In this episode, James and Dee reflect on their time at WordCamp Europe before diving deep into the real meaning of employee engagement, what it is, what it isn’t, and how it shows up (or doesn’t) in remote, async-first teams. From neglected personal connections to overloaded calendars, we explore the habits that elevate engagement, and the ones that kill it.
Transcript
James: Hello everyone. This is another episode of the future of team podcasts. My name is James Giroux and my cohost Dee Teal is here as well. Hi Dee. How are you?
Dee Teal: I’m so well. How about yourself?
James: I’m great. This is our, we’ve just come back from WordCamp Europe in Torino. We’re recording. We missed last week.
We had a bit of planning. This is our first real episode since then. We’ve been sharing some stories back and forth about the experience so far. I had a good time. What about you?
Dee Teal: I had a great time. I’m still riding the buzz of being back because I don’t spend a lot of time in the WordPress community.
That was just so great to, go back and hang out with everyone that I haven’t seen for 18 months while I’ve been working elsewhere.
James: We. We met some great people. We’ve had some great conversations. The result of that hopefully will be some guests on the show. Some really cool stories.
One of the highlights for me was going to your. Talk at WordCamp Europe and you and Siobhan talking about the gender diversity in WordPress, Survey that you ran and just some of the data coming out of that. It was Really And I, I walked away from it with just a lot of self reflection to do.
First off as a male, but also just, in terms of the things you sort of think are normal. And then you realize our, our, by lack of being intentional about other approaches or other ways of doing things. They just are not inclusive or not the best way to actually draw other people and especially, people who identify as female into leadership and into, some of the things that we want them to be in.
I, I was quite happy with that.
Dee Teal: It’s, I think it’s a useful, I would just love to have had more men in the audience or an appetite for, I just love to see an appetite for people going. What we’re doing isn’t enough, and we’re willing to make the change that’s required to actually.
Increase that diversity and an understanding of the benefits of it. I understand privilege is not given up easily, people go, I’m losing here rather than I’m gaining. And it’s, I think the message of how much there is to gain about increasing that. diversity and leadership, is the message that we need to get out there.
Rather than, oh my goodness, I’m giving up privilege and people just hanging on by their fingernails going, I do not want to let this go. Yeah, it was, it was a great exercise in pulling it all together, it was late for me because I was a late addition to the lineup, but it was, it was, it was a great experience and, we’ll throw a link in the show notes to how you can actually see that talk if you’re interested.
James: Awesome. This week we are looking at the topic, of elevating employee engagement and having a think about this whole concept of employee engagement and some of the things that you can do, especially in a remote first organization or in a distributed organization, to actually enhance it. Cause it can be quite isolating to be far apart from your colleagues separated by time zones it takes a different level of Energy and intentionality in order to bridge that gap if you don’t have that Recharge, which even for introverts is important that recharge of being in person.
It’s especially for me, prescient right now to be thinking about it because we’re gearing up for the launch of the next iteration of our team experience, index. That’s our employee engagement survey. The future of team puts on every year. I’m saying every year we did one last year and we’re doing one this year.
It’s the inaugural one last year. To try and engage, the experiences of everyday WordPress employees all around the world. And I think that it’s probably the best place to start. I think in terms of engagement, which is this whole idea of getting data and actually getting some baseline input from your team on what their experience is like, even just to begin with.
Dee Teal: I agree. I wonder if we need to start with a why is engagement important? What’s, what’s, what is, what is engagement? What do we actually mean by it? Cause we hear it said a lot. Do we actually know what it means? And how would you, how would you actually describe that? For me, it’s that sense of how an employee is feeling in their activity and in their work, and how engaged they are with you as a company.
If you’re, the owner of a company. I don’t know if that’s the technical, the technical meaning of it. Is that, do you actually have a written, written, what’s your, what’s your take?
James: Think there’s differing, viewpoints on it. It is different things to different people. And you gotta be careful with it.
Some call, it employee experience. Some people call it, employee engagement. From a definition point of view, probably where I would land is, is it, it’s, it’s like a loyalty metric. Right? Or a loyalty barometer or, or an energy barometer. It’s hard, because a little bit of all of these things, but ultimately what you’re after is, how motivated are the people in your team to do the work that you have to do today? And how motivated are, are, are they to stick around with you for, The next two, three, five years. Yeah,
Dee Teal: it’s how close their seat is to their desk at the door. Right. That’s right.
