ELE brings leaders together across companies and industries to work through the messy stuff: decisions, risk, handoffs, execution drag, and what it takes to move from idea to action.

UPCOMING CALENDAR

LATEST IDEA EXCHANGE

RECENT INSIGHTS

WHO WE ARE

About ELE

Schedule a Local Meetup

Companies In Our Network

Contact ELE

Figure out if ELE is for you. Straight answers on what ELE is, who it’s built for, and how contributing members actually work together. Still have a question? Contact us.

ELE Group, LLC

Fireside Chat: Inspire Greater Employee Engagement by Connecting to Purpose

In today's fast-paced business environment, employee engagement is more crucial than ever. Yet, as Steve Curtin, author of "The Revelation Conversation," points out, "Most sophisticated organizations make the time and make the investment in articulating a mission or a vision or a purpose statement, core values, corporate ideals, but very few of the employees within that organization even at the senior level can recall them."

This disconnect between organizational purpose and employee understanding was the focus of our recent session, where we explored strategies to inspire greater employee engagement by connecting individuals to their work's purpose.

Key Takeaways:
1. Job Purpose and Essence: Understanding the distinction between job functions (what you do and how you do it) and job essence (why you do it) is crucial for employee engagement. Managers should help employees connect their daily tasks to the organization's higher purpose.
2. The Revelation Conversation: Regular, informal conversations between managers and employees about job purpose can significantly improve engagement. These conversations should focus on helping employees understand their role's essence and its connection to the organization's mission.
3. Aligning Values and Behaviors: Organizations should not only define their core values but also create value statements that explain how these values translate into specific behaviors. This helps employees understand how to embody the organization's values in their daily work.
By focusing on these areas, organizations can bridge the gap between their stated purpose and their employees' day-to-day experiences, fostering a more engaged, motivated, and purposeful workforce.

Connecting to Purpose: Inspire Greater Employee Engagement

Engagement &amp; Culture

brian.watkins

kery.mortenson

nick.allen

jay.jamrog

richard.busby

susan.peters

Organization Development

employee engagement

purpose

ariel.mcgrew

evidence-based stategy

andrew.savikas

productivity

customer satisfaction

steve.curtin

trategic alignment

farrell.calabrese

getAbstract

Fireside Chat: Inspire Greater Employee Engagement by Connecting to Purpose

Case study: <a href="https://www.learningexecutive.com/book/the-revelation-conversation-inspire-greater-employee-engagement-by-connecting-to-purpose/">The Revelation Conversation</a> by Steve Curtin argues creating an environment for employees to do work that matters rather than simply checking boxes and going through the motions, employers will reap the benefits of higher employee engagement, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

<a href="https://www.learningexecutive.com/book/the-revelation-conversation-inspire-greater-employee-engagement-by-connecting-to-purpose/?author=steve-curtin"><img class="size-medium wp-image-36891 aligncenter" src="https://www.learningexecutive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/The-Revelation-Conversation-Book-Cover-200x300.jpg" alt="The Revelation Conversation (Steve Curtin, 2022)" width="200" height="300" /></a>

Nearly every organization has a mission, vision or purpose statement displayed on its website or framed and mounted in the executive corridor. Yet employees often struggle to articulate how their company’s purpose relates to their daily job tasks.

Join this ELE discussion on Zoom with Steve Curtin, author of The Revelation
Conversation, and Andrew Savikas, Chief Strategy Officer at getAbstract, to learn about tools and best practices to inspire greater employee engagement by connecting job function to company purpose.

In the fireside chat, we will discuss:
<ul>
 	<li>The benefits of higher levels of employee engagement</li>
 	<li>How leading companies link their corporate ideals to employees’ daily job
responsibilities</li>
 	<li>How L&amp;D leaders and managers can involve employees in the discovery of their total job role and connect job duties to job purpose</li>
 	<li>How to create an environment for employees to do work that matters</li>
</ul>
ELE produces this Learning Circle: Retooling Talent Development for the New Normal.

ELE's <a title="ELE's Idea Exchange" href="https://www.learningexecutive.com/idea-exchange/">Idea Exchange</a>: Collaborate online with your peers.

&nbsp;

single-event

Your Teams

Learning Circles

Complimentary

online event

complimentary event

strategic alignment

Do you wish you could stop the mayhem of work and life and just take a minute? Do you sense you could contribute more if there were a little more room in the day? Does busyness deprive you and your burnt-out team of the oxygen your talents need to catch fire?

Many have felt that way, yet taking a pause has seemed impossible—until now.

