Now, more than ever, leaders need to decisively and powerfully nurture trust in the workplace. Although much of what it takes to build trust is common sense, it’s not always common practice. In this short video, I share 10 practical ways leaders can immediately build trust with their teams and organizations.
Thanks to Tanmay Vora at QAspire.com for the sketchnote
Now, more than ever, people need leaders to step up and lead from the heart.
The coronavirus pandemic has turned our world upside down, and people are looking to their leaders for direction on how to move forward when it seems like life has ground to a halt. Sheltering in place and social distancing may be effective strategies for slowing the spread of coronavirus, but they can be recipes for disaster by creating isolation, fear, and loneliness. Millions of workers have been told to work remotely, often with little training on how to do so effectively. That leads to a loss of productivity, frustration, low morale, and disengagement.
In order to be fully engaged and bring our best selves to work, there are four basic human needs that must be met. Meeting these needs has become even more critically important during this time of uncertainty and change, and if we lose sight of them, we run the risk of losing our best people.
In conducting over 19,000 exit interviews of employees who voluntarily left their jobs, Leigh Branham, author of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, identified four basic needs that weren’t being met that started people on the path to disengagement and ultimately quitting a job.
The Need for Trust — The number one priority for any leader is to build trust with his/her team members. Trust is the foundation of any successful relationship, and in the workplace it’s a non-negotiable if leaders desire to tap into the full effort and passion of their employees. Employees won’t give you their best if they don’t believe you have their best interests in mind. They will shy away from taking risks or making themselves vulnerable if they don’t feel safe and trusted. They expect company leadership to deliver on their promises, to be honest and open in communication, to invest in them, and to treat them fairly. The ABCD Trust Model is a helpful tool for leaders to understand what it means to be trustworthy and build trust with others.
The Need to Have Hope — I’ve had the privilege of meeting football legend Rosey Grier, a member of the “Fearsome Foursome” when he played with the Los Angeles Rams, and now a Christian minister and inspirational speaker. He said something I’ve never forgotten. When speaking about his work with inner city youth in Los Angeles, Rosey said “Leaders aren’t dealers of dope, they are dealers of hope!” So true…leaders are dealers of hope. We need to instill a sense of hope in the people we lead. Our people need to believe they will be able to grow, develop their skills, and have the opportunity for advancement or career progress. It’s our job as leaders to foster that hope and support our employees in their growth.
The Need to Feel a Sense of Worth — Despite its struggles and challenges, work is an intrinsically rewarding experience for people. We derive a tremendous amount of self-worth from our work, whether it’s something we’re employed to do or whether we volunteer our time and effort. Employees have a need to feel confident that if they work hard, do their best, and demonstrate commitment and make meaningful contributions, they will be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
The Need to Feel Competent — Employees need to be matched in jobs where their talents align with the challenges of the work. If the work is too simple, then it’s easy for people to lose interest and become disengaged. If the employee is in over his/her head and the work is too challenging, it can lead to discouragement and frustration. Leaders are on a constant quest to find ways to place employees in that sweet spot where they are challenged at just the right level. But it’s not all on the shoulders of leaders to do this work. Employees need to take responsibility for their own development and learn how to manage their motivational outlooks.
These four needs – trust, hope, sense of worth, and competence – aren’t just needed during the coronavirus lockdown. They’re needed each and every day. Unfortunately, too many people show up to work each day and check their expectation for these needs at the door. They don’t think of work as a place where they should experience fulfillment. Isn’t that sad? If there is one good thing to come out of this global pandemic, I hope it’s the renewed focus that leaders have on the value of their people. Most business leaders spout the cliche that “people are our most valuable asset.” Well, now is the time to put the money where your mouth is. What are you doing to meet these basic human needs of employees during this unprecedented time?
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The desire to contain the spread and impact of the COVID-19 virus has led many organizations to require their employees to work from home. For some, working virtually isn’t a big change. Many workers are already accustomed to working remotely on an intermittent or regular basis. It’s been reported that 43% of Americans work from home occasionally and at least 5.2% (8 million people) work from home full-time.
However, there’s a big difference between occasionally working from your kitchen table and setting up shop in your home for an extended period of time (or permanently).
Before you pull the trigger on sending your team members home to work virtually, I suggest you formulate a thoughtful strategy. Having led and been a part of virtual teams for many years, I can testify that working from home is not a panacea. It has its advantages compared to life in a cubicle, but it has its own unique challenges as well.
