Mentors and Sponsors- What’s the difference? (Support Series 2/2)

When you are seeking assistance, it is helpful to know where to turn.  The last blog covered the difference between therapists and coaches as excellent systems of support.  This one will jump into mentorship and sponsorship as tremendous resources to bolster your career growth.

Mentorship

Mentorship is a relationship where the focus is on supporting the growth and development of the mentee.  They are excellent resources because they are usually seasoned leaders with industry knowledge who can guide less experienced people to help them raise their potential by achieving career goals and success.     

Mentors support mentees through formal or informal discussions about building skills, qualities, and confidence for career advancement.  Since they have “been there, done that,” they could show you the ropes and provide information that can offer shortcuts so you can avoid mistakes and pitfalls they have experienced along their career journey. They can discuss strategically with you how to best position yourself for a promotion. If you are about to have a conversation with a skip level, a mentor can share vital intel if they have it; for example, this person likes information in bullet points rather than paragraphs, and if you send an email with an agenda and include these two topics, that will help you stand out. The best mentors provide those practical tips to set you up for success and do not just speak conceptionally. Mentors usually act as trustworthy confidants fluent in reading between the lines of corporate emails and complex management and can share the “unwritten rules” for advancement in their organization because they understand the challenges you are facing.  Every cadence is different, but usually, mentors volunteer their time to do monthly check-ins. 

A mentor can share potential contacts with you to bypass gatekeepers, they can also connect you with other potential mentors since helping your career usually takes multiple guides.  We tend to make the erroneous assumption that just because a mentor has a fancy title that they have wisdom in every area, but similar to investing, we get the most benefit when we diversify.  Having multiple mentors can help because each person has different values, ambitions, insights, connections, and industry specialties.  

It might seem as though the benefits of mentoring are a one-way street, but when done right, it is an equally rich partnership.  While the mentee gains insights and experience in their field, the mentor can take pride in their protégé’s successes, help to develop another and learn from their mentees.  The best relationships are authentic ones, so be aware of downplaying potential issues because you are trying to impress your mentor.  Also, if your organization provides you with a mentor, it is ok not to click off the bat because the best relationships take time to cultivate. And the truth is, organizations may not always get their matches right, and that’s ok; there should be options to get rematched for the best possible fit. To read more on this topic of creating excellent mentorship relationships, check out my 3-part blog series.

Sponsorship

A sponsorship is similar to mentorship, but in some cases, it can be more effective in advancing your career.  A sponsor is someone in a position of power who uses their influence to endorse and advocate on your behalf by communicating with other high-status leaders in the company.  A sponsor could be your boss, your skip level, or anyone who is in a position to influence others and who knows you well enough to use their power and political capital for your benefit.

While there can be overlaps and some can play dual parts, a simple difference between mentors and sponsors is that mentors talk with you to help level up your skill and give advice, whereas sponsors talk about you to help you move up and get your next position.  Sylvia Ann Hewlett, CEO of the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) says, “If you want to advance your career, having a mentor isn’t enough anymore, if you aspire to climb higher in this modern and competitive climate, you’ll need a sponsor as well.”  CTI has tracked the sponsor effect since 2010 in four U.S. and global studies and the results show that sponsorship, not mentorship, is how power is transferred in the workplace.

What do sponsors do and how to get one?

A sponsor can share successful strategies with their sponsee relating to staying on top of new, required skills for your desired position and new opportunities.  Then, they inform you of these requirements and prospects to help prepare you for a title change. They are invested in their protégé’s career success and will use their influence and networks to connect them to high-profile assignments, people, pay increases, and promotions.  Every organization has mission-critical work associated with revenue generation or contact with key clients and partners; they are the plum assignments that people vie for. Sponsors can advocate for you to get these strategic projects. The truth is, many important decisions about your career - compensation, promotion, and new assignments happen in a room that you are not in. Sponsors can carry your papers and use their currency on your behalf.

To get a sponsor, you first want to identify who they are and intentionally create quality moments. Carla Harris, Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley said you can study the organization for a few weeks and note the people who have a seat at the decision-making table. And if you cannot figure that out, ask someone. Aim to build relationships with 1-2 people, and one way to do that is to have frequent touchpoints. Harris talked about how she would find ways to interact with them; she would come in at 7:15 am and be sure to say good morning, have a conversation in the elevator, and bring occasional coffee. Any good relationship starts with those light touch points and develops further. Then when your name comes up, it can be as simple as that person saying, “I like that person; they are good,” or “how about that person sets up the client meeting?” And if there is no other data about you in the room, that comment will travel far because it implants a positive first impression among the other senior leaders.

If you can collaborate with the sponsor, doing great work often formalizes the relationship. You want to impress them so they can take on the risk of advocating for you.  According to Joann M. Eisenhart, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Northwestern Mutual, “Sponsorship is earned.”  This differs from some organizations where mentors are assigned; sponsors cannot be compelled to spend their political capital on you. Only when a person knows your work, trusts you, and can attest to your character will they likely be an advocate for you.  Most people will not risk their reputation for anything less.  They may ask you to work on aspects of your career development before they are willing to go to bat for you.

If you already have a mentor and continue to build trust and authentically nurture the relationship, it can take on sponsorship characteristics.

And if you do not have any of those opportunities for collaboration with mentors and sponsors, find ways to stand out. If you are at a company town hall, get involved. Alison Wood Brooks, Harvard Business School Professor said, if you ask thoughtful questions, you come across smart and likable. You don’t need to have the answers, but good questions can set somebody else up for success. You can make the extra effort to attend events where you know leaders will be and interact with them; as Stephen Hawking once said, “Showing up is half the battle.”

How do Sponsors decide to take on Sponsees?

To determine if you will take on a sponsee, you can give them mini-projects to see how they do.  You can connect the sponsee with somebody else and see how they handle the interaction. For example, if you know your sponsee wants to move from a client-facing role in 3 years to a strategic facing Senior Director role, you can link them with the Head of Strategy and if they run with that connection, grab takeaways, and integrate into the next steps, you know your work will be put to good use. 

Some sponsors can be nervous because they might think sponsoring the wrong person can ruin their reputation. Carla Harris said, “if that is your fear, you are not sponsoring enough people.” When it is done right, developing and retaining talent by enriching more junior workers is a crucial part of their job, and the best way to grow your power is to give it away. In any given year, you can sponsor two or three people, but can mentor more than that.

What is the Sponsee’s Role?

Similar to a mentorship, good sponsorship is a two-way street.  While a sponsor sticks their neck out for you and gives advocacy, it is good for you to show your reliability to them, live up to your potential, and deliver on your promises.  Keep your sponsor in the loop with your successes and aim to exceed their expectations.  Also, you can make your sponsor’s job easier to advocate for you by providing them with talking points so they can best represent your accomplishments.

As you think about breaking through your feeling of being stuck or eager to climb to new heights in your life and your career, you tend to go farther and faster when you go with others.  While mentors and sponsors can offer assistance, they each have specialties.   Mentors volunteer their time to provide wisdom and guidance and sometimes skill-building.  Sponsors talk about you highly when you are not in the room to rise in your career.  No rule says you only need one of these supports, if you have access to it, you can enlist as many people as you need.

