The Future of Work is Hybrid ( Remote Series 11/11)

While some companies have opted for a full remote experience, others are still figuring it out and thinking through a hybrid setup.  Since covid has blown up the traditional work model, it has allowed companies to think about a more improved format that will allow people to rearrange their lives and work preferences for greater fulfillment and productivity. 

One complexity that companies are dealing with is how much time people should be in the office.  In a linked interview, David Rock from the NeuroLeadership Institute mentioned how split worker preferences are:

·      1/3 of people love to be in the office because they are most productive and happier and do not have distractions or a lack of structure, which they can experience at home.  It is also energizing for extroverts to be around people who get their energy from all the interactions. 

·      1/3 of people prefer to be at home, especially caretakers, who tend to be mostly women, and some racial groups who talked about experiencing greater comfort working from home. They can organize their schedule that supports their parental and lifestyle preferences.  It is also less depleting for introverts who can get quickly drained by being around people constantly.

·      1/3 of people are happy to mix it up, go into the office part of the time to be around people and collaborate, and stay home part of the time for deep work and more flexibility.

Executives are also split on this topic, which some believe is more emotionally charged than layoffs.  Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, Reed Hastings of Netflix, and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs are just some Fortune 500 CEOs who have loudly demanded their employees return to the worksite.  They view physical attendance as paramount, especially given their real estate investment.  Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, David Ek of Spotify, Parag Agrawal of Twitter, Jack Dorsey of Square, and Mark Benioff of Salesforce have endorsed more of a work-from-anywhere policy.  And some trust their teams to make the best decisions.  Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy told employees, “instead of specifying that people work a baseline of three days a week in the office, we're going to leave this decision up to individual teams."  Sundar Pichai of Google said, "I think people and teams are going to figure this out.”  They take more of a local approach empowering teams to do what makes the most sense for accomplishing business objectives and satisfying individual preferences.

The Future Of Work Is A Hybrid Setup

A  McKinsey article highlight’s that many organizations will be seeking to combine the benefits of remote and onsite working, but many currently lack a strategy for the future of work.  The key is figuring out the right model that will work for your culture, having a definite strategy and not trying to be all things to everyone.  When you define your culture, and tell others who you are and what it means to work here, people can make informed decisions that best suit their needs.

Companies are in this rare moment to reimagine how work can be done better.  Before determining your hybrid strategy, here are some points you may want to consider:

1. Define the kind of company and culture you want to have.  People are still thinking about the right way to do hybrid and there is no one correct answer as it depends on the needs of the people and the company.  How is your organization being regenerative, where it invests in its people so that every year, they get even better, rather than exploitative, where they try to extract as much as they can from people as they drive toward profits.

2. Set your goals linked to the business outcomes and then give flexibility.  Once you know the company’s purpose and business outcomes, you can be flexible in achieving those ends.  Rather than return to the old ways of doing things or bad habits that were not working, it is a real opportunity to explore what will be best for your team and company in this current period.  Granting employees the flexibility they yearn, will allow the company to benefit from higher productivity, engagement, and loyalty.  People benefit because they can organize their life according to what is important to them.  At GitLab, they optimize for results rather than activities or the number of hours worked

3. Survey your people and co-create.  What do your employees want?  How are you using their voices to restructure the workday and week?  How much flexibility do they have in deciding how they work, when, where, and who they work with?  Where do their preferences and interests come into play?  You can give an anonymous survey to truly understand their predilections, and then you can use that data to balance it with the organization’s needs.  How can they be set up for success, do their job well, and simultaneously make sure the business is serving the stakeholders and customers?  Once you know this, you can collectively create the best policy for the work and your people.  This decision should not be made by one person or just the executive team in an office, and then it gets imposed onto others, there has to be an account for the diverse perspectives and a collaboration to determine the best course of action.  You can run an innovation tournament and crowd-source the best ideas.  They can submit various models to meet the conditions of promoting worker benefits, attracting top talent, and meeting the needs of the business and its many stakeholders.

4. View the office as a tool to advance teamwork.  This will help you be more intentional about your in-person time.  One of the keys to making this a success is to think about batching or arranging time together to maximize the team’s advantage in the office as face-to-face coordination helps. 

In an interview with Adam Grant, CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella said, “stop thinking about remote work like a switch but instead a dial to turn up or down on synchronous and asynchronous work depending on the type of team you have and the kinds of projects you are doing.  If your project is more like a relay race, you need more time together like an assembly line with multiple people are involved or a media shop where one draft needs to be handled by many people…a writer, editor, and designer.  The person passing the baton needs to be in sync with the person receiving it.   When excellence depends on repeatedly passing the ball, you want to spend several days in the week together and coordinate your time.”

5. Designate Anchor & Deep Work Days.  Some companies choose 2 or 3 days a week for anchor days.  If you are going to the office, it is nice to spend time on intense collaboration and innovation.  When people know they are coming in for ideation or creative work or working on a specific task or problem together where they are whiteboarding and solutioning, it can deepen cohesion and engender great feelings as people can feel good creating and connecting. It is also a buzzing energy to align around a goal.   They can be used for important internal meetings, 2–3-year strategy planning work, or with key customers to give them facetime to build more trust rapidly.  Finally, an opportunity to have lunch, connect, and foster great culture and build community.  If an entire team has few dependencies, they can even decide to meet at WeWorks on the same day to work in community.  When people are co-located, there is magic and spontaneity in the informal interactions where people of different expertise and experience exchange ideas for great creativity.  Those casual collisions drive learning and innovation and can brighten people’s days and make them feel more connected.

The key is to devise a plan that will work for most.  If you allow everybody to pick individually and are on different schedules from their immediate and cross-functional teams, you miss the benefits of hybrid.  It is not as productive to come into the office and do things they can easily do from home such as staring at a screen all day when they would have been more productive at home.  The people who have a 2-hour commute and are forced to come in to do independent work that they could have done better at home will become resultful.   

Another format I’ve seen is when managers set a number such as 30% of your time per month in the office, or designate certain weeks out of the month, such as the 1st and 3rd.   Or, some managers select a day for drop-in office hours or the HR Team encourages all employees to do their onboarding in the office for the first two weeks.   You can use the rhythm that works for you, but the idea is to have some frequency with each other.  It is also essential to make the experience compelling, so people want to come in, for example, if leadership makes themselves more accessible, that could incentivize people to come in.

5. Designate quiet time.  For the non-anchor days, you can select part of the time for deep work and reflection.  In these interruption-free zones where there are no meetings, you have protected time to put your head down and complete your analytical and critical work, so you are not working after hours.  It is also an intentional space to step back from the screen and do more creative and focused work.  Research suggests that limiting meetings to the afternoons can give people time to get stuff done in the morning, progress on their tasks, and be more likely to focus on the afternoon meetings because they’re not multitasking.

Make asynchronous communication hours clear.  When people are working remotely, what are the general times they should be logged on, this will allow them to arrange their time freely to best serve them, and have better work-life harmony.  The asynchronous times would be the meeting free times.   At Warner Media, they have No Meetings Friday, you can communicate via slack, but no calendar invites will come through that day.   Being clear about the different kinds of time helps people avoid the triple peak where they are active in the morning, during the day, and in the evening, which will lead to burnout.  There should not be the expectation of being accessible on weekends and late nights.  And if you are the type who likes to work on nights and send emails, be clear that you do not expect a response.  If you are a senior leader and send many messages before the weekend, it’s a good way to destroy somebody’s off time.  You can establish the norm or expectation that you do not need a response in your email signature by writing something like this: I value working flexibly. I’m sending this message at a time that best suits me, but I don’t expect that you will read, respond to, or act on it outside of your regular working hours.”

6. Declare time off.  Having synchronized holidays is a nice feeling because people will not be returning to a pile of work when nobody else is working.  Having that time off for rejuvenation is so vital to the health of the employees.  At Salesforce, they have wellness days, time for you to journal and sense make, do yoga, meditate, or do other things, which provides another opportunity for replenishment.

7. Be intentional about your off-site, whether quarterly, biyearly, or yearly.  Whatever format you choose, it is nice to have off-sites, getting away from the office with a focus on bonding, relationship-building, connecting, and doing great, focused work that will advance the business and ensure alignment.

8. Give people a choice and define flexibility.  Flexibility is the number one request that employees make, but it’s too narrowly focused on remote and hybrid work.  It’s not enough to discuss where we should work, we need a broader conversation about what flexibility means.   Some would say it is the freedom to choose their place of work, their purpose, the people they work with, and their priorities.  This helps contribute to a regenerative organization because people are motivated by many different things, and if some want to spend time with their family, they should be able to.

·      Place– Outside the 2-3 anchor days where people have to be in the office to achieve objectives better, you can offer options for people to decide if they want to work from home or go to the office.  People with young kids or with long commutes may choose the former, while those who prefer to have a space outside their home for work or get to flex their extroverted nature might choose the latter.

·      People – Wherever possible, it is helpful for people to choose the team they want to be on and the people they get to collaborate with to do their best work because it is in service of the business.

·      Purpose & Priorities – Where possible, it is helpful for people to have autonomy in their work - freedom to explore new ideas and work on projects they want to work on.  Allow them to take healthy risks as long as the company is not jeopardized.  When the business is at risk, they should reach out to make a collective decision and not make that alone.

Undergirding the freedom option, that flexibility is not blindly granted but earned.  If you present as a reliable and credible coworker, a good communicator, and meet all their deadlines and outcomes, of course, you should have these privileges.  But if it is apparent that work is slipping through the cracks and there is a negative strain on the team because critical projects cannot move forward, then the freedom option needs to be considered because it is freedom in service of hitting outcomes and personal and team happiness, but not at the expense of objectives.

However you decide to build your hybrid culture, you can always run an experiment and try something for a quarter or two to gather data, work out the kinks, include your people’s voices, and see what works best and what adjustments need to be made. These complex problems cannot be solved by anyone but must include a team working together.

Quote of the day: “We like to give people the freedom to work where they want, safe in the knowledge that they have the drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether they are at their desk or in their kitchen.  Yours truly has never worked out of an office, and never will.” — Richard Branson

Q:  What is your strategy for hybrid work? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

What’s your hybrid strategy?

What Is Your Virtual Onboarding Strategy? (Remote Series 10/11)

Many companies struggle to bring people into their organization so they feel welcomed, are quickly integrated into the work, connected to their teammates, and set up to contribute immediately.  Virtual working has added another level of complexity to that long-standing challenge but, with intention, it can be a great experience.

According to a recent study by Gallup, “only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees.”  The traditional in-person experience can usually be described as a firehose where they give you a ton of information they want you to know including the company history, the logistics of navigating the office space, computer setup, and necessary paperwork to complete.  For big companies, the HR representative conducting the process can be routine since they have likely done it numerous times so the novelty has worn off.  But for the person starting the new job, it is a one-time experience and a chance to make their company introduction special.

The goal of a good onboarding is to help newcomers get settled and have the confidence to jump in as quickly as possible.  Here are some things you can do to have a memorable virtual onboarding experience:

Phase 1: Pre-day 1

1A. Strong welcome upon acceptance.  Once the candidate accepts the offer, you want to send the candidate a grand welcome.  Some companies would receive a general welcome video from the CEO about the purpose and vision and the role they can contribute.  As the manager, you should send a welcome email or have a call mentioning how excited you are for the person to join your ranks.  You can even have a teammate or two send a message so they feel included from the beginning.  If a company offers no outreach from the acceptance to the first day, that’s a red flag as they may deemphasize the relationship piece.

