Moving from Manager to Leader-- this is the last topic in the 2021 Deer Oaks Leadership Certificate Webinar series. Thank you for joining us today. Got a great turnout. Folks, you probably remember that this series provides a certificate for those that have completed all four of the topics in the series.

Now you didn't have to actually view the individual topics live. If you weren't able to make any of the four topics live, you could also have attended them virtually. Or you can go online and view it on demand. We track that attendance as well. So I do want to remind you what the four topics were here in 2021.

Back in March, we kicked off the series. Session one was, "How to Effectively Delegate Tasks and Responsibilities." We followed that up in June with session two, which was "How to Motivate, Engage, and Retain Your Staff." Session three was in September-- "Successful Approaches to Difficult Employee Conversations."

And then today, of course, is "Moving from Manager to Leader." If you missed any of the three previous sessions this year, and you want to go back and view them online and still get credit for attending those to help you earn your Deer Oaks Leadership Certificate for 2021, you still have time to do that. All you have to do is hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today. Our staff monitors that inbox.

So just hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and just request that we send you the link to any of the sessions that you missed. Let me read them again. Session one was in March, in case you're taking notes-- "How to Effectively Delegate Tasks and Responsibilities." Session two followed in June-- "How to Motivate, Engage, and Retain Your Staff." Session three was in September-- "Successful Approaches to Difficult Conversations." And today, session four, "Moving from Manager to Leader."

So again, if you missed any of the previous three sessions this year and still want to view those online, view the recordings, so you get credit for it towards earning your-- either for your own edification or for earning your 2021 Leadership Certificate-- there's still time to do that. Just hit Reply to your GoToWebinar invitation for today and ask our team to send you the links to any of those that you missed. And I'll go ahead and review this again at the end for those of you that are just joining us now, just to make sure that as many people who want to earn the Leadership Certificate this year will have that opportunity.

All right, folks, now as we get ready for today's conversation, I want to start with asking if our technology is working for us today. If you can please locate the Raise Hand icon in the GoToWebinar software in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. And if you can see my slides clearly and hear my voice clearly, can you please click on the Raise Hand icon now? That's great, folks. Looks like we're good to go technology-wise.

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At that time feel free please to type in any questions you have into the question box in the GoToWebinar software in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. And we'll get to as many questions as time allows today. We do have a few hundred people on the call today, so I do anticipate a lot of questions. But I do commit to getting to as many of your questions as we can this afternoon as time allows. So I'm looking forward to that Q&A session here coming up shortly. Let's go ahead and get started, folks.

All right, let me start with a quote from John Quincy Adams. Many of you probably remember President Adams. He was the sixth president of the United States. He was president early in the 1800s. And I love this quote. I think it's so relevant, even today. "If your actions inspire others to dream more, to learn more, to do more, and become more, you are a leader."

Oftentimes people think about leadership synonymously with their position. And if they're not holding a management position or a supervisory position, or maybe they're in a church group or a community organization, and they're not the coach or the teacher, they somehow feel like they're not a leader. But I think most of us recognize leadership is a series of attitudes and behaviors. It's not necessarily a title.

Certainly there are certain responsibilities that come with titles, right? If you're in a supervisory or managerial role or some sort of a teaching role or something like that, of course it's expected that you'll provide leadership to the people that you're supervising or you're teaching, of course. But leadership can be provided by anybody.

You don't have to be in one of those roles. I mean, peer leaders are oftentimes the most effective leaders. There's leaders in our neighborhoods that are always organizing positive group activities in the neighborhood, like neighborhood watch or those kinds of programs. There's leaders in community groups that are bringing people together to do fundraising.

I mean, there's just lots of different ways people can lead. There's leadership on sports teams, peer leadership, of course, where one player encourages the other players to come up higher and do even better. And so I just want us to recognize that leadership is something that we can all do on a day-to-day basis, regardless of what our station in life is at the time or what our title is.

