The show’s guest in this episode is Paul ter Wal. He is a speaker, writer, consultant and engagement explorer. He is based in the Netherlands. He speaks 3 languages and has been president of three speakers associations.
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How Employee Engagement Will Improve the Results of your Organization with Paul ter Wal
Hi, I’m Melanie Parish and I am the host of the experimental leader Podcast. I’m so excited to be here with you today. And I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity. And also like, what parts of myself I might bring to my work, my brand, my company, what parts are appropriate, what parts aren’t appropriate, and how I become a more interesting human being, if I bring all the parts of myself to my life, my work my brand, I’m really playing with the idea of how I can live my values, my company values, my personal values. And it’s not easy. It’s not simple, it’s not clear.
So I just wanted to share that with you, I worry that I’ll be inappropriate in some way. And I’m also worried that I’ll be too safe, that I’ll be boring that I’ll not share the edges of me that are some of the most interesting parts of me. And I wonder if you feel those same questions? Do you worry that you play it too safe? Or that you take too much risk? I think these are interesting things that we all grapple with when we think about our personal and our professional brands. Who are we? And what parts of ourselves can we share with the world? I challenge you to really think about who you are, what’s the best parts of you, and what parts can you freely share so that you can be as authentic as you possibly can be.
Today, I am so excited to have our speaker Pal ter Wal. He is a speaker, writer, consultant, and engagement explorer. Paul is based in the Netherlands and speaks three languages. And he’s been the president of three speakers associations. For more than 25 years, he’s been in the speaking, consulting and training business for executives, human beings, directors, and employees.
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Welcome to my show, Paul.
Well, Melanie, thank you for having me on your show. I love to be here.
Well, it’s great to be here. And we’ve been doing this book club, this book club thing about my book, The experimental leader, be a new kind of boss to cultivate an organization of innovators. And I think that you looked at chapter six. Yeah, any thoughts that you want to share just sort of cold out of the out of the gate? And then I can read a little bit.
Well, what I really love about this chapter is that leaders need to focus on where the process of the work done in their team or the organization has a bottleneck, where is it stopping them from being really successful? And that’s what I love, because I look at that from engagement point of view as well. So we’re on the same hands.
Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s so easy, you know, leaders today, they have so much on their plates, they are busy, they’re running, they have a to do list that never ends. And, and it’s so it’s so easy to be busy. And and it’s so hard to get anything done, or to make any real change. So I do think that focusing on the one thing that’s going to make everything change can be really, really useful. And that’s usually the bottleneck I’ll, I’ll read just a little bit. As you know, I draw a lot of inspiration for my work with today’s knowledge, economy leaders from traditional manufacturing, optimization processes. But while Mike Rother is writing about Japanese Kata techniques, and gold rats Theory of Constraints have been critical for the development of my own business and coaching practice. These systems with their diagrams and acronyms and hardcore adherence can draw a leaders time management quickly into the weeds. As an experimental leader apply the tools such as intense, kata processes and experimenting with bottlenecks with a light hand so they don’t become overwhelming. Let them be easy to use tools for tackling your leadership challenges. Take the best from these systems and use them to grow your leadership skills and improve prove your value to the organization. In my work with business leaders, we focus on identifying bottlenecks, simply by paying attention. And then using the improvement tools to track and assess the experiments we do to mitigate those bottlenecks. The tools themselves aren’t the goal we’re focused on, they just represent the next step in the experiment process. And And I’m curious, I think your work is around speakers. And where do you see bottlenecks come up? On a day to day basis? Like what what speakers are there? You know, what are some of the bottlenecks speaker, my experience?
