Category: Recognition

Three Steps to Increase Employee Engagement

Post author By Gregg Dedrick
Post date 01/06/2020

By: David Novak, Co-Founder & CEO of David Novak Leadership

It’s impossible. I can’t do that. The reason I missed my deadline is because… As a leader, do you get these types of excuses from those on your team? I know it can be frustrating to hear excuses because I’ve heard lots of excuses while leading teams at KFC and Yum! Brands. And while you might be tempted to blame your team for their excuses, I’d like to challenge you to adopt a different mindset when it comes to excuses. Could it be that excuses are rooted in barriers your team needs you, as the leader, to eliminate?

The Power of Eliminating Barriers

When I came into KFC, my goal was to shift the culture to empower our Restaurant General Managers. We knew that having the tools and equipment to do your job increases engagement. We also knew that it was important to equip your team by:

Aligning the team with common goals rather than providing no direction
Noticing the needs of the team and providing resources rather than ignoring needs or assuming all needs are met
Helping the team by eliminating barriers rather than requiring members to fend for themselves

We were passionate about learning how to better equip our managers, so we took action.

Step One: Solicit Feedback from Managers

The first step we took was to solicit feedback from our managers. We wanted to know what resources they needed to be successful and what barriers they faced so we could make changes.

I quickly discovered we were holding the managers accountable for things that were undoable because they didn’t have the tools to do their jobs. The managers described a number of barriers that directly and indirectly hindered their performance, things like:

Too much paperwork
Not enough drive-thru jackets
Not enough labor dollars, which prevented them from covering their shifts

This feedback was eye-opening to the Executive Team and helped us understand that our managers really didn’t have the tools they needed to be successful.

Step Two: Communicate

Step two involved communicating with our managers. We shared our research findings and let them know we not only heard what they said, but we also took action by eliminating barriers. Based on their feedback, we reduced paperwork, provided more drive-thru jackets and increased labor dollars. We also let them know these changes put accountability back in their court and we expected them to achieve better results since the barriers were eliminated.

Step Three: Hold Your Team Accountable

Our decision to give the managers what they needed to do their jobs catapulted performance and morale for those who wanted to be empowered. Our decision was celebrated by some and they embraced receiving resources with accountability.

Not all managers were excited about this change. In fact, the decision to equip the managers exposed those who relied on the barriers to mask their poor performance. We initially experienced substantially higher Restaurant General Manager turnover because those managers who didn’t like the higher goals and accountability quit.

However, long term, the payoff for removing barriers made a positive impact at KFC. We experienced:

Overall higher levels of performance
More engaged and empowered managers
Reduced manager turnover after the initial fallout

Do You Need to Eliminate Barriers?

How often do you hear excuses at work? How often do you make excuses at work? Could it be that you and/or your co-workers don’t have the tools to be successful?

You can uncover barriers to success by taking action. Do your research like I did. Ask questions. Find out what resources are needed and what barriers are keeping your team from achieving results. Then provide the resources and eliminate the barriers while holding your team to higher expectations. Download this guide to learn more about equipping your team by removing barriers.

When you eliminate barriers, you might experience some turnover like we did at KFC, but don’t let that stop you from taking action. As Ben Carson said, “So after a while, if people won’t accept your excuses, you stop looking for them.” You can help your team stop looking for excuses by removing barriers. You can help your team learn to embrace accountability. Are you willing?

Do you know someone who could use help eliminating barriers? If so, pay it forward today and share this blog and guide with them. By sharing this blog and guide, you are equipping them to become a better leader.

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Where Do You Draw The Line? Balancing Work Relationships

Post author By David Novak Leadership
Post date 11/25/2019

Friendly happy diverse team workers talking laughing eating pizza together in office, cheerful workers staff group chatting sharing meal enjoying having fun at work, good relations at lunch break

Most leaders want to be liked by their team members, yet some have a difficult time drawing the line between personal and professional relationships in the workplace. As a leader, you don’t want to seem unapproachable or standoffish; but you also don’t want your team to forget that you’re there to guide them. A smart leader seeks to find a balance in this area.

Following these simple guidelines will ensure your work relationships are meaningful and productive:

Get to know the people you work with

Great leaders know who they lead. It’s no secret that personal connection creates a better work environment and leads to better results. Jason Goldsmith is a perfect example of someone who leads out of personal connection. In Jason’s work as a performance coach to top professional athletes, his first priority when taking on new clients is to ask lots of questions to get to know them better. Experience has taught him that bonding with his clients makes him more effective at his job. To learn more about Jason, check out his podcast on DavidNovakLeadership.com.