Incorporate these four areas in your strategy to have team members work virtually:
Clarity—Your team needs clear direction about the expectations and responsibilities of working remotely. Questions or topics to address include: Will team members be expected to maintain specific “office” hours? Does there need to be a different process for securing a backup if someone needs to be away from their desk or has a personal appointment? What technology platforms will you use, and when, to replace face-to-face meetings? If webcams are required for meetings, will be people be allowed to opt-out because they’re having a “bad hair day” (when, likely, they just didn’t feel like changing out of their pajamas)? Are there norms established that govern how the team makes decisions, communicates, and collaborates? Don’t assume the implicit expectations of a few team members working from home occasionally are explicitly known by everyone and that they apply to having the entire team function virtually.
Communication—Effective communication is the key to working successfully in a virtual team and of primary importance is establishing trust among team members. Trust is built through interpersonal interactions, and unfortunately, working virtually reduces the amount of interpersonal connection we experience compared to working in the office. We lose the random encounters in the hallway, break room, or at the water cooler that are so important in fostering personal connection. We also lose the visual cues provided by body language that place a person’s communications in context. The reliance upon email and IM in the virtual world easily leads to misinterpreting a person’s intent, usually in a negative fashion, so be proactive about using the phone and webcams to make communications more personal. Stay disciplined about holding one-on-one and team meetings to bring people together to combat loneliness and foster a sense of team identity.
Community—There are many benefits to working remotely. Included are increased productivity, a greater sense of autonomy and control over one’s work, and better work-life balance. But it comes at a cost—isolation and loneliness. Any veteran remote worker will tell you that loneliness is a frequent visitor to their home office and intentional effort is required to prevent that visitor from settling in permanently. Remote workers need to be proactive about reaching out to other team members to connect socially, even to just chit-chat for a few minutes. It’s also important for team leaders to create opportunities for team members to bond. Strategies can include having a virtual team lunch via webcam, have team members share pictures of their pets, or give virtual tours of their home offices. Shifting employees to work virtually, either temporarily in response to the coronavirus, or permanently as part of a larger strategy, requires leaders to increase the amount of training they provide the team. Whether it’s specific training on how to lead or work in a virtual team, or general leadership and other skill-building training, remote employees should not be treated differently from office-based team members. The out of sight, out of mind pitfall often befalls virtual workers, thereby limiting their personal development and advancement opportunities. Virtual workers must advocate for themselves and need their leaders to champion their efforts in being included in the broader organizational community.
Shifting employees to working virtually requires leaders to increase the amount of training they provide the team.
Care—Virtual workers need to take the lead in self-care if they are going to be successful over the long haul. In addition to the challenges of isolation and loneliness, virtual workers often end up working longer hours because work is ever present. It’s hard to resist the temptation of sending just one more email, writing a few more lines of code, putting the finishing touches on that critical presentation, or doing just a bit more data analysis when the glow of the laptop screen is beckoning. To combat this challenge, have a dedicated work space, preferably with a door, where you can leave work behind at the end of the day. Establish personal norms for yourself regarding work hours and breaks, just like you would have in a physical office. Establish boundaries with housemates about noise and activity levels in the house, and how household responsibilities are handled during the workday. Build routines into your schedule that allow you to connect with others and recharge your batteries. It may be going to the coffee shop in the morning, walking the dog around the block, eating lunch outside, or taking an afternoon walk at a local park. Treat working from home much the same way you’d treat working in the office. Getting dressed in office attire puts you in the mindset of being at work, and believe me, it works in your favor when you need to join an impromptu webcam meeting!
For many occupations today, work has become something you do, not somewhere you go. Requiring people to work from home in response to the coronavirus gives many organizations a chance to see that people can be just as productive, if not more so, working virtually as compared to working in the office. This is a fantastic opportunity for organizations to build trust with their employees by giving them the opportunity to work remotely, and it’s also an opportunity for employees to prove themselves trustworthy in response.
Growing up playing sports, coaching my kids’ sports teams, and being a sports fan in general has taught me numerous lessons about life and leadership. A few that standout are the value of setting goals and working to achieve them, persevering through failure, and the importance of everyone knowing their role and working together to make the team successful.
However, the most important lesson I’ve learned about being part of a successful team, or leading one, is the need for trust. Great teams thrive on trust (click to tweet).
It doesn’t matter if it’s a sports team, a military team, a work team, or any other kind of team, the best teams have developed a high-level of trust among team members to the point that each individual knows they can count on each other to do their part. If someone is falling short or needs help, another team member will be there to fill the gap.
But how do you build that kind of trust in a team? Well, it doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intentional focus and effort. It also doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and shared experiences for people to bond with one another. It’s the team leader’s job to structure the team and its environment in a way that allows trust to flourish.
