Fostering a Culture of Engagement is Key to Combating Employee Disengagement and Quiet Quitting

Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. This is Jeffrey m Roach, cohost of the holistic leadership podcast, and we are so, excited to have with us today Tom Willis, a cofounder and partner. Tom Willis believes we are all born with unlimited potential. As a former classroom teacher, he also believes in the power of lifelong learning. These beliefs have shaped his primary goal in life, helping others uncover their talents so they can reach their potential. Prior to joining Phoenix, he had the honor of serving as CEO for Cornerstone, a consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and an engineer with the Intel Corporation. Along the way, Tom was fortunate to earn degrees from the University of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame, his MBA. Tom is also the author of The Great Engagement, How CEOs Create Exceptional Cultures. Tom, it's so wonderful to have you here and and, obviously, such an important topic, that's getting discussed globally here in the United States in in many, many different ways. So thankful to have you here on the show. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Excited to talk about it. So I wanna start obviously with your book. You know, you you specifically as people will go out and check the book out, specifically crossed off, you know, the great resignation part, which was very visual and and replaced the word resignation with engagement. On all your experience of which you've had a a very impactful, leadership career, I wanna understand, you know, why is it that you feel we shouldn't be necessarily focusing as much on that resignation part, but really more importantly on the engagement aspect? Yeah. Well, we think that in simple terms, that engagement is the antidote to the resignation that's happening. And a lot of the resignation is obvious. People quit their jobs, but most of it is actually below the surface. It's people quiet, quitting, and sort of quitting and staying, which is the most nefarious of all, you know, just sticking around for a paycheck. Just a few weeks ago, Gallup released their latest engagement survey results. They've been doing this for decades, and I think they do a really nice job. You could argue about some of the questions and sort of what's our true measure of engagement, but let's set that aside for a second and just focus on the the core point here that we're on eleven year low. Eleven year low, that our engagement across this country is about thirty percent, thirty percent. And we don't even talk about it. We don't even realize, like, how pathetically sad that is that we've got seventy percent of our folks who were just kinda checked out, and we don't treat it like it's it's that big of a deal. And so to me, it's just sad, frankly, like, that we have that many people kinda living a disengaged life. And work is life, by the way. I'm not a big fan of work life balance. That it's all work. It all work is life, and and part of life is work. But that a huge chunk of our time is in the workplace, and yet people are pretty much checked out. And so to me, we're we're at a really critical time as leaders that we've gotta look in the mirror and figure out what we're gonna do about this. You know, it's such an interesting point to to your to your, highlight there that we're at eleven years. I was just recently at a fascinating two day, program called the Culture Impact Lab and, was actually hosted by an organization called Call for Culture. And, Angela Howard, their founder, formed this to your exact point to really focus on how do we as leaders in all different types of organizations, whether we're in the startup space, whether we're in a corporate space, whether we're in a more traditional space. How can we all be champions of improving culture and improving engagement? But, it's so interesting though. Right? Because what we know based on this data too is that people leave generally are not leaving the job. They're leaving because of a bad leader or a bad manager. And so I'm curious in, you know, all the work that you've done, all the research you've done, you know, certainly in preparing and then writing the book, what would you say organizations and leaders need to be paying more attention to as part of that looking in the mirror so that they're really doing a better job of taking care of and supporting their people? Yeah. Well, in in one way, it's really simple. It's not easy. It's really simple. It starts with the leader. Typically, the CEO, the school superintendent, the the president of the nonprofit maybe, whoever's at the top, looking in the mirror, like I said, and saying, am I willing to continue to accept this, or am I committed to making a different future happen? And if you're not committed, then don't don't start. It's it's gonna take hard work, frankly, a lot of hard work. But it starts with just a really simple commitment to yourself and then to your team and maybe to your board that I'm no longer willing to accept whether it's twenty percent or thirty percent or forty percent wherever you are in that spectrum. I'm no longer willing to accept that, and I'm gonna work like hell to make a different future happen. And then from there, there's