Leadership Optimization Archives | Page 6 of 6

HR teams can find themselves in a crossfire between employer and employee. At first blush, the HR department recruits, enables, and fosters employee growth, and so would appear as a service for the people. And yet, contrary to this, it is those in the higher leadership ranks who regularly seek HR counsel and guidance and ultimately hire and pay these HR professionals.

How does HR effectively balance the services it offers to the employer and the employees?

Balance can be difficult to determine and perceived differently in varying contexts. For example, in a business where there is a strong union environment, would it make sense for HR to provide additional support to managers and leadership in order to level the playing field, so to speak? If so, would employees feel limited or disinclined to express issues they have to HR?

A workforce perception that HR teams are only there to help “higher up” already exists, with one study finding that 70% of employees do not trust their personnel department. If we look at it from this perspective, HR teams need to seek ways they can recalibrate the balance so employees trust in HR’s neutrality and feel comfortable communicating their issues. A fundamental aspect of Human Resources is to be a connection between management and staff, and if they are being iced out by employees – who make up the majority of any company – then they will not be able to effectively enhance the workforce experience or workplace culture. Conversely, managers and leadership must also be able to trust HR’s neutrality and advice, viewing them as a strategic partner in meeting company goals and objectives.

Is there a ‘default’ view HR professionals can take when caught in the middle?

Simply put, their job is to help guide leaders on how they can optimize their company through their staff while also supporting workforce health, growth, and development. In this sense, HR teams are always advocating for the people, because those same people make up the foundation that buttresses managers, leadership, and business outcomes.

With the contemporary workforce undergoing a great rebirth of their outlook on work and what they seek to gain from it, more people want to work in a person-centric environment. A 2022 report by Gallup found 61% of respondents said greater work-life balance and better personal wellbeing was a very important consideration when looking for a new job. Both attributes are key HR services, and it could be argued the true balance HR should seek leans more in favor of employees. By being consciously people-centric, this could ultimately benefit the employer through an engaged, energized, and dedicated workforce.

The reality is, there can be no one set approach. Companies vary in their needs and organizational dynamics, and so HR must seek to calibrate the unique balance for each company, department, division, team, or individual with whom they work.

If you need help navigating that journey, OrgShakers has a breadth of experience across all different types of organizations – whether that be public, private, global, unionized, or non-unionized. Head over to our contact page to get in touch, or you can email me directly at amanda@orgshakers.com

With a post-pandemic wellbeing mindset on the rise, as well as the influx of Generation Z into the workforce, many are starting to realise that a leader’s ability to utilise their soft skills is becoming increasingly valuable.

For the most part, hard skills are the ones that have been considered of greatest value to employers, simply because the word “hard” suggests that these skills are more difficult and complex to acquire. In reality, however, soft skills are ever-changing and ever-growing, and so can prove to be much more difficult to keep up with, despite the implied fluffiness of the word “soft”.

Soft skills relate to an individual’s emotional and cognitive capabilities: empathy, flexibility, curiosity, vulnerability…the list goes on. And what has been highlighted during and post-pandemic is that these skills are actually the most powerful ones to be harnessing, and if utilized correctly, can make all the difference in improving management approaches.

The International Institute for Management Development identified four key attributes for a manager to be successful in today’s workplace – and three of these were soft skills. This is largely due to the fact that we are seeing a new generation entering into the world of work with new mindsets, fresh perspectives and an openness that has not been seen in previous generations.

Gen Z are the first generation to have grown up with social media, an environment where expressing and sharing ones innermost thoughts and feelings is considered the norm. As a result, these younger workers will value the ‘power skills’ of honesty and vulnerability in their leaders and they would be more likely to respect a manager who is willing to openly share challenges they are facing.

A McKinsey Global Institute Report reflects this, predicting that global workplaces will see a 24% increase in the need for social and emotional skills by 2030.

So, vulnerability amongst executives is emerging as a highly beneficial quality, but the reality is that showing that vulnerability – especially for those leaders from previous generations – is not something that they are used to (or comfortable) doing.

