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Improving Sales Performance
Focused on Talent: Engagement with Kate Rehling and Deborah Fulghum
In this episode, we’re once again consulting the latest Talent Magazine by The Center for Sales Strategy.
Today, we’re focusing on Engagement with Kate Rehling and Deborah Fulghum joining Matt to help break it all down.
Kate and Deborah both provide super valuable insights, like:
- How a company culture is like a garden. If you regularly tend to it, what you plant will flourish. If you don’t, weeds will start sprouting in no time.
- Why the success of you organization doesn’t depend on WHERE you work but HOW your work
- And, finally, why engagement and satisfaction are in no way the same thing
LINKS:
The 2023 Talent Magazine
ENGAGE 2023: The Company Culture Report
Kate Rehling
Deborah Fulghum
Matt Sunshine
The Center for Sales Strategy
Welcome to Improving Sales Performance, a podcast highlighting tips and insights aimed at helping sales organizations realize, and maybe even exceed, their goals. Here we chat with thought leaders, experts and gurus who have years of sales experience from a wide range of industries. I'm your host, matt Sunshine, ceo at the Center for Sales Strategy, a sales performance consulting company. In this episode, we're once again consulting the latest talent magazine from the Center for Sales Strategy. Today we're focusing on engagement, with Kate Reiling and Deb Folgum joining me to help break it all down.
Matt Sunshine:Kate and Deb both provide super valuable insights like how a company culture is like a garden If you regularly tend to it, what you plant will flourish and if you don't, weeds will start sprouting in no time at all. And why the success of the organization doesn't depend on where you work, but how you work. And, finally, why engagement and satisfaction are in no way the same thing. With that, let's jump into the conversation. All right, so I'll throw this first question out to either one of you. But, deb, why don't you plan on responding first? What are some of the biggest trends when it comes to engagement, any major or significant areas of focus that you seem to be passionate about right now?
Deborah Fulghum:Great question. There's two, that there's all of them staying out to me, but two in particular. The first is I think more companies are being, and will be, intentional about their culture. It's not just something they say, or that we have a culture. Everybody has a culture, right, is it? The culture you want to have is what we need, and that's where the intentionality comes in.
Deborah Fulghum:I think it's important that companies have to, that they need to focus on creating a good culture, and we are finding that so many companies are actually adding it as a line item to their budgets to make it a priority, which I think is huge, because if we make it a line item now, we're saying this is important. If we just say it's important, then it may not be. I think that leaders are looking to give employees clear direction and if they're intentional about that and people feel like it can be part of something bigger, then great things will begin to happen for this company. So the intentional culture is one. The second for me, and actually it may even be the first, is that people first culture.
Deborah Fulghum:I love companies that are people first-minded. The relationship employees have with their leaders is critical to success. We all talk about this all the time that people don't lead companies. They lead managers right. So if we are people first, we know that we are part of something bigger than just being a cog in the wheel for a company, and I think that building strong relationships is important. So those are the two that I'd say, but I'm sure Kate has another. She came out there.
Kate Rehling:The intentional cultures is really one of my favorite, and we use the example of a garden with up your culture. So if you have a garden outside, you could choose to tend to it and it could be beautiful and fruitful, or you could just choose to neglect it and it could be full of weeds. Either way, it's still there and either way, your culture is still there. One of my favorite new trends is the on-site is the new off-site trend, and it has a lot to do with being intentional. So with so many people still working remote in hybrid it's, how are you getting people into the office, explaining why you're bringing them there, re-energizing them, convincing them? You should be here today. You're here for a reason, so it's interesting how the tables have turned a little bit with that.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, I've heard people call it an on-site now too. That's interesting, yeah, and I like that. All right, kate, this one's coming specifically to you in this year's Talent Magazine, which, by the way, if people watching this or listening this haven't haven't seen the Talent Magazine yet, they really need to get it, and we'll have a link in the show notes that people can go to it and grab it. There's digital copy. There's no charge for that. We just really want to get it out there.