lots of things to do that we can talk about, but it begins with the simple premise that and everyone's probably heard this idea that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Well, we actually coined the idea that culture eats everything from breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So if you're a CEO, the the thing that, in our opinion, you should be focused on more than anything else is culture. It is the biggest game changer. It's the biggest way to drive change and drive improvement is by focusing on culture. If you do nothing else, work on creating a more engaging and more fulfilling culture and the results, whether it's financial, whether it's the softer skills, whether it's outcomes for your patients or the outcomes for the community that you serve or the students that you serve, those things will follow. But first, you gotta start with this commitment to I'm gonna make it better. You know, it's it's an interesting point that you bring up there, and I always tell, you know, individuals I mean, coming up in health care, I've seen some very interesting CEOs, and I've had, you know, had one CEO earlier in my career to your point who owned it. She truly believed that it was her role to set the tone and to help lead the culture that she thought was most important for the organization. But she didn't do it from a top down approach. She did it really from more of a bottom up approach, meaning she, you know, she spent more time with the team at all levels of the organization than she even did with the executive team. And I regularly, you know, got to experience this with her, She was my mentor for five years, and I witnessed her never forget her humble beginnings as a nurse. She would put those scrubs on and get right back in there and help them. But she used that as her opportunity to work alongside them and also be aware of the challenges and opportunities that were present. I'm curious, you know, I'm sure in your work, you've identified organizations that have really kinda defined this, leaders that may have defined this. Are there any examples that you can point to so when leaders hear this, they can look at these examples, to kinda say, hey. Let me learn from it and and see. So examples of where, culture has improved because of their their commitment to making it better? Yep. Well, yeah, I mean, we've been doing this work for almost thirty five years around, the United States and into Europe. And so we've got several hundred, if not thousands, of examples at this point. And we're pretty unique in that we actually promise results, which most folks kind of in this this space, I e, leadership development space, don't do. So that's good because it puts our butt on the line for producing results, because we're committed to making results happen. We don't wanna we don't wanna work for free forever if we don't produce results we're looking to produce. So we get right at it and make things happen pretty quickly. And, typically, it's, it's about a five month engagement. So if you go on our website, phoenix perform dot com, and and check out the proof tab, There's tons of examples out there, tons of, case studies from different industries, health care, education, etcetera. And there there's many others that that we could connect folks to. And, back to Gallup, you know, Gallup does does similar results. They'll put up sort of results on organizations that are doing quite well. And at the high end of their spectrum, instead of seventy percent disengaged, they have, co companies that they highlight who are only thirty percent disengaged. Yes. So the exact opposite. And I think they call them their exceptional, their exceptional category, basically. So they've got tons of examples as well out there. I wanna ask you about, you know, usually when we talk about these topics of culture, we also will talk about, you know, the importance of a sense of belonging. In your work, how important have you found that to be? Where, you know, individuals can truly feel that they can be who they are in the workplace? Because to your point, we spend more time in the workplace than we do, you know, even at times with our own family. And and in this world, you know, where people are working virtually and remotely and hybrid and and you name it, there's even more of that. Right? And so I'm just curious about your thoughts there and and what you maybe have experienced in this work. Yeah. And belonging is one of those, you know, thousand pound words that means different things to different people. And so I always like to define a word before we start talking about it to to see if we can get alignment on it. So, in our our way of thinking, belonging is is just that. It's just a simple idea that I can speak up. You know, I can I'm I'm able to share my perspective without any fear of retribution or ridicule or any sort of aftermath. And it doesn't mean that my idea is always accepted, doesn't mean that people agree with me, but I'm able to contribute. And so, in Google's terms, they would they'll call a lot of that psychological safety. Mhmm. The challenge is that we've kind of overemphasized psychological safety in my opinion. When we put the onus completely on the organization or the leader to create psychological safety, Well, that's that's