However, a shift in mindset which views vulnerability as a powerful skill rather than an admission of weakness, is a great way to bridge the generational gap between executives and the younger workforce. And it is key for this to start from the top, so that it trickles down the hierarchy and settles into a refreshed workplace culture which recognises the ever-growing importance of these power skills.

To discuss and seek further guidance on how to turn power skills into the skills of success, get in touch with us here.

“People leave managers, not companies,” is the mantra of Marcus Buckingham’s book on leadership[1]. And if I were to simplify this message even further, it would be to this: people are more likely to remain working for leaders that are approachable and inclusive.

In a time where workers are consistently changing jobs, retention strategies have become an integral part of many organizations. And even for those companies who have already placed a focus on retaining talent, they are now being faced with the struggle of combatting the rise of quiet quitting. The key to having an impact on both these issues lies in the hands of leaders – or, more specifically, in their ability to be approachable.

The idea of being an approachable leader has outdated connotations of being perceived as ‘weak’. Yet, Visiers study found that the second most commonly cited attribute of a bad manager was being unapproachable (47%).

The fact of the matter is that being welcoming and in a position of power will allow you to form real bonds with your team and be in tune with the culture being fostered within your company’s walls.

Achieving approachability is easier by breaking it down into three aspects:

Breaking down hierarchies

A simple culturally appropriate greeting is one of the oldest and most effective ways to be perceived as a welcoming and approachable person. Leaders who recognize their team members have a 63% higher chance of retaining them, so by making that effort to authentically greet your employees every morning and speak to them, they will be much more likely to want to remain working with you.

Knowing your team

Good leaders will take the time to know all the names of their team members. Great leaders will take it that one step further, and actively seek out ways to connect authentically by asking open-ended questions to learn about their interests beyond work. You can encourage your team to open up more by being transparent yourself – discuss your interests and tell stories about your life. Research from a team at Harvard University found that asking questions about people increases the likelihood of them having a positive impression of you. By demonstrating that you are making time to know the team members who work for you, you are reinforcing that they are valued and seen as individuals.

Having an open door

I remember giving an office tour to a new HR executive that I was trying to recruit, and when I walked past the CEO’s door, I noticed that it was wide open and he was in there at his desk. I gave an impromptu knock and poked my head in, and after a brief exchange I introduced him to the potential hire. Immediately he invited the both of us in and dropped what he was doing, and the three of us sat down for a good half hour as he got to know this HR exec.

All these years later I still remember this because I was struck by how proud it made me feel that the CEO took time out of his busy schedule to greet the potential new hire authentically and to learn about his background, despite not being on his schedule. Making a point of having your door always open – literally and metaphorically – can make employees feel they are invited to speak to those higher up rather than waiting to receive permission to seek their attention.

Interacting with these three components will help inspire genuine trust in you as a manager. There is always a risk for those in higher positions to be ‘cut out of the loop’ when it comes to finding the root cause of issues in the workplace, and so by being someone who team members feel they can trust, this risk is significantly mitigated.

However, in this endeavour, striking a balance is key. If you are seen to know more about one member of the team over another, this can come across as favouritism. Therefore, it is important to be aware of how much time you spend formally and informally with each member of your team. Managing the extent of your relationships with each team member is crucial and needs to be consistent and inclusive, as you have a duty to coach, develop and lead team members of all backgrounds and styles.

When it comes down to it, being present and front-line-facing can go a long way. If a leader is seen to be the wizard behind the curtain, then team members will feel a lack of motivation working under them. Make a point of getting to know new team members as they are onboarded, as well as checking in periodically to show that your interest is authentic. This will help nurture an overall inclusive culture in the workplace, and boost the productivity and engagement of employees, which leads to higher client satisfaction and higher operational performance.

It all starts from the top – if you are interested in discussing approachable leadership, I can be reached at marty@orgshakers.com

[1] Buckingham, M., 2001. First, Break All The Rules. London: Simon & Schuster Ltd.

‘Quiet quitting’ has been a buzzword in the corporate world recently – staff members are taking back their personal lives by setting boundaries on how much extra effort they put into their work. This has sparked many conversations as to why employees felt the need to quietly quit in the first place, and one such reason may be due to the rise of ‘quiet firing’.