Matt Sunshine:But in the Talent Magazine, you help create a piece, write a piece that covered some of the major takeaways from the Engage 2023 report and, just for everyone's listening's sake, of bringing everyone up to speed, the Engage 2023 is a company culture report put together by the division of the Center for Sales Strategy called Up your Culture, focusing on company culture and employee engagement. So tell us a little bit about that piece. Let me frame it for you this way. I know that we could spend and we were joking before we started there we could spend multiple episodes, hours and hours and hours of diving into the report alone and, in fact, there will be an entire podcast series to covering the Engage 2023 on the Up your Culture podcast, the Culture Over Coffee that everyone listening. This should absolutely check out. But what are some of the major stories, the headlines that emerge from this year's report when it comes to engagement, and where does it look like companies should dedicate more of their time and effort?
Kate Rehling:I did spend hours and hours and hours delving into the top.
Matt Sunshine:Yes we did.
Kate Rehling:One of my biggest takeaways from this year's report was core values, and a company's core values really define how people do things around there. So how do they interact with others, how do they collaborate and work together, how do they interact with clients and with prospects as well? So essentially, I call them the rules of the game, and everyone really should be aware of a company's core values and what the core values really mean, so that expectations and behaviors can be in alignment. And what we found out in Engage 2023 was 70% of managers can articulate their company's core values. So, surface level, that's a C right, that's a passing grade. 70%, but that's not great. That means 30% of leaders aren't aware of their company's core values. It should be. 100% of leaders should be aware of their company's core values and what they mean. And then, on the other side of that, 56% of employees reported they either couldn't recite their company's core values or they weren't aware that their company even had them in the first place. And so, just to put that into perspective, I know Pickleball right now is super popular.
Kate Rehling:I've never played Pickleball, so that would be like throwing me onto a Pickleball court giving me a racket. Is that what you play with. I'm not sure You're saying, hey, here you go, have fun. I would think wait a minute. What are the roles of the game? How do I play? I have no idea what's going on here. I could never be engaged in that game if I don't know those things. And that's not knowing what your core values are. It's really, really critical. And then 61% of people don't believe their organizations hire people who embody their core values. So if your core values integrity and you're a hiring manager, you're interviewing someone and you say, wait a minute, I think they lied on their resume, you do a little bit of digging, you find out they actually did lie on their resume, but I spent a lot of time with them, I've invested my time. I think they would be all right. Let's go ahead and bring them on board. That's a direct violation of your core values and people are seeing that within the companies they're working in.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, that core value. In other podcasts that we've done this season, the conversation of core values continues to come up again and again and again and the point has been made that too often there are not intentional core values. I mean, I guess you show what your core values are by the way you act, but you also it's good to call them out and say these are our core values and so many companies don't have that. And to the point where one leader will say, well, our core values are this, this and this, but if you ask five other people, they don't know that.
Kate Rehling:No, no, they're just words on the wall. Right, We've all seen it in people's teams background. I hear integrity and collaboration back there, but what does that really mean? And I actually I heard a quote earlier this week from Reed Hastings, who was the co-founder of Netflix, and I wanted to share it with you guys. He said the actual company values, as opposed to the nice sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted or let go. I thought that was really good.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, true, true, true. All right, kate, this one's going to come to you first. So 32% of employees say that they have quit a job due to being forced to physically be in an office setting. That, right there, was a little shocking to me, but 32% of US employees say that they've quit a job due to being forced to physically be in an office setting. You wrote an article titled Don't Confuse being in the Office with Culture that talks about this exact issue. So here's the question how should companies approach settling on the right sort of hybrid, remote or in-office schedule that best supports their employees' preference? And, with the rise of remote work and virtual teams and all the technologies, how can organizations maintain that high level of employee engagement and be successful in the digital world and workplace?
Kate Rehling:Yeah, I'll take the first part of your question and, I really think, taking time to sit down and define why your company specifically needs to have people together in the office. I think it's important to have a very, very candid conversation with yourself, with your managers, with your top level leaders. Why do we need people together? What happens when people aren't always together? And then, what do our employees prefer and, by the way, engage 2023 said 86% of people prefer either hybrid or remote. And then, once you've had that, I think about the tasks your team has to accomplish. And then, which tasks do you wanna make sure people are doing in the office? So, maybe it's because you want people physically together, maybe they need more of your direct oversight, maybe they need to be together for collaboration purposes, whatever it may be. Identify those tasks, how long they'll take, and set the standard. These are the things that should be completed in the office, and not only that, but here's why. And get that buy-in from people. And, taking that one step further, maintaining accountability. I've spoken with a lot of managers who have set a standard. You're coming in every Tuesday and Thursday. Well, so, and so doesn't always come in every Tuesday and Thursday, and once you let somebody through, that, it starts the domino effect and people have less buy-in. So I think that's really important.