Q: Who do you go to when you need help rising in your career?  Comment and share your ideas.  We would love to hear!

Quotes of the day: “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” -Winston Churchill

“No one has ever become poor by giving.” -Anne Frank

As a Leadership and Executive Coach, I partner with others to help create powerful relationships to advance in your career, contact me to learn more.

Which supports do you use for your career growth?

Therapists and Coaches: What’s the difference? (Support Series 1/2)

Navigating life is not without its challenges.  There are times when we need help to accelerate our progress.  Former President Barack Obama reminds us, “Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it.  I do that every day.  Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a sign of strength.  It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new.”  If you feel stuck in some part of your life or just navigating a tricky situation, partnering with an ally could be just the thing that helps you breakthrough.

This series will explore four common sources of life and career assistance and the differences between each.  The first blog will cover support offered by therapists and coaches, and the second will review mentors and sponsors.   While they all have commonalities in helping you go after something you want in life, each has its particular focus, which may relate to what you need at the time.

Therapy

As a coach, I am often asked about the difference between coaching and therapy and while I am not a therapist, in putting together this information, I have conducted research and spoken to various therapists to learn more. Here is my coach's perspective.

While there are many different kinds of therapists and specialties, I’ll focus on a general description. A therapist, or trained mental health professional, must have a license to treat mental health and focus on emotional healing.  They can lead you out of a type of dysfunction that is getting in your way of operating soundly on a day-to-day basis.  Most people go to a therapist because of a presenting problem, such as a panic attack or crushing anxiety that makes them less effective on the job and in their lives.

We all have a past, and sometimes previous unaddressed emotional issues and key experiences have framed who we are today.  Therapists can help examine your history and seek to undo unhelpful thoughts or process trauma so you can move forward.  You may discover that you had an interaction with a teacher early on that made you feel ashamed, and even though it has been decades, you play that record in your mind like it just happened and haven’t shared that struggle with anybody else.  Carl Jung said that secrets are psychic poison; we can better heal by processing repressed experiences.  Therapists explore any family links that may have had a more significant impact on you that you never gave credit to, but it sits in your subconscious and settles as nerves in your body.  Maybe your parents told you that you were never good enough, or not as good as your sibling, and it is connected to the lack of confidence you are now exhibiting, which prevents you from going after a promotion.  Maybe you only received love from your family when you were achieving something, so you have some self-limiting behavior of burying your head in work to produce results rather than collaborating with your teammates because you find the former to be a more valuable method to prove your worth to your boss, it’s your conditioning from when you were young.  A therapist can help you navigate those emotions and illuminate the present better to move forward. 

The goal of therapy is to release any places where you are blocked to be happier, more settled, and at peace.  At its core, it works on the psychological problems from its source and does healing work, sometimes spanning an extended period.  Tiffany Louise, Social Worker and Professional Coach says, “People generally seek therapy because they are feeling blocked, experiencing maladaptive emotional and behavioral health symptoms, and are otherwise not functioning optimally in their lives.”  This trauma can cause people not to follow through with agreements or assignments and be resistant and stay stuck.  Therapists can help you develop coping mechanisms so you do not get derailed in your day by the incessant ups and downs that can create imbalance.

There are also times when we are experiencing complex life events and are overwhelmed and have a crushing worry that consumes us, so we need to talk about it to process and heal.  In a comment to the Huffington Post, David Spiegel, Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University said "We're social creatures, fundamentally, so talking to people can be a real source of support, and therapy can be an interpersonal laboratory. It's a way of working with cognition, emotion, and interpersonal relationships in a way that helps you manage your emotions and learn to see it from a different perspective."  In other words, you do not have to go through a huge life transition or trauma to benefit from therapy.  Talking with a professional allows you to get a sense of how you appear to other people, helps you get feedback on whatever you're feeling, and offers insight into how those emotions are affecting your everyday life. 

When should you seek a therapist?

You can work with a therapist when you want to gain emotional healing from your upbringing, past trauma, or need assistance with an overwhelming situation. When there are consistent interruptions to your functioning, maybe you feel chronic anxiety or stressed-induced pains, have trouble sleeping, experience changes in appetite, or feel depressed, you can get support.  In general, humans are not meant to keep things inside, and therapy can help us in all sorts of ways and can be whatever we want it to be.

Coaching

Coaching is a creative alliance designed to help people move forward in their personal and professional lives and be the best.  A coach helps you define what you want to achieve, strategize how to get there, and support you as you take action to achieve extraordinary and sustainable results.

Coaching helps you clarify who you are, who you want to be, and dedicate time to inner work and reflection.  As a Leadership Development and Executive Coach, I have helped clients define their purpose and rediscover their passions to have great fulfillment and meaning.  Some of my clients feel like they have a lot to be grateful for, yet something is still missing; they need that extra processing with a trained coach who can help them piece the puzzle together.  I’ve helped clients create a vision for their lives, so they know that when they take steps, they are meaningful ones because they are in the direction of their worthy goals.  Together, we explore their values or enduring beliefs that guide all their decisions and set goals aligning with their purpose, vision, and values.  When life feels complex, knowing these crucial elements can serve as a steady and reassuring guide, steering us through the mayhem.

Coaches work with people who feel like their lives are on autopilot and they want to challenge themselves or break out of their comfort zones and stretch to play bigger.  They want to tap their inner motivation for a major goal, such as being promoted to senior leadership.  A coach offers tremendous accountability for others to get what they want out of life.  Just recently, I was working with a senior leader who aimed to be a Vice President. When I asked her what she needed to do to get ready for that position, she was grateful for the question because she never thought about it methodically so she made a list and created a roadmap. Asking her about what her leadership needed to see from her expanded her viewpoint beyond her perspective and created even more nuance to her plan. Coaching is about helping others discover their dreams and uncover the motivation to go after them deliberately.

If you feel confused about the next chapter in your life (i.e., struggling with career decisions, major life choices) and would like guidance on what would best serve you, coaches can help.  If your thoughts represent puzzle pieces, coaches help to take them out of your mind and place them on the table so you can see the map to explore the territory better.  Coaching is not about focusing on what’s wrong, but on what’s possible so you can get more out of your life and live from a point of choice and fulfillment.

As an Executive Coach, I work with others to improve their mindset and skillset to accelerate their career and have a bigger leadership impact.  Common topics I’ve covered with leaders include communication (how to speak with executive presence, how to give and receive meaningful feedback, how to advocate for yourself and negotiate effectively, how to have courageous conversations, how to listen to understand and not reply), how to delegate for results, run meetings, prioritize, plan, organize, have work-life flow, make better decisions, be a strategic thinker, among others   I’ve also helped leaders run high-performing teams by creating agreements, defining mission, vision, and values, putting in place systems and processes for peak performance and having productive conflict.  I help leaders discover their philosophy and principles that will guide their actions, know their strengths, and plan to address their weaknesses or find workarounds. I also do a lot of work around career coaching by helping clients do the work to get clear on what they want in their next role; I help them create their leadership branding and their narrative so they can speak about themselves profoundly. Sure, we cover tactical aspects like updating their resume and LinkedIn, but I assist them in being strategic about their outreach so they know whom they want to contact to connect with and what they want to say to maximize their time in a win-win fashion so it is an energy-building experience.