1B. Paperwork & Checklist.  Every job has the necessary paperwork to complete, but instead of wasting time on day one finishing it, you should send it in advance electronically so you can hit the ground running on day one and not be bogged down with this tedious work that can be handled on your time.  It is also nice to have a checklist of everything you need to do to be fully onboarded so you can track your progress along the way.  GitHub has a massive checklist for the new employees and the things managers and the company need to complete with estimated deadlines.

1C. Introductions.  It would be great for the new hire to send a 1 min. video or a paragraph introducing themselves with their picture, some information about them, and some questions to get to know more about them, such as how they spend their weekends, some of their favorite things to do, or a top value.  There can even be a dedicated slack channel for intros to connect with people more easily and find common interests.

Phase 2: Intense Initial Period. 

Executive Consultant Amanda Davis talks about onboarding happening in an initial intensive phase, maybe every day for the first week, and then a slower, more sporadic phase because onboarding is an ongoing process and not a one-time event.  In this initial intense period, here are some aspects to consider:

2A. Receive Company Overview.   Day one should be special and aim to excite and delight.  It should include a macro overview of the company’s culture, philosophy, and customer impact stories.  It should answer why the company exists and the good work meant to be done.  The captured feeling should be energizing and motivating and make the person proud to be part of something great and important. 

2B. Get Briefed on Role Overview.   While you have learned about the role during the interview, this information can be even more specific, which will help you succeed at your job.  You should be briefed on the critical work to be done, a picture of what great looks like, and key processes and practices that will help you thrive.  

2C. Have a buddy or guide.  This is somebody on your team who can answer questions about the company or day-to-day necessities for you to do your work.  The buddy can be somebody there for a while to impart institutional knowledge faster or a recent hire who can navigate the onboarding process more quickly since they just went through it.  Upon hire, it would be nice for the buddy to reach out to connect, share what they love about the company, and make it easy for the person to contact them for anything.   

2D. Create a cross-functional cohort.  If it is a larger organization, you will have clusters of people coming in frequently.  You can make sure they are put into a cohort and there are opportunities to connect so they can know more people outside of the team and know others are going through the same experience as you.

2E.  Receive a 1-page network map from your manager.  It is vital to set up a strategic meeting with your manager where they will provide a matrix of the organization so you can have a better understanding of the inner workings and information flow.  The manager should also provide a list of key internal people to connect with, stakeholders and business partners.  It should have their top priorities and needs, the best way to communicate with them, and anything else you find helpful on that page.  Once you walk through the grid and describe the connections, you will want to broker an introduction with some key people to grant credibility early on.  There is a big difference between an employee pursuing a push method, where they seek to make contact with their coworkers over a pull method, where you, as manager, make the connection and find ways to pull them into work quickly.  Companies who opted for this pull over push system were 8x more likely to be successful versus lower performing organizations because they created the conditions where the new hire got connected to key relationships quicker, had access to information and expertise, and had an opportunity to get pulled into work and contribute immediately, which led to a shorter cycle of productivity.

2F. Meet & greets.  Once you have that list, you should set up appointments and begin your listening and relationship-building tour.  The quality and effectiveness of your internal relationships will separate successful and productive employees from unproductive ones.  When relationships are developed early on, the speed of work increases, and you can feel more included and empowered to contribute early on.  It can also lead to career success because you can develop a network of trusted experts.  You can also meet people that will help you get on bigger and more visible assignments. 

Be sure to make the most of meet-and-greets by asking some strategic questions.  You can set the frame by saying, “I would love to start with introductions and then learn about your key priorities, major pain points, and the work that excites you.”  You can also generate enthusiasm for working together by asking about their ways of working and how you can best support them and their success.  Good opportunity to tell others what you do and build your brand from the beginning.  You want to think about mutual value exchanges and not just create a one-way relationship.  As you leave the meeting, you can ask who else they think it would be helpful for me to connect with so you can extend the conversation with other strategic partners.

Phase 3:Ongoing supports

3A. 1 Month Connect.  Having gone through a month of work, there are likely many more questions that have come up so having a cohort of new hires connect for relationship building, continued excitement, and doing a deeper dive to answer questions to learn even more about the company so they can contribute more robustly to the organization.  The goal is to continue to educate and build excitement, so the new employees see themselves as direct contributors.  It is also a two-way street because hearing some of their perceptions can offer great value to the team leaders about the company and onboarding processes.  The managers do a great job spreading the learnings and aim to repeat them.  You can have exercises where people have to share their understanding of their role’s purpose aligned with the company’s purpose; these stories can build valuable connections.  These meetings can continue monthly for the first quarter.

3B.  Connecting to a mentor.  If the organization has a formal mentor program, it would be great for the person to be connected to a seasoned leader who can serve as a mentor to advance their career development to build that long-term investment.  This can happen bi-yearly or quarterly depending on the bandwidth and can increase in frequency over time.  Still, it is soothing knowing they have a dedicated mentor to help them succeed in their career.

Some companies treat onboarding as a routine one-day event.  However, the most successful companies treat the onboarding experience as memorable and put in the necessary support along the journey before they even start during their intensive period, and in an ongoing sustainable fashion.  When you intend to make the experience valuable, you will open the doors for workers to contribute more easily.

Quote of the day: “I truly believe that onboarding is an art. Each new employee brings with them a potential to achieve and succeed. To lose the energy of a new hire through poor onboarding is an opportunity lost.” -Sarah Wetzel, Director of Human Resources at Engage:BDR

Q:  What are the best tips you can share about onboarding effectively? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 11/11 will focus on hybrid work being the future.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

What’s your onboarding experience?

How Do You Personally Thrive While Working Remotely (Remote Series 9/11)

For some remote workers, their experience can include isolation and loneliness from their work community and overwhelm at home.  It almost seems like you are working more than ever and cannot figure out why others are finding ways to manage and even thrive. There are things you can do differently and better to make the remote experience work for you.

Here are some tips for thriving at home while working remotely:

1. Build buffer time between meetings.  You may want to end your meeting anytime from 5 -15 mins. before the top of the hour so you can have a moment to grab water, stretch, get up, and move around.  At the office, we had those natural buffer times built in as we walked from one location to another.  Going straight into another meeting can be disorienting.  Take a few minutes to close the work from the previous meeting and be intentional about the next meeting.   You may want to keep a notepad near your desk to capture all the action items.

2. Build in transition and reflection time.  We had natural transitions during our commute where we could be alone with our thoughts. It was a prime opportunity at the beginning of the day to think about what we wanted to get from the day or how we wanted to contribute to the upcoming meeting or at the end of the day where we can process the many disparate thoughts to sense make and reflect on how the day went.  That precious time served as excellent learning time as people could listen to a podcast or book or have time for entertainment where they can escape to another world with a great piece of fiction.  If you and your family are working from the same spot and your alone time has shrunk, how are you building in transition time, especially for an introvert who needs that time to recharge?  Where are you creating the white space in your day to process?  Other than longer showers, some people find building in 15 min. walks to be a saving grace.

3. Build in connection time.  Similarly, extroverts may have enjoyed those times in the office when they got to linger around after a meeting and chat with their friends.  As external processes, that vital time to share your thoughts and hear others so you can better make sense of topics was crucial.  Who do you do that with now?  Do you have a designated buddy you can call to recreate that time after a meeting to debrief and satisfy one of your work needs?  If you are using your family as your sounding board, but they also appreciate their alone time, they may feel exhausted from your sharing.  

4. Set boundaries.  It is essential to set boundaries at work and at home.  One of my clients realized he and his wife had opposite styles, she was an introvert who needed alone time, and he was an extrovert who needed extra connect time.  While working from home for the first time, they sat down to discuss what was not working.  The wife noticed she used to have her coffee alone to think through her to-do list for the day but now that her husband was home, he would want to use that time to chat.  So they talked about a better way to organize their time going forward to get both of their needs met and designate the right time for processing and the right time for connecting so they can be at their best and be even better prepared to contribute at work and to their relationship.

Thriving at home while working remotely takes the intention to rearrange your day to practice your values and fit in time for non-negotiables such as family, exercise, healthy eating, and solitude for learning and reflection.  Otherwise, it can be easy to default to unhealthy habits of overworking and neglecting other essential needs naturally built into the routine of going to the office.

Quote of the day: “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”— Anne Lamott

Q:  What practices help you be at your best when working remotely? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 10/11 will focus on onboarding virtually.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

Thriving while working remotely

How To Get Noticed Remotely? (Remote series 8/11)

One of the biggest challenges with remote work is reduced visibility.  You may not get the same level of preferred interaction if you do not go into the office regularly.  However, you can still do many things to advance your career and stand out as a great teammate.

Here are some tips to get noticed remotely:

1. Show engagement & visibility.  Think about how you can show that you are invested in the team’s purpose and results, the company’s success, and each other.  One way to show engagement is to participate often in the group’s collective wisdom but not dominate.  When your cameras are on, and you offer verbal comments with those in the room and written ones in the chat, it shows your presence.  You can be sure to ask questions to show you are listening and even volunteer for additional projects if you have the bandwidth.  You can contribute to offline communication and post in Q and A forums, offer assistance, and share best practices.  You can send congratulatory notes to acknowledge other people’s wins and be specific with your feedback other than just saying good job.  Share what you have learned so that others may use that information to advance their work. 

2.  Be proactive.  Do not just sit back and follow, step up and lead.  You can raise potential challenges that you see on the horizon and offer possible solutions to show that you are being strategic and thinking long-term.  Connect your work and that of the teams to the impact of the business, and keep in mind other cross-functional teams and dependents when sharing your initiatives, as it shows you as a thoughtful contributor.  Be sure to procure a buddy who is in the room and can translate some of the nuances in the meeting.  You can message each other during and after the meeting to ensure you have the essential pieces down.  Be sure to make the most of your one-on-ones and seek out mentors as a prime opportunity to gain more visibility.

3. Create a friction-free experience.  It can be easy to create unnecessary thrash in remote settings, and be the person who keeps things simple and easy.  When sending emails, do not invite many back-and-forth interactions, rather, include the fewest steps possible.  For example, if you want to request a meeting with your boss, do not keep it vague and say, I’d like to meet, and then you have to wait for them to ask about the topic and available times, and then you provide times and there all these extra emails when once could have sufficed.  Instead, you can request to meet, state the topic, and offer several times that may work and if not, they can suggest 2-3 times during these available windows for the following week. They can confirm a time, and you can be all set.  If you are looking for your boss to provide answers, instead of making it open-ended by asking what they think is the solution which can demand a lot of work, you can offer three avenues that you were thinking about and ask which one of these, if any, would they want to go forward with?

4. Build relationships.  Since many organizations are matrixed where your work depends on the work of many others, it can be helpful to spend time intentionally building relationships and collecting goodwill.  This is one of the most important things you can do to succeed in your career, yet it is never urgent for people.  Your connections should not be transactional but more about building authentic connections.  You can share information on your careers and roles and even think about how best you like to work with each other. Knowing more details about their work can help you better work together.

5. Be a good team member.  Take part in team activities to get to know people outside their roles.  Be a builder and acknowledger of others’ ideas, take time to recognize, praise, and elevate them, and do not diminish, embarrass, or engage in any cringe-worthy behaviors.  Respond to emails timely and follow up on requests, so people are not wondering if you got their messages.  Do not engage in gossip; when you have a challenge with a person, assume positive intent and always go to the person to explore what’s going on. It would help if you did not involve your manager unless it calls for an escalation because the two of you have gone back and forth a few times and cannot seem to settle the differences.  If you do escalate it, do not send a private message to your boss to give your side, instead, you can tell the person, I think it is best if we bring this issue to the boss, and then you can send an email including the other person and your boss so no covert activities are occurring which can breed further distrust.