All right, so along those lines, I've got four objectives for our time together today. One is to discuss the benefits of continually improving our leadership skills. This has been a lifelong journey for me. I've been in management now for going on 28 years. And at times, I've not focused enough on the leadership part of managing.

We'll talk about the differences today between managing and leading because that's important. And it's interesting. If you're in a leadership role, again, whether you're a teacher, a supervisor, a parent, or you're leading a community group, whatever the case may be, if you're in a leadership role, I think most of us recognize that there's going to be times when you're managing things-- and we're going to make that distinction clear today-- and times when you're leading people.

And so I want to review those differences today. I think it's important for us to recognize that there's a time for both functions when you're in a leadership role. I also want to help us to identify several strategies or skills to help us become more of a leader on a day-to-day basis in whatever our roles are. And then last, but not least, I want to review core leadership habits that can help to increase employee engagement and employee motivation.

All right, let me start with Part One, The Benefits of Enhancing Our Leadership Skills. I truly believe-- I think many of you have probably heard the old saying or the old question, the age-old question. Are leaders born, or are leaders made?

I'm a big advocate in the belief that leaders are made-- that anyone-- it doesn't matter what station of life you're born into or what your personality style is. Now certainly there are certain personality styles, and there are certain characteristics that people are born with that might predispose them to being effective in leadership-- absolutely.

But anyone can become a leader. I think you've all recognized. It doesn't matter, again, what your station in life is or what your title is. Anyone can learn leadership, leadership skills. Again, leadership-- these are things that we do. They're attitudes that we embrace. They're skills that we learn. They're behaviors that we focus on that make us better leaders, that enhance our leadership abilities.

And so I'm going to talk about the benefits of focusing on that. And so, again, this is a lifelong journey for most of us is the benefits is help your employees if you're leading right now in your organization or the children in your home or the kid you coach in your Little League team-- I'm an ice hockey coach, so I'm familiar with that-- or whatever community group that you volunteer for. Whatever group of individuals that you're leading, the benefits of becoming continually a better leader is you'll enhance your ability to help those individuals reach their highest potential.

You'll also be able to build more bonded, engaged, and productive teams. And I'm certainly slanting our conversation today since it is a conversation for a lot of the clients that have Deer Oaks as their EAP organization. And so I know a lot of you are part of organizations.

And you may very well be in a leadership role or a management role in your organization right now. And so I do-- I am saying a lot about work teams and employees and those kinds of things. But again, these same factors, these same characteristics, these same benefits apply to any leadership environment. Consistently help your team to achieve its goals.

And then, last but not least, as we enhance our leadership abilities, we'll maximize our own personal satisfaction and professional success. I got to tell you, I get a lot of personal and professional satisfaction out of doing a good job in leading. Earlier in my career, I was way too focused on the management side.

And again, I'm going to delineate the difference between managing and leading here in a moment. I was way too task-oriented-- very, very focused on things and less focused on supporting and encouraging and influencing people, which was more on the leadership side. And I wasn't as successful in helping my early teams achieve their goals. And I wasn't enjoying my work life and my life in general as much.

But as I've learned to be a better leader-- and I have not arrived. I'm still working on it. Yes, I've been in the workplace for 40 years now, but, I mean, I'm still working on it. I'm a work in progress like we all are. But I got to tell you, the more I focus on being a better leader, the things that we're going to talk about today, applying those things, enhancing my own leadership capabilities, the more I enjoy the work that I do, the relationships that I have, both personally and professionally.

All right, folks, the next thing I want to talk about in terms of benefits-- there's been a lot of research around this. I know a lot of you have studied leadership, as I have, over the years. There's a lot of great articles out there. All you got to do is google leadership. You'll find tons and tons of some pretty good stuff. I know we can't trust every website that we look at.

But there's a lot of really credible organizations like Forbes magazine, Harvard Business Review. There's a lot of them out there that have some wonderful-- Gallup, the polling company, does great leadership development/employee engagement research. There's a lot of stuff out there online that you can read that's very helpful to drill even deeper than we'll have the time to go today. But I want to share three leadership study areas that are very profound to me.

