Managers who know when to have a laugh and not take themselves too seriously tend to be some of the best. Their joie de vivre makes for a happy workplace and fosters healthy relationships with their team.

We will all have experienced occasions, however, when a manager has inappropriately bookended a far from light-hearted message with quiet chuckles. This is what is known as laughter padding – and it can be far from funny!

Laughter padding is a very common reflex that its perpetrators use without even realising they are doing it.

Much of the time, this innate need to smile or laugh can emerge in managers or executives who have to discuss something uncomfortable, deliver unfavourable news, or ask something of someone they suspect that individual will not want to do. And the problem with this tic is that it may undermine their authority.

Now, it is not uncommon for managers to feel a bit out of their depth. A recent study found that managers significantly lacked confidence in their ability to talk about potentially sensitive issues such as work flexibility and employee wellbeing. These are the situations when the laughter padding reflex can kick in.

In their subconscious they are trying to ‘soften the blow’ of their words by padding them with laughter – but to the person receiving the message this can easily be perceived as the manager failing to take the issue seriously; ‘This is no laughing matter!’

This can lead to a range of communication issues with a senior member of staff and their team. The urgency of a request, or the clarity of feedback, will be at risk of falling flat, and these problems that could have been avoided are now being given the opportunity to snowball.

So, what can a manager do to prevent this?

A lot of the time, a person doing this habitually will probably be nervous to some degree. The fear of having to speak publicly, known as glossophobia, is a very common one, with up to 75% of the population being affected by it. In this situation, a management coach would be able to help them improve their confidence by guiding them in understanding why this laughter padding response is being triggered.

Interestingly, the reflex is believed to stem from humans’ instinctive need to gasp for air to oxygenate the muscles. We take deep breaths to prepare for an emergency or in the face of danger, and in these scenarios the ‘danger’ would be the possible repercussions of telling someone off or speaking in a difficult circumstance.

To combat this, a coach might suggest that if the manager knows they are going to have to have a conversation that they suspect may not be well-received, they rehearse what they are going to say. Practicing it a couple of times will make it easier to approach the discussion.

As well as this, a coach will help them to distinguish when it is and isn’t appropriate to laughter pad. The reality is, laughter padding in the right context is a great tool to increase managerial approachability. But the key to this is chuckling when it is more genuine, and fits well with the tone of the conversation. This way, when they are having to have a more difficult discussion and are not padding it, the person listening will realise that this is a more serious situation.

It’s all about finding that balance, so if you think you or your managers might be laughter padders, you can reach out to our team of coaches for help in turning laughter into a leadership asset – not a derailer.

Black History Month aims to recognize the achievements of Black people and their contributions made to history, and this year in the UK, the celebrations are centred around the contributions of black women, as well as coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush.

First celebrated in the UK in 1987, Black History Month has become a huge cultural and political event – especially in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that were sparked from the racially-motivated killings of George Floyd and Belly Mujinga.

Even as British society becomes more actively conscious of the value that Black Britons have brought and continue to bring to the UK, we can see that they are still faced with severe disparity – especially in the workplace.

Black workers only make up 1.8% of senior leadership positions in the UK, despite comprising of 3.2% of the working population, according to research from the Chartered Management Institute. In addition to this, less than half (47%) of respondents said their organization was taking active steps to increase the proportion of employees from diverse ethnic groups through its recruitment practices, and 67% said their company was not taking any action in relation to ethnicity pay gay reporting and action plans.

And this picture doesn’t get any better the further we zoom out – in the US, the first Black CEO of a Fortune 500 company was not promoted to this role until 1987. Now, if we fast forward to the 2021 research gathered by SHRM, there were only four new Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, two Black men and two Black women. This equates to 0.8% of Black people in a CEO position, compared with 86% of White men.

This is a stark realisation that in a month where we celebrate the value and contributions of Black people, they are still heavily undervalued in the corporate world.

That’s why I find it so important to remind people why we still celebrate Black History Month. Because we are still on the journey to equality and the eradication of prejudices. Therefore, it is crucial that employers are using this month to reflect on their diversity, equity and inclusion policies, as well as listening to the voices of their employees of colour, so that they can show they are continuously committed to changing for the better.

Racism is deeply, deeply rooted, and it is still very much present in many of our society’s systems and structures. The first thing most organizations can and should do is admit that, to some degree, there are biases and inequalities still present in their workplace culture. As these prejudices are systemic and subconscious, they can be easily overlooked due to being less overt. However, talking about disparity, shining a light on the fact that the experiences and opportunities for Black people are different and scarcer than their White counterparts, is a step all employers need to be taking to work towards achieving true equality.