In A Minute to Think, Juliet Funt, a globally recognized warrior in the battle against busyness, provides a powerful guide that will give you the permission, framework, and specific direction you need to do the following:
<ul class="a-unordered-list a-vertical">
 	<li>Regain control of your overloaded, caffeinated, inbox-worshiping workday</li>
 	<li>Liberate yourself and your teams from burnout and busywork</li>
 	<li>Reclaim creativity and focus despite the chaos around you</li>
 	<li>Bring thoughtfulness into designing your next work norms</li>
 	<li>Tame the beast of email and escape the mire of meetings</li>
 	<li>Find your precious minute to think</li>
</ul>
You’re not alone in your yearning for freedom from constant reactivity. The global workforce today is so fried that it belongs in the food court of a county fair. We’re relentlessly behind the curve, dousing fires everywhere, and our 3 a.m. insomnia provides the only unscheduled thinking time of the day.

What we need reinserted in our lives is the missing element of white space—short periods of open, unscheduled time that, when recaptured, change the very nature of work. White space is the stepping back, the strategic pause, the oxygen that allows the sparks of our efforts to catch fire. White space has the power to radically—and simply—reinvent the way we approach work in this maxed-out, post-COVID 21st-century world.

With Juliet’s memorable stories, easy-to-use tools, and razor-sharp instruction, she carves for us an escape route from the overwhelming amount of low-value tasks and the daily avalanche of e-mails, meetings, decks, and reports. Using research, client stories, and a relatable voice, Juliet shows all of us how to reclaim time for thinking and make room for what truly matters. Whether you are an individual trying to build a more sane and humane flow of daily work, a team that wants new levels of efficiency and effectiveness, or an entire organization changing your culture toward thoughtfulness, this book will lead you there.

A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work

innovation

julian.malnak

nancy.dome

denis.sternberg

Performance Improvement

time management

work-life balance

Creativity

Self-Improvement

Mindfulness

Personal Growth

workplace efficiency

Professional Development

stress management

effective work habits

katrina.nordquist

deepa.kartha

“A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly.

There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

leadership development

talent development

Burnout Prevention

employee wellbeing

resilience building

laura.sandera

Mindfulness in the Workplace

High-Performance Teams

Focus and Concentration

Employee Health

Organizational Health

Wellness Programs

Energy Management

WALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLER
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2O16 PICK IN BUSINESS &amp; LEADERSHIP
Master one of our economy’s most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this “exciting” book (Daniel H. Pink) from an “exceptional” author (New York TimesBook Review).
In our distracted modern economy, the coveted skill of deep work—the ability to focus intensely without interruption on demanding mental tasks—has never been rarer or more valuable. As Cal Newport argues in Deep Work, this superpower boosts your career success and provides meaning, yet most squander it by endlessly checking email and social media.
<blockquote>💥 The key for Deep Work
(Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
is training your mind and habits.
<ol>
 	<li>Work Deeply</li>
 	<li>Embrace Boredom</li>
 	<li>Quit Social Media</li>
 	<li>Drain the Shallows</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
Newport makes the compelling case that cultivating deep work enhances your impact. He offers a practical four-part regimen for training your mind: work with laser-like focus free of distractions; embrace boredom instead of constant entertainment; quit social media; and avoid shallow obligations that don't engage your talents. Newport supports this advice with stories of legends like Carl Jung who structured their lives around deep work.
Deep Work provides an urgent roadmap for focus amid the digital discord. In our multitasking world where everyone is distracted, deep work is the key to standing out as an achiever. This skill allows you to quickly master the most difficult information and produce your best work. Deep Work gives you a competitive edge.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

leadership

Leadership

dirk.tussing

tracey.wik

chris.edwards

marti.konstant

effectiveness

motivation

performance

Focus

Concentration

Digital Distraction

Career

Success

Goal Setting

Technology

"A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company

Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots.

Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Personal Development

Task Management

executive coaching

stress reduction

Leadership Effectiveness

Efficiency

Team Productivity

Strategic Planning

Personal Organization

Workflow Management

Workplace Organization

The book provides a science-based and data-driven approach to leadership, focusing on how leaders can improve employee well-being, satisfaction, and productivity. It is based on two in-depth studies conducted by the authors.