The first is from Gallup. Gallup does a lot of, again, a lot of polling around employee engagement. And one of the byproducts of great leadership is employees tend to be more engaged and give 100%. And so it's interesting when you look at Gallup's employee engagement surveys-- they do them every year. Been doing them for years. And they've written several books encapsulating the research.

Like one of the first books is First, Break All the Rules. And so again, that's First, Break All the Rules. It's by Buckingham and Coffman. Those are two of the Gallup researchers. But it's interesting that when you look at Gallup's research-- and it does fluctuate a little bit from year to year.

But in general, most of their annual employee engagement surveys show that less than 25% of non-management employees across the country are fully engaged in their work. They would be considered a fully engaged individual that comes to work, committed to the organization, wanting to give 100%. So they're motivated and highly productive. And so that's interesting.

And one of the reasons why less than 25% of non-management employees-- management employees tend to, because they're a little higher up in organizations, tend to be a little bit more engaged than line employees oftentimes-- not 100%, but oftentimes. But it's interesting. One of the reasons why people don't get as engaged as they could get is they're not being well led.

They're not working for individuals that are great leaders that are encouraging and motivating to work with and work for. And so I want us to recognize that if you want to have an engaged team, a team that comes to work every day or comes to your organization every day wanting to give 100% and really committed to the organization's mission, do the best you can to be a great leader.

In addition, along those lines, Global Forces, another organization that studies employee engagement and employee satisfaction-- and they say that satisfied, engaged employees, which you find in higher levels-- far higher levels-- working for great leaders, stay twice as long with their organization. So they're much less likely to go look for a job somewhere else because they're happy. They're 85% more efficient in their work.

So the quality of their work is much better because they're so engaged. They're 10 times less likely to call in sick. Like, for example, I love the work that I do at Deer Oaks. I've been with Deer Oaks for 10 years. And I love my team, and I'm really bought into our mission. And I was pretty sick. You can probably tell. I've still got a bit of a head cold.

But I was pretty sick a couple of weeks ago. And I had one of those lingering things. We've got two small grandchildren living with us. And of course, those of you that have small children recognize that kids will bring home lots of bugs from school and daycare and those kinds of things. And so I caught something. And it's lingered for about two weeks.

I'm on the mend now. I'm on the tail end of it. You can probably hear it on my voice. But I got to tell you, I haven't missed a day. And in the first week of the two weeks, I was pretty sick. I mean, I was-- now I work remotely, so I didn't have to go out and be around other people, which is an advantage, obviously.

But I got to tell you, I didn't want to take any time off, because I enjoy what I do. And so I could totally relate to that. I'm really engaged. I enjoy-- and I've got a great boss. Our executive director at Deer Oaks does a great job. And she's really great to work for. And having a great boss really makes a huge difference to me. And so again, I'm less likely to call in sick. And then people that are engaged and satisfied are 58% more likely to help coworkers. They're better teammates.

The last research I wanted to mention about this is that when leaders are most effective is when they're communicating. It's interesting. There's a book called The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. Kouzes is spelled K-O-U-Z-E-S. Posner's P-O-S-N-E-R, but Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge. They talk about it.

The very beginning of the book, they say that leadership is relationship. And what they mean by that is highly effective leaders build good relationships and communicate well with their teams, with their individual employees. And when that happens, and when those conversations are highly respectful-- because, by the way, there's a great study by SHRM, the Society for Human Resources Management. I know some of you are HR professionals on the call today-- really talked about-- and a wonderful survey was out in 2011, but still very relevant today-- that the number-one non-financial motivator for employees in the United States to come to work every day is to be treated with respect.

So when leaders are encouraging their staff members, listening to them with interest, showing respect for their capabilities, interested in their ideas, just being a respectful colleague and a respectful leader, that employees tend to, again, be more motivated to do their best work. So, folks, take some time to google leadership research around the more effective we become in leadership. There's so many benefits in terms of what our teams experience and, at the end of the day, the productivity of whatever area you're leading.

