7 Questions

We explore the complexities behind why employees leave their jobs and offer practical solutions to improve retention through seven essential questions. We begin by discussing the challenges leaders face in predicting employee turnover, supported by insights from recent research. Next, we delve into common reasons people quit, including burnout, poor management, boredom, and lack of belonging.

We discuss the importance of building connections through meaningful conversations and how asking the right questions can reveal critical insights into an employee's state of mind and engagement. Finally, we share our seven essential questions designed to foster open communication, gather valuable feedback, and support employees, ultimately helping to reduce turnover and enhance job satisfaction.

Transcript

Dr. D.: 0:00

Welcome to leadership dissected, where we examine the details of leadership strategy, workplace culture and decision making through the lens of behavioral science. I'm Dr. D,

Dr. C.: 0:13

and I'm Dr C. With our decades of leadership experience and PhDs in business psychology, we dig into the latest research trends practical strategies to help you survive at work without losing your mind. Today,

Dr. D.: 0:27

we explore the complexities behind why employees leave their jobs and offer practical solutions to improve retention. We begin by discussing the challenges leaders face in predicting employee turnover, supported by insights from recent research. Next, we delve into common reasons people quit, including burnout, poor management, boredom and lack of belonging. We discuss the importance of building connections through meaningful conversations, and how asking the right questions can reveal critical insights into an employee's state of mind and engagement. Finally, if you wait until the end, we'll share our seven questions. These questions are designed to foster open communication, gather valuable feedback and support employees, ultimately helping reduce turnover and enhance job satisfaction. So let's cut into this topic. Dr, C, let's start with why leaders struggle to predict employee turnover. It's really tough to understand or even identify when an employee might quit. Trying

Dr. C.: 1:20

to predict why an employee might quit is a real challenge for leaders. I think there's a lot of unknowns out there, lack of transparency. Sometimes there's things outside of even an employee's control, like life changes, but often we also hear some undisclosed satisfaction with their workplace that creates a challenge. A recent McKenzie survey highlights this connection between employers and employees perception of workplace well being that may indicate that sometimes leaders aren't necessarily fully aware why

Dr. D.: 1:50

people are leaving. We've talked about often is how misleading employee engagement surveys are, because employee engagement surveys don't necessarily get all of the honest answers. People tend not to answer those surveys as honestly as they can. In my opinion, too many leaders rely on those surveys as the best predictor. Even though they're annual leaders really are surprised when the behavior or the motivation or their turnover doesn't reflect what they saw in the last employee engagement survey. Totally agree

Dr. C.: 2:23

with that. And I think another aspect with employee engagement surveys becomes a real challenge for leaders to interpret what information, what data they're getting from that times employees don't want to be as authentic as they can be when it comes to those surveys, because one mere retribution, another aspect is we get all this information. What are people actually doing with this what actions are being taken by these leaders to create this positive environment or make changes that are meaningful to the employee? Yeah, engagement surveys are great. Starting point doesn't always get to the true root of why people are leaving. What are the challenges that they're encountering? Ultimately, leaders are trying to walk through a cave with a little flashlight, not knowing what direction to go, and they can fall into some pitfalls of assuming, if I have positive sentiment on my surveys and the team is fine. Thing

Dr. D.: 3:12

that I noticed about surveys, particularly employee engagement surveys, is if the team is okay, I would call it meh. Level of engagement, not high, not low. The employees will tend to lean towards more positive responses because they want to believe that other people around them are happier than they are. They tend to be a bit more biased towards positivity in those cases, and I think some of that has to do with trust. I'm not going to score down because that's going to invite too much scrutiny on our team, I'll just lean towards the average, between three and four on a five point scale, and that will tend to keep the spotlight off. But when a team is unhappy and they don't care anymore, that's when you see employee engagement surveys, brash and senior leaders can be really surprised by that. If there has been a new leader introduced to the organization. For example, I have seen organizations where the employee engagement survey just tanks and the new leader just doesn't believe it. They want to believe me. Being here is a good thing for the organization, the fact that it crashed, well, that can't be the things that I'm doing that can't have anything to do with me, it's because I'm addressing the underlying issues, or I'm pulling off the band aids or whatever stories people can tell to solve the cognitive dissonance, the disconnect between the reality and that part of themselves, their ego, that they're trying to protect the reality is that's terrible, because leaders don't take action, and the people that hired leaders into that part of the organization don't want to believe that they brought in somebody that's making things worse, so they don't get as deeply involved as they should. Have you ever seen that? Dr C, I

