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Peggy Grall - The Change Coach

Slowing the Turnover Carousel


Just a generation ago most people spent their entire careers at the same company. Today employees are likely to work for 5 different companies… before they’re 40.
The debate about why this is happening is rich, but for today, lets look at the “so what?”

This month we’ve been talking about legacies, your legacy, and challenging you with the question, “What do you want to be remembered for when you leave the workplace?” As difficult and disruptive as the turnover carousel is for companies, it also presents you with a perfect opportunity to build your legacy. You may be one of the only people at your company, or in your department, who has been around since the beginning and who fully understands the rationale behind key decisions and how core values really get played out.
Here are a couple of ways you can blend your desire to leave a legacy with your company’s need to “slow the turnover carousel.”

Tap Into Your Inner Historian – Capture your company’s history. Even if your company doesn’t have the most exciting story, tell it anyway. Every company is the story of people pooling their hopes and dreams and turning them into something bigger than themselves. Tell that story; it’s your story too. Then share it with new employees.
Be a Role Model –Just BE the employee your company needs right now; provide new employees a model to work from. The most powerful influencer you have is your life. Live your final working years in integrity.
Integrity: the state of being whole and undivided; the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
True personal integrity is rare and it’s what new employees need to experience the most.
We’d love to hear from you! Use the comments below to tell us about ways you’re “slowing the turnover carousel” at your company and securing your legacy.
Remember, you can change it…and we can help!

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Blacksmiths Do It; Carpenters Do It…Should You Be Too?


Throughout much of human history, formal education has been a difficult thing to come by for most people. It wasn’t until the 19th century, when public school systems and universities began to pop up, that formal degrees and diplomas signifying that a person has the skills and abilities to work in a particular profession became available.
Yet, there has always been a need to educate and pass on knowledge. Blacksmiths, carpenters and farmers have historically taken on apprentices, or taught their own children their craft so that knowledge and skills would continue on, and each community would ensure that there was at least one person who knew how to perform crucial functions.

The 21st century has spawned a generation that is one of the best educated in all of human history. But, as universities and high schools have taken over the role of formally educating and preparing students for the workplace, mentoring and apprenticeships have declined.
Education doesn’t equal experience. If you are a Boomer who is leaving the workforce soon, or beginning to prepare for your exit, you have an excellent opportunity to help secure your legacy by reviving the age-old tradition of passing skills and information along, by mentoring a younger colleague.
Do you have industry knowledge that could be helpful to university or high school students interested in your field? Look around you; are you in charge of training any of the newcomers to your company? Does your company offer any official opportunities to mentor? Right now, in your head, you possess one of the greatest assets for your company, for your industry, for your future…your experience! Don’t let that asset go to waste. Find a way to give back and help the next generation be as successful as you have been.
I’d love to hear from you. Use the comment section below to let me know how you’re giving back to the next generation. Are you mentoring with your company or professional affiliation? Are you passing on a family business to your children? Are you writing a book?
Remember, you can change…and we can help!

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Look For The Helpers


After the type of week we experienced last week, it would be easy to feel depressed about the direction humanity is headed. With man-made bombs intentionally going off in Boston, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and an unintentional bomb exploding in West, Texas all this violence and hate is enough to give you the sense that things are going very wrong. But, as is usually the case in life, focusing on these scenes of destruction really doesn’t give us the full picture. Even during all the turmoil there were people doing good things, helping total strangers, proving just how great people can be when they are motivated by a sense of purpose. As I watched the news coverage for the Boston Marathon bombing, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a famous quote by Mr. Rogers:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”  
Just minutes after the bombs went off you could see several people running toward the smoke, looking for ways to help. They were there, the helpers, proving that even at the darkest moments there are those shining a light.
Maybe your work environment, too, feels chaotic and filled with turmoil. Maybe you feel hopeless and depressed by the changes you see all around you. Perhaps you need to take a tip from Mr. Rogers and look for the helpers in your office, for those who are trying to make things better. If you don’t see any, then maybe it’s time for you to become a helper.
I would love to hear your stories of the helpers in your life. Use the comments below to tell me about a time when you, or someone you know, jumped headlong into a moment of crisis.
Remember, you can change…we can help!

more...

Look For The Helpers


After the type of week we experienced last week, it would be easy to feel depressed about the direction humanity is headed. With man-made bombs intentionally going off in Boston, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and an unintentional bomb exploding in West, Texas all this violence and hate is enough to give you the sense that things are going very wrong. But, as is usually the case in life, focusing on these scenes of destruction really doesn’t give us the full picture. Even during all the turmoil there were people doing good things, helping total strangers, proving just how great people can be when they are motivated by a sense of purpose. As I watched the news coverage for the Boston Marathon bombing, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a famous quote by Mr. Rogers:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”  
Just minutes after the bombs went off you could see several people running toward the smoke, looking for ways to help. They were there, the helpers, proving that even at the darkest moments there are those shining a light.
Maybe your work environment, too, feels chaotic and filled with turmoil. Maybe you feel hopeless and depressed by the changes you see all around you. Perhaps you need to take a tip from Mr. Rogers and look for the helpers in your office, for those who are trying to make things better. If you don’t see any, then maybe it’s time for you to become a helper.
I would love to hear your stories of the helpers in your life. Use the comments below to tell me about a time when you, or someone you know, jumped headlong into a moment of crisis.
Remember, you can change…we can help!

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Crisis Leadership and Shock Trauma


If you’ve ever been in one of my Leading Change workshops you know that I believe that business change environments dictate the style of leadership you should adopt. For instance, Business As Usual is best served by ‘Champion’ leaders, while Crisis situations require a more directive ‘Captain’ in charge. Traditional leadership models often fall short during intense organizational change.