All right, next, I want to talk about the difference between managing and leading. And I'm just going to summarize some of these points. This obviously is something we could drill down very deeply into. But here are some basic characteristics of managing.

So managing, day in, day out, tends to be task-oriented. This was one of my bigger mistakes early on in my supervisory career. So I was very focused. I'm a results-oriented person, and so I was a lot more focused on managing tasks than motivating people, for example. But managing tends to be managing tasks. Management behavior tends to be more tactical, like, here's what's going on.

Here's how we need to address it. Here's how we need to fix this problem. Now that's necessary. All of those things I'm talking about are necessary. What I want us to see, though, is again, there's times when you'll be managing and times when you'll be leading. It's almost a continuum of activities that anyone in a leadership role is going to participate in in discharging their responsibilities.

At times, you're going to be managing. At times, you're going to be leading. Managing is also trying to control things by virtue of the definition of "to manage," right? To control, to stay on top of things, to make sure everything's working the way it needs to work.

People that tend to be more management-oriented than leadership-oriented tend to be risk-avoidant. Now it's prudent, of course, to minimize risks in any environment, of course. But they tend to be very focused on not taking risks because that could get outside of their control. Managing is a lot about controlling.

And then along those lines, when people who are in management mode, when people in leadership responsibilities or positions are in management mode, they tend to be more directive towards people that they're guiding, whether it be parents directing their children; again, volunteer leaders in a community group; or a supervisor in an organization, in a professional organization. When we're in management mode, we tend to be more direct. We tend to tell people what to do and how to do it.

Now let me contrast that to characteristics of leading. Leadership is less task-focused and more focused on the process and the future. Where are we going with this? Like, yes, here's a task that needs to be completed this week. But how is this task going to make a difference? How is this task, as we do it, and when we complete it, going to make a difference in the quality of the output that we produce?

How is our participation in this task going to help the people that are involved in it learn and grow, so they can be more effective moving forward? And so leadership is very forward-thinking. It's about process improvement. It tends to be more strategic. It doesn't just look at what is, as is. It looks at, how do I leverage this?

Like for example, if I'm going to assign someone-- if I'm going to delegate work to someone, not only do I want to delegate it to someone that can just get that task done effectively, but I want to delegate it to someone who's going to see this work as motivating, is going to see this work as an opportunity to improve their skill set. And so again, you tend to be more strategic when we make decisions. We tend to be more strategic.

When you're in more management mode, your decisions might be more pragmatic about-- right now, I need to solve this. So I'm going to not put these two people on this task, because I need to stay over here and work on this other thing. I'm going to put this other person on this task. Where someone who's being more strategic might, again, think about, who can I assign this task, who are going to be more motivated by this task, who are going to see this as an opportunity to learn and grow, which might help enhance their professional development for the future? Again, examples of being more strategic.

Another key characteristic of leading is focusing less on tasks and more on influencing and motivating people. And so I want us to be thinking about that. To me, that's the biggest delineator. When I'm in management mode, I'm task-oriented. When I'm in leadership mode, I'm more about encouraging and motivating people.

So that's how I, in my mind's eye, keep those two things separate. And I'm a supervisor at Deer Oaks. I've got three direct reports. And so every single day, I do both of these. In doing my job responsibilities or completing my job responsibilities, every day, I perform management functions. And every day, I also at times influence and motivate people. You're going back and forth.

The goal here today in our conversation is, how can we become a little bit more a leader? If you ask people-- if you do exit interviews with people and ask them about what they like about their supervisors, a lot of the answers come from leadership behaviors, like encouragement, taking an interest in their careers, being more positive in their interactions with them, being more supportive, helping them grow professionally. That's a lot of what people appreciate working for people.

