Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Welcome to episode 212. This is your host, Bernie Borges. Hey. This episode is part 2 of a 2 part series on fulfillment centric leadership. On episode 211, I told you the story of when I recently presented Fulfillment Centric Leadership for the very first time as one of 15 speakers at the NSLS Virtual Summit, and how it was very well received. I also shared the horrifying data from Gallup’s 2024 State of Global Workforce Report that says that 77% of the global workforce is not engaged in their work, costing a staggering 8.9 trillion with a t to the global economy. Then I reviewed 3 of the 10 steps to a fulfillment centric leadership model. So to recap, they are step number 1, start with your own journey.
Bernie Borges [00:01:02]:
Being self aware of your fulfillment is foundational to being a fulfillment centric leader. Step number 2. Get to know the 5 key life pillars. Health, fitness, career, relationships, and legacy. So that you can lead with authenticity. And step number 3. Let the data guide you. Survey your teams so that you can discover their level of fulfillment across these 5 pillars.
Bernie Borges [00:01:32]:
Now, if you didn’t listen to episode 211, even though I just recapped the highlights for you, I strongly suggest that you listen to it just to get more context. It’s less than 30 minutes long. And between episode 211 and 212, you can listen to both in about a 1 hour time frame, either at the gym, while you’re working out, or driving in your car, or whatever it may be. And you can even listen faster if you listen at 1.25 or 1.5 speed like a lot of people do, including me when I listen to podcasts. So let’s dive in to continue with the 10 steps to fulfillment centric leadership starting with step number 4. Step number 4, I call it keeping it real. On episode 211, I commented that when you do your own fulfillment self assessment, the results are not entirely meant to be kept to yourself. By completing your self assessment and then becoming familiar with the 5 key life pillars, and then also surveying your team about their fulfillment across those 5 key life pillars, you then have the foundation to lead with authenticity.
Bernie Borges [00:02:48]:
And this is what I mean by keeping it real. You see, nothing kills trust faster than a fake leader. Your team can spot insincere leadership from a mile away. So I encourage you to share some of your own struggles and some of your victories too. Consider being transparent about some of the challenges that you face. Because when you’re authentic, your team feels safe being genuine with you. You’re essentially reminding your team that, hey, you’re human too. And that you experience similar challenges and that you’re navigating the same fulfillment journey across the same 5 key life pillars.
Bernie Borges [00:03:30]:
So keep it real. Alright. Step number 5, make wellness work. The fulfillment centric leadership model creates an awareness for wellness. And let’s face it, a healthy team is a productive team. It’s just that simple. But this goes beyond just offering gym memberships or maybe a salad bar if your team works in the office. Your HR team should be your partner to creatively design wellness habits, and I do mean habits.
Bernie Borges [00:04:05]:
So here are a few examples. Offer flexible schedules to promote mental health or maybe to attend stress management workshops. Offer walking or standing meetings if your team is in the office. Now, of course, you wanna be supportive of individuals with disabilities that may not be able to participate in walking or standing meetings. Encourage people to take breaks to do physical activities, such as stretching or desk push ups, one of my favorites. That’s simply just resting your hands on your desk and doing push ups at your desk. Also, you can do things like holding meetings that are devoted entirely to sharing wellness habits. Those conversations are likely to inspire people when they learn about wellness habits that maybe they didn’t know about, or maybe they weren’t doing them.
Bernie Borges [00:04:58]:
And, don’t overlook the topic of sleep. Encourage your team to get the proper sleep and offer resources for those who may be struggling with sleep, which is, by the way, more common than you may think. Lastly, nearly everyone has an occasional struggle with the afternoon sleepies. Now, this is where your eyes wanna close shut for a deep sleep in the middle of the afternoon. Can you relate? I can. Look. By openly discussing these things, people feel that you’re acknowledging something that they might think only happens to them. That this struggle, I’m referring to the afternoon sleepies here, is way more common than you think.
Bernie Borges [00:05:43]:
So offer resources to help prevent or overcome the afternoon sleepies. Making wellness work is fundamentally about walking the walk, not just talking the talk on this topic. And let me remind you of the blatantly obvious. Providing resources for wellness happens in parallel to being accountable for work outcomes. So when I suggest that you consider offering things like flex hours for wellness reasons, this is to enable results, not to disadvantage them. You’re still running a business or maybe an apartment or a community or whatever it may be. All I’m saying is to make wellness work so that your people will give you their best work. Step number 6.