Cultivating an inclusive environment at work that leverages differences is a continuous journey – it requires consistent work and dedication, but it produces real, beneficial results for your team and your company. Black History Month demonstrates all the incredible things that have been achieved by Black trailblazers over the course of history, and employers who are educating themselves and their people around this will better understand that the best innovations come from diversified perspectives.

To continue this discussion and look at how you can take advantage of all the opportunities that being inclusive has to offer, get in touch with me at marty@orgshakers.com

As coaching continues to grow and many organizations are increasingly happy to invest in bringing in external coaches, the reach of this valuable tool can be significantly increased when we also take time to build the coaching capability of managers.

Research from an ICF Global Coaching Study found that 99% of workers who had been coached were satisfied or very satisfied, and 96% of them said they would repeat the process. However, most managers that I talk to admit to finding coaching ‘scary’ or ‘nerve-wracking’; some of them worry that they won’t be equipped to deal with the level of vulnerability that might arise, while others simply worry that they won’t be able to ask the right questions. So, what often happens is managers default to mentoring their employees and then call it coaching.

As we are in National Mentoring Month, I’ve been reflecting on how both are valuable and whether there’s a way we can support more managers in getting the balance right. This can even be as part of the same conversation if managers have a simple structure for how they might do this. After all, professional coaches sometimes offer suggestions to their coachees!

What I would suggest is that the first step is to simplify the coaching process. Everyone will probably feel comfortable getting someone they are coaching to:

Get clear on what the problem is that they want to solve and what the desired outcome looks like.
What the options are to get there – including obstacles they might encounter.
And what the steps are that they can take to get there.

I often recommend that managers read Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit. But, even if they don’t have time to read the whole book, they should have time to read one of the many articles that outline his 7 questions designed to help leaders coach.

If managers spend the first part of a development conversation focused on encouraging their employees to explore their own ideas and take time to think differently, I think it’s then highly complementary to build on this with appropriate mentoring.

After all, your boss has often experienced the exact same challenges you now face, so why wouldn’t they want to share their wisdom? Perhaps what’s key in the transition from coaching to mentoring in this situation, is avoiding the word “should” and clearly stating that while this is what you experienced, and/or did, that it won’t necessarily be the right solution for you. Instead, position it as something to consider.

I read a statistic recently published by Ten Thousand Coffees that over 60% of employees would consider leaving their current company for one with more mentorship opportunities. So anything we can do to support managers by leveraging both coaching and mentoring effectively has got to be a good thing!

For more information around coaching and how it can benefit you as a client, get in touch with me at anya@orgshakers.com

There has been a bit of a theme emerging in the world of work.

First it was the ‘quiet quitting’ phenomenon that swept across the 2022 workplace landscape.

Hot on its heels came the trend for ‘quiet firing’ which emerged in response to workers quietly quitting.

And so, to the newest edition – ‘quiet hiring’.

The term has been coined by the leader of Gartner’s research team, Emily Rose McRae, who describes ‘quiet hiring’ as a way to address an immediate need for the company. The business could hire external contractors. Or, if money is tight, they might shuffle existing team members around to fill the short-term gap that has opened up.

The latter approach is, however, higher risk as uprooting people from their roles might just prompt them to begin quietly quitting! Add to that the danger of someone feeling their original role was not valued if it could be put on hold and you have a recipe for a host of unintended consequences further down the line.

The problem with having all of these ‘quiet’ approaches is that they are all being carried out, well, quietly!

Employees found themselves struggling to communicate their need for boundaries at work, and so began to quietly build them themselves. Employers were struggling with communicating with staff who they felt were underperforming, and so began to quietly push them away. And now we have companies who are trying to quietly repair skill gaps, which could result in more quiet quitting … which will, in turn, lead to more quiet firing.

It is a vicious, surreptitious cycle which could be avoided if employers and employees spoke up rather than clammed up about their mutual needs and expectations.

This means encouraging and supporting a dialogue between managers and their direct reports about their wellbeing needs, as well as managers knowing how to help employees they feel may be underperforming.

And when it comes to filling those short-term gaps, the best approach is to be open with your people about what the company needs to do – and how you plan to do it. Then sit back and listen to what they have to say, because a productive two-way dialogue is always better than the sound of silence.

To get in touch with us about any communication and culture needs you may have, head over to our contact page.