Here are five strategies leaders can use to build high-trust teams:
1. Hire and develop great team members—You may be asking what this has to do with trust. Well, any leader will tell you that the team is only as great as its members. Team members need to be competent in their roles and dependable in their performance if they’re going to be trusted by their fellow team members. Of course, the best option is to recruit and hire top performers, but even if you can’t afford to pay top-tier talent, you can still train and develop team members to perform their best in their specific roles. As Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great points out, it’s not just about getting the right people on the bus, but getting the right people in the right seats on the bus.
2. Teach them about trust—One of the truths about trust is that it’s based on perceptions. My perception of what constitutes a trustworthy team member is likely different from your perception. Differing perceptions among team members is why it’s critical to establish a common definition of trust. I’m a proponent of using the ABCD framework as the “language” of trust. ABCD is an acronym that describes trustworthy team members. A team member can be trusted if he is Able (demonstrates competence), Believable (acts with integrity), Connected (cares about others), and Dependable (honors commitments). Having a common language of trust allows team members to identify actions that will build trust, and to discuss low-trust actions in an objective, behaviorally focused manner.
3. Have clear roles and expectations—One of the primary ways mistrust develops in a team is a lack of focus and clarity on the team’s purpose, goals, and roles of its members. This causes team members to step on each other’s toes and question each other’s motives. It drags down their morale and productivity and fosters disengagement. High-trust teams are crystal clear on their purpose and goals, each other’s roles on the team, and how they work together to make the team a success. A team charter provides this clarity from the get-go. Whether it’s a temporary ad-hoc team or a permanent, operational team, a team charter details the purpose of the team, the roles of team members, behavioral norms of how team members relate to each other, and how they’ll make decisions. A team charter functions like banks for a river. It provides direction and boundaries for the team to operate and channels their energy toward their goals. A river without banks is just a large puddle, and without a team charter, teams flounder and their productivity wanes.
4. Create an environment of psychological safety—Psychological safety describes an individual’s perceptions about the consequences of taking interpersonal risks in their work environment. It consists of taken-for-granted beliefs about how others will respond when one puts oneself on the line, such as asking a question, seeking feedback, reporting a mistake, or proposing a new idea. A safe environment cultivates trust because it allows team members to take risks and potentially fail without fear of punishment. If team members fear the consequences of being vulnerable, they will withhold their trust from others and won’t put themselves at risk to help their teammates. Team leaders set the tone when it comes to creating a safe environment. By role modeling vulnerability, authenticity, admitting their own mistakes, and treating team member errors as learning moments rather than opportunities for punishment, the leader gives permission for team members to do the same.
5. Let them experience challenges together—Part of astronaut training at NASA includes experiencing 7 to 10-day wilderness expeditions. NASA brings together a crew and puts them in an uncomfortable environment in the wilderness where they are forced to rely upon and trust one another. It’s the breeding ground for the trust they will need to have in each other when they are living and working together in space. The key variable in this exercise is dealing with and overcoming challenges together. Now, obviously, it’s not practical or possible for most organizations to send their teams on wilderness expeditions to build trust, but it is possible to structure other activities to accomplish the same purpose. Team building events like ropes courses often get a bad wrap as being gimmicky, but if done in the context of a broader, more strategic approach, can be helpful trust-builders. The key is to let team members experience challenge together, either on the job or off it, and let them work through it themselves. We do a disservice to our teams when we try to prevent or rescue them from hard times. It’s the perseverance through struggle that builds team trust and unity.
The most successful and high-performing teams are built on trust. I agree with Mike Krzyzewski, the legendary coach of Duke University’s men’s basketball team, who said in his book Leading With The Heart, “In leadership, there are no words more important than trust. In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved.”
Photo by Gerd Altmann on Pexels.com
Imagine, if you will, you are in a large hotel ballroom with nearly 3,000 leaders from 115 countries representing 38 different industry sectors. You’re attending a conference to discuss the most important leadership issues of the day, and 96% of the attendees agree that one specific topic needs to be a high priority in relation to all their other business priorities. You would guess the vast majority of leaders would have a plan in place to deal with such a widely accepted, high-priority business issue, right?
Wrong.
The high priority business issue that is critically important for success? Building and maintaining stakeholder trust.
The number of leaders who have a defined plan to address this issue? Just 34%.
Building trust starts with your most important stakeholders: employees. If your employees trust you and the organization, they are much more likely to go above and beyond to do good work, take risks that fuel innovation, and deliver excellent service to colleagues and customers. But as YPO’s Global Pulse survey reports, even though nearly all leaders say building and maintaining trust is important, it’s hard work to build trust with employees. In fact, survey respondents said it’s easier to build trust with vendors and suppliers than it is with employees. No wonder only a third of leaders have a defined plan for building and maintaining trust in their organization.
