51% Of Your Team Might Be Emotionally Cheating On You

With INTENT: our 5 minute deconstructions of the current trends to inspire healthy rethinking and reconstructive action.

by Chris Wickenden, Chief Creative Officer at FROM:TODAY.

51% of the global workforce is either watching for or actively seeking a new job.

53% of people say that now is a good time to find a new job.

They’re on the market, so to speak.

The lights are on but no-one’s home.

People are going through the motions, under the radar, somewhat.

Can you really say that you’re able to get the very best out of these people when they’re constantly keeping their eye out for something better?

In this episode of With INTENT: Chris delves into the nuances of presence and purpose and their impact on organisational performance. With statistics revealing a significant portion of the global workforce considering alternative opportunities, Chris questions whether businesses are truly harnessing the potential of their employees, and shares some ideas of what we can be doing about it.

Find out how your culture is blocking performance by taking the free, 5 minutes INTENT:  assessment here: https://fromtoday.scoreapp.com/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, Chris here from From Today. So, 51 percent of the global workforce is either actively seeking or open minded to new working opportunities. 53 percent of the global workforce say that now is a pretty good time to look for work. So, can we honestly say that we're able to get the very best out of these people?

When they're not fully invested in what they're doing right now, effectively they're on the market, they're looking for something better. And it makes me think of a situation at a party or something where I'm talking to somebody and it's not lost on me that they're kind of scared. they're looking over my shoulder.

And really it just feels like they're looking for somebody more entertaining to speak to. Um, and maybe that says more about how compelling I am in a social environment could be that, but you get the point. So I hope so anyway, but the quality [00:01:00] of that interaction there. really suffers because no, neither of you is really engaged in it.

One of you is looking for better and the other one's self conscious about that fact. So if you think about 51 percent potentially of our workforce effectively in that state of limbo, not really invested in what they're doing right now, the impact is huge. So presence is an absolutely key determinant of performance within any business.

It forms a crucial part of our diagnostic organizational performance tool intent. But in general, that ability to dedicate all of your attention to the here and now has an impact on the quality of everything that we do in life, our behavior, our relationships, our performance. And it's interesting in business, it's often overlooked because things can get quite heady, but in other areas, we don't give it a second thought.

For example, in sport, [00:02:00] I really like, um, I only recently rewatched the, Last Dance with the Chicago Bulls and Mark Vancell's analysis of Michael Jordan and why he was able to perform at such a high level and He said that most of us struggle to be present Michael was a mystic because he was never anywhere else His gift was not that he could run fast jump high and shoot a basketball His gift was that he was completely present And maybe a better analogy for, you know, the lay person is think about driving your car.

If it's just a means to an end, if you're impatient to get where you want to go, or you're thinking about that conversation you've just had, or you're absent minded, whatever it is, the quality of your driving really, really suffers. So if we have, again, potentially 51 percent of our workforce That is not fully invested in every interaction, every action that [00:03:00] they take, every relationship, then the impact on performance is huge.

And of course, it's an engagement problem. I like what Eckhart Tolle says about presence. There being three states. You have. acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm. And we ebb and flow between them when we're fully present. So if you think about the opposite of that, where there isn't a great level of presence within an organization, effectively, effectively, rather, you've got a workforce that is resistance to the present.

They are not enjoying what they're doing and they're unenthusiastic. Of course that has an impact. And, as a leader, we have to model the behaviours that we want to see in our workers in relation to presence. And often, with our biggest challenges, it can be quite comforting to think that the answer to it is something that we don't know [00:04:00] yet.

It's quite complicated. We don't know it. But when we do, we'll put it into practice. But at the moment, we stay inactive, continuing to do what we've always done. And the reality is that nine times out of ten, the things that have the biggest impact on our behavior, our relationships, and our performance are the things that we already know.

but we just don't do. And that's quite confronting. So starting with us as leaders and something which I'd invite you to do is become more aware of just how present we are on a day to day. So we ask five questions in our organizational performance tool to assess the quality of presence within a business.

So I'd invite you to do it for yourself right now. Number one is, To what extent would you describe your organization as where you want to be right now? Number two, to what extent do you truly understand yourself, the people around you, [00:05:00] and the work that you do? Number three, to what extent do you give yourself space to reflect and think laterally?

Number four, to what extent do you consider your physical and mental well being? And number five, To what extent would you describe yourself as in a state of flow at work? Be really honest about it. And once you've done that, think about how you might shift the dial positively on each of those things. How can we expect the people that we work with to be fully invested and show up wholly?

if we're not doing that ourselves. And the last thing I'll leave you with, um, I'm not usually one for hacks, but I think this is just fantastic when it comes for raising the level of presence throughout your day. So any moment where you feel that you're not fully invested, maybe you're in a conversation and your mind has drifted or you're doing a menial task and you're a bit resistant to it.

You're frustrated. Why am I having to do this? And all [00:06:00] of that stuff. Take five mindful breaths and give your attention fully to those breaths. It is a fantastic tool for just resetting, bringing yourself back into the moment. And cumulatively, you can start to build up how much of your time you're actually present with the work that you're doing or the action that you're taking.

Right now. So as always, I really encourage you to have a look at our blog on this, where we delve into it in a bit more detail. We also have a look at the impact of hybrid working on the quality of presence within a business. We would love to continue this conversation with you. Please get in touch with me on LinkedIn or chris at from today.

com. I look forward to continuing this with you. Cheers. Bye bye.