With the pandemic altering the fundamental structure of work, many employers have been wading through several stages of grief as they realize there is no “returning to normal” and remote/hybrid working models are here to stay. As we venture into a new year – three years after the pandemic began – employers appear to be entering the final stage of grief: acceptance. And this ‘acceptance’ can help organizations thrive with the introducing of a Chief Remote Officer (CRO).

According to the State of Remote Work Report 2022, 60% of employers in the US require staff to work remotely or in a hybrid capacity. Now is the time for employers to embed remote work into their foundations and use it as an organizational tool. Employers who are intentional about remote working strategies will be able to build, innovate, and leverage their benefits, and this means clearly establishing how remote work will fit into your company and its culture.

This is where a CRO proves incredibly valuable; having an executive leader dedicated to optimizing remote and hybrid workers ensures a business can create and accelerate opportunity. The CRO finds ways of leveraging remote work in a healthy, productive, and profitable way for employers and employees alike.

They also design policies and programs that remove an individual’s work location as a critical factor for success. With McKinsey finding over 90 million American workers now working remotely or in a hybrid setting, the need for a specialized executive to coordinate and care for this aspect of work has become even more necessary.

Many more responsibilities fall under a CRO – establishing the most effective communication protocols, exchanging and gaining access to shared data, maintaining the organization’s culture, and repurposing the workplace to meet today’s business and workforce needs. Expanding the C-suite to include this new role reflects how many companies’ dynamics have evolved since COVID. Employee needs have changed – people value their time, recognize its importance, and are largely in favor of a remote working lifestyle.

Establishing a role like the CRO allows an organization to move away from being constantly reactive to remote and hybrid work. It is a proactive approach to meeting today’s business and workforce needs. Now is the time to begin looking at how you can best leverage this organizational tool – whether that be from an economic perspective, a people strategy perspective, or to further your environmental, social, and governance agenda. To discuss this topic further, please get in touch with me at amanda@orgshakers.com

As we venture into this new year, none of us can be sure what the future holds. However, with ‘unprecedented’ events becoming commonplace this decade, there are sure to be more than a few surprises in store for employers over the next 12-months.

But the truth about ‘surprises’ is that very often we will have had an idea they were coming our way. So, whether it’s based on the extrapolation of an established trend or simply ‘gut instinct’ based on years’ of experience, we asked the OrgShakers to predict what will be surprising us in 2023.

Stephanie Rodriguez believes that many organizations will be wrong-footed by the increase in employees putting boundaries around their working hours. A significant proportion of business leaders and front-line managers still cling to the belief that staff ‘prove’ themselves by how long they work and their ability to always be available. With the rising popularity of remote working, it has become even more difficult to adhere to normal working hours due to the ability to work whenever from wherever. And so 2023 is going to see the misnomer that is ‘quiet quitting’ actually becoming a necessary step for the physical and mental wellbeing of employees. Learning to navigate this new attitude towards work is going to be a new challenge in the coming twelve months.
Therese Procter believes that businesses may falter due to organizational paralysis. Quite simply, the past 2-3 years have been so overwhelming that many leaders are struggling to identify a way forward. Therefore, she believes that we are going to see many more organizations reaching out to consultancies about people trends and how to navigate through difficult times. In addition, 2023 is the year of power skills for those in charge – she believes there is going to be a surge of leaders developing their emotional intelligence and empathetic skills, as this will help them to really understand the evolving needs of their team.
Amanda Holland believes that leaders may be surprised by the increasing importance their employees place on ‘making a difference’. The social agenda has been brought to the forefront in 2022, and now many people want to work somewhere that they believe reflects their values. Allowing employees to play their part in driving the social impact of the organization could enhance recruitment and retention result and accelerate collaboration and innovation in the workplace. She also believes there is going to be a rise in demand for remote work in the metaverse, as people seek a more realistic human connection in a virtual space.
Sayid Hussein agrees that there is a greater focus on the digital employee experience, adding that this may also accelerate the adoption of the four-day working week. 100 UK companies have already signed up for a permanent four-day week which he believes will act as a catalyst to propel this idea forward. Firms will, however, need guidance in navigating this new way of work.
Pamela Kingsland predicts that a surprise employers may encounter in the coming year is the rise of individualisation in corporate culture. The demand for flexible work schedules, tailored rewards and benefits, and personal development plans will continue to rise, as well as the emerging concept of individualised wellness. This would be data driven, and focus on people having customized gut biome treatments, individualised vitamins, and tailored exercises to a person’s specific metabolism, as well as neurological fingerprinting. Bodily health and brain health will play a big part in optimizing people to their full potential, not just as workers but as human beings.
And finally, one of the biggest surprises that Alisa Cardenas believes employers may see is the establishment of white-collar trade unions. There has been a significant rise in employee consciousness as we have emerged from lockdown. People have become more inclined to question the five-day, nine-to-five structure. Remote and hybrid work has introduced a new type of flexibility and being faced with a pandemic has caused a mass recalibration of what people value. We may see this begin to emerge through new unions being established in the corporate sectors.

