Show notes
Join Lisa Ryan with Mike Domitrz discussing RESPECT in the Workplace. Find out specific approaches that are vitally important to integrating respect in the workplace. * You are invited to join our community and conversations about each episode on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/MutuallyAmazingPodcast and join us on Twitter @CenterRespect or visit our website at http://www.MutuallyAmazingPodcast.com** Lisa Ryan BIO: Lisa Ryan helps organizations develop employee engagement strategies that keep their top talent and best customers from becoming someone else's. Lisa is a gratitude expert, award-winning speaker and best-selling author of ten books, including "To Have and To Hold: 101 Smart Strategies to Engage Employees." She is Past President of the National Speakers Association, Ohio Chapter, and received her MBA from Cleveland State University. Books Lisa Recommends: "Think & Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill "How To Win Friends & Influence People" by Dale Carnegie Social Media Links: Website http://www.LisaRyanSpeaks.com Twitter https://www.twitter.com/grategy Facebook https://www.facebook.com/#!/LisaRyan14 LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/asklisaryan/ Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/grategy Youtube http://youtube.com//user/mygrategy Blog http://grategy.com/category/lisa-blog/ FB Page https://www.facebook.com/LisaRyanSpeaker/?fref=ts Elite Experts http://eliteexpertsnetwork.com/lisa-ryan/ **IMPORTANT: This podcast episode was transcribed by a 3rd party service and so errors can occur throughout the following pages:READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW (or download the pdf): Mike: Welcome to The RESPECT Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Domitrz from mikespeaks.com, where we help organizations of all sizes, educational institutions, and the US military create a culture of respect, and respect is exactly what we discuss on this show, so let's get started. Mike: This week's guest is Lisa Ryan. Lisa helps organizations develop employee engagements strategies that keep their top talent and best customers from becoming someone else's. She is a gratitude expert, award-winning speaker, and bestselling author of 10 books, including To Have and To Hold: 101 Smart Strategies to Engage Employees. She's also past president of the National Speakers Association Ohio Chapter, and received her MBA from Cleveland State University. Lisa, thanks for joining us on The RESPECT Podcast. Lisa: Well, thanks so much for having me. Mike: Absolutely. Let's get right into it. How does respect play in the workplace? Lisa: To have really good connections between people, they have to feel that you respect them. You don't necessarily have to like everyone, but to acknowledge them for the skills, the knowledge, the expertise that they bring to the workplace, that is critical in making those connections happen. Mike: And how do you get people to do that, to actually treat each other with respect in a workplace where they feel, "Hey, I'm here for my goals, they're here for their goals"? Lisa: Well, my company, which is called Grategy, stands for "gratitude strategy," so in my world, everything comes down to gratitude. It comes to looking for the good, and when you start with a gratitude practice that we could spend hours talking about, but you start to look for the good in people. So, say you have a person that, for whatever reason, you just get along with. It's like, what if I challenged you to find one good thing about that person, and it's like, "Lisa, there ain't nothing good about that person." All right, if you had to pick something about that person, what would it be? "Um, I don't know, she wore cute shoes yesterday." You start there, because when you start to acknowledge people, when you're able to look for the good, it starts to change the energy around that relationship, and over time, it does change the relationship. Mike: How does that ... So that's in the workplace. What about in our personal life? What about the neighbor next door? Lisa: The neighbor next door, it's the exact same thing. It all comes down to connection. Mother Teresa once said, "We're more starved for appreciation than we are for bread." So whether that works, and actually, with our neighbor, with our spouse, with our significant others, with our children, when we can go and find the good in those people, and let them know that, "Hey, I appreciate you," "Hey, I respect you," "Hey, I love you," and say the words that often we take for granted, working on that in our personal life then actually helps us to bring that better, less-stressed person into the workplace. So it really is part of a whole picture. Mike: Let's say a parent's at home, and they're having a rough day with their kids. The kids aren't listening. Let's say they only have one, and it's giving them an attitude. How do they even take a breath to ... Like, do you have an exercise to give them to take a breath and start with the