would be that I have failed that person in not helping them to fully understand how they can personally benefit from boosting their own skills. Sure, not everyone is cut out for leadership; but when we stop learning, we stop growing. So the answer is to work with the individual to devise a pathway which helps them to continue to grow and to explore the areas which interest them to the benefit of the organization.

Interestingly, this is an area where diversity, inclusion, and equality come very much to the fore. Equality doesn’t mean treating everyone the same, but it does mean giving everyone an equal opportunity to maximize their personal strengths to do the best they can. When you have a diverse range of people all bringing their talents fully to the benefit of the business, then you increase the chances of having a strong innovative culture and great customer service.

For companies to remain successful in the future, what will their corporate cultures have to emphasize and focus on? 

Innovation. It’s a one-word answer, but it can have game-changing consequences.

If you have been tracking the surveys over the last few years, you would see that more and more CEOs have been putting innovation at the top of their priority list. But there is still an awful lot of misunderstanding about what innovation really is. There is a difference between invention and innovation; invention is the process of introducing something new or different, while innovation does so in order to solve a genuine problem, add real value to the customer, and drive growth for the creator. Businesses with a genuine culture of innovation don’t simply look at product or service, but also strive to improve the system, process, outlook, attitude, and every aspect of the business in order to deliver differentiated customer excellence.

Corporate culture isn’t just about reputation, profitability, or even employee engagement. It’s about improving the lives of customers and delivering something which they will genuinely benefit from alongside a great customer experience.

Need some help shaping your corporate culture? Check out John’s corporate culture services.

Jim Rembach is the creator of the Emotional Intelligence Customer Experience Design framework (EQCX) and the host of the Fast Leader Show. We recently asked Jim to elaborate on the concept of emotional intelligence and how it impacts leadership, and also to reveal some of the leadership-related wisdom he has learned from the leaders that have been featured on his podcast.

Tell us a bit about your background. Why did you decide to create your podcast?

I grew up in a very racially diverse area in the suburbs of Chicago in a blue-collar home with two older brothers and one younger brother. Like so many of us, I was heavily influenced by my environment. Several of the kids in my class became high school dropouts. Of those that did graduate from high school, few went on to continue their education. I was falling into the same pattern.

Luckily, my parents moved away as my father pursued a job within the same industry, but with a different company. The environment that we moved to was dramatically different from the one that I left. There, most kids did graduate from college and many of them continued their education even further. And I eventually became the first one in my family to receive an undergraduate degree.

Despite majoring in finance and real estate, I was unable to pursue my initial desired path of becoming an investment banker. Because I had some experience working retail, I eventually found my way to working for a company called AutoZone. They were in a hyper growth mode and my opportunities to advance rapidly were very attractive. Eventually, I was able to find a job in their call center, which grew rapidly to 800 seats in two locations in only a few short months.

After a couple years in the call center, there was a change in AutoZone’s senior leadership and they decided to close the call centers. I enjoyed working in call centers so much that I decided to leave the company and pursue other opportunities. Over the course of the next few years, I ended up working in a few call centers for different companies. Being able to see firsthand the impact of leadership on the business, the customer experience, and employee engagement has been priceless.

But I’ve always had questions. Why do people do the things that they do? How do people find a right fit? How do you engage employees? How do you engage customers? How do you engage with colleagues? How can you make a greater impact? How can you help more people? All of these questions and my never-ending desire to find answers combined with the joy that I receive by recognizing others are some of the foundational reasons why started the Fast Leader Show podcast.

Because of my operational experience, I knew beyond intuition that having engaged employees generates engaged customers. I also knew that having a customer-centric focus in my leadership practices delivers a greater impact to the company and those within it. Oftentimes I refer to it as human-centric, because we are working both inside and outside the organization.

What are some of the most commonly-cited leadership mistakes that the guests on your podcasts have admitted to you?

There are a few that I find to be common. But with the storytelling format of the show, how people discover their mistakes and the circumstances surrounding their mistakes are unique to the individual.

One of the more common mistakes that people cite is allowing fear to rule their decisions. People allow fear to prevent them from exploring opportunities within their existing role or new opportunities, standing up to others, expanding their current role, doing what they know is right, and enjoying themselves. Ultimately, fear is an internal restriction. Sometimes the fear is purely internally manifested, while sometimes the fear comes from external forces and yet we allow it affect us. For all of us, fear is something that we must admit exists and learn how to manage it.

Finish this sentence: “The main reason[s] that over 80 percent of leadership programs fail is…” 

… learning is only the beginning, development takes time. People have to practice leadership skills and attitudes. And they must have effective coaching to be led to success.

The high failure rate of leadership programs has been around for a very long time. Measuring the return on investment (ROI) in leadership training and development is considered to be an important element in human resources and beyond. The ROI of training and development is frequently a topic presented and discussed at conferences, workshops, and professional associations. Journals and media regularly present the subject with more and more emphasis. Yet nothing is changing.

Executives have come to expect ROI projections and estimates in requests for leadership training and development funding. Leadership educators now find that asking for return on investment information is commonplace, but they’re frightened to reveal the true results. And they should be.