Working remotely does not mean you have to be invisible or reduce your value in any way. You can do many things to stand out and be a contributing force, it just may require a little more intentionality and planning.

Quote of the day:  “Not finance, not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and rare.” – Patrick Lencioni

Q:  What are you doing to stand out remotely? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 9 /11 will focus on how to personally thrive while working remotely

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

Get noticed Remotely

Make Recognition Routine (Remote series 4/11 )

Recognition is a big part of building community and a culture of appreciation.  It can help retain top talent because a prime reason why people leave their jobs is because of poor managers, usually ones that overlook the excellent work of others and fail to provide praise. 

While it is a fundamental human need to receive recognition, it is not a universal practice.  More than 80% of supervisors say they express appreciation to their employees, yet less than 20% of their employees say their supervisors give appreciation more than occasionally.  There is a disconnect, and it is contributing to a hemorrhaging of great talent.

Some traditional recognition programs such as employee of the month or the annual banquet recognizing star performers have problems.  To acknowledge only one employee for the month is not enough, it should be a daily and weekly practice.  Another problem is that they are often not judged fairly, otherwise, your best employee would win every month, but it seems awkward to give it to the same person so you start concocting reasons to spread the benefit around to the point where everybody gets it. This means your best and average workers are treated equally, which is unfair if they provide different outputs.  Worse yet, if 1-2 people on your team have not gotten it, that can become an issue.  

Effective recognition makes the employee feel noticed for what they have done.  Managers who say, “I saw what you did, and I appreciate it” means a lot.  Both individual and team recognitions are essential, and they can range from formal to informal. 

Here are some recognition practices you may want to consider:

1. Saying thank you in a public way.   You can do this via slack channel or at a standup meeting for peers to see that you appreciate them.  You can also send a physical note or card to tell them how much you value their work beyond the requirements.  It can be helpful to keep track of those you recognize so you can challenge yourself to praise new people regularly if you feel it is genuine and well-deserved 

2. Send an email to your teammate and CC others.  You can be specific about what they did to do a great job and CC your boss and your boss’s boss to make their contributions more visible.

3. Create a kudos board or gratitude channel.  Some companies have a dedicated spot where you can see all the thanks.  There are programs like Assembly where you can give kudos to people and the ones that get the most every week will get rewards like gift cards, show tickets, or other benefits.

4. Spot bonuses.  Some managers have a spot bonus budget that they can give an individual or a team for a specific behavior, action, or result for an extraordinary job.  They can range from a couple of hundred to a few thousand, and it is nice to give a monetary reward when you can.

5. Have a forum to share your good work.  Google’s “I Am Remarkable” initiative empowers women and other underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond.  It is done because many people struggle to talk about their accomplishments due to culture, gender modesty norms, or imposter syndrome, so the goal is to challenge the social perception around self-promotion. 

6. Make connections to mentors and sponsors.  In addition to recognizing their good work, you can make connections to potential mentors or sponsors for them to receive support to further their excellent work.

It is essential to take time to shine a light on people’s good work, and the benefits extend to both the receiver and the giver.  For the receiver, it can be a moment stamped in their memory for years.  The boomerang effect for the giver is that it elevates their spirits because they create a positive experience for another. 

Quote of the day: “Recognition is not a scarce resource.  You can’t use it up or run out of it.” -Susan Heathfield, HR Expert

Q:  How do you like to give and receive recognition? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 5/11 will focus on accountability in the remote environment.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you recognize others?

Community Building While Working Remotely Is Not Optional (Remote Series 3/11)

While there can be more organic opportunities to build community in person, the remote environment requires you to be more intentional about how you build a sense of belonging…and the investment is significantly worth it.  Cultivating better relationships can translate into a decrease in conflict and tension and an increase in engagement, retention, and productivity levels for better results. 

Here are some things you can do to build community while working remotely:

1. Connect as a large group before jumping into the work.  You can create quality connection opportunities to get to know each other beyond roles so you can learn about each other as people, find common interests, and collaborate more effectively.  It is helpful to give your team context for these intentional team cohesion moments so they can grasp the purpose. So instead of just adopting a new routine of connection and maybe surprising others, let your team know that you are going to be intentional about time for team building because you think it will have a positive impact on the work you do together.

Before virtual meetings, you can begin with getting-to-know-you or check-in questions.  Depending on the size of your team, for small teams less than 8, you can do a quick go-around so everybody can take 30 seconds to respond.  For larger teams, you can rotate so some members answer for one meeting and the others respond for the next meeting.

Here are some questions to get you started:

·      What is a highlight or lowlight of the week?

·      Tell us about the last time you were really excited about something.

·      What is something you love about your team?

·      What’s the best piece of media you’ve consumed recently?

·      What is one thing you are proud of this week?

·      What is something you want to spend less time doing?

1A. Connect on a 1:1 basis before jumping into the work.  You can utilize the breakout room so people can spend a couple of minutes in pairs discussing.  Chit-chat may have the perception in parts of the US as a waste of time to spend 8 minutes, but in Latin America, 20 minutes would not be enough time because they view the relationship piece as part of the work and enjoy viewing colleagues as friends.  While we all have different comfort levels, once teams form the habit, it can become their favorite part of the meeting because it sets the foundation for deeper conversations and better working relationships.

2. Coffee chats.  If your team is small enough and you know everybody, you can organize a broader coffee chat campaign, especially within cross-functional teams so you can get to know other people in the company.  You can have themed questions for the month so there is no pressure to come up with prompts, and so the company will all be talking about the same topics, which adds another level of connection.  After that, you can transition to other ways to connect by learning about each other’s backgrounds, roles, and career goals.  Here are some themed questions you can begin with:

·      Tell me about your favorite teacher. 

·      Tell me about your favorite comedian. 

·      Tell me about your favorite kind of music.

·      What’s one goal you are working on?

3. Book club.  People who learn together grow together.  Pick a book that can yield great professional and personal conversations and connect biweekly or monthly to cover a few chapters.  To share ownership, each member can rotate facilitation duties, provide a brief overview of the chapter and lead the discussion.  It is an excellent opportunity to connect and share around the value of learning, as well as provide the opportunity for many people to lead a meeting and improve their facilitation skills and for others to see a multitude of different styles in running events. 

4. Interest groups.  You can have your team list interests, and then they can form groups around them.  Aylia Elian, Senior Director of Talent and Leadership Development at Hilton, shares some of the groups that were created such as for parents, peloton users, movies, books, and recipes.  You would be surprised by some topics that bring people together and allow for great friendships to forge.

5. Other structured activities designed for connection. A big part of these connections is time for self-disclosure, which can help build trust and relationships.  It is always nice when leaders are part of the process so they can show another side to them and allow for more substantial relationship building.

5A. Values exercise.  Values are the most important driving force in our daily lives, yet very few share them with coworkers.   You can do an exercise where you get people thinking about their values, how they were formed, and how they practice them today.  If people like the exercise, they can do something with purpose and goals.

5B. Picture share.  Pick a theme for a picture, such as favorite places to work.  Get employees to take photos of their desk, workspaces, or their go-to coffee shops and share them with the group. This can be a fun insight into how and where people like to work and could spark ideas among others to expand on what they already do.  Another option could be to share an essential aspect of their lives.  Maybe it is a photo of their hobby or an interest, and then they can share why it is so meaningful.  Another variation is to have people send a picture of something important without being in it and then people have to guess who the image belongs to as a light and fun way to engage.

5C. Interesting facts.   You can do something similar to the picture activity, but share interesting facts instead.  Have people send you a brief fact and then read it in the meeting, and everybody can guess who they think the fact belongs to.  The person can turn their fact into a little story or add additional details.  It is fun to learn who grew up on a farm and drove a tracker at age 6 or who has an extensive wine collection and spent over $500 on one bottle of wine.

5D. Social hour.  You can be deliberate about building your genuine connection. You can set up breakout rooms and have speed sessions where people get to know each other for 10 mins and then rotate.   It is always helpful to share the intention behind the meeting, beyond just having the opportunity to connect with your peers and foster community, it helps strengthen your relationship and networking skills more broadly. 

5E. Celebrating birthdays. Do you know when it is your teammate’s birthday?  If so, what do you do to make it a memorable moment?  How about if everybody went around the room and, for 30 seconds, talked about what they are most grateful for and what they wish for this person this year?  If the group is large, you can have them add it to the chat and call on a few people to share.   

6. Unstructured time.  Having a place where people can drop by and connect informally can be helpful. 

As an important reminder, be careful not to do something that crazy uncle would do and share with no filters that make others feel uncomfortable.  It would be like showing up to a work event in a speedo or showing up on zoom in your bathrobe  That’s great that you feel authentic, but you want to be attuned to the environment and keep it professional.  Similarly, no need to reveal your anger management classes or all the things you are working on with your therapist, opt for mature self-disclosure because there is a way to be work-appropriate and authentic at the same time.

6A. Remote lunch together.  You can offer a zoom link for people to have lunch together and hang out.  Conversations around food are always the most interesting, and sharing a meal can be a nice break in the day and time that people cherish and look forward to.

6B. Water cooler slack channel.  There can be a dedicated channel for connection.  People can discuss birthday celebrations, weekend hobbies, or other areas of interest.  This informal communication can help people get to know each other.

7. In-person offsites or retreats.   At least once or twice a year, it is nice to bring people together to break the script, be in a new place, have excursions together, and get valuable planning work accomplished.  Part of the time can be used for working sessions, part of the time can be used for intentional team bonding, and part can be on developing skills.  Topics around strategy, communication, motivation, burnout, productivity, and self-management can be valuable territory to explore.

8. Culture or connection-building committee.  You can have a dedicated planning committee of 3 or 4 who spend time thinking about these connection moments, which can take a lot of time when done right.  You can also rotate the members on the committee every quarter, so a wide variety of activities and interests are represented.  This can also get more people involved and invested in the success of this initiative.

Making time to build team community and foster a healthy and engaged culture is worth every minute. It is a great way to increase engagement and make people happy and excited to work with people they know well and enjoy.

Quote of the day: “We are but each other’s keeper.” -Author Abhijit Naskar

Q:  What is your favorite community-building activity?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 4/11 will focus on the importance of recognition.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

What’s your favorite way to build remote community?

Clear Expectations Are the Foundation for Remote Work Success (remote series 2/11)

Clear expectations can make or break a remote team.  Anytime there are changes to the work, or the context has shifted, there will always be an initial lack of clarity followed by unclear or unmet expectations.  This can cause a lot of stress as people are not realizing what they have to do and may even be duplicating efforts.  Clear expectations lead to greater confidence and trust in your work and less conflict, rework, wasted energy, and micromanagement; it is the fertile ground for successful remote work.

As a manager, you can do many things to create an incredible remote work environment for your team.   Here are some categories to cover for setting clear expectations:

1. Define the team.  If you’re starting a new team from the ground, or if you have inherited a team, be clear from the beginning about who is on the team and who is not, as well as the adjacent and dependent teams.  All good teams have a purpose and vision so there is alignment and a compelling reason to unite and rally around.  Additionally, you need to define the OKRs, goals, outcomes, tasks, the rationale for why the work matters, the big picture behind the work, and co-create team values that will guide the work.  When team members can answer why they are here to do what they do and the impact they will have, they will be more engaged. 