Dr. C.: 4:53

have, but I'm actually going to take a little bit different take on that when I have seen survey results from different organizations. And when it comes to engagement, intent to stay different sentiment, what I find is people who start to score low haven't disconnected. Matter of fact, I think they're more connected because they're feeling more comfortable voicing their concern, voicing what's going on. My worry tends to be silent. Group, the people who are responding with mid level responses, your threes on a five point scale, guys are trying to stay under the radar. Now, what I often see when it comes to engagement surveys, people will hyper focus on the low responses and try to find solutions for the low response, neglect looking at what is working right? What are we doing to make sure that not everyone moves into that low response, but what are we doing to maintain people's positive sentiment? I think with every survey, you also have a bit of a difference in responses based on tenure. People who start off in an organization don't automatically give a low response. So for teams who have mixed groups, some of the challenges maybe mastering those surveys. Because you have high responses, you have a couple low responses that now averages out to You're doing okay, middle response. And I think for leaders having this skill set of Yes, looking at the data, looking at information that you're getting from your surveys, and also formulating a plan, formulating an action, to get at the root of what's going on with your team. You mentioned earlier how often these surveys go out. Some organizations very much do it on an annual basis. Some organizations do it quarterly. One organization I've heard of, actually, as you're walking out the door, there's a little panel that says, How was your day today? That's an immediate feedback. So getting more data points is important. It's going to give you a richer picture where I think leaders fail, and I'm using the word fail very deliberately. Here is that they don't take action. You look at the data and say, we're good or let me get someone else to deal with first,

Dr. D.: 6:48

I'll say I agree with you on the silent middle that's very dangerous place, from my perspective. The challenge with an employee engagement survey is not the survey, it's that all of these different interpretations that we have, or different variations on how you can interpret that data. If your data is a surprise to you, you've missed the point. You have missed out on many other conversations that you could have that will give insight into people's thought processes and people's behavior, oftentimes you don't understand means that you're not having those conversations, and those conversations are really important in building that level of teamwork and camaraderie and insight with your team or with your boss or whomever. Those conversations are the thing that are missing if you wait until the survey, and you see your scores tank or they're kind of middling because people have apathy. That's death. That is the thing that's going to really kill an organization. So we really have to understand how to engage with people more proactively, authentically and ask the right questions. Now we won't. I think there's a really good set of questions that people can use that will help one, build connection and two, help understand what the state of mind your team is in. But let's talk about briefly. Dr C, why do people quit? If it's too late for the survey or you don't have your finger on the pulse of your team, people will start leaving. So what are some of those reasons? Yeah,

Dr. C.: 8:19

I think the most obvious reason that people jump to is better opportunity. Persons found a new organization, someone who's willing to give them that 20% raise, someone who's willing to increase the benefits. Maybe there's something about this new organization that that is more attractive to them. That's like the phrase grass is always greener on the other side. I always find that interesting. With a lot of organizations, they're willing to let team members who have tenure, who have experience, who know how to do the work, walk away over a change in compensation. Yeah, when they need to replace that person, they're essentially giving that increased compensation to the new person, because that's now the market. Now I know we can't just give people raises every time they threaten to leave. That's just going to create an environment where people are going to solely focus on money, to not really look at what they're getting from an organization. That is the most common rationale organizations and leaders give why a person leaves they're less likely to look at we have the right environment for people to thrive. Are we building opportunities for people to grow, which also is another reason why people leave. They want to grow in an organization. They want development opportunities, especially if you're looking at employees that are younger, that are not as tenure or in different stages of their career, they're looking for the next opportunity to grow. A lot of times, team members will look at that opportunity as you need to grow vertically. A lot of organizations, if they don't have that vertical growth, don't do a lot of investment in just developing people, because there's that fear that if I develop someone, if I build someone up, if I invest in them to being able to do more, they're going to leave. And Richard Branson has this great quote where you train your people, do they have the skills to leave, to treat them in a way that they want to see? Day.

