Category: management

  • Is this the one secret to a successful hybrid team?

    Is this the one secret to a successful hybrid team?

    ​Recent research from Gallup on hybrid working suggests that one of the most important factors for a high performing hybrid team is…

    Trust.

    That’s not surprising – when managing beyond the line of sight, you are relying on your people to do the work you are paying them for, to the best of their ability – and without the means to track exactly what they are doing all day.

    Some companies have approached this problem with activity-monitoring surveillance software or bureaucratic work tracking systems. While this may be appropriate for certain industries and roles, such an approach will compound the lack of trust.

    So maybe we could instead look at how to build trust?

    Now, trust is a complex emotional dynamic, and so much will depend on the circumstances of you, your team, and your work.

    But we can use a tool to help us as managers work out how we can be more trustworthy ourselves, and how to build trust in others.

    It’s the Trust Equation, developed by Maister, Green and Galford:

    Trustworthiness is the sum of three factors:

    • Credibility: What you say – your knowledge, experience, and judgment.
    • Reliability: What you do – your consistency, your ability to keep promises and be dependable.
    • Intimacy: How safe others feel in sharing with you – your ability to be empathetic and respect confidentiality.


    However, these three factors are divided by the fourth:

    • Self-Orientation: Where your focus lies – on yourself or others.

    Using the equation to build trust in a hybrid team

    The aim is to consider the factors and focus on what you can do to enhance how others feel about you. It is also about setting up the opportunities for your team members to act in such a way that you and other team members trust them more.

    Credibility

    You: Be transparent with decision-making in hybrid settings. Share the logic and analysis behind the choices you make.

    Enable others: Give staff opportunities to showcase their expertise – to you and others. Create forums (e.g. team meetings, internal newsletters, project showcases) where staff can present ideas, lead discussions, or share insights. Encourage team members to share their strengths and recognise them publicly. Use appreciative language to reinforce their contributions and build confidence.

    Reliability

    You: Set clear expectations, and standards – for deadlines and availability – and keep to them. Act consistently when assessing contribution and making decisions,

    Enable others: Establish workflows and check-in processes that prompt others to be proactive in their information-sharing, that makes progress visible and enables workload problems to be uncovered before they become problematic. Celebrate consistent follow-through and express gratitude for dependability. Link tasks to a shared purpose to motivate reliable behaviour.

    Intimacy

    You: Create space for personal connection – schedule regular 1:1s, ask about well-being, and encourage informal chats. These are much harder when you see each other less consistently, so pay particular attention here. Share of yourself to the extent that you are comfortable, your openness can encourage openness in others which builds connection.

    Enable others: Create space for team members to connect. Create projects or tasks for pairs or small groups. Build social time into your team meetings to maximise the value of your shared time. Foster a culture of appreciation and empathy. Use positive communication to acknowledge personal efforts and create deeper connections.

    Self-Orientation

    You: Share your intentions, explain why you are asking for something or the purpose behind your decisions. Celebrate others’ wins publicly. Support your people to grow and develop. Be accountable for your mistakes..

    Enable others: Ensure team members understand the bigger picture – their role within the organisation and the overall purpose and aims. Set team goals and objectives, and help them see how their individual strengths are aligned. Delegate tasks and meaningful responsibilities. Express gratitude for collaborative efforts and selfless contributions.

  • Use this marketing mantra that’s a surprisingly powerful management tool

    Use this marketing mantra that’s a surprisingly powerful management tool

    It was one of those moments where I could see an idea click straight away.

    I was facilitating a development session for a client. I wanted to explore a point further, so I went on a short digression to introduce a model. Immediately I could see it was the right call, as the group members took it on. It wasn’t a new model for all of them, but it was a moment where they all considered using it in a new way.

    From marketing to management

    The model I introduced is deceptively simple, and it comes from the world of marketing and communication, but I’ve found it useful in all sorts of leadership and management situations, from giving feedback to developing strategies, designing training courses and planning for change.

