Podcast: How Are Work Relationships Changing?
HR.com Live! Podcast with guest expert Brian Fretwell on How Employer and Employee Relationships are Changing
Posted on 08-04-2020, Read Time: Min
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Have you noticed an evolution of how employees and managers are interacting?
In this podcast episode, Dr. Heidi Scott and Brian Fretwell talk about how the employer and employee relationships are changing in business today. Brian Fretwell is a master facilitator, author, and professional leadership and culture speaker. He has been an in-demand master facilitator for some of the biggest companies in the world in the last 10 years. He has helped companies with transformation by creating the behavior change in their employees that will meet future company needs and leadership safety and communication.
Learn more by reading the highlights of their conversation:
What's part of your story that led you to consider the need for us to pay attention to the changes in the concept of social contracts?
So it was really from getting kicked in the teeth a lot, and like so many other people's experiences going through 2008 in the course of four years, I lost a business, I took a newly created position that had never been imagined before. It was actually my title of dream manager inside a company, and then that company eventually folded. I then jumped on with the company they had been owned by the same person for 40 years, and within two years that company was then sold. Just seeing over and over again, this idea that we used to have a sort of this industrial hangover idea of, “Okay, I’m going to go to a company. I’m going to be there my whole life,” or “I’m going to even progress in this company and move up two or three levels.” It’s just less and less the reality that we see out there on the employee side but also on the employer's side. I think it requires us to really look at how we approach both of those relationships.
So, when we use the term social contracts, could you crystallize that definition so it makes sense to everyday people like me?
Sure. My father used to work up at Bunker Hill in Northern Idaho at the mines. The contract that they had, and when I say social contract it's that implied aspect. He had to show up there and put up with stuff. It was going to be hard work. He was going to have to really push through, but he could expect to retire, and he could expect to be sort of cared for. There was a safety net, if you will, as long as he drove through some of the challenges that they knew were going to be there.
Well, now (if you want to call it) a safety net or those assurances just aren't out there anymore. I mean, the average life of a Fortune 500 company in 1995 was 25 years. Today it’s less than 10. As for the average tenure of the company, ask every HR person and they will tell you it is about two and a half years per employee. Twenty percent of the jobs that we have today didn't exist 15 years ago, and that number is going to double in and just go on. What we have is this idea that people still say, “I want to find a career that I can be at for a long time.” Well, they don't exist as much anymore and a company's sole approach is asking the employee, “Where do you want to be in 10 years?” As an interviewee, I might answer that question, “Well do you guys know if you're going to exist in 10 years?” That's just the reality of the economy we live in, and so to approach that we have to really take a deep look at some of the assumptions under that.
Well, now (if you want to call it) a safety net or those assurances just aren't out there anymore. I mean, the average life of a Fortune 500 company in 1995 was 25 years. Today it’s less than 10. As for the average tenure of the company, ask every HR person and they will tell you it is about two and a half years per employee. Twenty percent of the jobs that we have today didn't exist 15 years ago, and that number is going to double in and just go on. What we have is this idea that people still say, “I want to find a career that I can be at for a long time.” Well, they don't exist as much anymore and a company's sole approach is asking the employee, “Where do you want to be in 10 years?” As an interviewee, I might answer that question, “Well do you guys know if you're going to exist in 10 years?” That's just the reality of the economy we live in, and so to approach that we have to really take a deep look at some of the assumptions under that.
We want to retain great talent; what are your thoughts? What are some strategies that you recommend we utilize?
So HR is on the front lines of this and I talk with HR leaders all the time who really kind of understand it and are trying to push that focus on, if you will, soft skills. But I think really two specific ones. One is how we’re approaching each other every day. I call it less of a focus on what we call, cause maps or “Let's do problem-solving” and more of a focus on “Ok, if something successful happened, if our team operated successfully, do we know how and why that happened?” and “Do they know how and why that happened?” I always say people and machines aren’t the same. We can do problem-solving on a machine because the machine operates at a high level almost every time.