Dr. D.: 10:00

That's a great quote. And I think about the phrase, I'm leaving for a better opportunity, I feel like that's the same way that people say, what's my success, or what's my failure? Well, what's my success? Or where are my opportunities? I think people use the term better opportunities to kind of soften and put a professional face on. I'm unhappy with this thing over here, therefore I started looking, and I think better opportunities is better described as a missed opportunity for the organization. What was that better opportunity? What was that unmet need? That unmet need is why they left and why couldn't the organization that they're at or the role that they're in satisfy that need. It's

Dr. C.: 10:41

almost like with personal relationship, not you. It's me, right? But the reality is a little bit me, but it's also you. And a lot of organizations aren't ready to hear that. They aren't ready to hear have inadequately trained leaders to really take care of team members, to really help guide and help grow people. Another factor is, what kind of culture do we have as an organization? Is it one that allows people to be their authentic selves, allows people to grow? There's a big focus on just getting things done, not really human members, being successful, and that fosters a really bad environment for people. One of big reasons why people leave organizations is also burnout, and burnout really is the result of not just their workload and stress the environment and an inability to actually get the support that a person needs more so, support from their team, support from leadership. And when I say leadership, not just referring to a person's manager supervisor, you gotta go up the ladder and really see what kind of leadership support is being cascaded down. In addition to that, an awareness by leaders of what kind of risk organization is really at create this environment where more and more people are being burned out

Dr. D.: 11:49

absolutely and you touched on culture. And culture is a big, amorphous thing about an organization. There is an organizational culture. There are team cultures. If your team is in multiple locations. There is a location culture. Culture is so complicated of an idea, I like to use the idea of atmosphere that's created around a person. So if you think about culture as the big thing, that's the intention or the actual experience, climate is how people feel the culture. Your cultural climate is what you can measure. And when you ask somebody, what's the culture like, what they're really telling you is, what's the climate, the atmosphere, the local weather, is what that person experiences from day to day, meeting to meeting, person to person. The atmosphere around a person can change when they interact with one person versus when they interact with another. It might be stormy weather when they're going through a big organizational change that overlies everything else. So that is like walking into fog. I like to think about the atmosphere that's created around a person. And most organizations focus very heavily on culture, but they don't focus enough on atmosphere. And understanding the atmosphere around a team or around a person, can really help give insight into what's their state of mind, what's their risk in leaving what's or something changed that went from sunny to rainy. The culture component is so important, but it feels like something that people can't influence. But if you think about it in terms of atmosphere around a person, it suddenly becomes something that can be talked about and measured. When

Dr. C.: 13:22

you use the phrase atmosphere, they tend to be very visual. When it comes to some of these phrases. I also think of atmosphere is how light, or how heavy this atmosphere is. If it's too light, can't breathe because you don't have the resources, the things that you need to survive. It's too heavy. Yeah, you're on the mountain top, and, you know, you have no oxygen tank the other side of it, the atmosphere is too heavy, comes crushing and either one creates challenges for people to perform, feel connected to their work, let alone still navigate, admire, still navigate what it means to be an employee.

Dr. D.: 13:53

When it's too heavy, it's like a hurricane. You know it's coming. You shelter in place. You're making plans. You're super tense, the lightness and heaviness of it is a great visual metaphor for this idea. Another reason that people sometimes leave is not feeling like they belong within an organization, not feeling like they're they're not really connected with the people that they work with or the work that they're doing. They can lose track of their purpose. That purpose doesn't keep them connected with the work that they're doing, and so they don't feel like they belong, they don't feel like they fit in, or they don't feel like what they're doing is actually worth their time, but they need the money they're not really connecting with the bigger picture of what they're trying to accomplish. This also is tightly associated with a sense of belonging. By belonging, you feel like I'm doing something of value within the organization that is bringing purpose bigger than myself, and I'm doing it with people who share that purpose.