breath? Because in that moment, they're in total frustration. Lisa: The breath definitely helps that person, and this is not a "press the easy button and everything's changed," because the thing is that when you're tired, when you're frustrated, that's probably the wrong time to start a new practice, so we're starting before that, of changing the conversation. Let's say little Johnny comes home from school. Instead of saying, "Well, Johnny, how was your day today?" and Johnny, of course, because we're wired for negativity, "Well, Billy was mean to me, [inaudible 00:03:58]," instead, "Johnny, tell me something good that happened today." Now, the first time you ask Johnny for something good, Johnny's going to look at you like you are insane, like, "What happened to you? Who are you?" But we just start to change the conversation. Lisa: Many people, and there's lots of research on gratitude, but it also works with children, that children that have some kind of gratitude practice, that are trained to look for the good, fare better than kids that don't. And in this immediate gratification society that we live in, when Mom and Dad take the time with the kids to say, "Okay, let's ..." We're sitting down to dinner, or we're getting ready for school in the morning. "Let's look at something good. Let's look for those things that we can be grateful for." And over time, it becomes that habit. Lisa: I had one of my clients that they started doing with their kids before going to bed, they would just do their gratitudes right before bed, and on the days the parents forget for whatever reason — you know, their plates are full — the kids are like, "How come we're not doing our gratitudes?" So, even at the beginning where they may be resentful, they may be, you know, "Oh, this is stupid, why are we doing this?" Over time, it becomes a practice, it becomes a habit, and it starts to change those relationships. Mike: How do you get someone in the workplace to even begin to attempt at home? How do you inspire them or give them a bit of a catalyst to do that, versus going, "I'm not messing with this"? Lisa: Well, one of my favorite ways is the 30-Day Gratitude Challenge, and this is every day for 30 days, look for five ways that you can be grateful. And there's actually five different ways ... You know, the gratitude journal, of course, is one, writing down five things that you're grateful for. There's the verbally thanking people, specifically looking for people and catch them in the act of doing something right, and being specific instead of just saying, "Hey, thanks." You know, "Thank you so much for putting in that extra effort on that report that I needed. Really appreciate your efforts, it helped a lot." Lisa: So first, writing them down, verbally, then we have the thank-you note and the letter of appreciation. In the world according to Lisa Ryan, the thank-you note is, you know, "Thank you for something." Thank you for dinner, thank you for the gift, thank you for something. The letter of appreciation is "Thank you for being you." Thank you because that you're in my life; this is the difference that you make. And then the fifth way is to reflect on or meditate on gratitude each day. Lisa: So, getting into the habit. I used to do — and actually, I've been asked to bring it back again — an official 30-Day Gratitude Challenge, where people would use the five thank-yous a day challenge, and then the funniest part was, after the 30 days were over, I was getting these emails of people saying, "I'm so sorry that the 30-Day Challenge is over, because I really liked keeping my gratitudes." I'm sitting there thinking, you know, that was part of my evil plan, that you get into the habit of doing it, and then you see the difference, and not only do you see the difference, but the people that associate with you also notice the difference. I had one guy who I interviewed after the gratitude challenge, and his wife came up to him and said, "What's going on with you? You're not nearly as grouchy as you used to be." So, whether or not you feel the difference, other people will also notice. Mike: Well, and it's important, and we notice what we're being grateful for. What I mean by that is the compliment, you know, telling somebody, "I'm grateful for this." In the workplace, when we're doing our program at corporations and associations, if you ask somebody to come up and say, "Say something nice to this person," they 99% of the time will go to appearance. Lisa: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mike: And that's not going to the deep heart of gratitude, that's going for the easiest route out, and it doesn't connect with people. It's not that it doesn't connect at all, but it's in a different thing versus saying, "I see you talk about your kids; you clearly are a devoted parent." That is so much more meaningful than "Wow, nice top," you know, or "Nice jacket," or "Nice shoes," or ... And so you can start to say, "How can I see deeper to connect with this person on something that's