Through coaching, I help clients be better learners, raise their self-awareness, and potentially have mindset shifts to upgrade their human operating system.  We explore blocks such as nasty messages from their inner critics that keep them from their best life or limiting beliefs and derailing habits that do not serve them, so we replace them with productive alternatives.  A coach helps you remove unnecessary obstacles and barriers that you have created for yourself to move forward.  We work on improving your confidence and self-esteem and overcoming feelings of self-doubt by revisiting old scripts and updating them.  Similar to the sport of curling, we are clearing the path so the client can direct their stone where it needs to be, although the difference is that he client does the work.  A coach helps clients discover their blind spots because it is hard to see the spinach in our teeth and it is nice when a trusted advocate kindly draws our attention to something that would be helpful to know.  When emotions are strong, we need someone else to see how we think. Neuroscientists call these disruptors.  We need people to interrupt our thinking patterns to prompt us to stop and to look at them differently, somebody to help us revisit and expand our stories.  Big shifts can happen when somebody else reflects your beliefs to you to see how they serve you and what you want to do about them.

How does the coach operate?

Many sessions begin with a goal or topic to explore and end with action steps and accountability, but it all depends on the client’s needs.  It usually includes asking empowering questions to connect people to their passion and purpose, raising awareness of their inner blocks, challenging their thinking, and discovering new viewpoints and possibilities.  As a certified leadership coach and thought partner, I’m trained to listen and reflect deeply, always asking more of them than they ask of themselves. I reflect to them what I hear but slightly shifted language.  I hold space for others to process what they really think and feel because we do not often create reflection time for ourselves. They have a container to utter unformed thoughts to a coach dedicated to helping them make discoveries to fuel their growth. I also use a lot of frameworks so clients can have set models to work from.

When should you seek a coach:

If you need a skilled thought partner to help you advance on your personal and professional short and long-term goals and you want to be held accountable for projects that you are pursuing, a coach can help.  If you are eager to rise in your career and navigate all the pieces involved in the process, a coach can help.

Therapy and coaching are two ways that can help support your growth for greater understanding.  While therapy tends to focus more on the past and working out previous experiences, coaches dip into the past but are mainly interested in how it informs the present and uses that information to guide them to their destination.  With that being said, many therapists are coach-like, they see clients as naturally creative, resourceful, and whole, and they work on goals to deepen the learning and forward the action.  There are also many coaches who are not afraid to explore the client’s full context, including how the past has influenced their current outlook and actions and how they may want to address the wounds.  While the brain is a marvelous complicated mess, and sometimes the lines can be blurred, we need different things at different times.

Q: Who do you go to when you need help?  How do you see working with either a therapist or a coach supporting your goals?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

Quote of the day: “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside, awakes.” -Carl Jung, psychiatrist.

[The next blog in this series 2/2 will focus on two other supports – mentors and sponsors]

As a Leadership and Executive Coach, I partner with others to help you achieve your goals, contact me to learn more.

Who do you turn to for support?

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

The Secret To Making Virtual Meetings Successful (Remote Series 7/11)

Why do some virtual team meetings feel like a waste of time while others feel essential and productive?  When leading a team, it is crucial to be mindful of your meeting design to increase the chances that the meeting is a good use of everyone’s time. 

Here are some steps to include that distinguish the most valuable virtual meetings from the rest:

1. Plan.  Decide if a meeting is necessary.  Most things do not require meetings – if you are giving information or have made a decision that does not involve others’ input — an email will do.  But some things require human interaction and collaborative thinking, like problem-solving or addressing conflict not fully explored.  If we need to take time to let creative solutions emerge, a meeting may be required. Adam Grant said that meetings should be for learning, doing, bonding, or deciding.

2. Determine Meeting Duration & Number.  No rule says meetings need to be 30 mins. or 1 hour.  Good meeting hygiene is to make meetings 15, 25, or 50 minutes because the shorter time will allow you to be more intentional about using your time wisely.  Having that buffer before the next meeting can help replenish energy.  It is also good to set the number of meetings suitable for the team, defining a healthy range for the week will allow people to plan time to do their best work.

3. Connect.  Each meeting should have connection time dedicated to them.  You can begin with a check-in question, such as what is something you have done this week that got you excited.  If you could play any Olympic sport and be the best, which would it be?  The goal is to get to know each other besides their role because people who know each other and can find commonalities usually work better together.

4. Clarify norms around meetings.  What are the expectations around participation?  Do you have a video camera rule where you want cameras on most of the time (say 90%) because it helps create a connection?  What are the guidelines around when cameras are off?  Do you want to grant professionalism to people and trust that when they have their cameras off, it is because of a good reason?  Should they drop a note in the chat about why their cameras are off, such as they have not had a chance to eat and will turn it on after, or kids are in the background since they stayed home from school, so it is a bit noisier than usual.  When cameras are off, how do you show you are still present?  For the presenter, it can be hard to stare at a bunch of black zoom boxes and wonder if people are present or even paying attention.  What is the behavior that you want to give and get?  When you ask questions, do you expect to hear from everybody by adding their views in the chat?  If you suspect people are disengaged because their camera is always off, and when you call on them, they do not respond or do not add to the chat, what is the process for addressing your observation? There are so many ways to do meetings well, and it starts with clarifying your expectations and inviting them to offer what would work best.  Once you have an agreed system, any deviation should be discussed until you are on the same page and making the most of your time together.

5. Prep in advance.  What are the 1-2 big questions you want to be answered in the meeting?  What should people read, prepare, and be ready to contribute?   Amazon has a narrative culture where at the beginning of the meeting, all people will read a document together for a few minutes and make comments and be ready to discuss ideas.  This allows for the discussion to be much richer and meetings more efficient because people are caught up to speed faster.

6. Create an inclusive environment.  There are things you can do to hear all voices.  First, telling them their point of view matters so that when they weigh in, the best decisions can be made.  Before the meeting, send any relevant info, an agenda, and questions in advance so you can give time for the introverts to think through problems/challenges.    How do you ensure turn-taking is happening effectively and that some dominant voices are not crowding out the introverted voices?  You can utilize the chat for more inclusivity and encourage people to put hashtags before their contribution to organize their ideas.  Adam Grant offers these helpful hashtags to organize comments:

·      #Question – you want to ask a question

·      #Debate – you want to challenge what was said or share a different perspective

·      #Aha - which indicates a new learning

·      #On Fire - means the floor is yours because you have something burning and timely to share. 

This helps to keep the flow and momentum of the conversation because it is related as opposed to going in order, and comments are not directly related.  Remote work benefits us because it gives us this second communication channel.

7. Save time by starting with the agreement.  If a meeting needs a critical decision, you can invite team members to send their responses in advance so you can review them and find the places of agreement.  Then, during the meeting, instead of reviewing everything, you can dial into the point of disagreement by saying, I know we are all on the same page with deciding this project is a go and like A, B, and C elements, let’s talk about element D since there were many different perspectives.  The ideal outcome would be deciding on the next step to advance this project.  After that preamble, you can begin a rich discussion for a decision to occur and save a lot of time in the process.

8. Encourage disagreements.   Productive disagreements can lead to the most innovative ideas, but sometimes they do not just naturally happen, so you can introduce some process to induce it.  Here are a few things you can do:

·      You can tell people you want to hear their disagreements and give them the space to offer any.

