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Next Generation Coaching (AI Based) for the Worker of the Future

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Shifting from Boss to Coach/Mentor is critical for employee experience and the Worker of the Future. As leaders and managers, we must understand this evolution and get it right. People need to feel seen, heard, and celebrated. They don’t want to be just another butt in a seat at an office. The worker of the future wants their work to mean something, to be personal to them, and to get real, individualized support on their career growth.

With many workplaces engaging in hybrid, remote or even contingent work, it’s harder than ever to not only engage your entire workforce, but ensure they’re getting the coaching, mentoring, and development support they need to be their best selves and crush performance.

Enter AI coaching.

AI coaching is in its incipiency, and here to enhance rather than take away from human coaches. People like myself who have spent years training and developing a coaching style that creates real results want to be able to provide more at all levels and AI provides access for all. AI coaching is a critically important to supplement all workplaces and contingent workers.

How AI Coaching Will Shape the Worker of the Future

One of the most important attributes of AI coaching systems and services like Fingerprint for Success, evoach, the Rocky.AI chatbot, and others is that they can be delivered on demand. In our hyper-connected world where we’re using to having data and information available at our fingertips, AI coaching is an on-demand service that your employees can access anywhere and anytime. Just as remote and hybrid work have shifted to allow people more autonomy to get their work done during their personal peak productivity (whether that’s 4am or 11pm), AI coaching allows people to get real-time feedback on their problems and challenges so they can continue to learn, grow, and push through their own limitations.

AI coaching also harnesses the power of big data, culling from millions of data points about people, their characteristics, their behaviors, and our history as a species to make personalized suggestions for growth. In a way, AI coaching is like having access to a brain that knows everything about everyone, allowing your workers to benefit from top-tier insights. It’s similar to how human coaches work, drawing on their personal experiences, their training, and their past successes coaching others with similar struggles to prescribe a course of action for you. The difference lies in the amount of data AI has access to and how it synthesizes that data into a personalized plan. And, of course, the humanness of the interaction.

AI Coaching – Unlocking the Workplace of the Future

The future of work is not one to many – it’s one to one. AI coaching helps workplaces overcome the financial and logistical hurdles to ensure everyone has access to mentoring, coaching, and support to be their best and do their best. It democratizes coaching for all.

Imagine your organization employs 76,000 people – that’s roughly how many people work at Meta right now. Now, imagine you are all in and committed to shifting your workplace culture to one of coaching and mentoring. You decide that in addition to empowering your leadership to coach and mentor their teams, you want to hire human coaches to grow all your people so they can continue to succeed in the new world of work. You calculate that one coach can work with fifty of your employees. If you want every single one of your employees to have access to a coach, you would need 1,520 coaches.

Enter AI. With the help of AI coaching services and chatbots, you calculate that one coach can now double the number of employees they can work with, one hundred each. Now you need half as many coaches as you did before, saving you tons of money and labor hours. You also find that your employees do even better because they can access the on-demand AI coaching whenever they need it to coach themselves and then supplement their learning with personalized sessions with their human coach.

That is why I find AI coaching so interesting and exciting. It makes building a true workplace culture that is founded on coaching and mentoring possible.

Limitations and Challenges of AI Coaching

People need people. They always have and they always will. While AI coaching offers incredible advantages and possibilities for the worker of the future, it cannot replace the benefits of working one-to-one with an experienced human coach who really gets who YOU are.

AI coaching systems and chatbots are really smart, but they excel at synthesizing and regurgitating information. Yes, they have access to millions of data points, but they lack the creativity and innovation of the human mind. That is why AI coaching should go hand-in-hand with human coaching.

Relationships matter. Working with a coach is not a transactional experience. It’s one that grows and develops over time as both people get to really know each other and form a deep connection. This is what makes the coach/mentor and mentee relationship so powerful. You’re accessing wisdom, advice, and support for your career and self, but you’re also forging a bond founded on respect and partnership.

What do you think of the AI coaching revolution? Are you excited? Inspired? Frightened? Leave me a comment below or send me a message and let’s chat. If you’re looking for a coach to help you up the game, click here to learn more about my coaching services.

8-Step Framework for Success: Execute “The Purposeful Comeback” for Your Organization

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With 2020 officially behind us, it’s time to focus on the opportunity of 2021! The workplace has a good, albeit flexible handle on the fact that we must provide new skills for employees, teams and cultures to meet the demand of the future. Let’s go 2021!

Remote, socially distanced, outside or in lock down, businesses and their leaders are ready to make up for lost time and navigate the future. The theme with which we are all approaching our comeback is a combination of gratitude, caring, people, community and impact for others.

Both individually and organizationally we are craving, wanting, needing, planning and orchestrating “The Purposeful Comeback.” It’s a framework to create next generation leadership that will see our organizations into the future. Mastering “The Purposeful Comeback” roadmap and tools below will help you create real and lasting success, growth, business results, and engagement for your people and workplace culture.

 

1. Winning Mindset and Energy

Companies don’t outperform their leadership and the same is true of teams. Creating a purposeful comeback in 2021 starts first with focusing on leadership using integrated purpose as the path to organizational success. We as individuals must show up every day as our best self. That means putting on your oxygen mask first – you can’t help anyone if you don’t first help yourself.

