Lee Hopkins was a high-performer as a reporting analyst for a company, yet he didn’t feel like he fit in.
He had trouble establishing rapport with fellow employees, didn’t have “the greatest relationships” with the people with whom he worked.
It had nothing to do with leadership. For instance, company leadership fully supported him during his transition from female to male, even helping to pay for the surgery.
“My leadership was good leadership,” said Hopkins, now a social connections and business culture coach in the Chicago area. “They had an open-door policy, they said, ‘Be your whole self, bring your self to work.’ My leadership said, ‘that’s great, take some time off and … we’ll see you when you get back.”
Upon his return, Hopkins said, people respected his transition. But after being with that organization for more than a decade, he ended up leaving because “I didn’t feel supported, like I was a part of a team.”
How could that be, right?
It’s a question Hopkins asked as the presenter in a webinar, “How to Cultivate a Productive, Engaged and Stable Workforce” hosted by the National Association for Business Resources in partnership with the Best and Brightest Programs, Corp! Magazine and MichBusiness.
The webinar capitalized on Hopkins’ experience as a social connections and business culture coach helping organizations create a culture of belonging. Hopkins is a speaker, podcaster and ‘coach on a mission’ to help professionals feel more connected, heard, understood and appreciated.
The topic is “near and dear” to Hopkins’ heart, which leads him to ask audiences, “What have you tried to make more inclusive, supportive and productive connections?
“Sometimes we might try things like team lunches or team outings, or leadership training or something else I don’t know of,” he said. “Maybe you have an idea. Maybe you haven’t tried anything because you’re not in a position to create such initiatives.”
A poll he conducted during the webinar showed that 97% of the attendees had tried some sort of improvement – team lunches, outings or leadership training – to increase engagement of their employees.
“I’m really glad to hear we’re working toward inclusivity and engagement, trying to bring our teams together,” he said. “It’s one of the great ways to connect. It creates familiarity.”
The problem, Hopkins pointed out, is that some of those things – the lunches, the team outings – work, but the effects don’t last long.
“Team outings and activities might be great for awhile, but they don’t really build those relationships,” he said.
The reason organizations exist, he pointed out, is obvious: To produce something. Engagement has become a “big buzz word,” toward that goal. And building relationships within the team is a big part of that production, according to Hopkins.
But sometimes the organization has to get out of its own way.
“The organization just wants to be productive, it wants to make money, it wants to grow, it wants to survive,” Hopkins said. “It doesn’t have time for all that ‘relationship’ stuff.” The organization can’t immediately see how being human-centric is productive.
But, the way organizations survive is by giving its employees the tools they need to complete their tasks. Traditionally, he pointed out, those tools ranged from process improvement to automation to job training and leadership development.
And, he said, for several years that seemed to be enough, because it worked. The knowledge to perform their duties was thought to be important. All workers needed was to know how to do the job.
“Now we’re discovering that, to be productive, the knowledge and skill to complete simple tasks is not enough,” Hopkins said. “They also need new tools.”
It started becoming apparent that the lack of those relationships – the “gossip and back-biting” that goes on in companies – was hurting productivity. And Hopkins was quick to point out the lack of productivity is the one thing that will get corporate’s attention.
“Organizations have discovered it takes more than just the latest technology, leadership training or even diversity hires to improve the productivity at its core,” he said. “Organizations can now see that productivity is linked directly to employee engagement. That’s great news for us people problem solvers.”
Hopkins said he felt more like an outsider than a team member specifically because he didn’t know how to build rapport. To him, there was nothing to talk about.
“I didn’t understand my peers, and they didn’t understand me,” he recalled. “I was 20 years their junior in most cases, they were partnered, they lived in the suburbs with their family and a house, I lived in Chicago as a single person in an apartment.
“Never mind being transgender, we’re not even talking about that,” he added. “I just couldn’t connect with them. They had a different lifestyle outside of work, and different tasks inside of work. I was stuck.
“I enjoyed that kind of work, I was a high-performer, but I wasn’t engaged,” he said. “So I ended up leaving the company. I just didn’t feel like I belonged.”
Hopkins said there are signs that an organization’s workforce isn’t engaged. They include:
- Minimal participation in meetings. “I was silent, didn’t contribute ideas or feedback,” he said. “I was disinterested in discussions and not actively engaged in the work toward the team’s goals.”
- Limited collaboration.
- Minimal interaction with leadership. If employees are avoiding interaction with supervisors or management. “It shows a lack of engagement,” Hopkins said. “I avoided my supervisor at all costs.
- Lack of personal investment – employees who do not seek opportunities for growth or advancement may not be engaged in their own professional journey.
“Three of those four describe my engagement level,” Hopkins acknowledged. “I was really interested in my own personal development, which is why I left the company. I didn’t feel I was engaged, so I left.”
Hopkins said that companies, for instance, with DEI initiatives know the benefits of bringing people together … as a collective brain trust to drive innovation.
But these companies don’t always reap the benefits because they can’t foster engagement.
“The team can suffer and it won’t reach its full potential because the people in the room think differently, and they communicate differently, because of their life experiences.
“Because there’s no bridge to cover that gap in communication, teams have a difficult time getting in synch,” Hopkins said. “They can’t figure out how to be a team.”
So how does a company get there? Hopkins said the solution lies in teaching the “art of curious conversation,” comprised of being emotionally intelligent, being an active listener and asking curious questions.
“These skills will enable any organization to create a human-centric environment where employees see each other as humans who know, like and trust each other, rather than mysterious entities who don’t have anything in common with them.”
But none of it happens, Hopkins pointed out, without the active participation of a company’s senior leadership, who Hopkins said “need to walk the talk” about culture change.
Leaders, he said, have to set the tone and act as role models “embodying the desired cultural attributes and behaviors.”
But, while it starts with the leaders, he said, the leaders can’t be the only ones doing all the work.
“It’s an undue burden on the leaders to manage the emotional wellness of their teams, their own wellness and be responsible for the productivity of the team. That’ show we get burnout,” he said. “We want to empower our employees, individual contributors, with the ability to connect with their peers. Leaders are creating a pathway by demonstrating the process, and they invite their employees to walk the walk.”