What are some of the ways that you see people sabotaging their chances to get ahead in their career?

There are three key ways I see people sabotaging their chances to get ahead.

1. Emotional Intelligence: People are not actively improving their emotional intelligence (EQ) skills. The evidence is very clear: those with higher EQ advance further and make more money over those with higher IQ. By not proactively improving your emotional intelligence, you are literally blocking yourself from moving onward and upward faster. You are costing you and your family a better livelihood.
2. Blending In: People are not amplifying their uniqueness and exploring ways to use their uniqueness to add value to others. They are choosing to fit in, keep their head down, and not make waves to stand out above the rest. Ironically, this behavior increases the chances of you being affected by downsizing and reorganization. Career security resides in being unique. It’s your responsibility to reveal it.
3. Coaching: Those that do not seek the support of a coach will be passed by those that do. All of the experts and masters of anything in the world have coaches. As individuals, we have blind spots to the things that are blocking us from obtaining what we seek. We all have unintentional blindness. A coach helps you to see what you can’t.

Could you give us some advice on how a leader can work on improving his or her emotional intelligence?

You can’t improve what you know nothing about. So there are two things to do. First, learn about the competencies you need to improve to increase your emotional intelligence. The next thing is to assess your emotional intelligence. Unless you know what you need to work on, you are not going to be efficient with your time and effort.

Once you know what you need to work on, you must be willing to put in the practice to improve. Knowledge is not what improves your emotional intelligence. You must practice the new behaviors you’ll need to practice in order to experience any gains.

How does poor internal morale in a group or company tend to manifest itself in the external customer experience?

The symptoms of poor internal morale are presented in a multitude of different ways. The innocent victim in most of these cases is the customer.

Poor morale can impact the customer experience by:

• Chronic problems experienced
• Poor product/service development
• Low levels of feeling valued
• Mixed messaging
• Cumbersome interaction processes
• Higher cost
• More time invested

All of these symptoms end up pushing customers to your competition. Causes of these symptoms are most often misdiagnosed as technology or process problems. What people fail to realize is that people design, implement, and support the technology and processes. So it’s people that are the problem. And when poor morale and engagement are present, people don’t work well with one another.

What are some of the most essential skills that leaders of the future will have to learn and master in order to be successful?

Leaders of today have to do these things now to be successful. The future is now.

If you want to rapidly accelerate your progression to greater levels of responsibility and compensation, you’ll need to master these four vital skills.

1. Perspective Taking: To be able to consider various points of view or assumptions about situations and people and to seek alternative options and choices. To view various situations through the eyes of others in order to better understand their behavior, positions, or requests.
2. Decision Making: You can’t merely gain perspective. With all of your perspective taking, you need to be able to make a decision and set a course of action. Knowing when to convert all of the insight gathered into a plan is key. Make a decision and move forward. And let your perspective taking continue so you can make adjustments when needed.
3. Persuasion: Nothing in an organization is done solo. You need to be able to persuade others of the merits of your decision so they work in concert to execute the plan. Being able to influence and persuade others to join you in the pursuit contributes to the outcome experienced.
4. Platform Building: In today’s noisy world, it’s more difficult to stand out from the rest. But for you to receive more opportunities to obtain greater success, you must. Creating a platform enables you to get seen and to be heard. Without it, you are just one of many. If you’re serious about taking yourself to the next level, you can’t succeed without a platform.

Looking for a good leadership coach? See how John Mattone can help.

 

Shawn Overcast is a partner at gothamCulture with more than 15 years of experience quantifying the softer side of business by working with human capital departments from small companies to global Fortune 100 organizations. We recently talked with Shawn about the importance of employee engagement, leadership training programs, and effective corporate culture.

Tell us a bit about your background. What do you find interesting about employee engagement and organizational development?

“If you treat your crewmembers (employees) well, they will treat your customers well, and that will serve our shareholders well.” – CEO, JetBlue Airways

I started my career as a training designer to develop a leadership training program in a rapidly growing startup. An annual employee engagement survey indicated that employee morale and culture was at risk of declining, and senior leadership wanted to act fast. After I followed this program from design through implementation and then measured the impact on the organization, including the impact of employee engagement, retention, and customer service, I was sold. But this was more than just a training effort. We established principles of leadership, expectations for leadership, and a new performance management system. Employee engagement matters; people are capital inside an organization. Their behaviors affect performance, and performance affects financials.

Finish this sentence: “When trying to improve employee engagement at a company, the thing that you most definitely should NOT do is…”  

Attempt to drive the results. If we’re only focused on a single measure, such as employee engagement, we’re missing the full picture of what else is affected and why. We certainly consider employee engagement in our approach, but we also seek to build a theory of change (or logic model) to explore all of the variables that drive employee engagement. Then we determine what other business results they drive.

We continue to work backwards to understand not only what actions led to or affected results, but also what inputs are required to support those actions. We don’t take action until we understand the full system and chain of impact. This rigorous assessment determines the appropriate interventions for the organization.