Well human organisms are a little bit different like if any sports team operates on the highest level, even in a football game, it might be one quarter. So they have to go and look at that to say, “How do we replicate that in 4 quarters?” So how do we have as much analysis on what went right as we do on what went wrong so we know what to reinforce and what to push? But for most managers out there, their skill set is really telling people what went wrong and again, that I always call that the industrial hangover that you can do that as long as there's other expectations that are being met on the employee. Because those other expectations or assumptions aren't there, we have to be mindful about what's been going right and are we meeting that 6:1 positive to negative feedback ratio that is so important.
Well human organisms are a little bit different like if any sports team operates on the highest level, even in a football game, it might be one quarter. So they have to go and look at that to say, “How do we replicate that in 4 quarters?” So how do we have as much analysis on what went right as we do on what went wrong so we know what to reinforce and what to push? But for most managers out there, their skill set is really telling people what went wrong and again, that I always call that the industrial hangover that you can do that as long as there's other expectations that are being met on the employee. Because those other expectations or assumptions aren't there, we have to be mindful about what's been going right and are we meeting that 6:1 positive to negative feedback ratio that is so important.
I love everything that you just shared, and I’m thinking as an HR leader maybe we want to retain our people and it sounds like what you're talking about has a good deal to do with appreciative inquiry, you know? Finding what's going well. What are some concrete strategies you would recommend to us when we think about how we help our team focus on what went well? How do we focus on it so that we can replicate it?
So appreciative inquiry is a deep kind of strategy and structural process. For me, it's about the interactions we have on a daily basis and where the process came from or rather than where my focus of it came from. My wife is a counselor and she talks all the time about validation. So when somebody comes in and then they explain, “Here's what's going on,” your job is to listen and validate the experience. What it does in the person's brain is allow them to kind of settle down and say, “I’ve been hurt.” The number one thing I hear, workshop to workshop around the world, is people saying, “I feel like I’m just a number here.”
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I would have retired 5 years ago. The impact of that or rather the application of that is really about whether we are asking what's going right. It’s really about being validated: “What have you done?” and “What are you contributing?” and for my job as a leader to stop and listen to it.
I talk about success cause maps and diving deep down in there, but it's really about the day to day ie. was the employee hurt? Did I have a chance to say, “Here's what I think I’m contributing. Here's what I think I’m doing.” And then the manager can then validate that or can redirect that. But so many times the conversation is just manager to employee and they don't ever have a chance to be heard in the organization. That starts to create so many other things that allows us to build a foundation for doing other things and making process improvements to doing feedback. You can't give feedback until somebody's heard, at least if you want it to be effective.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I would have retired 5 years ago. The impact of that or rather the application of that is really about whether we are asking what's going right. It’s really about being validated: “What have you done?” and “What are you contributing?” and for my job as a leader to stop and listen to it.
I talk about success cause maps and diving deep down in there, but it's really about the day to day ie. was the employee hurt? Did I have a chance to say, “Here's what I think I’m contributing. Here's what I think I’m doing.” And then the manager can then validate that or can redirect that. But so many times the conversation is just manager to employee and they don't ever have a chance to be heard in the organization. That starts to create so many other things that allows us to build a foundation for doing other things and making process improvements to doing feedback. You can't give feedback until somebody's heard, at least if you want it to be effective.
Yeah, that's really good. I think that really for our members, HR professionals at every level practicing, whether you're a manager or a leader of anyone formally or not, that habit of validating, the habit of listening is so important. I love what you're saying; it certainly resonates with me and my leadership style and the way I want to be listened to and validated - and listen to and validate others.
I love that you use that word, habit. Drucker said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” but what he’s talking about and I think what we miss on that is that culture is the habits. The validation is a habit; it’s a daily activity that I can do and I can do it in a ton of different ways. I can ask questions and I can do those things, but the habit is much more important than the strategy.
So really being able to understand as a leader, what the daily habits are that are allowing my employees to be heard, that is building the Psychological Safety, and that is creating the core so that when everything continues to change, we still have these base strategies. The sports example, we do it all the time, is that we dribble every day and practice if you’re a basketball player. It’s not part of the strategy but without it, the strategy never works. So as leaders, what are the daily habits that are helping to build culture? Can you measure them? Do people understand them?
So really being able to understand as a leader, what the daily habits are that are allowing my employees to be heard, that is building the Psychological Safety, and that is creating the core so that when everything continues to change, we still have these base strategies. The sports example, we do it all the time, is that we dribble every day and practice if you’re a basketball player. It’s not part of the strategy but without it, the strategy never works. So as leaders, what are the daily habits that are helping to build culture? Can you measure them? Do people understand them?
