Episode #34 - Dr. Joe Garcia from the Home Depot Discusses Employee Engagement - Permission to Speak - Leadership Podcast - Interview with Kelly Vandever - a podcast by Kelly Vandever

Permission to Speak Podcast. Hosted by Leadership Communications Expert Kelly Vandever. Episode #34 - Dr. Joe Garcia. Permission to Speak is the video blog and podcast that loiters at the intersections of leaders who want their people to speak up, technology that facilitates connections, and results that serve an organization’s higher purpose. Topics covered in this episode include: - Industrial / Organizational Psychology
- Impact of employee engagement on key business metrics like customer service and sales
- Research within Home Depot comparing top stores and poorly performing stores
- Wanted to also measure how much of impact there is from employee engagement
- Stores higher in engagement had 8% lower rate of turnover
- Gallup’s 12 Questions
- Factors that impact employee engagement: being emotionally connected, give the right level of discretionary effort, alignment of personal and company values, treatment received from peers and leaders, do you like the people you work with, do I feel capable, supportive feedback that helps you do better, your boss has your back and your best interest in mind
- How do you make employee engagement important to leaders: Get the leaders to buy into the fact that employee engagement will help them look better and get better results, that they would gain rewards and benefits from a better performing organization. Once convinced, show them how to do it, show them how to drive better levels of engagement. Teach and maintain the behavior until it becomes a habit.
- Create metrics to measure the leader’s success around engagement
- In addition to the leadership component, you also must hire the right people
- Increase your ability to bring people into the organization who will align with the organization and who will connect with what we do and what we’re all about
- It’s a combination of good leaders and the right people who will welcome and appreciate what you have to offer as a company
- Diversity and inclusion
- Doing the right thing when it comes to diversity versus the better results we get when we have diversity in the workplace
- Diversity of everything including diversity of thought
- Having the lens of someone with a different perspective helps a business better serve their different customers
- Diversity isn’t only about helping society, it’s about helping you be stronger and more competitive as a business
- The one thing that leaders don’t do well is develop their people
- Development is a key part of how people feel engaged with a workplace
- If you help me be more successful, I’m less likely to leave you
- Of 67 leadership competencies examined through research, “developing others” is consistently at the bottom of how effective leaders are at the competency
- How leaders develop their people is difficult but very important to engagement
- A key part of your job is a leader is to develop others
- Knowing the skills needed to be successful in a role or a role they aspire to and helping them get there
- Dr. Garcia recommends development fall into the 70 – 20 – 10 rule. 10% of development should come from reading or training, 20% should come from others such as mentoring/coaching and connecting/networking with those who are successful with a skill, 70% should come from putting yourself out there, forcing yourself to demonstrate your skills, volunteer for job, do cross-functional assignments, practice new skill over and over and over again
- More important than money, benefits, or making people happy is being there and letting employees know, I’ve got your back, I care about you, I’m going to help you develop if that’s what you want and give you the tools to help you get promoted and do better.
- One challenge most people have is the pace of change in business today. It makes it very important for leaders to help their employees deal with the pace of change.
- Need to know how to understand the human side of change
- How to get people to want you to

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