sort of one side. You need both sides. You need psychological courage on the other side. You need people to muster courage to speak up because it does take courage to speak up, especially in a meeting if your boss is in the room or your boss's boss is in the room that we need to create the safe space, so people can contribute and and feel like they belong. But we also need people to be willing to step up and to to exercise psychological courage. And when you can get both of those balanced and both of those sort of fire in all cylinders, it's amazing how powerful teams are. And that's really at the heart of what we do, frankly, is helping teams have breakthrough conversations, that they they're able to now do that going forward without really that big of a deal. I appreciate how you you highlighted that, and I like the idea of that psychological courage. You know, I look back in my career early on, I had a senior vice president who I always tell this story, always had a knack of making people feel comfortable. And even at times, he would challenge sort of their, you know, whether it was their imposter syndrome or their lack of self confidence to speak up. But he always did it in such a wonderful kind of thoughtful way. And so I can always remember in meetings, he would always say, you know, health care is the type of place where we're all called to serve. Whether you're somebody who's cleaning the facility, serving the food at the facility, greeting people at the front desk, or you're the surgeon or the nurse and so on. We're all here to serve. And he and he would always say after that, he would say, but that means we also have to speak up on what and how we're gonna serve. And so he would regularly make sure if we didn't leave if we were in a room, everyone had to speak up. Everyone had to offer something. He always just had that about him. But I noticed to your earlier point that that was not the case with some of the other leaders in the same organization. People people wouldn't speak up, in those meetings. They just you know, they didn't necessarily feel they could. And so I can remember we started to unpack that. What was it about them that wasn't allowing for it? And I was actually one that would go to to this senior vice president I'm calling and referencing and say, did you notice that? And he said, I'm glad you noticed it. And so we would start to really unpack that because there was definitely some element there where, they were not necessarily creating that culture. And at the same time, what was it on the other end that could be done, to make it different? And so I appreciate the context and and, you know, how you approach that. I wanna ask you about, you know, this engagement. Right? To your point, Gallup has done this, you know, for quite some time. I know some of the larger organizations really focus a lot on their employee engagement. They issue, you know, once a month or or, you know, regular cadence of employee engagement surveys. But there's been a lot of discussion particularly lately around, are they truly anonymous? Are you really gonna answer it if you don't feel connected, or safe, in that organization? You know, anything you wanna share there based on the experiences that you've had. Yeah. I'll be I'll be a little provocative here and say that surveys are useless. Now having said that, we use them. Surveys, at best, will get the conversation going, but the real gold is in the conversation. Yep. It's in the ability to facilitate and to get people talking about what's really going on behind the scenes because you're never gonna get an accurate representation for all the reasons you just mentioned. In fact, this whole fascination with net promoter scores, you know, that that everyone seems to be bringing on, if you really still don't think about it, it doesn't measure what it pretends to measure. The promoter is someone who's literally gonna say, hey. Go hire these people because they're great. But a survey can't do that. A survey basically measures how much they like you. Sort of this this sort of generic, I like them, so I'm gonna give them a nine or a ten. It doesn't actually measure, like, how many people are willing to go out and actually sort of sell on your behalf, basically. That's a whole different ballgame. And so even there, this sort of darling of surveys lately is not really a true effective measure. So our advice is always do surveys by all means. Don't overdo them and use them. Make sure to have a discussion about them, Create that safe space so that people I don't mean safe space like, Nirvana because that doesn't exist. But do your best to create a space where people can speak as freely as humanly possible, which is never a hundred percent, frankly. But it's the closer to a hundred percent you get, the better. And just talk and ask questions. Get curious. You know? Talk about what's behind this. You know? People said that in general, we're not doing very well, at this area. It seems like we got a lot of gossip going on. Now what's going on? And and find out what's behind that answer. Find out what's really at the root of that answer, and that's where you can find the gold is when you get down to that root cause level. You know, earlier on, you you highlighted, you know, right away the important role of the