People are less excited about being told what to do and how to do it, like they were good taskmasters. Again, that's a part of it. But I want us to recognize, again, the more we enhance our leadership abilities and behaviors, the more effective we're going to be in discharging our responsibilities.

People that are in leadership mode tend to take more risks if they strategically see a reason for it, right? Sure, by doing things this way, it might be the safe way to do it. But if we try it this way, who knows? We might come out ahead in the end. Sure, it's risky. But the payoff might be great. So this might be a risk that's worth taking.

And so again, when you're in leadership mode, you might be thinking more about taking appropriate risks. And then, again, leaders tend to be more collaborative with people. When we're in management mode, we tend to be more directive with people, telling them what to do and how to do it, calling the shots ourselves. But when we're in leadership role, it's more about facilitating conversations with your people or working or collaborating with your people on how things are going to get done, instead of telling them what to do.

Here's a quick summary to this point in our conversation today about what effective leaders do differently. And again, if you're looking at this as a continuum, again, recognizing you're going to perform some management functions every day and some leadership functions every day, we want to do a little bit more leading than managing. I mean, I'm right now probably around close to 60-40 on the leadership side, where 10 years ago, I probably was 60-40 on the management side.

So I am growing. But as you can tell, I'm not there yet. I want to-- I'd like to get to a place where maybe I'm 75-25, where I'm doing 75% leading and maybe 25% managing. So I still have a ways to go. But I want us to recognize that effective leaders, people that are leading more than managing, tend to make a significant positive difference in the life of each employee.

There's been a lot of research that shows when you're working for a great leader, people not only are more effective and motivated on the job, but at the end of the day, they go home. And they're in a better place emotionally and mentally. And they become better parents, better spouses, better significant others, better neighbors. So great leaders do have a lot of impact on the people they lead.

You inspire individuals to follow a shared vision. One of the things that came out in the research over four decades from the book The Leadership Challenge I mentioned earlier from Kouzes and Posner is that people want to be inspired. They want to know when they go to-- because life is hard, right? Work is hard.

And so when you're facing problems, when you're facing difficulties-- and we've all just been through a period here during the pandemic when life has become even more stressful and difficult maybe than ever before. We want to work for leaders that are inspirational, that are encouraging, that are supportive, that inspire us that tomorrow will be better than today, that can excite us about something we're working towards, a vision for the future or a goal that we want to achieve as a team. So that's important.

And along those lines, effective leaders motivate teams of diverse people. When I'm talking about diversity, I'm not just talking about cultural diversity, although that's a part of it, of course. I'm talking about all diversity-- generational differences, language barriers, people from different parts of the country or different parts of the world. I'm talking about people that have different personality styles, different ways of communicating.

But every team is diverse in its own ways, right? And so great leaders tend to be able to motivate. They can bring people together. They can motivate people that are diverse, that are different. And they can galvanize them. They can bring them together. They can inspire them to work together towards a common purpose.

One of the best examples of that is the United States of America. Think about the late 1700s. And we didn't have the internet, and people were geographically dispersed. We didn't have any forms of mass communication, right? Yet our early leaders in America did an incredible job of bringing 13 separate states together, separate colonies/states together, to form one United States.

And I think it was-- that's an amazing study in leadership. But great leaders today are still bringing people together. Even if you're coaching a hockey team, like I am, or coaching a softball team or a baseball team, whatever the case may be-- a soccer team-- just taking a group a group of young people and getting them all on the same page together takes great leadership. I think it's incredible.

So last, but not least, collaborate effectively to plan and complete tasks and projects. Overcome adversity. Great leaders are great at, again, getting people together to move forward on a project. When adversity comes against them-- and adversity is part of life. We all know that. They're great at encouraging people to hang in there and persevere and overcome that adversity and still successfully meet their goals.

All right, I'm going to go a little quicker here for the last two parts. The first three really was setting the foundation. But here are some ways to become more of a leader, so to focus, again, a little bit more on the leadership side than on the management side day to day. And so one is adjust your mindset.