·      After people raise an idea, you can ask if anyone can think of an alternative perspective.

·      You can assign a devil’s advocate role to address any weaknesses of the idea.

·      When somebody says I think we should do X, you can acknowledge their contribution and challenge them to brainstorm to come up with several different other ideas.  When you get in the habit of saying, “great, what else is there,” you don’t get anchored to the first ideas leading to quality and innovation.  

·      You can focus the disagreements on the task or process and reinforce the idea that it is not personal and is in service of pursuing the best ideas.

9. Amplify others’ voices.  You can set the stage and let people know in the beginning that you will call on all people, starting with those you have not heard from so you can be sure to get diverse perspectives and so it is not a surprise when you call on them.  If somebody is not speaking up, you can call on them or send a private chat and preface your question with, “I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic, what would you like to share?  Also, as a facilitator, be mindful of those who are trying to talk but may be a little slow to get in, you can give them an opening by saying, “Danielle, it seems as if you want to share, I would love to hear from you.”

10. Give space for the introverts to share.  Create time for people to write down their ideas privately before they verbally share or add to the chat channel to have that necessary processing time.

11. Facilitate turn-taking.   Making sure people get their turn goes a long way to feeling validated and included.  You can have people raise their hands so cue forms and each person can speak in order.  When somebody speaks, you can have them call on others. When you get questions, you can allow others to answer before you do, so it is not just a ping-pong effect going from one participant to you and then another participant to you, rather it is more of a network approach where they are answering each other’s questions, and you are in the background.  Watch out for interrupters, and be sure to jump in to prevent that behavior and allow people to finish their thoughts

12. Give praise.  Reach out to at least one team member after the meeting to recognize them for sharing their different view during the conversation.  When you reward the behavior you are trying to encourage, you will invite more of the same and create a great team meeting culture.

13. Reflect.  Watch a recorded video of a team meeting and pay attention to who is talking, who is talked over, who is listened to, and who is ignored.  You can see what the team is noticing and put any necessary changes in place to make meetings more inclusive.

Many people will tell you that meetings can be the worst part of their day and week, but when they are done right, they can be an energizing experience.  Designing the right processes can help create effective meetings that are inclusive, innovative, and foster the best ideas.

Quote of the day:  “Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful.  Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.” – Author Jason Fried 

“When leaders know how to lead great meetings, there’s less time wasted and less frustration.  We have more energy to do the work that matters, realize our full potential, and do great things. – Entrepreneur Justin Rosenstein

Q:  What are your best remote meeting practices?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 8/11 will focus on getting noticed 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 run inclusive remote meetings?

Optimize Your Remote 1:1s (Remote Series 6/11)

It is common for people to feel a lack of support from their managers while working remotely if the right systems are not implemented.  When you are intentional about organizing your 1:1s, you can ensure your direct reports are getting the most out of the sessions by feeling connected and supported to be set up for success.

Here are some helpful components to include in your remote 1:1s:

1. Connect.  Spend some time connecting first before jumping into the work.  Asking about non-related work such as how their weekend went, inquiring about their family, or asking about any exciting things they have been up to lately will build invaluable rapport. 

2 Work Update & Supports.  You can have your Directs briefly report on the work (what’s going well that they are proud of and what challenges they could use your support in).  There can be space for what they tried, what they failed at, and what they are learning.  There are various supports you can offer, whether it is answering their questions, providing documentation, and informing them of how the big picture of what they are doing fits into your projects and the larger company initiatives. You can also give them access to others by making introductions with your peers, providing any tech equipment to do their job more easily, or any other necessary assistance.  As a manager, when you ask, “is there anything I can do to support you this week,” it sends a resounding message that you care.  If you have limited capacity or have one area of strength that you are particularly good at that you want to leverage, you can specify your support. For example, “I have an extra 30 minutes this week, is there anything I can do to support you on this project with this part of the deck or anybody I can connect you with to facilitate the work?”  

3. Skill progression.  It is always nice to call out skills and capabilities that they are developing and how they fit into their career goals.  Feedback on how they are doing can motivate and lead to greater engagement.  

4. Solicit Feedback.  This is important to optimize the working relationship.  A common question that leaders can ask: "Is there anything you want me to start doing or stop doing to make things more effective?" One remote manager Rodolphe Dutel found that when he asked his remote employees what he could do to make their lives easier, he learned a lot of helpful answers ranging from more face time, mentoring, and written instructions instead of verbal ones, so there is more clarity.  Little changes like moving a weekly meeting by one hour so the Direct Report can pick up his kids at school or scheduling time to have a quick sync before a big meeting to reduce nerves and stress, or having office hours for a brief check-in to provide help to get unstuck can all make a big difference.

5. Solicit ideas.  It is instrumental in creating space for your team to share their voice and be heard.  You can ask what ideas they have to improve the team or company.  They have a unique vantage point, and tapping into that wisdom will help you do your job better and serve your team more productively. It can also increase engagement because they can feel included and know their input matters.

6. Invite them to create the agenda.  Including the direct reports in crafting the 1:1s is essential.  You can have them talk about a structure that would work for them, possibly borrowing from some of the components above or creating new aspects.  The experience and buy-in will be significantly enhanced when they can include the factors that will meet their needs.

The key to effective 1:1s while working remotely is to be intentional about creating a great experience and not make the time transactional or routine.  Neither side should show up with no plan because you would miss a prime opportunity to connect, grow together, and produce great work.

Quote of the day: “90 minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate’s work for two weeks or 80+ hours.” – Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel.

Q:  How do you maximize your 1:1s to be an energizing experience? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 7/11 will focus on making virtual meetings successful.

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 have great 1:1s?

Accountability Is Key For Remote Working (Remote Series 5/11 )

For remote work to be successful, it is vital to ensure your team is aligned on accountability.  Many people shy away from these conversations, but when you can bubble them up and are clear on how you want to handle the topic, you will save yourself a lot of headaches in the long run.

Here are some factors to consider with accountability:

1. Hire the right people.  When you hire doers eager to get great work done, you are set up for success.  Once you provide direction and guidance around important things to be executed, doers will make things happen.  One of Zapier's core values is "default to action," and one of Amazon’s principles is “bias for action.”  For these organizations, recruiting people with these tendencies who have a deep appreciation for getting things done is vital.

2. Focus on goals and outcomes over activities.  It would help if you did not try to manage every aspect of your team’s work or focus on activities completed and hours logged, instead measuring your team’s effectiveness on their accomplishments and KPIs.  If they are meeting their goals, great.  If not, you can investigate further to learn why and realign expectations.  Your job as a leader is to help define what the work is to be done and allow them to figure out how they plan to approach the project for success, and then follow up to discuss progress.

3. Offer flexibility and trust.  The mentality of ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) allows workers flexibility to decide how they want to arrange their day for maximum output.  If that means starting work later so they can take their kids to school or arranging a quick tennis match during their lunch break to get a 2nd wind to produce high-quality work, so be it.  Give them the autonomy to decide how they want to get the job done that suits their needs and situation, especially if it is not negatively impacting the team.