Building trust with employees isn’t easy because it never stops. It’s not like other business strategies that have a beginning, middle, and end. You don’t conduct a trust initiative by holding a few team-building events, hanging up motivational posters around the office, giving out t-shirts with pithy hashtag statements on them, and then consider the task done. Building and sustaining trust is part of your leadership and organizational ethos. It’s a way of being, not just doing.
So how can you get started in creating a high-trust culture? Here’s four key steps:
1. Start with You. The most important and impactful thing you can do to build trust is to be trustworthy. Leaders are always being watched, and your behavior sets the standard for what is and isn’t acceptable in the workplace. It’s the little things that count when it comes to building trust, and those little things are your behaviors. Do you walk the talk? Do you use behaviors that build or erode trust? Building trust is a skill you can learn and develop, it’s not something that just happens automatically.
2. Create a Safe Environment. An environment of psychological safety is the fertile soil that allows the seeds of trust to grow and flourish. Psychological safety describes an individual’s perceptions about the consequences of taking interpersonal risks in his/her work environment. It consists of taken-for-granted beliefs about how others will respond when one puts oneself on the line, such as asking a question, seeking feedback, reporting a mistake, or proposing a new idea. Leaders can foster safety by encouraging and rewarding employees who demonstrate vulnerability.
3. Connect. In my experience, a primary cause of low trust between employees and their leaders or organization is a lack of personal connection. Connecting with employees involves building rapport, communicating, and acting with their best interests in mind. People trust those they know and like, and unfortunately, many leaders don’t take the time to foster personal relationships. Granted, in large organizations it’s not possible for senior leaders to have a personal relationship with every employee. But leaders can be more transparent in sharing information about themselves and the organization, interacting with employees in town hall meetings or company events, taking time to attend smaller department or group meetings, and generally making themselves more available and known to team members.
4. Foster Collaboration, not Competition. Research has shown that collaboration has more positive effects on team and organizational outcomes than competition. Unhealthy competition creates a scarcity mentality and perceptions of mistrust among team members, whereas collaboration encourages people to develop trust and reliance on each other to accomplish goals as a collective unit. At The Ken Blanchard Companies we have a saying that defines our philosophy about the power of collaboration in teams: No one of us is as smart as all of us.
Nearly every leader agrees that building and maintaining employee trust is a critical priority for organizational success, yet few actually have a plan to make it a reality. Building trust is not an easy-peasy, one-time effort. It takes constant effort and vigilance, however, the results are worth it because it’s the foundation of your personal leadership and organizational success.
Let me ask you a question: Do you believe trust is critical and important to your success as a leader? Raise your hand if you answered yes. OK, you can put your hand down now.
Why do I think you raised your hand? Well, nearly everyone agrees trust is a critically important factor in leadership success. A recent survey by YPO showed 96% of chief executives said building and maintaining trust was a high priority for their success. This past week I posed that question to 120 family business owners and leaders representing dozens of industries across the Midwest United States and 100% answered in the affirmative.
Now let me ask you a second question: Do you have a defined strategy and plan for building and maintaining trust? Raise your hand if you answered yes. Anyone? Anyone?
If you didn’t raise your hand, you’re not alone. YPO’s survey showed just 34% of the respondents said they had defined and specific plans for building trust in their organizations. Based on my personal experience, I think that number is a bit generous. The response from the group of family business owners and leaders this past week is more reflective of my experience – 3 people raised their hands (2.5%).
It can be difficult to know where to start to build trust. Trust goes deep and wide. There aren’t any magic silver bullets when it comes to building trust. It requires a comprehensive and sustained approach over time.
If you want to have a defined and specific approach to leading with trust, I recommend you consider the following three dimensions:
1. Trust in Your Mission—Organizational mission statements are common and most of our organizations have them, even if we can’t always remember them verbatim (I said they were common, not effective or well written!). But how about a personal leadership mission statement? What is your mission as a leader?
I used to think a personal mission statement was a bunch of warm, fuzzy, namby-pamby leadership nonsense. Until I wrote one. It helped me take the jumbled mess of thoughts, values, and ideals that I knew in my gut were my personal mission and express them succinctly and coherently.
You don’t have to follow any specific formula, but here’s an easy one to get you started:
My personal mission statement is “To use my writing and speaking skills to teach and inspire people about the power of trust so they enjoy deeper, more meaningful, and rewarding relationships.”
There is a two-fold reason why a personal mission statement is the first dimension of leading with trust. First, if you don’t know where you’re going as a leader, why should anyone place their trust in you? People trust leaders who are clear on their beliefs, values, and priorities. Second, having a clear mission allows you to lead confidently and authentically, with a sense of purpose and direction for your life. Trust in your mission translates into others trusting your leadership.