Oh, I must say, I think 80% of my work is working with large organizations. And as President, of course, I work with a lot of speakers. What I see in the speaker market is that they focus for men mostly on the amount of money they can earn doing a gig. And I think like leaders, they should focus on quality. If if you are a great speaker, if you know your content, if you write books, if you publish about what you want to say, people will find you. So you need to focus on your quality on who you are. So I love the work of an American speaker, friend, Sam self-esteem, focus on your non negotiables. If you know who you are, what you stand for what is non negotiable for you, you will find that strange to go and to perform at your best. And I think that should apply to all leaders in the world. Know your core values, let them show them. And I love the gamma Walk, walk and talk with your employees about what your non negotiables are, what their hours are, and then find that alignment. Because if you talk about those things, you will find that bottleneck that is holding one person back in not delivering the way you want it to be. And you can tell them by Hey, you’re not productive. Or you can ask the question, hey, what do you need to perform in a better way. So I love the idea of finding that bottleneck, a your process in your team.
I think that’s so powerful. And for those who don’t know what a gimble walk is, a gimbal walk is when it’s from manufacturing when the boss was up above the factory, looking down. And again, the walk is when they come down to the factory floor. And they actually walk the factory floor to see what’s happening with their employees. And it’s it’s one thing to talk about what’s happening, what are you doing at work. And it’s never the same as looking at the work. So I always encourage people to have people share their screen on Zoom. Zoom makes this really easy. Or go sit behind them and watch what they’re doing even in accounting or wherever it is watching. See, because the things someone describes will not be the same thing you will see if you go and look and dive into seeing the problem as they see it. It’s incredibly powerful as a leader to go to where the work is being done. And watch, don’t don’t intervene. Don’t fix it. Don’t participate. Don’t help watch and see what you learn. You will learn something completely unexpected. Almost every time. It’s amazing.
I think that’s so powerful. And for those who don’t know what a gimble walk is, a gimbal walk is when it’s from manufacturing when the boss was up above the factory, looking down. And again, the walk is when they come down to the factory floor. And they actually walk the factory floor to see what’s happening with their employees. And it’s it’s one thing to talk about what’s happening, what are you doing at work. And it’s never the same as looking at the work. So I always encourage people to have people share their screen on Zoom. Zoom makes this really easy. Or go sit behind them and watch what they’re doing even in accounting or wherever it is watching. See, because the things someone describes will not be the same thing you will see if you go and look and dive into seeing the problem as they see it. It’s incredibly powerful as a leader to go to where the work is being done. And watch, don’t don’t intervene. Don’t fix it. Don’t participate. Don’t help watch and see what you learn. You will learn something completely unexpected. Almost every time. It’s amazing.
Yeah, I think that’s completely true. And you say don’t take it over and don’t try to control what they’re doing. Don’t go check them on their work. Ask a question. If you see something is not right, then say, hey, what am I looking at? Is it really what you want it to have? If people feel that they are pressed by control, it’s not going to work engagement will go down immediately. In the Netherlands, they will call in sick the next day and stay away for a couple of weeks. Because we paid a salary anyway. So that it works. If you ask questions, and I did this a long time ago with people who could work and the same workplace anymore. Just walk with them across a riverside on a bowl of fire, have a cup of coffee have that open few conversation because I don’t see you in the eyes. I walk next to you. So the employer has an open view and with that they have an open mind and they will tell you anything. But yeah, I should. If I sit opposite of them, I check their eyes. And people don’t like it.
No, I think the the sitting beside or walking beside is is is lovely. Yeah, spiteful. Let’s change gears. And thank you for indulging, you know, me and reading some of my book and looking at it. And I’d love to know how you’re experimenting in your life and your work right now.
Oh, I made a big change a couple of weeks ago, I own my own consulting firm for a long time, more than 25 years, I’m getting a little bit older. And I want to transfer my knowledge and the way I like to work to other younger people, younger consultants. So I sold my company to another consulting firm. And that’s quite challenging and exciting, I can promise you, because for a long time, I was the boss. And now you work with other people with other experiences. And we’re experimenting at this point, how can we work together? How can we share those egos that of course the others have I have and seek alignment to work together just so I’m really on an experimental journey at this moment. And it’s it’s fun.