It’s simple to connect with those you lead. Start by asking your team members for three interesting facts about themselves. Ask about their background, dreams, and families. Doing this shows you care about them as individuals. Once people know you care about them, they will care about you.

Make sure you keep enough distance to be objective

While it is important to connect with the people you lead, you don’t want to get so close that you are unable to be objective around them. Sometimes being a leader requires you to take a step back and be a coach. This is hard to do if you become too involved. Leaving enough distance will allow you to keep an objective view about your team members so that you can still gauge a person’s talent and capabilities while giving the right feedback when necessary.

If you implement both of these approaches, you’ll have no problem striking the right balance with your team.

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Why Great Leaders Need Truth Tellers

Post author By Gregg Dedrick
Post date 08/29/2017
1 Comment on Why Great Leaders Need Truth Tellers

Were your antennae clipped at birth? This is not your typical leadership question, but let’s consider how helpful this question can be. Antennae provide sensory information to insects which helps them better understand their environment. While humans don’t have actual antennae, we use environmental clues to discover how we are perceived by others. Yet not everyone’s antennae work perfectly, and some seem to have had their antennae clipped at birth. Research refers to this as lacking emotional intelligence, but I’ve found that asking if your antennae were clipped gets people’s attention a lot better!

When serving as the Head of Human Resources at Yum! Brands, I frequently got to help people who were stuck in their growth and performance. Have you ever worked with someone who seemed completely unaware of how their attitude and actions impacted others? Me too – and those are the people I describe as having their antennae clipped at birth. For example, consider the person who talks too much in meetings and constantly interrupts others, yet her behavior doesn’t change. Others dread going to meetings and don’t feel heard because she talks all the time. Because her antennae are clipped, she doesn’t realize how her behavior negatively impacts the team. The truth is, some people don’t have antennae to help them navigate their relationships.

We all have blind spots in our lives, even if our antennae work properly. The key to uncovering our blind spots is giving people permission to give us feedback. When we invite people to serve as truth tellers in our lives, we learn and grow. If we don’t have a few truth tellers, we run the risk of staying stuck with behaviors that are ineffective, and possibly destructive, to our success.

I know from personal experience that asking for feedback can be hard because you might be surprised by what you hear. When I was Head of Human Resources at KFC, I was introduced to a feedback exercise and decided to try it out with the Executive Team. We had one minute to complete two statements about each Executive Team Member in a round robin format:

What I appreciate about you
How you can be more effective

I got more feedback from these two questions than I received in an entire year! Some of it was encouraging, some of it was helpful, and one particular piece of feedback was shocking. During this exercise, I found out that one of my peers thought I was going over his head to send him messages. This information shocked me because that was not my intent. Because my relationship with this peer was important to me, I took action to repair our relationship. We started having regular lunch meetings where I shared what was going on and what I was thinking. And over time, we developed a productive relationship because he shared feedback with me and I took action to make changes.

The Executive Team Round Robin opened my eyes to how powerful this feedback tool can be. And once I understood the power of receiving feedback, I recruited a few people to become my truth tellers. I regularly asked them to give me straight feedback, and they agreed to be honest. Seeking out feedback has helped me become a better leader in both my personal and professional life.

Ken Blanchard coined the phrase, – Feedback is the breakfast of champions. I’m a firm believer in the

truth of this phrase. It’s a simple way to remind you that you need to invite people to give you feedback daily, just like you eat breakfast each day. Both breakfast and regular feedback helps you become more

productive.

Were your antennae clipped at birth? Maybe not, but we can all use a few truth tellers in our lives. Who can you invite to be your truth tellers? Once you identify them, use this feedback tool to start the conversation. And remember to seek out that feedback regularly! Building discipline around asking for feedback can help you become a better leader. Who will you ask for feedback today? Download the Truth Tellers Feedback Exercise to help you get started.

David Novak Leadership is all about investing in you and helping you become the best leader you can be. And we invite you to pay it forward by sharing this blog and the feedback tool with others. Who can you share this with today?