James: And all the other things, that we might do in engagement are really about. Figuring those two things out because, if they are not excited about leadership, their leadership, their people, their, their, their direct line manager or overall company leadership, that’s an indicator, but it’s not the only indicator that could be counterbalanced by great pay,
or being really fulfilled, great colleagues. Exactly. That’s why, engagement data. Is so valuable, but it has to be well rounded. It’s not just how likely are you to recommend this as a place to work on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s not, it’s not just that it really is nuanced. And that’s why it’s really important to get.
around it and why I would encourage anyone to do a survey like the team experience index or something similar. We have one at future of team called culture compass, which is a customized version just as an example of that, that you run with your team, you create your own questions. You can do both, our Likert, statements which you can benchmark against the team experience index or Or, create your own and then short answer questions.
And I always like start, stop, continue as a collection of feedback questions for people to do as well. When you get into these kinds of surveys, Selecting a box doesn’t always tell the whole story. So being able to provide that ability for your team to give a bit more long form answers or short form answers to some of the things that are going on, or to be positively or negatively triggered by the questions that are being asked, where you click a box and then being able to actually dig deeper into that, if.
Pay is a big thing and, start might be, Hey, we’d like to see you start benchmarking these roles against other, companies in the ecosystem to see where we fit and giving us that information. So we feel better about ourselves, right? That could be something that comes up.
Dee Teal: I think a big part of actually making sure that we’ve got the data is that you actually know where you’re heading, right?
Yeah. It’s let’s get this data, let’s see where we’re at now. And then we got the sense of. In the spectrum of things that contribute to employees, sense of engagement with the company and with their work, what we actually know that we have to work on? And there’s and we’ll go through, I presume the list of things that affect that and, what we would be wanting to measure in order to get that sense of what do we need to adjust and change or where do we need to shift our sales to get us heading in the direction that we want to go.
James: It is, and sometimes you don’t know. I think one of the interesting things I’ve found with, WordPress companies in particular is everything’s fine, right? The whole building could be on fire behind them, but the leader just goes, everything’s fine. Right.
Dee Teal: And, well, I’m engaged and I love what I’m doing.
And so everybody around me must be feeling the
James: same. I have a sense of ownership. Nobody’s coming to me with complaints. I show up to all the meetings, we get to do these three activities that I’ve decided by myself in a corner that everyone’s going to do in love. And everybody says that they love, you can get yourself into, what is it, a cone of silence or, or something like that?
Aging myself will get smart. It’s best to hear each other, but anyway, carry on. But, you can get yourself sort of in this echo chamber where you hear back what you want to hear and not what’s actually being said. Right. Or what needs to be said and as a result, not have any clue of what direction you need to go and collecting data or doing these types of surveys can actually be a tool to help you take concrete steps forward.
And when you can work with a partner and I highly recommend this, not just because. We sell this as a service, but because this, in my opinion, is the best way to do it is to go with an outside anonymous third party, team to actually run this engagement survey on your behalf because it protects your employees, from, the fear of, anything they say coming back, right?
And it also for you means that you’re going to get honest, Input and feedback because the people providing it to you aren’t trying to coddle you either, they’re gonna provide you with the feedback that it’s been given. This is what they really think. Yeah, they really think and Hopefully if they’re if they’re a good tool to be using Recommendations on what you as a team can be doing in order to move forward and a couple of goals that you can have For your team in order to move the needle on engagement.
That’s engagement. One thing we wrote down, and I’m just gonna, move on from data, a little bit now, here is, you said this, and, when we were doing our planning, and I thought this was really great. If you’re trying to tick the engagement box, you’re doing it wrong. What did you mean by that?
Dee Teal: It’s the motivation for why you’re actually doing it. If it’s we hear people talking about engagement, we should probably do engagement. I think the thing for me, and it was funny cause I’d forgotten I’d said that, but as you were talking through that stuff, I think the thing for me is you have to be, settled enough in yourself that you’re willing to hear negative feedback that you recognize.
That you could do better and that your company could be better if you actually engage with this stuff and be willing and able to make that change. So for me, taking the engagement, it’s the motivation of why you’re doing it. I’m taking the box because people would do it because people say that we should do it, but that’s not actually engaging with the sense of continuous learning and continuous improvement that I am prepared to take the good with the bad.
