performance – Dutra Associates

The Key to Engaging Employees: It’s Not What You Might Think

March 4, 2019 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Employee engagement is something that we hear about on a regular basis. In fact, we hear about it often enough that it can sound like just another buzzword. Yet, it’s anything but. The lack of employee engagement is estimated to result in $7 trillion in lost productivity worldwide on an annual basis (Gallup 2017). For nearly 20 years, Gallup has been researching employee engagement and the percentage of engaged employees has barely budged in the United States during this timeframe. Based on 2018 research, Gallup has reported that 34% of U.S. workers are engaged while globally, only 15% are engaged.

What is Employee Engagement?

What exactly is employee engagement? According to Gallup, an engaged employee is one who is “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace”. Someone who is experiencing this type of engagement is most likely to be aligned with their team and organization’s goals and making key contributions to producing desired results. Organizations that do the best job of creating employee engagement achieve earnings-per-share growth greater than 4 times that of their competitors. Additionally, other business boosting results are enjoyed by those companies who exemplify employee engagement. These include higher customer engagement, increased productivity, lower attrition, and higher profitability.

A Simple Approach

There are a multitude of methods available for increasing employee engagement with varying ranges of complexity, time commitment and cost. Yet, the solution may be simpler than you think. When we talk about employee engagement, we often speak in generalities. It can sound as if there is a group called “employees” that we must direct something towards collectively. A one size fits all approach has less of an opportunity to positively drive your engagement levels than one simple opportunity that many leaders have, at every level, including the C-suite. This opportunity, the key to engaging employees, is to get specific about each person.

One Employee at a Time

Engaging employees happens one person at a time. The place to start is to get to know each person on your team uniquely. How much do you already know about each employee and what makes that person tick?

How many of these questions can you answer right now about each employee on your team?

What are their career aspirations?
What personal aspirations do they have?
What motivates them?
What are their most important values?
What key strengths do they bring to the team?
What type of behavioral style do they favor?
What professional development needs do they have?

Call to Action

If you can’t answer all of these questions for each employee, I invite you to make it a priority to schedule 1:1 meetings to discover those answers. Then, look for the opportunities to:

let them use their strengths each day,
take on assignments that build the skills for their future career path,
communicate with them in a way that matches their style.

Your employees want to work in jobs that allow them to do what they do best, to grow and develop professionally, and feel a sense of purpose in what they focus on each day. What drives engagement and motivation is unique to each individual. So, get started by getting to know your team. Look for ways to align what is important to each person with the work they are doing, and watch your results begin to shift.

If you would like support in increasing employee engagement in your organization, please contact me to have a conversation. We offer a simple yet powerful and practical methodology to support you in improving employee engagement.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who believes we each have far more potential than we typically tap in to. She helps you learn how to step into your full potential so you can create consistent, optimal performance for yourself and your team with less stress and more enjoyment. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Harnessing the Power of Focus: 3 Tips to Prepare for the New Year

November 28, 2018 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

This is the time of year where I like to take a pause and reflect on:

what went well,
what did I learn from, and
what do I want to create in the coming year

Where are you right now in the pursuit of your goals for this year? Where have you knocked it out of the park? Where has your progress lagged your expectations? What are your top priorities for the coming year?

In The Power of Focus, authored by Canfield, Hansen and Hewitt, the point is made that “the main reason that most people struggle professionally and personally is a lack of focus.” The book provides practical and easy to implement strategies to support you in creating and reaching your targets in all aspects of your life. No matter what stage of life you are in, being deliberate, persistent and focused will serve you in creating your future. Here are a few key tips from the book that will help you lay a foundation for harnessing your focus and get you ready for the coming year.

Focus: Laying Your Foundation

#1 – Develop Successful Habits
Habits are nothing more than behaviors that we engage in over and over again until we do them without thinking about them. Early on in life, most of us learned how to ride a bicycle. Remember how much there was to think about? We had to pedal, steer, watch out for traffic, keep our balance, use hand signals for a turn…so much to keep in mind. Yet, as we practiced those behaviors repeatedly, riding a bike became easier and easier to do until that day when we just got on the bike and pedaled away without a second thought.

We all have good habits and some not so good habits. Take stock of your behaviors that support you, such as getting 7 – 8 hours of sleep each night, eating healthy foods, or spending time with your family. Acknowledge yourself for your good habits and keep them going. Then, take stock of your not so good habits that are getting in your way, such as being late to meetings, doing your email while a colleague or associate is talking with you, or not exercising regularly. Prioritize which one you’d like to work on first and define the new habit that will replace it. Finally, take consistent action each day to install that new habit. Research indicates that it takes, on average, 66 days to form a new habit. The amount of time it takes for you is dependent on the habit’s complexity. Be patient and persistent and keep track of your progress. Before you know it, you’ll be ready to work on the next successful habit you’d like to take on.

