Business Consulting for Excellence
Powered by Actionable Conversations
Engaged, high performing employees. Thriving, aligned teams. Leaders who excel at delivering results and helping employees reach their full potential. A collaborative organizational culture built on trust, respect, inclusion, and a focus on safety. In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, these goals have never been more critically important yet increasingly difficult to achieve. KPC Consulting, LLC business consulting can help – through bespoke consulting solutions designed around the Actionable Conversations platform.
What is Actionable Conversations?
Actionable Conversations is a simple yet powerful platform that dramatically improves workplace effectiveness through better relationships and shifted behavior. What makes Actionable Conversations unique is the triple impact of
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learner skill development
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leader credibility enhancement, and
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real-time insight for the organizational leaders around measurable behavior change and leader impact.
All in roughly an hour a month.
Why Actionable Conversations?
The Actionable Conversations approach is a deceptively simple, three stage process that happens on the job, around real issues your people are currently working through… in a little over an hour a month.
Each month, managers lead their teams through 60 minute conversations. Each conversation uses one concept from a popular business book as a “lens” through which the team discusses a current business challenge. Even first time managers have everything they need to lead a robust conversation, including facilitation notes, activities, and videos.
CONVERSATION
Building off the group Conversation, each team member commits to a “micro-behavior change”; one small action they will do differently moving forward. The Actionable Engine (a web-based personal growth tracker your people can access from any device) helps them keep track of their progress.
Each person who commits to an action also chooses an Accountability Buddy; someone who will be notified and encouraged to check in with the person committed to action, to help keep them on track.
ACTION
As a team leader, you’ll have real time visibility into who’s struggling, who’s thriving and who’s checked out on your team. Think how much more effective you could be in your leadership conversations if you knew exactly who on your team needed your attention, and what to talk about.
As an organizational head, you’ll be able to see—quantifiably—who in your organization are driving real change… and who’s a flight risk. Real-time insight into your organization’s people, with the click of a button.
INSIGHT
The ROI of Better Conversations
Better conversations drive better relationships. Better relationships drive better engagement. And better engagement is the most effective way to impact profitability.
Let’s talk engagement.
More than simply “the right thing to do,” the data now irrefutably shows that developing a more engaged workforce positively impacts virtually every business metric you’d care to measure. Better engagement matters.
Organizations with top-quartile teams in employee engagement have:
Summarized from the Gallup Q12 Survey, 2106
How do relationships fit in?
Research from Gallup indicates that managers and leaders are the biggest factor influencing employee engagement, and employees are 3x more likely to be engaged when they have regular and meaningful communication with their manager.
The top two reasons people leave their jobs:
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The relationship they have with their manager
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The relationship they have with their peers
Any KPI you’d likely want to measure is directly impacted by employee engagement. The most effective what to increase employee engagement is to foster better relationships in the work place. Relationships will make or break your business*.
How important are conversations?
Strong connections are formed through real conversations and shared experience. Better group conversations improve employee relationships & leadership credibility. Better one-to-one conversations strengthen individual relationships & develop a coaching habit.
From Engagement at Work, Gallup Q12 Meta-Analysis of 14 million employees 2016
“Our work, our relationships, and our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time”
– Susan Scott, Author of FIERCE CONVERSATIONS
What is the Engaged Individual Pyramid?
The pyramid represents the six core competency areas of top performers in the 21st Century. Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, these competencies must be developed in a particular sequence (bottom to top) to create lasting change.
The Engaged Individual Pyramid
Role & Culture
This lays the foundation for the Engaged Individual. Without a sense of aligned purpose and team connection, the other areas are irrelevant. The three sub-categories below outline how these modules foster engagement and help individuals go above and beyond their job descriptions.
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Role Fit: (WHAT) Reconnect individuals with their natural skill set and rekindle the enjoyment they have for their work.
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Team Dynamic: (HOW) Discuss how your team collectively operates and clarifies expectations.
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Aligned Purpose: (WHY) Create enthusiasm and unite your team through a shared purpose. Help individuals identify a particular aspect of the organization’s vision that resonates with them.
Self-Management
Team members gain a greater sense of control over their work, the direction that it’s going, and think more proactively about what steps they can take to have a greater impact in the organization and with the end client.
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Time Management: Individuals consider how they manage their days; they focus on how to work more efficiently and effectively.
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Prioritization: Identify what’s important and what’s urgent. Move beyond just “keeping up” to actually getting ahead. Team members realize the value of their contributions.
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Planning: Future planning for personal careers, organizational goals, and departmental goals. Intelligent planning as a group.
Team
This section of the pyramid focuses on team dynamics that exist in the workplace. We take a look at the mentality and attitudes team members bring to working with others.
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Peer Interaction: While you don’t need to be best friends with your coworkers, each person should bring civility to the workplace. Respect is necessary to allow each person the space to do their work in their own way. This sub-category is great for when certain things have been bottled up or brushed under the carpet in the past; move forward and create an environment of respect.
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Accountability: Only effective teams are made up of individuals who are able to take personal ownership of their projects and responsibilities. Each individual doing so allows the team to thrive.
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Collaboration: If we as a group can leverage the individual strengths of each person here, where everyone is responsible for their own actions, then the sum becomes greater than its parts. As a team, we can accomplish more than individuals on their own.
Thinking
Move away from doing without thinking—or maintaining the status quo— and take your team to the next level. Think strategically and proactively about what you’re doing and where you’re going. This section also focuses on how we think—about past accomplishments and past failures.
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Learn from Mistakes: Facilitate proper discussion and reflection on mistakes. Look at situations from the past that we can apply learnings from; determine how we can do this as a team.
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Embrace Change: Take ideas that are given to us and take ownership of them; change the mentality and attitude of those who have not yet learned to do this. Face changes and create something exceptional out of what may have been unexpected.
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Micro-Innovation: Create small, incremental improvements. This is not something that’s a major event and not something done by “those people” but it’s the little things that we all can do on a daily basis. Build systems, adopt an innovative mindset, and think differently about innovation.
Leadership
Leadership runs along the side of the pyramid and complements other sections. People gravitate toward people who are pursuing something of meaning. Natural leadership is one of the most critical elements to teams who want to thrive in the 21st century.
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Trust: (lines up with Self Management): Are you organized? Are you getting things done? Competency builds trust among others on the team.
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Loyalty: (lines up with Communication and Team): Whose best interest are you doing this in? Are you going out of your way to make sure this is beneficial for all? Leaders are thinking of the collective interest of the group.
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Peer Development: Are you going out of your way to help team members achieve more themselves? Are you giving recognition to the people who help with the project and are you taking responsibility for the things that didn’t go right?
Communication
How does human interaction play out in your workplace? This section focuses on specific skills to help your team members become more effective communicators.
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Clarity: Reduce the ambiguity, confusion, and frustration that comes about through vague communication. Say more precisely what you mean to say.
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Empathy: Communicate in a way that resonates with the other person and develop better listening skills. Throughout Communication and in this particular sub-category, we’ll spend time on sales and how to sell more effectively. (Everyone who has a job is selling something at some point.)
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Influence: Learn how to drive behavior change and form new habits.