2. Personal Trustworthiness—The second dimension of leading with trust is personal trustworthiness. Trust is based on perceptions, and perceptions are formed by the behaviors we use. If you use trust-eroding behaviors with those you lead, they won’t trust you. If you use behaviors that build trust, they will trust you. It’s that simple.
There are four elements that determine your trustworthiness: competence, integrity, care, and dependability. Those four elements are the “language” of trust, and to make them easy to remember, we’ve captured them in the ABCD Building Trust Model:
Able—Leaders demonstrate competence by having the knowledge, skills, and expertise for their roles. They achieve goals consistently and develop a track record of success. They show good planning and problem-solving skills and they make sound, informed decisions. Their people trust their competence.
Believable—Leaders act with integrity when they tell the truth, keep confidences, and admit their mistakes. They walk the talk by acting in ways congruent with their personal values and those of the organization. They treat people equitably and ethically and ensure that rules are fairly applied to all members of the team.
Connected—Trustworthy leaders care about others. They are kind, compassionate, and concerned with others’ well-being. They readily share information about themselves and the organization. Being a good listener, seeking feedback, and incorporating the ideas of others into decisions are behaviors of a connected leader who cares about people.
Dependable—People trust leaders who honor their commitments. DWYSYWD—doing what you say you will do is a hallmark of dependable leaders. They do this by establishing clear priorities, keeping promises and holding themselves and others accountable. Dependable leaders are punctual, adhere to organizational policies and procedures, and respond flexibly to others with the appropriate direction and support.
Personal trustworthiness is at the core of leading with trust. Trust is the foundation for unleashing the creativity, innovation, and productivity of your team. Using behaviors that align with the ABCD’s of trust is where it starts.
3. Extend Trust to Others – The third dimension of leading with trust is to extend trust to others. For trust to develop, someone must make the first move by extending trust to another. It’s the leader’s job to extend trust; it’s not the follower’s job to blindly grant trust to the leader based on their position or title.
Servant leadership is an approach that incorporates this third dimension of leading with trust. Creating a culture of servant leadership is based upon the idea that we can lead and serve at the same time. The leading aspect is represented by the traditional organizational pyramid with senior leaders at the top and front-line employees at the bottom. The leader has the responsibility to build a culture around a clear and compelling vision that includes the organization’s purpose, values, and a picture of the future where the organization is headed.
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
Once that’s in place, the servant aspect of servant leadership is flipping the pyramid upside down and serving the people who will bring that vision to life. It’s extending trust to those who will implement the vision and doing whatever is needed to support them with the training, tools, and resources to accomplish the mission.
Servant leaders create an optimally motivating environment for employees to flourish. Your people are constantly making logical and emotional appraisals of your leadership behavior. Every interaction in the workplace causes them to make judgments about how they think and feel about you, the organization, and the job they perform. Those appraisals lead to employees evaluating their sense of well-being. Am I feeling safe? Am I winning or losing? Is my boss for me or against me? Based on those appraisals, people form intentions about how they’re going to “show up” on the job. Our research shows that employees of other-focused, trustworthy leaders have greater intentions to do above-average work, give discretionary effort, be a good corporate citizen, stay with the company, and endorse it as a great place to work, the five hallmarks of passionate, highly-engaged employees.
Let’s circle back to the two questions I originally posed. Do you believe trust is critical and important to your success as a leader? You likely answered with a resounding yes. Do you have a defined strategy and plan for building and maintaining trust? Your answer was probably no. If so, build a plan based on the three dimensions of leading with trust: trust in your mission, personal trustworthiness, and extending trust to others. Your people deserve a leader they can trust.
The turning of the calendar page from one year to the next is an opportunity to start the new year with a clear and focused plan for your team or organization. Yet, if you’re like many leaders, you not only find it hard to establish a clear strategy for the year, you find it difficult to keep all your team members aligned and moving forward to achieve the goals. If this predicament is familiar, you have the opportunity to clarify your leadership intent for the year.
What is a ‘leadership intent’? It’s my variation on the concept of a ‘commander’s intent.’ In military parlance, a commander’s intent is the purpose and goal of a given order from a leader to their troops. It provides clear direction and the boundaries of operation for the troops to carry out the commander’s intent.
In his book, Call Sign Chaos, retired General and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, details how young Marine officers are taught to convey a clear intent so that it passed intact through layers of leadership down to the front lines. In the heat of battle, where communication can be difficult and circumstances can change rapidly, it’s imperative that every soldier be crystal clear on the intended outcomes of the mission.
