Tag Best Corporate Cultures

Poor managerial behaviours negatively impact engagement, alignment, productivity, and retention.

Research has identified gaps between what people expect and their experience when working with their immediate manager.

Poor managers cost your company money when:

1. They don’t set clear goals with their people.
2. They don’t align goals to the team, departmental, and organizational objectives.
3. They don’t check in on progress.
4. They don’t provide feedback.
5. They don’t adjust their style based on the needs of the employee.
6. They don’t listen.
7. They don’t change (without training and support).

How?

1. They don’t set clear goals with their people.

About 70 percent of people want to have goal-setting conversations often or all the time, but only 36 percent do. When managers aren’t skilled in setting specific, trackable, relevant, attainable, and motivating goals, the result is multiple priorities, unclear action steps, and a poor line of sight on how work contributes to larger objectives.

“All good performance begins with a laser-like focus on goals,” so Identify 3 to 5 critical goals for each employee and make sure they are written down. Goals that are written down are 18 percent more likely to be achieved. Writing down the goal also makes it easier to review.

2. They don’t align goals to the team, departmental, and organizational objectives.

Only 14 percent of organizations report that their employees understand their company’s strategy and direction.

When people don’t know where their company is going, they can work on projects that are out of step with organizational objectives.

Make sure all team members are working on the highest-priority tasks. Ask managers to check in and review priorities with their people. Ensure the work is meaningful, on target, and contributes to overall organizational goals.

3. They don’t check in on progress.

More than 73 percent of people want to have goal-review conversations often or all the time, but only 47 percent do. And 26 percent say they rarely or never discuss current goals and tasks.

What gets measured gets managed.

Research conducted at Dominican University in California found that people who write down their goals, share them with someone else, and have regular weekly check-ins are 30 percent more likely to achieve those goals than people who do not.

4. They don’t provide feedback.

Research shows that 67 percent of people want to have performance-feedback conversations often or all the time, but only 29 percent do. And 36 percent say they rarely or never receive performance feedback.

Without feedback, people don’t have a way to make course corrections or to know how they are doing until it’s late in the process. No one feels good when work must be redone because of a lack of feedback.

A few key attributes of good feedback are:

– Focus on observable behaviours, not personality traits. Feedback should be clear and directive and should focus on concrete actions.

– Keep a positive end goal in mind. Paint a positive picture of the desired outcome that gives people a vision to work toward.

– Offer to be an accountability partner. Change is hard. Offer to provide appropriate direction and support as needed.

5. They don’t adjust their style based on the needs of the employee.

Nearly 54 percent of managers use the same leadership style for all people in all situations, regardless of whether a direct report is new to a task or already an expert. Half the time, this results in a manager either over-supervising or under-supervising.

The best managers tailor their management style to the needs of their employees. For example, if an employee is new to a task, a successful manager will use a highly directive style with clearly set goals and deadlines. If an employee struggles with a task, the manager will use equal measures of direction and support. If the employee is an expert at a task, a manager will use a delegating style on the current assignment and focus instead on coming up with new challenges and future growth projects.

6. They don’t listen.

When I ask clients and audience members, “What is the biggest mistake leaders make when working with others?” Forty-one percent of the respondents identified inappropriate communication or poor listening.

Here’s a three-step model to help managers slow down and focus on what people share.

– Explore—ask open-ended questions such as, “Can you tell me more about that?” or “How do you think that will go?” or “What does that mean?”

– Acknowledge—respond with comments such as, “You must be feeling …” or “So, if I hear you correctly, what you’re saying is ….”

– Respond—now that you understand the direct report’s point of view, you can carefully move forward with a possible response.

7. They don’t change (without training and support).

Most new managers—60 percent—underperform or fail in their first assignments. Worse yet, as Harvard researcher Linda Hill has found, managerial habits developed by new managers often continue to hobble them for the rest of their careers.

