No Shortcuts

There are no shortcuts to connecting with your employees. No hacks, no backdoor methods, or “secret” ways you can instantly make them your best confidant. No Magic Wands (sorry wizarding world friends), no Jedi mind tricks (not that I haven’t tried) to get into their heads to strengthen that connection. Doesn't matter how long they've been working with or for you, what they do, what generation you're comparing them with, where they grew up, what sports they’re fans of, whether they went to your college or not etc. You get the idea.

What matters is true connection. It's relationship building 101. You have to earn it (like the old 80’s John Houseman commercial). It’s like anything in life – there’s a little luck to things landing in your lap (like a winning lottery scratcher), but most of it is attributed to hard work. Take music as one example – do you think Dave Grohl got his way to the top of the music industry by using some sort of cheat code? Nope, no up, up, down, down, left right, left right, B, A, start there. What about Luke Skywalker? He had to have his hand sliced off, fall down a tube, train in a stinky swamp, learning from a funny talking elf for ages to eventually realize he to learn it slow and steady.

No folks. There are no shortcuts to connecting with your employees. It’s hard work. You have to practice, fail, try again, and drill whatever skills are related to what you’re accomplishing in life. Similar to a New Year’s Resolution exercise binge, I’m all for making changes, but if you’re relying on the annual turn of the calendar to make a change in your lifestyle, you’re just procrastinating.

I like to weave points of personal reference (as you know) in my stories so I’ll use exercise as today’s analogy – but this could be anything from needlepoint to woodworking to baking the perfect, soft, warm, buttery, caramel chocolate chip cookie (you’re welcome). ??

Here’s the main concepts we’re after today:

· Time – nothing happens overnight. Push forward, but be patient to see results – sometimes it takes MUCH longer than you would think.

· Effort – you can go do something half committed. How far will that really get you?

· Failure – I preach this a lot. Thomas Edison failed at the lightbulb over 2000 times. But he learned from it every time.

· Reflection – (wait Tom, I thought this whole diatribe was reflection?) Take time to shake out self-doubt/imposter syndrome stuff. Wait, you have that too? EVERYONE does. Celebrate the baby steps you make. A few baby-steps lead to grown up steps, so on and so forth.

Now here’s the application.

In this short VIDEO CLIP , you see Thrusters and Chest to Bar Pull ups (that means your chest hits the bar - ouch). I don’t want to be a hypocrite – so I’ll use a practice what I preach approach today:

A) TIME: Getting pullups in any fashion took months and months. Learning how to do chest to bar pull-ups, took technical and strength training, then skill to do it right (and still didn’t get it right til the day before this video) – nearly 3 years in the making. Still not there, but you get the point. You have to put time in with your people. Focused, undivided attention time. Ever been in a personal relationship that took zero time? Nope. Doesn’t happen. Courting is a thing, even in a business sense.

B) EFFORT: All of this took effort – both in practice, and execution. You have to be willing to put the energy in to get you in the right headspace. But if you’re not willing to put in 110% on the things that will elevate you, you’re just swimming with the rest of the fish. You KNOW when you’re half-Arsing things; you’re foolish to think your people can’t see the same things. If you’re going to do something, put the right amount of effort in to do it REALLY well, not just so-so well.

C) FAILURE: The video examples come from a competition. When I started this path, I thought I was so-so strong, turns out – not so much. That thruster exercise doesn’t look that hard, but when you have to do 50 of them, with form, it adds up quickly (and yeah, it sucked). For me, my motivation comes in getting a little better each day. For that to occur, you have to fail throughout the process. It helps you see where to spend your time. (I failed a lot at these.) Over time, both leaders and employees fail at things organically. Celebrate it (like Improv). Figure out what could have gone better or differently. Correct the form, correct the approach. Apply it, test & repeat until you get the routine down, then repeat B and C til you’re ready for the next lesson.

D) REFLECTION: I look back where I started with this example. I give myself some self-fives when I need it, but mostly, I use my own examples to help others keep things in perspective. Everyone’s on a different journey with a different end point. Think about that. Your career aspirations and your employees probably aren’t. That’s OK. Help them reflect and achieve their goals, and they’ll give back in spades (effort, ambassadorship, results).

You can search for some of this stuff from your favorite browser, but at the end of the day, the story stays the same. If you want people to follow, you have to lead them on the journey. Demonstrate by example. These days, you can’t just give marching orders. Most employees want to be included on the trip and not just receive a MapQuest printout of where they’re going. Stop trying to find the shortcuts, and be methodical, sincere and invested in building relationships with the people you’re trying to lead. Show them how it’s done, teach them how to do it, then watch them succeed. Most of all, remember they are NOT you so meet them where their learning zone is must successful.

Sorry, not sorry, for the longer post.

I told you there's no short cut.

PS – Need a guide? Let’s talk about what that might look like for you and/or your company needs.