What we do know for certain is that 2022 brought with it many unexpected surprises that had a great effect on the working world, and so as we venture into 2023, OrgShakers are ready to help employers optimize every opportunity that comes their way. To get in touch with us about your people strategy or organization dynamics, head over here.

2022 was yet another memorable addition to the 21^st century’s ‘roaring twenties’.

With the working world still adapting to the changes that the pandemic brought, as well as the rise of the metaverse and the cost-of-living crisis, there are a lot of things that employers, upon reflection, may want to leave in the past so that they can focus on the new year – and new opportunities – that lay ahead.

The OrgShakers team, therefore, have put together a list of thoughts that we think organizations should leave in 2022 in order to propel them upwards in the year to come:

Amanda Holland believes that employers need to leave behind the idea of returning to how things used to be pre-COVID. Executives need to shift their mindset from treading water until things ‘return to normal’ to learning how to thrive in the ‘new normal’. The needs of the workforce have changed significantly, and this needs to be embraced in 2023.

Building on this, Stephanie Rodriguez advises that organizations stop placing an emphasis on material in-office ‘benefits’. Free snacks, ping pong tables and nap pods are all great and fun additions to an office space, but they are also almost a given now. Instead, companies should start placing more emphasis on benefits that truly matter to most people, such as mental health assistance, flexible working, advancement opportunities and improved leave policies. This would more accurately reflect the benefits that people care about and seek out the most.
Therese Procter believes that leaders need to be leaving behind the belief that asking for help is a sign of weakness. After the recently missed penalty in the England V France World Cup game, former international soccer professional Roy Keane made the point that ‘pressure will disturb even the most professional and most calm’, and this is a mindset that leaders should be adopting. The past year has brought with it countless pressures and surprises in the political, economic and social climate, and so looking ahead, executives need to focus on removing this stigma around seeking out a coach or an advisor to help them, as this will only result in making them stronger and more capable.
According to Sayid Hussein, employers need to be leaving behind their apathy to cybersecurity. With 2022 seeing more cyber-attacks than ever, it is important that companies begin to improve their security measures in order to keep their data secure. Provident Bank recently conducted a survey for small businesses which found that only half of companies felt they were fully prepared for an attack. And with phishing being the most popular form of attack this year – 83% of companies said that this was how they were targeted – it is critical that organizations are leaving behind their flippancy to online security and focusing on strengthening it in the coming year.
For Alisa Cardenas, it’s about organizations leaving behind the ambiguity of where their employees are investing their 401K contributions, and instead encouraging staff to invest in their values and the values of the company. Looking at companies like Invest Your Values, leaders can start to nourish their environmental, social and governance agenda by encouraging their teams to invest their money into mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that have a more positive environmental and social impact.
And, finally, Pamela Kingsland believes that the way we look at business and capitalism as a whole needs to be left behind, and instead urges business leaders to begin humanising capitalism. As discussed in Hubert Joly’s new book, companies need to find ways to link an individual’s search for meaning to the overall purpose of the business, as this will allow for a more sustainable and wellness-focused workplace.

If you want to get in touch with us surrounding any of these points, you can do so here!

Creating the conditions which enable employees to be engaged and motivated should be a top priority for employers. Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce report, which found that only 21% of employees were actively engaged at work, sadly shed light on the fact that employee engagement is not being done effectively, or even prioritised, and the result is unhappy employees. This unhappiness will affect performance and will lead inevitably to unhappy customers and less successful business outcomes.

Employee engagement should be an important year-round focus, but we can do some things to help create a ‘reset’ at the beginning of the New Year and support our teams to reengage with their work. 16^th January 2023 will be ‘Blue Monday’ in the UK, so called (and coined by a psychologist Cliff Arnall) because of people returning to work post-holiday to bad weather, debt and low levels of motivation. This does not apply to everyone of course, but how can employers help counteract this?

The end of year holiday period creates a ‘pause’ which people are often desperately looking forward to. With our ‘always on’ working lives, and what seems to have been an epidemic of overwork this year, many people are limping towards the finishing line of what has felt like the Marathon of 2022. The joy of having some rest time with family and friends also creates time and space for people to think about their lives, the good and the ‘not so good’, and in particular their work lives, and how this aligns with their personal aspirations.