Okay. Have a look at all of it, sift it through and appreciate that change needs to happen to make this better. And it’s that willingness to change, I think, is the thing that I feel like needs to be critical for people. And it’s all part of that whole continuous improvement attitude of, being prepared to fail, get it wrong, but also be ready to make the change to get it right going forward.
James: When you said it. The first thing that I thought of was that, typical, stereotypical maybe manager who, Exists for lists, right? Maybe you’ve experienced that you’ve had a manager or people leader in your career whose Goal in life is to check the boxes on their list Made for the day And when they speak to you in your one on ones or in your team meetings, it’s less about what’s actually said and more about moving through the agenda items and making sure that they get through.
And for them, the satisfaction is, having gone through every item on the agenda in the, allotted time, and being able to move on. I sometimes think of that. When you said it, That was the first thing that came to my mind was that maybe stereotypical kind of manager who’s just like you don’t actually care about me You don’t actually that’s
Dee Teal: that’s the key isn’t it?
It’s that sense of all I have to take all these boxes. You’re not seeing me At all.
James: Yeah.
Dee Teal: You’re not engaged at all with what I’m saying to you. This has no impact at all on you. It’s the, I mean, I guess it’s probably also that quintessential difference between hierarchical versus servant leadership. And I think because I’m so imbued with servant leadership, which sounds arrogant, it’s not, I don’t mean to sound that, but that sense of hang on, this is how we lead is that we That just didn’t even, it doesn’t even compute for me anyway.
James: Now that we’ve gone through a little bit of the overview, we’ve talked about the importance of data and not just taking the box. The next section I think is actually a lot of fun and, you can thank chat GPT for helping us out with this. And we’re just going to react to a couple of these, statements, but I wrote to chatty and I said, Chatty, what are some things that you think people can do and, what should they not do when it comes to creating an environment for engagement?
And now, luckily, all of these things are things that were on my list as well. So, it’s fun. Right. I just thought maybe we could go through, three or four of these different examples, and we’ve got eight to choose from, but I’ll let you select the first one, the one that stands out to you, on what we can do to, really elevate employee engagement at work, and, we’ll have a quick little chat on that.
Dee Teal: Well, I’m going to just kick off with the one that’s first on the list, which is foster transparent communication. Things don’t happen in a vacuum. The good things don’t happen in a vacuum. And when you’re not clear on what’s being communicated or there is no communication or there isn’t clear communication, particularly from leadership, people will write their own story. It’s not even in leadership and relationships in any situation where you’re unclear about.
What’s going on about what is happening behind the scenes and you are seeing actions and activities that are happening out there, but you don’t actually know what’s going on behind it. Hasn’t been clearly communicated what’s going on here. Then you write your own story and your story may not be correct.
You’ll make a bunch of assumptions. A lot of them will be negative because you don’t know what’s really going on. And that sense of. Being super clear from the top about what’s going on undermines some of those negative or incorrect or inaccurate stories that people will tell themselves.
James: And a good example of that is, and it doesn’t have to be big and formal.
We’ve talked, I think, in previous episodes about the value of things all hands meetings or quarterly get togethers where you just talk about the company goals and what’s going on. But even just something as simple as. A slack update. Hey folks, just wanted to give you a quick, update on how we’re progressing toward our new targets our goals for this quarter, we’re hitting this.
Well, we’re doing this while we’re doing this well, or we’re missing the mark on this one. We’ve decided either we’re going to put more attention to it or we’re going to let it go. Even just those kinds of things are really, really helpful for people. And it helps everyone feel at least like they’re going, cause you’re right.
We all have our own, RuPaul likes to call it our inner saboteur, like that person that is our critique, is always calling us out that, that, what is it imposter syndrome, all of those things mixed together and, that can be quite, quite a bad place to get, as an employee, if you’re not getting any positive input or real input from your leadership about what’s going on, and it can push you away.
It can give you the, what have I heard? The Sunday scaries. Is what is a term I’ve been hearing lately, where you get this anxiety or apprehension about going to work on Monday morning because you’re not sure what you’re walking into.
Dee Teal: Yeah, I think, I think the, some of the great benefits of actually having that communication is just that sense of people knowing what’s going to happen next.
