Leadership Lessons From a Fifth Grader

I am just back from HREvolution and heading into the office with a few lingering thoughts about leadership and being the real deal. As I process them, I'd like to share with you a post from last year about leadership from a fifth grader. Why can't adults just seem to get this right?

Leadership. Sometimes it's so quiet that if you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd miss it.

My daughter started middle school and has had so many opportunities in just the first 4 weeks. One of those was election for student council. So, with 9 students in her homeroom interested in the coveted leadership spot, each set out to create a poster and prepare a speech to solicit votes from their peers. Hers went like this:

"Hi, I'm running for Student Council. I am reliable and responsible and would like to represent you. I am also able to to do something kind of unusual. I can do this <insert freaky finger trick here.> I'm sorry, I just had to make sure you were awake. Like I said, I would like to represent you on the student council. I appreciate your vote and respect your decision. I also brought in some treats for your enjoyment."

<parent note: this line was overridden by the teacher and the Fudge Stripes were not mentioned or shared until after the vote!>

When my husband and I saw her later that day - she was psyched. She LOVED giving the speech and friends told her she was funny, she did not talk too fast and she seemed so comfortable. Giggling and unable to contain her excitement, she wanted to do it again - even though she did not get elected. 

"We're so proud of you for going for it" we said, "look at the wonderful experience you had." Playing with the kid we said, "At least you know you got one vote - your own."

"No," she said. "I had 2 votes and I did not vote for myself."

What?! Turns out she took her 2 votes and used 1 vote for friend A because she was nervous and did a great job on her speech and the other vote for friend B because she thought she'd be a great representative.

Wow, I thought, as I settled back and took a close look at the young girl sitting beside me. Mistaking my pride for doubt, she asked if that was the right thing to do.

Absolutely.

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The story doesn't end there.

A few days later she came home sad. It seems a friend told her she lost the election because she didn't vote for herself. <darn kids> I could see the struggle between for self and for others multiplied by middle school drama.

We talked about not knowing how the votes were distributed, remembering how psyched she was after the presentation and how good it felt to support her 2 friends. We talked about winning vs. being a good person and about how we were so very proud of her.

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Leaders bring out the best in others and, when it's all said and done, that's who people follow. 

I know leadership is not about pomp and circumstance yet I have to wonder, is there still a place for quiet leadership in the loud world we live in today?

The Look and Feel of Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is top of mind for all organizations right now.

I was preparing for my role on an employee engagement panel and my worlds of practicing HR professional, organizational HR leader and working supervisor collided in a kaleidoscope of thought. Usually my thoughts flow, but they were not flowing at that moment.

With all of the coined words, catch phrases, lists, commandments, principles out there on employee engagement, I fell into the trap of trying to come up my own original <and maybe even a bit disruptive> take on it all.

I had nothing. I was working too hard to sound smart - to be academic - and that's where it all went wrong for me.

Employee engagement is not academic. Yes, Gallup has a ton of research on employee engagement complete with proven interventions and SHRM produces their annual Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement report (spotlighted here) but your efforts will fail if you don't move beyond the data.

Employee engagement is about people. It's about employees choosing to work together to make a product, service or experience better.

There is a look to employee engagement that you can't miss.

From my experiences, employee engagement looks like the supply sergeant coming in on Christmas Day to run through the supply list "one more time" to be sure the deploying soldiers had everything they needed (and more) or the health care team that shifts their schedules over lunch to see a patient who thought his appointment was this week - not next.

There is a feel to employee engagement that you can't miss.

From my experiences, employee engagement feels like urgency. It feels like enthusiasm and being unstoppable. Barriers don't exist, possibility abounds and ideas flow. Produce now, ask questions later. You can't tell an engaged group what the answer to the question is because they come up with questions you haven't thought and the answers are yet to be discovered.

First line supervisors can enhance - or destroy - your efforts.

Yes, yes they can. Training and supporting your first line supervisors is key to any employee engagement effort. They can't deliver if they don't understand and they cannot do it on their own.

Employee engagements is more than 3 bullets and while there are things that work and things that don't, there is not one right way to do employee engagement in any particular organization, department or team.

It starts with a conversation and I will be joining Allan Benowitz, Sharlyn Lauby and Alexandra Levitt this afternoon discussing what engagement means from a business perspective, where to start, how social fits in - and more - at the SilkRoad Connection Global Users Event.

More to come!

Photo credit iStockphoto