so I'm here to talk to you about work and you're probably saying I'm here at this Ted talk I'm not at work I'm here for my personal growth and development why does she want to talk to me about work well how many people here um view work as their primary source of personal growth and development I have spotlights in my eyes but I don't see an overwhelming amount of hands maybe one or two and how many believe that your source of growth and development occurs largely outside of the work environment if I see yeah a
whole lot more probably the the compliment well I'm here uh this afternoon to deconstruct that concept I propose that work is a key source of enabling our personal growth or inhibiting our growth development so we'll take a peek at the social psychology behind that proposition making and then uh make an appeal to the leaders here that we indeed have an obligation to build structures cultures in our organizations that are specifically geared accomplishing your organization's Mission but also along the way thecage personal growth and development I must be developing and I'm not thank you very much
oh I miked I sound different suddenly you know uh you know if I how many leaders are here are people who are subject matter experts that people go to probably quite a few well you know have to ask yourself why do you do that you know why do you spend endless hours working and leading an organization or being a go-to right I mean it's it can be grueling well when I uh was beginning my professional career back in the 80s someone offered me a book and an invitation to do some soul searching and they asked
me to find my Colonel of truth and the colonel of Truth oh pardon me may I have the slide advancer thank you thank you and the Kel of Truth was was your personal mission in this world why is it that you want to lead why is it that you want to work with people and I thought long and hard about it it wasn't an easy question to answer and ultimately I determined that my personal mission was this my mission in this world is to help people heal and grow through my work now obviously given the
fact that for 30 years I've worked in the healthcare industry industry it's pretty apparent that I can fulfill the first part of my mission quite easily I'm helping people albeit indirectly as an administrator but I'm helping people heal and frankly I'm so pleased to say that there are probably tens of thousands of people throughout the country that the organizations in which I've LED have helped people optimize their health or or heal and I continue to do that the second part though of my personal mission is to help people grow and really that takes place in
the work in the workplace and through and with the employees that I'm associated with so if you think about it then let's take a peek just a little bit behind these assertions I'm making at some of the Developmental and Social Psychology well we probably all remember maslo I don't know if anyone has ever seen him before this slide has appeared but there he there he is way up there and uh of course aslo was the father of humanistic psych and also uh the uh uh researcher of human needs and development and he offers the hierarchy
of needs well I contend that the workplace is front and center as a means for people to move up toward self-actualization this slide was obviously developed by someone in the UK uh but anyway if you look at it from psycholog or physiological there are cultures struggling third world cultures that are struggling to just manage to take care of those needs without taking care of those needs needs it's posited here that it's very difficult if not impossible to move further up so it's very sad to me that there are people throughout this great world that'll never
be able to reach their full potential we will be not able to enjoy the power and the medicine that they bring forward as individuals however if you look at some of the information here on the uh hierarchy you can see we provide for Safety and Security right there's a belongingness a sense of of purpose and ultimately of accomplishment and actualization also this concept of work environment and self-esteem and self-identity has been really carefully researched and make no mistake about it the structures and c and and uh I conditions at work daily shape who you are
and I think this is something that you know you kind of know a good culture bad culture but as Leaders how do we know what we're doing to people we spend 65% of our waking lives adult lives in the workplace so you walk into work you bring with you your sense of self-esteem self-identity self-image and the culture instantly starts working on you start shaping you start shaping your attitudes your beliefs right your behaviors ultimately so how and what are the structures within our work environment that do this well yeah is it a cube Society right
is there an opportunity for participation so it can go from physical layout to ultimately the kinds of control and information structures that are there how do people get recognized on the process side of things because the structure is going to lead to the process and the process is going to lead to the outcome of whether or not you are in a toxic environment or you're in a healthy growing environment that's uh encouraging your growth so that's the quality of the relationships right are people trusting are they backbiting there's a huge issue in the country today
with Workforce bullying people ultimately can be can be compelled to leave the workforce or even commit suicide because of Workforce bullying no different than School Place bulling so the structure the processes that are there will ultimately yield an impact on your self-esteem and how you approach not only the work world but your personal relationships many of us have gone home I'm sure from a really rotten day at work and look out people don't want to be around you or maybe better said you don't want to be around them so how do you make them feel
so it's really a vicious cycle and this just bills all the way out into the community I don't think any of us want to be this poor guy why am I the person that has all the problems this poor gentleman here right trying to do a good job and having all of this structure process influence on him every day he's not a happy camper so we really we do not want as Leaders to create toxic environments we rather create healthy and productive environments in my life I have found as and in my career life I