The second phrase to be logged in the ‘quiet –’ saga, quiet firing shifts the focus to a managerial perspective, and refers to those leaders who are assigning some members of staff menial tasks, setting unrealistic expectations, and consistently denying them time off work. Essentially, instead of communicating with these employees to help them improve, they are quietly pushing them away until they finally decide to leave of their own accord.

While some leaders may be doing this consciously, this new phenomenon does bring into question whether managers who are being inattentive are at risk of unknowingly quietly firing their staff.

Being in a leadership role means you may not have a lot of time to spare, but a crucial part of being a manager is finding a balance between being attentive to those above and below you. Members of your team may feel they are being neglected due to a lack of direct engagement with them, and this can be perceived as quiet firing and can push people towards leaving. This is reinforced by Gallup’s report which found that 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. In other words, a manager has the largest effect on how engaged their employees are at work.

This highlights the importance of finding that time to offer clear and consistent feedback. Leaders who are essentially giving up on those workers who they deem as underperforming, instead of taking the time to tell them how to improve, are failing their staff.

Underperformance is a sign to managers that they are not being as attentive as necessary. The relationship between leader and worker needs to be nourished, and this nourishment comes from communication – through the implementation of a regular feedback session – and from clarity, as only about half of workers actually know what is expected of them.

Communication and clarity are especially important with the rise of hybrid and remote working models. Research shows that employees working from home often receive less performance feedback for their good work than those in the office, and this can be simply due to the fact that remote working removes the chance of bumping into one another. Gone are the days of grabbing someone for a quick chat or catching up by the water cooler. All these little opportunities for micro-feedback sessions are much harder to achieve through Zoom or Teams, as now, a formal effort has to be made to speak to colleagues.

Implementing ways of giving regular feedback to employees who work remotely will help mitigate the risk of quietly firing staff. On top of this, it helps enhance your culture – in the office and digitally – to be open and approachable, which can ultimately better staff engagement and improve the quality and quantity of their output.

If you need guidance on how to avoid falling into the trap of quiet firing, you can get in touch with us here.

The ability to be adaptable is becoming gold amongst leaders in the contemporary corporate world. A post-pandemic perspective has seen working life in a continuous state of flux, and if leaders want to stay on top of these shifting conditions, then they need to consider adopting a new, flexible management style.

One struggle that leaders may come across is the generational differences they face with their staff. Most people in leadership positions tend to be in their midlife, with statista finding that the average age of CEOs and CFOs in America was 54.1 and 48.9. Now, with Gen Z filtering into the workforce, along with them comes a new set of values that will likely differ to those in leadership positions. The recent ‘quiet quitting’ phenomenon is a prime example of this.

In order to overcome these potential barriers, leaders should start practicing a more adaptable approach to how they manage their people. This will allow them to create a common language to communicate with their younger staff so that they can respond to the needs of these employees more effectively and optimize their talent.

The Centre for Creative Leadership outlines three components of flexibility that leaders should incorporate to help them seize every opportunity:

Cognitive Flexibility

This is about using different thinking methods to be able to approach each problem from the best angle. Embedding these varying strategies and frameworks into their planning and decision-making will allow them to recognise when a change is needed. Leaders who are flexible and open with the way they think will be able to recognize new trends in the workplace and respond to them promptly.

Emotional Flexibility

Leaders who are empathetic towards periods of transition will be the most prepared to guide their staff through change, as well as manage their own potential feelings of angst and resistance. In this sense, those that are willing to show their own vulnerabilities can make their staff more willing to express theirs, and this leads to an open and honest culture in the workplace which allows for proper support through a transitional period.

Dispositional Flexibility

This concerns finding an equilibrium between being blindly positive and pessimistic. These leaders take on an optimistic perspective that is grounded in realism, and can acknowledge when a situation is bad but look ahead to how to make it better for the future. These leaders have a mindset which allows them to view change as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Leaders who are using all three of these components will be able to interact with change as and when it comes. And with a workforce who have emerged from lockdown with new perspectives on what it means to work , as well as an entirely new hybrid working model, learning to respond to change swiftly and effectively will allow leaders to excel, while also propelling their people and their company forwards.

