Leaders consistently rate their own meetings much more positively than attendees do. When managers assume their meetings are going smoothly, they are less likely to solicit feedback and seek opportunities to improve. As a result, frustrations that attendees experience don’t get fixed (irrelevant agenda items, unnecessarily long duration, lack of focus), leaving employees disgruntled and disengaged. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Steven G. Rogelberg, Chancellor’s Professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and author of The Surprising Science of Meetings, helps managers improve their meeting skills. Among his tips:
What have you done to improve the caliber of team meetings? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, visit our online learning programs.
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As any manager who has tried it can tell you, onboarding new employees remotely is a challenge. And a bad onboarding experience can have long-lasting negative fallout. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, James M. Citrin and Darleen DeRosa, co-authors of Leading From a Distance: Practical Lessons for Virtual Success, offer recommendations for companies large and small who want to make onboarding strategies succeed.
Are some of your employees about to hand in their notice? Timothy M. Gardner, management professor at Utah State, and Peter W. Horn, management professor at Arizona State, identified numerous “pre-quitting behaviors“ that are often tip-offs that a resignation could be in the offing in the next 12 months. Just like poker players exhibit various “tells” that reflect the strength of their hands, workplace “tells” can signal future turnover. Through detailed questionnaires administered to managers, the authors distilled the most common pre-quitting behaviors. These include:
“Typically,” say the authors, “organizations handle a turnover problem with large scale interventions to improve departmental or firm-level commitment, job satisfaction, and job engagement. These strategies may work, but they take time to design and implement. Thinking in terms of the turnover risk of specific employees allows you to invest your time and resources in those employees who create the most value and are actually at risk of leaving.” One technique is to use what are called “stay interviews.” Instead of conducting only exit interviews to learn what caused good employees to quit, hold regular one-on-one interviews with current high-performing employees to learn what keeps them and what could be changed to keep them from straying. Are any of your employees exhibiting signs of quitting, and what action might you take to get them to reconsider? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. We would love to get your feedback and hear about your experiences! Listening to your employees and incorporating their feedback is important to you and to the culture of your organization. But sending out an employee survey once a year is not sufficient, says Carrie McKeegan, CEO and Cofounder of Greenback Expat Tax Services -- especially among remote teams who find it harder to build relationships. Collecting feedback on an ongoing basis will allow you to address roadblocks head-on, encourage creativity and collaboration, and drive innovation. Here are things you can do:
Few of us like to admit it when we make a mistake. We’ve been trained since our childhood school years that only “correct answers” get rewarded. But two things are true: 1) Everyone makes mistakes, and 2) admitting to errors can actually be very beneficial. Writing in Inc. , Ken Sterling, executive vice president of Bigspeak, contends that “admitting mistakes has the best rewards for you in the long term -- especially for your leadership style and building trust with those around you.” Great leaders, be they CEOs, elected officials, or even quarterbacks, take ownership of their errors and avoid blaming others. So, “If you want to become a better leader, it starts by being accountable…Ultimately, we are involved in creating, promoting, or allowing each situation we find ourselves in. When we realize this, it's quite empowering, actually. Otherwise, if it's not our fault, we're really saying we are victims.” Leaders who refuse to be accountable create what Sterling calls a culture of fear. And fear leads to silence. People who are afraid of being blamed, don't want to speak up or contribute ideas. To do so would be equivalent to putting a target on their backs. What's more, failing to acknowledge mistakes pretty much ensures the mistakes will be repeated. Writes Sterling, “The key to learning -- be it martial arts, team sports, sales, or leadership -- is owning your errors. If you don't admit the mistake to yourself, then how can you ever improve on it?” Owning one’s errors builds trust, and trust builds strong relationships. Research has repeatedly shown that employees want to trust their leaders and when that trust is there, leader honesty drives employees to be honest as well. “Candor is at the heart of good management and positive work culture. Imagine being a leader who can admit to personally messing up, and who sends the message that in this organization, you can mess up, too. It's liberating.” When was the last time you admitted to a mistake, and how did that go? When did your boss last admit to a mistake? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. A manager’s job and communication style must change as their team expands. Writing in The Harvard Business Review, Julia Zhuo, vice president of design at Facebook and author of The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks To You, explores some of the necessary adaptations.