What are some of the things you think about? I think this is fascinating. You know, you’re a consultant, you help people with processes, I’m guessing, what are some of the things that you’re thinking about that you need to talk about? Or work out? What’s the wisdom that you bring to this process for yourself?
Well, maybe the most important part is, I work from positive psychology. Because for a long time, we were always looking at the things that goes wrong. Because it’s quite easy. You can tell people you’re doing the wrong stuff, you need to improve. What you see from positive psychology, which is around for 50 years, but not really trained, is look how we can support people to get more energy to be more productive, to make less mistake and to stay at the company. So we’re challenging organization. And that’s one of your bottlenecks. How can we improve the way people work by supporting them to get energy from the work instead of work pressure, burnout, complaints, all that kind of stuff, which is negative. And we try to help leaders and companies to get to that next level that you say, hey, what do you need to act in a better way? So we’re looking, experimenting, what questions and what support employees need to make the company the team more profitable than ever. So for me, it’s always about human beings, and profits, without profit the rest of the company, they can’t survive. But without human beings, we can’t work as well. So we need to find the balance between those two. And that’s fairly challenging, and that makes every customer unique.
Now, you also have a lot of experience as a speaker in speakers, bureaus, those kinds of things. And I know a lot of people, myself included, think it might be interesting to be more to do more speaking engagements. How should people think about that, and how would they get started?
Well, that the first thing I would advise is join a Speakers Association in your country. Because all the knowledge of the last 5060 years of public speaking are in speakers associations. And last Thursday, we had international speaker day, and it was about sporting the whole family internationally about 10,000 people that are public speakers all over the world. And we need to acknowledge them and support them. And what you see is we are with 5000 members and we had more than 1 billion hits on LinkedIn, only on LinkedIn by telling that we are professional speakers and that we support companies, public org and as Asians people with our stories, this is the new art of storytelling. We forgotten about it for so long that if you want to develop human beings, if you want to develop organizations, you need to tell positive stories. And that’s what speakers are doing. Our role is to sit at the campfire, and tell a story. And everybody has his own nice or niche, pencil where you live. But you, you can be an expert on your topic, and sit around the fireplace and just relax and tell your story. So for me, as as quite experienced, I was asked last week, are there rules for public speakers, and I said, there are no rules, but the one stay close to your core values. So if you have a story to tell, of course, you can be trained to be on stage, how to use a fee and that kind of stuff. What I notice is, if I come into a big conference room, the first thing I do is go to the AV people. Because they can make me look good or bad on stage. So I’m always polite, give them something awesome. What do you need for me, I will be on a for hours, they will know by name, I will go into break again to them. Just be nice to human beings. That’s all it takes. Because when you are on stage, the other ones the other human beings are watching you. And if you are comfortable in a story like you are with your book, then you can tell your story. It’s not that you need to be on the left side on the stage or the right side or making a point in the middle of stepping. Some people teach you that I don’t I love it the way you are. You are a human being you have your story, you’re on stage, please tell your story. And that I noticed that you use about.
I noticed that you use this term human being. It’s in your bio. You’ve used it multiple times. What does that mean to you to use the phrase human being?
Well, what I saw is that we still love to talk about human resources. Taylor invented with McKinsey 100 years ago, you could replace human resources like you can change your computer, your phone, whatever. For a long time. That was the case, what we see that works better to human beings. So I don’t like it in the current era with demographic issues, that we still have a department called human resources. And then they are called Human Resource business partners. They forget that they work for human beings, normal people. And we need those people nowadays 10 times more than we needed. 4050 years ago, when I started working. out of 10 lawyers, I started as a lawyer out of 10 lawyers, three had a job. Now they have 10 places, and there are only three lawyers left to fill those places. So we need to see them as human beings with their own core values, with their own purpose with their own wishes for life with their own private life. And as employers, we need to look, how can we convince them to work for us and stay with us? Your F in the US now the great resignation? A lot of people are leaving, because during Corona time COVID They started thinking about that purpose. Why am I doing what I’m doing? And suddenly we saw Human Resources changing into human beings. And that’s the difference. And if you see like in your book that there are bottlenecks that you need to work on. The first question is, is it in the technique? Is it in facilitation? Or is it in human beings in the team in the group of people? Because that’s a different approach for me.