Rather than just hoping that people will come back from their holidays refreshed and suddenly regain engagement, we are suggesting that employers need to be proactive this new year and enable a January ‘reset’.

A key part of a leader’s role is to tap into what motivates their people, to carry the torch for the organisational purpose and create excitement about what they are to achieve in 2023 through their ability to create an engaging story of what might be.

We would like to suggest a few things businesses can do to enable a reset:

Make a point of welcoming everyone back. This may sound obvious but do we do it? The best way to start the year from a leadership perspective is to have a proper welcome back catch up with all your team members. Dedicate some time early in the year to get together, share holiday stories and discuss aspirations for the upcoming year. Not just going straight in talking about detailed task objectives but discussing what they would aspire to see happen in 2023. Human beings like to feel valuable, and feel that they belong, so these conversations are vitally important in maintaining the ‘social glue’ that ties teams together and in ensuring we value our colleagues and humanise our workplaces.

Restating and realigning purpose. Rather than just carrying on where we left off in December, the New Year gives you as leader the ideal opportunity to restate the organisational purpose; to reconnect your people with the ‘why’ we do what we do. You can reconnect your team members with their role in achieving the overall purpose of the organisation and remind them of their purpose and their value to you and the organisation. We often have a ‘look back’ at the end of a year but are less inclined to have a ‘look forward’ at the beginning of the New one as we throw ourselves straight into the work. Whatever happened last year, we are now looking forward and need to focus on what we can do in the future. This ‘look forward’ reminder also ensures that everyone is venturing into this new year with a clear sense of what the company is aiming to achieve, and this restatement of purpose can help strengthen team bonds as well as create alignment and improve the speed at which these goals are met.

My suggested reading for points 1. and 2. is ‘The Heart of Business’ by Hubert Joly – his personal playbook for achieving extraordinary outcomes by putting people and purpose at the heart of business.

Speaking of goals…we all know it’s a common tradition to set new year’s resolutions for our personal goals, but there’s no reason why companies shouldn’t support this ethos. Asking each team member to set a motivational goal at the beginning of the year, that you and they can check in on every month or so, is a great way to engage people and have them work towards something other than their day-to-day organisational tasks. It may be to learn something new, go to a particular conference, or to shadow someone. It does not have to be part of their development plan but must be something that means something to them personally, like getting involved in the organisation’s corporate social responsibility events or supporting a particular charity or cause.

Prioritise wellbeing. 2022 was an arduous year for a lot of us – cost-of-living worries are following us into the new year, as well as increased stress levels and increasing levels of burnout. We at OrgShakers prioritise supporting wellbeing in the workplace, not just as a moral issue but as a key business driver. We understand that it makes sense to actively and consciously enhance employee wellbeing rather than having to keep fixing issues arising from overwork and stress. Adopting the January ‘reset’ mindset means making wellbeing a priority from the get-go. Consider as an organisation what you can do to create a culture of wellbeing, how you might change last year’s working practices to create the conditions for employee wellness in 2023 and see the business benefits that will follow this. Einstein said that the definition of insanity was ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. What can you change as a leader, and as an organisation, to create a more engaged and healthier workforce?

A strong start to your business year can make all the difference and engaging in a January reset will have big business benefits. If you would like to discuss these and other ways to create this reset, you can get in touch with me at pamela@orgshakers.com

by Gary Payne, Robert Satterwhite, and Ann Wheeler

How do you motivate a middle manager?

Middle managers need to be sold on the culture and vision of your organization. When your middle managers are going to model organizational behaviors and values, it’s critical to win over their hearts and minds, and keep them motivated.

To do so, your company should:

Provide purpose

People are motivated by purpose, particularly the younger generation. In a 2021 Deloitte survey, out of 8,273 Gen Z respondents, 49% said they chose their careers and employment based on their personal ethics.

Motivation is not solely about career advancement; people want to feel like they are adding value, meaning, and purpose within the company and beyond. They want to feel proud of their work.

Your company communications, both internal and external, need to be consistent and highlight the impact your organization is making.

Identify individual drives and goals

Motivation is different for each individual.

Some might be driven by a promotion, while others want to avoid boredom; they fear growing stale in their career. They want to be innovators as opposed to overseers.

Take opportunities during scheduled check-ins, quarterly assessments, and year-end reviews to ask your middle managers about the vision for their careers and how that vision fits within both their current roles and potential future roles.