So how we think about the people that we lead is important. And so if you're too task-oriented-- and that's where I was, really, 20 years ago. I was way-- honestly, way too task-oriented. I was thinking less about how I was helping the people I was supervising, thinking more about how can we just get this done?

And as I learned more about leadership and got better training, and as I grew as a leader and gained more skill-- and again, I'm still on that journey. I focused a little bit less on task and a little bit more on helping people. And now I recognize that that's the priority. It's at the end of the day, life's not about how many tasks we get done.

Yes, our to-do lists need to be completed, right? The work needs to be completed, needs to be finished. But at the end of the day, if I do a good job of leading the people, they'll be more motivated. One of the life lessons I've learned-- they'll be more motivated to do a better job completing the tasks.

And so along those lines, think about when you go to work every day that I'm here to help people. I'm here to support them. I'm here to encourage them. Think about how you can encourage and recognize people. There's a book out there called The Carrot Principle that talks a lot about that people really want encouragement. They really want recognition.

And so find the good in people. Look for ways to encourage and give recognition. Focus more on collaboration. Again, one of the biggest changes in my life, one of the game-changers that's made me a better leader today by far than I was 20 years ago-- because I was more focused on "I" back then. I was more focused on telling people what to do.

Now I'm more focused on "we"-- more focused on, how can we do this together? I'm much more collaborative now instead of directive. It's made a big difference in my effectiveness and in the quality of my relationships with the people I work with. And focus a little bit more in the future. Instead of let's just get this done and get this off our to-do list today, how can what I'm doing today help improve the process or help people grow for the future?

Of course, prioritizing people over tasks again. And I think this is a big thing. This, again, was one of the game-changers for me. I was probably 80% task-focused 20 years ago and 20% people-focused. And nowadays, I'm probably, again, more 60-40-- 60% people-focused, 40% task-focused. And I'm still not there yet. I want to be even more people-focused.

But how you become more people-focused is you spend more time. You invest time spending with your employees. Make sure that you see spending time with your employees as an investment-- that if I provide good support for them, and I spend a little bit more time with them and show them that I care about them as people, and I'm interested in what they care about-- the more I do that, they're going to feel more cared about, more supported, and more respected. And they'll be more motivated to do their best work.

And that takes really spending time with people, getting to your staff as people. I do one-on-one meetings every week. Gallup has research that shows that managers that have structured one-on-one meetings regularly with their employees-- doesn't have to be every week. Can be every other week, whatever works for your team. Can even be once a month.

But those that have structured one-on-one meetings with their supervisor end up being three times more engaged in their work. There's something about having structured one-on-one meetings where your supervisor's regularly catching up with you, asking about your life, showing concern for you, there to support you, having your back. And then focus on the quality of your interactions every day.

I used to think my productivity should be judged by how many things I crossed off my to-do list. But I've come to learn that actually, my productivity is better measured by the quality of the interactions I have with people. And so I try to make sure every email, every text, every phone call, every conversation, every meeting that I have every day is quality, where I'm there for people. I'm present with them. I'm doing a good job of listening. I'm showing interest in their ideas. I'm treating them respectfully. It makes all the difference in the world.

And then along those lines, be as collaborative as possible. So as I mentioned earlier, people who are more in management mode tend to be more directive. Like when they're assigning work, they'll tell someone what to do and how to do it. Where people who are more in leadership, in a leadership role or in a leadership space, headspace, are thinking more about, how can we do this together? How can we work together to solve this problem instead of me telling you what to do to fix it?

All right, last, but not least, let's talk about additional leadership habits that motivate individuals and teams. And so positivity is important, folks. I learned something from a colleague of mine that works for a local municipality. She'd been supervising people, I think, for over 35 years. She said that I'm a human being. Some days I have good days, some days, bad days.