Key themes and topics in the book include:
<ul>
 	<li>The "Generator" Leader: The book explains how to become a "Generator" type of leader, which is a leader who people want to work for and who cultivates trust and positive connections.</li>
 	<li>The Mismatch of Wellness Definitions: It addresses the difference in how employers and employees define wellness and offers ways to bridge that gap.</li>
 	<li>Tone over Time: The authors emphasize that the tone a leader sets at work is more important for employee wellness than the amount of time they spend at the office.</li>
 	<li>Work Should Support Life: It offers guidance on how to craft work to support employees' lives and unique needs, rather than the other way around.</li>
 	<li>Eliminating Mental Health Stigma: The book discusses the importance of addressing and eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health in the workplace.</li>
</ul>
The book is aimed at current and aspiring business leaders and managers who are looking for practical, data-based insights to create a healthier and more productive work environment.

Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives

future of work

janice.simmons

talent management

psychological safety

employee experience

learning and development

organizational culture

HR leadership

workplace wellness

Human Resources

Manager Training

team culture

wellbeing at work

Bestselling authors and cohosts of the TED podcast Fixable, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss reinvent the playbook for how to lead change—with a radical approach that moves fast, builds trust, and accelerates excellence.

Speed has gotten a bad name in business, much of it deserved. When Facebook made "Move fast and break things" an informal company motto, it fueled a widely held belief that we can either make progress or take care of people, one or the other. That a certain amount of wreckage is the price we have to pay for inventing the future.

Leadership experts Frances Frei and Anne Morriss argue that this belief is deeply flawed—and that it keeps you from building a great company. Helping executives and entrepreneurs solve their toughest problems over the past decade, Frei and Morriss learned that the trade-off between speed and excellence is false. The best leaders solve hard problems with fierce urgency while making their organizations—employees, customers, and shareholders—even stronger. They move fast and fix things.

Based on their work with fast-moving companies such as Uber, Riot Games, and WeWork, Frei and Morriss reveal the five essential steps to moving fast and fixing things. You'll learn to:
<ul>
 	<li>Identify the real problem holding you back</li>
 	<li>Build and rebuild trust in your company</li>
 	<li>Create a culture where everyone can thrive</li>
 	<li>Communicate powerfully as a leader</li>
 	<li>Go fast by empowering your team</li>
</ul>
With a one-week plan to fix your problems on a fast cycle time of one step per day, this book is your guide to maximizing impact and reinventing your approach to change. By the end of the week, you won't just have a road map for solving your company's toughest problems—you'll already be well on your way, improving your company at exhilarating speed.

Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader's Guide to Solving Hard Problems

Strategy

Change Management

team-building

best practices

strategy

trust

business

problem solving

yolanda.mangram

Management

Company Culture

Speed

A revised and updated edition of the acclaimed Wall Street Journal bestseller that explores why some leaders drain capability and intelligence from their teams while others amplify it to produce better results.

We’ve all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drains intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them and always needs to be the smartest person in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, light bulbs go off over people’s heads; ideas flow and problems get solved. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves to deliver results that surpass expectations. These are the Multipliers. And the world needs more of them, especially now when leaders are expected to do more with less.

In this engaging and highly practical book, leadership expert Liz Wiseman explores these two leadership styles, persuasively showing how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation.

In analyzing data from more than 150 leaders, Wiseman has identified five disciplines that distinguish Multipliers from Diminishers. These five disciplines are not based on innate talent; indeed, they are skills and practices that everyone can learn to use—even lifelong and recalcitrant Diminishers. Lively, real-world case studies and practical tips and techniques bring to life each of these principles, showing you how to become a Multiplier too, whether you are a new or an experienced manager. This revered classic has been updated with new examples of Multipliers, as well as two new chapters one on accidental Diminishers, and one on how to deal with Diminishers.

Just imagine what you could accomplish if you could harness all the energy and intelligence around you. Multipliers will show you how.

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

new manager

middle-manager

heather.tunison

communication

collaboration

emerging leaders

potential

frontline managers

inspiration

teamwork

excutive leadership

TalentManagement

OrganizationalCulture

EmployeeDevelopment

DecisionMaking

Growth

Self-Help

cindy.pinkstaffmiller

terresa.bubbers

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators and “master of the life hack” (GQ) explores the fascinating science of productivity and offers real-world takeaways to apply your life, whether you’re chasing peak productivity or simply trying to get back on track.

In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charles Duhigg explained why we do what we do. In Smarter Faster Better, he applies the same relentless curiosity and rich storytelling to how we can improve at the things we do.

At the core of Smarter Faster Better are eight key concepts—from motivation and goal setting to focus and decision making—that explain why some people and companies get so much done. Drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics—as well as the experiences of CEOs, educational reformers, four-star generals, FBI agents, airplane pilots, and Broadway songwriters—this book reveals that the most productive people, companies, and organizations don’t merely act differently. They view the world, and their choices, in profoundly different ways.