#2 – Leverage Your Strengths
One of my teachers once shared a philosophy she had learned in her career and it has guided many of my own decisions. That philosophy is “if it’s not my genius, it’s not my job.” Too often, whether we work in a company or are running our own businesses, we get caught up in the day-to-day operations and administration and spend more time putting out fires, answering email, handling bookkeeping, and managing employee problems than doing what we most love. Focus the majority of your time each week doing the things that you do best and let others do what they do best. When you are using your strengths, you are far more likely to be engaged and energized. This puts you in the mindset that will allow you to do your best work.

Before you say, I can’t afford to hire someone. Think again. If you’re inside a company, you likely already have people who would be happy to take on some of the tasks that are draining your energy. If you own your own business, imagine how much your business could grow if you took back those hours that you’re spending doing things you don’t enjoy. That will more than pay for the bookkeeper, marketing consultant, or personal assistant who you hire full or part-time.

Remember, this is all about focus. If you are scattered in too many different directions, it’s impossible to get traction on your most important result.

#3 – Create Your Master Plan
Finally, to set a strong foundation for harnessing the power of focus, you must create your master plan. What is your vision for the future you want to create in the next year? Really give yourself some time and quiet space to play with this. Make this vision as all encompassing as possible and state each aspect of it as though it’s already happening, such as, “I am taking a month of vacation each year,” or “I am working with a collaborative team.” Include every aspect of your life, not just your work. This might include, your financial life, health and wellness, fun, relationships, personal development, contribution/volunteering, and anything else that is important to you.

Then, consider what milestones you will meet 6 months from now, then 3 months from now, 1 month from now, next week, and tomorrow to bring that vision to reality. Create goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable and time-based. I know we’ve all heard about SMART goals. Be honest though. How often have we all set goals that are a bit on the vague side?

Once you have that list of goals, ensure that you are taking one step toward your broader vision every day. Creating a habit (see tip #1) that ensures you are focused on chipping away at your goals each day will keep you inspired and moving in the direction of your desired destination.

Call to Action

As this year draws to a close, I invite you to pause and take the steps that will determine your success in the new year. If you’d like to dive more deeply into what focus can do for you, click the link for more information on The Power of Focus. Best wishes for a focused year.

Seven Principles of Extraordinary Results

July 23, 2018 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Image Provided by ThoughtAction LLC

Are you consistently getting the business results that you desire? What if you had a model that easily conveyed how you create the results that you experience each day? What if you could gain insight into the patterns of your thinking and behavior that serve you as well as the patterns that do not? What possibilities might be open to you if you could learn to run your system rather than having it run you? The Results System™ allows you to gain these benefits by providing the framework, tools and solutions that raise the bar and drive results.

The Seven Principles of Extraordinary Results provide a simple introduction to the key concepts behind The Results System™.

Results First and Foremost:

What is the outcome that you desire to achieve? Start first with defining your end result and work backwards from there. You create what you focus on.

Goals are Not Results:

It’s important to make a distinction between a goal and a result. When you do not, you run the risk of limiting your choices and options. A “result” is the outcome you want to create. A “goal” is a target or milestone designed to achieve the result. For example, when you say, “I want to reach my sales target for the quarter,” you might think you are describing a result. In fact, this is actually a goal. The result is what you will have when you achieve your sales target, such as financial stability.

Choices Not Actions:

Choose your actions wisely. Often, you might feel you are making progress when you can check items off of a list. Yet, you may end up wasting time by leaping too quickly to action and completing tasks that are not fully aligned with creating the results you desire.

Invisibles Make the Difference:

Remember that everyone has blind spots and other factors that are not yet visible. Take time to become more self-aware to reveal the aspects that are operating behind the scenes. Doing so drives better choices and actions.

Silent Partners Make Predictable Patterns:

All humans have a unique and wonderful “operating system” that creates unconscious repeatable patterns of thinking and behavior. Having such a system allows you to motor throughout your life without having to consciously think about each step you need to take to complete daily tasks like getting ready in the morning or driving your car. Over time, these patterns of thinking and behavior become invisible and operate behind the scenes. In most cases, they serve you well. Yet, when you want to change in order to get a different result, these automatic patterns kick up a fuss. In order to dissuade you from changing, there are even three lines of defense to keep you from making a shift: remaining invisible, making change awkward, and telling us stories in our own voice that convince us that change would not be beneficial.