4. Align expectations and promote self-accountability.   At NASA, they use a fire-and-forget approach.  Once somebody has shared the work to be done and had the conversation around expectations, they can dismiss the task from their mind because they know that they can rely on their teammate to manage and monitor themselves without reminders.  It’s an enjoyable atmosphere to trust your coworkers that the work will get done without having to send constant follow-ups or check-ins on status.  If unforeseen circumstances occur, you can trust that they will be proactive, bring the matter to your attention, and renegotiate the agreement because there is always the consideration of how the actions of one will impact the entire team.

5. Address incomplete work early on.  Often, leaders dread hard conversations when deadlines are missed.  Be sure to follow up early to understand what’s behind this behavior and have commitment-based actions and plans to move forward differently and more productively.  If you do not say anything, you are offering a tacit agreement that their behavior works, and you are willing to put up with more of it.  The responsibility is more on you to determine what you will and will not allow than on them pushing the envelope.

6. Do check-ins, not check-ups.  As a manager, you can check in with your teammates to see how things are, and if they need support to unblock their path or help them think through their challenges.  This is different from check-ups with a more monitoring feeling; where it seems like you are trying to catch them doing something wrong.  Being clear about your check-ins from the outset and the reason why can build a trusting relationship.  For example, if somebody does not have a lot of experience with a project, you can share that you will do more frequent early check-ins to make sure there is alignment and they are set up for success rather than them getting far in a project only to have some of it rolled back because it is not meeting the target.  Once the work is moving along well, you can share that you plan to change the check-in cadence.

Getting accountability right will save your team a tremendous amount of time and energy.  It begins by defining whom we want to be as a team and putting in the processes that support those goals.  It also involves having the right conversations to raise awareness, and so people have ample opportunity to course correct.  When accountability is done well, it is an extraordinary component of a successful team.

Quote of the day: “Creating a culture of integrity and accountability not only improves effectiveness, but it also generates a respectful, enjoyable, and life-giving setting in which to work.” -Tom Hanson

Q:  What accountability approaches have you found work the best for remote working?  What is the trickiest part?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 6/11 will focus on optimizing your remote 1:1s.  For a deeper dive into accountability, you can also check out this 3-part series.

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 offer supportive accountability?

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?

Common Pitfalls To Avoid When Managing Up (Manage Up Series 6/6 )

The last article explored the type of leader you want to be while you are managing up.  This article will cover some approaches you might be tempted to take but are more helpful to avoid.

Let’s explore what not to do:

1. Don’t bad mouth your boss.  While your frustrations may be valid, you will lose credibility when you complain to others.   Plus, by talking poorly about your boss to your Direct Reports, you normalize that negative dynamic on your team and that gossip contributes to a toxic culture.  Be a proactive leader who aims to improve the situation and not just a complainer who passes responsibility onto others.

2. Don’t criticize publicly.  Do not aim to embarrass your boss in front of others.  Disagree with your boss privately and in a calm voice.  Your job is to make your boss look good and build credibility for them that will ultimately enhance your department, not to score points at their expense.

3. Do not cast blame.  Upper management is just as human as you and can make bad decisions.  Instead of blaming and focusing on the past, address the issue and be intentional about what you want to be different in the future to avoid this from happening again.

4. Do not share when angry.  When you operate from this place of anger and resentment, your reptile brain takes over and clouds your judgment from making smart and strategic choices.  Take a reset and aim to take time to see different perspectives and replace the anger with empathy.  Stephen Covey would urge, “seek first to understand then be understood.” Put yourself in your boss’ shoes.  What are their biggest challenges, and how would they like to be treated?  This perspective will enable you to make stronger decisions for the best win-win outcomes.

5. Do not assume your boss knows all the details.  You may know the ins and outs of your team and your work, but if your boss is overseeing a few teams and is in charge of 100+ people, it could be hard to have all the specifics at their fingertips.  Instead, if you could get good at communicating at the conceptual level and build stories around crucial points, your message will resonate more strongly.   

6. Do not take it personally.  Just because your boss has not adopted your solutions does not mean they dislike you.  The same movies can get glowing reviews by the New York Times and slammed by the LA Times due to their subjective nature.  If your boss denies your request to handle the budget even though you have overseen much bigger budgets previously, you may think it is a personal attack.  When you take a step back, do you notice that they operate like that with other people, not just you?   Zoom out to see the bigger picture before rushing to conclusions.

When all else fails, decide to make peace

If you feel like you have tried everything, that your manager is aware and not making any changes or getting better, that can be a stifling experience.  Many organizations still promote people because of their technical success rather than people management skills.  To compound the problem, many new managers receive little or no training before jumping into their new roles.  The main reason why people leave companies is because of their manager.  One sign that it might be time to make peace with the situation and exit is if your manager is harming your health.  A study by the American Psychological Association found that 75% of Americans say their “boss is the most stressful part of their workday.”  If you are experiencing mental unrest by losing sleep, having chronic stress, or spending more time thinking about your boss, it’s time to go.  If you are struggling emotionally and seeing your self-esteem plummet and determine it is a toxic environment, that’s an unmistakable sign that it’s time to move on to the next role or job.

Give yourself the permission to make a career change and fight your fear of quitting.  Some people might not have the option to have a gap in their work, but there is no need to suffer indefinitely.  You usually have more options than you initially realize, you can have informational interviews with your peers and aim to transfer internally to a better team, or line up a role outside the company.  When you make a change, be sure to capture the learnings and what you would do differently next time, so you do not recreate the circumstances you were escaping.  If nothing else, by managing up, you will learn what type of manager you want to be and what kind you want to avoid.

Getting good at managing up takes time.  While it can be tempting to react by blaming and criticizing to get short-term wins, it is more helpful to take a step back and play the long game by focusing on who you want to be as a leader regardless of the circumstances. 

Quote of the day: “We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.” -Stephen King

Q:  What is one approach to managing up that you have taken that was an utter failure?  What would you do differently next time?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

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 not to manage up

Your Leadership Style of Managing Up Matters (Manage Up Series 5/6)

Many things may be out of your control when managing up, but what is in your purview is the type of leader you want to be while aiming to make positive changes. In the book, Influence Without Authority, Dan Olsen talks about when communicating up, success depends on 60% substance and 40% style, so controlling your content and delivery will go a long way to achieving your outcome.

Here are some aspects to think about to manage up successfully:

1. Focus on what you can influence, and accept what you can’t.  It can be helpful to accept that sometimes we cannot change senior leadership, we can only change our behavior and be the leaders we wish we had.  Embrace the practices that you espouse.  For example, if you feel like your manager’s team purpose is non-existent and already pointed out that observation, you can offer your interpretation of the team’s purpose and operate on that view until otherwise told. 

2. Acknowledge their authority.  Ultimately, the person in power will probably make the final decision, so recognize that. You might say, “I know you’ll make the call here, would you be open to hearing some of my thoughts?”  This approach can show respect and offer a reminder of the choices available.  

3. Avoid judgments, share facts. When you express concerns, stay away from judgmental words such as “short-sighted” or “hasty” that might set off your manager and has the potential to be taken personally.  Sharing facts and examples will help you make your case much better.  For example, instead of saying, “I think that first-quarter deadline is naïve,” you can say, “We’ve tried four projects like this in the past, and we were able to do two in a similar time, but those were special circumstances.  What has changed or needs to change to deliver this work in the same time period?” You can call attention to the reality of the situation and be future-focused in thinking through how we can make this happen.