Whether they are striving for career advancement, or they want to expand their skillset, help them define what drives their passions and their individual goals, so your organization can create opportunities and projects to keep them interested and engaged in their work.

Develop multiple mentor relationships

Many organizations see the value in dedicated mentorship programs, but it’s important to remember that people can have many mentors who will help them with various aspects of their career.

Encourage your middle managers to establish and build different relationships and get multiple sources of input.

How do you progress your middle management?

Helping middle managers progress their career path involves three key factors:

Early identification

As you are working with middle management and attempting to identify those who could grow into even greater leadership roles, it’s important to establish your criteria and competency model.

A common challenge for organizations is identifying leadership potential early enough in an individual’s career path. Often by the time they have been identified, it’s too late to ensure they get enough diverse experience to fulfill those leadership qualifications.

Thorough assessment

Assessment still needs to be viewed as an internal employee investment. The hiring rigor of qualifications needs to be applied equally to all promotions. If you want to retain the majority of your employees, it goes without saying that you need to treat people fairly and consistently.

When you are assessing internal employees for a role, make sure to communicate that you are using the exact same standards as you would for external employees. Give every internal candidate feedback throughout the process, especially if they aren’t chosen for the position.

Use the assessment process as an additional development tool, so you can build upon that feedback and provide the resources or a coach to help your internal hire candidates continue to develop.

Continued training and leadership development

When internal hires are promoted, they are already embedded within the organization’s DNA. There tends to be an expectation they will hit the ground running when you might give more leeway to an external hire. But as we noted earlier, that can be a weird mirage of success; it becomes very easy to fail under the burden of presupposed expectations. What made an internal hire successful in their previous role will be different from the KPIs of their new role.

Give your internal hires the same grace period you would extend to external hires:

Provide formal onboarding. A deliberate onboarding process formalizes the need for new behaviors; too often, it’s perceived as training that’s only necessary for external hires. Remember your internal hires need it as well.
Undergo the exercise of stakeholder mapping, so they understand their potential impact and influence. Don’t assume they will already know based off their previous position.
Conduct a formal listening tour, even if they are already familiar with stakeholders and staff. This gives everyone a chance to get to know them in their new position and allows more freedom to ask questions and collect data.
Check on their calendar. Make sure they have set up regular meetings with peers and quarterly meetings with stakeholders.
Ask what they need and what leadership could be doing better.

Leadership also has to ensure the proper amount of focus is being put on strategic change and initiatives. If you want to create a coaching culture where there’s mutual team accountability, you need to create processes to support that philosophy.

Next Steps

Below are some questions to consider as you reexamine your current leadership development program:

Early Identification of Leaders

Do you know what “good” looks like at your organization?
Do you have a clear idea of what your leadership pipeline looks like?
Have you communicated that back to your managers so they can reflect on feedback?
Are you looking at how results are achieved and paying attention to cross-functional aspects of the role?
How do managers treat not only their own, but other teams, sections, and divisions within the organization?

Assessing Their Success

Are your middle managers as dedicated to positive reinforcement as they are to constructive feedback?
Are they instituting an internal coaching culture?
How do your middle managers show up in team meetings? Do they speak 80% of the time, when they should be speaking 10%?

Development & Progress

Are you utilizing talent mapping to forecast hiring needs?
Have you defined clear paths to career development and growth?
Do the company’s growth goals support all employees?
How are you creating opportunities for current employees who didn’t receive a promotion?
Are you providing formal onboarding processes for internal hires?
Should you use onboarding coaches to enhance and build employee capabilities as they move into new positions?
Are you emphasizing the importance of strategic initiatives and creating time and space for your leaders to focus on those goals?

At the end of the day, retaining your employees through leadership development is good risk management. You want to develop a deep bench of leaders that your organization can use to propel its growth and ultimately plot its succession plan. If you have any questions about retaining and promoting middle management or leadership development, please do not hesitate to reach out to us here.

by Gary Payne, Robert Satterwhite, and Ann Wheeler

Employee retention is a hot topic for 2023.

As economic instability continues, organizations will need to lean on leaders across all levels to maintain stability, profitability, and institutional knowledge.

In a Fall 2022 report from Slack’s Future Forum, 10,677 survey respondents from the global workforce reported an increase in burnout; it rose 8% from May to August 2022. Among US workers, the numbers were quite drastic – burnout rose to 47%.

Two of every five US respondents said they were burnt out, and the highest number of those respondents were middle managers.

These numbers should provide a wake-up call because, as you will see below, middle managers play a vital role in any organization.