Change is a Process:

Any change that you set out to make has an emotional component to it. To create change that lasts we must deal with the inevitable feelings that will come up. While initially you might start off positively fired up about making the change and are certain you will be successful, the actual practice of creating new habits and permanently changing your behavior may cause you to swing from confidence to doubt to hope. When you experience this roller coaster, it may be enough to have you give up and go back to your old habits. Keep in mind that the emotions that arise are all a natural part of the change process. In knowing that, you can design strategies to manage the emotional ups and downs and achieve the result you want.

Use the System:

Take a systems based approach to creating your results. The Results System™ model helps you to reveal the visible and invisible factors that drive your ability to create results. Your Results System™ is unique to you. Even teams and organizations have a Results System™. Using the model will create greater self-awareness around the strengths and the detractors that impact your results and provide you with a means to make conscious choices and choose the actions that support the achievement of your key outcomes.

Call to Action

Are you willing to make changes to achieve the result you desire? If so, what action(s) are you willing to commit to in the next week to help you achieve this result by implementing the above principles into your life and work?
If you would like to learn more about how you can reveal your own Results System™ and develop strategies to create the results you desire, please reach out to me to discuss how this system can help you in all areas of your life.

Adapted from “Seven Principles of Extraordinary Results” by ThoughtAction, LLC, 2015. Adapted with permission.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development and Career Coach and Facilitator who believes we each have far more potential than we typically tap in to. She helps you learn how to step into your full potential so you can create consistent, optimal performance for yourself and your team with less stress and more enjoyment. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

Is Your Organization Ready for This Seismic Shift?

May 24, 2018 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

On average, 10,000 of these events will happen per day in the United States through the year 2030. What are they?

According to the Insured Retirement Institute, 10,000 baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are expected to retire, on average, each day in the United States through 2030. This is excellent news for those getting ready to enter the next chapter of their lives and an opportunity for younger workers to step into new roles. Yet, what will be the impact of that lost knowledge and expertise on your organization?

Based on research conducted by the authors of Critical Knowledge Transfer, one company reported that in the next anticipated wave of nearly 700 retirements, they would experience a loss of 27,000 years of experience. If that’s not enough to have you sit up and take notice, I’m not sure what will. That said, not every vacated position is created equal. Some will certainly be easier to fill than others. Perhaps the appropriate level of expertise and skill is readily available on the job market or you have done the work to ensure that someone within your organization is ready to take on the role. Unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Taking a Proactive Stanch – 4 Key Tips

Knowing the average age of your employee population is not enough. That still keeps the potential problem at hand difficult to define. Take a closer look at the specific roles held by long-term employees and seasoned managers who are within a few years of retirement age. Which positions require critical skills and experience that are not easy to find on the open market? Long term employees across and at all levels of the organization often hold critical, hands-on experience of how to get things done through their comprehensive knowledge of processes, company historical information, clients and customers. Without a proactive approach, your organization runs the risk of realizing, too late, that you have a critical skill shortage that is adversely impacting your business performance.
Consider implementing a mentoring program that effectively engages both older and younger workers in accelerating development and bridging the knowledge gap. Providing training for both mentors and mentees can help to ensure that a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship is created and both parties find the experience a valuable one.
Utilize knowledge capture methods to gather critical expertise and make it available across a wide range of people. There are many ways to store and manage institutional knowledge including online forums, podcasts, webinars, and videos, to name a few.
Pay attention to employee engagement. Younger members of the workforce have an average job stay of roughly four years. Ensure the right managers are in place who truly care about their employees’ success. Robin Reilly, a Senior Consultant at Gallup has written that such managers “seek to understand each person’s strengths and provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas and opinions.” Increasing employee engagement will assist in keeping younger workers from jumping ship.

The time has come to proactively address the seismic shift that has already begun in terms of talent shortages in the workplace. These are just a few of the tips that can help you to mitigate your risk. Don’t wait another day to identify where your organization is most vulnerable and take the steps now to ensure a smoother transition.

Transformational Presence Series: Part One – The Three Questions

December 6, 2017 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Our last blog was focused on Alan Seale’s Transformational Presence approach to leadership and its application to navigating a complex world. If you missed it, please click here. In that post, we announced a four-part series dedicated to exploring a tool or framework of Transformational Presence in each of the next four months. Read on for Part One.