You are a human being you have your story... Share on XI’m super curious about you know, if you’re selling your company, will you have more free time and if so, What will you do with it?
First of all, I love writing books like you do. So I published a book just four weeks ago, but it’s in Dutch. And it’s about the broader sense of profitability, not only shareholder value but stakeholder value, but you’ll get it when you hear my my story. And what I wanted, that I didn’t want to be busy with selling my product and my company. So I was looking for an organization that understands what I’m doing. And then have the time and the salespeople that can sell my story. And then I come in, take over and do what I need to do. If I have more time, well, I’m 64. By now, I like it to work four days a week. To be honest, I’m more productive when I work four days a week, and rest three days, and there is Cambridge research that proves that this is true. I like to travel. I’ve been the world precedent of the professional speakers. And it was in 2019 2020. I traveled all over the world. And in my bio, it says engagement explore, I don’t want to be an expert, because then I tell others what to do. I want to explore and find out why engagement is different in the US than in the Netherlands than in Namibia, South Africa, Australia. And what I noticed the reason, that much difference, the culture is different, but that’s the outside. The inside is a human being with core values with a purpose with wishes. And that’s so amazing to see. And I want to do it more. I want to have more time to travel around.
That’s exciting stuff. Where can people find you, Paul?
On LinkedIn is always the easiest, because I have a LinkedIn profile that’s both there. Well, you can connect it. And I have all my contact information in it. But also all my videos and on YouTube, I have about 36 different videos in English in Dutch in German. And people can use it. I’m from the era that I love to give and receive instead of give and take. A lot of people give and then are eager to take from you. I think that we should learn to give to others, and then hope that they will be friendly enough to give to us as well. And then we can receive. Let’s say that’s my motto for life.
Well, thank you so much for being on my show. It’s been a pleasure to have you here. I love being on your show and hope to see you soon. Take care. Thank you.
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It’s been so fun to be with Paul today talking about human beings. And I love the idea of give and receive as opposed to give and take of feeling of generosity and acceptance of what comes our way. I love the power of language that he used in those word choices that he was making. I really challenge you to think about your language choices and how they impact what you do. Go experiment!
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Paul ter Wal
Paul ter Wal is International Engagement Explorer, employability expert and workplace architect. For more than 25 years he has been in the speaking, consulting, and training business for executives, Human Beings directors and employees.
Happiness Makes Money. According to the Gallup Engagement Index a staggering 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged at work. The world has a crisis of engagement, with serious and potentially long-lasting repercussions for the organizations.
This is where Paul ter Wal steps in. The former lawyer works on both sides – employer and employees – to create work happiness and loyalty. His concept is based on finding the “Non-Negotiables” and the core values of the individual as well as the company. Because a highly engaged workforce means the difference between a company that thrives and one that struggles. When employees are engaged, they are passionate, creative, and entrepreneurial, and their enthusiasm fuels growth. These employees are emotionally connected to the mission and purpose of their work.
The former lawyer at a social benefits organization as well as Assistant Director of a Public Health Insurance company started his consulting career at Capgemini in the field of social security and labor law. Today Paul ter Wal is a professional speaker, advisor, work health specialist. His company is called Team ANDARE.
Paul is recognized as Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) by the Professional Speakers Australia as well as Fellow (FPSA) by the Professional Speaking Association in the UK and Ireland. Paul was President of the Global Speakers Federation in 2019 – 2020; he is currently President of the Virtual Speakers Association International (2022 – 2024).
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