Regardless of the type of organization you lead—a military unit, business, or non-profit —a clear leadership intent sets the course for getting all your team members on the same page for achieving the outcomes you desire. The formula of a clear leadership intent is:
Leadership Intent = The ‘why’ of the strategy + A clear picture of the end state
There are four characteristics of a clear leadership intent:
1. It conveys the ‘why’ of the strategy—A shared understanding of the ‘why’ of the strategy allows your team members to understand the big picture, which allows them to take ownership of their given responsibilities. Anyone who has ever questioned the ‘why’ behind a decision and been told “just do it, you don’t need to know why,” understands how demoralizing and unempowering that can be. Knowing the ‘why’ empowers your team members to make decisions, independent of your direction, that lead them closer to achieving the goal.
2. It provides a clear picture of the end state—My experience has shown that one of the primary reasons we fail to accomplish our goals is a lack of clarity on exactly what we’re trying to achieve. We can get so twisted up in trying to set the perfect SMART goal that we fail to clearly paint the picture of the end state. A clear understanding of the end state enables team members to understand what needs to happen next in order to move closer to achieving the goal.
To illustrate the value of conveying the ‘why’ of the strategy and painting a clear picture of the end state, Mattis recounts the example of the legendary World War II British field commander, Viscount Slim. Deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Slim’s troops were vastly outnumbered by the Japanese, often out of radio contact with him for days or weeks at a time. In his book, Defeat into Victory, Slim describes the value of having a clear leader’s intent:
“Commanders at all levels had to act more on their own; they were given greater latitude to work out their own plans to achieve what they knew was the Army Commander’s intention. In time they developed to a marked degree a flexibility of mind and a firmness of decision that enabled them to act swiftly to take advantage of sudden information or changing circumstances without reference to their superiors…This acting without orders, in anticipation of orders, or without waiting for approval yet always within the overall intention, must become second nature in any form of warfare.”
3. It conveys the essential details—By the very definition of providing a clear end state, a leader’s intent should provide the essential details, and only the essential details. Resist the urge to micromanage by providing too many details. Micromanaging thwarts initiative and creates dependency on you, the leader. A key to achieving your team’s or organization’s goal is to create acceleration within your team. You want team members to take responsibility for owning the goal and developing their own plans for executing against that goal. Burdening your team with too many details or conditions handcuffs them from acting independently. Your goal as a leader is to orchestrate and synchronize the efforts of your team, not to control them.
4. It is written with ‘will’ statements—Rather than condensing your strategic plan or goals into a PowerPoint slide with fancy charts or graphs that may leave room for interpretation, try going old school and write out your leadership intent with very clear ‘will’ statements. A clear statement of your intent focuses on ‘what’ you’re trying to achieve and the ‘why,’ but refrains from telling your team ‘how’ to achieve the goal. A good leadership intent statement includes an ‘in order to’ phrase that crystallizes the measure of success.
For example, “We will attack that bridge in order to cut off the enemy’s escape” is a clear leadership intent. It describes the ‘what’ (attack the bridge), the ‘why,’ and measure of success (to cut off the enemy’s escape). If the troops seize the bridge but allow the enemy to escape, the mission is a failure. However, a troop commander acting under clear intent will adjust their actions to cut off the enemy’s escape regardless of whether the bridge is captured.
The length of a written leadership intent need only be as long as necessary to clearly convey your message. It may be a single sentence, a few bullet points, a paragraph, or an entire page, all depending upon the scope of your strategy or goal.
A clear leadership intent has the potential to align your team around the key outcomes you want them to achieve. But it requires a few prerequisites. First, trust must be present up and down the chain of command. Leaders need to trust their team members to act responsibly within the boundaries of the stated intent, and team members need to trust their leaders to provide them with all the information they need to make smart decisions. Second, leaders must be tolerant of mistakes. Empowering your team to make decisions means that occasionally they may get it wrong. If you punish people for taking risks, you’ll create a culture of risk-aversion. Instead, treat mistakes as learning moments and view them as an opportunity to teach and develop your team. Finally, discipline and accountability need to be alive and well. Team members need to be disciplined to act in alignment with the leader’s intent, and when team members stray, leaders need to hold them accountable for their actions.
As you head into a new year, consider making your leadership intent explicit with your team. Provide them a clear picture of the end goal, a solid understanding of the purpose of the strategy, and enough details that enable them to make the next right decisions to accomplish the mission.
Perhaps the new year has started off with you being promoted into a managerial role for the first time. If so, congratulations!
Stepping into a management role for the first time is a daunting task for anyone. Most new managers are eager to make their mark as leaders and approach their supervisory opportunity with verve and enthusiasm, yet don’t have a good idea of the nature of managerial work. It doesn’t take long for reality to set in before new managers realize that leading people is a whole new ballgame. What made them successful as individual contributors will not ensure their success as managers.