    It’s… Think, Feel, Do.

    Or if you prefer alliteration and imagery: Head, Heart and Hands.

    By using the think, feel and do model, you are encouraged to think about the outcomes you want.

    From a change perspective, the aim is that you explore individual and group motivations, insights, desires and needs – and uncover the pain points, barriers and potential objections.

    When it comes to giving feedback, use Think, Feel, Do to plan your comments. Think about what you want them to do as a result of the feedback and then shape everything so that they understand that both logically and emotionally. For example, your tone of voice, non-verbal communication and even the room setting needs to align with the words you are saying. And you need to edit those words so your message is clear and action-focused, not open to misinterpretation or diversion.

    Think, Feel, Do is one of the most effective tools – for critical thinking, for communication, feedback and change – because it is so easy to apply. Obviously it is only the starting point, and it links into other ideas like Cialdini’s six principles of influence.

    So, in the spirit of think, feel, do, I’m hoping that:

    • You know what the Think, Feel, Do model is, how it works, and are convinced about how useful it could be.
    • You feel supported and helped, and motivated to use the model.
    • You will file this idea away, and use it the next time you are planning change, drafting communication or providing feedback.
  • One core strategy that can help you and your team to flourish and thrive

    One core strategy that can help you and your team to flourish and thrive

    There’s a cactus near my desk that is doing okay. It’s alive, it’s green, it’s growing – but very, very, slowly. And this year there were only a few pink flowers on one globe, when in previous years there was a full ring of blooms on all of the globes.

    In short, it’s surviving. I’ve given it enough light and water to keep going. And the flowers I got were very pretty.

    But I’m not helping the cactus to thrive.

    Maybe it wants some fertiliser, or better positioning, or I need to really pay attention to the watering requirements – instead of just letting it carry on.

    And much of leadership and management thinking is similarly focused on sufficiency – on the tasks and activities to ensure performance meets targets, on making sure people have what they need to perform.

    But instead, we should be looking at how we, as leaders and managers, can add the extra so that we thrive and flourish – and help our teams to grow and develop as well.

    Instead of the ordinary, we should be aiming for the extraordinary.

    And that’s why I focus on the ideas of positive management, such as Martin Seligman’s PERMA model. Seligman is sometimes referred to as the godfather of ‘positive psychology’ owing to his ground-breaking focus on what helps people be emotionally and mentally healthy. It’s a testament to his thinking that many of his ideas have permeated mainstream management practices.

    Researchers have found clear correlations between adopting these positive management practices, and increased team productivity, morale and performance.

    So have a look at the model and then we’ll explore how you could apply these principles to help your team members achieve greater satisfaction and success.

    Positive Emotion

    • Say ‘thank you’. Express your gratitude for your team members’ actions. It’s a little thing, but it really helps to build a respectful team spirit.
    • Celebrate small wins. In team meetings and one-to-ones, acknowledge individual and team successes. They don’t have to be important, just an indication of progress.
    • Praise effort. Make sure you also highlight those occasions where a team member has invested a lot of effort and expertise, even if the end result isn’t a conventional success.

    Engagement

    • Identify and harness strengths. The idea of ‘flow’ is closely associated with using strengths – those activities which you are good at, which you enjoy, and which energise you. Use an online strengths assessment such as VIA and then try to allocate work that aligns with people’s strengths.
    • Use healthy competition. Challenges and informal contests can help people focus and engage.

    Relationships

    • Create social contact time. Build in opportunities for informal conversation. For example, schedule a break in your meetings and don’t let people go back to work or dive into their phones. Include a non-work activity in your team meeting. Hold a team lunch.
    • Assign buddies or mentors. Link your people together to support each other or to share their knowledge.
    • Solve problems together. Wherever possible, role model the behaviour of collaborating with team members to solve problems together, rather than operating individually.