Kate Rehling:And then the second part of your question, matt the success of your culture doesn't depend on your location. It depends on you as a leader. And, interestingly enough, we found that hybrid employees are more connected to their organization's culture than those in the office full-time. And that goes back to what you said at the very beginning of this episode. It's because when your people aren't together physically, you're forced to be more intentional to maintain that culture. So you're not around the water cooler inspiring people, but you are inspiring people instead to rally around an organization's purpose statement, their mission, their why. It's really working to be more intentional in that way.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, you know, what's interesting is that a lot of leaders they think by being vague about all of this is the right answer. They think by saying things like well, I'm just gonna let them figure it out or I'm gonna let them do whatever they wanna do. And what they mean by that is that they don't wanna be heavy-handed, they don't wanna tell people what's right or what's wrong. They what they'll say they are saying is well, I trust people will make the right decision for their circumstance. And that, on face value, seems pretty nice, but it kind of backfires 100% of the time, like, if people want rules dead, you're shaking.
Deborah Fulghum:Yeah, people need rules. And it's funny because Kate and I were having this conversation with some other people this morning about a leader who was taking it the very opposite of what you're saying. She was almost demanding that people be in the office and the funny and interesting part of that was the people she was demanding this of were remote before. Remote was cool, right. So she's changing the rules and this person wants to quit, or maybe had quit I can't remember, kate, if she had quit or not.
Kate Rehling:I think she'd already actually quit.
Deborah Fulghum:yeah, yeah because you're changing the rules, you're not telling me why. There's no purpose for me to be in. To add on to what Kate was saying, if you're gonna have me come in the office Tuesdays, then what are we doing? That's different from what I could be doing at home Because we have so many people who, you know, you think about your commute, the time you put into that, getting ready for work, commuting. How much more productive can you be working remote? I mean, our company is 100% remote.
Deborah Fulghum:I probably put in more hours than someone who goes into an office because I have my full focus on getting things done and accomplished and I'm finding that there's no one riding the middle. There's somebody on the demanding side and someone on the lenient side. But to your point, there should be rules of the game because people wanna know, just like pickleball, what are the rules so I can do it. Just give me the parameters. I must put bumpers up on my bowling lane so I know what to do and what to expect. But you know, the one thing we talk about often in, whether it's talent or culture, it's people wanna know why. It's not just a two-year-old who says that all the time, why, why, why. But adults think it too. So take the time to explain why you need to come in the office, why it's important what we're gonna do, how it develops a team that we're gonna brainstorm together. I think those are vital pieces when you ask people to come in.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, and just piggybacking on that, I think it is important to have an expert outsider that can help you to think through the decision-making process, the ramifications of the decisions. I wouldn't wanna go it alone right now. Right, absolutely Right. Bringing in an expert outsider is just so valuable in helping to make those really smart decisions, Because you can't see it when you're in it. Right, I truly believe, for the most part at least. Maybe I'm a little naive, but I wanna believe that people have the best intentions, no matter what they're doing, that they have the best intentions, Whether it's coming off the right way or not. Is that's where that expert outsider is so critical?
Deborah Fulghum:I agree, I think a sounding word for anybody is critical Get your insight from your people, from consultants, from other people.
Kate Rehling:to make before you make a decision is don't make a rash decision and I think too often decisions are made because, well, that's what we've always done. Why wouldn't we still do it that way?
Matt Sunshine:So having somebody to push back and ask you open-ended questions, to really uncover why behind it and what truly is best, is so smart Most decisions are made, because it's either that's the way we've always done it or the last thing that happened to impact them before the decision had to be made has a big influence on what decision gets made. Just might not be the most important or the most often, it just happened to be the most recent and so it gets, so let's use this as a segue. Deb, let me come to you on this one. In your case study, you wrote a case study in the Talent Magazine where you covered how cox media in this case, because they are the case study went about increasing their employee engagement. What are some of the tactics and strategies that they adopted to accomplish this outcome?