To discuss these flexible leadership strategies further, you can contact me at stephanie.rodriguez@orgshakers.com

It is no secret that the workforce is changing, and with these changes comes a sharper focus on attraction and retention strategies. But between flexible working schedules and varying benefit schemes, employers are overlooking a key process that can help optimize their ability to secure the talent they have – management training.

Managers play a vital role in the creation of a positive workplace culture and engaging with employee concerns. They are the ‘connecting leaders’ for helping to build relationships between those at the top and bottom of the hierarchy. Ensuring that they are properly equipped to take on this role can help an organization thrive, as many potential problems can be avoided by strengthening the company at its managerial roots.

To begin with, leaders need to know how to go beyond the words of their company’s mission statement. While having a clear statement is excellent for highlighting what the business’s aims and values are, they need to be put into practice. Managers must know how to demonstrate these principles in their approaches and enact them in real-time to increase the trust staff place in them. By building this trust, organizations are more likely to increase retention rates, which can also reflect positively on their reputation when recruiting future staff.

Secondly, there is now an expectation for managers to have more personal and tailored relationships with employees. The rise of a carpe diem ideology post-pandemic has resulted in people wanting to make every day count by finding purpose in their work. Leaders have to be properly equipped with contemporary strategies to help remind them of this purpose in order to sustain engagement levels.

The needs of the workforce have shifted since the pandemic, and managers will require a refreshed set of training to keep up with this. By doing so, they mitigate the risk of employees quitting due to uncaring and uninspiring leaders, which was the third highest reason (34%) for people leaving their job according to a study by McKinsey.

Additionally, there also needs to be a focus on the retention of managers themselves. The CEB conducted research which found that 60% of all new managers fail within their first 24 months – and the main reason cited for this was a lack of proper training. Leadership roles come with a lot of responsibility, and so companies that prioritise giving their new managers the right tools and skills will help them seize all that the opportunity has to offer.

It is a chain reaction. Equip managers on how to engage with their people properly and they will avoid falling into the twenty-four-month trap. And having a good manager leads to a workforce who are engaged because they feel understood by their leader(s). Culture matters, and having a positive one focused on developing people, including mangers, will benefit colleagues and businesses.

Avoidance of legal issues is the final benefit. With the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) set to become firmer when filing discrimination cases against employers and overall trends in filing of claims, having managers who can correctly engage with employee concerns is more crucial than ever. Leaders who are perceived as approachable will be trusted with queries, and this helps avoid the use of third-party channels like the EEOC.

Navigating the heightened sensitivity that has developed post-pandemic is a delicate thing, and so requires a refreshed and expert approach. Having successfully worked with clients to build programmes that can identify and mitigate these issues, we see positive results in productivity, culture and risk management. Investing in managers is worth the expense.

Have you ever heard the phrase “quiet leaders”? This is a leadership style whose description may seem much more familiar than its name. Quiet leaders can be described as “managers who apply modesty, restraint, and tenacity to solve particularly difficult problems.” (Lagace, M.)

Badaracco (2003 ) explains, “Everyday work life is full of right-versus-right decisions. In fact, it sometimes seems that these hard trade-offs are delegated downward from bosses to people in the middle of organizations. In these cases, it does little good to tell people to screw up their courage and do the right thing. The essence of the problem is that several right things—obligations to owners, employees, communities and one’s own values—are clashing with each other. Quiet leaders also recognize the full complexity and uncertainty that govern so much of life and work today.” He goes on to offer five basic guidelines for quiet leaders:

Five Basic Guidelines

Don’t Kid Yourself – “…make plenty of room for the unexpected.”
Have Some Skin in the Game – “…look for ways to channel self-interest in ways that also serve others.”
Buy Time – “Time gives people a chance to assess their real obligations and gives sound instincts a chance to emerge.”
Drill Down – “…into the full complexities of the problem…”
Bend the Rules and Look for Compromises – “Responsible behaviour in some difficult situations requires a little wiggle room.”