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From Trailer Park to Corner Office: How My Past Impacts My Present

Post author By David Novak
Post date 07/18/2017
3 Comments on From Trailer Park to Corner Office: How My Past Impacts My Present

back view of programmer sitting with hands behind head at workplace

By: David Novak, Co-Founder & CEO of David Novak Leadership

What do you want to be when you grow up? People are asked this question all the time, especially when they are young. Did you know that only 30% of global workers work in the field of their childhood dream job?¹

I have to confess that I did not end up working in the field of my childhood dream job. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a Major League Baseball player before the reality set in that I couldn’t hit a curve ball. At one time, I saw myself as a sports writer.

Because my dad worked for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, marking latitudes and longitudes for the nation’s mapmakers, we moved every three months from small town to small town. I actually lived in 23 states by the time I was in seventh grade! My dad would hook up our trailer to his government truck and we would move to the next town. We literally took our neighborhood with us as the rest of the surveyors and their families moved together. The largest house I lived in until junior high was 8-foot-wide by 40-foot long. I always tell people I succeeded because of my upbringing, not in spite of it. (This is important to me.) The biggest break I got was having loving parents who wanted me to achieve the American dream.

Who would think that a kid from the trailer parks, whose childhood can best be described as nomadic, would ever have a chance at becoming the CEO of Yum! Brands at the age of 46? Certainly I wouldn’t have. Yet the lessons I learned from my trailer park days actually helped me become a successful CEO. Let me share one particular example about how my past impacts my present.

My dad has always been tremendously supportive, and he worked his tail off to give us a better life. But in many ways my mother was my first mentor. Every time we got to a new place, she would take me to the local school to get me registered and then say to me, “Look, David, you’ve got to take the initiative to make friends. Don’t hang back and wait for the other kids to come to you. We’re only going to be here for a few months, so make them count.”

That’s how I learned how to size people up in a hurry and how to figure out quickly who the good ones were and who I should avoid. As a result, when it comes to assessing people I’ve got a good gut instinct that I still listen to whenever I meet someone new (which, when you’re CEO, is practically all the time) or have to decide whether to hire or promote someone.

Fast forward… Soon after becoming CEO of Yum! Brands, I went to my first meeting of the Business Council. Its members are one hundred twenty-five of the top CEOs in the country, and I was meeting these captains of the industry for the first time. They are the people who run General Electric, Boeing, and General Motors, and they had no idea who I was. It wasn’t all that different from the first day at a new school. I quickly sized everyone up and, remembering that they all put their pants on the same way every morning, worked my way around the room. If it hadn’t been for those early school experiences, I’m not sure this would have come so naturally to me in my later life.

But I’m not the only one with a humble beginning who ended up in a corner office. Brian Cornell, the Chairman and CEO of Target Brands, also had a humble upbringing with many challenges. But he learned from these challenges and now uses what he learned from his early years to lead many as the CEO of Target. I recently interviewed Brian as part of our biweekly Podcasts. Here’s what he shared.

I grew up in a really humble environment. I lost my dad when I was young and my mom had a series of illnesses, so I had to grow up the hard way. I worked for many years as a little kid – mowing lawns, shoveling snow, and washing trucks. So if you look back in time, when I was a kid, you would say there’s no chance that this person, growing up in this kind of environment, ends up doing what he’s doing.

I learned early in life that there’s only three ways that I could put my economic circumstances aside and just move forward:

In school, because when the test is handed out, nobody cared who my dad was or how much money I had.

In sports on the playing field because there, the playing field was level.

At work, because once you showed up, it was all about performance and execution and doing the things that were put in front of you.

I embraced the level playing field idea early. I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I said I’m gonna perform, excel, and take advantage of opportunities. And somehow it all worked out. It wasn’t some magical path. I didn’t grow up in a CEO’s household. I had to work for literally everything I had by finding part-time jobs so I had money baseball cleats and football equipment. But it all worked out because I found what worked for me.

And I was really fortunate to have great mentors and leaders and people who just cared, like my grandparents who raised me. My grandfather was an engineer and he taught me about hard work, great values and the importance of a great attitude. My grandmother was really focused on education, and she talked about working hard in school, learning, and what that was going to bring to me. But most importantly, my grandparents were two individuals who really cared. They showed me how important it was to have people who cared for you – to give you advice and sometimes to give you tough love.

Brian learned how to work hard and care about people from his humble upbringing and he uses that today in his role as Chairman and CEO of Target.