With two million people across North America stepping into their first managerial position each year, getting people the training they need is critical.

Unfortunately, research shows that most managers don’t receive formal training until ten years into their careers!

I suggest you rethink the traditional approach to who gets trained in the organization.

My suggestions?

1. Don’t hold your best people back—in fact, don’t hold anyone back. Why not train everybody who desires it?
2. Show everyone you value them and are willing to invest in their development.
3. Adopt inclusive policies that identify and provide people with the training they need to build leadership bench strength, bring out the best in people, and create a strong work culture.

Better leadership practices have been positively associated with increased engagement, alignment, productivity, and performance.

Research has identified that better leadership practices—if fully employed—could be worth as much as a 7 percent increase in profits!

For leadership development professionals, these seven areas provide an opportunity to take a more targeted approach to improve manager performance in each region.

Here are five ways to get started.

1. Take a look at the overall design of your performance management process.

Conduct a quick internal assessment. Are managers following best practices in setting specific, motivating, attainable, relevant, and trackable goals? What percentage of employees have current goals written down?

Individuals and organizations achieve more when goals are identified, written down, and reviewed consistently.

Read more about performance management

2. Double-check on goal alignment at the team and department level.

Make sure that all team members are working on the highest-priority tasks. Ask managers to check in and review priorities with their people.

Ensure the work is meaningful, on target, and contributes to overall organizational goals. Efficiency improves when everyone is clear on goals and moving in the same direction.

Read more about goal alignment.

3. Please look at how much time your managers spend with their people.

Everyone benefits from regular coaching and performance review.

Monitoring progress and providing feedback are two key ways for a manager to stay involved and partner with an employee to achieve goals. I suggest leaders meet with their direct reports at least twice a month to discuss progress toward goals and to address employee needs for direction and support.

Read more about time management.

4. Identify what individuals need to succeed in their high-priority tasks.

Managers need to adjust their leadership style to meet each person’s needs, depending on their experience and confidence with the tasks they are assigned.

With proper levels of direction and support, people can move through stages of development and reach peak performance faster.

Surprisingly, without training, only 1 percent of managers are skilled at identifying and delivering all four styles when needed, whether directing, coaching, supporting, or delegating.

5. Review your performance review process.

In many organizations, goals are set at the beginning of the year and not seen again until the review process at the end of the year.

I recommend that managers conduct a series of mini-reviews throughout the year—every 90 days is the recommended standard. This allows leaders to make mid-course corrections. It also eliminates surprises for direct reports and keeps the partnership between the manager and direct report solid and vibrant.

 Read more about goals.

Final Thoughts

A renewed focus on leadership development can significantly affect an organization’s performance. Research shows that when managers meet the needs of their people, organizations benefit through higher levels of discretionary effort, work performance, and intention to remain and collaborate more effectively.

How are the managers in your organization impacting your bottom line?

Give your leadership development process a review.

Great managers aren’t born—they’re trained.

Get started today by emailing me at  Steve@StevenArmstrong.ca.

It’s impossible to avoid hearing about AI these days.

From those who praise it to those who warn about an impending apocalypse because of it, there is no shortage of opinions or predictions about it.

Instead of discussing AI’s pros and cons or capabilities, I will try something different in this post.

Today I will interview an AI by asking ChatGPT questions about leadership!

What do you think about ChatGPT’s responses?

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Unlike the military, which is used to manage battlefield stress, civilians generally receive perfunctory support when they deal with trauma.

I recently read a 2002 Harvard Business Review (HBR) article titled Leading Through Trauma. In the paper, the authors argue that:  

“Although the human capacity to show compassion is universal, some organizations suppress it while others create an environment in which compassion is not only expressed but spread.”

They have a good point. 

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Whether trauma happens at the individual level – unexpected medical diagnosis – or the collective level – a disaster strikes a community – the fallout is real and calls for leaders to express more than empathy. 