Mindset:

Your mindset really, really matters. Everyone from Marcus Aurelius to the Buddha to Victor Frankl and lately the best, Mel Robbins, has shown us how important thoughts and beliefs are in creating success for ourselves and others. To stage “The Purposeful Comeback” in 2021 we must cultivate a mindset that is positive, self-aware, growth-minded (see Carol Dweck’s phenomenal book, Mindset), and other-focused. Changing our mindset is about changing that talk track in our head.

Physical Energy:

We know that moving your body daily has a positive effect on the mind. Studies have shown that “exercise improves brain function, structure, and connectivity. These brain improvements are directly linked to improved learning, memory, and cognitive function.” Showing up as a leader in 2021 starts with taking care of the temple and setting aside time for the essentials: exercise and nutrition, adequate sleep, and recharging. We must make them a daily habit.

 

2. The Audience is the Hero of Any Story You Tell…So Make Them One!

Want to become a real purposeful leader? Figure out how to create meaningful followers.   Create meaningful followers through this simple basic tool: learn how to build relationships from the inside out. First, with yourself and then with others.

You know the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you. But do you know and understand the Platinum Rule?

The Platinum Rule says this: treat others how they want to be treated. It’s other-focused and becoming other-focused is what you need to really succeed in the year ahead. Putting the focus on treating others how they want to be treated will help you build stronger relationships and relationships are the key to success. Make them the hero because they are! Use these two principles to help you:

-Remember WIFTHEM: This is an acronym for “What’s in it for them.” In every interaction, positive or negative, you must consider what the other person wants and how they are looking to benefit.

-Consider the Action: What action do you want your audience to take that can and will benefit them? This action will benefit you, too, of course.

 

3. Know Thyself to Help Others

Impact is created by working from the inside out. If you want to help others you must Know Thyself. If you don’t know or understand yourself, you’re almost guaranteed to get it wrong with others.

So, how do you start? First, just START. We teach the following framework to our clients inside our new on-demand coaching product, Hooga. Knowing yourself comes from really understanding and being able to articulate the following four core concepts about yourself:

  • Strengths
  • Values, Passions, and Skills
  • Brand
  • Story

This is the value you bring to others and the world. Getting really clear on this allows you to demonstrate your value to your peers, team, and clients.

 

4. What’s Your Story?


Humans have always told stories. From huddling around a fire to hieroglyphics to books to the vlogs, blogs, and podcasts of today, we have an innate desire to share our own stories and discover those of others. Storytelling allows you to captivate an audience, shape thoughts, and communicate purpose and value.

What do you do? Why do you do it? What impact do you create? Why does it matter to you, to your client, to the world?

Remember, your story is not a script. It’s not static or boring. It recognizes the audience and what’s important to them, then captivates them through the use of humor, drama, and narrative arcs. Want to learn to create impact? Then become your own best storyteller.

 

5. The New ABC’s “Always Be Connecting”: Bridge the Gap

We all come to the workplace with different life experiences, skills, and values. We come from different generations, cultures, and backgrounds. We are driven by the need for human interaction, to belong, to be part of a community. We are better together, and we know that (more on that in a second), yet technology, socioeconomic disparity, and generational differences easily divide us.

To seize the opportunity of 2021, we have to find a way to bridge the gap between us so we can pull together and connect. COVID-19 and remote work certainly hasn’t made this any easier. It’s also forced us to acknowledge the diversity (or lack thereof) in our workplaces and community. 64% of applicants say that they consider diversity and inclusion when considering a job, yet only 55% of people think their organizations have policies to promote it. Even more troubling, 90% of them say they’re not treated with respect at work, discriminated against, and even harassed.

This means it’s even more important that we make this the year we figure it out once and for all. Learn how to connect pure and simple. There are so many ways. Just one way we devised is our B.R.I.D.G.E. the Gap system, an integrated six-step plan that will help you unleash the potential of your employees and your workplace.

 

We cannot do it alone. You know that and I know that. Yet the greatest dysfunction of teams persists in our workplaces today. For some organizations, getting their teams to work together efficiently and in harmony is one of their greatest challenges.

Solving the team divide starts by focusing on and ensuring these principles are present in your workplace:

6. It’s Better Together: Teams

  • Do your people feel safe enough to share their ideas, true opinions, and feelings?
  • Is your workplace culture one that empowers, connects, and inspires?
  • Are your employees engaged and connected to the purpose and impact of their work?
  • Is everyone on the team working in alignment with the team’s values?
  • Is there a culture of trust in your workplace?
  • Do people communicate with each other effectively, openly, and often.
  • Do you empower accountability? Do you ask great questions?
  • Got a strategic vision or plan and is it shared universally?

 

7. Make Culture Last: Sustainability

In order to drive and sustain “The Purposeful Comeback,” you need to do the work and then create a system. An integrated system to sustain culture and engagement is necessary for our organizations.

Your system will need different parts, so ask yourself what that system would look like in your organization and what it should include. We recommend having systems to create and sustain purpose, to grow the next generation of leaders and develop their skills, to share in a purposeful vision and story and that all employees be able to articulate it and their own value, and to further coach employees to be their best, work from the inside out, and deliver on the organization’s core values.  Start now by devising your system.

 

8. Pay it Forward: Cultivating Disciples

Seizing the opportunity of 2021 and creating “The Purposeful Comeback” is about looking to the future of your organization. What comes next? Who will lead in five years? In ten? How will you continue to evolve and stay relevant in a changing world?