The Three Questions

Let’s start with a focus on the three foundational questions upon which the Transformational Presence approach is built.
1. What wants to happen?
2. Who is that asking me to be?
3. What is that asking me to do?

On the surface, these seem like pretty simple questions. Yet, the beauty of these simple questions is their power to tap into our heart intelligence. Too often, we rely solely on our intellect which is incredibly good at analyzing situations, solving problems and keeping us safe. Our heart intelligence is more visionary. It can take in the big picture and show us the next step to take. One is not better than the other – which is a huge relief to me since I’ve spent most of my life relying primarily on my head. It’s using the head and heart intelligence in concert with one another that is the key. Incorporating our heart intelligence helps to break through overwhelm and complexity and find an element of clarity that can show us the way forward.

A Discovery Process

Let’s take a brief look at each of these questions.

When we ask “What wants to happen?”, we’re open to discovering what the shift might be that wants to take place or what the opportunity or breakthrough is that is waiting to emerge. We are recognizing that there is a message in the situation or circumstance we are faced with and that something “wants to happen” or evolve.

As we look at question #2, “Who is that asking me to be?”, we are exploring how we choose to “show up” in relationship to “what wants to happen”. What are the qualities and personal attributes that we want to express? For example, this might mean being more playful, forthright, resilient, open, etc.

“What is that asking me to do?” is our action question. Rather than this being a question where we try to figure out what to do next, instead we are inviting “what wants to happen” to reveal the next step to us. Then, after we take that next step, we go back to question 1 and repeat the cycle.

While we navigate the complexity of our world, we typically go directly to the third question and try to figure out what actions we need to take and how will we execute on them. Yet, if we begin to consider that every situation or circumstance we encounter might have a message for us, we can start to develop a new approach. No longer is it reasonable to plan far out into the future. Our world is changing too quickly for that. Instead, if we apply these three questions to everything that we do, we can be shown the way, one step at a time.

An Exercise to Get You Started

Here is an exercise that Alan shared with us in our recent Transformational Presence – Leadership in Action course. I invite you to experiment with this as a means to begin applying this approach to your own life and work.

Bring to mind an opportunity available to you, personally, or to your company or business right now. Then, ask yourself The Three Questions. Really listen, sense and feel the answers that come. This is a no judgment zone – let whatever experience you have with these questions be okay. It does take practice to quiet our minds so that our heart can be heard.

Then, please feel free to share your experience with us in the comments section. And, if you’d like to learn more, you can purchase Alan Seale’s book here.

Derived from: Seale, Alan. Transformational Presence: How To Make a Difference In a Rapidly Changing World. Topsfield, MA: The Center for Transformational Presence, 2017. Used with permission.

Navigating a Complex World

November 20, 2017 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Our world is becoming increasingly complex and the ability to navigate ambiguity is now, more than ever, a critical leadership and life skill. We all have challenges we face throughout our life and work. Often, we react by focusing on finding someone or something to blame for our circumstances. Then, if we can move beyond that initial reaction, we bring our skills and knowledge to bear, look for ways to fix the problem, put a plan of action together, and execute on a solution. Our goal is to get the problem off our desks so that we can move on to the next item on our to-do list.

In some cases, this approach will work, at least for a little while. Yet, many times, the same circumstance will arise again a few weeks or months down the road. We find ourselves solving the same problem over and over again. Our complex world cries out for a new approach. Alan Seale, master teacher and mentor, and the founder of the Center for Transformational Presence, offers an approach to leadership that helps us to navigate this rapidly changing world in powerful ways.

According to Alan, “Transformational Presence is not a model or a formula. It’s a way of living, leading, and serving – an approach that provides a strong foundation for conscious living and conscious leadership. Transformational Presence is also a practical set of skills that, when developed together, build and expand our capacities for awareness, understanding, perception, and effective action – capacities that are essential for navigating today’s rapidly changing world.”

I have had the privilege of attending several of Alan’s workshops and programs over the last decade. Most recently, I attended the Transformational Presence Leadership in Action program in Connecticut. We explored the latest tools and frameworks from Alan’s most recent books, a two part set: Transformational Presence: How To Make a Difference in a Rapidly Changing World and its companion, Transformational Presence – The Tools, Skills and Frameworks. During those days, we had the opportunity to immerse ourselves in applying the work to our own circumstances and challenges. I came away with a renewed commitment to fully integrate Transformational Presence approaches in my own life and in my work with individual clients and organizations.