And, the breadth of P, I know there’s so many companies that rely on P2 around here’s, here’s open visual, what’s happening. You can see that monthly or weekly even updates from the CEO about what’s going on. Breath, air, I think in a company and the opportunities to actually ask questions certainly been in, in organizations where we would have that regular all hands, but it wasn’t just a download.
It was also a what’s on your mind. And so those areas where you are unsure you can actually anonymous anonymously or otherwise ask those questions and get the answers. Get the actual answers about what’s going on.
James: I’m just pausing there to give us a little bit of a break, because we’ve only got about four minutes left on this free Zoom. I forgot about the 45 minute cutoff. What I’m going to suggest we do is, stop here. Give me a quick minute to shut this call down, and then I’ll send you a new Zoom link, in Slack for us to use.
Dee Teal: Sounds good.
James: Okay.
Dee Teal: I’m glad. Oh.
James: All right. I’m not going to do, Oh, I thought that was way too quick to come in. All right. I’m not going to do another what to do. I’m going to do a what not to do. And I found one on the list that for me is, When I’m guilty of, I figured, better to call it out now. And this is to neglect personal connections.
I am the kind of I just, I’m, I lean into tasks. We’ve talked about this before. I lean into tasks. You lean into people as sort of our, your natural, way of working. And for me, it’s an exercise of intentionality to actually develop personal connections with people. And I don’t know, it’s funny because You know, I’ve done these MBTI things and I’m supposedly an INFJ, which is the rare one but I’m probably very barely inside the line of INFJ and probably more of an INTJ in some situations because this is one where I go to task rather than feel often in work, but neglecting if you if you do not want to have an environment that, is engaging for your team or that, makes your team feel great, then neglect personal connections.
And here’s the example. Keep all communication strictly business. Who needs to know their colleagues as real people with interests and lives outside of work?
Dee Teal: What the, I mean, it is funny. Absolutely. But it’s scary how. True. It is I don’t know when I first started being a manager and actually managing people, there is a cliff, a click or a shift that needs to happen in the sense of we’re having a one to one conversation. And it is very easy to keep leaning into the work.
So that you end up, how’s the week been, what’s been going on, and you’re not actually asking or interested in what’s happening outside of work for people. And that can be, that’s definitely an adjustment to make, but I read somewhere that people, who burn out burn out. because they don’t have connection with the people that they’re working with.
They’re focused on the task. And that sense of building up that sense of relationship between you and your team members and between team members and each other is critical for your team to flourish. I
James: I think as well, there is maybe a bit of a generational thing here because, my wife and I, my wife and I are born in the same year.
We’re four or five months apart. We’re not, we’re not that. different generationally that way, but she’s the youngest in her family. And she’s got older siblings who are very much into Gen X and, and her dad’s a farmer and all that kind of stuff. And I’m the oldest in my family. Everyone’s younger than me and definitely leaning more millennial.
And, I find this very interesting, when we first, and it could be personality as well, but when we first started dating and talking about things, the line of separation for her between work and personal, or work and the rest of my life was Bricked up 10 meters high, it was just you, that was the line.
And, meanwhile I’m, you know, used to talking to younger millennials and, you know, feeling all the things and, and doing all the things. I was very accustomed to that and just sort of having that blend. But I, I’ve realized even more as I’ve navigated, circles with folks that are older than me.
Is that they tend to lean more into, sort of keeping personal, personal and keeping work, work, or they have these three or four permissible subjects that they, that are, tiny toe dips into their personal life. What
Dee Teal: are we watching on the telly? Are you watching House of Dragons?
Is that, is that, is that one of
James: them? That’s not what I’m watching, but, ask me.
Dee Teal: I’m not, and it’s what’s being talked around at the Horticultural at Work, and we nearly ended up in spoilers on the weekend because I haven’t ruled out watching it.
James: I, I have a couple of things. I’ve got Korean dramas.
You can ask me about Korean dramas. You can ask me about knitting.
Dee Teal: Stop it. I did not know this. Really? I did not know this about you. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. This is the thing, right?
James: Yeah, knitting, I’m, I’m a huge knitter. It’s just so funny. I love
Dee Teal: that about you. Yeah. That’s amazing.
James: So that’s, that’s one of my allowed topics that I talk about.