How does the concept of the quiet leader spark your thoughts about leadership? Is this a style that describes you or a leader you work with? Is it a style you find appealing?

Taking a moment to explore different or unfamiliar leadership styles can be a great way to learn and grow as a leader. It can also be a way to reenergize a leadership journey.

If you would like guidance on how to become a quiet leader, get in touch with us here.

“You will fit in perfectly here” is a phrase that many of us will be familiar with hearing after receiving a new job. And while this is positive, it can make you wonder what employers really mean when they say an employee is a ‘good fit’.

Is a ‘good fit’ someone the interviewer feels they would get along with on a personal level? Someone who looks and sounds like they do? Or could it be someone who they think will blend seamlessly into the current team?

If such a small phrase raises this many questions, there is probably a hidden meaning behind these words.

To begin with, what do we mean by a ‘good fit’? For me, it is all about culture. Each organization has its own culture which is made up of common practices driven by its values and the working practices of their leaders and supervisors. This culture will have formed over time, and typically, a company will hire candidates that reflect their way of thinking and behaving. In other words, they are a ‘good fit’.

For example, research by Totaljobs found that 67% of employers saw a candidate’s cultural fit as ‘very important’, with one in five going as far as saying they would not hire a candidate if they were not the right cultural fit. However, the idea of maintaining a company’s culture could be the very thing holding it back.

Tara Ryan, the Director of People Experience at Monzo, pointed out that if you are trying to preserve your workplace culture, you are not giving it the opportunity to evolve. In short, the potential for business progression is being lost due to this rigid mindset.

Sure, employing people who ‘fit’ may help create a cosy camaraderie, but it will not necessarily bring anything new and innovative to the table to help your business increase its productivity and maintain a competitive advantage. Tapping into a wider range of attitudes and perspectives will enable you to push the boundaries of what you are trying to achieve and remain the preferred business partner to your clients.

So, rather than assessing if a potential hire is a culture fit, start assessing how they will be a culture add. What can this individual add to our culture to ensure we become irreplaceable to our clients?

While this approach is good in theory, it can be tougher in practice. Laura Rivera conducted a study for her book Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs which highlighted that only half of managers had a clear understanding of what their organizational culture was. In light of this, a shift to culture add can only be achieved by investing time in helping leaders understand what your company’s culture is, how it impacts business outcomes, and how hiring and leveraging a greater diversity of talent can strengthen it.

At OrgShakers we want to help you seize this opportunity by developing your Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) strategies. You can read more about the DE&I framework we use here or contact me directly at: Marty@OrgShakers.com.

For most of history, publicly traded companies have defined their purpose rather narrowly: they existed first and foremost to serve shareholders, and their interactions with customers, employees, governments, suppliers, the environment, and wider communities were subordinated to this agenda. Now, however, the definition and scope of a company’s purpose is clearly changing. Throughout the business world, people are asking why shareholders, many of whom have only passing affiliation with the company, should be prioritized over stakeholders whose lives are deeply tied to the company’s existence and decisions?

This can be a tricky topic. Conversations about ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) strategy and stakeholder management can at times be muddied by idealism, cynicism, or both. But getting ESG right isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s an important part of running a profitable business. Every organization and leadership team must now take the time to think more broadly about how they can interact with and capitalize upon the interlocking network of constituencies to which they relate.

So, how do you go about implementing a solid ESG plan?

How do you drive those values down through your organization, embedding a sense of corporate responsibility into the company’s culture?

And how do you manage your duties to non-financial stakeholders while continuing to provide value to shareholders?

Getting ESG right is hard – but Systemic Team Coaching can help produce great results by helping teams evaluate the systems that they interact with, identify the stakeholders involved in those systems, and develop strategies that accommodate a wide array of stakeholder needs.

In other words, Systemic Team Coaching helps teams pluralize their understanding of value and success.

What is Systemic Team Coaching?

Systemic Team Coaching was developed by Dr. Peter Hawkins, who in his book Leadership Team Coaching, defines the practice thus:

“Systemic Team Coaching is a process by which a team coach works with a whole team, both when they are together and when they are apart, in order to help them improve both their collective performance and how they work together, and also how they develop their collective leadership to more effectively engage with all their key stakeholder groups to jointly transform the wider business.”