 4. Share disagreements humbly.  Even though your opinion might be well-informed and well-researched, it is still an opinion so talk tentatively where you leave room for the other person to weigh in.  Instead of saying “If we set an end-of-quarter deadline, we’ll never make it,” you might offer, “In my opinion, based on where we are now, I do not see how we will make that deadline.” You can also use phrases like, “I’m thinking aloud here.” This will leave room for dialogue, and it shows your curiosity about other perspectives.   You can even ask for permission to share your disagreements.  “I know we seem to be moving toward a first-quarter commitment here, I have reasons to think that it will not work. I’d like to lay out my reasoning.  Would that be OK?”  This gives the person choices and allows them to opt out.  You can further invite them to respond by asking them, “what might be missing from this assessment?”

5. Approach with inquiry.  If your manager has made a decision that has impacted your work, you can lead with open-ended questions such as, “I would love to understand the rationale for this decision, can you tell me what went into this?  Assumptions are counterproductive, share your thinking and genuinely seek to understand their perspective and what they are trying to get done.  It is helpful to assume positive intent because you only see one piece of the picture, meanwhile they have a more expansive view based on their leadership team meetings and discussions on what is coming down the pike.  They could also have stressors that you do not see or fully understand based on where you sit in the company.  

6. Pick your battles.  If it comes to stylistic differences, give your boss what they want.  If they prefer PowerPoint, but you prefer google slides, instead of spending energy arguing on small things, defer to their preferences.  Strive to win the big ones and not waste energy and psychological capital on the more minor points.

7. View your boss as your customer.  You may feel frustrated that you cannot get your job done because you are working on your boss’ items.  It is good to check in with yourself because your priority is your boss.’  How would your mindset be different if you saw your boss as your customer and you were working on satisfying their plans? 

8. Ask for their advice.  If you have determined that your boss has a “closed mind” about something, you can signal your openness by asking for their advice.  Adam Grant offers this example. “Let’s say you want your leader to take mental health seriously, you can use this phrasing, ‘I heard from many people that they are struggling with mental health, which can affect their well-being and I know you care about building a community here.  I want people to feel that they are cared about so I’m trying to think about how to do a better job supporting people, I’m not sure what to do next, but I know you are brilliant at getting things done and driving change.  Would you be willing to help with these cultural changes?’”  People like to feel included and genuine flattery can go a long way.  Plus, it is less threatening when you approach your comments not trying to make the person wrong and show that you have a superior way but are open to learning from the leader or co-creating something better together. You come across as an advocate and not an adversary.

Managing up involves both art and science to be successful.  You want to have the right content to share, as well as an effective delivery.  Using facts and inquiry, approaching disagreements humbly, and seeking true partnership can get you off to a great start.

Quote of the day: “One of the best ways to influence people is to make them feel important. Most people enjoy those rare moments when others make them feel important.  It is one of the deepest human desires.” -Roy T. Bennett.

Q:  What style do others use to manage up that you see as most effective?  Which is the least effective?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 6/6 will focus on pitfalls to avoid when managing 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.

What is your leadership style when managing up?

Common Scenarios Where Managing Up Is Needed (Manage Up Series 4/6 )

In the last article, we covered managing up to pitch a project.  This blog will focus on many other situations where managing up can come in handy.

Let’s jump into a few common scenarios and approaches for managing up:

1. If you receive additional work unaligned with the priorities.  If you have been given an assignment that you cannot see the value in or the connection to the bigger strategic vision, you can ask questions to get clarity.  How do you see this new idea fitting in with our current goals?  If we take on this new initiative, our capacity will be reduced, we may need to drop or delay another, in that case; which one would you be willing to deprioritize?  Depending on your boss’ style, if you think it is overloading to have them select from open-ended options, you can suggest one to deprioritize to make it easier.  If you prefer to delay, you can say, “Is this idea something we need to implement now, or could it be considered for the next quarter/year?  By laying out how pursuing a new idea will impact other priorities, you can help your boss assess what makes the most sense from a strategic perspective.

2. If you receive vague work.  You can take steps to elicit more thoughtful contributions by asking questions to prompt more critical thinking.  Tell me how you see that working?  What would you like the outcomes to be so we can get the best results possible?  What does success look like?  Are there examples of things you have seen that you like and want to include?  These prompts encourage the leader to expand on their ideas to add more definition to make your work easier.

3. If you disagree with your boss on a topic.  You can be forward-thinking and ask, how would you prefer me to handle this the next time this comes up?  If no answer is provided, you can offer your thought process of how you would handle it and invite your boss to comment on your plan so you can test to see that you are on the same wavelength and make the necessary adjustments. This way, you can create predictable and effective ways of working.

4. If your manager is acting as a bottleneck to your work.   If your work process is slowed because you are waiting on your boss’ approval for the next project, you can say, “I know hitting the deadline on this project is a priority for you, in order not to delay the release of this work, here are the two things I would need from you by this date.  Do you see any obstacles with that timeline?”  Let me know how I can make any adjustments to keep us on track with achieving this priority. 

5. If your manager is doing things that hurt their reputation.  You can say, “I don’t know if you’re intending to come off like this, but here’s how you’re being perceived, I have some thoughts on how I can help with that if you are interested.”  Most leaders want to hear this news especially if it is broached in a respectful and trusting manner.

6. If you suspect incompetence.  Try and diagnose the issue and figure out exactly how the incompetence shows up.  Do they lack experience?  Do they have poor emotional intelligence?  Is their decision-making shaky?  Do they not hold people accountable?  Is it incompetence or just a different approach?  If you can pinpoint and categorize the problem, you and your team can create targeted strategies to address the deficiency and better manage up. 

7. If your manager is micromanaging.  Learn to see if it is just happening with you or is common with other members.  Suppose it is prevalent and causing delays in getting the work done and negatively impacting the organization.  In that case, it is worth speaking up to make changes at a more systematic level rather than changing the style with just you.  You can share your understanding of the expectations and see if they are on the same page this way you can focus more on the outcomes rather than the activities and methods used to achieve those results.

8. If your role is ambiguous.  Be proactive.  Many Directs want their boss to define their job for them, but you are missing out on the opportunity to craft your job.  If you have the chance to create your scope and how it advances the mission and purpose, lay the first stake, and then ask what they would add.  You can say, “Here is what I think success looks like, what is your version, and what would you contribute”?  Here are the skillsets and capabilities I am honing for this job and my development plan, what else should I consider if my goal is to get to the Director level so I can set more of the creative strategic direction? Communicate what you need to be successful in terms of timely information, access, guidance, and resources.  You can use “If-Then Statements,” If I am going to do this, then I need these three things in place to be successful, how do you see this best working? 

9. If your one-on-ones are not useful.  Instead of merely providing status updates, include strategic issues. Suggest ideas on promoting your team for more visibility within your company or discuss process improvements.   Be sure you prepare an agenda to make the best use of your time together.  They will access your thoughtfulness and be more inclined to hear your suggestions.