Create those next generation leaders (your disciples) from within. Get clear on your purpose, define it, live it, and then empower your people to buy into that purpose. When you can do that, then you’ll become known to clients, the market, and even potential employees. Look at all the top companies of today. Most were once unknown operations working out of someone’s garage. They got really clear on their purpose, wove it into the fabric of everything they do, and then the world caught on and embraced them.

You can do the same in your organization. You have all the tools you need. Start now with this roadmap to cultivating your Purposeful Comeback in 2021 and if we can help, please reach out. You control what happens to you, your team, and your organization this year. Start now to make it the best year yet and maximize your impact!

The Case for Creating Safety and Belonging in the Workplace Has Never Been Clearer

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As we get used to a new normal and over the shock and grief of COVID-19, it’s never been more important to care about our workplace. Our employees and teams really need a sense of safety and belonging. Both in the psychological and in the physical sense, as COVID-19 leaves us with new rules and regulations.

Simply put, if people don’t feel safe at work and if they don’t feel like they belong, they won’t do their best work. It really is that simple. The key to creating a successful culture that helps your company thrive and deliver high performance is to make sure your employees are safe. That means addressing their fears and concerns over their physical and psychological safety in a post-COVID19 world. Here’s how:

 

Ask, “What Can I Do Differently to Serve You?”

To solve any problem in your workplace, start by asking great questions. Questions that encourage the other person to go deep and really mine for the crystals so you can help solve for the challenges. I love these ideas from Google’s Head of People Analytics – start this week by asking these questions of every person on your team:

1) What am I doing now that you want me to continue to do?

2) What am I NOT doing frequently enough that you’d like to see more of?

3) What can I do to make you more effective?

Asking great questions demonstrates to the other person that you care about them, that you’re willing to listen, and you’ve got their back. When people know you care, they’ll trust you. Trust goes a long way toward creating a true culture of safety and belonging. In this new world you actually may want to share your procedures for physical safety and further check to see if they do feel physically safe and social distanced.

 

Ask, “What Makes Work Meaningful?”

We all want to do work that is meaningful, that makes a different for someone else or the world. With all this time at home, worrying about what’s going to happen to our families, our friends, our jobs, it’s got a lot of people thinking about what’s really important in life and questioning if they’re living in alignment with those principles.

Make sure you’re helping everyone on your team connect their work to their meaning and purpose. Help them see why they’re doing something and how it’s contributing to larger team or organizational goals. When people can see that they are part of something and helping to meaningfully create progress, they will feel that they belong. Again, COVID-19 is a game changer. Is there something you can do to help your employees or clients create meaning while protecting them at this time?

 

Seek to Reskill on Emotional Intelligence and Behaviors to Create Safety and Belonging

In previous articles we’ve discussed the importance of cultivating Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in our changing workplace. As we reenter the world and workforce with differing fears, anxieties, and stresses, demonstrating EQ has never been more important. Self + Others = Success. EQ helps us get there.

Reskill your team on the basics of EQ and make sure they understand how to really listen in a meaningful way, how to ask great questions, how to have empathy for the other person, and how to tap into their own strengths and story to connect. Also, make sure that you understand the real challenges of the current times and be sensitive to how they are feeling. Seek to address how their colleagues and clients may be feeling as well.

Check out our toolbox here for free resources you can use to help your people level up and let us know if we can help you apply them to our current day scenarios.

 

If you make a conscious choice to intentionally create a culture of safety and belonging, your team and company will thrive. We’ve seen it happen over and over again with our clients – and we’re sure these simple hacks will make the difference for you, too.

Need some support? Reach out to us – our Strength & Story system guarantees you will create a culture of safety and belonging and see real results with your team and business in 100 days or less. Contact us to find out more about how we can help you grow and thrive.

Where’s the Free Food and Ping-Pong Table? What New Hacks Will Solve the Innovation Vacuum in the Work-From-Home Economy?

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The work-from-home revolution has been unleashed. While it’s true that the workplace and worker of the future were both already changing prior to our current global pandemic, this lockdown has cemented a new era.

Big headlines from some of the largest tech companies in the world are just the beginning of this new era. What will it do to our workplaces?

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of both Twitter and Square was the first to announce their “work-from-home forever” policy change. Other companies soon followed suit and last week we had the announcement from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the tech giant’s employees may also continue working from home indefinitely.

So what does this mean for cities that currently enjoy prestige as tech hotspots like San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Austin, and others? And more importantly, what does this mean for companies who have invested years and hundreds of thousands of dollars creating campuses stocked with free food, gyms, ping-pong tables, and more in an effort to attract the best and brightest employees in the industry?

That is the question that has been on my mind the last few weeks as I work with my own clients, including executives from some of the largest companies in America. It’s been well documented that perks like free food do more than attract rock star employees. A 2015 study from Cornell University found that when crews of firefighters eat together, they perform better on the job than crews who eat alone. This didn’t escape the leader in free food and organized socialization, Google, or the thousands of other companies that have followed their lead. For tech companies, offering free food has the same effect. Science dictates that it brings people together and fosters friendships, ideas, and innovation.

Prior to CVOID-19, the ubiquitous new age “dining hall” that could be found at many tech companies created a natural space for innovation. Where people gather and come together, there is always the potential for the creation and spread of new ideas. And it’s these new, innovative ideas tech companies relied on to stay one step ahead of the competition. Summarily, food and eating together creates safety and belonging , which creates trust, which creates innovation.