The article explains that leaders can meet this challenge by understanding the need for meaning and taking appropriate action.  

• Meaning occurs when people try to make sense of the traumatic event and often find themselves soul-searching – asking difficult questions.  
• Leaders can take action by making it ok for people to process the tough questions, providing knowledgeable resources to support the effort, establishing routines that offer stability, and creating networks of those who can learn from and help each other. 

As I considered the article, I felt we all long for this type of leadership as we face the complexity of today’s world and experience both heightened awareness of traumatic events and a lack of humanity.   

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Considering these thoughts, consider who around you might be dealing with a traumatic event and explore how you might meet their needs. 

By the way, this isn’t just a top-down leadership idea… 

A few years ago, a co-worker’s brother passed away. The funeral was held in a small community several hours outside of Calgary.

Family and friends filled the building.

I looked around at the many faces who had shown up to mourn the loss and celebrate this man’s life.

Except for my friend and co-worker, I didn’t know a soul,

I saw my co-worker; he greeted me like a long-lost friend, swept me by the arm, led me to the front of the hall and sat me down with the family. 

I knew my friend was going through a traumatic event and showed up to support me.

He likely would never have noticed, nor held it against me, if I chose not to attend the service. But he certainly appreciated that I was there.

Learn more about how you can be a Better Leader.

Please consider those in your life who may be going through a difficult time this week. Reach out to them. You don’t have to jump on a plane and travel halfway across the country. You can pick up the phone, email, or drop a card in the mail.  

I think that we all agree that we need more humanity in the world; take this opportunity to provide it.

Based on articles by Stav Ziv and  Melody Wilding

Have you ever felt an ominous lump in your throat during a meeting? Maybe you’ve noticed tears forming and then slowly gathering, giving the office a slight blur as you pretend to cough them away.

I have.

When my last job ended, I felt a massive relief as I was very unhappy with what was happening around me. At the same time, emotions were running close to the surface as I loved my work and the people I worked with, and my ego was getting beat up because I felt like I was failing.

I felt my breath catching and prayed no one would look at me, let alone ask me a question, because, at times, I felt the moment I tried to speak, I’d break down.

If you’ve been there, you might also have wondered how to stop crying or how to avoid or delay getting there in the first place.

You’re certainly not alone. A recent survey from the staffing firm Robert Half found that 45% of respondents, all workers in the U.S., had cried in an office environment.

Read about me and being an Ass

Is it okay to cry at work?

The short answer is that it depends—on what kind of situation you’re in when the tears come, how frequently, who’s around when it does, and your work environment.

I come from a military background, where If you cried, you had better have a bone sticking out of you. Most people believe crying can have negative consequences. According to the Robert Half survey, roughly 70% of workers and CFOs agreed that it “can undermine career prospects” or that “crying at work is perceived as weak or immature.”

Only 30% thought that “crying has no negative effect—it shows you’re human.”

There are situations where it’s best not to cry, like when you’re an employee talking to a supervisor (especially if you have a complicated relationship), a woman in a group of men, a presenter standing in front of others in power in a tense situation, or at odds with a colleague.

Read more about wearing your Heart on Your Sleeve

Kimberly D. Elsbach (Ph.D. Stanford University) is a Professor of Management; she adds, “The dangerous part of crying is it repositions us farther down the power position,” Dudley says. “In any situation when we cry, we risk losing our power, credibility, and believability.”

What’s Gender Got to Do With It? Men who cry at work are often judged harshly. Sadly, women who cry may reinforce stereotypical attitudes toward gender in the workplace.

4 Ways to Stop Crying (or at Least Avoid or Delay It)

Depending on the situation, you don’t necessarily have to consider crying at work a career killer.

But here are a few things you can do to tamp down oncoming tears, delay them long enough to find a safe place to let them out or make you less likely to cry in the first place.

1. Take a Deep Breath

A common suggestion for avoiding tears is to practice deep breathing when you feel the waterworks coming on.