2. Define clear roles and responsibilities.  Now that you’ve all agreed on your team’s purpose and vision, ensure you are all on the same page regarding everybody’s roles and responsibilities.  For example, what specific tasks or perspectives do you expect each team member to contribute?  Because team members may not understand why they’ve been chosen, schedule a meeting to share why each member was named to the team, each person’s unique background and valuable skillset, and clarify each member’s role.  Share a game plan for how your team should interact with each other.  Creating a team charter can help bring organization and introspection to your team, especially when geographically dispersed, so they always know the direction and can remain on track with their high performance. 

3. Establish team norms or ways of working.  In different companies and cultures, routine processes often differ widely, which confuses team members.  How will you work together?  What are the ways you will interact with each other?  What are the values and behaviors that we all can expect?  Team leaders should establish norms and provide training for best practices such as meeting formats, use of technologies and communication, and processes for decision-making and conflict.

4. Set Communication Norms.  This is essential to make sure we are collaborating effectively and getting the work done.  What is your communication strategy to keep everybody connected and doing great work?  How many weekly formal or informal connections will you have?  What are the guidelines around daily needs?  How do team members set commitment-based deadlines so there is no need for follow-ups?  What kinds of digital tools will you use and for what purposes?  Teams often amass tools but no discussion on how those tools are used.  Sometimes zoom becomes the de facto for everything, even when sharing an update can better be done over email.  Remote working offers a great opportunity to co-create which tools will work best based on their purposes. 

You can develop a communication charter and gain agreement on how communication will happen, what kind of messages will be exchanged, and what channels will be utilized with examples and non-examples   After establishing those processes, you can gently remind the person who may be using the right tool in the right way based on the charter.  So much conflict happens due to unclear expectations around communication.   

Here is a list of tools with some possible purposes that might be helpful for your team for the communication component of the charter.

4A. Instant messenger.  Slack is a popular remote tool, especially for direct messaging.  This is best done for rapid communication and iteration without a glut of unwieldy threads like in email.  Some channels can be set up to relate to specific topics or projects.  There can also be non-work-related channels as a way to connect with others.  For example, you can have a water cooler challenge to learn about when it is people’s birthdays or what they did over the weekend. You can have a channel for introductions for when new teams join, and they can offer a video intro so you can quickly learn people’s stories.

4B. Email.  It can be used to provide more extensive information and have a record of the communication and share weekly updates or summaries of what everyone is working on to ensure alignment.  Most teams do not talk about the guidelines around emails.  For example, in the TO line will be those who need to respond, and in the CC line are those who need to be updated.  Instruct others not to reply all when it is not necessary, so it keeps people focused on their productivity unless there are important exceptions like a decision needs to be made and you want all voices included.  In that case, share that information and give them a window to weigh in before you move forward with the decision.  When an email chain gets too long, start by summarizing critical points before weighing in and creating a new thread when the topic has evolved with a different focus.   These may sound like trivial things, but being on the same page around communication norms and creating a frictionless experience will make the work much easier and faster.

4C. Video meetings.  Zoom is a popular tool for getting people together in real-time to discuss projects and have a back-and-forth to hash out details.  Other tools include Microsoft Team, Google Duo, and Webex.  In your charter, you can specify how and when you use video and the guidelines for success, such as when the cameras are on and the best ways to interact.  At GitHub, they do not have presentations in their meetings because they are only for interaction.  When a new team member tries to present, another team member jumps in to enforce the norm, and that’s how their meeting purpose remains intact.   If there is no discussion on these norms, you cannot expect people to be great team members.

4D. Phone calls.  If there are a few back and forth on instant messenger or emailing and still more to hash out, it can be best to jump on the phone to discuss the issue in real-time.

4E. Document hub.  Where do you store critical documents and project information?  Who is responsible for keeping that information organized and updated?  How can it be accessed outside the firewalls?  This allows people to quickly complete their work when there is a centralized location to get what they need.

4F. Define synchronous and asynchronous work.  Maybe you have organized your tools into broader categories of synchronous and asynchronous work based on the purpose.  For example, some teams will use asynchronous tools when work needs to be done in real-time such as brainstorming and problem-solving.  Using asynchronous work can be used for sharing info, giving status updates, adding ideas to a document, or chiming in on a proposal with a more extended deadline.  The advantage of this approach is that you can catch those people who either cannot attend a meeting or do not have an invite.  You can make it more inclusive and open it up to many voices to contribute their ideas and gain more visibility and possibly recognition.  It also leverages flexibility for times that best serve them depending on their energy levels and personal commitments.  The early risers can add comments at the beginning of the day when they do their best work, and the night owls can contribute at the end of the day for their ideal time. 

5. Define response time and deadlines.  What are the expectations around response times, should emails be answered within 24 hours or three days?  Should people respond when they have received a message by saying, “messaged received, thanks,” or is no response necessary to reduce clutter? How about the word quickly, what does it mean?  We could all have different ideas.  It could mean 2 hours, 1 day, within a couple of days, or sometime this week, depending on who is interpreting the message and their position in the company.  When you stay away from vague terms, it offers more clarity.  A great way to do that is to include deadlines, “please respond by tomorrow 5 pm est. so the client can have their answer in the morning as promised.” 

6. Define work availability and standard meeting hours.  For some, the work-from-home experience has blurred boundaries between personal and professional obligations, so as a manager, it is essential to discuss work schedules with each team member to respect their time.  If you know the morning time is for your family, and you will not be logging on until a specific time, share that upfront.  If you know you do your best work in the evening and will be sending emails after 11:00 pm or on weekends, share that just because you are sending a message that is convenient for you, your expectation is that they do not respond until their work hours.  These clear boundaries help maintain positive relationships and a healthy culture where people can comfortably focus on their work and not have to work around the clock, not have their performance measured by how quickly they respond, not get burned out, and not have to expend unnecessary energy thinking about their communication.  Clear boundaries can help teams work together better and especially overcome time zone differences.  For meetings, provide optimal times to overlap early and late time zones and have a predictable window.  If there is no convenient time, you can have a rotation system, one month that favors one coast and another month that favors the other.

Great teams can be set up to thrive when there are clear expectations on the ways of work, including a communication strategy.  It will enable people to spend more time on the work and less on figuring out the best approaches to navigate interpersonal dynamics.   As a leader, the best thing you can do for your people is to take the time to set this foundation for masterful work to be built.

Quote of the day: “Treat a person as they are, and they will remain as is. Treat a person as they can and should be, and they will become as they can and should be.”  -Author Stephen Covey 

Q:  How do you set clear and high expectations?   Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 3/11 will focus on building community remotely.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you set clear expectations?

Successful Remote Work Hinges On Great Managers (remote series 1/11)

The Pandemic has caused many people to shift their operations to hybrid and remote models for the first time.  Some people successfully adjusted to remote work, while many have not.  As an Executive Coach working with many leaders dealing with this issue, there are many lessons I’ve collected on how to improve the building and managing of remote and hybrid teams.

It is clear that not having a strategy to organize people around the globe to work together successfully and build something amazing will lead to failure.  But being intentional about a placeless mindset – an integrated way of thinking, living, and working so we can work from anywhere can be a differentiator.  And just because we have seen many early examples of remote work not being done right, does not mean it is a flawed model; it is constantly evolving and can be beneficial when leveraged correctly.

Here are some common challenges in thinking through remote work:

1. Low-performing managers. The managers who struggled in person have continued their challenges.   Some leaders got the position because they were good at the technical parts of their job and not necessarily because they were extraordinary people managers.  Being a manager is not simply a great individual contributor plus one additional skill in their familiar domain, it draws from a different bucket.  You have to have a mindset of really caring for your team and aiming to make them better than they thought possible. The reality is some people pursue that route for the promotion and title, not because they love the people side of the job or are particularly good at it.  So, you end up with a pool of people who dislike managing and do it anyway.   Their poor performance was exacerbated when they had to do it remotely because the stakes were even higher to do this aspect of their job well and with enjoyment.   Previously, some of these people leaders relied on an older management practice called “managing by walking around,” where they gathered information through their interactions, and some could rest on their presence and charisma.  Now, that they have to be more intentional about building rapport and in some cases, modeling vulnerability, they feel challenged because it is different and harder.

2. Managers not adapting their approach.  Leading a high-performing team can be hard work even in the best of circumstances.  But when team members are working from home and scattered geographically and culturally, the task of managing remote employees is even greater.  Managers trying to replicate the same approaches online as they did in person are struggling.  For example, if you used to give status updates in your meetings and now do it on zoom, it may not have the same impact because of all the additional environmental distractions.  There is a real opportunity to take advantage of the tech tools for a more significant impact and to enhance meetings, such as the breakout rooms to encourage small group discussion or the chat to include diverse perspectives.  It is not exciting for people to show up, stare at a screen and passively hear somebody talk the whole time.  Some of the zoom fatigue is that we are trying to make the online work feel like in-person work, but it is not.  There can be copious benefits to remote work when managers appropriately leverage unique opportunities to better utilize the time together.

3. Managers who do not lead with trust and know how to hold others accountable.   Some managers who do not trust their workers or fear losing control have turned to micromanaging or overmanaging.  If they are not skilled enough to control work and performance, they look to increase surveillance, e.g programs that count your keystrokes; this is never a motivating or inspiring strategy, resulting in rebellion and disengagement from workers.  With a lack of visibility, managers are struggling with how to keep accountability.  Instead of co-creating the goals, metrics of success, checkpoints, and implications for missed work and allowing people the freedom and autonomy to do their job, they are skipping these steps and doing more telling and less collaborating.  Employees who follow managers due to positional power is never a sustainable model, you want to manage where people choose to follow you because they find it to be a valuable, even inspiring experience.

4. Lack of clear expectations.  Communicating clear expectations is something we are constantly working on, but with remote work, there is even more of a need to do this extraordinarily well.  Do people know their roles, tasks, top 3 priorities, how they will be evaluated, and the specific ways they can excel?  Do they know the best methods for interacting with each other?  Using more intention in designing those processes will save a lot of time.  While you were In person, you may have been able to go up to somebody and request a task, but with remote, you have to be more thoughtful in how you approach people.  Email is a terrible way to communicate anything that involves a lot of back-and-forth discussion or emotional topics.  If coordination is not effectively done, it will lead to poorly organized projects from start to finish.

5. Lack of intention in building team cohesion and culture.  While some culture-building efforts could happen naturally in the office, especially before, during, and after team meetings, remote work requires more planning.  Some overlook this essential step which contributes to the overall enjoyment and engagement that can make people feel included, connected, and recognized.   

6. Lack of investment in employee career advancement and well-being.   A big part of being a leader is to care for those you lead and work to make them successful.  That entails having somewhat regular career conversations to ensure they are growing in the organization and investing in their well-being.  It is responsibility #1 of a manager to care for and develop others; If you are not doing that you are failing as a manager, regardless of the results you might be getting.

Surely, there can be a lot of advantages with remote work when the model is designed well.  Two enormous benefits include increases in productivity and job satisfaction, among others.  

1. Increase in productivity.  According to a survey from ConnectSolutions, 30% of workers say they accomplish more in less time.  While remote work is new for some people, many have been doing it for a while.  Cisco started with remote and hybrid work in 1993 and saw a rise in productivity.  Sun Microsystems experimented with it early on and saw productivity increase and costs drop significantly; they ended up reducing $500 million in real estate.  CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg said. “People are more productive working at home than people would have expected.  Some people thought everything was just going to fall apart, and it hasn’t.  And a lot of people are saying that they’re more productive now.”  When done right, with a strategy in place, remote work can be a boon to business.