    Meaning

    • Map your purpose. Work with the individuals and the team as a whole to identify their own sense of purpose, to consider how their tasks and responsibilities contribute to the bigger picture, and support the organisation’s ultimate goals.
    • Tell a story. Ask team members to share impactful work experiences or moments that inspired them.

    Achievement

    • Set objectives that are achievable and meaningful. It’s not enough to set and monitor goals, you need to make sure they are relevant and important.
    • Appreciate progress. Sometimes, the effort doesn’t produce the intended results. But it’s important that you acknowledge the input, otherwise you encourage people to always play it safe.
    • Offer pathways to growth. Help people to achieve by providing a range of development interventions – training, mentoring, and private study time.
  • Leadership insights from the Panama Canal

    Leadership insights from the Panama Canal

    Decision-making is a key skill for leadership, but one that many of us find difficult, as we are often side-tracked by emotions, or fail to analyse the data sufficiently deeply, or take mental shortcuts. I recently heard a great example of how two different attempts to solve the same problem were impacted by their approach to decision-making. It was in Tim Harford’s excellent podcast series Cautionary Tales, in which he explored the two very different attempts to construct the Panama Canal.

    Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man behind the creation of the Suez Canal in 1869, headed the first attempt to dig a canal, which ran out of money and ended in failure in 1889. 15 years later, US President Theodore Roosevelt picked up the baton and more considered political and technical leadership saw the canal through to completion in 1914.  

    So I thought I’d share my insights about what this story tells us about decision-making and leadership.

    Understand the reason for your past success.

    In my workshops I often use a NASA quote which emphasises the importance of conducting neutral ‘pause and learn’ reviews regularly throughout a project – rather than having a single end-of-project ‘post-mortem’ review of failings – in order to find out why they really succeeded.

    And Tim Harford suggests this issue is at the heart of de Lesseps’ obstinacy that set the project up for failure. He’d been told that building Suez was impossible, but innovative solutions had been developed and seemingly insurmountable obstacles were overcome. So when people told him his plans for Panama were impossible, he dismissed them. He didn’t think that people might have been overly cautious about Suez but correct in their concern about Panama.

    He (and others) just assumed that he was the driving force behind the success of Suez, and he would do the same for Panama. Harford uses this to explore the heuristic of Fundamental Attribution Error – how we incorrectly tend to attribute results to ‘dispositional’ factors (the person) rather than ‘situational’ factors (the nature of the challenge, the resources, etc).

    Be willing to change your decisions.

    At the heart of de Lesseps’ failure was his obstinate insistence on digging a lock-free sea-level canal – the same design he’d successfully built at Suez. He’d made this decision without having visited Panama, or really understanding the geography – he saw a route that was less than half the length of Suez, but neglected to consider the mountains, the huge amount of rain, the mudslides and the raging rivers. He actively resisted any attempts by professional engineers to suggest alternative routes or methods, using locks and dams. And one thing I hadn’t appreciated – de Lesseps wasn’t an engineer himself, so his conviction wasn’t even based on his own technical knowledge, however mistaken.

    When the Americans took over, they assumed they would keep to the same lock-free plan, but progress was slow, and after a year the officials on the Canal Commission were still divided about the design. So, a few months after appointing John Stevens as the second Chief Engineer, Roosevelt recalled him to Washington and asked his opinion. Having experienced the problems of digging in the rainy season, Stevens argued the case for a lock and dam design, and Roosevelt accepted this change of plan.

    Respect the opinion of experts.

    And this decision about locks was just one area where Roosevelt sought out and listened to expert advice. Yellow fever and malaria had decimated the French attempt – contributing to an estimated 20-25,000 deaths. The Americans had appointed Dr Gorgas who, armed with the latest medical knowledge, proposed to drain the swamps to tackle mosquitoes – but the Canal Commission wanted him to stick to the traditional methods of combatting disease by attacking filth and smells instead. Roosevelt’s approach was to ask the opinion of a doctor he knew who was versed in the scientific literature. On his advice, Roosevelt gave a green light to Dr Gorgas.

