Creating a Great Place to Work, by Gbitse Barrow

Organizational leaders often speak about crafting an employee value proposition – creating a great place to work; a great place to learn, or a great place to grow. As is usual with a lot of these huge corporate transformation campaigns, plenty of money is spent, and most times the only people that come out smiling are the HR executives who can nicely tick off their performance scorecards and the consultants who got paid for designing the EVP and running internal road shows and publicity. Months down the line these superficial programmes yield very little – employee engagement remains low, and talent retention is still at risk.

Obviously there are a number of organizations who have gotten it right, but they definitely went a bit deeper than an EVP campaign and road shows. It boils down like everything else to the character of the leadership in the institution, and where this is wrong, no amount of branding or re-branding can make a change!

We are preparing this week for a trip to the ancient city of Kano, and I am really excited about visiting my favourite hotel in the world – Prince Hotel. Perhaps its owner has never sat down to think about crafting an Employee Value Proposition, but judging from my visit over 5 years ago, he has an EVP well wrapped up under his belt. Employee engagement is about incentivizing the right behaviour, rather than playing favourites with a bunch of yes men that is typical with organizational leaders today. At Prince, the hotel staff members get a big share of the service charges, so they would do everything to keep you satisfied and locked up in your rooms ordering room service all day long – It works you know! Conversely, I recall how a young employee in a bank once told me that he suffered under his boss for a while for calling her by her first name, which was the right thing to do since the organization had a first-name open-door policy. He soon learned of his “unacceptable” behaviour, began to append Aunty and “Ma” before and after her name, and soon he got a long-awaited promotion!

You may recall episodes of the award winning TV series on NTA – Super Story where a company CEO served up some specially concocted jollof rice for lunch each day at the canteen and got away with hypnotizing his employees to work without a salary. One day the spell wore off, and the attempt at manipulating employees in the short term like many of our organizational leaders try to do with myopic incentives and political camps in the workplace.

One of the saddest leadership stories around motivating employees that I remember from my own career was the end of year party where the party committee had set aside lavish gifts of microwave ovens and deep-fryers for the “managerial” cadre staff and less stylish plate sets and cup sets for the “non-managerial” cadre. I may be wrong, but I would have thought that in terms of impact the wife of one of our drivers would have been more impressed with a deep-fryer, that my wife who already could afford one and indeed still had two extra in her store from our old wedding gifts. Right thinking leaders would have either provided the same gift items for everyone or perhaps even taken the higher road and given the more junior staff the more lavish gift items. It’s just a grab-grab attitude that is becoming so pervasive. We all know you are the managers – your salary, status cars and other perks already show it. Do you have to rub it into the faces of the spouses and children of your junior colleagues even at a Year- end Party?

We have even had CEOs of Nigerian organizations who have separate elevators in their buildings, forgetting that someday when they leave the headship they have to join the regular lifts. I saw that happen in a government building in Abuja with a former minister, and had a really good laugh!

We can go on and on, but I believe the point is made, if you really want to create a great place to work you need to incentivize the right behaviour, be gracious with your employees – pay them properly, invest in their development, and most of all do not rub in the fact that you are the boss by creating all this power distance. Next time you hear about a corporate EVP programme, reflect on these real life examples of what works and what doesn’t and make sure that yours does!

Going Higher, by Nike ONI

Are you desirous of achieving great dreams or are you currently working on making one of your dreams a reality? Are you thinking about writing a book, starting your own business or doing something really great to change the world around you? Dreams... you and I may call them but they may eventually turn out to be reality. People like Wole Soyinka (the first black African Nobel Laureate), Ferdinand Magellan (the first to sail around the world), King Sunny Ade and Michael Jackson (notable musicians) etc, were men of like passion - with great dreams and desires who ensured that they used teamwork to make their dreams work.

Like you, I have some really huge dreams, but I have come to understand the bigger the dream, the better the team that I need to make it happen. In order to build our dreams and make the best of it we must realise that having the right people on board our team really matters in order to ensure that they not only connect to our dream but they also are able to key into it with great ease. For instance, I know of a close associate whose dream became a reality by sharing ideas with close family and friends and today despite still undergoing a lot of challenges he is still ensuring that he lives his dream. Not only has he made the dream a reality but has also in one way or the other gotten those who he shared his dreams with and have made meaningful contribution to it involved in its execution.

In the words of Dr John Maxwell "one mistake I've seen people repeatedly make is that they focus too much attention on their dreams and too little on their team". Building a dream team is perhaps the single most important ingredient in making your dream a reality.

Most times we are often faced with several challenges that come along with our dream. Dr John Maxwell has also identified some of these challenges and they type of teams required to tackle them:
For a New Challenge You need a Creative Team
For a Controversial Challenge You need a United Team
For a Changing Challenge
For an Unpleasant Challenge
For a diversified Challenge
For a Long - term Challenge
For a Mountain - sized Challenge You need a Fast and Flexible Team
You need a Motivated Team
You need a Complementary Team
You need a determined Team
You need an Experienced Team

Think about your current dream project and the challenges that it poses and use the correlation table to guide you around decision regarding the type of team you need, to make your dream a reality.
It is also important if you are working with a team currently to assess their ability to cope with your specific challenge(s). You may need to make additional investments in growing them, adding others to support them, or removing the ineffective ones altogether. If this doesn't work, then perhaps you may need to give up your dreams and help others achieve theirs.