Why is it important to develop and retain middle managers?

Middle managers are your connecting leaders.

They often serve as:

Liaisons between supervised employees and leadership overseeing the flow of ideas, strategy, and progress within and across an organization
Change agents who drive employee initiatives and build organizational culture
Team builders also heavily involved in the hiring process
Keepers of detail-oriented, institutional knowledge

Middle managers know what motivates their team. They help people answer, “Why do I matter to the company?” and help them see how their role fits within the overall vision.

A very savvy manager is the one who knows your employees best and has the most impact over their experience with the company. You often hear the saying, “Employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers,” but the inverse is also true. When a strong middle manager leaves an organization, some of their direct employees tend to follow, and your talent losses increase even further.

Why is middle management so stressful?

Middle management often operates on the front lines of organizational change, which demands a taxing balance of rigor and flexibility. They are the ones who are tasked with handling more of the honest, direct conversations that happen in work environments.

For example, during COVID-19, middle managers were responsible for helping others adjust to remote work environments. And when companies chose to institute return-to-office policies, it was middle managers who had to work through the details of employees’ schedules.

In a recent survey conducted by Odgers Berndtson US, out of the 606 survey respondents, 41% wanted to retain the option of a hybrid work environment as opposed to fully remote work or in-office. Imagine you are a middle manager who knows hybrid work is popular among employees, but leadership has decided it wants everyone in-office full time, and now you must deliver the news.

Middle managers are the ones who implement policies, even if those policies are unpopular with employees, while they continue to remain the primary motivators for their teams.

To add an additional level of pressure, while middle managers are often the ones you call upon during a crisis, they still have to think about new strategic initiatives and big picture perspectives—even if there’s not enough time to do so.

Lack of leadership development

Internal hires often seem like a no-brainer. Your organization retains that employee’s loyalty and commitment and the knowledge about systems, process, and customers that is important to success. You have rewarded your employee and shown the rest of the company potential career paths; if people work hard and meet expectations, you will provide possibilities.

And yet, so often, internal hires who take on new roles struggle with the responsibilities then leave.

Individual contributors, particularly at the middle management level, will excel and get promoted, but their targeted skillset still remains that of an individual contributor. They need to learn to move away from the trigger response of a “fix it” mindset and learn how to delegate and promote team accountability. However, they are often not provided with the development and training they need.

When middle managers are promoted without training, they are being set up to fail, at which point your organization loses both the leadership role and the individual contributor skills you initially valued.

What makes a middle level manager successful?

Some important skills for successful middle managers are:

Resolve conflict

A middle manager needs to handle, address, and transform conflict.

They can take a conflict and translate it into a productive discussion about individual and team growth.

It’s important to note how middle managers set the tone for these types of conversations. If they remain calm and present the ideas as part of a development discussion, then the feedback generally will be received in the same way.

Embody organizational values and reinforce positive behaviors

Middle managers must possess a deep understanding of your organization’s values and choose to embody behaviors clearly linked to those values. A leader who can translate values into expected behaviors helps develop and build your organization’s culture.

Middle managers oversee the behaviors that get rewarded, so it’s important they are able to reinforce those behaviors both with their own actions and among their teams.

Agility and coaching skills

The art and science of putting together an effective team is complex. Middle managers must develop alternative options, understand, and meet metrics, and even identify new key performance indicators (KPIs) as teams change and grow.

Leadership agility is key to middle manager success.

A huge part of that flexibility is knowing how to coach and develop the team’s capabilities to bring out the best attributes and efficiency.

Keep in mind, there’s a big difference between mentors and coaches. Mentors do a lot of talking and teaching; they relay their own experiences and make suggestions. Coaching is about listening and asking questions.

In the second part of our piece, we will be discussing how employers can help motivate middle managers and grow their skills. In the meantime, if you have any burning questions, you can get in touch with us here.

In discussing the current diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda with thought leaders from the US and the UK, we have gained valuable insights into the way global events are shaping DEI strategy and practice in organizations.

A challenge raised in both conversations is that the scope of DEI has undeniably widened, primarily due to the massive societal strides that have been taken over the past few decades. Now, for example, financial wellbeing, mental health, and organizational culture all fall to DEI, as well as the recruitment and onboarding of people from an ever-widening mix of diversity dimensions.

This was the main subject of the discussion with our two UK DEI specialists – Sue Johnson and Therese Procter. They pointed out that failing to provide additional resources to deliver against this expanding portfolio risks the impact of DEI initiatives becoming diluted. To mitigate against this, companies need to consider employing a DEI specialist at board-level.

