Today’s show is about Employee Engagement with Special Guest, Dick Smith, the Chicago Vistage Chair. Listen to the show on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.
Dick [00:00:01] Hiring practices: finding, hiring, and keeping good talent has everything to do with how engaged their employees are. It becomes an attraction magnet when employees are engaged in a company – they’ll tell their friends what a great place it is, how they’re recognized for their contributions. And so, as a consequence, they have a pipeline of new possible hires.
Don [00:00:23] My name is Don Rheem, CEO of E3 Solutions, and author of the book “Thrive By Design: The Neuroscience That Drives High-Performance Cultures.” I speak across North America on the neuroscience of engagement, and I’m passionate about helping leaders at every level create engaging workplace environments where employees feel safe, recognized, and validated. Employees who feel safe are happier, healthier, and more productive. Each week, my team and I take on topics impacting managers, and we offer solutions to your biggest workplace challenges. And you’re listening to Thrive By Design, a podcast created by E3 Solutions to give managers, CEOs, and leaders tips, strategies, and tools needed to create an engaged culture at work.
Don [00:01:14] Welcome, I’m your host Don Rheem, CEO of E3 Solutions. Over the past several weeks, we’ve launched a special guest series where we talk with subject matter experts one on one about critical workplace challenges. Our guest this week is Dick Smith. Dick leads several groups of CEOs who meet monthly to tackle tough business issues as a part of Vistage International, a membership organization for CEOs. In his role, he provides executive coaching to his Vistage-member CEOs. And he’s been doing that for over 10 years as a Vistage chair. Welcome, Dick, and thank you for taking the time to be here with us.
Dick [00:01:57] It’s my pleasure, Don. It’s great to be with you today.
Don [00:02:01] I know you’re a busy guy. I want our listeners to understand a little bit about what you do. You’re a Vistage chair. So, you’re a chair of some groups under this organization called Vistage. Can you tell us a little bit about what Vistage is, and what your role is as a chairperson of groups in Vistage?
Dick [00:02:18] Sure. Well, thanks for asking. Well, first of all, Vistage is the oldest and largest company dealing with CEO-level execs and their senior leadership team. We say that we’re around to help our leaders make better decisions, become better leaders, and get better results. We have 22,000 members worldwide in 16 countries. As you mentioned, I run as a facilitator and coach, three different Vistage groups, on average 13 to 15 members in each. And we meet once a month, for a full day, twelve times a year, and we sit around and help one another identify challenges, decisions, opportunities that they have. So, we help one another decide how to better run our businesses a little bit better in this peer advisory concept that we have.
Don [00:03:10] So, Dick, recently I spoke to your three groups, and I was talking about employee engagement. And, first of all, I’m always impressed when a Vistage chair believes that employee engagement is an important topic for their members. Help me understand where employee engagement fits in for your members, again CEOs of their own companies. Why this issue so important?
Dick [00:03:32] Well, in my candid opinion – it’s one man’s opinion – but I think shared now by many.
We know that when our employees are engaged at a high level, they perform at probably two to three times the employee that’s not engaged, if you will, to any degree. And so, that means we can do things better, doing them faster, doing them cheaper.
And that’s always a goal for our members. And I feel that employee engagement covers so many things across the board as it relates to performance. It’s in everything that we deal with from an issue standpoint month by month.
Don [00:04:06] So, when I was there and talking to your groups on these three consecutive days, I did talk a lot about neuroscience and the science behind what drives people when they’re at work, what drives their behavior. How did that land on people in, you know, reflecting on it afterward? What kinds of things did you hear, how were members reacting to this science-based approach?
Dick [00:04:23] Well, great question, and going back to – I actually heard you speak, Don, back in 2011. I had you speak to my Vistage groups back then, and I was very impressed back then with the neuroscience of employee engagement and your assessment tools. And then, I think it was August or September 2017 when I read under our Vistage chair network that you came out with a book called “Thrive by Design.” I immediately bought the book, read it, and said, “Oh my gosh, this is exactly what my members need.” I went ahead and bought 50 copies for their holiday present and gave it to them Christmas time in 2017, and proceed to tell them that we’re going to go through this book every quarter. We are going to read four chapters and then review, and see what it means, how it resonates with you folks.
Dick [00:05:14] They actually fell in love with the process, learned a lot in reading the books, and as you know, I brought you back in February this year, to really reconfirm, not only with my members, but they invited some of their senior-level staff. And I got to tell you that I was a member myself for 13 years, chairing now for over 10 years, and out of all the speakers I’ve ever heard, I think your program won, is the most impactful, and you are probably, if not the highest-rated speaker I’ve ever had in front of my group, you’re right near the top. So, what they took away from it, many many things.
Dick [00:05:51] Things that they’re still using today. I met with a member today and asked that question at breakfast this morning. I said, “Help me out, what did you take away from Don Rheem’s presentation?” And, basically a couple of comments: One, you’ve got to do this – every time there’s a bad thing that happens with an employee, it takes five to correct that, so they’re trying to do more of that recognition five to one. They’re also talking about making sure that the employee feels safe, and making sure they understand what’s next in a lot of our conversations. You’d be amazed how often this comes up in my coaching sessions with members. When we talk about: Well, are you making that employee feel safe? Are you making that employee feel that they’re making a great contribution to the tribe, as you say? And, well anyway, so you know many, many members are using it. In fact, as you know, you’re coming back to Chicago. We talked about it back in February. You’re coming back to do two eight-hour workshops on May 29 and 30 here in Chicago. And many of my members have signed up to go back themselves, as well as bringing quite a number of their leadership team members to your workshop.
Don [00:07:00] Yeah. And I’m looking forward to those two sessions, and it’s great to see that very high level of interest that was there. And you mentioned this issue of the importance of people feeling safe, and I do talk about it in the book, but for listeners that may not have read the book – the issue here is around the limbic system in the brain and the role of the limbic system in threat detection. And if employees don’t feel safe when they’re at work, and by safe, work is unpredictable, inconsistent, and not fair. They have a manager who’s not available, inaccessible, or is mercurial in how they treat and respect employees. The brain starts hijacking resources with the limbic system, starts hijacking resources from other parts of the brain, to deal with that perceived threat. And what that means in very practical terms is an employee’s IQ drops, their peripheral vision collapses, their ability to care and know what’s going on for other people around them goes in decline. Now, Dick, as a chair, part of the Vistage process is you sit down with these 13, 15 CEOs around a table, and you process issues. And a member brings up an issue they’re dealing with, then all the other CEOs come around, and support that member, and they work through the issue and try to create resolution. In all of these issues that you deal with, and you touched on this a little earlier in a comment, but where does employee engagement fit in that hierarchy of issues? Or, maybe another way to ask it is: For those issues that you deal with, how many of them really pivot around employees’ commitment and presence when they’re at work now?
Dick [00:08:31] Great question. And I have the saying that goes: For every CEO, 80 percent of their problems walk through the employee entrance every day. So, almost every single issue we process has to do with employees in one way, shape, or form.
Dick [00:08:50] We talk about compensation – certainly there is an area there that obviously you have to reward employees to make them not only feel safe, but provide growth – what’s next for them. Benefits, culture obviously has to do with employee engagement. Hiring practices: finding, hiring, and keeping good talent has everything to do with how engaged their employees are. It becomes an attraction magnet when employees are engaged in a company – they’ll tell their friends what a great place it is, how they’re recognized for their contributions. And so, as a consequence, they have a pipeline of new possible hires.
Dick [00:09:28] So, as I say, 80 percent of your problems,