CEO. I wanna ask you, though. I know in your book, you also do talk about how disengagement impacts productivity and profitability. I wanna ask you about in your experiences, how do you I mean, yes, the profitability piece, but even on profitability, sometimes it can be hard to measure. How do you get the CFOs, to buy into this and and also make this an important part, of their work? Because ultimately, I often have said that I that I feel like so much onus for culture and engagement is put on human resources, or is put on organizational development. And at the end of the day, if the CEO and the whole executive team aren't supporting them in owning it, it's as if they're on an island, because generally, a lot of employees also don't tend to care that much for human resources depending on their experiences, depending on benefit issues, you know, you name it. And so we've got a whole host of those dynamics too. Thoughts on on that and what you've seen work? How much time do we have? You just asked, like, seventy two questions. They're all really good and layered and layered and nuanced and nuanced. You know, when I worked for Intel I don't know if they still do this, but they they refused to have a director of safety because everybody's job was safety. It wasn't one person's job. So it's a bit lunacy to assign somebody the job of culture, in my opinion. Lots of organizations do it, but I think it's crazy. Because you can't have one person be responsible for culture. It doesn't make any sense. Now, some organizations are doing it well. I want I don't want to dismiss that. That some people have the gift, the ability to facilitate more productive ways of moving the culture forward, which is great. Because at the end day, every single employee is a cultural ambassador. So they own the culture. And every single day, you make hundreds of converse decisions, conversations, and every single time, you're either adding to the culture or you're detracting from it. This is not my original thought, by the way. This is from Matthew Kelly, one of my favorite authors. Mhmm. And he talks about how every single action is either an additive to the culture or a detraction. If you're talking about somebody and trying to figure out how to help them and you really genuinely want to help them, that's additive. If you're talking about somebody because you just want to talk about them, that's subtracting from the culture because you're gaslighting. So we gotta figure out a way, and we have, to really create this idea that everybody needs to own the culture and make it better. Now the whole HR thing, typically, within organizations, there's kinda two levels of HR. There's there's a tactical. We gotta process payroll. We gotta take care of benefits. We gotta process all the tactics. Right? And then there's a strategic level HR. So the answer depends on where where organization falls and how big they are. But, typically, you need to have somebody who's strategic and who gets that they do not own the culture. But most of them I shouldn't say that. Many of them have have egos like they all do, and so they think that the culture is theirs. Well, you've already lost the battle. If you think that the culture is yours, you are you are destined to failure, in my opinion, and we've got lots of proof to to support that. At the end of the day, to to get kinda more simplify this, we actually don't engage with the client unless the CEO hires us. That's how strongly we feel about it. Unless the CEO hires us, we will not do it because we know that as the CEO goes, so goes the culture, period. That's that's such an interesting phenomenon, and I think it it it speaks volumes to to exactly what you're getting at. Right? I know you and I earlier were also talking about the important role of the board. Obviously, governance is a very interesting complex process. But in my career, I can look back and, you know, to our earlier conversation, I was referencing my first CEO who who I adore to this day for all that she did for me, but also what I saw phenomenal leadership abilities and characteristics. But I saw her with one board chair who also was in total alignment, and then I saw her with with another board chair that ultimately led to her retirement. And I saw, you know, one was a bank CEO who cared deeply about culture, had phenomenal engagement himself, eyewitnesses as both a customer and also as a community leader. The other, an interesting individual, didn't necessarily care as much about people. And so I'm curious, you know, in your case, you you highlight we only take it if if we're hired by the CEO. How important is that connection though with the board, to the CEO? Because, ultimately, I argue, fiduciary is also people. People drive value. People drive finance. People drive quality, you know, you name it. And so any thoughts on that? Yeah. A lot. I'll try to keep it simple, for today's purposes. But many boards don't actually get their job. They don't know what they're supposed to do, and that's not their fault. It's just kind of how we set this thing up, over the the last several decades. Now, obviously, a lot of that's dependent on what industry you're in and sort of how mature, how experienced, how what level of professionalism you have on your board. So this is not a blanket