Attention Entrepreneurial Leaders: Are You — And Your Employees — ‘Bore-E-Gaged?’

Good morning, everybody. It’s John Garrett coming to you with another Episode of Green Apple Slices where every Monday, I call and hope that she picks up, Rachel Fisch.

Rachel: Hey, John, how are you doing?

John: Doing great. How are you?

Rachel: I’m good.

John: Excellent. Back from Vancouver?

Rachel: Yup.

John: Are you home now?

Rachel: I’m home this week so I’ll be in Toronto this week and then I’m getting ready to head out to London, England not Ontario but yeah, very excited about that.

John: Right, right. London, England. Nice. There we go. But yeah, but every Monday we always get together and chat briefly to get everyone started and thinking about employee engagement, corporate culture, things like that. This article I found on Forbes and it’s by Randy Nelson, “Attention Entrepreneurial Leaders: Are You — And Your Employees — ‘Bore-E-Gaged?”

Rachel: What?

John: Yeah. Bore-E-Gaged.

Rachel: You just can’t make up new words.

John: Yeah. Well, I made up tangential last week. Come to find out it’s a real word.

Rachel: It is a real word.

John: Bore-E-Gaged. Basically, what he’s saying is you’re either all in like crazy engaged or you’re all out and just bored and just going through the motions.

Rachel: Yeah. The idea is that Bore-E-Gaged is that uncomfortable space in between, right? So when you’re talking about entrepreneurs who love challenges, who love building things and creating things, it’s kind of like an on or off in many cases where as you said, they’re either bored or they’re completely engaged.

John: Right, yeah, but you’re not bored enough to where you’re going to quit and just, “I’m out. See you” but you’re not necessarily giving it your all.

Rachel: Right. That middle space.

John: Right, exactly. I thought that this might apply to some of the bookkeepers, the more solopreneurs that listen and something like that, that maybe they can relate to because I mean I know that’s kind of where I’m at in my space for the last 13 years. Yeah, sometimes it’s hard because you’re working so hard that you feel like you’re not necessarily getting traction then it’s easy to get bored with “Oh, I got to do these routine things again” and it’s like, yeah, but that’s what grows your business.

Rachel: Right, yeah. Like hosting podcasts every week.

John: Yes.

Rachel: No.

John: But yeah, I mean your thoughts on the whole entrepreneurial spirits, if you will.

Rachel: Well, I did have a thought or two because when you see — I saw a job posting a few years ago that was talking about — and at this time I had my own business so I was the entrepreneur and I had a few staff at that time. It’s talking about this very large corporate entity wanting people with an entrepreneurial spirit and I look at that and go, “Do you really?” Do you really know what that means to bring somebody who loves to build and create and design and make something from nothing —

John: And not have a boss.

Rachel: And bring them into an organization that has limits and budgets and all of those other lovely things and guidelines that the rest of the world kind of lives by and so that was my feeling is that I’m not always sure that people understand when they’re thinking that it’s a really great thing which it is but this is kind of what we get out of it, is that there’s two speeds. I’m waiting for the next project to start and I’m working like a workaholic on this project that I just thought up that I want to get out of the door. Those are kind of the two speeds.

I mean it was definitely interesting, it gave us back some stats that we’ve talk about before, those in place that are actively engaged and actively disengaged which means that they’re actually costing you money and we’ve talked about the cost of disengagement and stuff like that. But yeah, the Bore-E-Gaged again is that space in between those two things. What can you do with employees to incentivize them to become more engaged?

He actually talks about employee engagement is the relationship between an organization and its employees, right? That’s kind of what it means so when things are going well, you have engaged staff, and when that relationship is not so hot then you’re going to see that and the engagement level of your staff as well.

John: Right and lead by example when you’re at the top and recognize that if you’re bored then the people below you probably are too because they can sense it. So it’s just admitting that and being open about that and yeah, just having open communications with people then you’ll find out.

Rachel: What I actually really liked is when he’s talking about like now, it’s almost like as soon as you get bored there’s a million other things that you could be doing like checking Facebook or checking Slack or checking LinkedIn or doing a million other things that are completely not related to work or not very related to work. That didn’t used to be the case as well so now, as soon as you get bored there’s something else to steal your attention which, yeah, that was pretty interesting.

John: I didn’t hear what you’re saying because I was just liking a Facebook post. But I’m sure it was amazing. But you’re exactly right, you’re exactly right. I mean there’s so many things to distract us that if you’re not excited about it then it’s so easy to lose focus and be on to something else that’s not productive. Absolutely. That’s great.

Well, enjoy the rest of your week and have a safe flight to London, England. I expect a full on accent and a royal family update. So yes, have a good rest of the week, Rachel.

Rachel: Thanks. You too, John.