    Be rigorous.

    De Lesseps seemed to drive the project on confidence and charisma – but without the foundation of evidence and analysis. He chose to visit Panama only in the short dry season, so didn’t understand the challenges of tropical conditions. When his chief engineer calculated that because of rain and mudslides they needed to double the planned soil extraction, de Lesseps refused to alter the estimated cost or timescales. He had also ensured that the consequences of his decisions were not subjected to external scrutiny, by bribing the French newspapers.

    In comparison, to establish his own evidence Roosevelt made the first overseas visit by a sitting US president. He deliberately visited in the rainy season. He ducked out of official dinners to experience the workers’ food, made impromptu visits to the hospital and often stopped workers to ask them about their experience of conditions. His approach was described as being obsessed that people were trying to hide things from him.

    Think before you act.

    After a year of the American effort, John Stevens was appointed as the new Chief Engineer. The first year had been characterised by red tape, disorganisation, poor supply chains, yellow fever, and limited progress – but Stevens didn’t act immediately. Instead, he visited, observed, and assessed the problems. His biographer describes this as an early form of Management By Wandering Around – and it had a fundamental result:

    Define the problem correctly.

    Stevens realised that the project wasn’t about digging – it was about transportation. Removing the huge amounts of heavy clay soil had been a massive problem for both French and Americans, exacerbated by rain, mudslides and multiple railway gauges. Many times the diggers had to stop because there were no trains available to remove the waste. Stevens approached this as a systems problem and made a series of decisions and innovations to increase the speed and volume of soil transported.

    And while those innovations were being developed, he re-allocated the workers onto infrastructure projects to improve conditions for the workforce and to tackle the other issue that Stevens identified as a central problem: health.

    Disease was the greatest enemy of a stable and effective workforce. In the absence of any scientific understanding, the French had blamed moral turpitude for the astonishingly high mortality rate. Since then, the role of the mosquito in yellow fever and malaria had been discovered. Even though the Canal Commission had appointed Dr Gorgas, who had helped eradicate yellow fever in Havana by tackling mosquitoes, they were not all convinced. But once Roosevelt had backed Gorgas, Stevens could give him the workforce he needed to drain swamps, dig ditches and deprive the mosquitoes of their breeding grounds.

    Have your own personal goals

    Stevens surprised Roosevelt by unexpectedly resigning after only 18 months in charge. But he’d met his own target – that the success of the canal would be either guaranteed or proved to be impossible.

    He’d invested a huge amount of energy in establishing the systems that would lead to the project success – but had no desire to remain for the 8 years he correctly estimated it would take to complete the canal. There were other opportunities out there.

    Applying the insights

    I hope you found this as fascinating as I did. It really is incredible to think of how these massive projects were completed without the computers and technology that we rely on today. But even so, you can see that the key issue that remains the same, from one century to the next, is the quality of leadership and decision-making.

    Picture credit: Bernal Saborio on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

  • How to overcome the 4 obstacles to giving quality feedback to your hybrid team

    How to overcome the 4 obstacles to giving quality feedback to your hybrid team

    Providing motivational and developmental feedback to enhance performance is one of the most important leadership and management skills.

    But for managers who lead hybrid teams – flexible in their working hours or location – there are four new challenges that you need to overcome, which are generated by one big difference:

    The key difference for a hybrid team is less consistent contact

    Where teams use a hybrid working model, or a form of flexible hours working such as compressed hours, the in-person contact between a manager and their team members is less frequent and less regular.

    I’ll explain how this impacts on the ability to give effective feedback, and suggest ways you can overcome this.

    1. Managers have less direct observation of people’s performance

    The traditional co-located team, working 9-5(ish), 5 days a week, gave managers a lot of chances to see and hear their team in action. Managers could gain knowledge passively, almost by osmosis – picking up on when team members were doing things right, or spotting where performance could be improved.