Upon promotion to a supervisory position, all first-time leaders should be issued the New Manager’s Survival Kit. This metaphorical kit includes the basic items a new manager needs to survive the transition from being an individual contributor to a people manager. This kit doesn’t include everything a new manager needs to succeed on the job, just a few essential emergency relief items (see Dan McCarthy’s 25 Tips for New Managers for an excellent list).
1. Compass—To succeed as a manager you need to know where you’re going, and you need to navigate your journey from a couple different perspectives. First, you need to be clear on your own leadership point of view—your values, beliefs, and desires for being a leader—for it is these ideals that will keep you grounded and motivated in your career. Second, you need to understand the path of success from your boss’ perspective. What does success look like in your new role? Make sure you’re clear on your goals and objectives.
2. Mentor—Or more accurately, the contact information for your chosen mentor. Think of it as the “phone a friend” lifeline from the “Who Want’s to be a Millionaire?” TV game show. There will be many times you’ll need to phone a friend to ask for advice, vent, or commiserate with someone who has walked the same path. We all need a sage guide to help us on our leadership journey.
3. Seat cushion—For better or worse, the reality of organizational life is that managers participate in a lot of meetings. When you first move into a supervisory position you might wonder to yourself “What am I going to do with my time now that I’m not on the front lines?” The answer is meetings, meetings, and more meetings.
4. Thermos—Managers frequently work long hours, sometimes at an unrelenting pace. You’ll need a thermos for your coffee to keep you energized and focused, especially when you’re in those meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Did I say that managers have a lot of meetings?
5. Hearing aid—Arguably the most important of the survival kit items, a hearing aid is essential for your success. Listening is one of the most valuable yet underused skills for managers. Through listening you will build trust, establish rapport, learn about your people, and understand what’s truly going on in your business.
6. Tissues—Inevitably you will have someone cry in your office, and occasionally, you may feel like crying yourself! Always have a box of tissues on hand to gracefully handle those emotional moments.
7. Megaphone—One of your primary roles as a manager is to cheer your people on to success. The most difficult transition for new managers is learning how to achieve goals through other people rather than doing it themselves. You’ll need to learn the three P’s of motivating people: Push, Praise, and Play. Some people need to be pushed to perform their best through challenging assignments or strict accountability, while others need to be praised in order to bring out their best work. And of course every manager’s favorite, some people just need to play. Those are the self-motivated individuals that just need to be put in the starting lineup and given the freedom to do their thing.
8. Task list—Whether it’s a productivity app on your smart phone or an old school to-do list, you need a method to keep yourself organized. Managerial work is characterized by brevity, variety, and fragmentation, so you need a way to keep track of all the tasks on your plate. I use a combination of techniques including elements from David Allen’s Getting Things Done philosophy, ABC task prioritization, and Urgent vs. Important analysis.
9. Inspirational reading material—I won’t give you a list of critical books that new managers should read (that’s the subject of a different blog post!), but I will say that new managers need inspirational reading material to help them learn the skills they need to master as well as to stay inspired on their journey. Leading people requires mental, emotional, and physical stamina and it’s important to make sure you’re feeding your own soul so you’re equipped to give to others.
10. Mirror—Yes, you could use the mirror to help start a campfire or catch the attention of a rescue plane if you’re stranded in the wilderness, but in the office you can use it to look at your reflection, because at the end of the day you have to be comfortable, satisfied, and proud of the person looking back at you. One of the best pieces of advice a new manager can receive is to “be yourself,” for that’s what it means to be authentic. As you experience the highs and lows of leading people, occasionally check yourself out in the mirror to see if you’re being the kind of leader that you’d like to follow.
Are there other items you would include in a new manager’s survival kit? Feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment.
Santa is making his list and checking it twice. He’s going to find out which leaders have been naughty or nice. Actually, I think any person willing to step into a position of leading and managing others deserves whatever he/she wants for Christmas! (Try selling that to your spouse or significant other and see how far it gets you!)
If I were to play Santa at the office Christmas party, I’d give the following gifts to leaders:
1. A Sense of Humor – I’ve noticed that a lot of leaders have forgotten how to have a good time at work. Managing people can be quite stressful and it’s easy to get focused on all the problems that have to be solved and the fires that need putting out. This Christmas I would give every leader a healthy dose of fun and laughter as a reminder that you should take your work seriously but yourself lightly. Play a practical joke on your staff, send a funny joke via email, or even better, laugh at yourself the next time you goof up in front of your team. You’d be amazed how a little bit of levity can go a long way toward improving the morale and productivity at work.