Walt Disney puts a positive spin on the ways adversity from your past can have a positive impact on your future. “All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”

What about you? How does your upbringing or the adversities from your past impact the way you lead today? Download this guide to find out! It provides some questions to help you evaluate your past so you can better understand why you lead the way you do today. Your past can be a powerful tool if you’re willing to revisit it and learn from it. Are you willing?

Maybe you know someone who has a challenging past. Would they be inspired by what you just read? Pay it forward today by sharing this blog and guide with them. By showing you care, you may inspire them to become a better leader. Go Lead!

¹https://qz.com/29058/workers-outside-the-us-are-more-likely-to-pursue-their-dream-jobs/

Podcast Recognition

Jason Goldsmith, Performance Coach

Post author By David Novak
Post date 06/08/2017

Download this Action Journal

This great resource will help you along the way, during or after you listen to the podcast. Not only will you get to know our guest, you will be asked tough questions to really spearhead your journey to becoming a better leader!

Jason Goldsmith has helped many professional athletes take their games to the next level. Hear Jason’s insights and how they apply to any professional, whether you are an athlete or in business.
Jason may be best known for his work with two of the PGA’s top professionals, Jason Day and Justin Rose. He helped Jason Day achieve a world #1 ranking on the PGA and he helped Justin Rose take home a Gold Medal at the first Golf Competition at the 2016 summer Olympics.
[bctt tweet=”“Create an environment where people can be open to try things and be vulnerable to be able to try things.””]

From Podcast Action Journal

As a coach, Jason has a unique bond with his clients. If they know Jason is committed to helping them, they are more likely to be vulnerable. There is a special trust and energy that happens when Jason is fully present with his clients.
Being present means listening and engaging with the person in front of you.
(5:17-7:44)

Would you use the words “trust” and “vulnerable” to describe the relationships you have with your team?
Why is it important for leaders to be present with those they lead?

Jason is worried that our need for instant gratification and our shorter attention spans have had a negative impact on our ability to connect with each other.
According to Jason, a team that connects with one another will be more effective. A creative culture is the result of people feeling comfortable enough to try new things.
(30:02-31:20)

What are some ways your team can achieve more connection with each other?
If your team felt comfortable enough to new things, how would your organization benefit?

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Why You Need to Heartwire AND Hardwire Your Leadership

Post author By David Novak
Post date 04/03/2017

By: David Novak, Co-Founder & CEO of David Novak Leadership

Leadership failure is everywhere. I recently did a quick internet search on the topic and you wouldn’t believe the titles that appeared:

Businesses Don’t Fail, Leaders Do
6 Warning Signs of a Leadership Failure
The Key Causes of Failure in Leadership
Why America’s Leadership Fails

These titles only scratch the surface! There were pages and pages of articles on leadership failure. Yet success is totally possible if you know and practice a secret I discovered while serving as Co-founder and CEO of Yum! Brands, one of the world’s largest restaurant companies, operating in over 130 countries. The secret is called Heartwiring™ AND Hardwiring™ your leadership. Lots of leaders talk about how to hardwire success through process and I’m a big supporter of that. But I know that hardwired leadership is much more effective if you combine it with Heartwired leadership™. I’m passionate about heartwiring and hardwiring leaders because I know it works. As CEO of a global company, I’ve invested significant time teaching this leadership style to thousands of leaders around the world… and it showed in the results we shared with Wall Street.

But before I explain what heartwiring and hardwiring means, let me share some of my background with you. I’ll start at the beginning…

I was anything but a born leader but I feel absolutely certain I was born to lead and teach. My early education was far from typical when you consider I grew up in a series of trailer parks and ended up living in 23 states by the time I was in seventh grade. Then, rather than getting an MBA or even majoring in business, I enrolled in the journalism school at the University of Missouri. After graduation, I started my career as a $7,200 a year copywriter with the objective of one day being a creative director. My career didn’t turn out exactly as I planned. In fact, through a series of career “accidents,” I left the world of advertising and ended up in the restaurant industry. Over the course of my career, I’ve held many roles:

Copywriter
Account Executive
Head of Marketing for Pizza Hut
Chief Operating Officer for beverage division of PepsiCo
President of KFC and Pizza Hut
Co-Founder and CEO of Yum! Brands

Along the way, I had the privilege of learning from all kinds of leaders from all around the world, from the likes of Jack Welch, Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon and Howard Schultz. And while I was fortunate enough to learn from Fortune 500 CEOs, I equally loved learning from the restaurant front line managers and franchisees. Through it all, I have been a passionate student of leadership, constantly seeking new techniques and major insights from the smartest and best people I could go see. The lessons I learned and put into practice from this diverse group of leaders shaped me and helped me achieve a fair bit of success. I know I wouldn’t be who I am today without the people who invested in my leadership journey.