Dr. C.: 14:51

And I think belonging is something that a lot of times we don't have strong conversations about in the workplace. Sometimes there's some misinterpretation of what. Belonging really means. Belonging refers a sense of being connected or attached to a social group, community, a place, an institution. It encompasses all the feelings of acceptance, inclusion and identity within that group. So belonging is fundamental because it lays a significant role in shaping our own self perception, shaping our behaviors and really our overall well being. So feeling like you don't long in an organization can drive people away. People want to feel like they can be their authentic self. People want to form relationships with other people. We often forget we're social creatures. We want to connect with other people, and often we have interdependencies when it comes to their work that we do, there's a dynamic with how work is structured. Now, things tend to be in silos. You have your specific tasks, your specific area, that's your focus, that ignores that. Interdependency, my task isn't done. It impacts someone else. Someone else's task isn't done. It impacts me. Where belonging comes in is I have a connection with this person, because we're all working towards a common goal. I can have a genuine conversation with this person. In addition to that, people want to feel included. People want to feel whatever self they bring is accepted by the people around them, accepted by the organization. Some organizations struggle creating this atmosphere of acceptance, this atmosphere where a person can be their authentic self. I often tell leaders pause and remember that working with another human being, people have these social needs. People have this need to belong. In addition to that, being able to connect to the work that we're doing, having purpose. If you lose your purpose, or, as I like to say, if you lose your heart and the work that you doing, people often start disconnecting. There's a lot of different social components are often forgotten, often overlooked. It drives a person to leave an organization. This

Dr. D.: 16:41

gets to one of the ideas that I think, I think it's a really big reason why people leave. It's been a reason why I've left organizations, and that's one of broken promises, unfulfilled commitments that erode trust and see cause employees to take action by leaving an organization. They've said, This is what I need to be here. The organization did not respond. Building trust and maintaining trust is fundamental, and that means that in the conversations that you have in between engagement surveys, you're keeping a good running tally of the things that are important to each person, why they're important, and what you're going to do about it and when you're going to follow up, so that you can really show I'm here for you. I've heard what you said. I've looked into it. We've either got a solution or this is something we're not going to be able to solve. Can we collaborate on an alternative? That level of follow up and that level of trust builds what we call in social science psychological safety, and that psychological safety is allowing people to bring up the issues, concerns, fears, worries, successes, whatever it is that's on their mind in a judgment free zone, and

Dr. C.: 17:46

I think this concept of broken promises, when a team member is being brought on, we have work life balance. We want to make sure that you have the time that you need to take care of what's important outside of work. Great words behaviors don't match. When people have emails coming in after hours. You're getting those those calls after hours. Worst I've seen is people will text or call people's personal cell phone numbers or telephone numbers when they're on vacation on PTO. And that's a broken promise from the organization that we're going to honor and respect your space. We're going to honor and respect you've committed to us during this from this from this time to this time, and we're going to honor that commitment, that promise is broken. On the flip side, whenever a leader brings on a new person, often during that interview, there's some promises, promises that are made about commitment of work, commitment of accountability, team members break those promises too. We start to have these poor behaviors, and it may not necessarily be their performances of poor behavior. They may not be aligning with a lot of the social norms of the organization, creating an environment that becomes more challenging for the leaders to lead, making

Dr. D.: 18:47

the atmosphere better. They are making the atmosphere worse. They're

Dr. C.: 18:51

that little gray cloud that is flying around everywhere, or they're that storm that's just coming down, lightning and fury, creating an environment where the atmosphere let's get heavier. Yeah,

Dr. D.: 19:01

and I look, everybody's human. We all bring negative atmosphere or positive atmosphere, depending on our own personal mood. From time to time, those types of promises are also being forgiving when people have a bad day, and giving the space and understanding, but all of that comes from building a deeper level relationship with somebody and understanding the way that they tick so many leaders and so many team members don't build enough connection with the people on their team or the teams around them. Leaders don't invest enough time in trying to get to know people at the front lines or multiple levels down in their organization, structurally, hierarchically, so that becomes a challenge connection