I talk about whatever, but. But, often I have two or three go to’s of these things. Just I know for you, it’s the F1, right? It’s cars. And, or
Dee Teal: Well, no, that, well, yeah, but it’s my ridiculous car. It’s not necessarily the Formula One, but, I have friends Yeah, no, my ridiculous car. Building, I don’t knit, but I, well I do knit, but I don’t knit.
I can knit, but I don’t do it. I build teeny tiny model houses. Yeah, this is yeah. But it’s not something we talk about at work. We talk about TV at work. But it’s interesting because different workplaces that I’ve been in have different, different flavors and definitely, where I’ve been in the past, there was a lot more water cooler action about what’s going on.
And whereas we are now, we are very focused on work. So I think the leadership and the, the, the extent to which I guess, Leaders in a company are open, may also filter down into the, into the, into the, boots on the ground workspace, the shop floor, as it were.
James: I think it’s a psychological safety thing as well, that if your environment isn’t so secure, you’re less willing. To be vulnerable or to be open about those things that may be something other people look at you and go, wait, what Korean dramas? You seriously are into what is that? Why, where, when, how, I will say though, I did an interview. A couple of months ago and that was one of the first things about myself that I told them when I did an introduction and they were like, we have a whole slack channel full of people who love K dramas.
You will be right at home. That’s amazing. And I was like, that’s really cool. I’m ready.
Dee Teal: Let’s go. Where do I sign?
James: But it just goes, I
Dee Teal: feel like we’re getting a little bit sidetracked. We are,
James: but I think it’s a good point when you talk about engagement, yeah.
Dee Teal: Yeah. It’s that, it feels like that, when you’re in that one to one call with a direct report or with your manager, that these are the parts.
I mean, I just feel like I just went straight to task then and go, Oh, hang on, we’re off where we’re, we’re having this lovely moment of connection, but I’m like, Oh, hang on. We need to get back on task because we’ve got work to do. So yeah, you just got a really good prime example of how that, how that goes.
But you
James: know, one of the things I think that separates good leaders from great leaders is the ability to put the work aside and focus on the people. That’s actually in my mind, one of the big separators, because we can talk about work, Anytime that’s easy. It’s hard to get personal.
It’s harder to be vulnerable to open yourself up to be, not for everyone, at least for me, as a leader, I would say that that’s what separates the good from the great is, the ability not just to develop personal connections, but to have genuine care. For your team and genuine, support of them and their endeavors and the things that they get up to at the weekend and be, authentically excited about it.
Dee Teal: I think too, when seasons end with a company, a reflection of how well a company is able to do that. May also be the extent to which those relationships outlast your tenure with a company. And I look at, my previous employer, I have one, one to one appointment that we never canceled. So every two weeks we still get together and catch up.
We clearly, we don’t talk about what the work that we’re doing together anymore. Cause we know no longer with the same company, but we do talk about, we’ve, but the. whole relationship totally transcends all of that. And that, there’s a number of different calls that I still have in my calendar of different durations.
Some are six weeks apart. Some are closer together still endure. Which is a reflection of that workplace in particular.
James: All right, you’re up. You get to pick a what to do, or if you want, you can pick a what not to do. I can
Dee Teal: pick a what not to do.
James: Yeah, go for it.
Dee Teal: Let’s not overload on meetings or even, the meetings thing is interesting. Let’s talk about what not, the, the chatty’s little example is fill up everyone’s calendar. Again, this is what not to do just to be super clear, fill up everyone’s calendar with back to back meetings all day, every day, after all who needs actual work time to get things done.
So cheeky, chatty, so cheeky, but I, I feel like there’s a balance to be had with meetings. And I know particularly in remote workplaces where it’s often a default to let’s jump in and have a meeting about it because, we’re struggling to, to find that connection if we’re talking about things offline.
But also, I feel like there’s a sense in which meetings also need to have some of that personal touch as well, particularly when you’re working remotely, when it’s, it’s finding, there’s definitely a fine balance to be found. I know when we were, and it would depend on the meeting too, and I guess the outcomes of a meeting.
I mean, you’re not going to have a meeting with the client and have an icebreaker at the top of the call. I mean, you’ve got stuff to do, the clients. Busy and has got time. But when we were talking about when we used to have regular regional meetings, having 10 minutes at the top of that call to actually connect personally really makes a difference to how people feel about working in that region.