In our journey to making our dreams work, we should be careful not to become - "I woulda, coulda, shoulda". We can find the cure for cancer or AIDS, or become the next President, or become the most sought after professional in our areas of competence. All we need is to put together our dream team to make our dream work.

Great Memories Strengthen Relationships

Have you ever seen siblings sit together and chat all night long, our couples sit in bed re-living fond memories of their lives together? Great memories are a good source of nourishment for our relationships. Imagine if you could re-live great memories with your colleagues, employees, bosses and important clients. You will perhaps not just create great moments of joyful nostalgia, but also help to create a stronger bond in the relationship.

While events may just occur and create the great memories for your relationships, we could be a bit more deliberate, and actually create and sustain these memories ourselves. We should therefore be passionate about creating the time, and the enabling environment for great memories to take place.

For example, imagine a boss who sits behind her chair all day, behind the closed doors of her office, compared to another who spends time on the shop floor, engaging employees and customers and creating those opportunities for an interesting joke to be shared, an important lesson to be learned or a heartfelt feeling to be shared. By being open and available, we therefore create the time and atmosphere for great memories to be made. The heartfelt feeling, joke or important lesson created as you walk around the shop floor can be that great memory and bond that brings you closer to that person.

I have a personal example with a colleague who I teased on two separate occasions about getting pregnant because she stayed at home during a strike in the first instance, and went on leave at an awkward time in the year the second time. Interestingly, I was right on both occasions - she got pregnant just within the same spaces of time. Now, when we see each other we often share the joke around the memorable moments when I teased her and it draws us closer each time.

Think about your relationship with your spouse, parents, siblings, children, colleagues at works and clients, and make a deliberate effort to create a pleasant memory. It could be a lunch or dinner outing, it could be an away-day or team building event, or something special that you do for them, or even a story or lesson that you can share. Plan to create this memory, then create it, and use the opportunities of your future interactions to re-live the memory and strengthen your relationship.

As we do this, we should also take time to think about the fond memories we already have with people, and take the next opportunity we have to re-live that memory, and create an even stronger bond. Memories can serve as great ice-breakers for people you haven't seen or spoken to in a while, and can help to re-kindle the relationship in a very enduring way.

Remember, memories are powerful things. We shouldn't wait for memories to just happen to us, rather, we need to make memories happen, and ensure that we re-live them

John Maxwell Leadership Training debuts in Abuja

The Nigerian Human Resources and Training Community in Abuja got a first-hand taste of the recently launched John C Maxwell Leadership Development Training Workshops from Learning Impact NG. At an exclusive event which was strictly by invitation, Learning Impact NG delivered one of their John Maxwell Workshops - "Winning with People", based on the best-selling work of internationally accaliamed leadership expert - Dr John C Maxwell. The one-day workshop was facilitated by the leading John Maxwell certified trainer in sub-saharan Africa and founder/CEO of Learning Impact NG, Mr Gbitse Barrow. Participants included Human Resources Directors, Personnel and Administration Directors, as well as Training Directors and Training Managers from within the public and private sector in the FCT.

The exclusive event held at the Shehu YarÁdua Center Center on Thursday,28 October and participants were taken through the most modern training delivery techniques based on experiential learning principles. Participants got an opportunity to apply the Think-Say-Do Model developed by Dr Maxwell in a number of interactive activities, case studies, group and individual activities and lecturettes from Mr Barrow.

Participants were generally excited about the programme, the quality world-class content from John Maxwell that had now been put in Nigerian context, and the excellent delivery methodology used which kept them busy for the whole day, and helped ensure that they could actually transfer some of the learnings to action in their work, personal and family lives.

Learning Impact in May 2010 acquired the exclusive license in Nigeria for John Maxwell leadership Development Workshops, and offers a unique range of Leadership Development Workshops and other proprietary workshops for Human Resources and Training Professionals. In a press statement issued at the end of the event, the Company's Head of Research and Publications, Ms Nike Oni was pleased with the turn-out and reception that the Abuja HR fraternity had given the John Maxwell brand in Nigeria, citing that the event was over-subscribed, which made organizing it quite challenging. She was confident that the Company will ensure that it's programmes help to lift the lid on leadership in Nigeria, based on its aspirations and the strategic vision of its founders and international partner - Dr John C Maxwell.

The Company's Head of Sales, Mr Abioye OKE also revealed that the Company will be taking its Signature Programmes to Lagos on 12 November to the even more interested HR and Training fraternity in Lagos, where again the event seems well-subscribed. According to Mr Oke, the John Maxwell quality in leadership development is second to none, and we are encouraged by the support from our colleagues, and look forward to helping organizations in Nigeria build positive influence in their people and work ethic".