Some interesting ideas about Crisis leadership have come from researchers at the US Army Research Institute who spent ten months observing the Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, Maryland, a world-renowned urban facility that treats more than 7,000 patients each year with severe, often life-threatening injuries. They wanted to find out which leadership strategies fared best for teams working in “highly dynamic and stressful situations”. The Shock Trauma Center was the perfect petri dish.

The center’s trauma teams are made up of three key leadership roles: the top-ranked position, held by the ‘Attending’ surgeon; the second-ranked ‘Fellow’ position, followed by the third-ranked ‘Admitting’ resident, with the players changing from day to day, week to week and month to month. A trauma team’s lifetime is short – about 15 to 60 minutes – with individual leaders coming and going while the leadership positions remain rigid, but flexible.

Researchers observed that the team’s active leadership role shifted frequently and fluidly among the three individuals. The researchers described what they saw as a, “paradoxical leadership system characterized both by rigid hierarchy and dynamic fluidity.” They watched junior members of the triad defer in times of their own uncertainty, and more senior leaders step up, only to step back again when the junior leader could handle the situation. This dance of leadership allowed for minimal errors, shared accountability and critical on-the-spotlearning and mentoring.
Is your company going through a time of intense change? Could this model work for you? Perhaps this ‘tag-team’, ‘relay-race’ approach to leadership is a best practice in the making.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear about your leadership roles and how they actually get played out in a crisis.

Remember, you can change it – we can help!

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What People Magazine Knows About Customer Experience Management

When Seal and Heidi Klum called it quits earlier this year, they reported having “grown apart’, a common theme among Hollywood power couples; they come together in a storm of romance, and beat a hasty retreat at the first sign of trouble. They gu…

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Don’t Interrupt the Kaiser

The great industrialist Henry Kaiser once said, “If your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.” He would know. From building giant warships during World War II to helping found one of the largest, most efficient healthcare providers in the wo…

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Harry Potter, Frankenstein, and Andrew Carnegie Walk Into a Bar

New ideas, new ways of doing things, new products, every day brings with it the chance for dynamic change. Staying ahead of that change requires hard work, intuition, a bit of luck, and most of all creativity. But, how can you be creative? Is there a…

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Changes Are Coming

With a view towards providing increasing value to my loyal readers, I’m excited to announce some changes that you’ll soon see happening with this blog space. Starting today, this blog will become a landing place for ideas, inspiration, and ad…

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Vive la Différence

Change initiatives bring out the best – and worst – in all of us. From senior leaders to front line staff. What others need from us to make their transition successful is often very different from what we would naturally do ourselves.We see t…

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Change Bytes 2012-05-14 09:04:00

Good to GreatJim Collins (Good to Great, Great by Choice) was a keynote presenter at the Women President’s Organization annual conference in Atlanta this past month. Mr. Collin’s books are always a good read, and he was in rare form presenting in …

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What Do You Expect?

I boarded Direct Air flight #5915 on March 5th for a flight to the sunny south, fully expecting that the airline would fly me safely home again 10 days later. Ah – no! Six days after my departure, the airline went bankrupt and I was left to fend for my…

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Is Today the Day?

Time is interesting; we watch it, occasionally we waste it, grab it while it flies past us, and sometimes we even kill it.The ancient Greeks had two words for time. The first, chronos, refers to chronological or sequential time. It’s the…

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I Am A Rock

I love sixty’s music! Yup, turn up the Rock & roll for me! I was listening to Classic Rock on TV today and heard Simon and Garfunkel singing, ‘I am a rock, I am an island’ That song takes me back to darker times in my youth, when I’d been hurt by s…

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What Matters Now?

I’m sitting on the porch of my mother’s home in Folsom California as I write this. My mother was eighty-six on her last birthday, and is slowly being swept into the sometimes present, sometimes gone experience that is dementia. For the past couple of y…

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Change Bytes 2011-08-30 09:59:00

What will matter?By Michael JosephsonReady of not, some day it will all come to an end.There will be no more sunrises, no days, no hours or minutes.All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone elseYour wealth, fame…

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Are you smarter than a 2 year old?

I’m the lucky Grandmother of three delightful granddaughters. Yeah…I started young, and it’s paying off now!Not being the traditional Grandmother of yester-year, who rocked on the porch with hoards of grandchildren at her feet, I only occasionally ge…

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A Story For You

I’ve just been perusing the papers, and the economic news is dismal – heck, most of the news is down right depressing right now. So, I’m going to tell you a story on this bright and breezy summer day, in case you need a smile.Picture Charlie Brown, the…

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How’s the Weather?

This weather we’re having is crazy, isn’t it? It seems like the whole world is being caught in tornados, hurricanes and floods of Biblical proportion. Here in Ontario, we’ve gone from freezing our petudies to flipping burgers on the Bar-B-Q overnight. …

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What Are You Afraid Of?

On March 11th an earthquake of 7.2 magnitude rocked the Tokyo area, followed by a tsunami of Biblical proportions, and just this past week ‘super tornados’ (966 in the Month of April to be exact) rained down destruction on southern …

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Impression Management and Role Transition – Guest Post by Diane Craig

Charismatic leaders operate in a state of continuous evolution and change. New roles, new positions, new corporations: change can take many forms. These leaders are men and women with executive presence — and they really get around. By definition, ch…

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There’s Wisdom in Crowds

Canadians will head to the polls, in a few weeks, to elect a new leader, or reaffirm the one we have, and south of the border CNN is already scampering after any whiff of 2012 election gossip. Both countries seem to be laboring under the same misconcep…

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Let’s Talk About Power

In the past few weeks, unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve been witness to the single largest turnover of power the modern world has ever seen. Not since the defeat of Hitler have we witnessed dictators humbled in such dramatic ways. Just ask Z…

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