    However, hybrid working reduces these opportunities for happenstance observations – so managers will need to be more purposeful and tactical in how they identify issues requiring feedback, and how they deliver that feedback, using the methods below:

    • Observed practice. When I am training people to be coaches, one of the most impactful methods is observing them deliver a coaching session. The coach can easily record their session (with the client’s consent), so I gain huge amounts of information about their skills in practice and can provide rich motivational and developmental feedback. Recent AI developments make this even easier for managers – transcribing the audio, or even summarising the main points. Choose the right interaction to observe and see how your team members use their people skills.
    • Self-observation and upward reporting. Modern ways of working require greater autonomy, which you can foster by encouraging your team members to be reflective, to identify aspects of their practice they were proud of or unsure about, and to bring these issues to you so you can discuss, analyse, motivate and help them to develop.
    • Third-party observations. Without creating an atmosphere of spying, approach other managers – or team members if appropriate – to pass on their observations to you so you can craft appropriate feedback. It’s not a formal 360-degree assessment, just an opportunity for some different perspectives.
    • Embed reflection and feedback into the working practice. Make ‘lessons learned’ part of every project review, and analyse successes as well as problems. Following training, encourage people to identify what they learned and to commit to what they will do differently. Agree team ground rules and encourage everyone to give each other open and honest motivational and developmental feedback.
    • Feedforward, not feedback. I always champion Kluger and Nin’s Feedforward Interview approach – where managers spend time with their team members before undertaking a demanding task. They clarify expectations and – most importantly – tap into the team member’s past successes and experiences, which they can leverage to enhance their performance this time round. You can sum up the approach as “prepare, not repair”. It doesn’t stop you from providing quality feedback after the event – it just makes it more likely that you’ll be delivering a positive message.

    2. Managers find it harder to deliver feedback in a timely manner

    The best feedback is given shortly after the event – while everyone still remembers what happened. And traditionally, feedback was something that was given in person, face-to-face. But hybrid and flexible working means a lower chance of being able to do this.

    One way round this is to prioritise speed – using digital communication methods such as email, messaging and video conferencing to get the initial points over – and then follow up with a more considered feedback session at a later date, recording the details for future reference.

    Obviously, there is a danger if you are providing developmental feedback that a gap between raising it and resolving it fully might cause distress or confusion, so make sure you get the balance right.

    3. It is harder for managers to appreciate the context

    When working together more consistently, managers are more attuned to how their team are getting on – their levels of work pressure, non-work problems, etc. So if they see potentially problematic performance, they can take account of the immediate context and build that into their feedback.

    Without this knowledge, when managers and leaders provide developmental feedback they need to make space for a two-way conversation. Invite your team member to provide their perspective and context, ask them reflective questions to uncover their perceptions, and once you have established the context you can provide your considered feedback.

    4. Managers find it more difficult to support the team member afterwards

    Less consistent contact means it is harder for managers to monitor their team member’s progress on enacting developmental feedback.

    Again, the solution is to be more purposeful where you can no longer rely on happenstance:

    • Set up opportunities for the team member to practice their revised behaviour, with you or someone else observing.
    • Arrange creative learning interventions such as task-based shadowing.
    • Use Kluger and Nin’s Feedforward technique to help your team member prepare in advance.

  • Are you ready for the workforce of the future?

    Are you ready for the workforce of the future?

    The future of work isn’t just about technology – it means a different workforce too.

    So often, articles about the future of work focus on the technology. That’s not surprising bearing in mind the transformative role that generative AI will have. But there’s an equally important transformation that will occur in the next few years – the end of the ‘single dimensional’ workforce.

    At the CIPD’s Festival of Work, I heard a great panel discussing the future workforce, so I’d like to share some of the key ideas raised by the participants: Dr Sarosh Khan of HSM Advisory, Simon Reichwald of Bright Futures Resourcing, Mel Forbes from APSCO, and Roger Clements from Matrix.