And that sense of we are a team and a collective in this region doing this work, and not just a group of automatons. Ticking off all of their boxes. So, don’t overload on meetings, obviously. That goes without saying, Chatty, but, also balance your meetings so that there is that sense of not just ticking the boxes and the task oriented exercise, but there’s also that sense of being able to connect with each other and build those relationships.
Not just one on one, but also as a group.
James: Absolutely. You need those connections. I think when I hear this, think of the pressure of knowing you have things to do or things that are on your plate that have to get done and your team leads or the company as a whole, not being conscious of that and overloading you with communication, right?
And the pressure that comes with, okay, well now I’ve got eight hours to get, 62 hours worth of work done because I’ve spent the last week and a half in back to back meetings doing all these things. I have looked, one of the interesting things. So I think people leads are a little bit different.
They generally will have more meetings because their responsibility is to do direct connections with folks and be sort of in that space. That is their role. But can remember. In some roles I’ve had where yeah, I was literally going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting Trying and then trying to figure out.
Okay. I’ve got 10 minutes in between this meeting and the next meeting It’s enough time for me to hit the loo, grab a drink of water and i’ve got four minutes left I can send out this quick email that hopefully moves this project forward and that kind of like pressure and intensity of How am I going to get this done?
How am I going to get all of the things done that I need to get done? That’s really
Dee Teal: I think This, this is also a reflection on the sense of when you’re in an organization that has multiple different areas and your work intersects with multiple different people who have their agendas and the things that they need to get done.
And there’s a lack of being able to see How everybody’s competing demands on you intersects and reflects on your capacity and ability, because you’re focused on, I need James for this, and I’m going to get James for this, but there’s seven other people that are doing that same thing, and I don’t have an answer for how you, broach that, but that sense of when you are working with someone and need that from someone, also not just keeping your focus narrow that you can’t look at the wider picture and go, okay, there’s seven of us here that need James’s attention or Dee’s attention or Hoover’s attention.
How can we actually consolidate and work together to maximize what we, what we need rather than. Bigger picture thinking. Not everybody defaults to that.
James: If you want to get really practical on meetings, it’s probably a whole episode on its own, but I would, I wonder about things capping the number of hours, any individual contributor is, supposed to have in a week and give them permission to decline anything over and above that.
Dee Teal: Yeah, or having a meeting free day. We used to have meeting free, we used to be able to choose a meeting free day during the week,
James: choose Friday,
Dee Teal: not having any, oh my God, best day ever.
James: Having a meeting free Friday, we did the same thing, in some of my other workplaces and it’s something I even bring in to my agency work and some of the other things I do, Friday, just.
Not having meetings as a catch up day is just fantastic. But another thing too, I think for leaders in particular is, to recognize that if you are stressed about not being able to get things done because your diary or your calendar is full of one on ones and meetings with other teams and liaising back and forth.
That actually is your job and you don’t need to be as stressed your role. Your output is your ability to have those meetings, those one on ones taking care of your team, unblocking for them, making sure they’ve got what they need to be successful. And I think that is one thing that sometimes, especially first time managers or first time leaders often get stuck in is that I, I’m not able to get anything done, but the output of the team.
is a reflection of you getting things done. That is your done.
Dee Teal: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Having a one on one being able to talk through what’s going on for someone is tangible output.
James: It’s a total mind flip though, for somebody, especially if you’re coming from, a role as an individual contributor and then leading a team, right.
That’s doing the same thing where maybe you’re the most tenured or the most experienced that the, the one with the most skills, it’s hard. Maybe we’ll do one more because we’re, we’re going long, but I’ll do a what to do. And the what to do that I’ve got is to recognize and reward accomplishments.
Dee Teal: I love this one so hard.
James: I cannot tell you how important it is in an environment where you want to. See engagement grow to recognize and reward accomplishments recognition when I first joined Envato. They were 300 people there The I’d been working there for a year. They just done an employee engagement survey and at the beginning of, of the financial year, about, July, August, I showed up in September and they sat the whole company down and they said, okay, we’ve just got the results back from our employee engagement survey.
And they’re, the thing that we’ve noticed in that is people are not feeling recognized. We are going to literally. Transform the entire company and put a ton of emphasis as a people team into programs and things that you can do as leaders and as individual contributors to recognize the folks around you.
We had recognition tools that came out for us. We actually used 15 five as a tool where you actually go in and you recognize, three or four people every week for something they’ve done. We, we would have recognition days where they would just bring in a coffee cart.