Take a Break and Get Away From the Situation

If you think you might start crying and you’re in a setting where you don’t want that to happen, the best thing you can do is remove yourself from the situation. If you’re leading a meeting, you can tell everyone to take a 10-minute break and reconvene. Otherwise, you can quietly step out—people always go to the bathroom.

3. Stop the Thoughts That Are Making You Cry (This’ll Take Some Practice)

If you can’t physically escape the situation, that doesn’t mean you can’t mentally get away. Whatever provokes your crying response, try to put that out of your mind and think about something unrelated instead.

4. Eliminate or Reduce Stressors in Your Life, if You Can

You can avoid crying well before you find yourself in a tear-inducing situation. Ensure you’re getting enough sleep, adequately fed, and hydrated. Try to reduce or eliminate other stressors in your life, too.

The Argument for Not Avoiding Tears at Work

Next time you think about how to stop crying, consider that it might not always be such a terrible thing, and you can help make it just one more normal response in the spectrum of what’s acceptable at work.

And don’t forget that you can play a role when you’re crying and when you notice someone else in the office call. “We can only start changing this if we start to change how we think about it with others,”

So don’t be so hard on yourself if you occasionally feel the tears coming at work.

And don’t be so hard on your colleagues if and when they cry at work.

Crying is a sign of our humanity, and we want to see the society in our colleagues and leaders.”

The goal of a leader is to ensure that your team finds a solution to their problem.

To do that, they have to know what the problem is. You must know how to ask open-ended leadership questions to ensure successful conversations. Open-ended questions are essential for any leadership strategy because they allow you to understand your employee’s wishes and needs with subtlety.

What Is an Open-Ended Leadership Question?

An open-ended question is not one with a simple answer. When understanding an employee’s motivations and goals, you don’t want curt “yes” or “no” answers; you want them to deliberate and talk at length.

You want to know their point of view, and open-ended questions make that happen. The more the employee says in response to the first question, the more details you have to ask further questions.

The clearest example of an open-ended versus a closed-ended question is “Do you have any questions?” versus “What questions can I answer?”. The first could prompt a simple “no,” and then there is a lull in the conversation. The second, however, starts your listener to deliberate longer and ask several questions they may not have thought of.

Questions usually asked by leaders include fact-gathering questions, goal-oriented questions, and rapport-building questions. All of these are good and useful to the leadership process, but each needs to allow for an open-ended answer and tie in with the larger goals and needs of the employee.

Benefits of Open-Ended Question

Many things, asking open-ended questions equips you with better leadership skills. For example:

• It allows you to build trust and rapport with the employee, as it demonstrates your interest.
• You can learn more about the employee wants and preferences and define needs, goals, challenges, and other data.
• It places you as the expert in the discussion, presenting your value. 

Open-Ended Rapport-Building Questions

Rapport-building questions start the conversation, get your employees talking, and help you understand the person you’re working with. It can also make you both more comfortable with a more personal connection and allow you to begin gathering the necessary information.

Examples:

• • Can you tell me about your priorities for this meeting?
  • What is your background?
  • How is business going?
  • Please tell me about your upcoming plans for the year.
  • What would you like to see improve?
  • What is your biggest challenge right now?
  • Could you list your concerns in this area?

 Open-Ended Qualifying Questions

These questions can help determine the interest level of your employee in how you’ve approached the conversation. It can also let you know how to proceed. Not every employee will buy what you’re selling, and it’s essential to figure out how much an employee is committed.

Examples:

• • What is your timeline for this to be resolved?
  • What do you see as the next steps moving forward?
  • How do you decide this?
  • When should you assess these solutions?
  • How should we move forward after this?

Open-Ended Priority Questions

These questions help discover and address your employees’ roadblocks or concerns and further understand their priorities and needs. These questions should be carefully constructed so as not to steer the conversation toward something that can’t be fixed. Be sure to treat each employee individually, and don’t assume you know their priorities based only on similar customers.