Here’s one thing I know: the work-from-home revolution and less human-to-human gatherings will create a safety and belonging gap which will lead to an innovation vacuum in your company unless you take steps to prevent it. Even now, your employees likely are not sharing meals together. They’re logging off of Zoom or Slack to go eat alone in their own kitchens. Ideas are not being exchanged and innovation is stalled.

So if you want to continue to spur innovation inside your company, as I know you do, use these ideas to foster safety, belonging, and innovation in the workplace:

 

Bring People Together

One of the most important steps to fostering innovation during the work-from-home revolution is to be intentional about replacing the cafeteria. You must find a replacement for your company’s dining hall, happy hour, or mixers that fits our new normal of social distancing and working remote. Rather than getting off of Zoom or Slack for lunch, encourage people to stay on and eat together as they would at the physical office. Schedule virtual happy hours. Randomly assign or encourage small groups to form and meet weekly over video chat to check in with each other and talk. As regulations allow, have people meet outside of work in small groups to walk or go for a hike. In fact, creating small bonded teams of 6-8 works for the Navy Seals. They create a brotherhood of safety and belonging, which yields the highest performance. Our millennial/Gen Z networking groups at launchbox, encourage participants to form a “tripod,” a small group of three people that meet for lunch and check in with each other between monthly meetings. No matter what you choose to do, you must be intentional about encouraging the human-to-human connection.

 

Ask Your People What They Need From You

One of our favorite workplace hacks to create and build strong teams and companies is to simply ask your people what they need from you. Are they feeling Zoom Fatigue with too many meetings already? Are they isolated and feeling distant from their team? Are they experiencing challenges at home that are interfering with work? Regular check-ins with your people will help you solve problems, build strong employee loyalty, and ultimately create the space people need to innovate. Unhappy, stressed, scared people do not create game-changing breakthroughs. Happy, confident, supported people do.

 

Foster Resilience

If you haven’t checked out our blog on mastering the 3 components of resilience, read that next. Our 3 C’s of Confidence, Commitment, and Clarity will help your people create resilience. As I said above, unhappy employees do not innovate. Help your people meet the challenges of the work-from-home revolution by teaching them the skills to build and maintain resilience. It will change the way they show up for work, their team, and your clients.

 

The work-from-home revolution has arrived and it’s now our normal. We do the work with business owners, executives and workplaces to help them find, build, and share their Strengths and Story to build high performance cultures through safety and belonging. What could be better? Click here to book a free session with us today!

3 Steps to Effectively Lead Your Remote Team Through Crisis

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Our employees are overwhelmed, anxious, and stressed out. And that was before the Covid-19 crisis! Now they have a whole new mess of problems to deal with: worrying about the virus, fear about what will happen to the economy, working remotely for the first time, trying to manage their kids at home, struggling to adapt to new technology, increased conflict with their partner from being cooped up inside…it’s A LOT. Meanwhile, we’re trying to get them to be as productive as possible and G.S.D (Get Shit Done).

If you’re anything like the clients we’ve been talking to over the last few weeks, you’re struggling just to keep your own head above water let alone be the kind of leader your remote team needs right now. While there’s no manual or precedent for dealing with a large-scale global epidemic in this modern age, we’ve been coaching our clients on how to pivot and adapt their businesses while leading their teams to success. No matter what industry you’re in or what catastrophe you’re facing, there are only three things you need to focus on as a leader to effectively manage your workforce and cultivate high performance.

1) Decrease Fear

Your people are scared. They are facing the unknown just like you.

As their leader your most important job is to decrease their fear. Even if the future looks bleak, your people want to know you have a plan to take care of them and see them safely through this storm. They want to know they can count on you, that you’ve got their back, and you’re here for them. 

One of the most effective ways to decrease fear is to ask your people what they want from you. Start by listening and leaning in. It may be different for every person, but you owe it to them to take the time to ask great questions, be an even better listener, and find a way to meet them where they are. Then authentically contextualize your mission and vision in a way that employees can relate to and find meaningful. And communicate, communicate, communicate. Take a look at our 4 C’s of Connection in Virtual Work – scroll down to get a free copy of our Remote Management Toolbox.

2) Increase Safety

Along with decreasing fear, you need to increase every team member’s sense of safety. When you start by turning your workplace upside down and listening to your people, you’ll have a good sense of where to begin.  Understand that people need people and that we are interconnected beings. The biggest challenge is the lack of community and perceived empathy.

But even more importantly, you’ll have taken a big step toward decreasing their sense of isolation. If your team is working remotely for the first time, they’ll quickly start to feel alone and adrift in the world. It’s up to you to make sure your team is connecting to you and with each other on a regular basis. Have at least two real connections per week that asks how they are doing.  And make sure to use video – verbal communication is only 7% of total communication!  Additionally, appoint a communication czar to make sure it works well with your team.

Start now. Implement daily or weekly video calls. Create a Slack channel where people can check in with each other during the day. And spend time demonstrating you care by coaching your team members through their specific challenges. Let them help each other and create a buddy system. 