But I've come to realize in my role for the city as a manager, she said that when I go to work, I check my baggage at the door. And she literally touches the Welcome to City Hall sign at the front door. And she says, I literally picture myself checking my baggage at the door-- checking my bad mood, checking my personal problems, checking the fact that I'm a little tired because I didn't sleep well last night at the door.

And then I go in the door, and I put a smile on my face. And I think to myself, it's show time. That was a great image that she gave me. And I think it's really important for us to remember, it's showtime. I actually said that to myself before I logged on to this webinar today, because I got a lot of stuff going on like y'all do right now, right?

But I wanted this to be a helpful time for you all. I wanted to be able to share to the best of my ability. And so I had to check what I'm doing today, put that aside-- my deadlines, my responsibilities, what my family is going through right now. Everyone's got their issues, right? And just to try to be here with you folks right now.

And think about that. When you go in, when you plug in with your people, the best thing you could do-- put a smile on your face. Be positive. Be encouraging. It sets the tone for the team just like parents set the tone for kids when they walk in the door. When mom and dad are positive, I mean, the kids will tend to be more positive.

Positive energy-- my daughter likes to talk about "the vibe." She's a millennial. She talks about the vibe. And I like that. It's that positive energy. So be as positive as you can. Recognize your people are looking up to you. Your children are looking up to you. People in your neighborhood are looking up to you when you're in a leadership role. And so do your best to really set a positive tone.

Last, but not least, let's talk about team building. And this is something that some leaders don't pay a lot of attention to, other than doing an occasional "team building," quote-unquote event, or team-building activity. But team building should be a process where you're continually creating a positive and inclusive workplace that gives everyone a sense of belonging.

So make sure you're regularly holding team meetings where people get to each other better. I do a lot of icebreaker meetings-- or icebreaker activities at the beginning of team meetings. We do at Deer Oaks from time to time to do formal team-building activities. We've been 100% virtual, like many of you have, since the beginning of the pandemic. So we've not done in-person team-building events like we were doing.

But we still found a way to do it. We just did a team-building holiday party before Thanksgiving, where we did a desk-decorating, a virtual desk-decorating, competition. And so we had some fun with that. Last month we did a trivia contest, an online trivia contest, as a team-building activity.

But more than anything else, in our regular team meetings, we regularly do icebreakers and other activities to get people interacting together and to get them more comfortable together. I've had rules of engagement conversations with my team where everyone goes around the room and talks about how they like to be treated when they're at the office. I've had people go around the room and talk about what's the best way to communicate with me, what mode of communication, what time of day.

But those are the kinds of things that we should be thinking about on a regular basis to get teams to care about each other more. There's research that says-- this comes from the Leadership Challenge book. Teams where individuals care about and like each other have remarkably higher productivity, as much as 70%.

So it's really worth our while to make sure we're regularly bonding our team members together. When people come to work and feel like a work family, people are less likely to leave. They're more likely to work harder for each other and less likely to leave. And so a focused approach, an intentional approach to team building can be very helpful.

All right, folks, I know we've covered a lot in a very short period of time today. We still have some time for questions. Let me open it up for questions. Let me remind you, if you have any questions today, type your questions into the question box in the GoToWebinar software in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.

While you're thinking about that, I know that all of you on the call today or probably most of you on the call today, because this presentation in the series was offered to Deer Oaks clients, you all have Deer Oaks as your Employee Assistance Program. And so during this stressful time with this ongoing pandemic that we're still all dealing with, remember, you've got an EAP program that's available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via toll-free number. It's answered live around the clock. If you don't know the toll-free number for Deer Oaks, all you have to do is reach out to your human resources team at your individual organization and just ask for the toll-free number to Deer Oaks. They'd be happy to send it to you.

And again, it's a confidential service. You can reach out to us 24 hours a day. We provide free counseling and other resources for you and your family members. So remember that we're here for you.

All right, I got some questions coming in, folks. One question is, where can we find the book you were speaking about at the beginning of the presentation? I mentioned several books.

