Leadership expert on what every Alabama company can learn from Air Force and Google

Cord Sachs is a Birmingham-based leadership expert and the CEO of FireSeeds, a company that helps companies find and grow great leaders and “the company behind many of Alabama’s fastest growing companies.”

Yellowhammer sat down with Mr. Sachs as part of our ongoing leadership series, and he discussed how helping employees to reach their personal goals can directly motivate them to hit the company goals.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation can be found below. (For more information on FireSeeds and their leadership development platform, Wildsparq, click here.)

Yellowhammer:

Today we are going to talk about the “Cylinder of Congruence.” Cord, what is the “Cylinder of Congruence?”

Cord Sachs:

Before I answer that question, let me set it up by asking, “How do you maximize culture?” If you are the leader of any kind within the workplace, how do you create an intentional culture to maximize the output, productivity, team buy-in, and the loyalty of those who work with you? Our whole lens at FireSeeds through which we answer these questions is through “culture.” This is a popular buzzword and can be seen as soft and fuzzy but we want to answer, “How do you measure intentional culture and what does this look like?”

So here is what we mean by the “Cylinder of Congruence.” We want to engage the people we want to influence in an authentic way that fosters loyalty to the cause.

This concept came from Coach Brian Landry. He spent 23 years in the Air Force. He received a Ph.D. in leadership, and served as a military analyst and a professor of aerospace studies in the USAF. The team he was working with had to think through how to recruit young officers to commit many years of their life to something they knew would draw them away from their family for long periods of time. So they came up with the Cylinder of Congruence.

Picture a horizontal cylinder in front of you. On top of that cylinder are the big picture goals of what the USAF wants to accomplish. At the bottom of that cylinder is all the grassroots people and their own personal hopes, dreams, and goals. So what Landry and his team realized is for them to recruit the people they needed, they had to bring the overarching goals of the USAF and then bring the personal goals of the people into the cylinder so there can be a congruent understanding. If you come and work with us, we want you to know we are aware of your own personal goals and if you work with us, there will be a congruence in our goals for success as the USAF and your goals as an individual.

Now where do these individual goals play out? In the home and with families. For example, as you can imagine, many people want to be successful so they can send their kids to college and maybe give them a better opportunity than they had before. What many leaders find hard to understand is they do not make the connection between their people genuinely being excited about the value and productivity of their department and what will help them further their career and meet their individual goals for their families.

What the USAF realized early on in this process is they needed to engage these officers to find out what their personal goals were and what they wanted to accomplish. When they would talk with them about these personal goals, they were often about providing for and protecting their family. Then they could then weave in a picture of how when you go fight for this country, you are going to be able to better protect your family and provide for your family.

So when they had the goals in the cylinder and they were in congruence, not only did the recruits have more buy-in and loyalty to the cause, but their ability to recruit people went through the roof compared. All they did was consider the personal hopes, dreams, and goals of for potential recruits.

Yellowhammer:

Okay, I would like to hear some examples of this. Can you give us some examples of when the goals of a company and the goals of the people were congruent and it not only was good for the people but for the company also?

Cord Sachs:

One example is a company everyone is familiar with – Google.

They ran an experiment in which they asked their managers to start making a personal touch with their team members and they could not talk about anything related to their business. They had to ask them questions about their personal life outside of work. And they had to do this once a month.

When they compared the teams that were doing this once a month to the teams that were not doing this, they knew they were on to something. The productivity was so much higher with those teams whose managers pulled each team member aside at least once a month and talked to them about them, they launched this initiative company-wide so that it would become a part of how they do business.

That’s a big company we all know showing us the culture-talk is not soft and it affects the bottom line. It will also help with your retention rates which are directly tied to attraction rates.

Yellowhammer:

Can you give us an in-house example of this happening with FireSeeds?

Cord Sachs:

Absolutely! Part of the culture of our company is when someone new comes in, we let them to know we want to be a part of helping them be successful for the rest of their life. We are going to coach them and even though we won’t require for them to tell us all their hope, dreams, and goals, we do want them to have them. And when we do this they are eager to share their goals with us. Each quarter we spend about a half day and review their roles and goals.

Recently I talked with our Marketing Director, Will, and I asked him about his goals and he said he was trying to save up the funds needed to buy a ring for his girlfriend. And then a few weeks ago, he walks into my office with a huge smile and pulls out this box with the ring inside and goes through the story of how he is going to ask her to be his wife. And now they are engaged. This was something we celebrated in the office and we did so because we are intentional to help equip our people to think intentionally about their personal lives.

Yellowhammer:

I don’t want to say that’s a radical approach but I would say it’s not normal. I doubt that most companies have leaders that could name one personal goal of the people they lead. There are probably a number of people who will see this as touchy-feely and have the response, “I don’t want to get into people’s personal lives. They need to leave their personal lives at home.” How do you respond to that?

Cord Sachs:

There is definitely a line that should not be crossed over when it comes to people’s personal lives. But let’s put numbers to it. Your people will spend 80,000 hours at the workplace. That’s more than home, church and kid’s events combined. You spend the majority of your life there, and it has to be more than just about the transactional bottom line. Thankfully, companies are seeing this. And that is due really to Millennials expecting more of a holistic experience in the workplace culture – one that productively blends our hopes, dreams, and goals outside of work and in the workplace, to have a collaborative place with a high relational expectation. And I think most people are wise enough to know where the line is in people’s personal lives.

Yellowhammer:

If people say to themselves, “I want this in my company.” What are the best next steps for them?

Cord Sachs:

Some of you may be thinking I would just like to do this for myself. And we have a simple little worksheet that will ask you about the roles you have in your personal life right now. That includes your role with your family, your finances, and even your social network. If this is new to you, I would set a goal you know you could complete by the end of this quarter.

Download our free Personal Roles & Goals template.

For more information on how WildSparq can impact your company culture, visit wildsparq.com/yhn.

WildSparq is a web-based leadership development platform that has quickly become the go-to way for companies — from small businesses to large corporations — to invest in developing leaders. Developed by the recruiting and leadership development experts at FireSeeds in Birmingham, Alabama, Wildsparq is an indispensable tool for companies that are serious about building their culture. To get more information on how WildSparq can impact your company culture, visit wildsparq.com/yhn.