When you think about a team in the field, across industries but for our HR professionals who are leaders of some sort, what’s the dangerous problem that you find in working with teams that are actually out in the field doing whatever it is they do?
It’s Psychological Safety. It’s not really the problems we have on the field. It’s the inability to talk about the problems. I mean it stymies entire organizations. We get silos. I can’t talk from this group to this group or within a team. I can’t bring up what I think is going wrong or because we just have this interaction that I’m afraid if I say something we’re going to be in trouble and that goes back to those habits. We don’t have a daily interaction where we talk about what’s going right so that we can then talk about what’s going potentially wrong. Psychological Safety is like a muscle. If that’s not developed on a daily basis, it’s much easier to break than it is to build.
Beyond listening and validating those we work with, what’s another action-oriented strategy that we are employing to create Psychological Safety in our teams?
When we do focus on improvement or problem-solving, the language that we use, and I always try to teach that, “What do we know we can improve?” So really starting that interaction with the team or employee saying, “What do we know?” because I wanted to tap into, “What is that person actually confident about? What do they actually believe we can improve?” Not, “What do we need to improve?” and, “What do we KNOW we can improve?” How do we address growth and improvement using - kind of like Carol Dweck’s language and growth mindset language, and tie into that Psychological Safety? If we can’t talk about the problem, and if I don’t have people that are able to come and say what they can do about a problem, then we’re just going to be dancing around and pointing fingers all day long because all we’re trying to do is protect ourselves as individuals.
So for new HR leaders today, what are new competitive advantages that we need to be leveraging?
The competitive advantage is culture. It kind of always has been, but I think it is so much more so today in as much as, “Yes we have these strategies and directions,” but “How are we building a team?” and, “How do we know on a daily basis every person on this team’s number one job?” Building that team so that if we have a reorg next week, if we have a buyout next week, or if we’re in a completely indifferent industry next week, the core that stability of that structure can move. Because when that core is gone and I believe most people have experienced this, then when that change comes in, it’s every person for themselves. It costs time, it costs energy, and it can cost a whole business.
You know I think this conversation Brian, as I’m listening to you, what was hitting me is the fact that we’ve been living in Economic Safety for almost 11 years of a good time, you know, economically - not to be a doomsayer because that’s not me. Also you have to kind of look at it and go, “Can’t last forever.” I mean that’s what we see, and so I think that some of the strategies that you’ve talked about now, we better be getting a hold of these now because it’s much easier now when we don’t have all of these stresses that the economy is pressing upon us.
You use the words certainty and safety, and safety for an individual is knowing that my position is safe and a reorg or a buyout can put that in jeopardy. Even in good times, we have those challenges because good times sometimes speed up those change processes, and our brains are just wired to identify danger in much bigger ratios than they are to identify what’s going right or rather the safety part of that. As managers, we have to direct the attention towards where there is certainty.
Now, you’ve written a book, what’s your most recent book title? I wanna know, what is it?
Experts of our Potential. It’s a look at how we as individuals bring value to an organization.
Well, that’s going to be one on my bookshelf soon so I look forward to reading that. If there’s another must-read book that you recommend HR leaders pick-up and get a hold of, regarding the concepts that we’re talking about, what is that?
I always go to Thinking Fast and Slow, and I’ll apologize in advance because it’s 700 pages and it’s a really deep dive. But I think that, as you just talked about, safety and he really focused on system 1 and system 2 but just sort of how the brain processes that kind of information I think really opens our eyes to, “Oh wow! How do we keep people from accessing a part of their brains that allows them to bring the most to their job on a daily basis?” I’ve read it three times now because I’m a little nerdy and it’s my industry, but it’s great.
Learn more about how employee and employer relationships are changing and what you can do about it by tuning in to the podcast here:
Learn more about how employee and employer relationships are changing and what you can do about it by tuning in to the podcast here:
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Author details:
| Dr. Heidi Scott, Chief Learning Officer, HR.com | |
| Brian Fretwell, Master Facilitator, Author, and Professional Leadership and Culture Speaker |
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