For a leader who wants to inspire, few things are more important than communicating with employees in a positive way. Writing in Inc., Marcel Schwantes, founder and Chief Human officer of Leadership From the Core, says “there are certain undeniable phrases that, if we use them more often with team members, will result in an increase in trust and loyalty.” Schwantes offers five examples of what great leaders will genuinely put into words to engage minds and hearts:
When was the last time you used one of these phrases, or heard your manager use one? What was the impact? To join the conversation, click "comments" above (just below the picture). We would really to hear your feedback. Remote workforces present unique challenges. So leaders must be more intentional than ever in promoting engagement and the productivity that increases as a result. Managing a fully remote company, Lou Elliott-Cysewski, co-founder and CEO of Coolperx, a net climate-neutral merchandising company, shares the lessons she has learned in Inc.:
What has been your greatest challenge in working remotely, and how has your leadership addressed it? To join the conversation, click "comments" above (just below the picture). We would really like to hear your feedback! As we navigate the Great Resignation, the need for empathic leaders has come center stage. People are unwilling to work for managers prone to autocracy, micromanaging, and narcissism — and they will resign in an effort to find a more welcoming culture. It is crucial to recognize, however, that the drive for results and the practice of empathy are not mutually exclusive. Writing in Inc., Phillip Kane, CEO and Managing Partner of Grace Ocean business consultants, contends that effective leaders understand that results matter. But they also realize that results are heightened with kindness. Such leaders recognize and reward the contributions of others, prize the mental and emotional well-being of those who work for them, and know better than to destroy trust over something like a missed objective. Kane concludes, “If you've believed, like many have, that delivering results and caring for others is an either/or proposition, change your thinking, and then change those you entrust to lead your team. Choose caring, empathic leaders. They are, for good reason, all the rage right now.” To what extent do leaders in your organization display empathy, and what is the effect? To join the conversation, click "comments" above (just below the photo). We’d really like to hear about your experience and get your feedback! As employee turnover continues to rise, employers are striving to discern what workers really want. Of course benefits are important, but they are far from the whole picture. Writing in Inc., Marcel Schwantes, founder and Chief Human Officer of Leadership from the Core contends that “good leadership takes skill, heart, head, hands, and a willingness to serve others.” He offers 3 actions leaders can take to ensure people stay longer:
Is your organization doing what it should to help employees continue to develop and build on their strengths? To join the conversation, click "comments" above (just below the photo). We're really like to about your experiences with attracting & retaining employees! If you want to hire the right kind of employees and keep them motivated, an extensive new study from Bain may prove helpful. The project’s authors spent a year surveying 20,000 workers in 10 countries (the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Nigeria) as well as conducting in-depth interviews with more than 100 employees. As recounted in Inc., the study concluded that there are six work-orientation archetypes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Problems can arise when employers are seeking one type but hire another. The archetypes are:
Do you recognize yourself, or any of your employees, in any of these archetypes? Does your organization skew toward one type in particular or is there a balance? To join the conversation, click "comments" above (just below the picture). We'd really like to hear your feedback and experiences! Extraordinary teams excel at fostering relatedness among members. New research cited in The Harvard Business Review suggests such teams have found subtle ways of leveraging social connections during the pandemic. Doing so requires creating opportunities for genuine, authentic relationships to develop. Based on his organization’s research, Ron Friedman, Ph.D, psychologist, author, and founder of ignite80, a performance development company, presents five key characteristics of high-performing teams that highlight the vital role of close connection among colleagues. Successful teams:
How has your team been fostering connections during this period of hybrid work? To join the conversation, click "comments" above (just below the picture). We'd really love to hear from you! Poet Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Writing in Inc., Marcel Schwantes, founder and Chief Human Officer of Leadership From the Core, notes that this is very true of leaders. The great ones, he says, take care of their team in ways that makes everyone feel inspired and understood. "The journey toward leadership greatness never ends,” says Schwantes, “but it does have a starting point. And sometimes the beginning of the journey requires some tough questions you need to ask yourself to raise your own bar." Can you answer yes to most — and hopefully all — of these?
Were you able to answer “yes” to most of these questions? Which ones might you work on? To join the conversation, click "comments" above, just below the picture. We'd love to hear your feedback! Jeff Zucker’s departure from CNN a couple weeks ago, has stirred up talk about office romance. Writing in The New York Times, Joanne Lipman, author of That’s What She Said: What Men and Women Need to Know About Working Together, and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, say the situation “points out how difficult it is to regulate office romance and how unevenly corporate policies around consensual relationships are enforced.” When it comes to trying to manage this issue “the rules are all over the place” and “enforcement is inconsistent.” A 2021 survey for the Society for Human Resource Management found that more than a third of Americans have or have had a workplace relationship, and the majority did not disclose it to their managers. There is no consensus in corporate America about what is considered acceptable. Most companies do not allow relationships between a supervisor and a direct report, “but that is just a baseline for a reasonable policy.” A 2019 Vault.com survey found that 41 percent of employees aren’t even sure what their company’s position on workplace romance is, and so don’t report an office relationship for fear of being penalized. What’s more, the beginning of any relationship can be tenuous. If employees aren’t even ready to tell their friends about it, can they be expected to know when to tell their supervisors? Is one date or one flirtatious email exchange the threshold? Companies owe their employees clarity, contend Lipman and Sonnenfeld. “Organizations need to specify what constitutes a relationship, to whom and when to report it, and in what circumstances it requires an adjustment in position for one or both people.” What's more, the rules need to apply to everyone. Office romances have existed for as long as offices have been around. It's time to figure out how to deal with them. Do you know your organization’s policy on office relationships, and do you think it is clear and reasonable? To join the conversation, click "comments" just below the picture above. We'd love to hear your feedback! New research from Gloat, a workforce agility and talent marketplace platform, confirms that nearly half (48.1 percent) of employees are thinking of leaving their current jobs, highlighting the internal labor crisis many employers are encountering. Gloat's study revealed two big reasons for the current exodus, which should surprise no one: Better pay and a desire for more growth opportunities. Writing in Inc., Marcel Schwantes, founder and Chief Human Officer of Leadership From the Core, notes that while offering every employee their desired salary is most likely not an option, leaders have considerable room to create growth opportunities that align with employees' personal and professional goals. To this end, they should:
What is your organization doing to create more internal opportunities and better communication about company values? To join the conversation, click "comments" above this article, just under the photo. We'd really like to hear from you! |
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