2. Increase in job satisfaction.  Global Workplace Analytics shows that many people prefer to work at least part of the time remotely.  People value their autonomy and flexibility, and when they’re empowered to segment their day in ways that make sense for their personal needs, they are happier.  For many, stress levels can decrease when they can spend more time with their families and less time commuting. 

The great resignation has been coined to capture the phenomenon of employees voluntarily resigning in mass, and the causes have been multifaceted.  This period can also be known as the great reputation of the suboptimal work arrangements we have tolerated for far too long.  Power has shifted from the employer to the workers who are demanding how they want to work and where they want to work.  People want more from their jobs, they want good managers and will leave mediocre ones.  Companies intentionally providing better cultures and offering more remote opportunities are winning. 

Quote of the day: Micromanagement is the destroyer of momentum.” -Author Miles Anthony Smith

Q:  What’s the biggest remote challenge you are facing right now?   Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 2/11 will focus on setting clear expectations for remote work success.                                          

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you manage remotely for the greatest results?

Approaches to managing up for a project (Manage Up Series 3/6 )

How often have you had a great idea that you wanted to pitch to your manager but pulled the plug because you believed it would get rejected?  Perhaps your idea could have brought massive benefits to the team and the organization, but you were convinced that your boss would miss the value.  Great managers provide forums for you to share and disagree.  But we do not always get to choose the people we work for.  When we can strengthen our skills of managing up, we can better lead for impact.

To increase your effectiveness in pitching a project, here are aspects to consider:

1. Bring a first draft plan and co-create.  When you are pitching a project idea, talk about the challenge being addressed, possible solutions, pros and cons of each, your recommendation, and how that solution ties into the bigger picture and the company goals and vision.  Co-create by asking your boss what they would add to your idea to improve its value.  If you are sensing they are opposed to it, you can ask – do you see any reasons why this may not work?  You can ask for their biggest objections they or another might have and if those were addressed, do they see any reason why the project should not go forward then?

2. Tackle the costs head on.  Having a handle on the costs will help you anticipate their possible rejections and prepare for them.  If you do not share them, they will likely be presented for you, instead, you can say, “here are the costs, and here is why I see them worth the benefit.”  Every organization has limited resources, time, and energy; accepting your idea may mean the rejection of another idea that someone else believes is wonderful so having that broader view will be important to making your case.

3. Share potential risks.  When you can brainstorm and analyze potential risks for new projects, categorize whether it is high or low, and share your analysis, you show your boss that you are thinking strategically, especially when you include recommended risk mitigation strategies and backup plans.  They will know that you put in considerable thought and will be more receptive to hearing your approach.   

4. Depict the positive impact beyond your team.  When presenting an idea, be sure to tie it to a positive impact.  Peter Drucker said, “ideas that make no positive impact are meaningless data.”  You are a small piece in the mosaic that your boss is weaving.  When influencing up, focus on the impact of the decision on the overall corporation.  In most cases, the needs of the department are clearly aligned with the company directly, and in other cases, this connection is not so obvious.  Be clear on making that link and do not assume it is automatically seen. Your best wins will relate to a larger goal and not just be about achieving your objectives because if your boss is helping just you, they may be disadvantaging another teammate and the resources they may need. 

5. Show success examples.  Point to examples used by other teams and how you mimic those efforts and processes for the best results.  You can even factor in the customizations you have made to better fit with the intricacies of your team.

6. Reduce workload.  The best recommendations take work off people’s plates.  If you happen to put work on, what can you do to minimize it?  Can you own the scheduling and logistics or volunteer to present the work at the meeting? How can you make it easy for your boss to say yes and show that it will not add extensive work?

There is an art to managing up.  When you can utilize critical thinking skills in presenting your idea, explaining pros and cons, and offering your recommendation, you make it easy for your manager to join you as a collaborative partner to endorse your project. 

Quote of the day: “Real control is influencing someone to the point that [they] believe [their] choices are [their] own.” – G.R. Morris

Q:  How do you pitch your projects for the greatest success?  What has worked and what hasn’t? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 4/6 will focus on numerous managing up scenarios and the best approaches to take]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to sharpen their managing up skills, contact me to explore this topic further. 

What works for you in managing up?

We All Need to Manage Up (Manage Up Series 1/6)

It is quite common to have a different perspective from our managers and want to find effective ways to speak up to alter outcomes.  Toeing the line between skillfully influencing regardless of your position and not overstepping in a way that disrespects your leader and damages your reputation can be tricky. When we can hone the skill of managing up, we can make a positive difference in our teams and in our organizations.

Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter defines managing up as the process of consciously working with your superior to obtain the best possible results for you, your boss, and the company.  It is a way of customizing your work style to best suit your managers for optimum collective success.  It can also refer to your tactics to build a strong relationship with your boss to make work easier.  Sue Shellenbarger in the Wall Street Journal writes, "Managing up, or building smooth, productive relationships with higher-ups, requires understanding and adapting to your boss’s communication and decision-making style.”  Clearly, the approach you take to manage up matters.

Mastering this skill has copious benefits.  You can effectively shape the agenda by better advocating for what you want, asking for resources, and promoting your team’s successes.  The organization benefits as well.  When you have a strong relationship with your manager and know a good method to be heard, you can achieve more win-wins.  Instead of contributing to a culture of silence where people do not voice their views, you can create a conduit for great ideas to see the light of day.  Organizations want people who can vigorously campaign on behalf of their team with excellent intentions to impact productivity, morale, and retention positively.

Choosing when to speak up is not always easy and straightforward.  Here are some situations that could be helpful to chime in:

1. When it is at the cost of the company’s mission and integrity.  If something is happening that is damaging the company’s reputation internally or externally, it can be essential to get involved.  If you know that corners are being cut and there is a negative impact on customers or other stakeholders, your manager will want to know this.

2. When your motives are genuine.  If you have already checked in with yourself and ruled out jealousy or other less envious motives, and it is really about the benefit to the team, organization, or stakeholders, it is a good time to manage up to share constructive concerns collaboratively.

3. When you have established trust and credibility.  When you have shown yourself to be a dependable person that delivers consistent, timely, and excellent quality work, you will be in a good position to manage up.  If you are not a model of what you seek, your message will be harder to convey and be heard. This reminds me of Jordan Peterson’s rule 6: set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.  While I disagree with the word perfect, the underlining sentiment of being an example of what you are trying to change is powerful.   Nobody wants to listen to somebody who cannot do the thing they are advocating.

4. When there are massive communication gaps.  You may have assumptions that your boss has a view of you that is inaccurate.  You may want to check in, clear the air, and frame the perception that more precisely depicts who you are instead of them filling in the gaps so you can speak up and align on a shared reality. I had a client who was working on a massive project, culminating in a pivotal stakeholder meeting where a decision had to be made. When the boss viewed the invite list, she said the list looked random and did not understand why some attendees were present.  My client wanted to take a moment to zoom out and inform her leader of the broader picture, that she had been talking to all those stakeholders regularly and had an excellent explanation for each person’s attendance.  Having that conversation to loop her boss in was essential because while they may have initially thought my client was careless in their selection, they were, in fact, deliberate. 

5. When it is for the leader’s benefit.  Business management expert Patrick Lencioni advocates managing up to benefit the leader.  He said, “do not expect that the manager is leading exactly the way they want.”  He shared a story of when a direct report came to him as a great example of managing up.  Lencioni promoted somebody who was not team-oriented, which violated one of the company values.  So, the direct report went to Lencioni and said, I know you have a lot on your plate, but I noticed an inconsistency that I wanted to share and learn more about the reasoning behind the decision. You talk about teamwork being important but just promoted the least teamwork-focused person, so I think to address the disconnection, we either should change what we believe or move him to another place where he would be a better fit.  Lencioni shared that he was happy to have that blind spot bought to his attention and believed that if you only hear about frustrations when your team hands you a resignation letter, it is unfair because it does not give the leader a chance to course correct.  

Another client of mine had a similar situation speaking up regarding their boss’ blind spot.  The boss would think out loud at meetings and share fleeting comments to the team about possibly doing more research.  Some team members would interpret those passing thoughts as requests, and a couple of people would work on the same project and waste time and resources.  Others would view those thoughts as just verballing processing and would not do anything and the boss would wonder why no action was taken.  So, my client shared this observation with their boss, “I noticed this phenomenon happening where your verbal brainstorming is creating confusion and might be wasting time, I’m wondering what if, at the end of a meeting, we share one thing to investigate and one person to do that so there is clarity and no overlap?  How would that work for you, or what would you add to reduce the confusion?”  Before sharing your idea, you can even invite your boss to share possible solutions before you offer yours.  This is a great topic to manage up because you are proposing a process change to improve the business and inviting a co-creating experience.

When NOT to manage up:

1. Personality difference with no business benefit.  If you simply do not like your manager’s style and changing it would make your life easier but have no positive impact on the business or other team members, then it is misusing the spirit of managing up.  For example, if you want your manager to be more optimistic and less realistic because that is your preference, you may be unable to change that.  It is good to ask yourself, how is my request impacting the business other than it’s annoying me?  If their approach is leading to hours wasted, unnecessary confusion, and a lack of direction for you and the team, that’s different.  Tapping into the bigger reason we are here and how we can align to make the business successful is a good guide to managing up.

2. You think you can be leading better.  You may believe you can do the job better than your manager, many of us feel that way from time to time and that can be ok, but when you take action to undermine your boss or try to win or be right at your boss’s expense, that is crossing the line.  To be successful at your job, it is helpful to support your leader publicly and make them look good rather than asserting your will.  And if you believe you can do a better job, great, do your best to get promoted based on the quality of your work and your integrity and when you get that promotion, you will get a chance to lead in the way you want, and your direct reports will follow you based on your style and the benefits that you deliver.

When you can learn the skill of managing up, it will make you a more effective contributor.  The best indicator of managing up is when there is a triple win – you win, your manager/team wins, and the company wins. 

Quote of the day: “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” – Albert Schweitzer. 

Q:  When was the last time you had to manage up?  What worked that you would want to repeat?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 2/6 will focus on helpful prework to do to manage up.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to sharpen their managing up skills, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you manage up?

The Art of Asking The Right Interview Questions (Hiring Series 4/5)

As your candidates move through the hiring process, it can be helpful for the committee to create a series of questions that will cut through the applicants’ buzzwords and bullet points to get a more accurate gauge on how they will perform on your team.  According to a study by Leadership IQ, 46% of new hires do not last longer than 18 months primarily due to poor interpersonal skills even though candidates may be qualified.  Asking questions that get at this issue can make a big difference. 

When thinking about the questions, you can choose ones that invite both scripted and unscripted responses.  Common questions allow them to share their prepared and practiced responses, such as tell me about yourself and why would you be an asset to this company, but it is only going to reveal so much.  You want to ask some questions that yield impromptu responses to engage in real-time self-reflection. This can show the best clues to whether the person would be a good fit. 

  1. Here are some attitudinal, career, and background-focused questions that can tap into both their scripted and unscripted responses: 

·      Tell me about yourself and highlight two turning points that led you to apply to this position.

·      What are your superpowers?  Give me examples of your strengths and put them in the context of your previous jobs.