3) Solve the Emotional Component

In times of turmoil, it’s normal for emotions to run high. As a leader, you need to make sure you’re helping your team process their emotions in a way that is healthy and productive. Make sure you’re regularly addressing these five areas on your check-ins with your remote team:

1) Self-Care: Discuss the importance of self-care and share strategies for individual success.  Routines, schedules, and how to deal with kids at home and connections.

2) Learn: Make sure your team has the tools and resources to support their learning and development with new skills for the virtual workplace and great communication tips.

3) Growth: If there is down time, encourage personal and professional growth along with real creativity.  What are some great ideas they can come up with for themselves to add big value for a future which will be super different and better than what we’ve experienced?

4) Mindset: Share practical ways each person can work on reframing their thoughts and help them through any mindset blocks. Remember, we need connection and help.

5) Connect: Illustrate the importance of connecting person-to-person and encourage team members to communicate over phone or video instead of email and text.

If you focus on just these three things and follow our hacks and tools, I guarantee you will see dramatic improvement in the performance and productivity of your remote team. While we are all being challenged to work differently, there is NO reason your team cannot continue to execute at a high level.

Need help implementing these strategies? Looking for personalized help for your organization? Reach out to us – the first session is always complimentary! We can deliver virtual keynotes, online workshops, and remote high-performance coaching to help your team continue to succeed and thrive. 

We also recently hosted a webinar on this same topic – click here to watch the replay. It will only be available for a limited time so don’t wait to watch!

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Two Predictions Shaping the Work(er) of the Future: Reality Hits Sooner

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Last year we made some predictions for the future workplace. We predicted (i) technology is going to continue to evolve and drive change, and certainly (ii) people will matter more than ever. Our new Coronavirus reality further demonstrates the importance of both these points.  So as we enter this next decade, we’re gratified to see that new interviews and evolving research continues to support our predictions for the future workplace.

 The Wall Street Journal recently published an article called, “The Workplace of 2050.” It featured interviews with five experts at the top of their game making bold predictions for the future. All five talked about the way evolving technologies will reshape their industries – and the important role humans will play in the future of work.  

David Baszucki, CEO and co-founder of Roblox Corp, talked about the gaming industry as a whole. Alongside tremendous technological innovation, he envisions teams getting larger and transitioning to remote work with employees spread out around the world. While not mentioned directly in his interview, we know that communication between humans will be critical. As teams stop reporting to the same central office and start logging onto Slack from their couch, being able to articulate your story, demonstrate your value, and build relationships will become key factors for success in this industry.   

In the medical field, the need for technological expansion is particularly great. Dr. Esther Choo, ER doctor and Associate Professor at the Oregon Health and Science University, expects we’ll see “a lot more options for communicating with patients, monitoring them, connecting them to needed care…and streamlining things.” She also expects increased integration among the many electronic health systems doctors and patients are currently using. Although these innovations will certainly help healthcare providers improve job performance, what’s really driving this shift is a desire for better communication between patients and doctors in order to create meaningful change.

 Other CEOs and founders echo Baszucki and Choo, predicting an increasingly prominent role for technology in industries ranging from restaurants to talent acquisition. But for all this focus on technological innovation, Free the Work founder Alma Har’el sums up it up best: “At the end of the day, the heart of the work is really about connecting on a human level, and that’s never going to change.” No matter how an industry is disrupted or what new technologies they choose to deploy, at the heart of all this change is us: people. We still matter.

To help you create success and shift to a culture of high performance, we introduced our 3-hack system. Many of our clients have already reported tremendous success after implementing it in their organizations. How will you keep the future workplace human? What choices will you make to make your employees matter? How will you empower and lead your people to high performance? Reach out to us for a free consultation. Through our dynamic keynote speeches, game-changing workshops, and bold coaching, we will inspire your people to up their game and help you create a high-performance culture.

Shaping the Work(er) of the Future. It Matters Now More Than Ever.

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The Future of Work is under attack: literally. The current fear of the Coronavirus has exacerbated the existing state of increased worker anxiety, depression, isolation and disengagement. They are all at all-time highs across the globe. And the pressure keeps mounting as the world moves ever faster.  In the U.S. alone, it’s costing billions of dollars in lost revenue and workforce productivity.

The Future of Work and the Workplace of the Future are huge topics of conversation. Yet, we’re still SOOO confused.  We ask, what it will look like? What it will feel like? Where and how will we work? How many hours will we attend to work and how will we balance that with all our other life challenges? How will we handle disease, global challenges, technological changes (robots, AI, digital, etc.), and how will we survive as workers?  It is an amazing question, especially today.

WE ARE MISSING THE POINT!  We are forgetting the single most important Future of Work component: the workers themselves.  The Worker of The Future. What will they do?

To break through all this uncertainty and confusion, to succeed in the future workplace, we need to first make sure we’re focusing on the right thing: the worker. Then, we need a system that helps and supports our workers as they navigate this period of tremendous change. Adjusting our focus and implementing a proven system is the only way to develop better connection, better engagement, and better teams. If we can figure that out, we’ll have better performance and financial results, better impact, better communities, and a ultimately a better world! 

Why We Need to Be Asking the Right Questions About the Future of Work

The workplace is changing and this change is creating enormous pressure. Industry research and our own independent polls of 20,000 people demonstrate the impact of big data, robotics, AI and other technologies our future. Here are the stats that we need to be concerned about and now with our new anxiety about Coronavirus, add fear on top of that – yikes!