meaningful?" You brought up a good example there on the project, to be grateful for the insights you brought to that project. To be that specific is a way more powerful form of gratitude and respect than "Hey, thanks for your help." Lisa: Exactly, yeah. Mike: So, to be the more specific and say, "That insight you shared right there, that was so brilliant, that helped me go down this path," and be that intentional with the gratitude, can really allow it to connect human beings. Lisa: Right, exactly, because really, what gets recognized gets repeated, so when you're telling that person, "Thank you, your insight, the relationship that you have with your family, the fact that you share," whatever it is, that we're looking at actions. Because I speak to a lot of manufacturing associations where there is mostly men in the audience, and when I use accepting a compliment, I do a whole thing on the ability to accept a compliment, but the thing is, because we focus on appearance, in the workplace, that can get a little hairy with all of this. So it's focusing on the actions that that person did, whether or not you like their dress or you like their ... Whatever they're wearing, when we're focusing on the physical attributes of a person, sometimes that can get us in trouble. Mike: Absolutely, and that's why we're brought in, is because people don't realize, they are naïve or ignorant, sometimes they just don't care — hopefully that's not the case — that those physical comments can be harming- Lisa: Right, exactly. Mike: ... especially with tone of voice, where you're looking when you're saying it. There's a million things that can cause harm there, whereas telling you what a great job you did on a project, there's very little chance of me causing harm without ... As long as I don't double-edged sword it, right? Like, "Unlike the last time ..." That, then, is not gratitude, that's like ... Well, it's gratitude with a slap at the same time. And so that's important, to let it be free of any "buts" or "and ifs." Lisa: Right, right. Well, and the thing, the other thing that you're doing when you're being specific and recognizing that colleague, and recognizing that employee, is they know that you're paying attention to them. You're not just going because, "Oh, I went to this program and Lisa Ryan said I needed to thank five people. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Check, done." Where instead, I'm specifically focusing, and now my employees know that I'm not only getting on them when something goes bad, but I'm also paying attention to what's going well. Lisa: I was at one of my programs, and a guy came up to me afterwards. He said, "You know, Lisa, when I do something wrong, I get recognized 100% of the time, and when I do something well, it's rare that I get acknowledge." And studies, I mean, there's lots of studies that are out there that show that a lot of times, it's about 42% of employees have been recognized for the good work that they've done by their manager in the past year. Year! That's insanity. We change the workplace when we start to look for people and catch our employees doing things well. That's when we can change the culture. Mike: Well, yeah, and we all know the research shows people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. They leave poor leadership. And so the question becomes, if you're listening to this, "How can I be a positive leader? Even if there ... Maybe I'm on the ... You know, I'm the lowest rank in the situation, how can I still bring positive leadership to that environment? How can I show respect for those I work with?" And this becomes an important part. Now, someone will sit there and go, "Well, when it comes to companies and respect, it's all about the bottom dollar, it's all about profit." So, how do you help that person realize respect has a lot to do with profit, with the bottom line? Lisa: You know, when you ... Because I run into those same managers, you know, "Why should I thank my people for doing a job? Isn't that what a paycheck's for?" It's like, you know what? If you want your people to do exactly what you pay them for, if a paycheck is all it's about, they will do exactly enough work so that they don't get fired, because you're probably paying them exactly enough so that they don't quit. If you want that employee to give you their best efforts, to have that best friend at work that Gallup says is one of the points of an engaged employee, that brings their best, that gives you their blood, their sweat, their tears, then we look for ways to acknowledge our employees. Lisa: Then we look for ways, and it doesn't matter if you are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the corporate ladder; every single person in an organization can make a difference, and it's just in that language. It's "I appreciate you," it's "Thank you," it's "I respect you, I respect what you bring to this workplace." I'm catching you doing things right, and I'm looking for…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
