Engage your people
You can talk all day about how passionate
you are about your business and how others should feel the same way. But if you
want to reach your employees and get
them to buy in to your energy, you need to
openly demonstrate your passion in everything that you do.
It’s not as objective as passing along
information or learning to do a skill. In
most cases, it’s not something you can talk
about or send out an e-mail to describe.
“Passion comes from your heart,” Corley
says. “People often say you can teach people to do things with their hands and you
can teach people to do things with their
head. The third thing is you need to be able
to engage their heart.”
Consistency demonstrates your passion
about the direction of the company and a
conviction for the decisions you are making.
“In too many organizations, the values on
the wall are not exhibited through the
behaviors of the leaders on a consistent
basis,” Corley says.
“If it’s written on the wall and you aren’t
consistent or your behavior does not
exhibit those values, then that’s where the
culture of the organization becomes different than the values on the wall.”
For example, one of Community Health’s
values is based on collaboration.
Corley uses small group meetings to get
people to share ideas about how to
improve the organization.
He also uses those small groups to pilot
ideas before introducing them to the entire
organization to see how they might work.
“We always say to people, ‘How can you
make a difference today?’” Corley says.
“There are situations that come up all the time. It’s a question that every business
ought to be asking every employee: How
can you make a difference, however small
it may be, every day?”
The broader goal of idea generation is to
get employees passionate about their jobs
and how they can do them better.
“We’re trying to say to all of our
employees, ‘Hey, you have two jobs,’”
Corley says. “‘One job is to do your job
well, and then two, it’s to improve your
job or improve the service that you provide.’”
The important issue is you have to
make them think it was worth their time
to make a suggestion.
“The only way they are going to feel
like they got something out of it is did
you try it or did you consider the idea
seriously,” he says. “If they never hear
anything, how many more times do you
think they will suggest something?”