·      Tell me about your track record of success.  What did you do to create your success and whom did you have to partner with to make that happen? [Research shows one of the best indicators that somebody will be successful in the future is if they have a winning past track record].

·      What are you not good at or do not like?  How have you addressed these weaknesses or found workarounds?

·      What are your pet peeves when it comes to collaboration? What types of people do you find the most challenging to work with? What is your strategy if you find yourself on a team with some of these people?

·      What do you look for in an ideal teammate?  What do you have to offer to the team?

·      Whom do you admire as a leader and why? How would your teammates describe you as a leader?

·      What are the ingredients of good company culture?  How would you contribute to an incredible culture?

2. Behavior Questions:  Asking behavioral and future-focused, realistic questions related to how they would approach their job can give you a lot of data on their potential performance.  Knowing what they would do can yield more robust responses than attitudinal questions that are more theoretical and philosophical.  For example, what is your philosophy on leadership versus how you would handle this issue?  

Here is a sample set:

·      If two colleagues are not getting along, how would you handle it?  Name 2-3 specific things you would do. Other variations include: Tell us about when your team had disagreements.  How were these differences resolved, and what was your role?

·      What are the steps you would take to manage an underperforming employee?

·      Can you tell us about a time when you disagreed with your manager’s directions or priorities? How did you respond?

·      Tell us a time when you made a mistake or were asked to go back and make corrections. How did you handle it? An alternative can be, what was your biggest failure? What did you learn from it and how have you avoided repeating it?

·      Have you had to work with someone whose personality was particularly different from yours? How did you make it work?  Another variation: Tell me a time when you had difficulty working with someone, what made them difficult to work with? What steps did you take to resolve the problem, what was the outcome? What could you have done differently?

·      Tell me about a time you faced a challenging situation?  What did you do to improve your situation?

·      If you are trying to get a new initiative implemented, walk me through how you would do this.

·      Tell me about a situation in your last job where you volunteered to help somebody outside your area or an important project where you volunteered even though you did not have anything to do with the core assignment.  Tell me why you did it, what was the result, and what was your role?   [A question like this helps you assess their track record of collaborating or teaming up with others to succeed.]

3. Questions to assess their preparation and career aspirations:

·       Can you tell us what you know about our company and what stands out the most?

·       Please tell us what you understand this position to be?  What excites you, and what concerns you?

·       How do your values and mission align with the company’s values and mission?  You can follow up on their response and provide some of the company information if you are trying to figure out alignment.

·      What are your career goals? What would need to happen for you to achieve your professional aspirations?

4. Questions to help understand their listening, communication, and curiosity skills:  This could involve formatting some questions as directions. 

·       Teach us about one of your passions, something that you know a lot about or consider yourself to be an expert in, and as if we do not know anything about it.

·       What have you been learning about lately or what is a recent topic that has captured your curiosity?

5. Questions that help reveal their level of self-awareness:

·      What have you been doing to work on your non-strengths?

·      What conditions can you do your best work in?

·      What is the biggest misperception people have about you?   

The misperception question is about whether they know how they come across to others, even in ways that may not be a true reflection of who they are.  Tony Hsieh, the former Chief Executive of Zappos, uses this question often. He said, “I think it’s a combination of how self-aware people are and how honest they are. I think if someone is self-aware, then they can always continue to grow. If they’re not self-aware, I think it’s harder for them to evolve or adapt beyond who they already are.”

Tony Robbins said, “successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” To truly understand if the candidate is going to be a right fit, you want to inquiry well.  Specifically, behavior questions can be the best indicator of how the person will perform on the job. 

Quote of the day: “People are not your most important asset. The right people are.” -Jim Collins

Q:  What are your favorite interview questions to ask? Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

[The next blog in this series 5/5 will focus on the concluding parts of the interview process]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to get clarity on the hiring process to secure the best candidate, contact me to learn more.

Which questions do you ask to get the best candidate?

Hire First For Values (Hiring Series 1/5)

What goes into selecting the right candidate to join your team?  While there are many aspects to consider, few are more important than the values of others and how they will align with your team and organization for the best synergy and results.

In Patrick Lencioni’s “The Ideal Team Player,” he argues for the importance of hiring for values and offers his humble, hungry, and smart model.  That is, exhibiting humility to think of yourself less, having the drive to pursue your goal aggressively, and the capabilities to be astute in how you interact with others.  When recruiters test for these values, they are more likely to get a great teammate.  Some would argue that these types of values and traits, such as having a positive mindset and a learning disposition, can be more important than having the technical skills to complete certain jobs because the latter can be more easily taught than the former.  This is how Southwest Airlines and many other entities organize their culture.  Hiring begins with bringing the right employees with the right values who can identify with the company’s purpose.

 Let’s take a deeper look at each value:

 1. Hungry. This value relates to an inner drive for excellence; you push until the job is done and are not satisfied with giving anything less than 100%.  You often think about the work outside of regular hours because you care beyond your job description.  The role may not just be a job for you, but a feeling of ownership and enduring impact.  You think more in terms of when a job is done and not dedicated hours of work.  You do not just care about your contributions, but the team outcomes.  This disposition can be inspiring to other team members and motivate them to do better.   Lencioni believes this is the hardest value to teach because it is all about the level of passion that you possess.  If you have it in abundance, you will move mountains to get the job done, if you do not, it will be hard to discover any incentive to get you to care and be hungry for positive impact.  It’s about the intrinsic motivation (you do it because you want to) over the extrinsic (you do it because you have to or simply to attain some reward).  This also does not mean you have no personal life because it is not about the number of hours but the quality of work – when you are on, you are driven by care and want to see things to the end, and when you are off, you can disconnect to get that much-needed renewal that will make you more effective overall.

A dimension of the hungry characteristic relates to the eagerness to learn, which Adam Grant mentions as one of the most important criteria to look for in hiring.  If you have the ability and passion for learning and acquiring new knowledge and skills, there is nothing that you cannot master.  As the proverb goes, “where there is a will, there is a way.” For some generalist jobs, it is ok if you do not have the complete skillset because you will find ways to get the job done regardless, whether that means pulling in resources or developing the skills yourself.  Ray Dalio’s Principles echoes a similar sentiment.  He talks about not hiring people to fit their first job but providing the ability to evolve and contribute in unforeseen ways, and that’s what learners and achievement-oriented people do, they are motivated to jump in, problem-solve, and figure things out aligned with the shared mission.  Three out of the five traits specified in the book Who: The A Method for Hiring would fall under this one category of hungry - motivation (a drive for achievement), initiation (taking action and inspiring others), and problem-solving (having the ability and interest to assimilate new information to get the best results). 

 2. Humble.  Author Rick Warren says that “humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”  When you are humble, you know what you are great at, you know how to use your talents well, and do not think you are more important than others.  Humility means jumping in and doing any work needed by the team because you are not above any task or any person.  You are comfortable using “we” language instead of “me” and can quickly apologize when you err because having that harmony is more important than your need to be right.  Lencioni said humility is the single greatest attribute to being a great team player because the root of all sin is being too proud; when you are arrogant, you think you are better and deserve better and put your interests over that of the collective.

 3. Smart.  This one has two dimensions – being capable of doing the job and being emotionally intelligent.

The first one is being proficient enough to do the job and knowing that you can be trained to learn the skill or task for whatever you do not know.  When you hire smart people, they are eager to figure things out, and even though they do not know everything, they can solve problems and grow in unfamiliar territories.  Some influencers endorse the strategy of hiring people smarter than you because you want to surround yourself with capable individuals who can challenge you.  As a leader, your job is to listen to your team, filter recommendations, and make the best decisions. 

The second dimension is having emotional intelligence, a good awareness of themselves and others, and can regulate their emotions and be sensitive to others.  They understand their strengths and weaknesses and can receive constructive criticism to make adjustments.  They have tremendous people skills; they know how to emphasize and connect with others through compassion and have common sense in group situations; they know how to “read the room” and respond to other’s concerns.  Lencioni notes that smart candidates “understand the dynamics of a group of people and how to say and do things to have a positive outcome on those around them.”  They are good listeners, collaborators, and team players. 

Lencioni says that if you hire for only one of these values, it can be dangerous because somebody who is just hungry will be a bulldozer, somebody who is just humble can be a pawn, and somebody who is just smart can be a charmer.  Aiming to get all three would increase your chances of getting an excellent team player.

4. Integrity and Character.  I added these components to Lencioni’s model.  When you hire good people, you know they will operate in ethical ways for the best interest of others.   They are honest and do not cut corners.  They are friendly and enjoyable to be around.  Management expert Tom Peters stresses the importance of hiring nice, empathetic people whose natural sensibilities would be to do the right thing.  In contrast, if you hire a jerk, they can bring down the morale and productivity of the entire team.  It does not matter how smart they are or how good they are at completing a task if it reduces the collective performance and happiness.  People yearn to connect with good people doing good work and it makes the work that much more enjoyable.

While this is the model mainly used by Lencioni, which fits his organization’s culture, you want to be sure to pick the values that align with your culture.  Before interviewing candidates, you can gather your team to ask how they would define the culture and the three most important values.  Your team can even help you determine the behaviors that exhibit those values.  For example, if you care about being a team player, you need to measure this in the interview.  You can ask about the projects they were a part of and how their contributions made the overall group better.  How did they put in processes to thrive and avoid or minimize conflicts that can derail projects?  Tell me when you had to partner with two other stakeholders and what you did to get their buy-in?  They can give an example of when this value was practiced and when it was challenged. This will help you determine if the person has lone wolf tendencies, which will not be valuable for your objective.  Pay attention to how they answer the question and if they are using words like “I” and “me” v. “we” and “the team.”

Once you are clear on the traits you are looking for, you need to let the candidates know just how much you take these values seriously, how they play out in your company, and how people are held accountable.  At the end of the interview, you can reiterate how serious you are about the values and how uncomfortable it will be to work at the company if they do not feel the same way. In fact, how much they are going to dislike the experience because the behaviors are so abundant that they would not be able to dodge them.  Sending a strong message will allow them to select out if they are not a good fit because they do not genuinely possess these values.  After all, finding the perfect candidate is not just what is best for the organization, but what is best for the candidate and the clearer the expectations are, the more they can make choices that will allow them to be in a position where they can do their best work in an environment that speaks to their values.

 Quote of the day: “I think the most important thing is just if you hire people whose personal values match the corporate core values – and not just the stated ones.”  -Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

 Q: What are the most important values that define your team and your organization?  How can you assess this in potential candidates? Comment and share with us; we would love to hear!

 [The next blog in this series 2/5 will focus on creating a successful hiring process]

 As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to get clarity on the hiring process to secure the best candidate, contact me to learn more.

Which values do you look for when hiring?

Top 6 Ways to Brainstorm (Brainstorming 2/2)

In the last article, I wrote about how adding guidelines can improve the process of brainstorming, however, there are many different types of brainstorming. Let’s explore six popular ways to spark creativity on your team.

1. Brain Writing. Start by giving people time to think and work alone by writing down all of their ideas.  Then come together as a group and each person shares one idea at a time. When you separate the individual idea generation stage from the group discussion phrase, it allows for many more initial possibilities. You can then narrow down your selections by detecting the overlapping themes and building on these smaller and more concentrated concepts in greater detail.