Examples:

• What would you like to achieve in the upcoming year?
• How is that problem changing how you operate?
• What isn’t working in the current setup?
• What improvements are you hoping to gain from this?
• What would prevent you from making this change right now?

 Open-Ended Discovery Questions

A discovery question should be clarifying and probing, provoking thought and deliberation in your employee. The better you understand the employee’s wishes, the better you can tailor a solution to their needs.

Examples:

• • What are your intentions for the future?
  • Can you elaborate on that?
  • What are your reservations?
  • What needs to be fixed with the current process?
  • What have I not covered that you’d like to hear more about?

 Open-Ended Goal-Based Questions

These help you discover the wishes and wants of your employees if you listen closely. When you know what’s holding them back from achieving their goals, you can better assist them with a solution. Focusing on the benefits of your product and how they attune to the purposes of the employee can also help close a deal.

Examples:

• • Why do you think this solution isn’t working?
  • How is the problem affecting your work?
  • What do you want this meeting to achieve?
  • How should we assess the success of this?
  • What could we do to avoid similar problems?

 Responding to the Answers to Open-Ended Questions

Be sure to ask your questions without rushing into them or being pushy. Show your genuine interest. Your questions should make your employees talk for as long as they want, and you must be sure to listen to them and provide helpful conversation. Be patient and don’t interrupt; everything you hear can benefit a sale.

Learning How to Ask the Right Questions

Increasing your experience with leadership discussions will allow you to keep a better ear out for helpful information.

When you know what to look for, you will find that subsequent conversations will go easier.

You are not your 2 AM conversations;

not your 3 AM nightmares;

not your 4 AM regrets

– Mark Dimaisip

I don’t mind telling you that business could always be better.

Or I miss the energies created by surrounding myself with a powerful team.

Or that I am often awake at 4:00.

So maybe that is why Mark Dimaisip’s poem resonated with me, as did the Hidden Brain podcast episode on regret.

Everyone has regrets.

Some say regret is the most common emotion.

Amy Summerville, who runs the Regret Lab at Miami University in Ohio, says:

‘we ruminate thoughts that spring unwanted to mind, and we chew them over without getting anything new out of them, they’re just repeatedly, intrusively, becoming part of our mental landscape.’

We don’t have time for all of my regrets; besides, that is why they invented rye.

But I would like to touch on my three leadership regrets that run rampant in my mind at 4:00 AM

1. Anger

Given the right set of triggers, I have a temper that can flash and lash out.

I’ve written about this and don’t understand where it comes from.

When it happens, it diminishes me, my leadership, my organization, and my people.

I have learned to manage it by being more aware of situations that may trigger the flash and trying to excuse myself, walk away, and disengage.

Read More About Not Being An Ass

2. Mediocrity

Far too often, I have allowed people to push me toward mediocrity.

As leaders, we know the right thing to do, yet people and systems cause us to settle.

And when we settle, nobody is happy.

People-pleasing only creates soup sandwiches, a mess where no one is satisfied.

Read More About Soup Sandwiches

3. Kindness

The business decisions I regret the most are those I wish I had acted out with more kindness.

Too often, I made decisions based on what I, our bosses or the mission demanded.

Decisions are made without humanity and care for the people impacted.

I know some of the decisions I have made hurt people.

That doesn’t make them wrong or even bad decisions.

But I wish I could get mulligans on a few where I could have been more honest, kind, and generous.

Final Thoughts

My experience tells me that your leadership experience would undoubtedly be happier with less anger, less mediocrity, and more kindness.

Happiness is a choice.

Focus on the positives.

Be self-aware.

Practice deliberate, purposeful, and thoughtful actions.

Understand that ambition and success will not lead to a life of fewer regrets.

Don’t get caught up in what you don’t have.

Be mindful and purposeful of the opportunities right in front of you.