10. If you feel like your manager is not giving you valuable feedback on your performance.  You can ask, what can I do or stop doing that would improve my performance?  What would make it easier for you to work with me?  Embrace the discomfort, after you ask that question, pause and do not be the next person to respond.  Listen with the intent to understand, not to respond.  You do not have to agree with the feedback, but it can be helpful to hear it.  Check for understanding by saying, “This is what I hear you saying, if I were to change x, y, and z, it would impact the team in a, b, or c ways?  What have I gotten right and what am I missing?” To ensure the alignment, you can even follow up with an email with the key takeaways and next steps.

11. If you are not getting feedback on a project.  If your boss always says, everything is great, go you.  You can say, can I get your advice on X, if you were driving my research, what would be top of mind for you?  Here is my goal for the next week or two to advance this project, I would love your guidance on whether I identified the right goals and how best to achieve them.  What obstacles should I be looking out for?  Annie McKee founder of Teleos Leadership Institute offers to say something like, “I want to do a good job and achieve my goals, and I need your help to do that.”  Be specific about what you want: their input on a particular piece of work, an introduction to another colleague, their permission to reach out to a client, etc.  If they cannot help, suggest an alternative and help them solve the problem, you can ask them if they can ask one of your peers for input or an introduction.  When you change your questions, you can more likely change the responses you are getting.

12. If you want your manager’s feedback on your overall development. You can share what you are doing to work on your growth goals, “What I am struggling with personally is how to make sure all people have a voice in the room and are heard, sometimes I get excited, and that enthusiasm makes it hard for others to get their voice in.  I want to run a flip meeting where I listen instead of sharing.  Do you think people would like that, or would it be a deer in headlights situation?  What suggestions do you have to ensure this is done well or that I succeed?”  You make it much easier for your leader to weigh in on areas that matter to you when you through out a statement or idea in which to react.

13. Take time to signal what works for you.  When you share with your leader what they do well or what works for you, you set them up to repeat that behavior.  For example, you might say, “I really liked when you made that email introduction, it made my work go so much faster, and I would welcome additional opportunities like that to advance future work.”  Formulating clarity in your requests will yield much better results.

Learning the skill of managing up in a variety of situations is critical to maintaining a great relationship with your boss and in the advancement of the goals of the organization. It is a muscle that we can all build with the right intention.

Quote of the day:  “Request, don't complain. Inside every complaint is a request. Find it and make it.” -Mary Abbajay, 

Q:  What is the hardest situation for you to manage up?  What makes it so hard? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 5/6 will focus on your style of managing 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.

The Art of Managing Up

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?

The Pre-Work You Need to Manage Up (Manage Up Series 2/6)

Managing up is a required skill in every job.  Doing this well will allow you to advance your career and bring benefits to your team and the organization.   

Before jumping into best practices for managing up, it is helpful to think about the prework you want to complete so you are in the best position to succeed. 

Here are some critical aspects to uncover:

1. Know your leader’s communication style.  Executive Coach Julie Kantor says, “some bosses readily explain to subordinates how and when they want to communicate.  Others do better when offered multiple-choice questions.  If your boss has not willingly told you, seek agreements on methods and cadence for updates.  You can ask, how often do you want updates: daily, weekly, or only when I have something to report?  Do you prefer phone, instant messaging, email, or face-to-face?”  Getting this information clear will contribute to an excellent relationship, allowing for managing up to occur more easily.  Also, maybe your boss prizes unstructured chat time before diving into the work, whereas you prefer having work updates first and chat time at the end if there is time because it is how you operate with your direct reports.  It is better to adjust your style to fit your boss’ preference rather than impose your will.

1A. Understand their listener/reader style.  You can adjust your style in response to your boss’ preferred method of receiving information.  Peter Drucker, often described as the founder of modern management, divided bosses into “readers” and “listeners.”  If your boss is a reader, they like to get information in report form so they can read and study it.  In that case, you want to include important points in your memo and then discuss them.   Others are listeners, they work better with hearing information presented and being able to ask questions immediately in real time.  In this case, you may want to verbally share to have that back and forth and then follow up with notes of what has been discussed.  This contributes to creating fertile ground for managing up to occur.

1B. Understand their preference for updates.  Some bosses prefer to be involved in decisions and problems as they arise.  These are high-involvement managers who like to keep their hands on the pulse of the operation during critical moments, so it is best to be proactive in including them.  Other bosses prefer to delegate and be less involved.  They expect you to come to them with major problems and inform them about any significant changes.  When keeping these bosses in the loop, be clear on what you are doing and if there is anything you should be doing differently, let them know you welcome their input.  This critical information will allow you to move to the next stage and not waste weeks of work because you did not allow your boss an opportunity to weigh in earlier.  Managing up will be easier when these processes are established.

1C. Have the expectations discussion.  Many people assume the boss will magically know what information to give their subordinates.  Some are naturally good at this, and some are not.  Be proactive at the outset and ask.  What are your expectations from me?  What is a good way to exchange feedback?  Do not assume that just because you like to receive feedback in a particular way from your direct reports, it will be the same style as what your boss will want from you.  Be proactive in uncovering expectations that will set you up for managing up success. 

2. Understand their decision-making style.  Do they make decisions intuitively and change their mind a lot, or do they prefer a more fact-based approach and need lots of data and time to arrive at an action slowly, or any combination of the two?  When you are trying to influence, you can use their style to shape your approach.  Maybe they want to be in control, so you would give them information about what you are doing and offer choices about the next steps so they can make the ultimate decision.

3. Understand your manager's strengths, weaknesses, and motivations.  When you can go to them on a topic that utilizes one of their strengths, they can help more efficiently.  When you go to them in an area of weakness, you may be disappointed.  In that case, it can be a good opportunity for you to be proactive in taking more of a leadership role.  For example, maybe your boss is not strong at creating team bonding events, you can volunteer to take the lead on that.  Furthermore, knowing what they care about and advancing that interest can be helpful.  Dr. Julie Kantor, Executive Coach says, “It pays to figure out what motivates your boss, do they need to look important? Find ways to help them talk about their successes.”  If your boss’ boss cares about retention and building community, you can link the team bonding event to a larger and more critical initiative that would bode well for your leader.

4. Know your leader’s realities.  What numbers are your boss being measured on?  How is their boss defining success?  What are their goals and pressures?  How does your work fit into this bigger picture?  You can exhibit upward empathy and learn about what the specific work is like for your boss, what makes it hard, and what might you be unintentionally contributing to the difficulty level.  Without this information, you might be flying blind so your efforts to manage up would likely be fruitless.

5. Know the organization.  Some organizations are more hierarchical so it can feel threatening to have direct reports speak up.  Find out the informal rules so you can be more clued in on how to operate within the existing structures before you aim to make changes.

This kind of preparation can be used to develop and manage a healthy working relationship - one that is compatible with both work styles and strengths so you can do great work together.

Quote of the day: “Think twice before you speak because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.”  -Napoleon Hill

Q:  What is one way to learn your boss’ key stated and unstated priorities?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 3/6 will focus on managing up for project work]

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 do you know about your leader’s style?

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?

Strategic Thinking Requires Time (Strategy Series 3/3)

How much of your time in your calendar is dedicated to strategy and long-term planning?  In one survey of 10,000 senior leaders, 97% said that being strategic was the most important leadership behavior to their organization’s success.  Yet, it is not being done. 