    Roger Clements presented his 3 key factors for the future of work:

    Fundamental demographic and social shifts in the workforce.A change in the model of work – the end of the ‘single dimensional workforce’ where people complete their education in their early twenties, work for 40 years and retire in their mid-60s.The rapid growth of AI and intelligent automation.

    The panel suggested the following tips for addressing the first two points:

    1. Think about the challenges of an older workforce

    With longer lives, it is accepted that we will need to work longer – into our 70s or even 80s.

    With such a long time in the workforce, it is highly unlikely that someone will remain I the same sector or type of role for their entire working life. We have already seen an erosion in the traditional model of long service for an organisation – this will no doubt continue to decline.

    Thus we will need to provide opportunities for people to reskill and to return to learning, in order to take on new roles and tasks.
    There also needs to be better accommodation of the needs for older workers. Very few employers are thinking about the needs and desires of a 60plus worker – such as their external interests and roles.

    2. Personalisation is king

    The idea of a personalised job role is essential for younger people as well. Indeed, we have seen the end of the old model of the employer as the custodian of the worker’s career and the rise of the autonomous worker, crafting their own jobs and careers. Using flexibility to maintain their interests and side projects. vs autonomy, flexibility.

    Interestingly, one panel member suggested we should be talking of ‘work-life balance’ anymore. Instead we need to consider ‘work-life integration‘.

    3. Adapt your workforce models for flexibility and efficiency

    Organisations can harness these changes in workforce desires and technology change to create a more efficient operating model. Companies in the pharmaceuticals and technology sectors are moving ahead with contingent workforces – bringing in people as you need them for specific tasks or project phases.

    4. Promote belonging and connection

    One of the side-effects of workers exercising their autonomy and flexibility may well be a loss of the belonging and connection that many people gain from their work. Indeed, we saw in the pandemic how important work was in terms of the social role, in providing purpose and identity.

    Can organisations respond by making sure that people who work for them – no matter how long – feel at home and part of the bigger picture?

    5. Make the most of your multigenerational workforce

    A multigenerational workforce can add value and create benefits – but it is often portrayed more as a challenge.

    Individual conversations are vital in understanding specific needs and desires, rather than making assumptions based on large-scale surveys.

    Have programmes focused on skills development, available to all, not just a graduate development programme.

    Use reverse mentoring or reciprocal mentoring to bridge the generational divide and ensure skills, knowledge, understanding and experience are shared.

    Photo credit: Olly on Pexels

  • “Being a leader is not about you.” How leaders can achieve performance success

    “Being a leader is not about you.” How leaders can achieve performance success

    You’re a leader with a great organisational business strategy, operational plan and team objectives. So now the big question is – how do you get your team to perform and deliver success?

    One approach I encounter is focused on command and control. Some industries, companies, leaders and team members seem to favour a directive model of leadership. While a preference for instruction over facilitation may be appropriate in some circumstances, there is a risk it leads to a vicious cycle of micro-management and disempowered staff.

    But there is another way.

    “Being a leader is not about you. It’s about the people that are on your team and how you can help them to be successful.”

    Susan Vobejda

    Everything we know about performance shows that the greatest success is achieved by those people who are empowered and trusted, who are given both the tools and the autonomy.

    For me the key element in Susan Vobejda’s excellent advice is “how you can help” – the leader’s role is not to provide ‘one size fits all’ support. The challenge is to find out what each person needs to deliver the performance the leader needs.

    How can leaders do this? When I’m working with leaders and managers I recommend they develop individualised support for their team members by asking the following questions:

    1. What are your motivations and aspirations?

    Purpose prompts performance. Where leaders select or align tasks with people’s aspirations, this energises and encourages people to deliver.

    2. What do you need from me to meet your targets?

    The model of Servant Leadership emphasises the value in the leader helping employees to develop and deliver. By asking them what they want, the leader avoids top-down assumptions and empowers team members to identify their own support needs.