Deborah Fulghum:You know I love that cox media and this is gonna be crazy, but I love that cox media worked with upper culture during the pandemic and during a trend where we have seen employee engagement. According to Gallup, employee engagement's gone down across the globe. So to be working with a company that is very intentional about being a people-first company and making sure that they have a plan of attack, a plan of action again back to that intentional culture to make sure that they keep their people engaged even when times are tough, what we found is, across the board, their efforts paid off. With the engagement survey we saw growth from the beginning to the end. And you know, when we do engagement surveys, it's just a temperature check, because we all know that your culture isn't something that's done after an engagement survey Well, we're done, we don't have to do anything else, we have to keep going. So it's just a temperature check to say, okay, what's going well, what's our opportunity to get better? That's really what it's about. We worked with them on the four engagement elevators and that's a proven focus that we know really moves the needle on engagement. We focus on shared mission, people development, valued voice and earned trust and we give them tools in each of these elevators. But I will tell you two of the tools that we use with them that they raved about when we asked what did you take away? What were the greatest things you learned in your journey with us?
Deborah Fulghum:Growth guides, one of the first things, and that's what we talk about in the people development. You know, managing people by the platinum rule, not the golden rule. We want to manage people by how they want to be managed. What are their goals, what are their motivations? How do they want to be more involved in the company? We have to ask right. We have to stop and ask. We can't assume we know what they want.
Deborah Fulghum:Second, user guides. Oh my gosh, people say they cannot live without those. I think user guides that's in the valued voice elevator. We spend time there. It really helps break down the barriers between departments and the silos because we know how to best work with each other. We may get so used to working with one department. We don't know how somebody else is gonna react and how they work. And if we can look at a user guide, we can figure out. How do they like to communicate? What drives them nuts? What should I stay away from? What should I do? It just is a very good tool to give us an idea of how to bring out the best in people. It takes a guesswork out, which I think is really cool, but those two tools, those you know they took away many things, but those are two things they've said they cannot live without and they will continue to use for years to come.
Matt Sunshine:So Remind just restate that there are four sections.
Deborah Fulghum:Four elevators.
Matt Sunshine:Four elevators, and what are they?
Deborah Fulghum:Shared mission. That's where we really rally around. What are we all here to do? What are our core values? And back to what? Something Kate said. This takes us very back to our beginning conversation. What's our intention? What are we here to do? Why are we all working so hard and how can I be involved? That's a shared mission and if I can put my hands on that big rock and know that, I mean we think we tell the story all the time, that story of when JFK walk through you know NASA and said you know to the janitor. So what's going on here is we're putting a man on the moon. He, he felt like my job is so important and what I do is helping those people get that man on the moon. He was a part of that bigger mission. That's what shared missions about.
Matt Sunshine:So shared mission, value voice people development is our second element.
Deborah Fulghum:Pay attention to people and what gets them going. What is that really? That platinum rule? How do they want to be treated, not how you want to be treated? And then valued voice is making sure. If we have valued voice, we're more apt to share ideas, create ideas, have psychological safety to be able to not be put down with anything we have to say and then earn. Trust is the last elevator, and you know it's there for a reason because we can't demand trust. We have to earn it. We have to live by our core values. Like Kate said, we can't just have them be words on the wall. It has to be who we are authentically and if people believe that, they want to be part of that and they're more engaged.
Matt Sunshine:Perfect, all right. So On the same, on this bigger topic of engagement and, kate, maybe I'll come to you first on this one in the engagement take away section of the magazine there's, there's the phrase satisfaction and engagement are not the same thing, right? And I've heard, I've heard this described before. So on how they're different. So can you first explain what is the difference between the two? And second, why is understanding that so important?
Kate Rehling:Yeah, engagement and satisfaction are not the same thing. We've all walked into a department store and seen two people working there. Maybe they're having a funny conversation and laughing to each other. They probably even have their phones out and they're texting. They're satisfied. That's great. They're happy. They're not helping me as a customer, but they're satisfied. Engagement is an emotional commitment and willingness to give your best at work. It's being all in, so someone coming up to you and really understanding my purpose here is to help you, to help you get what you want. I'm engaged, I'm bought in, so to very, very different things. You can have a lot of satisfied employees, but if they're not engaged, they're not helping you move forward, they're not committed to the bigger mission of your organization. They're not driving your success.