  • 375M people will have new job categories,
  • 41% of companies will be fully automated,
  • 47% of jobs will be gone by 2030,
  • 67% of CEOS believe technology will create more value than human capital,
  • 44% of leaders believe automation will make people largely irrelevant,
  • Workers are scared too: 53% believe people may become irrelevant and 50% believe that they will need new jobs. 

Management and employees are both uncertain. As a result, fear, anxiety, depression, lost productivity and disengagement pervades the workplace.

But to bridge this gap, move out of uncertainty, and create engaged workplaces and workers of the future, you must put your focus where it belongs. On the people. People need people and people need to matter. 

Reports from Korn Ferry, McKinsey, Josh Bersin, and The World Economic Forum show that Emotional Intelligence and effective human interaction are the real skills necessary to win in the workplace and create engagement.  Human interaction will become even more important to succeed, connect, provide value and grow businesses.  And it is multifaceted. It includes purpose, meaning and an integrated and diverse approach to work, community, and family. Humans want connection and meaning. They want contribution and impact. They want to feel seen and heard. They want immediate feedback. But most of all, they want to matter.

The Hacks, Tools and Solution:

Let’s create that connection and bridge the gap between the Worker of the Future and the Future of Work. After coaching over 20,000 Millennials, Gen Zs and their managers, we’ve developed a simple 3-hack system that will help solve the workplace disengagement crisis. This system can be rapidly implemented today to shift the way you lead and positively impact your company’s bottom line.

Hack #1: Turn Your Workplace Upside Down:

Learn what your most critical audience (your workforce) needs from you to create high performance. Ask them questions on an individual level, create focus groups, and send out surveys. Get a sense of what they need and value in order to meet them where they are and utilize them in creating a culture that defines the Future of Work within your company. Safety will be added to this list for sure so let’s have the dialogue: what do workers need from you to feel safe and protected? Utilize our tools like The Platinum Rule, “WIFThem,” and our signature communication tool, “GPS” –  Gratitude, Permission, Shared Experience. 

Hack #2: Create Meaningful Work:

Many studies demonstrate that meaning, purpose, impact and contribution are the most important things that workers of all ages want from the workplace. To create meaningful work, make sure your organization is addressing these two key things for each of your employees: providing opportunities for learning/growing and creating a sense of community. This is the way you will ensure the work feels meaningful, no matter the task. Now more than ever when we have been pushed to a new normal , which includes fear of survival, meaning matters.

Hack #3: Reskill from the Inside/Out on Emotional Intelligence:

According to the World Economic Forum, Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is key for 2020 and beyond. Additional research, including the 2017-2020 Bersin reports on HR and talent predictions support this. To help your people develop a higher EQ, focus first on finding a way to connect with them. Then, create a safe workplace and encourage them to be vulnerable in sharing the truth of who they are. Finally, mentor and coach them in the moment, not during a quarterly or annual performance review. Today’s workplace moves fast and tomorrow’s workplace, even faster. You need to help your people grow and develop new skills for success now. Particularly, are they capable of being managed remotely, engaged through self-motivation, trusted by coworkers, and still learning and growing?  What systems will you put into place to help them?

Doing the work and committing to using this 3-hack system MATTERS. If we don’t put our focus in the right place (on the Worker of the Future) there won’t BE a Workplace of the Future. Because without the people, none of it really matters. So start solving the disengagement crisis in your organization today! Use our system, check out our free tools, and read the rest of our blog for even more implementation tips. Reach out to us to learn how we can support you in creating lasting change through our high-performance coaching, keynote speeches, and workshops.

The Workplace of the Future is NOW – Do You Have a Plan to Solve Employee Disengagement and Anxiety?

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Our clients tell us they can’t keep up because the world is changing so rapidly. The word “change” actually seems insufficient to describe the rapid transformation affecting all our businesses. And yet we’re more connected than ever.  One misstatement, misstep, miscalculation of impact and a disgruntled person’s tweet can go viral at a moment’s notice. We’ve never felt more vulnerable to the opinions of others and it’s affecting our businesses.

Not a stretch for any of us or our businesses, just look at what happened to Peloton recently. When its holiday commercial failed to strike the right note with its customers, the company’s stock dropped more than 10% after a storm of criticism helped its infamous commercial go viral for all the wrong reasons.

But it’s not just our customers that are challenging. Our employees live in this world and they are challenged by the change too. They’re also confused. Hence, most businesses are facing a two-headed crisis with their employees: (1) disengagement and (2) anxiety. Just when we need our teams to pull together, crush performance, and be stronger than ever, actually the opposite is happening. Our employees are instead disconnected from each other or with their bosses. Rampant anxiety is hurting their individual performance. And high turnover is costing us serious money.

At launchbox, we’re all about finding solutions to help you solve disengagement and anxiety to ignite your team and company’s performance.  We’ve developed a 3-hack strategy you can use to ensure your company is meeting the demands of the changing workplace. Follow along as we show you how we’re helping three clients solve their own unique organizational problems:

Asking Questions to Solve for Disengagement

One of the clients we work with had a modern challenge that needed solving: many of their employees worked in the field at customer sites while others remained behind at the company’s main office. Not surprisingly, they were struggling to keep their remote employees engaged.

When they came to us for help, we coached them to start by conducting an assessment of all their employees to help them figure out what the specific problems were. Turns out the employees that spent a lot of time in the field were having trouble remaining connected to their peers, the company’s mission, their contribution, and ultimately their own career path.