    3. What are your unique strengths and how can you use them best?

    Performance is enhanced by identifying strengths and generating opportunities to leverage them through alignment, selection or re-framing. A strengths focus means doing more of what you are best at and which energises you.

    Providing leaders listen and enable, they can achieve business success by helping their team members be successful.

    Photo credit: Fauxels on Pexels
  • Get it right first time: setting up for success, not debriefing disappointment

    Get it right first time: setting up for success, not debriefing disappointment

    I think the traditional approach to setting objectives for team members is back to front. Most managers set out the what when of the task. They monitor progress and provide feedback at the end.

    But this doesn’t mean that the job will be done right, let alone right first time.

    So, rather than waiting to spend time afterwards debriefing what happened and exploring how to improve next time, surely it is better to spend time beforehand setting up the team member so they succeed?

    Managers who prepare, don’t need to repair.

    This doesn’t have to be complex or time-consuming. I’ve trained many managers to use a quick and effective technique, based on Kluger and Nir’s Feed Forward approach, that creates a win-win:

    • Team members gain confidence that they can achieve the objective set.
    • Team members know what to do to deliver right first time.
    • Managers can relax, as through the conversation they understand the colleague’s approach, can agree or improve it before the work starts.
    • Remote and hybrid-working teams benefit the most, as this structure enables high quality autonomous working.

    Follow these steps for effective task management in just 10 minutes

    Start with these questions and be prepared to ask some follow-up open, non-directive, questions to make sure the team member is thinking analytically.

    1. Could you think of the last time you did a similar task successfully?
    2. What were the conditions that made this possible? First think about what you did, your capabilities and strengths.
    3. What did other people do to help you?
    4. What was the organisational context that led to the success?
    5. What can you replicate from that past success so that you can deliver this time?

    Finally, offer to put in place the management and organisational success factors that the individual has just identified, where possible and appropriate.

     

     

    Picture Credit: Mart Production on Pexels
  • Use your doubt productively: a new approach

    Use your doubt productively: a new approach

    Conventional wisdom says we want our leaders to be decisive, confident and certain. Whether politician or business leader, we’re reassured by their communication of a clear vision and how it will be achieved.

    But our desire for certainty has drawbacks.

    “We mistake charisma and confidence for competence” says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzi in Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It).

    I’m pretty sure you can think of someone whose popularity exceeds their performance, whose presentation outweighs their contribution, and whose over-optimistic confidence leaves no room for nuance and reason.

    So if the opposite of certainty is doubt, can we use it productively?

    This is an area explored by Nicola Reindorp in her blogposts and BBC Four Thought podcast. She argues that doubt has valuable place and should not be seen as the enemy:

    Doubt is at the heart of self-awareness

    Reflecting on how others might see your behaviour and questioning yourself on how can you be better is fundamental to emotional intelligence. This openness to change and other perspectives is driven by accepting self-doubt.

    Doubt is the bedrock of critical thinking

    Daniel Kahnemann’s book Thinking Fast and Slow exposed how the brain takes shortcuts, bamboozled by emotion and looking for easy answers. It takes doubt to question your thinking, to test the evidence and look for alternatives.

    Doubt drives a collaborative approach

    If you think you may not have all the answers, then you’re more likely to be collaborative. If you know your perspective is just one of many, then you’re opening the door to a more diverse and inclusive thinking process.

    Make doubt work for you

    Reindorp stresses that the key is to use a cycle of analysis to work through your doubts and not to get overwhelmed by them. Avoid the negative aspects of doubt by setting a limited time and space for rational exploration of the issues using thought exercises and models.

    This approach of focusing on rational processes can be seen in the following diagram, which I have adapted from The CEO Report – Embracing the paradoxes of leadership and the power of doubt from Said Business School. Avoid the negative factors – Hubris, Myopia, Angst and Paralysis – by focusing on four structured rational processes: Preparation, Challenge, Validation, and Awareness.