Upon retiring from Yum! Brands, I knew there was more work to be done… that my leadership journey was far from over. I became excited about investing in leaders like you by sharing what my team and I learned about leadership over the years, so David Novak Leadership was born.

David Novak Leadership is about Heartwiring Leaders™ and Hardwiring Success™! Let me explain. Early in my career, I had an experience that changed how I thought about my own role as a leader and inspired me to accomplish what, for me, is my greatest example of taking people with me. I was working for PepsiCo and recently became head of operations for Pepsi Bottling. Since I had held mainly marketing positions until then, one of the first things I did was travel to our various plants to meet with the people there and find out how things worked.

While at a plant in St. Louis, I asked what I thought was a pretty straightforward merchandising question to a group of route salesman. I wanted to know what was working and what wasn’t. Right away, someone piped up, “Bob is the expert in that area. He can tell you how it’s done.” Someone else added, “Bob taught me more in one day than I’d learned in two years on the job.” Every single person in the room agreed: Bob was the best there was. I looked over at Bob, thinking he must be thrilled by all this praise. Instead, I saw he had tears running down his face. When I asked him what was wrong, Bob, who had been with the company for over forty years and was about to retire in just two weeks, said, “I never knew anyone felt this way about me.”

I’ve always believed in people, but that experience made me even more determined to be the kind of leader that would never let a person like Bob go through his entire career without being thanked for what he did and encouraged to find out how much more he could do. I wanted the people who worked for me to know that they mattered, and I wanted them to enjoy coming to work each day. I also understood it started with me. It was my job to cast the right leadership shadow, because no one else was going to live up to these principles unless I lived up to them first. This is what heartwiring is all about – becoming a leader who listens to those you lead, cares about them, recognizes them, and acknowledges that every person on your team has value.

Hardwiring Success is all about what you do as a leader: using processes, procedures and discipline to get consistent results.

Heartwiring AND Hardwiring are equally important, because who you are as a leader is just as important as what you do as a leader.

As you join me on my leadership journey to becoming the best leader you can be, I’ll share my personal leadership story – things I did well, as well as my mistakes. I’ll share lessons I learned along the way. I’ll be honest and real, because sometimes the best way to learn is from the success and mistakes of others. I want you to know you’re not alone as a leader. I’ll commit to being one of the most transparent and honest leaders and teachers you’ve ever had.

Let me share what you can expect from David Novak Leadership:

Profound truths, practically applied rather than textbook, theoretical answers to your leadership questions. I’m committed to sharing what I’ve learned through my experiences (the good, bad and ugly). I’ll also introduce you to other leaders because I want you to have a diversity of wisdom and insights to apply throughout your own leadership journey.
Transformational change that sticks rather than checklists that fade quickly. I’ll help you think differently about people and leadership so the changes you make are sustainable. One of the best ways to change your leadership style is by doing something different, and I’ll provide insight on actions you can take to change the way you lead.
Leading by taking people with you rather than the traditional top down, hierarchical leadership style. I am passionate about the importance of taking people with you every step of the way. Top down hierarchies just aren’t as effective, and I want you to have a better way to lead.

John Quincy Adams said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” This is my goal for David Novak Leadership – to inspire you to dream more, do more and become more. Starting this month, you can stay connected with me by signing up to receive our bi-weekly blogs and podcasts. I’ll answer your leadership questions via video each month too. If you’d like to learn more about my leadership journey today, check out my books:

The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office tells the story of how I became CEO and the lessons I learned along the way.
Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make BIG Things Happen teaches you how to hardwire success by getting your mindset right, having a plan, and following through to get results.
O Great One! A Little Story about the Awesome Power of Recognition tells the story of a heartwired leader who transformed an organization through the power of recognition.

I’m a firm believer that leadership is about who you are AND what you do. Heartwiring Leaders! Hardwiring Success! That’s what David Novak Leadership is all about. Follow me @DavidNovak on social media, because together, as leaders, we can make a bigger difference! Click here to listen to my podcast with Gregg Dedrick discussing why we began David Novak Leadership.

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