statement, but many boards don't really know what they're supposed to do. And so we've kinda set the CEO up with a really tough scenario. At the end of the day, the CEO is sort of the tip of the spear though that the board's not there every day. The CEO's wants needs to be responsible for the culture and for the results at at the end of the day. The the board can sort of help to them to be successful and to help to sort of help them be accountable. I say that's I say that very intentionally because I'm not a big fan of holding people accountable. I actually don't think we can do that, but that's a separate subject. So the the role of the board, is is critical because as you just said, either have somebody stay and and produce great results or have somebody retire and maybe retire early. And so that's one of those examples where, you know, CEOs need to muster the courage to to lead the board. Mhmm. And a lot of times, CEOs don't do that. They they they follow the board, and I think that's where we can get ourselves into trouble, frankly. If you You don't have a strong leader. I don't mean like a strong do what I say leader, but a strong leader who's who's sort of convicted in what they know is the future of their organization. They're clear about the future. They're clear about the vision and the purpose. Then the board will follow their lead. I wanna also ask you specifically. I know in the book, you talk also about as leaders and organizations, we do have a role to help alleviate stress. We're sitting at a time where most people suggest probably the most stressful work environments ever. What would you say, you know, examples, thoughts on on how leaders and organizations really need to do this and and also do it systematically? Because, obviously, you can't just do it by, hey. We're giving food. We're, you know, bringing pet therapy in. It's gotta be, you know, a whole comprehensive approach. And so your thoughts there. Yeah. Well, again, the the data is pretty overwhelming here that, five hundred and fifty million days off are taken every year because of workplace stress Mhmm. Which adds up to about five hundred billion dollars in cost to just in just the United States alone, by the way. It's trillions if you look at the global impact. Wow. So, absolutely, stress is a huge contributor. And I wish I had a a magic pixie dust to answer this question. I don't. And I don't wanna pretend like I do. But I think a lot of it has to do with the sort of frenetic pace that we're all sort of following each other's lead, and we're not slowing down and thinking about what do I actually need to accomplish? What's my highest and best use for the next eight hours, the next ten hours? You know, what's my highest and best use for this week that I'm in? Too often, we wake up, and what do we do? We check our email, and now we're reacting to somebody else's agenda as opposed to slowing down and saying, what do I need to accomplish? What's the best thing for me to spend my energy on? And that includes CEOs. We get sucked into sort of the super doer. You know, so many people get promoted up through our organization all the way to the CEO level because they're good at getting stuff done. They're good problem solvers. Well, that works great to some level. And at some point, your job is no longer to solve problems. Your job is to grow your people so they can solve problems. But it's hard to make that switch because it's like it's like rewiring your thinking, rewiring your your DNA almost. And I was guilty of this myself when I was a a CEO. I had a couple hundred employees, and I was still trying to solve everything. I was still trying to make decisions for everything, and it took me a while to figure out, oh, jeez. That's that's not productive, and that's not helpful. That's not my primary job. So we have to be really intentional. In our book, we get into, some really pragmatic skills around this. They're really for those who folks who are interested in learning more, you can go to, phoenix perform dot com slash holistic leadership, And we'll put some resources on there for for your listeners if they wanna check this stuff out. A few of them are free. Also, linked to to buy our book. But we get into some very pragmatic skills, and we talk about things like leadership and like management and like coaching. And we come at those from very different angles from what we've seen out there, Very different ways to think about our jobs, and it's really helpful to most folks. In fact, I was working with one woman in California, and she was just overwhelmed, frankly. I don't know how else to put this. She was about to quit. She was mentally fatigued. She was working probably a hundred hours a week. And just the simple discipline of slowing down and thinking about what do I need to accomplish those weeks? What's my highest and best use of my time? Cut her work hours in half, and she's like a wholly different human being. So this stuff works. It's not rocket science, but it does take discipline. Yeah. And and to your point, leaders have an important role. Right? Because when you lead that way, the team sees it, you know, verse you know, I can remember I had a an executive who would say, I don't email after the workday. And I mean, this was in a health care environment. She said, because