Common challenges leaders have in finding time for strategic planning:

1. Short-term focused.  Most leaders want to spend more time on strategy but one challenge that keeps them from the practice is being too enmeshed in the near term.   Rich Horwath, CEO of the Strategic Thinking Institute, found that 96% of leaders surveyed claimed they lacked time for strategic thinking because they were too busy putting out fires.  Some leaders do not know how to step away from the whirlwind.  For example, Lisa, an HR Vice President, explained how she approached her job in a transactional manner, simply aiming to get the next hire and not recognizing that she needed an entirely new approach to recruitment and retention for a fast-growing company.  To do the latter effectively, she needed to step away from her workload and short-term hiring goals to create the think time to rework defective processes and devise a more scalable system that will allow her to streamline the hiring process that will eventually save significant time in the long run.

2. Poor email management.  The volume of emails keeps leaders focused on immediate and sometimes low-priority concerns.  According to a Radicati Group analysis, we receive an average of 126 emails per day.  I have some executive clients who receive 400+ emails.  If you were to categorize your emails, which ones are truly valuable and which ones are time sucks?  How much time do you spend on emails?  How much time do you want to spend?  How is your time on emails serving your long-term goals?  What’s your plan to free yourself from this time-consuming activity? 

3. Failure to prioritize and delegate.  When you create a jam-packed schedule and are running from meeting to meeting, you cannot contribute strategically without adequate time to reflect on the issues and consider all the options.  What meetings do you need to deprioritize?  How can you delegate so you do not have to be at all places at all times?  Our routine can put a damper on strategy time, so how can you reallocate your time to prioritize the unfamiliar and non-routine activities to increase your capacity to act more strategically?  In a ten-year longitudinal study of over 2,700 newly appointed executives, 67% of them said they struggled with letting go of work from previous roles.  Trying to do everything yourself is a sure path to limiting your leadership and that of others because they do not have the chance to grow.

4. Falling into the competency trap.  This is when you continue to do a previous task related to execution because you do it well, enjoy it, and get a confidence boost because you are accumulating expertise in that one task. The problem is that while you are doing that work, you might be neglecting the other activities such as strategic planning and setting vision and direction, which are skills more needed by the business. What produced your past successes likely will be different than the future wins you will need to succeed. Indeed, you can deliver amazing work on the wrong things and it will go unnoticed.  If you are in stage 3 of your leadership but still doing stage 2 work, it is time to depart from your comfort zone and exercise new strategic muscles.

To avoid some of these challenges, create space in your schedule:

Strategic thinking does not necessarily mean numerous sabbaticals or extensive leadership retreats but is more about carving out consistent space.  As productivity expert David Allen shared in an interview with Dorie Clark for her book Stand Out, “You don’t need time to have a good idea, you need space…. It takes zero time to have an innovative idea or to make a decision, but if you don’t have psychic space, those things are not necessarily impossible, but they’re suboptimal.”

Once you find that calendar time, some executives may not know how to begin their strategic thinking time.  I find that some of my clients put too much pressure on themselves believing they must begin with states of enlightenment that yield novel insights, but it can start much smaller.

Here are some things you can do during your protected strategetic and think time sessions:

1. You can distinguish the urgent from the important.  Stephen Covey’s 2 x 2 matrix is helpful for this in separating more immediate needs from longer and more meaningful work.  Where do you want to have an impact?  What will it take to achieve success?  How will the organization evolve to meet challenges on the horizon?  These are the kinds of deep, foundational questions that are best addressed with long-term planning.

2. Think with others to get an outside perspective.  Reach out to other departments or build rapport with leaders, managers, front-line team members, and customers to listen and understand their roles, concerns, and ideas.  This will add to your knowledge bank of all parts of the organization to better utilize those insights in your projects to ensure alignment with the corporate strategy from the outstart.  You can also think about how to use other partners for new initiatives and create win-win experiences.  As you develop these relationships, you will learn more elements of the business and know which key individuals to call when you want to brainstorm or move past an obstacle.  It would help if you also were proactive about connecting with peers outside your organization and in your industry to understand their observations.  You can share your ideas across your network for greater meaning-making.

3. Expand your cross-functional learning.  When you understand more about all areas of the organization and know who all the key players are, each project you work on becomes a puzzle.  When you move pieces, you can see how it affects others either directly or indirectly.  When you consider the impacts of your decisions on all company domains, you see the big picture more clearly.  That is strategy.

4. Ask other strategic thinkers about their processes.  Turn to people who have skills you admire and find out what their process is as a prime learning opportunity.  You can start the conversation with, “I noticed you offer really valuable contributions in the meetings; I would love to know your process for strategic thinking?  Where do you get your insights from?”  You’ll be surprised how quickly others engage and what you can discover.

5. Learn.  Read books and articles, listen to podcasts and interviews, and watch instructive videos and webinars to expand your thinking and learn new approaches relevant to your specific situation.  There are many valuable conversations happening in your industry, especially among futurists who have spent much time thinking about these topics.  How do you receive regular doses of information that can spark your own?  Are there classes, industry conferences, professional gatherings, or associations that you can attend?  Can you form a book group with your coworkers to have dedicated space for this type of learning? It doesn’t need to be time-intensive, even just 10 minutes of reading and 30-minute discussions can yield significant returns.

6. Take a break.  It can be common to think that to accomplish your work, you must increase your hours.  In fact, research by Bob Sullivan reveals that productivity decreases for those who work more than 50 hours per week.  When you can let your mind wander, you can come up with great strategic ideas.  Lin Manuel Miranda came up with the idea for his award-winning play Hamilton when he was on vacation with his wife fishing.  You can check out my other blog on the importance of taking breaks for breakthroughs.

7. Reflect.  Do you regularly ask, what’s working and what’s not?  How can you chronicle your successes and failures to rethink your approach to make it even more strategic?  You can develop a reflective practice that can be as little as one or five minutes that will engender tremendous value because you will be more intentional about your actions and contributions.

8. Pick a small project to experiment.  Is there one project you can work on regularly to develop some of your strategic skills?  You can test a hypothesis and run an experiment and once you take action, reflect on your progress and learnings and then iterate to improve even more.  If you just stay in your head without taking action, you will rob yourself of the best learnings, which usually come when you try something and get immediate feedback.

9. Engage in meaning-making activities.  Developing great strategic thinking skills requires you to gain exposure to key roles, synthesize broad information, participate in a culture of curiosity, and gather experiences that allow you to identify patterns and connect the dots in novel ways. That’s why leadership development programs often include job rotations, cross-functional projects, and face time with senior leadership - they accelerate your critical thinking.  You can take that 30-foot view to better understand those issues that get raised over and over in different parts of the organization.  Why hasn’t anybody solved them yet?  What’s been the dominant approach? What’s a different approach to take?

Leaders know the value of spending time on strategic thinking, yet they are not doing it because of the challenges of short-term thinking and the urgency of trivial tasks. Start by fostering a practice for thinking and reflecting that will help you develop strategies that can bring significant benefits to you and your organization.

Quote of the day: “Get off of the dance floor and look at your operation from the balcony.” - Ron Heifetz, Harvard Professor

Q: What is your thinking and reflecting practice?  Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

 As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to engage in strategic thinking for them and their teams, contact me to learn more.

How do you create space to strategize?