What is a common example of misaligned priorities between a company’s front-line managers and its senior leadership?

Perspective. Front-line leadership is continually focused on the day-to-day that’s in front of them internally. Their span of sight and control is narrower and more focused on the work that needs to get done by the team of people who report to them: the front line. They are typically concerned with issues of efficiency, productivity, quality, coordination and integration of process, individual capability, employee satisfaction, and even customer satisfaction.

Senior leadership is more closely aligned to the external face of the company: the C-suite, the board, and the customer. Their perspective is more broad and more long-term. They seek to meet the needs of external stakeholders by setting direction and guidance for those working internally. They are concerned about the financial success and viability of the company, the long-term implications of strategic decisions on the market, competition, and customer loyalty.

These minor differences in attention and primary stakeholder needs lead to conflict and misalignment between these levels of leadership.

When companies actively assess their corporate culture, what types of surprises do they often discover when they study the results?

There are three “Ahas!” or insights that come from assessing workplace culture. The most frequent discovery is the difference in perceptions about the culture from different groups. This could be differences between levels of leadership,  business units or locations, those with varying lengths of tenure with the company, or (in the case of a merger or acquisition) individuals from the new company and the legacy company.

Another insight is an imbalance in the company’s focus and acknowledgment of their “Achilles heel” or “soft underbelly. “Similar to the point above and the perspectives of senior leadership and middle management, some organizations as a whole tend to be internally or externally focused. A heavy internally focused company typically has a very empowered and capable workforce, likely one with long tenure. They also tend to have strong processes and are very coordinated and aligned on values and approaches to communication and decisions. Conversely, an organization more heavily focused externally has a strong handle and understanding of the market, is quick to adapt to the changing needs of the customer, and innovates and learns from mistakes quickly. The challenge with this imbalance is the risk of high turnover and not having the people around long enough to continue to deliver on what works best.

And third, leadership learns more about what they’ve taken for granted. Senior leaders act with the best of intent by establishing clear direction and strategy to ensure people are aligned, empowered, and capable. They ensure the organization is responding to the needs of the market, and that their processes and systems remain a competitive advantage for the organization. However, there are times where the message isn’t clearly articulated or strategy is lost in execution. This “Aha!” establishes priorities for where to focus communication efforts in the very near term.

How would you go about aligning the corporate culture of an organization which is plagued by internal politics?

Organizations plagued by internal politics often show up as siloed and have low coordination and integration. A culture assessment can objectively tell a story that is experienced every day by the employees working within this environment. We use an empirically-based assessment to capture this moment in time and are able to demonstrate to leaders the implications of their political behaviors and what can happen if interactions remain unproductive.

Step one is to assess the situation and dialogue — truly engage in collaborative discussion — about the current state. From there, a handful of advocates or culture ambassadors will likely raise their hands to take action on driving movement in the culture change process. Change starts with one, and momentum will breed momentum.

What are some of the roadblocks that you frequently see when trying to transform the organizational culture of a large international corporation?

Loss of momentum and involvement from senior leadership. Often, senior leadership is heavily involved during the assessment and dialogue phases, seeking to understand the problems and making decisions about priorities and level of investment for the culture transformation. But once work is allocated across the organization to continue the process, leadership gets focused on something else. Without continual focus, recognition, and communication from the top, it becomes difficult for new cultural norms and behaviors to take hold.

Competing priorities. This is often an output of the first. As leadership focuses attention on other aspects of sustaining (or creating) a high-performance organization, the efforts dedicated to culture become “old news.” Instead, culture and the interventions selected to support the transformation should be baked into the way everything else gets done, including all new efforts, investments, and priorities in the future.

Moving on before the new culture has truly taken hold. This is the challenge with looking at a single measure, such as employee engagement. These surveys are simply a snapshot in time. And simply doing a survey does not mean you’re engaging your employees. It is important to follow through and track, manage, and measure key metrics over time.

If a senior executive were to say to you, “I don’t believe in investing resources in a leadership development program, because my employees are likely to take what they learn and go work somewhere else,” how might you respond?

But what happens if they stay?

Generally speaking, what will the corporate leaders of tomorrow have to do better than they are doing today in order to succeed?

They’ll need to work on balance, or continue to focus on their organization’s strategic direction and intent, and respond to the changing marketplace. We learn that in Business 101. They must continuously evaluate their processes and organizational structure to ensure work is coordinated and conducted in an efficient and quality manner, and that their people have the tools, skills, and empowerment to do their jobs. They must view their people as an asset, not an expense. But most importantly, they should gain capability in finding balance across all of these.

They’ll also need to grow in agility and capacity to balance structure and sustainability with flexibility and continuous capability development; in other words, to focus on the needs of external stakeholders and stockholders, but not at the risk of compromising internal stakeholders (and sometimes stockholders!). They’ll have to balance the need to set direction, but ensure that their people have the tools, skills, and capacity to execute to that mission. Finally, they must maintain their competitive advantage in how they execute while staying just one step ahead of the competitors in the marketplace.

If you think that your corporate culture isn’t as strong as it should be, see how John can help your company.