unless unless it's to my night shift that I know is there that is working, if I send an email, the others are gonna expect that I'm responding. Or or excuse me, they're gonna expect that they need to respond to me. And so she would, you know, use the timer and use the the system so that it would send it in the morning. And, you know, just little things like that, she would say, often made a big difference. I wanna ask you, you know, specifically about you you talked a little bit about this sort of in the intro, when we first started, but recognizing how important this work is and and, you know, you doing this, you know, internationally. I'm kind of curious from the vantage point of when you look at all the companies that you've worked with and and others you've experienced, witnessed, is what's in that secret sauce for those that are actually engaging, motivating employees around engagement, around culture? You know, what are some of the top things that you think, you know so that as other leaders of organizations here, it say, wow. I've gotta do that. Yeah. There's a few things. One is, as you said just now, it's becoming more self aware. You know, the idea of sort of emotional intelligence, So it's a lot of people get intellectually, but they don't actually get it. They they the some of the most intelligent, highly educated folks around emotional intelligence are some of the least emotionally intelligent people I've ever met. So there's a difference between intellectually getting it and being trained in it and actually living it, to actually being emotionally and socially aware. So that's probably the the one place to spend the most energy is to get somebody to help you to become more self aware because none of us is as aware as we think we are, myself included. You know, I've been doing this professionally for almost a decade and I'm still having insights about myself on a on a almost weekly basis. They're, like, sometimes, like, profound. Like, oh my gosh. I can't believe I'm doing that as a father or as a husband or whatever. Mhmm. So that's the first place to start, I think, is to become much more self aware. And then the other probably big one I would point to is this idea that too much of our time is spent in the doing, is spent in the cranking stuff out, you know, getting work done as opposed to if if you're a leader, your primary job is to grow your people. And one of the best ways to do that is to get really crystal clear about the future that you're going for. Some people call that vision. Some people call that purpose. Some people call that mission. I don't care what you call it. It's a future that animates your heart, that animates people. That's where the secret to engagement is is that you gotta help people find what are they aspiring to, what do they care about. In our book, we have a really elegant formula for engagement, and it's it's this, Engagement equals aspiration times empowerment. Mhmm. That's it. Like, if you really think about it, that's how you create engagement as you find out not not inspiration. Inspiration is great, and there's a time for that. But aspiration means what do individual people care about? What are they here for? You know? What are they why are they doing this work? I've worked with lots of folks who've been doing you know, they've been a teacher for twenty years. They've been a health care provider for twenty five years, and they have forgotten why they got into this work in the first place. They have lost sight of their aspiration. And when you can rekindle that in them and help them to do that, it's like they've got a whole new life, a whole new energy to their work. And then you empower them, which is pretty straightforward. It's not rocket science. It's, you know, empowering people. If you hire good people, let them do their job. It doesn't mean they're gonna be perfect. They'll make mistakes sometimes, and that's okay. We gotta empower your people. So they've got the ability, the appropriate ability, the appropriate responsibility and authority to do their job. That's so profound. I love that. Aspiration and empowerment equals engagement. That's awesome. Tom, I wanna, give you any last words, and also to share where individuals can find you and connect with you in in the organization. Yeah. Absolutely. Great talking to you. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, go to the, like I said, the phoenix perform dot com slash holistic leadership. If you wanna learn more about the work, learn more about us, go check out the book on Amazon, The Great Engagement. It's by myself and my business partner, Brad Zimmerman. And, I'm not terribly active on social media, but I do, occasionally check on LinkedIn. So that's probably the best place to to find me. Just Thomas Willis, on on LinkedIn. So thanks again for having me. Yeah. Absolutely. And thank you for joining us and, obviously, for, all of us here within the holistic leadership community. As Tom said, also check out his book, really an important topic and a lot of lessons that all of us as leaders and organizations can learn. And so, again, thank you to all of our holistic leadership community. Looking forward to, the next show as well. And, Tom, thanks again for all your work and the work that you and your team do. Yeah. Thank you.