Dr. C.: 19:44

to foster these positive relationships. It really does create this environment for people to be more transparent, more honest about what they need and what's going well and what's going wrong. We put a lot of pressure on leaders to make the connections. We also need team members to. Connect needs to be a two way. Conversation can't be, and I think power dynamics make it either challenging or make it seem like it's not possible. Sometimes that can be intimidating, and team members to actually ask their leader, how are you today? Fostering these relationships, fostering these connections, creates this open communication, which in turn, can prevent turnover, because if you have a strong relationship with your leader, you're going to be more transparent about, hey, this isn't working for me right now. I'm thinking about looking for new opportunities. Here's what I'm looking for. It then creates an opportunity for the leader or the organization, take a look and say, Hey, can we actually fulfill this to keep you? Because often new members, leaders, organizations don't always think about it. How expensive, not just financially, truly socially. How expensive, how taxing it is to see team members leave. Have to look for someone to fill that role, which you often see with organizations. If one key person leaves, we're going to start questioning, is it time for me to go to something's wrong? It's not just an opportunity. What's created this atmosphere that it's time to go?

Dr. D.: 20:58

In terms of the broken promises you brought up work life balance, which will be a whole other topic, but another broken promise on that is giving employees time off and saying you can take time off, then not creating an environment where employees can take that time off or feel empowered or safe to take that time off. I might use an example where an employee has over 200 days of PTO sitting on the books and never takes time off. Why isn't the organization looking at that and saying, This is a risk? Now, that employee might not give an indication that they're going to leave, but that's an indication of burnout. That's an indication that that employee is taking on too much and not taking enough time off. There should be a leadership intervention. You need to take a week off, and we need to create an environment around you where you can take a week off this month and take another week or two off in the next couple of months. That is a broken promise, and it's a broken promise that most organizations don't follow up on. They don't look at their PTO balances and say, This is a risk. This employee is at risk. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to make sure that our environment that promotes work life balance is actually ensuring that our employees are taking their time off? Conversely, employees also look down on employees that have a zero PTO balance when employees take their PTO a day off every couple of weeks because they've accrued a day and they're spending it right away. Man, you're always on vacation. Why are you always gone? This doesn't seem very productive. That's also a broken promise.

Dr. C.: 22:31

So PTO always apples me in the way that it's structured. It's very much like grade school, where you have to ask for permission to go to the bathroom. You have to ask for permission to take time to recharge. And I think a lot of organizations create this sense that if you take time off, you're not contributing, you're not carrying your weight. And this is reinforced by team members and going well. This person's always out. This person's not bringing, not completing their task, because they're always out. I always have to come, have to cover for them. That creates that atmosphere and people take care of themselves, and that does become a broken promise. And I often see leaders also very guilty and not taking the time off, not allowing them to have that recharge time. I think people forget this is part of your benefits. This is part of your compensation, to actually take time off. So it's important that we're creating space where people don't feel like I need to justify me taking a day off rather creating this environment where leaders are encouraging people, Hey, make this part of the norm for an organization. What's the norm for a team? Because, yes, there is interdependence. When a person leaves, sometimes tasks are going to be distributed. But team members also have to realize when they're on time off, their work is being distributed too. Yeah,

Dr. D.: 23:39

many organizations is their culture. Say that work, life balance and a family environment is something that they strive when your PTO balance in aggregate is a reflection of your culture. If your PTO balances for leaders or teams are too high, then that means that your actual culture is drive until burnout, not work life balance. And so we started this about saying broken promises. The broken promise is that you said our culture is one of work life balance, but our culture is really drive until burnout. Don't take time off, or we are not going to build this infrastructure processes so that you can take time off, and that is a broken promise that

Dr. C.: 24:24

really does come from not just leaders reinforcing the behavior with team members reinforcing it too. This idea of work being a family a little challenging to say that every environment is a family. If that were the case, we would have to accept every bad behavior. You would have to accept every efficiency. And when it comes to the culture you you create, atmosphere you create that's fine by the worst behavior you tolerate worst behavior to Team tolerate. So as leaders, we have to take a step back and say, well, if we're breaking these promises, that's a tolerated behavior, and we can't be surprised. And people leave because of the. Broken promises. Almost everything

