Is Employee Engagement Over-Rated? with Patty McCord

Patty McCord is a workplace innovator, culture and leadership consultant, and former chief talent officer at Netflix. Patty has many years of working with business leaders and aspiring management to help people realize and practice leadership. She is the author of a wonderful new book, Powerful: Teams, Leaders and the Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, which pushes the boundaries of thinking about the way we work. From abolishing performance reviews to challenging the need for policies, Patty believes people come to work as fully formed adults with a desire to make an impact and to be proud of what they do. Her ideas have been featured in publications around the world, including the Harvard’s Business Review, Fast Company and The Wall Street Journal. In today’s podcast Patty explains why mapping engagement and happiness measures against productivity in workplaces may undermine the very results workplaces are trying to create.  She also shares how Netflix built a thriving culture by treating employees like adults, balancing freedom and responsibility and replacing performance reviews with radical honesty. Connect with Patty McCord: Website: pattymccord.com [free_product_purchase id="23610"] You’ll Learn: [02:03] - Patty gives some of the dangers of overlaying engagement and happiness scores with team performance. [06:48] - Patty talks about the value of saying something radically honest every day. [07:53] - Patty explains how if you practise giving people feedback every day, 50% of it will work and be positive feedback. [11:24] - Patty says why the freedom and responsibility has to live inside of the business that you're trying to accomplish. [12:28] - Patty explains why strategy is figuring out what not to do. [16:52] - Patty tells how to orchestrate vigorous debates to encourage people to get curious, and put themselves on the other side of the argument. [19:23] - Patty gives examples of what should managers do instead of formal perfomance reviews. [21:40] - Lightning round with Patty McCord. Your Resources: Brotopia by Emily Chang Powerful by Patty McCord Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for joining me again this week.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post. Please leave an honest review for the Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them.  And don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. It’s free! You can also listen to all the episodes of Making Positive Psychology Work streamed directly to your smartphone or iPad through stitcher. No need for downloading or syncing. Until next time, take care!  Thank you Patty!