SmartBrief on Leadership referred me to this article by UK-based executive coach Gill Corkindale on the Harvard Business blog.  The gist of Corkindale's argument is that leaders can be most effective when they balance the usual inward (inside organization) focus with an outward one.

Traits of "out" leaders, she says, include building networks, managing their visibility, and engaging with peers outside their companies.  However, these additional "out" traits Corkindale stood out to me:

• Get involved in cross-organisational initiatives
• Engage in organisational politics

In other words, dig deeper than a focus on results/deliverables and surface-layer workplace team building – find new ways to engage employees and design communication initiatives so you can see issues from their perspective.

In short, shake up your leadership approach!

Here are six ways to do this, as used by companies Winning Workplaces has honored for their success in realizing the payoff of employee engagement:

1. Get known for walking the halls and being approachable by employees at all levels by doing exactly that on a regular basis.  See: Clearbrook
2. Start an award program for above-and-beyond performance where you, the CEO, bestow it.  It doesn't have to be a cash award, either – it could merely be something specific to your workplace culture.  (Bonus: Form an employee committee that decides the winner, so the award is "by employees, for employees.")  See: SmartPak
3. If you're in a service industry and you don't already do this, train to be able to do what front-line employees do every day to boost camaraderie, credibility, and commitment.  See: Aquascape, Gentle Giant Moving, Restek
4. Not to get all Olivia Newton-John on you, but get physical!  This can take the form of daily or weekly huddles, or on the more ambitious side, theater-style team building exercises.  See: 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, Jump
5. Actively involve as many employees as possible in the business strategy to spur innovation and boost retention.  See: Corporate Ink, Exactech
6. Supplement the strengths of your leadership and/or HR team by bringing in outside coaches to improve employees' skills so they will perform better for you, and be better prepared in their careers (which, ironically, also tends to improve retention).  See: Headsets.com

Photo credit: Steve Spangler Science

The recession has sharpened the lens through which business owners and leaders, not to mention HR directors, view workplace team building.  Increasingly, and understandably, these folks are saying, "What's in it for our firm?" and getting off the fence to line up for or against such practices based on the answer to this question.

I came across two articles this weekend that make up the sides for and against investing in your workplace in this way:

Pro: Area business leaders focus on 'morale' to keep workers happy (Maryland Gazette)

In this article, Elisha Sauers cites several sources to explain that as  the recession produces layoffs and demoralized employees who wonder if they're next, bosses are turning to innovative staff engagement activities to make up the losses.

Key points:

• "Experts have said workers who feel under-appreciated can be just as detrimental to a business' success as job eliminations."
• At Nacon Consulting, implementation of a gas allowance to help employees get to work based on their distance from the office and allowing one hour of leave per month for employees to volunteer for causes they care about have gotten a "great response."
• At Travel Agency Network, trust building activities of the "fun committee" are "clearly a retention tool," says the company's general manager.

Con: Team Building is a Waste of Money (Wealth Method)

In this article, Rune Aresvik argues that "even in the best of times, what passes for 'team building exercises' is a total waste of time and money."

Key points:

• Increasing team satisfaction has negligible effects on the success of the team in reaching its goals.
• The only positive outcome of team building activities is that coworkers know each other a little better.
• "[W]hy spend money [on these activities] temporarily in an artificial setting, when you ... should ... do this in the real setting?"

After reading these two articles, has your position on the ROI of these practices changed?

This article from MercuryNews.com touched my heart.  Jessica Bernstein-Wax reported last week that about two dozen employees of graphics chip maker Nvidia recently completed a bicycle-assembling workplace team building exercise.

Normally, the end result of this excursion would be that employees would pat each other on the back and go back to work, with the employer's leadership crossing their fingers that morale and productivity will rise, if only temporarily.

I have a feeling, though, that the "afterglow" will last a lot longer in this case for Nvidia.  You see, immediately after being assembled, the six bikes were given to children from East Palo Alto, CA, who, Bernstein-Wax writes, thought they were on a normal school field trip.

The bottom line?  Doing good for the greater community provides rich memories for everyone involved, including employees.  If you can factor team building into this equation, you're definitely on your way to becoming a Winning Workplace.