Matt Sunshine:Makes total sense and I can see why there is a difference and why it's important to understand the difference. Deb, anything else to add?
Deborah Fulghum:Yeah, I'll say that we talk about this as well. I think so many people have an image in their mind of what culture is, and they're not right. They think culture is what Google did Ping-pong tables, baseball tables, free lunches, dry cleaning and these are nice perks but that's not a culture. Culture is who are we? What do we represent? How do we get our work done? How can you be a part of that? Knowing about you as a person and having you want to be a part of that and how you're kind of fulfilling your dreams and training you so you can be a part of that. So it's not fun and games are nice, but that's not what a culture is, and I think that's the sooner people realize that, the more that I think it's a different approach. You know, we just have to think. Let's be intentional about moving the needle with our people. So they are engaged.
Kate Rehling:I don't want to play ping pong as an employee with a leader who doesn't listen to my ideas and laughs at me when I bring something new to him.
Matt Sunshine:I remember years ago we, when we when we shot our, when we created our culture video for the Center for Sales Strategy and we had so many people call us and clients reach out and say, can you help us make a culture video? And they're like it's not about the video.
Deborah Fulghum:Right.
Matt Sunshine:It wasn't saved. The video is nice, but it's not about the video. It's about actually having that, that culture and that engagement. Alright, last question for both of you. Deb will come to you first and then Kate will let you wrap it up. If there is one piece of advice that you could give when it comes to the engagement of employees, what would that be? So think about this way. What is an actionable takeaway that anyone listening to this might might be able to use? That would help them to improve their engagement.
Deborah Fulghum:Yeah, I'd say listen to your people. Set aside time specifically to listen to your people, and I don't mean as a group, I mean individually, and it's not a one on one where you're giving, you're looking at their activity or what they're working on. It's getting to know them as a person what are their dreams, what are their goals, what are their ideas Because you might learn something. And I think the thing about listening and Kate and I talk about this all the time Listening is not and you don't listen with intent to answer or to think about your next question.
Deborah Fulghum:It's listening to really what somebody is saying and then formulating a response based on tell me more, right? So it's not that you want to compare, say we've done that before, just tell me your thinking. So keeping that conversation alive is important. And also I'm going to add one more sorry I think feedback to people is really important. I'm not sure that people give the right amount of feedback on performance to people and I think that that needs to be something that it's almost like we've talked about this before. If you have 10 pennies in your pocket, your right pocket, make it a goal to get all those 10 pennies to your left pocket and each time you give praise or feedback to someone, put the move the coin over. Just be intentional about it. Make sure you're doing it. Don't think people know because they don't.
Matt Sunshine:Okay.
Kate Rehling:Debbie, you took mine with the feedback I would say. I would say set an actionable goal to get a gauge on your current engagement level, because you you don't know and you can't grow if you don't know where you're at right now. I think it's Elisa from our team who says what gets measured gets done, so measure where you're at right now. That could be using a culture and engagement survey, like we do. You could come up with your, your own unique way to kind of gauge how people are feeling, but make sure to get a pulse on where everything's at, where everyone's at, so that you can set some actionable goals and strategies to improve your culture and engagement level moving forward.
Matt Sunshine:I've heard it said another way, that if you're not committed to growing and improving your engagement, you are not growing or improving your engagement.
Matt Sunshine:Very well said you're not doing it and that might not matter to you, but, boy, it sure does matter to the people that work for the organization and, ultimately, the people that work for the organization drive the performance. Deb, kate, cannot thank you enough for joining us and everyone listening or watching. Thank you for listening in on our conversation. It's been great. If you want to connect with Deb or with Kate, best way to do that is on LinkedIn and we'll have links to their their profiles in the show notes so you can grab them there. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your day and check out and be on the lookout for the next episode of the improving sales performance podcast. This has been improving sales performance. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, join us every week by clicking the subscribe button For more on the topics covered in the show. Visit our website, the center for sales strategy dot com. There you can find helpful resources and content aimed at improving your sales performance.
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