We work with leaders and teams to define their function in relation to the function of their wider organization and that organization’s impacts on a wide array of stakeholders. We help teams work together to improve their collective performance, placing special emphasis on how a team’s interaction approaches, communications, values, incentive structures and goals can be further aligned to the needs of the business and the needs of the wider stakeholder community.

How it works: The Five Disciplines of High Value Creating Teams

Also developed by Peter Hawkins, the Five Disciplines of High Value Creating Teams is a highly practical Systemic Team Coaching framework that gives teams guidance on how and where to develop their effectiveness.

1. Clarifying

Clarifying is the process of developing a set of agreed-upon objectives, and it refers to what the team needs to focus on in order to drive strategy. This typically includes addressing the team’s purpose, vision, strategy, objectives, roles, and responsibilities. As coaches, we work with the team to clarify their tasks, their wider purpose, and the methods they intend to utilize—making sure that the company’s core business is weighted alongside diversity and other ESG concerns.

2. Commissioning

Commissioning refers to agreeing upon a relationship between a team’s objectives and its stakeholders. For a team to successfully meet its business goals while also pursuing meaningful ESG strategies, it needs to have a clear understanding of stakeholder requirements and to articulate a success criteria that takes these requirements into account. In this phase of coaching, our team coaches work to expand the team’s understanding of its relationship to its wider stakeholder system, especially as it relates to the ESG strategy.

3. Co-creating

Co-creating refers to teamwork and teamwork methodologies. Either consciously or not, all teams work together to build their own behavioral norms and value structures that, taken together, help determine their collective performance. In order to maximize that performance, and to create the healthiest possible workplace culture, our coaches work with teams to help them consciously build the teamwork methodologies that work for them and will generate the most value.

4. Connecting

Connecting is the process of combining the first three disciplines in such a way that ensures effective stakeholder engagement. It means identifying all stakeholders, defining their unique relationships, and building the appropriate strategies to serve them. Ultimately, the term stakeholder includes an incredibly wide range of people and groups, each of which requires slightly different things from your organization. Some of them (e.g. employees and suppliers) provide value to the team; others (e.g. communities and shareholders) rely on the team to create value for them. Managing these relationships is the responsibility of the whole team not just the team leader.

5. Core Learning

Core learning refers to how the team needs to continually learn and adapt in order to meet the evolving needs of the market, the organization, the team itself, and its stakeholders. One of the challenges of establishing an ESG strategy is coming to terms with the fact that your stakeholders will evolve alongside your operations. Opening new business units, launching new product lines, relocating teams to new locations, expanding into new markets—all of these core aspects of doing business will change the inventory of stakeholders that have to be served by both local and senior leadership teams.

Team coaches help the team step away from their day-to-day tasks and reflect upon their performance processes. The goal here is to codify not just specific lessons the team has learned but also the process by which they were learned so that the team can begin to coach themselves. By focusing on the process of learning rather than simply the lessons themselves, teams prepare themselves to react to the fluid and unforeseeable needs of the future. This stage of coaching also involves supporting and developing the processes and performance of every team member— identifying strengths and weaknesses and coming up with tactics for future situations.

For teams to perform at their best and cast the widest possible net of value for the widest possible suite of stakeholders, they need to be effective in all five of these disciplines.

Conclusion

Systemic Team Coaching can help leadership leaders and their teams improve their collective value- creating performance, allowing their organizations to work toward a pluralized set of goals that provide simultaneous benefit to a wide variety of stakeholder groups.

In working with clients across the industry spectrum, we’ve noticed that nearly every team and organization has stakeholders of whom, for one reason or another, they are either unaware or are potentially impacted by unrecognized ESG concerns. Systemic Team Coaching is an excellent approach to ensuring the maximum effectiveness of a company’s ESG strategy.

What is Systemic Team Coaching?

How it works: The Five Disciplines of High Value Creating Teams

Conclusion

The Five Disciplines of High Value Creating Teams Graphic courtesy of the Global Teams Coaching Institute