What do you get out of this story?

Photo credit: Bicycle Design

I was touched by this Q&A with Leonard Abess, former majority owner (but still chairman and CEO) of Miami's City National Bank, that appeared on the Knowledge@Wharton site this week.  While Abess sought no exposure, his decision to give $60 million from the sale of his majority stake in the business last fall to his 400-plus employees nonetheless earned kudos from no less than Barack Obama in the President's inaugural address.

The CEO choosing to reward his employees for their hard work over the years with a significant monetary gift and help ensure their future – especially the retirement of older, longer-term staff – in a challenging economy is certainly laudable.  But digging deeper into Wharton's conversation with Abess reveals a leadership philosophy that is all about employee engagement and workplace team building with an eye toward long-term growth and sustainability.

Here are some reasons why Abess' leadership style and his company are representative of a winning workplace:

• Abess understands intuitively that the people doing the work every day make business success possible.  Case in point: Abess' annual report letter starts, as opposed to ending, with a thank-you to his employees.
• He works hard to, and takes pride in, encouraging employees to think and act like owners.
• Caring for employees' well-being doesn't start and end with the $60 million gift – sharing a trait with Fel-Pro, the inspiration for Winning Workplaces, Abess knows all his employees' names, and even the names of their families.
• Die-hard focus on retention: Abess would rather retrain employees and shift their responsibilities to make them happy and have them stay than lose them to another company.  (This explains 40-plus-year tenures, and accordingly low turnover.)
• Focus on giving back to the greater community: Abess' active interest in environmentalism.
• A leadership philosophy characterized by leading by example, strong ethics, and respect for people – including listening to and responding to them well.

A good, related rainy-day team building exercise: Find news clips of companies on Wall Street, or others, that exemplify traits that go toward the other extreme – people second, executives first; lukewarm or poor ethics; etc.  Share them with your leadership team (or all employees) and discuss how you are, or strive to be, different than those examples.  Let the resulting discussion inform your workplace practices.

I talk about workplace team building and employee engagement so much on this blog that I'd be remiss if I didn't provide some practical, organizational examples of how you can approach it in a way that some of the most innovative small organizations – our Top Small Workplace and Best Boss winners and finalists, among others – are doing so.  Here then are 20 team building strategies culled from our website that you might consider implementing this year:

1. Look for complements vs. redundancies when hiring.  If you are CEO of a small organization such as a startup, look for managers who have different approaches than yours.
2. Encourage and incentivize cross training wherever possible.
3. Bring your teams together for meetings whose only goal is to brainstorm ways to work better together.  Sales and marketing is a typical place to start.  See 2004 Best Boss finalist Fieldglass, Inc.
4. Form team member committees and charge them with developing and enforcing company-wide policies.
5. The small team approach to client management can pay big dividends.  Just ask our 2006 Best Boss honoree Rackspace Managed Hosting and 2007 and 2008 Top Small Workplaces finalist rbb Public Relations.
6. Bring in top-notch, locally available coaches on topics that will reinforce your culture and the service you want employees to demonstrate for your customers.  The key is to have them become a regular sight in your workplace and be affable enough that employees come to respect them.  See 2006 Best Boss winner Headsets.com.
7. Engage in daily, weekly, or monthly huddles.  See 2005 Best Boss winner 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and 2008 Top Small Workplaces finalist Tasty Catering.
8. Task-based teams – as opposed to teams focused on workplace "ideals" such as "green teams" – can attack problems more directly.  See 2006 Best Boss winner Seventh Generation.
9. In this economy, a great task to assign one or more teams is improving operational efficiency.  Bigelow Tea did this several years ago with their shipping provider; employee input saved the company around $80,000 per year.
10. Hold quarterly lunches with your teams off site, hosted by your president or CEO.
11. Hold all-staff meetings every 1-2 months.  These can feature a mix of team building exercises, sales briefings, and updates on HR benefits and policies.  Encourage any and all questions; if leadership cannot or does not wish to answer them in a large-group setting, follow up with employees individually.
12. Many progressive small firms are designing their workspaces with open floor plans and no offices.  This encourages impromptu sessions that foster workplace team building.  See 2008 Top Small Workplaces winner Jump Associates and finalist Edmunds.com, Inc.
13. Create opportunities for senior employees to mentor junior associates (helps lower turnover of the latter).  See 2008 Top Small Workplaces winner Integrated Project Management Company, Inc., and finalist Forum One Communications.
14. Do you manufacture your product(s)?  Create a team to research and implement lean practices.  Benefits include cost savings and improved customer attraction and retention.  See 2004 Best Boss winner Berner International Corp. and 2008 Top Small Workplaces finalist HUI.
15. Give teams accountability, including in revenue generation, quality control, and hiring and firing decisions.  See HUI.
16. Is your office in a beautiful environment?  Do you espouse environmental values or have an eco-friendly product or service focus?  Encourage team hikes over lunch.  See 2007 and 2008 Top Small Workplaces finalist PRIZIM Inc.
17. Consider giving out performance bonuses on a team instead of an individual basis, based on which add the most value to clients.  See rbb Public Relations.
18. Think about choosing a metaphor to instill workplace team building at a cultural level in a way that both new and seasoned employees can identify.  For example, manufacturer IRMCO uses the wolf pack – "the only perfect team in nature."
19. Is your firm comfortably profitable and looking to give back?  Consider implementing a foundation or project that reflects your business.  The eyewear manufacturer and distributor Luxottica Group, for example, set up a foundation called Give the Gift of Sight that uses the company's existing workforce as volunteers who travel internationally to screen and prescribe recycled frames and lenses to those in poor and underserved areas.
20. Extend the team mentality to your customers, especially your best ones.  Check in with them often on how you can deliver more and better value-adds to them.  The goal is to get them to think of your business as an extension of theirs.  See 2007 Top Small Workplaces winner Corporate Ink.