Dr. D.: 25:02

comes back to how we communicate, when we communicate, and what we communicate. And if we really want to talk about shifting a culture to create the environment where we can first identify if somebody is at risk of leaving, second try to prevent them from leaving, then what we have to do is employee communication strategies. We started this conversation talking about a data collection point employee engagement and it is a really good indicator of turnover, but it is a lagging indicator of turnover for two reasons. One, all the people that left don't usually complete your employee engagement survey. The people that have decided this environment wasn't for them any longer. They're not reflected in your employee engagement survey. Second, there are lots of reasons why employees don't give truthful answers in the employee engagement survey. The solution is you have to talk to people in your organization as people authentically, and ask the right questions to understand what's their headspace? What do they need? Do they feel supported? Do they have a sense of purpose? Within the organization, there's so many opportunities for somebody to have a conversation authentically, but they don't. Every time they sit down with the employee, it's about a project or something that needs to happen or something that didn't happen. But building that level of trust and communication is not something that's necessarily built into the culture, at least not at every level. The

Dr. C.: 26:25

challenge for leaders is knowing the right questions to ask. So that dresses the importance of doing stay interviews. Now, what a stay interview is is having a conversation almost like an exit interview, but instead of asking a person while they're leaving, what can we do to make sure that you stay? What can we do to create this environment, this atmosphere, or what resources, what opportunities, what support does a person need to actually stay with the organization and talk about exit interviews? A little bit, exit interviews are lagging indicator of why a person left. A person who's leaving actually completes an exit interview. That information isn't as actionable. Being able to ask these questions for a person leaves helps give leaders, helps team members identify, what is it that they need? What is it that's fulfilling here at current employment, it's keeping them there. Now in my work, I've often asked people what keeps you here? You will get some people who say, well, the pays, the benefits, the flexibility of my schedule. I gotta keep it because I have important things in my life. Important things in my life, which are people often say, have a connection to the work that they're doing, have a connection to their team members. So they stay not because there's increased benefits, not because they're getting all these opportunities to grow, but they're staying because they have purpose, a purpose in their work, whether it's the people they're serving the work that they're doing, or the people around them stay. Interviews gives an opportunity for leaders. We proactive, opposed to react when a person leaves an organization. Stay.

Dr. D.: 27:50

Interviews are a really powerful approach to understanding and collecting data in the semi formal way, using those to build connection. Now they only work if you actually take the feedback provided and do something about it and take action. I'm going to take this idea of the stay interview one step further. I believe a stay interview is a program that is something probably created by HR, and leaders are taught on how to do them, or HR does them, and it's disconnected from the hierarchy that the employee who is experiencing the stay interview is part of. I'll take it one step further. If you want to make it part of your culture and not just a program, then every opportunity that you talk to somebody is the opportunity for a stay in leadership with complete authenticity, asking some of the tougher questions that feel a little invasive, a little uncomfortable, that you might not want to hear the answer to. But if you do them enough, and you do them so that they're part of your culture and that they're expected, people will very quickly become comfortable with answering these what seem like very tough questions to ask and very tough questions to hear the answer to, also in the culture, it has to be actionable. Have these conversations as part of one on ones team meetings, informal conversations. Should be able to ask these questions feeling like I can take action on this. I can have conversations about this and do something about it. The idea of the stay interview is a spectacular one, taking it even further and integrating it as part of your culture, that's magic.

Dr. C.: 29:26

I think for leaders, there's a couple of skills you need to make sure to develop. You got to be willing to listen. You're unable or unwilling to listen for the sake of listening, it's going to be really challenging to actually have these authentic conversations. Listening is one of those skills that everyone is expected to know how to do, but we're never taught how to truly listen. We're never taught to take a step back. Because often when we're listening, we're listening to respond. We're listening to give an answer. So lot of times, we're sitting there hearing words, trying to formulate, how am I going to respond to this? What am I going to tell this person opposed to being. In the uncomfortable space of I don't have an answer. You need to think about it. This is not a visceral response that I can give you. It's not something that I can just pull out of the sky, because what that ends up doing is go back to broken promises. So it's really important that we really strengthen this ability to listen but also be empathetic of the situation for each of our team members we don't have empathy, makes it that much more difficult to connect with our team members, not just as a leader, but as a human being. These connections are how we get to the root of challenges, to the barriers people are facing, but also the opportunities to foster stronger relationships, to foster more connections, and build better understanding of why people stay, why people leave, another challenge for leaders, actually knowing what questions to ask can be a little awkward in a one on one, not knowing what to ask a person. So really, there are seven core questions dr d and I believe every leader should be asking their team members. These seven questions are designed to build engagement, gather insights and identify potential issues. They can be used during one on ones or any conversation to support an employee, where team members can have these conversations to support each other. So dr, d, let's talk about these seven questions. So first question on the list, do you feel your work has purpose? Now, for team members, you want to have meaningful work, I think generationally, look at the research. Younger generations. Want to make sure that they're connected, that their work has purpose. A lot of times we'll say they're a why kind of test that they're doing. They're a why kind of contribution. So being able to ask team members you feel your work has purpose gives insight on if they're connecting to the work. What it also does is it gives leaders insight on if team members understand why we're making a change, why we're doing certain tests, why we're doing any type of

