We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris Lee. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris below.

Chris, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

I believe one of the biggest and problematic misconceptions in corporate America is that employees need to be time managed in order to get the work done.

In my experience, most employees want to be successful and feel their job contributes to a greater success. Yes the benefits and comp are important, but contribution is what drives them day to day. That’s why it’s critically important for any employee to have a work environment sets them up for success and productivity.

In contrast, what we (the corporate world) do is give vaguely defined objectives, and then proceed to inflict all kinds of overhead and distractions on their work environment such as constantly changing weekly priorities and a constant stream of meetings and team chat.

Then when productivity and delivery go off the rails there is an assumption that, obviously, employees need more structure and management. When the reality is they need less, but better aligned, leadership and communication.

We are seeing a lot of debate around the pluses and minuses of alternate work structures like WFH (Work From Home) and hybrid arrangements. To my prior point I think the bigger problem to solve is to have clear alignment and transparent (meaning supportable) expectations.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

What I have been doing for several years now, is productivity coaching for business leaders and teams.

In short, I help overworked leaders and teams get more work done, without working longer hours, and without sacrificing work-life balance. I think everyone can agree post-pandemic that burnout and lack of life balance have reached epidemic proportions and guidance is needed now more than ever.

But getting to this point was a definite journey for me. I started out, and worked for decades, in corporate technology companies like Motorola, which was a dynasty back in the day. For most of that chapter I was leading launches of new strategic technology as well as building and leading high performance teams.

So productivity was a key component of my success and I studied the classic gurus. But over time it became very clear that the classic tactics were not cutting it, and we were working harder and harder but getting less done, all the while sacrificing our personal lives and health.

I knew there had to be other ways but what? So I sought out unconventional ideas and gurus, including people like Gary Keller, and my greatest influence Tim Ferriss. Ferriss’ book “The 4 Hour Work Week “was an epiphany for me and helped me believe it was possible to work less. but more on what really mattered.

The other part of my story relates to my mother, who passed away very suddenly from a rare brain condition. That was a huge wake-up call for me! She had worked hard all her life and passed before she got the chance to do the things she had put off. I vowed then to make changes in my own life. That led to working on my alternate passions like doing music, and also motivated me to write my book “Less Is The New More”.

The natural next progression was using my platform and productivity principle–to inspire and coach people to their best performance but still have work-life balance.

My mission is to “level up the planet, one amazing person at a time!”

Have you ever had to pivot?

Absolutely. In this time of post-pandemic and pre-recession (or intra recession) the word “pivot” seems to be the theme for the year. We’ve obviously been through recessions and market ups and downs before but in my experience I haven’t seen such a mix of financial, wellness and spiritual turmoil all happen to such a degree at the same time.

So specifically, a big challenge and focus to pivot on is how to do marketing effectively and with integrity. The growth of the Internet and social media were huge enablers for entrepreneurs and helped level the playing ground. After a while however the constant deluge of inauthentic and impersonal marketing spam proceeded to ruin it for everyone. And made customers and users so jaded to any marketing.

Then along comes the lockdowns, and suddenly everyone is scrambling to go 100% virtual and go live and now you’ve got a new flood of attention fatigue. People got zoomed and tuned out of anything that wasn’t a fun 30 second TikTok. And busy professionals tuned out altogether. So my social media marketing that used to work was suddenly like crickets.

The solution or pivot is to really get hyper-focused on authentic nurturing of real connections and relationships. Including getting back to face to face interactions. People still want to consume. But they want to buy from a trusted, real face.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Two things. My first advice is the same as my advice for any relationship and that is to actively develop being a better listener. Team members want to feel like they matter. They are also your eyes and ears on the ground. So listen to what they say, or more to the point, what they are really saying. ,And if appropriate, be prepared to act on it in some way. or else it will be perceived as just lip service. Also, in a team dynamic make sure everyone has a voice and that vocal members aren’t allowed to drown out others.

The second thing is to boldly and clearly lead the team. This may be an unpopular opinion but I’m not a big fan of servant leadership. In my experience being too servant-focused dilutes the mission, your authority, and the confidence of the team. Now I don’t mean micro-managing–in fact I mean the opposite.. Make sure everyone clearly knows the shared mission and they know their role in it. Then lead them into battle and let them do their jobs. People want and need to be led. They need to believe in the mission, and your confident and firm leadership provides that, especially when things get tough. Be their compass, directionally, morally and emotionally.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thatchrislee.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatchrislee/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thatchrislee.1
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thatchrislee/