What do you think of our list?  What employee engagement activities are not listed here that have worked for you?

Photo credit: Key Adventures

With layoffs on the rise, it can be hard to "be of good cheer" this holiday season.  Yet, there are silver linings among the economic woes.  Like the New York Times reporting yesterday that

A growing number of employers, hoping to avoid or limit layoffs, are introducing four-day workweeks, unpaid vacations and voluntary or enforced furloughs, along with wage freezes, pension cuts and flexible work schedules.  These employers are still cutting labor costs, but hanging onto the labor.

And like these two unconventional stories of team building:

Elyria, Ohio's Chronicle-Telegram covered the efforts of the National Association of Women in Construction Education Foundation's Block Kids Building Program.  On Friday last week, 30 kids, aged 9-17, constructed a city from Legos in under 50 minutes.  The executive director of Save Our Children, which hosted the event, stressed the importance of this exercise:

It's a brain exercise that they should have every day, but it also has implications for later in life.  Maybe they'll think of a cure for a disease, or develop hurricane-safe buildings.  We have to cultivate that in them.

The second story I found comes from the Naperville (IL) Sun.  Recently a group of special needs elementary students were brought to a stables "for a hands-on lesson in team building and problem-solving."  With older fifth graders acting as peer helpers, the kids observed and brushed three rescued horses.  All students then set up an obstacle course and, using their verbal skills, helped navigate the horses through it.

The Sun reported that

One of the purposes of the trip was to provide the fifth-grade peer helper students with confidence and team-building skills to foster a working relationship with the special education students they work with and help at school.

What workplace team building and employee engagement lessons can we learn from these two stories?  Here's what I picked up:

• Kids tends to focus on the task at hand and leave egos at the door.
• It's important to cultivate active skills, such as verbal commands, as well as passive skills like thinking outside the box.
• Patience is perhaps an even greater virtue in team situations.

What lessons do you take from these stories?

Photo credit: NAWIC Education Foundation

Felix Salmon posted an interesting commentary yesterday on Condé Nast's Portfolio.com website.  Addressing a session from this week's World Business Forum in New York that featured microcredit creator and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Salmon's piece, titled "Philanthropy vs Profit," concludes that

for-profit philanthropies have very little in the way of a track record, and the track record they do have is not particularly good.  Maybe that will change, in the future.  But for the time being, I'd keep the idea of for-profit philanthropy in the "not proven" category.