With this information in hand, we were able to help the leadership design and implement specific engagement strategies through coaching individuals and the team to create increased engagement. The solution? Double down on understanding the employees needs and then solve them at the individual and group level.  Model behavior, downstream techniques, and stand for the employee. The result? Greater engagement and increased retention across the entire company.

Helping Employees Find Meaningful Work

Another of our clients, a respected financial advisory firm, sent one of their talented young employees to get coached by us. This young man was struggling to find real meaning, purpose and contribution in his work. The company’s mission of protecting their clients’ assets and growing wealth just wasn’t cutting it for him. He was looking for something deeper, more meaningful, something to feel he was a part of and that would allow him to make a difference.

In working with us, he learned about himself, his own why, and the impact he wanted to have. It was critically important for him to have belief around his impact and tangibly see the results of his work (in the form of seeing his clients’ wealth grow) in order to feel connected to what he was doing. We talked about how he could better communicate that to his bosses in order to get some help to create bigger results for all of his accounts.  He was predisposed as many millennials are to create impact.  We tied his ambition and work to philanthropy that was created by the growth of wealth. Once he became aware of this meaning, he could articulate it as his value and extend it to his clients.

Can you guess what happened next? He got the help he needed from his supervisors to recast his own meaning and impact in order to contribute to the team. This in turn helped his clients AND his company’s bottom-line.

He also discovered how to live his own values and find greater purpose and contribution by seeing the positive things his clients were able to do for both their families and for others as a result of their increased wealth. How’s that for a win?

Reskilling Emotional Intelligence

Management at one high-end health club came to us because they were frustrated with the performance of their younger employees. They felt that many of them didn’t display the warmth and friendliness they wanted to see in such customer-centric positions.

After instituting hacks 1 and 2 above, we dug deeper to create a system of skills to help employees connect more readily to the company’s mission. We helped the employer bridge the generation gap by showing them how to reskill their young employees on the basics of customer service, making it about teaching, learning and growing. We encouraged them to train and coach young employees on connection. This gave their young people skills they could see they would use forever. It also made them feel that they had power over their own future, that they were creating their own path to success. Finally, we encouraged management to illustrate how their role was absolutely vital to the entire customer experience and that how they showed up as individuals made the ultimate difference.

The culture at the health club became one that was focused on others and giving value. As a result their young people began to flourish. They learned new skills and changed the way they communicated with clients and their peers. And ultimately, they took ownership of their own self-development and growth in order to provide the best possible experience for the customers they saw every day.

 

As we enter the next decade, one thing is for sure: the workplace will continue to rapidly evolve even faster. In order to keep up and achieve even greater success in the years to come, make sure you’re solving problems for both your customers and your employees. If your company could use a little support in igniting growth like these three clients, book a free call with one of our coaches today!

5 Steps to Keep the Multi-Generational Workplace Human

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With the increased digitization of our businesses, it’s easy for employees to start feeling isolated and forgotten, like they just don’t matter. Where we previously had to pick up the phone or walk across the office if we wanted to talk to one another, now we can communicate with just a couple keystrokes. Where co-workers previously spent all day sitting in adjacent cubicles, now team members can be spread across the city, country, or even the world.

While technology has allowed us to work faster and more efficiently, it’s also contributed to higher levels of stress and anxiety among workers. Because as technology has changed the way we work, we’ve kind of forgotten the most important element: the people.

So if you care about keeping your humans happy (and you should because happier employees are more productive and successful at work) make sure you’re taking these five steps to keep your multi-generational workplace human:  

Communicate Like a Human

We have the power of speech for a reason: to communicate! So instead of texting your employees, actually pick up the phone and call them (yes, even your Millennial and Gen Z employees). Or better yet, drop by their desk and have a real conversation complete with facial cues and body language. Yes, it’s inefficient and yes, it might not be the most productive use of time, but real human communication is essential to forming better relationships and bridging the gap in the multi-generational workforce. Which brings me to my next point:

Face Time Not FaceTime

You’ve got to encourage your people to have meaningful face-to-face interactions. That means coming out from behind the computer screen and planning regular in-person meetings, going to lunch, or grabbing coffee together. As a boss or manager, one of the most valuable things you can do is plan one-on-one meetings with each of your employees. And when you’ve met with them all, go back and start over again.

Provide Individualized Mentoring for Career Success

One thing we hear over and over again from the young Millennial and Gen Z employees we coach and train is that they want personalized mentorship from their bosses and managers. They don’t want to feel like just another cog in the machine. They want individualized support to help them learn, grow, and achieve their career goals. As we previously discussed, mentoring and coaching is the new leadership development training. So make sure you’re giving all your employees the right support and not just a one-size-fits-all solution.

Encourage Work-Life Balance

Work is a big part of our lives. But it’s not our whole life. So encourage your employees to achieve a healthy work-life balance. Don’t give them grief if they ask to leave early to catch their kid in a school play or need to come in late because their dog got sick. If they’re not feeling well, tell them to stay home and rest even if you’re in the middle of a big project. Tell them to have a great vacation and actually mean it. Respect your employees enough to trust that the work will still get done.