Smarter Faster Better is a story-filled exploration of the science of productivity, one that can help us learn to succeed with less stress and struggle—and become smarter, faster, and better at everything we do.

Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity

performance management

organizational effectiveness

decision making

Leadership Skills

workplace productivity

In The 6% Club, The Change Doctor Michelle Rozen, PhD, teaches audiences and readers how to create and actually stick to new positive habits, unlocking the secret formula to the life, success, and happiness they've always dreamed of. The book was born from a recent study where Dr. Rozen surveyed 1,000 people who pledged to make a change in their lives, and, shockingly, only 6% had stuck to the change just a month later.

Dr. Rozen's powerful, uplifting, and actionable methods have been tested on countless event attendees from all types of background for over a decade. In this book, readers will learn how to:
<ul class="a-unordered-list a-vertical">
 	<li>Work out more, eat healthier, save more money, do better in business, or attain any other personal or professional goal</li>
 	<li>Make changes solo, or with another individual like a friend or partner</li>
 	<li>Stop making excuses, giving up, or putting it off—effortlessly</li>
</ul>
Based on science and written by one of the most sought-after motivational speakers on leadership and change, The 6% Club earns a well-deserved spot on the bookshelves of all individuals looking to make lasting changes in their personal and professional lives.

The 6% Club: Unlock the Secret to Achieving Any Goal and Thriving in Business and Life

Coaching

resilience

Overcoming Obstacles

business success

Habit Formation

Success Habits

Achieving Goals

Positive Change

Life Success

Goodall shares a perspective that resonated greatly with me - change has become a cult, treated as a sacred easy button for leaders and organizations. The problem that change initiatives often disregard the change toll or on the people and organization's resources for true transformation. What if there were fewer change initiatives and more resources/effort were put into improving what already exists? What if there was more stability and less turbulence that would allow people to thrive? Fix what's really broken, transform what's not longer relevant, and create environment and systems that honor humans.

If you’ve had enough of the constant turbulence that defines corporate life today, you’re not alone.  Learn why change is bad for people and for business, and discover how to create the stability that we all need to thrive.

For decades, “disruption” and “change” have been seen as essential to business growth and success. In this provocative and incisive book, leadership expert Ashley Goodall argues that what has become a sacred dogma is both wrong and harmful.

Whether it’s a merger or re-org or a new office layout, change has become the ultimate easy button for leaders, who pursue it with abandon, unleashing a torrent of disruption on employees. The result is what Goodall calls “life in the blender”—a perpetual cycle of upheaval, uncertainty, and unease.

The problem with change, Goodall argues, is that a culture where everything from people to processes to strategic priorities are constantly in flux exerts a psychological toll that undermines motivation, productivity, and performance.  And yet so accustomed are we to constant churn that we have become numb to its very real consequences.

Drawing on two decades spent leading HR organizations at Deloitte and Cisco, Ashley Goodall reveals why change is not the same as improvement, and how, by prioritizing team cohesion (instead of reshuffling teams at will), by using real words (rather than corporate-speak), by sharing secrets (not mission statements), by fixing only the things that are truly broken (instead of moving fast and breaking everything in sight, and more, leaders at every level can create the stability that people need to thrive.

The Problem With Change And the Essential Nature of Human Performance

corinne@innovatingresults.com

organizational development

Strategic HR

diana.anderson

Corporate Strategy

human performance

workplace stability

Nearly every organization has a mission, vision, or purpose statement displayed on its website or framed and mounted in the executive corridor. But it is largely unknown to employees and seemingly unrelated to their daily jobs.

As a result, while employees may possess the knowledge and skills to do their jobs, they are unaware of what bestselling customer service author Steve Curtin calls job purpose: how their specific tasks contribute to the organization’s reason for being. They understand what to do and how to do it, but not why they do it.

Curtin offers a fresh tool to overcome this challenge. The Revelation Conversation is a one-on-one exchange where leaders and managers involve employees in discovering their total job role, connect job duties to job purpose, and inspire greater employee engagement. Instead of just having assignments to work on, they now have a purpose of working toward. Service quality goes from transactional to exceptional.

The book contains dozens of examples of how leading companies link their corporate ideals to employees’ daily job responsibilities. By creating an environment for employees to do work that matters rather than simply checking boxes and going through the motions, employers will reap the benefits of higher employee engagement, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

The Revelation Conversation: Inspire Greater Employee Engagement by Connecting to Purpose

Login