I mentioned The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. So again, it's The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. Kouzes is K-O-U-Z-E-S. Posner-- P-O-S-N-E-R. I also mentioned First Break All the Rules by Coffman and Buckingham, which is one of the books that the Gallup researchers wrote that talk about all the benefits of having an engaged team. So I hope that helps.

All right, here's a great question, folks. How do you shift conversations when an employee starts to vent negatively? I think that's a great question. So here's my rule of thumb. And I think you'll find this consistent with a lot of management philosophy in the world nowadays.

As supervisors, supporting our staff is a part of what we do. I know we all that. And so if someone comes in and wants to vent a little bit, we need to let them vent a bit. We obviously-- it's going to be counterproductive to let someone go on and on and on with negativity. I mean, that goes from venting into complaining. And so that's going to be counterproductive at a point.

But to give someone five or 10 minutes-- this is what I try to do. Any time someone comes to me and wants to share a concern or an issue or wants to complain about something, I listen for five or 10 minutes. I want to demonstrate that I care about them as a person. And so I do listen.

But if they're going on and on and on on the negative, and they're not-- then I'll start to introduce, now what are we going-- what could we learn from this? I can tell that you're frustrated, and I don't blame you. What could we learn from this? Is there a way forward here that we could brainstorm together? So I try to shift the focus into, what could we learn from it? Are there any bright sides to this?

How can I help you cope with this better? I try to take the conversation from them venting to now, let's shift the conversation into something constructive. Constructive can be providing encouragement. It can be providing support. It can be brainstorming solutions. It can be talking about what we can learn from this-- lessons learned.

You want to make sure that you-- to just let someone complain, complain, complain for 30 minutes and have no potential solutions come out of that conversation can be a very negative experience for both the employee and the manager. But, sure, give them five or 10 minutes to share how they're feeling, to share their frustrations. I'd rather have them share it with me than to go out among the other employees and complain and bring everybody else down around them. I'd rather them come to me.

But then after five or 10 minutes, try to shift into brainstorming ways forward. Again, what can we learn from this? Is there a bright side to this? Or how can I support you as you continue on in this, so I can be more helpful to help you cope with it more effectively? Great question. Thank you for that.

All right, here's another. You guys have got some great questions here today. Here's another question that I want to share that I think all of us will probably experience at one time or another. What's the best way to get two staff people to work with each other that do not like each other?

Folks, that's going to happen in life, right? It is. I mean, people are going to not like each other, and there's going to be personality conflicts. There's going to be times when people just don't-- for whatever reason, they just-- that other person rubs them the wrong way.

But recognizing that having two people in conflict with one another can really pull-- it can create a lot of negative energy within a work team or within a family. You get a brother and sister not liking each other very much. Let's say they're a year apart, and they bicker and argue all the time.

And it's creating negativity at the dinner table. It's affecting the other children in the home. It's demotivating to the parents. I mean, so it's the same thing regardless of where that team is. If you've got two people on a team that are not getting along well together, I think it's important to pull each one apart separately at first.

Pull them apart separately and talk to them individually about the importance of getting along within a team. And to be honest, to say, I can tell you've got some issues with so-and-so. Or I can tell you have some issues with your brother or with your sister. I mean, call a spade a spade.

And just to say, I understand that they do some things that you don't like. Can you tell me from your perspective what those issues are? Give them a chance to talk it through, and then to say-- now, no one's all bad. This is, again, how I try to move things towards constructive. What are some things that you like about that other person? What are some things that you like about your brother or your sister or your coworker?

You can get them focused a little bit more about that. But as you get to the end of that conversation, to say, what could you do moving forward to-- even though this person may never be your best friend, because they do get on your nerves at times. And I get that. That happens to all of us. We all have people that are harder to get along with for us.

But what could you do-- since it's important that you all at least get along at least as colleagues-- you don't have to be best friends, but as colleagues. What could you do moving forward from your perspective to be more collegial with your colleague, so at least there's less tension and stress between you? And get that person to commit to what they can do from their perspective.