Show You Care

Our #1 tip for keeping the multi-generational workplace human? Show your employees you care. Take an interest in their lives. Ask how their weekend was, how their spouse is doing, what their kids are up to. And then actually listen to the answers. Say “Thank You” and “Good Job!” Get to know them as people and demonstrate that you really care.

 

 

 

Keeping the workplace human in the age of technology isn’t hard. It just takes conscious effort and systems that are designed to encourage it. If you’re struggling to provide a human workplace that keeps your employees engaged, reach out to us. We’ve developed systems and frameworks you can implement in your multi-generational organization to make sure you’re meeting the needs of your people. Click here to schedule a discovery call with one of our high-performance coaches!

4 Reasons Why You Need to Care About Creating the Worker of the Future Right Now

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The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “The only constant in life is change.” While I’m no philosopher, he certainly got that right! Just compare our world now to Heraclitus’s time. Hell, a lot has changed since I entered the workforce – and I’m no dinosaur!

So if we know the world is constantly changing and will continue to change, why do we keep putting things off for the future? Why do we keep telling ourselves that when the workplace of the future finally “arrives” we’ll just figure out how to adapt? Why are we not prioritizing developing our employees, our companies, and ourselves NOW so that we can make sure we WIN in the future?

As we’ve been talking about the worker of the future, you might have thought to yourself, “Okay Dan, I hear you, but why I should care about this right now? What’s so different about this moment in time that I should drop everything and shift my focus to worrying about a future that’s not even here yet?”

For starters, you don’t need to worry about the future if you’ve done the work to prepare for it. It’s only those who haven’t put in the time that need to worry! But to answer that question, to discuss why it’s so important that we care about creating the worker of the future right now, we have to look at a few things that are true about this moment in time:

Key Industries Are Being Disrupted

My wife is a Realtor and a damn good one at that. But whether real estate agents will eventually go the way of travel agents and she’ll be out of a job is up for debate.

“It’s a people industry,” they argue. “Nobody wants to buy a house from a computer.”

Well most people never imagined we’d push a button to have a perfect stranger come pick us up at our house and look where we are now.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Where there’s a need, or where we can create a need, there’s opportunity. Every industry has its own pockets of opportunity that could lead to significant disruption and choosing to ignore this fact is the equivalent of burying your head in the sand and pretending like it isn’t happening.

Every industry that hasn’t already been disrupted is ripe for future disruption. And the industries that have already changed will continue to do so. Speaking of Uber, I recently learned that in response to companies like Bird and Lime offering alternative, on-demand transportation options, Uber has also gotten into the scooter-sharing game. It acquired Jump Bikes in April 2018 to the tune of $200 million. Because even the disruptors can become disrupted!

We’re More Connected Than Ever Before

A 2015 study by Bank of America found that 71% of smartphone owners sleep with their phones either on their nightstand, in their bed, or in their hand. That figure is likely even higher now! The fact is, for the majority of us the phone screen is the last thing we see at night and the first thing we see in the morning.

And do you know what’s on those phone screens? Apps. Facebook. Instagram. Gmail. What’s App. Slack. All these things that allow us to be connected to others 24/7/365. This connectivity has not only dramatically changed our personal relationships, it’s changed the way we work.

Walk into an office six or seven years ago and it wasn’t unusual to find that most companies had a policy about their employees having their cellphones on their desks. Now? Bosses are sending their employees Instagram DMs and expecting them to respond if they’re on the clock. Or not on the clock because the lines between where our workday begins and ends have become incredibly blurred.

Used to be that every business had the same forty-hour workweek to get things done in. But now that we are all connected at the push of a button, it is always game ON.

The Speed of Life and the Speed at Which Things Change Has Increased

You’ve probably heard this old riddle before:

“There is a pond with lily pads in it. Every day the amount of lily pads in the pond doubles. If on the 30thday, the pond is completely full, on which day was it half full?”

The answer? The 29thday.

Just like those lily pads, the rate of change has been growing exponentially for hundreds of years and we are now at that 29thday! Earlier I mentioned how much had things had change since the time of the ancient Greeks. Now think about this: the first personal computer arrived in 1975, the Internet in 1991. Now we carry an Internet-connected computer around in our back pocket and use it to share cat videos with our friends on Facebook. How’s that for rapid change?

This culture of disruption and the increased connectivity between each and every one of us means that the speed at which things change will only increase. If you can’t keep up and your competitors can, you will lose. Period.

Trust is More Important Than Ever

It only takes one tweet with a screenshot of a supposedly private conversation to go viral and ignite a PR firestorm for your company. If we do not do right by our customers and convince them at every opportunity (and I mean every opportunity) that they can trust us, we open ourselves up to enormous amounts of risk. Your customers have a choice about who they buy from and who they work with. Companies do not have the power anymore. Consumers have all the power.

But it’s also not just about the customer. Employees want to work for companies that are real with them. And if you don’t deliver, they will find another company who can. It’s that simple. So you better pay attention and give them what they want because employees matter. Yes, you need the customer to buy from you, but it’s the employee that handles the customer and delivers the experience that gets the customer to come back and tell all their friends.

So now do you agree that it’s time we shift our focus to attracting, creating, and retaining the worker of the future? Because if you don’t, then whatever you’re prioritizing instead isn’t going to matter in five or ten years. Your company will struggle and probably get crushed by the competition who figured this out and made it a priority.

 

Need help? Sign up for your free coaching call and let’s figure out how to help you and your team win!