For us, right, and do things like that. We would have random meals that would show up. There was just these things that all of a sudden they would do. And then we would also look at the, promotion structure. And they started giving us, the tools to actually be able to promote people within our teams, and do different things like that so that people were getting recognized and rewarded for all of the different things that they were doing.
And, it is, it’s such a pillar for me of engagement and of culture that it’s one of the things that we’ve made a pillar of, the future of team our framework that we have, our open team framework, right? It is intentional recognition because it’s not something that just happens, right?
It is intentional. And in other places I’ve worked, I see it happen to, whether it’s tacos and slack, there’s a program in slack and get that’s tacos. We just give tacos to people when they’ve done really cool things. Very simple, very straightforward. But again, it’s just doing something, right?
Dee Teal: Well, I’ve been part of, we used, an HR tool that had kudos that you could send to somebody and that could come from anyone could just send it. Hey, I saw that you did this the other day. This is how it made me feel. This was amazing. And, that cross posted in Slack. People wouldn’t, and P2, I think.
So people would see, and, and I. To be honest, I, in my, which I think we’ve talked about before in my recognition doc, I saved the screen grabs of the things that people had said. I’m not, I think one of the things that is interesting is not everybody is motivated the same way to do great work. Or motivated in general, when you look at people’s intrinsic motivations, for some people, the recognition is a lot higher than there is for other people who, who would probably find some of that disconcerting.
But that sense, when there is nothing, For anyone definitely changes the tone. I mean, I’ve had different times where I’m I’ve just done something good and nobody else around me is going to recognize this. So stuff it. I’m blowing my own horn and I’ll throw up a siren in the Slack channel. I’ll go, Hey, me and the team really just got this thing launched and, and it feels slightly awkward.
And you’re sitting there going, well, I’m tooting my own horn, but if nobody else is going to do it, or nobody else is tooting the horns of any of the team around me. I think there’s, Definite uptick and benefit of being able to do that and for the company to have structured ways to do that and to make that easy and seamless and to be doing it on a regular basis definitely affects the tone of, of the place around you.
For sure.
James: Key is not to be that person that’s ticking the boxes where recognition is ticking the box, but where it’s authentic and meaningful and intentional, 15 5 after a while, when you’re I’ve gotta say, give a shout out to three people this week, and I have no idea who’s done any, and I mean, you’re scratching your head going, okay, we’ll all thank this person for this and that person for that.
It starts to lose its meaning, there is something there, I think, about, rolling out tech without training your team or building that value in, as, as something first that you need to think through and consider as a leader. If, if we had not had those conversations and training early on about the importance of recognition, just rolling out 15 five and giving kudos to, required kudos to two or three people a week.
Yeah, that would have not worked out. Cool. I
Dee Teal: think that the, the, the, the benefit or the, I think there’s an element of that of if it’s codified into a set number of things that you have to do at any given time, it’s oppressive. But when it’s the, the flip side of that is it does actually make you mindful and looking out for it in some senses as well.
But yeah.
James: We’ve got a lot more of these, things you can do, but if you’ve got access to chat GPT, I would highly recommend you go and, prompt, prompt chatty and see what, what they come out with. A lot of these things are things that I, I quite align with, as well, especially the cheeky ones, the cheeky whatnot to do is ignore time zones completely.
And be vague about expectations and, provide no growth opportunities. All of these things are just Oh, they’re the things I react to right away. But,
Dee Teal: Oh, it sends you right off. But then you look at the things that are good and go encourage professional development, create virtual social opportunities.
We could do an episode on that. I did an amazing thing that Huma made that absolutely loved around, social opportunities. Empower teams with autonomy. There’s, there’s some great things to dive into there and could probably do another couple of episodes about it,
James: but, but we have to end because if we don’t, I have to go to work and people have to get past eight in the morning and, and I’ve.
I’ve got to go and hang out with my family, who I haven’t seen for a couple of days. Anyway, on that note, thanks everyone for listening. Feel free to subscribe and like on YouTube that we would love that. Let us know in the comments as well, whether that’s on our website or on YouTube. I think those are the two places where you can do that, or even on X, let us know what you’re thinking and your feedback on some of these things.
We’d love to get your input on that and stay tuned for. More cool stuff more fun episodes coming soon. Thanks. Thanks everybody