Bernie Borges [00:06:31]:
Help people find their sweet spot. Hey. Do you remember that project that made you lose track of time because you were so engaged in it? That’s what we want for everyone on the team. Take time to understand what lights each person up, then look for ways to align their work with those passions and their skills. Now I admit this can be tricky because it might open up the door for a discussion about moving into a different job. If that happens, that could be a good thing or maybe not a good thing. On episode 211, I spoke about the alliance, which is a book written by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. The concept of alliance in this context is about creating an agreement with each individual on your team so that it aligns with their talents and their aspirations within their current job.
Bernie Borges [00:07:26]:
And the fact is, there might be some aspect of someone’s job that they just don’t like, and then, of course, other aspects that they love. But finding that right balance that maximizes each individual’s passion for their role is the ultimate goal. And if you end up discovering that an individual is in the wrong role, you know, it’s better to have that conversation proactively and with honesty, so that you can collaborate together on an action plan, rather than being blindsided by the resignation one day when you least expect it and can least afford to lose someone on your team. Help your people find their sweet spot. You’ll be glad that you did. Number 7. Build real connections. Work relationships should never feel forced or fake.
Bernie Borges [00:08:18]:
Create natural opportunities for people to connect. Maybe it’s through something like mentorship programs, or cross team projects, or even just regular team lunches, even virtual lunches. When people feel connected, they’re more likely to stick around and give you their best work. Now, this is as true for remote work teams as it is for in office teams. So let me give you just a few ideas to consider. And this is just a few ideas. You can come up with plenty on your own, I’m sure. Create a rotating schedule for individuals to lead team meetings that require collaboration prior to the meeting.
Bernie Borges [00:08:58]:
Periodically, hold meetings whether it’s in person or virtual that are devoted to a non work topic. In other words, a fun topic. Now the primary rule in this meeting is no work discussion is allowed. Just focus on the topic. In fact, invite your team to recommend the topics for these meetings. It could be topics like vacation stories, favorite hobbies, favorite concerts attended, favorite, sporting events attended, interesting places that have been visited. In fact, I know someone who took a 1 month sabbatical to walk the infamous Camino de Santiago Trail, which is over 500 miles long, and he and his wife did it in 30 days. He said it was a life changing experience.
Bernie Borges [00:09:45]:
Hearing that story was both entertaining and inspiring. So just get creative, but be sure that each meeting is inclusive so that everybody on your team can participate. Building real connections fosters relationships, which fosters productive teams. Number 8. Go long. Great leaders don’t just focus on short term results or quarterly results, things like that. They build something lasting. Help your team members see how their work contributes to the bigger picture.
Bernie Borges [00:10:22]:
Maybe it’s something like mentoring the next generation at work, or developing innovative solutions, or creating positive change even within your own industry. Invite ideas from your team for new ways of getting work done. Now be sincere in your approach to listening to those ideas. You can clearly communicate that while new ideas are welcome for discussion, you don’t necessarily commit to acting on all the ideas. In fact, that’s probably impossible. However, it’s a double edged sword. If you invite ideas often enough, there will probably be some ideas that have some merit and should be enacted, even if only as a trial. But this will keep your team motivated so that they will express their ideas.
Bernie Borges [00:11:08]:
And when they see their ideas are being enacted or even considered, then it motivates them. So going long with your team demonstrates a genuine interest in your team beyond the priorities of today, this week, this month, this quarter. Number 9. Make it happen in threes. My friend, I’ve been told when I present this at organizations that this step is the money step. This is where you put ideas into action that you can measure. Spoiler alert. Measurement is step number 10, but let’s focus on this step, step number 9, making it happen in threes.
Bernie Borges [00:11:51]:
This refers to organizing work activities into 3 levels of difficulty so that people can experience 3 levels of achievement. You see, fulfillment is directly tied to achievement. And organizing work activities into 3 levels of difficulty will create tiered levels of achievement slash fulfillment. Now, let’s not over complicate this. Let’s keep it simple. So we’re just gonna call these three levels of difficulty, low, medium, and high. You might wanna get creative on those labels in your workplace. That’s up to you.
Bernie Borges [00:12:29]:
The idea is to give individuals opportunities to realize achievements across these three levels of difficulty. So for example, if currently, the workload for your team is 100% focused on high levels of difficulty, for example, big projects with long schedules, you’re losing out on the opportunity for individuals to experience smaller achievements that can be celebrated and appreciated and recognized and can offer individuals that sense of fulfillment that everyone craves. So here’s an analogy to really give you some context around this idea, this concept. If you have a college degree or an advanced degree, receiving the degree was a high difficulty achievement and clearly very fulfilling. But along the way, you had many other fulfilling achievements. You did things like wrote papers. You worked on projects, maybe you volunteered in a student council or some other scenario where you experienced achievement. Hey.