2. 6-3-5 method. In this approach developed by Bernd Rohrbach in the 60s, six people sit around a table and pass their three ideas to the person on the right who builds on them.  This passing is done five times (or more) until everybody has had time to add to each idea.  They then get together and evaluate and search for commonalities.  This method is successful because it slows down the creative process since it gives everybody in the room adequate time to generate and strengthen before moving on to the evaluation phase.  It also prevents those who want to rush into solution mode because they are uncomfortable with uncertainty.

3. Round Robin Brainstorming. After each person has prepared something to share, the facilitator will go around the table requesting one idea from each person.  The job of the facilitator is to ensure an orderly process so everybody has a chance to talk and nobody evaluates the ideas until all have the opportunity to share.  This approach can be useful when team members have a tendency to stay quiet.  It also provides additional control for those who want to start analyzing the first few ideas before seeing the whole menu presented, they will have to wait until everybody has offered something.

4. Nominal Group Technique. Is a structured method for group brainstorming that can illicit creative answers to specific problems. Team members begin by writing down their ideas, then selecting which ones they feel are best. Once they are ready, everyone presents their favorite idea persuasively and then discussed and evaluated thoroughly. The group can take a simple vote for the ideas that they want to prioritize to further develop.

5. Sentence Stems. These include a series of prompts to get the discussion started.  For example, “we can cut our costs 10% by…?”  “We can become #1 in our space by…?”  Researchers at Google, Facebook, and IDEO have come up with a powerful three-word sentence starter – “How Might We…?” Each word is deliberately chosen, the HOW encourages detailed description, the MIGHT allows for freedom and creativity and the WE invites anybody to participate.  According to Duane Bray, the Head of Talent at IDEO, “How Might We” questions are so effective because they “allow clients to mentally reset and reframe a problem as an opportunity.”

6. Sketch Storming. This is the combination of drawing and writing to visually present your ideas.   Some concepts can be too abstract and difficult to describe in words so using diagrams and drawings can be helpful.  The depictions may even illicit multiple interpretations and fun, creative offshoots.

Whichever method you choose, the key is creating an environment of psychological safety so people can be encouraged to take risks in their thinking and silliness. You can choose to start with a fun warmup game.  Management Professor Leigh Thompson conducted a study on this subject and found that groups who shared funny or embarrassing stories about themselves came up with 26% more ideas and were 15% more creative than the groups who did not.

The best creative groups are not just the sum of their parts, but the totality of their experiences. When you can effectively implement methods that elicit people’s best, ideas blossom. 

Quote of the Day: “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainty” -Erich Fromm

Q: What’s your favorite brainstorming technique? Comment and share below, we would be overjoyed to hear from you!

As a Leadership Development & Executive Coach, I work with teams to facilitate processes for brainstorming & creativity. Contact me to learn more.

Which brainstorming methods yield the greatest results?

Brainstorming: From Broken to Better (1/2)

Does brainstorming ever feel like a waste of time? You believe it is necessary to get your team's input on a topic, but the session usually turns into a few people bickering, and the other participants remaining silent.   What’s going wrong?

When Advertising Executive Alex Osbourn developed this specific technique in the 1950s, the concept seemed obvious and simple - toss out as many ideas as possible without regard for being right or fear of criticism.  As it turns out, there are inherent problems with the design.  Psychology Professor Art Markman draws on research which shows that people who follow his method come up with fewer good ideas, compared to if individuals were to generate suggestions alone. 

Here are some challenges with basic brainstorming:

1. When people work together, their ideas tend to converge early on.  When one person throws out an idea, an anchoring bias occurs, where others tend to affix their ideas to the first ones.  Their minds are influenced as they start to think in similar ways about the problem.  In contrast, when they have time to work alone first, they diverge in their thinking because everybody takes a slightly different path when working through the problem while not being shaped by other ideas.  To reach the most creative solutions, it is much better to start with a large number of proposals and winnow down as opposed to having the first few thoughts dominate the process, thereby starting with a smaller sample in which to work.

2. Only some voices are heard.  According to Rebecca Greenfield of Fast Company, only a few people do 60%-75% of the talking, which can prevent other fresh ideas from surfacing. Even worse, if one of those people happens to be the boss, others could rally to support that view as a way to curry favor. Some may even censor themselves because they may feel like their ideas are not as worthy as those of the boss.

3. This method favors extraverts over introverts.  It is a natural tendency for many extraverts to blurt out ideas, even if they might not be fully formed because as they are sharing, they are processing and arriving at what they really want to say. It is their style. Contrastly, most introverts usually like to take time thinking more deeply about an issue and may go through several internal edits before they feel comfortable sharing.  The domination of a few loud contributors can cause others to remain silent because of fear of looking stupid by contributing an idea that has not gone through their personal vetting process or because they do not feel comfortable sharing freely in this way since they yearn for that uninterrupted thinking time.

In my experience in working with teams, not many people take the time to set up guidelines before they engage in a brainstorming session, they want to jump in and figure it out on the go.  With just a little bit of structure, the process can yield much higher efficiency. 

Here are some helpful steps to make the most out of your sessions:

1. Organize the logistics.  According to Author Brian Tracy, the ideal size of groups is 4-7, and the optimal length should be about 30 minutes.  Chose a facilitator to ensure that each person can have the same amount of contributions and to step in when guidelines are not being followed. Be sure to create those norms that work best for your team. Elect a recorder to capture all the ideas for revision and reflection.

2. Go for quantity.  The goal is to generate the greatest number of ideas in the time allowed.  There’s a direct relationship between the number of ideas and quality. In the book Originals, Adam Grant argues that creative people are no more creative than anybody else, but what separates their effectiveness is the number of ideas they put together and while many of them may fail, they just need that one from the bunch. Do not aim for 3-5, go for 15-20, or whatever may seem like a stretch for your team. Sometimes the last idea offered in the final minute is the breakthrough one.

3. Be positive and build. It is essential to avoid criticizing or judging. When you treat every idea as a good one, even seemingly absurd ones, it creates a safe space for people to give freely.  Always be thinking about how you can encourage and build on other’s ideas because it could take you to interesting and surprising places. This is the approach of improvisation, which is called, “YES, AND.” The idea is that when your partner introduces a crazy idea or scenario, instead of rejecting it, you go with it and make it even crazier. Essentially accepting what they say as truth and building on the reality that they set however asinine you think it may be.

4. Go for the ridiculous ideas. It is not uncommon for one bizarre idea to be combined with another crazy one to create a revolutionary third idea.  Lighten up, this process should be fun, silly, and at times, have you stitched over in laughter. After all, if we can’t laugh when in an imaginary and creative space, when can we?

When we put careful thought into brainstorming, we can create an environment that extracts the best quality from the team, while also fostering a feeling of fun, connection, and being a part of a powerful creative process which can deliver untold meaning and purpose.

Quote of the Day: Creativity is contagious - pass it on” -Albert Einstein

Q: What other guidelines would you add to maximize effectiveness in the brainstorming process? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

The next blog will explore the different types of brainstorming for maximum team performance.

As a Leadership Development & Executive Coach, I work with teams to facilitate processes for brainstorming & creativity. Contact me to learn more.

How do you spark creativity on your team?

Does Your Team Have A Ritual? (Team Series 9/10)

Sitting around the table with your family for your favorite holiday and then playing board games together afterward can be a sacred social ritual that contains special moments that have lasting significance.

Rituals are surprisingly ubiquitous across cultures and time and have played a role, for better or for worse, in the lives of individuals and societies.  Our ancient ancestors used the bond of ritual to create ties of kinship necessary for survival in a world rife with dangers.  The ritual of storytelling around a fire was used to pass down wisdom and beliefs across generations. 

In modern times, for some people, this word can conjure up a negative connotation because it may remind us of the practices that we had to do when we were young to appease our families.  Perhaps we did not want to do them or even know the reasons for why we were partaking — I always wondered about going to confession when I was not in the mood to share my secrets.  However, simple social rituals like a bedtime routine, keeping a gratitude journal, or a Thursday evening walk to the ice cream shop with your partner can help us consistently engage in our core values by fostering healthy and positive habits for our mind. 

The benefits of social rituals that we choose:

1. It allows for presence.  In our hyper-paced world, we can easily become anxious by ruminating on the past or being worried about the future, but when we spend more time in the present, we gain a greater sense of control and wellbeing. Doing the same activity every day and choosing to be mindful and fully present means that we will both receive the most from, and give the most to the experience.  Top sports players are well known for their pre-match rituals.  Serena Williams always bounces the ball five times on her first serve and twice on her second.  She wears the same pair of socks for the duration of a tournament.  She has even blamed losing on not following her ritual.

2. It provides structure and comfort.  It gives a sense of stability and continuity amidst the ever-changing, hectic, and often chaotic world.  Knowing that there is a practice that we consistently turn to provides familiarity and control over a changing world.

3. It offers a sense of renewal.  Metaphorically, rituals are oases, a time to rest, replenish, and restore ourselves on our long and winding path through life.  The time-out from our cyclic existence can provide mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing, especially while we are connecting with others.

4. Increases self-control.  Harvard Business Professor Francesco Gina and colleagues wrote about the use of rituals to help with self-control. Their study compared two groups of people who had the goal of losing weight. The first group was told to be mindful of what they ate for five days.  The second group had to engage in a three-step pre-meal ritual.  Step 1: cut their food.  Step 2: arrange their food symmetrically on the plate.  Step 3. tap their food three times with the utensil before eating.  The second group who followed the ritual ate less on average.   Going through these steps made them more mindful of the process and had a more significant impact on their goal of eating in moderation.

The benefits of rituals in teams and organizations:

Secular rituals or repeated enactments of a particular set of behaviors, scripts, and interactions can be a great tool to shape company cultures.

1. It is a way to stay connected.  Setting aside quality time to better relate with others and build a strong sense of community is everything.  Rituals can provide purpose, values, and meaning, while also bringing us together.  It can be a way to reinforce our identity.  Many workplaces have rituals for this exact objective.  At Walmart, workers begin the day with a company cheer.  At Yelp, salespeople bang a gong when they close a sale.  When I was at Penn State for college, I encountered a ritual that I initially found quirky but then wholly embraced because it made me feel more connected with my classmates. Walking through campus or the town, you would hear crowds spontaneously erupt with chants “We Are?!” and then they would wait for the only response from all to join in “Penn State!” As my group of friends would proudly respond in unison, it made us feel more connected to each other and this special experience. Ritual is what allows us to gather the energy needed to achieve great things, often beyond what we could imagine ourselves capable of. 

2. Rituals can be motivating.  Athletes who come together and do a cheer before the start of a game feel linked and energized.  Rituals can motivate a team to excel together.  A few years ago, Michael Norton, a Harvard Business School Professor, led a study in which 221 people were grouped into small teams and assigned to run around campus taking group selfies in front of specific locations, earning points for how many photos they completed in 45 minutes.  Before they began, one group was instructed to form a circle and perform a series of rhythmic claps and foot stomps, followed by a chant of “Let’s go” — a ritual they repeated three times.  The other groups spent this time reading an article in silence.  When the scavenger hunt finished, the groups that had executed the pre-hunt ritual had outscored the no-ritual groups — and they also reported liking teammates more.

Engaging in a social ritual for your team can create special bonding moments that can boost performance and create lasting memories.

Quote of the day: “The human soul can always use a new tradition.  Sometimes we require them.” -Author Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline   

Q: What are your favorite individual or team rituals that help you feel more connected?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

*The next and final blog in this team series 10/10 will provide common ways to build community in your teams.

As a Leadership Development & Team Coach, I work with teams to create rituals for peak performance and community building. Contact me to learn more.

What are your team rituals?