This aligns with Marty Belle and Conrad Woody’s conversation – which looks at DEI from a US perspective – in which they highlighted that inclusion starts with senior leaders acting as authentic role models for the required workplace behaviors.

A senior leadership team and board of directors that understand what inclusive behavior looks like will make inclusive decisions. And the best way of ensuring that the DEI dividend these decisions can bring is achieved, is by having a dedicated, senior DEI leader who can ensure inclusion remains at the top of the organization’s agenda.

With a diverse workforce comes diverse thinking, and this broader spectrum of perspectives will help when examining problems, as well as bring new ideas to the table. This can give you an advantage as an employer, as it means that the products and services you offer will more likely be accessible to a wider breadth of different types of people.

Part 1 of our series offered a solution to the widening scope of DEI for employers, and Part 2 highlighted why focusing on DEI can be beneficial for a company – both ethically and financially.

What these conversations have highlighted to us is that despite having an ocean between them, UK and US employers both recognise the importance of having an effective DEI strategy – and the performance dividend it can deliver. And by understanding their shared perspectives, we can help all organizations in implementing these strategies more effectively. So, if you are a business who would like to harness the power of DEI in your workplace, get in contact with us here.

To gain insight on the role Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) currently plays for US employers, we spoke with Conrad Woody, Managing Partner of Odgers Berndston’s Washington Office, and Marty Belle, Partner at OrgShakers.

“I would say in the US, the topic has always been more performative than really heartfelt,” Marty reflected. “For the majority of employers, it’s all about the bottom line… and if you’re not totally convinced that having a diverse and inclusive workplace drives profitability for you, you won’t focus on it.”

Conrad built on this, highlighting the fact that some employers are simply hiring people who look and act like their best workers because they believe this will ensure that their recruiting standards are always being met. “There is a commitment to conventional wisdom, because it’s easy to do – staying within your comfort zone is always easy!”

It is a tough mindset to crack, but it is one that Conrad and his team take every opportunity to challenge. “What we’ve been doing in our practice is using radical honesty and authenticity to help clients understand and open up the aperture to be more inclusive in the recruiting process. And we’re also advising them on how to ensure that the environment that people arrive in is consistent with the reality they are trying to create.”

Meanwhile, for those companies that are trying to be diverse, Marty pointed out that there is another mindset ‘trap’ to be avoided: “Organizations tend to choose where they feel more comfortable ‘being different’.” In other words, they become comfortable hiring individuals from one or two underrepresented groups yet fail to achieve a broader mix of diversity dimensions.

On the other hand, Conrad pointed out, “there is also this sort of ‘everybody’s diverse’ thing that’s happening.”

“I would agree, everyone is now in that conversation, because we are all unique, so that makes us diverse,” Marty offered, “But if you want to peel it back and say, ‘Well, where do I get my biggest innovation and creativity?’, then I would tell you that there are aspects of diversity that make the biggest difference. And that would be ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, marital status, physical ability, socio-economic status, religion, mental ability…to really drive the whole spectrum, you have to have those, what we might tend to call underrepresented groups or protected groups, in there. Otherwise, you’re not going to bring as much innovation to a complex problem as you could get with all of those broader elements.”

“Diversity by itself doesn’t drive you to greater productivity,” Marty continued, “but diversity with inclusion does. And this means figuring out how to get that mix of people’s best thinking incorporated into solving a customer problem.”

And Conrad believed that figuring this out “really starts with our behavior as partners to our clients. If the Partners in our own firm don’t demonstrate inclusive behaviors, how can we authentically advise our clients on it?”

“To truly unlock the power that diversity and inclusion can offer your company”, Conrad continued, “you have to realize that it’s about how people with those identities see you and value you, and that you make the time to go and get to know these people, because then they’ll trust you to have their best interests at heart.”

As well as this moral imperative, there is also the reality that millennial and Gen Z employees will no longer entertain non-inclusive companies, and so investors are quickly becoming more passionate about the social issues that organizations are pursuing. In this sense, there is a strong business case alongside the moral one to really make your culture a welcoming and inclusive one. So how do employers begin to close this gap and unlock the power of inclusion their business?

“I might say just have the conversation,” Marty concluded, “and be okay that you don’t understand the topic. Be willing to see what you can learn and be vulnerable.”

Conrad agreed, “getting comfortable with uncomfortable conversations is a huge step towards bridging into inclusive territory – knowing when to admit that you do not know everything simply opens up the opportunity for you to gain more knowledge and wisdom, and this is never wasted.”