When I was first introduced to this work, eight or so years ago, I have to admit that it felt a little foreign to me. After years of working in large corporations, I had developed a strong set of skills that allowed me to solve problems and execute on goals. While I longed for what the Transformational Presence approach offered, I wasn’t quite ready to take it on board. My logical mind was a little bit skeptical about whether I could actually see myself using the skills and tools with my clients. Yet, something has continued calling me to this work and in the last couple of years, there has been no denying that Transformational Presence will allow my clients and me to make the kind of difference in this world that we long to make.

To support Alan Seale in his mission to share this work, the next four blog posts will each focus on one tool or framework of Transformational Presence. As we start off the tool series in our next post, we will explore the three foundational questions of Transformational Presence:
1. What wants to happen?
2. Who is that asking me to be?
3. What is that asking me to do?

Please stay tuned over the next few months as we explore a few selected components of Transformational Presence. No matter what your role, if you are interested in helping to create a world that works, this will get you started.

A Blueprint for Leadership Mastery

February 15, 2017 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle

Core Leadership Skills

Fundamentally, there are a collection of key skills that prepare someone to step into a leadership role. These include things like the ability to:

communicate effectively,
influence others,
be adaptable and flexible,
drive for results,
build cohesive teams,
delegate and empower,
make decisions and problem-solve,
think strategically and
develop talent.

While every leader should have the opportunity to learn and build skill in these areas, skill-building alone is not enough to create leadership mastery. Have you ever noticed that regardless of your skill level, there are some days you’re “on” and some days you aren’t? There are some days you are filled with confidence and others where you question your ability? Some days where you crank out the results you want and others where you’re distracted and have difficulty staying focused on a project or goal?

What is Leadership Mastery?

All of the challenges that you face as a leader, no matter how skilled, come down to one thing. The one thing that changes everything is the understanding of, implications for, and ability to control the energy of performance. You know as well as I do that your competency level doesn’t shift from day to day. Your energy, however, is fluctuating all the time. Your energy is what determines how well your skills and competencies are expressed in any situation and what your outcomes will be. Leadership mastery, then, is about:

understanding the nature of the energy of performance,
utilizing that knowledge to create the conditions for optimal performance, and
making any necessary tweaks as any specific situation unfolds.

The energy that a leader presents in any situation is influenced by a number of different elements.

Mental ability that allows for clarity and focus
Emotions that are experienced throughout each day
Social factors that relate to your interactions with others
Environmental factors that relate to the conditions in which you are performing
Physical factors related to your level of health and wellbeing
Spiritual factors that speak to the connection you have with a sense of purpose, meaning and motivation.

When your energy is out of alignment and you’re feeling a bit “off”, you might experience anxiety, fear, worry, lack of confidence, or lack of motivation to name a few. How often do you actually get the outcomes or results that you want when this is going on? Likely, not very often. So how do you turn this around and have your energy work for you rather than against you?

Your Blueprint for Leadership Mastery

There are 5 key components to unleash your full leadership potential. Whether you run your own small business or you are leading a large organization, the foundation of your performance is built on these components. These 5 components make up COR.E Leadership Dynamics.

Component 1: Creating Your Plan
Self-awareness, a clear vision and specific goals are the essence of this component. Having a complete picture of the performance you want to create is critical.

Component 2: Establishing Your Energy and Performance Foundation
Energy fluctuations create inconsistent results. To sustain consistency and performance excellence, you must learn to manage your energy. Explore leadership mastery, understand the energy of performance, and identify and address blocks that stand in the way of your potential.

Component 3: Finding and Harnessing Your Performance Influencers
Earlier, I mentioned the 6 elements that influence your performance in any moment. Recognizing and understanding the impact of those influencers in the moment allows you to make immediate adjustments that keep you firing on all cylinders or get you back on track if things are going awry.

Component 4: Mastering the 10 COR.E Disciplines
Successful leaders have developed a personal approach or philosophy that keeps them motivated, resilient and aware of opportunities that present themselves. This component helps you to develop your own philosophy, built on the foundation of the 10 COR.E Disciplines, that will tap into your true leadership potential and performance.

Component 5: Optimizing and Sustaining Your Leadership Success Formula
An important element of this component is to embrace the need to evolve your approach over time. The world is a rapidly changing place and developing the capacity to be flexible and adaptable in the face of uncertainty is key to success.

My Invitation to You

If you would like to learn more about how COR.E Leadership Dynamics can help you to maximize your energy and optimize your performance to be the best leader you can be, please click here.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development and Career Coach and Facilitator who helps you create consistent, optimal performance using all your capacity and potential in both your work and life. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.