Dr. D.: 31:42

work. We talked about purpose. We also talked about how important it is to have a sense of belonging in your organization. It's connected to your purpose, but it's also connected to your team. So the next question is, do you feel like you belong? My parents' generation felt like they belonged to an organization and would spend their entire life that was a big part of their identity. Now we talked about younger generations, those that are coming up through the workforce now, that sense of belonging, that sense of identity with your team, with representation, with inclusion, that sense of belonging covers a lot of aspects of the work life. So we think that's a very important part of understanding what will keep someone with the organization and where they might be at risk of leaving another

Dr. C.: 32:28

question we often ask is you trust people you work with. That can feel like a loaded question, but it's very important that we assess a person has trust in their team, trust in their leaders, trust in the organization, because we know if person doesn't feel like they trust the people that they're working with, more often than not, they're going to look for a different environment where they do feel they trust someone, and that's going to create opportunities or create atmosphere for people to leave. Don't know about you, dr d, but I don't trust people around me. It's going to be really tough for me to work

Dr. D.: 33:00

trust is an important one. It might not be all the people. It might be somebody. It's a good indicator of a individual relationship that you need to work on, or a misunderstanding. Trust is something that ebbs and flows within people, within teams, and something you have to work on. So

Dr. C.: 33:17

another question that we often need to ask, really an unspoken question. You have enough resources. You have the resources that you need. These resources can come in a lot of different forms. You can be physical resources, like you have the right chairs, you have right number of monitors, you have the right supplies, you have your red stapler. Or can also be time. Time is a resource. Often we neglect to think that time is a resource that we can only allocate so much time throughout the day. Another resource that people often forget is support, liberation colleagues. That is a resource that we're asking for other people. Finally, knowledge they have, the information, the training, support they need to be able to be successful. This

Dr. D.: 33:56

is one of my favorite questions, because it opens up the opportunity for taking direct action. When you start asking questions like these, people will think, in the physical space, oh, I need an extra monitor. I need a new mouse. But as you develop trust, and as you develop your experience and that authenticity that somebody will say, Man, I'm feeling really burned out. I need some time off, or I just don't have the mental capacity to support this change that we're going through in the organization. It's such an important question that runs the range from easy and something that you can take action on and solve very quickly, and giving somebody permission to raise their hand and say something really small, like, I need a new mouse, it gives you the opportunity to respond quickly and get them what they need. The

Dr. C.: 34:38

next question, and this one's a little bit different from what people are used to, and it's very simple asking a person, are you happy? Overall happiness is a strong indicator of job satisfaction, of engagement. Sometimes people aren't really sure if they're happy or not. So it's one of these questions. I like to say it's a scary question, because sometimes people don't want to either hear the answer or a person. Being asked the question actually has to be introspective of am I actually happy here? Now, a good indicator of how happy you are at your workplace. It's how you feel on Sunday night or the night before you have to go where you're dreading it you feel like do not want to go in. I wonder how many sick days I have left, and there'll be a natural disaster that will keep me from having to go into work tomorrow probably indication that person's not happy. If a person feels fulfilled, person feels like the work that they're doing is filling their cup, in general, you're going to see a little bit more happiness. It's rarely metric. It's rarely asked. It's something that can truly tell you a person wants to stay I also

Dr. D.: 35:35

think this question is really powerful in how somebody answers, also tells you answers to other questions in the other previously asked questions. Do they have enough trust in you to answer that question and be honest and say, I'm not feeling very happy, or just give you a curt Yeah, I'm fine. How they answer is just as important as what they answer, and it's a great indicator of previous questions. I think the scarier question beyond, are you happy because it becomes actionable and it displays the sense of trust, is the next question, what would make you happier here, whether they're happy or unhappy? That question has relevance, and directly asking for feedback provides actionable insights and opens up a dialog. Opens up a conversation about, where's their headspace, what is it that they need? It gives them the opportunity to really share. I