If there's a business leader who could change Salmon's mind, I think it would be Trish Karter, the CEO and Cofounder of Boston-based Dancing Deer Baking Company, and one of the keynote speakers at our upcoming Top Small Workplaces Conference here in Chicago.

Trish has made a name for herself more for employee participation in a tough, inner city environment and helping Massachusetts' homeless population find jobs and homes through the company's Sweet Home product line than merely running a successful business, which she's done since she and her partners founded Dancing Deer in 1994.

As Trish told us in an interview we did with her in late 2006, the year 2000 was a pivotal one for Dancing Deer when it came to marrying philanthropy and profit.  It was then, after she bought out her partners and became CEO and majority stockholder, that she began to think seriously about doing much more than simply creating wealth for employee-owners and other stockholders.

The Sweet Home product line, established in 2002, emerged from this brainstorming.  It gives 35% of the retail price of each order to homeless families in the state, and it has made a real impact.  In 2005, for instance, Dancing Deer donated $30,000 to help three women with children achieve financial independence and a career path.

So how do businesses get started on a course to both give back and turn a profit?  Trish told us, in answer to a question that was held from our 2006 interview due to length, that business leaders must identify a cause that "resonates with the definition of who you are and what you want to accomplish."  She also said it's important to show a measurable gain at the end of the day, whether it be in terms of branding, increased employee morale, better perceived social responsibility by customers and clients, or raw revenue gains.

Obviously, your employee engagement best practices will help tremendously in both of these areas.  Think of what a great team building exercise this endeavor would be!

What are your thoughts on philanthropy vs. profit?  Do you think it's one or the other, or do you think businesses can achieve both with the right planning and execution?

Today the online community of commentors, Gawker.com, ripped BusinessWeek for its recent focus on promoting the benefits of the virtual world Second Life's potential for workplace team building.  Their editorial argues that

Lots of the hype was the fault of BusinessWeek, which bought into it with wide-eyed enthusiasm. And the magazine is still trying to get your employer to drag you off to a fantasy computer island for fun team-building exercises....

The unidentified author calls efforts by companies the magazine identified, including IBM and Xerox, to hold virtual forums to connect employees around the world "the single least fun corporate event that could possibly be inflicted upon an employee."

Perhaps Second Life, which the author (rightly) calls "an imaginary land packed with flying monsters," is not the best venue in which to host these events – it certainly depends, first and foremost, on a firm's mission and values, and then on the demographics and interests of its workers.  But to write off the whole notion of virtual team building would be a disservice to employees as well as businesses, which can benefit from these new and evolving employee engagement activities.

As Wikipedia notes, virtual teams can generate the following benefits:

• For employees: lower commuting-related expenses, enjoying flexible scheduling, and making physical handicaps a virtual (no pun intended) non-issue.
• For businesses: Freeing up physical office space, reduced travel expenses, no capacity limits, and improves flex benefits offerings for recruiting purposes.
• And for communities/society: Less commuting means decreased air pollution.

One of our 2007 Top Small Workplaces that has made virtual team building not just an initiative but its lifeblood is Seattle-based professional services provider Point B.  Started with just a handful of employees in 1995, Point B now has over 330 employees in seven cities.  The really amazing thing, though, is that they have no physical offices!  (Their project management work takes place mainly at client sites.)

How, then, do they maintain their culture and stay informed?  Primarily through these three best practices:

1. A highly customized, leading-edge company intranet. This provides employees on the go with starting points, if not solutions, to their most pressing daily issues, based on the experience of employees who have treaded there before.
2. Frequent, city-specific networking events where workers can talk shop and also about what's going on in their personal lives.  These range from informal and formal lunches and dinners to intramural-style sports activities.
3. Perhaps most importantly, Point B's leadership requires each employee to "define their own Point B," which means including both personal and professional goals in their job descriptions and career growth plans.

Some of the bottom-line results of this hybrid of virtual and physical workplace team building include staff and revenue growth of over 20% for the last seven years and industry-low attrition of 8% (the average is over 20%).  Clearly, the business case is there for incorporating virtual teams into overall team-building efforts.

Leaders: What is your experience with virtual teams in your workplace?  If you've implemented them, what have your results looked like?