     

     

    “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.” Voltaire

     

    Photo credit: Bruce Mars on Unsplash
  • Successfully manage hybrid team performance with 3 proven strategies

    Successfully manage hybrid team performance with 3 proven strategies

    It’s the big problem that everyone is talking about, according to surveys, research and my own conversations with managers. How do you ensure your team is performing now you no longer see them daily in the office?

    A common mistake is building over-complex top-down monitoring systems. The more you check on people, the less trusted they feel, and this impacts negatively on how they feel about you and their work.

    So how do you balance performance, trust and accountability?

    1. Clear targets so everyone knows what is expected

    It sounds pretty basic, but I’m still finding managers who struggle with doing this consistently and effectively. Get into a regular pattern (e.g. weekly 1-1 calls) where you agree the what, the why and the when.

    Using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-limited) may be commonplace, and that’s because it works – but only if leaders put in the effort to define the sought outputs properly, enable high performance and define success criteria.

    2. Upward reporting to maintain accountability

    When it comes to monitoring the output, the key is for the team member to be given responsibility for telling you how they’ve done. This builds trust and accountability.

    You’ll need a simple structure so that you’re not bombarded with feedback from all your team members, and you can track performance consistently across the team.

    3. A coaching approach establishes and supports the culture

    A coaching approach is about people being more proactive, creative, engaged and empowered. Managers get great results from using non-directive conversations, focused on helping team members generate their own ideas and solutions.

    What have you found to be particularly effective in leading for high performance?

    Photo credit: Anna Shvets on Pexels
  • You can’t turn back the clock – you need to adapt to hybrid working

    You can’t turn back the clock – you need to adapt to hybrid working

    I am still hearing managers talking about when or how they will return to pre-pandemic ways of working.

    • “We need to get everyone back into the office – we need to manage performance.”
    • “There’s no point investing in our hybrid working approaches, it’s just a short-term blip”
    • “We are more creative when we all work together.”

    Maybe you’ve heard similar from your colleagues; maybe it’s you hoping to turn back the clock to how it was.

    But this is a short-sighted view.

    The changes we’ve seen – working from home, flexible working – have been coming for a long time. It’s just that the last few years have seen them taken out of a slow cooker and zapped in the microwave instead.

    Accept that change is here to stay

    Shifting mindset is easier if you focus on the practical. Try these three approaches:

    • Find the sticking plasters. Replace temporary fixes with sustainable, long-term solutions.
    • Test, learn, improve. Aim for iterative development not instant perfection.
    • Co-create. Working collaboratively with all staff helps generate a solution that is effective, empowering and actually enacted.

    “It is better to take change by the hand and lead it where you want it to go before it takes you by the throat and drags you in any direction.”

    As John Kotter graphically suggested, it is best to accept change and make it work for you.

    There are so many advantages to this new way of working, including more empowered staff, larger recruitment pools, a happier workforce and greater organisational resilience. It’s time to let go of the past and join the future.

    Picture credit: Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels
  • The missing keystone of hybrid working?

    The missing keystone of hybrid working?

    When people talk about hybrid working, you usually hear the positives – better work/life balance, greater freedom. And if they do talk about the challenges, you’d be forgiven for thinking the main concerns are logistics: IT systems, satellite offices. Challenges around productivity are disputed as signs of an old-fashioned, controlling mindset.

    But what about the people factor?

    Recent research from LHH flagged up some major concerns for people managers. There were conflicting opinions on who decides which people can be hybrid workers. Collaborating in a hybrid environment was a struggle for 35% of the surveyed employees.

    And the biggest problem the survey identified – a lack of specific training for managers.

    Why do we expect that managers who haven’t experienced hybrid working before will automatically have the right skills and knowledge?

    Ensuring fairness, providing support, onboarding, building a team and maintaining performance in a hybrid working environment needs fresh skills and new thinking.

    “A new way of working needs a new way of leading.”

    In an ever more precarious financial environment, you need your managers to have the right tools. The foundations of future problems are being laid now and to tackle them managers need specific training, coaching, learning and development.