Bernie Borges [00:13:37]:
You completed semesters. You passed a class like maybe chemistry even though you hated every minute of it. I know I did. Anyway, all of these achievements were part of the journey to achieving your degree or maybe some other form of certification that you achieved in your educational journey or in your career. By making it happen in threes in your workplace with low, medium, and high levels of difficulty, you’re giving people a chance to experience fulfillment more often. And remember, it’s important to take time to recognize those achievements, even the small ones. Now the reason that I refer to this step as the money step is because people are self aware of their fulfillment journey at this point because you’ve been leading them through this lens. That’s why this is all the way down at step 9.
Bernie Borges [00:14:33]:
So when you create these legitimate opportunities for achievement, you’re creating more opportunities for fulfillment. I’ll take you back to the closing comment that I made on step number 5, which is to organize your 3 level plan around your business goals, the things you have to get done in your business. This is not about creating achievement for the sake of handing out a trophy. This is about creating a thoughtful process by which you can lead people through their fulfillment journey and it resulting in a much higher probability that they’ll be more engaged in their work and they’ll stick around longer because the opposite is far more costly. And finally, step number 10, the final step that I alluded to in step 9, and that is to track and also adjust as needed. Regular check ins with your team are crucial. You wanna know how people are feeling about the progress that they’re making in their fulfillment journey across the 5 pillars. What’s working? What isn’t working? And I recommend that you check-in with your teams on a regular cadence.
Bernie Borges [00:15:50]:
Monthly is a good cadence. Some organizations do it quarterly. You decide. Then use the feedback to stay informed about the status of your team and adjust as needed. Look. Your team is the lifeblood of your organization. And as I said on episode 211, if you think it’s a lot of work to proactively lead through this fulfillment centric leadership model, well, then I’ll remind you that it’s more work and more cost to deal with subpar work output of an employee population that has low engagement and high turnover. So we’ve now covered the 10 steps to fulfillment centric leadership.
Bernie Borges [00:16:35]:
So let’s do a quick recap before I wrap up this episode. Step number 1 is start with your own journey. Being self aware of your fulfillment is foundational to being a fulfillment centric leader. Step number 2 is to get to know the 5 key life pillars, health, fitness, career, relationships, and legacy, so that you can lead with authenticity. Step number 3 is to let the data guide you. Survey your team so that you learn where they are on their fulfillment journey across the 5 key life pillars. Step number 4. Keep it real.
Bernie Borges [00:17:12]:
Lead with authenticity. That’s what I mean by keeping it real. Step number 5. Make wellness work in the workplace so that your team can give you their best work. Step number 6. Help people find their sweet spot so that they feel valued and they’re more loyal to you for the time that they are with you. Step number 7. Build real connections that foster relationships and those relationships foster productive teams.
Bernie Borges [00:17:44]:
Step number 8. Go long. Build something lasting. This way, you’ll demonstrate a genuine interest in your team beyond the priorities of today or this week. Step number 9. Make it happen in threes. This is the money step. Arrange work in 3 levels of difficulty to create more frequent achievements, which creates more fulfillment in the workplace.
Bernie Borges [00:18:12]:
And step number 10, keep track and adjust as needed. Check-in with your team on a regular cadence. Know what’s working, what’s not working, and adjust as needed. Fulfillment centric leadership is not just another business trend. It is a fundamental shift in how you think about leadership. When your team members feel fulfilled in the key areas of their lives, they bring their best selves to work. That’s good for them, and it’s good for your organization, and it’s good for you as a leader. If you’re in a corporate environment, it can get you promoted.
Bernie Borges [00:18:50]:
The fulfillment centric leadership approach is not limited to the workplace either. You can use it outside of work where you lead others, whether it’s in your own home, with your family, somewhere in the community, or just wherever it may be where you have a leadership role. When you embrace the core principles of self awareness of fulfillment across the 5 key life pillars, and then you lead others through that same lens, the details can vary on how you do it. Now if I may, I wanna remind you that I’m available to deliver the fulfillment centric leadership method for organizations and events. I can present it in a 45 minute format or in a full day workshop format. So if that interests you, get in touch with me. The link to contact me is in the show notes. Well, hey.
Bernie Borges [00:19:41]:
This wraps up episode 212, part 2 of this 2 part series on fulfillment centric leadership. I sincerely hope that this information has been useful to you. And before I sign off, I have one more final message for you.
