In this episode of Transform Your Workplace, Brandon Laws sits down with James Ferguson, author of The Confetti Culture Playbook: How to Boost Your Team’s Contribution and Impact. The two discuss James’ new book and best practices for connecting with and leading your team effectively.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
James Ferguson is a leadership and culture expert and the author of The Confetti Culture Playbook: How to Boost Your Team’s Contribution and Impact. An award-winning hospitality industry leader, James is passionate about helping hotels “change the narrative” by prioritizing their people.
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🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
SHIFTING THE FOCUS
When the pandemic forced many businesses to close, guest James Ferguson says that it provided him some unexpected time to focus on his employees — a rare opportunity in the hospitality industry where a focus on guests is the obvious priority. And much of the leadership lessons learned in such unprecedented times inspired the ideas in James’ book, The Confetti Culture Playbook: How to Boost Your Team’s Contribution and Impact.
James explained, “The hospitality business is coming back and coming back strongly, but there’s still a lot of work to be done from a culture standpoint.” So many businesses have spent the majority of their time focusing on the “almighty dollar” and “not the people working hard to earn it.” And when companies realize that they’re responsible for the people who work for them, according to James, that’s when you start to change your culture. We must find ways to ensure that employees are seen, heard, and supported.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Getting Priorities Straight
“I think in business in general, you do focus on the profits, but I always say it’s people, process, product, and then profit. And if you get that order right, you start to see the results on the other end.”
The Importance of Encouragement
“If you’re finding ways to encourage and nurture your team, find the positive, seek the good and celebrate it, they’re gonna do more of that. If you’re constantly trying to find them doing wrong — you’re not setting expectations, but finding reasons to get them in trouble or whatever it is — that’s […] going to ultimately decide where they stick.”
Reinforcing Expectations
“If I take over a team, I usually hand them a sheet that gives them the general expectations that we should collectively commit to. And then what I typically do per department is I create what’s called a roadmap, or a habit-building checklist, so that each team member who runs a department understands the key actions that they should do daily. […] It helps build habits and, when you build habits, you create consistency. And when you create consistency, it builds culture and improvement in the business and operations.”
Fostering Buy-In
“When you as a leader are the one facilitating the conversation, you’re asking the questions, and you’re making sure that, if there’s a call out, you’re gonna make sure that everyone in that room comes and supports them through that problem so that they’re not on an island and not feeling overwhelmed. When you start to do that enough, there’s a lot of buy-in to that, so people don’t feel like they’re overwhelmed anymore.”
Celebrating Success
“Confetti is a tool that helps people understand not only the importance of recognition and reward in company culture, but more importantly, it’s a tool that helps elevate the experience. As a leader, everything rises and falls on your shoulders, and the energy you bring every day is vital. It sets the tone. So if you come in and you’re negative, that’s gonna be very contagious to your team. But if you come in and you’re positive and you throw confetti any chance you get and you use that as accountability to recognize and reward your team, it elevates the experience for your team.”
Valuing Employee Feedback
“Ultimately what any company realizes is that their employees care a lot, and they want the right things to happen so that they can do their job at the best level. So if we don’t look at feedback as negative or petty or problematic, and instead we look at it as an opportunity, there are things to solve every day. I talk about in the book how you don’t wanna be a problem identifier but rather a solver.”
LEARN MORE
Check out James Ferguson’s website where you can get his book, The Confetti Culture Playbook, listen to his podcast, or find other valuable leadership resources.