Dr. C.: 36:27

think asking this question, what would make you happier also opens it up, not just to the leader, but to team members, to think about what will make me happier. It may be, hey, on Fridays, can we just have afternoons no meetings that would make me happier? Because I can then transition to my weekend, as you mentioned, dr d, to create some actionable items for leaders, but also for team members. There's an onus to team members for themselves, for the people around them, to help shape environment where they can thrive, where they can feel happy. So it doesn't just solely fall on the leader, it's also partially owned by the team member. Like a team member, can say, well, I'll be happier if I lose 10 pounds. Read as a leader, I can support you by encouraging you, and I'm not gonna be the one taking you to the gym.

Dr. D.: 37:08

Hey, did you know we have discounts at the EAP program? It does give you some actionable opportunities. Absolutely,

Dr. C.: 37:14

it gives actionable opportunities, but it still puts the onus on the person. So we control our own happiness, we control our emotion. We control outcomes of those emotions. So really question, it's not just for the leader to ask, for yourself to ask, what would make me happier? What would it make me happier in this environment? And finally, for leaders, simple question is, how can I help? Or what can I do to support you? Pretty often, leaders will ask like, Oh, where do you need help? Or what do you need? It's important for your leaders to ask this question. It's more important to do the follow up, because this helps build rapport, this builds trust, and it reduces the risk of broken promises. And

Dr. D.: 37:47

given the previous question, what could make you happier here this question, this question gives the person that you're talking to the opportunity to say, well, actually, I don't need your help with that. I'm just glad that you asked, and I'm glad that you are getting to know me better. Is there some action that they could specifically take based on the request these seven questions, there's some real psychology behind them. We start with the first question, do you feel your work has purpose, which talks really generally about work. Do you feel like you belong? How do you fit into the organization? Do you trust the people you work with building on that belonging, trust is an important component of that now I have the opportunity to build trust with you even more by asking you if you have the resources you need, then we're getting to the end result. Are you happy here? What would make you happier here? And then offering that ultimate level of support with follow up, how can I help? Or what can I do to support you? These seven questions are designed in this order so that you can build a relationship with someone. And the first time you ask these questions, you're going to ask, are you happy here? What would make you happier? And there's a add another zero to my paycheck. But that's only at the beginning. Once this becomes part of your culture and part of your leadership ethos and part of your communication strategy with your team, you will find you will get very authentic answers, absolutely

Dr. C.: 39:04

and at the end of the day, it's about fostering positive relationships. That's what taking the risk, taking the opportunity, ask these seven questions. So I encourage our listeners ask these seven questions. Not just ask them to your employees, but ask yourself these seven questions. This will give you a good indication where your head's at. Take

Dr. D.: 39:22

these questions and imagine a point in your career when you needed some support, or when you were thinking about leaving an organization. If someone asked you these seven questions and followed through on these seven questions, would you really have left that organization? The answer might be yes, but think about what an impact that would have on you. Think about what an impact that would have on you today. So I'm going to repeat the seven questions one more time. I'll do it slowly. You can pause, grab a pen, piece of paper, open up your laptop, whatever you'd like to do to get these seven questions. Here are the seven questions, do you feel your work has purpose? Do you feel like you belong? On. Do you trust the people you work with? Do you have the resources you need? Are you happy? What would make you happier here? How can I help? Or what can I do to support you? So? Dr, C, any closing thoughts, take the risk.

Dr. C.: 40:17

Ask these questions. Get some introspection, but also build greater understanding of the people you're around. On the surface, these questions feel a little awkward because we're not used to asking these questions to the team members or employees or even to ourselves. They only feel awkward until you put it into practice, and you'll find you'll get some great insight and great perspective, better understanding of the people around

Dr. D.: 40:39

you. Think we're done here. Why don't we close it up? I'm

Dr. C.: 40:41

Dr D and I'm Dr C, and we'll keep dissecting leadership so your time at work looks a little less.