does your company need more umami?

What do great leaders and great chefs have in common? Both are more successful when they know how to create umami, a chemical reaction discovered by a Japanese scientist over a century ago.

Consider the following scenario.

Top sales producer Alicia received a promotion to head of regional account management. Although she was perfectly capable of doing the new job well, after a few months she realized the new role did not capitalize on her strengths and she missed the thrill of pursuing leads, creating relationships and winning new contracts. She requested a conversation with her boss to explore alternatives within the company where she might be able to make a bigger contribution and enjoy what she was doing again. After hearing Alicia explain her feelings and ask for his thoughts, her boss stood up, walked seven steps to the door, opened it and said, “You want out of this job? Go ahead, here is your exit.” Alicia was stunned. Caught between a paycheck and a pink slip, she shook her head and said she would stay in the account management job. Five months later, she left the company to start her own successful sales consulting company.

How long did it take the boss to disengage his employee and waste the company’s years of investment in her, along with her future potential to drive big revenue increases? Exactly the time it takes to walk seven steps and open a door. But it is not his fault. He simply did not possess the skills and training to understand that people are the most productive when they are doing not only what they are capable of, but also what feeds their core needs. Alicia needed challenge, the opportunity to create connections and the satisfaction of winning the race. Creative leadership could have found ways to meet those needs, even within the account management job. How? By understanding Corporate Umami™.

Umami is the chemistry created when the essence of a food is released, often in combination with other essences, causing a ‘Wow!’ sensation. Top chefs around the world have revolutionized their craft, seeking to create this umami sensation. Corporate Umami teaches leaders how to create ‘Wow!’ in the workplace by tapping into the essence of people to develop revolutionary, powerful connections across management, employees and customers.

Corporate Umami addresses widely recognized problems

that cost companies big money, including the cost of disengagement, turnover costs, resistance to change and poor customer relations. The Gallup organization estimates that employee disengagement alone costs US businesses over $300 billion annually. This translates to hundreds of thousands of dollars lost for every $1 million of payroll, year in and year out. Add in the costs of lost opportunities and lost sales, and the fi nancial impact can be devastating.

Fortunately, there are some relatively simple steps leaders

can take to begin creating Corporate Umami in any organization - in other words, stimulate engagement, increase productivity, reduce turnover, promote teamwork, boost sales and empower people to bring the best of themselves to work every day. Here is how:

1. Get curious about the people who work for you. Try this

exercise: strip away job titles and functions and think about the individuals on your staff in terms of their natural traits and abilities. Can you identify which ones are inherently adept at teaching others what they know? Which ones are strategic thinkers? Which ones have great courage? Do you know what motivates each of them to get out of bed each day and come to work? (Surveys consistently prove that it is not just the paycheck.) The answers need not lead to an organizational overhaul; they can simply guide future individual assignments and development plans designed to capitalize on each person’s natural core strengths and motivators.

2. Sharpen your awareness. Notice when someone seems to be truly ‘turned on.’ What are they doing? Who are they with? What kind of environment allows them to fl ourish? Could you create opportunities for them to experience work in this way more often?

3. Leverage the power of team synergy. In umami, each

ingredient contributes something essential without overpowering the others. Seek to pair people up in ways that leverage their inherent talents and create fresh synergy that extends beyond each person’s basic job function. Over time, people will gain more confi dence, interact with each other more effectively, and produce better overall results because a broader array of talents is being tapped.

4. Deepen the level of conversation. Increasingly, studies

show that people want purpose and meaning from their work, including a sense of contribution to the greater good beyond the organization. Discover what meaningful connection each person feels to their job, and help them understand how what they do matters beyond the borders of the organization.

5. Share yourself. People, including leaders, are not defi ned by their job titles. By showing warmth, sharing dreams, occasionally even confessing vulnerabilities, you will connect with people on a human level and create surprising openings, encouraging others to step up and show support of your leadership, boosting everyone’s personal power.

If some of this sounds a little outside your comfort zone, remember the bottom-line costs of failing to address poor employee morale, high turnover and low productivity. Leaders who master Corporate Umami concepts make more focused hiring decisions, improve career development planning, assemble high-performing teams, create dynamic customer connections and deliver lasting revenue increases and cost savings. Go ahead and try one of these strategies every day for fi ve days. In just one week, you will begin to experience the power of Corporate Umami and discover the ‘Wow’ in your own workplace.

Jeanne Hollister Lebens and Linda Spevacek are co-founders of Corporate Umami Enterprises LLC, a company that offers programs designed to enhance company performance through the power of an engaged workforce and more effective leadership. For more information on programs that Create ‘Wow!’ in the Workplace, as well as a complimentary Leadership Assessment to identify your most pressing leadership challenges, call 860-881-2188 or visit www. CorporateUmami.com.