have found nothing more powerful to shape an organizational culture than accountability and this beautiful sculpture hangs near the elevators at the medical center and I love this picture I love it for a number of reasons the high TR peas talk about accountability right and I'm not talking about blame blame does nothing but create fear it freezes your your your juice it freezes your creativity people don't want to participate teamwork becomes dysfunctional so accountability is not about blame that's a bad game to play Rather it's about being able to be dependent on it's the most simple
way to put it out but it is a very robust concept so take a look at these two high trapas artst right the training the trust the accountability the preparation the execution right that goes in to making sure that a disaster is avoided every time they do that it also is a beautiful uh representation of change because change let's face it we've all done some of this in our lives when you jump out of your comfort zone and you find yourself flying in the middle of the flight and there's nothing there to support you you're
not sure how this is going to turn out you have to trust that on the other side you will land and you will find hopefully a better place so uh I like this and actually we've had some management little mini meetings at the sculpture and the medical center to talk about this so um I want to make this real to AA Medical Center a Medical Center uh when we opened which was just a few years ago 3 years old it's a toddler of a organization it's a Melting Pot the 900 people now that work there
are from all over the region so when the doors open we did not have a culture that was preceding the opening right many people work here perhaps for organizations that have 100 year old history 150 year old history right you can get you can walk in those doors and jump in the little culture ult boat like we did when we were little kids in the little circle and it just moves you around you just get enculturated we didn't have that luxury and being very very much uh uh centered around culture we hired uh a consultant
from Los Angeles and this uh individual has a very evolved concept of how to build work culture and it's centered around this concept of accountability and so we worked together and we found that um uh our middle management and our Senior Management all created what we believe to be our habits of success and the habits of success in the organization need to be very specific they have to be be be describable in Behavior terms because as he as he challenged us if you as Leaders cannot carefully describe in detail what you expect from your team
how in the heck are they going to deliver what you want and I I think about often the uh self-help uh groups that talk about uh expectations being premeditated resentments and we all know that's true right if we don't make our expectations clear and we don't get it delivered the way we want it we have a resentment why we weren't clear so we all worked together to develop these nine habits and uh they are they are very specific and it represents how we manage a very complex business business and we hold each other accountable so
they range from things like I'll give you a few of them you know we achieve work problem solving and progress through cross functional teams not through silos right that we have timely transparent problem solving and communication through all levels of the organization let me tell you with some recent happenings here in Cleveland running a hospital there's been a lot of that going on I don't want to talk about that word because it'll late so um you know and also and I'll give you the actual behavioral description of this building uh an environment where it's safe
to take risks and uh so the behavioral uh definition if I can get this right from memory is that as Leaders we want to provide our employees with a safe environment to take risks to challenge and to questions questioning is invited and that we learn from mistakes and that's valued we also want to provide an environment where it's safe to innovate where multiple ideas can be uh launched and also multiple outcomes may be resultant and finally that there's no good or bad or right or wrong idea or approach but rather it's the collection of our
ideas how we Implement and how we move forward that result in best practice is through that Collective ability now any one of those you can actually see observe I can ask anyone here who's a manager say at the at the medical center jeez let's see what are you innovating right how's your cross functional team doing is there a clear definition of the purpose of the work you're doing so this is what we're doing day in and day out and we're actually creating a much healthier culture the visual here just shows what we've been talking about
all morning is that or afternoon here is that you know the work Place culture is the attitudes the beliefs and then the Customs the behavior and we have an obligation to provide new and improved experience for our employees because this will launch out into the communities we talked about some or Jill talked about some of the life-saving things we're doing we're paying it forward every day so I get back to the workplace of accountability uh accountability is our solution to fulfill that promise to our employees I am certain I'm sure that there is a this
is a group of successful individuals and there's make no mistake about it your success and my success in large part has been spurred by the environments of work that you've participated in no doubt about it so I want you to think about that think about the environment of the work that you're in now right Your Role how can you through a different expression of your own personal accountability and talents begin to shape it especially as a leader so I believe it is our personal social responsibility as Leaders to build organizations built on effective healthy cultures
when a culture helps employees attain this the employee and I and and review this in your own mind think about the best experiences you've had you have deep feeling of self-worth you have a deep feeling of value a sense of connection and belonging you know that what you're doing has an impact on something bigger than you and perhaps even put you in a posture to believe that your purpose is bigger than what you're doing on a day-to-day basis and that's the actualization it's a very profound and wonderful experience so to summarize I'd like to uh
mention uh or recite a quote from Aristotle he says we are what we repeatedly do and therefore Excellence is not an act but a habit and I uh I look at this beautiful picture and I think of the alignment and the great teamwork and I hope that's the kind of environment that that you find yourself in with support from the entire team and that you are arriving at your destination and also let's not forget individual expression and having a little fun along the way so thank you very much and again pay it forward thank you
very much