Collective Intelligence is the Goal (Team Series 7/10)

Your team is filled with highly talented individuals, yet you are not getting desired results.  How do you get your all-stars to contribute to something larger than themselves to produce excellence?

In 2008, a group of psychologists from Carnegie Mellon and MIT wondered what made teams consistently better?  The answer – harnessing the power of collective intelligence or the coming together of people to share their knowledge and insights.  Michael Silverman, MD of Silverman Research, defines collective intelligence as “something that emerges from a group that is distinct from the smarts of any single member.” 

They concluded that two factors go into fostering collective intelligence.

1. Have equal distribution of conversation.  When you have all people speak for roughly the same amount of time during a meeting, you have the presence of what researchers call “equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.”  Whether people are speaking a little bit on each of the meeting tasks or more on one or two of them, as long as the balance sheet shows roughly the same amount of air time, collective intelligence can be reached.  Anita Woolley, the study’s lead author offered, “As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well.  If only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.”

Executive Producer Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live, one of the longest-running and most successful shows on tv abides by two rules related to participation: give everyone a voice, and force people to listen to each other. Michaels will often keep a sheet of paper during a meeting, and make a note each time someone speaks.  He will not end the session until others talk an approximately equal number of times.  He sees his job as protecting people’s distinct voices and getting them to work together productively.

2. Foster high social sensitivity within the group.  This is a fancy way of saying that people are skilled at reading the room.  Teammates can intuit how other members felt based on non-verbal cues – body language, tone of voice, facial expressions.  Members took into account what was said and unsaid and were sensitive to all those thoughts and emotions. So, how do these behaviors of being more attuned to others emerge?  In a New York Times article where Author Charles Duhigg writes about effective teams, he answers the question by saying, “The right norms – those small habits, unwritten rules, and mutually agreed-upon ways of treating one another - could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright.”  One recommendation by the Kellogg Insight would be to have more women on the team because they tend to be more socially perceptive.

When you set up the systems for all people to share openly and to really listen to each other, marvelous things can happen.  It has been shown that the quantity of ideas is where a lot of innovation stems, so nudging all your participants to get involved can advance your team’s creative purposes.

Quote: “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”- Peter F. Drucker

Q: How do you ensure that each member is contributing equally?  Comment and share with us, we would love to hear.

*The next blog in this team series 8/10 will cover the importance of eating together for teambuilding.

As a Leadership Development & Executive Coach, I work with teams to facilitate the creation of norms and agreements for the best performance. Contact me to learn more.

Harness the power of the group for the most excellent results

The Must-Have Ingredients For Team-Building (Team Series 2/10)

In the search to build excellent teams, what are the most important factors to consider?

The last blog focused on the number one component in building great teams – psychological safety.  This article will explore the other important elements involved in a winning team dynamic outlined in Project Aristotle, including dependability, structure and clarity, meaningful work, and impact.

Here are a few ingredients that contribute to excellent teams:

1. Dependability.  It is about making and keeping commitments, which allow individuals to count on each other to get high-quality work done on time.  People crave reliability.  It is a great feeling when somebody claims ownership of a task, and the rest of the team members can dismiss it from their mind because they have confidence that it will happen. 

So…what makes people unreliable?  At times, it can stem from a communication issue – some people can say yes to something just because it is hard to say no.  Or, maybe they initially commit with the confidence that they can safely handle the task, but then run into a dead-end and are too afraid to ask for help.  Regardless of the reason, when you have psychological safety, people feel comfortable saying no to a task they cannot do or are secure in asking for help when they need to.   

One way to build dependability is to show excellent communication: 

·      Perhaps you say yes to a commitment and your world has abruptly changed, talk to your team members immediately so they can be part of the solution.  When you have ownership of a task and cannot complete it, it means recruiting allies to get the job done.  Teams pitch in for each other when emergencies arise.  Do not turn your back on a project because something has come up, find an alternative route to get the job done, even if it involves remedy through others. 

·      Be timely with your meeting follow-ups.  After a gathering, it should not take you days to send instructions, suggestions, or other pertinent information that team members need to do their jobs.  If you know you are going to be unavailable for the next four days, do not ghost your team, let them know of your absence and put a plan in place.  Perhaps somebody else can be assigned to send the meeting notes. 

·      Respond to messages in a timely manner.  If somebody emails you requesting something, do not just choose to ignore them, instead send a message saying you are unavailable and let them know when you would be free.  Perhaps the best you can offer is to jump on a 2-minute call or provide the name of somebody who can help out.  I am not saying that you should be attached to your email, but have a workable plan for the times when you are and are not available.  Imagine for a moment you needed something from somebody, knowing you having several options will make you feel like you are a part of a good team instead of feeling like you have nowhere to turn.

2. Structure and clarity.  People should know their job requirements, how to fill them, and what happens if they are not done.  They also have knowledge of other people’s requirements so they know who to turn to in order to tap into their expertise.  Setting clear goals and having metrics to measure them offers much-needed transparency.  Google uses OKRs (objectives, key results) to hit their short and long-term goals.  Be sure to communicate team goals so all members understand the plan for achieving those targets.

One way you can learn about other people’s roles is to have a newsletter highlighting others’ successes.  When you share what people are doing to advance the team, others can learn more about their roles and responsibilities.  If a weekly or monthly newsletter is too much of a commitment, it can be as simple as a 3-minute share at the start of each meeting.

3. Meaningful work.  People need to work on something important to them.  The meaning they ascribe to their work can be personal - it could be about solving really hard problems, utilizing their creativity, making money to support their family, or doing good work to help their team thrive.  Without meaning and a higher purpose attached to it, work can become mundane and disengaging.

If helping others is the main driver for some of your teammates, you can offer public gratitude to them when they have done something to offer assistance.  This acknowledgment makes them feel good about the work they have done.  If growing their skills is a top priority for other teammates, you can offer to support them with solving hard problems so they feel they are developing their abilities.

4. Impact. People need to know that their work matters and is making a difference in the world. 

A good way for teammates to feel they are making an impact is for others to regularly share credit or team testimonials of how their performance has advanced their work, the product, or the organization.

Psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaningful work, and impact were the ingredients that Google deemed to be vital for team success.  While every team is unique and could require different components, it is hard to think about any of these elements not helping to build stronger organizational units. 

Quote of the day: "Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.  The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."  -Andrew Carnegie

Q: Which aspect is most important to you? How do you find meaning in your work?  Comment and share your thoughts with us, we would love to hear from you!

*The next blog in this team series 3/10 will jump into fostering a team-first mentality.

As a Leadership Development & Executive Coach, I work with teams to strengthen their collaboration for peak performance. Contact me to learn more.

What vital features comprise your amazing team?

How To Have Difficult But Caring Conversations (Difficult Conversations Series 1/4)

Most people dread the difficult, challenging conversation that needs to happen. This could include giving unpleasant feedback, following up with your boss about a raise she/he said would happen, but has not, or confronting a teammate about their problematic performance and work habits.  If these situations are not handled with great care, it could not only explode in your face but also make the other person feel like their very competency and sense of worth are called into question.

It is natural to want to avoid these conversations because of the potential for things to go wrong. On the flip side, having the conversation can deliver a great sense of relief from the trepidation that fills our mind.  When we are constantly thinking about these delicate and intense exchanges, stress and negativity can consume our thoughts and distract us from our most important work. Instead of avoiding these moments, learning how to tackle them head-on can be one of the best ways to reduce your anxiety and even advance your career.

In his landmark book, Crucial Conversations, Kerry Patterson et al. defines a crucial conversation as a critical conversation when stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong so thought and care are required for the exchange.

If you plan on confronting somebody with an issue, here are some steps you can take to make it go as smoothly as possible:

1. Make an appointment.  Let the person know the nature of the talk so they can adequately prepare and not be thrown off and perhaps instinctually defensive.  A right moment for you does not mean the timing works for them as well.

2. Share your goal. It is critical to articulate your desired outcome.  Do you want to share how a comment that was made in a meeting impacted you? Maybe an ideal result could be to have that person stop speaking for you. Perhaps you noticed that the relationship had been soured and your goal is to return it to the way things used to be?  Clueing the other person in on your intention would ease their natural defense mechanism and you may even discover that you have a common goal in getting the project completed on time and doing an amazing job, even if you have different visions on how to get there.

The next few suggestions come from a model used in Crucial Conversations called STATE – State the facts, Tell the story, Ask for their perspective, Talk tentatively, and Encourage testing. 

3. State the facts. When you recount the specific things that happened, it lays the groundwork for all delicate situations because they see what went into you forming your conclusions.   For example:

·      When you do not show up for team meetings, do not deliver work on time, and do not share your opinions…

·      When I fail to get a payment from you for several weeks, and you do not respond to my emails…

4. Tell your story. These are the facts plus the conclusion. Once you have shared the facts, let them know how you arrived at your findings so they can fully understand your thought process. For example:

·      When you do not show up for team meetings, do not deliver work on time, and do not share your opinions… it seems as if you do not care about this project or are not putting in the same efforts as your teammates.

·      When I fail to get a payment from you for several weeks and you do not respond to my emails, I worry that you will never pay me.

5. Ask for their story. It is vital to get their take on the story so you have the full picture.  Do not assume you already know it so encourage them to share and listen thoroughly to what they have to say.  If true understanding is to happen and a resolution is to be reached, communication has to be a two-way street. Examples:

·      I’m probably not seeing the whole story, can you help me see what is going on or happening on your end?

·      I’m starting to think you may not care about this team, do you have another explanation? What am I missing?

When the other person is sharing, it is vital to listen with curiosity because valuable insight will be shared for you to navigate the conversation better and build a connection for greater understanding to take place.  When you can stand in their shoes and see their perspectives, you have a better chance of reaching an agreement and satisfying all needs.

6. Co-create success. It is always a good idea to engage your colleague in a problem-solving exercise to make the exchange more collaborative versus combative. Examples:

·      I hear you saying you are okay with this approach, but it looks as if maybe you still have some concerns, is that right, should we talk through them?

·      What outcomes are essential to both of us?  What constraints do we both have that we need to be aware of?  What is important to each of us that the other might not be aware of?

·      I hear you are concerned with getting certain people to leave this team to complete the project.  If we can get the right people, what can the campaign look like?

7. End with a thank you. These two words work in almost any situation, it creates closure in a difficult conversation.

The two other parts to Patterson’s STATE acronym include:

·      Talk tentatively. When you are convinced of the information and act in a forceful, dogmatic manner, you can invite unnecessary resistance.  In contrast, when you are tentative and more open in your approach, you can comfortably include the other person into the dialogue.  Examples can include: “This is my opinion…,” or “I’m thinking out loud here….”

·      Encourage testing. This approach is a way to draw out more of their response if you feel they are not sharing fully. Example: I’d like to take a stab at something here, I wonder if part of the reason why you do not submit your work on time is because you do not feel connected to the team or are not challenged by the work?

An effective conversation does not just include pure content, it is also about the way the information is presented and the intention to reconcile the difference in a caring and fair way.  The best approach to a satisfying outcome is to get as much information as you can so understanding can occur.  Indeed, a difficult conversation can be an opportunity for connection.

Question to consider: What is a constructive approach you have taken to handle a challenging conversation? We would love to hear your thoughts!

Quote of the day: “One good conversation can shift the direction of change forever.” –Linda Lambert

The next blog in this series 2/4 will focus on what happens when your difficult conversation detours.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to have courageous conversations, contact me to explore this topic further.

We need to talk…