2. The Chance to Catch Someone Doing Something Right – Too often we’re on the lookout for people making mistakes and overlook all the times that people are doing things right. Of the hundreds of clients I’ve worked with over the years, not once have I had one say “If my boss praises me one more time I’m going to quit! I’m sick and tired of all the positive feedback I’m getting!” Unfortunately the opposite is true. Most workers can recall many more instances where their mistakes have been pointed out rather than being praised for doing good work. Be on the lookout this holiday season for someone doing something right and spread a little cheer by praising them.
3. An Opportunity to Apologize – Despite our best leadership efforts, there are bound to be times where we make mistakes and let people down. One of the surefire ways to lose trust with people is failing to admit your mistakes or not apologize for a wrong you’ve committed. Take some time this holiday season to examine your relationships to see if there is someone to whom you need to apologize. If so, don’t let the opportunity pass to repair your relationship.
4. A Challenge to Overcome – A challenge to overcome? Why would that be considered a gift? Well, my experience has shown that the times I’ve grown the most as a leader is when I’ve had to deal with a significant challenge that stretched my leadership capabilities and forced me to grow out of my comfort zone. I would bet dollars to donuts (and would be happy losing because I LOVE donuts) that your experience is similar. Challenges are learning opportunities in disguise and it’s these occasions that shape us as leaders.
5. Solitude – Everything in our society works against leaders being able to experience regular solitude in their lives. Technology allows us to always be connected to work which is just one click or touch away. If we aren’t careful it can begin to feel like we’re “on” 24/7. Regular times of solitude helps you re-calibrate your purpose, relieve stress, and keep focused on the things that are most important in your life and work.
6. A Promise to Fulfill – Keeping a promise is an opportunity to demonstrate your trustworthiness. The best leaders are trust builders, people who are conscious that every interaction with their employees is an opportunity to nurture trust. This gift comes with a caveat – don’t make a promise that you can’t or don’t intend to keep. Breaking promises is a huge trust buster, and if done repeatedly, can completely destroy trust in a relationship.
7. Appreciation – Leadership is a noble and rewarding profession, yet leaders can go through long stretches of time without hearing a word of thanks or appreciation for their efforts. I would give every leader the gift of having at least one encounter with an employee who shares how much he/she has been positively impacted by the leader and how much the leader is appreciated by his/her team.
There are many more gifts that I’d love to give, but like most of us, I’m on a budget this year. However, I’m curious to know what other gifts you’d give to leaders if you were playing Santa. Feel free to leave a comment with your gift ideas!
I recently watched an excellent TED talk, which I think you’ll love, too. It’s about why the best leaders make loving employees a higher priority than profit.
Since the talk is only 9 minutes long, and the topic is an important, yet nuanced one, I have interviewed the speaker, Matt Tenney, to give you a deeper exploration of the topic. After you watch the video of Matt’s talk, I think you’ll enjoy my interview with him, which is below.
1. When you talk about loving employees, you say you’re not talking about a touchy-feely, warm and fuzzy emotional feeling, but rather being concerned about the long-term well-being of team members. Can you give some examples of how leaders can show commitment to an employee’s well-being?
Some general examples include frequently asking about and seeking out ways that we as leaders can help team members to be happier both at work and at home.
This can include removing obstacles that prevent people from doing their best work, reducing bureaucracy, facilitating skillful communication around problems in the workplace, setting clear boundaries between home and work so that employees don’t feel that they need to be checking emails and texts when they’re not at work, and investing time and resources in helping team members grow both personally and professionally.
A specific and counter intuitive, yet extremely impactful example of being committed to the well-being of team members, is refusing the demands of a customer when those demands create unnecessary negative impacts on the well-being of team members. This is something most, if not all, business leaders can relate to.
We have all dealt with external customers who are extremely demanding, not very grateful, and who create lots of stress for team members. A leader who is truly committed to the well-being of team members as the top priority would have a candid conversation with this customer and let them know that if they do not change their ways, the organization would no longer be able to serve them.
This doesn’t mean that the leader doesn’t love the customer. The leader could certainly refer that customer to a competitor who would take care of them.
Supporting team members in this way is a powerful demonstration of love and a powerful way to build loyalty with team members. And, I’m confident than in almost all cases, this can actually improve the profitability of the organization. Oftentimes we find that the most difficult customers are the ones with the lowest gross margins, providing the least amount of profit for the company, despite being the most work.
By finding someone else to serve them, we can create a huge synergistic effect that improves business outcomes. This can give us more time to serve the customers that are easy to work with, who are often the ones with higher gross margins, and who provide us with more referrals.
Also, by making the lives of our employees easier, they will be better equipped to serve those customers well. And, of course, there are side benefits like reducing sick days and improving overall productivity.
2. You share the example of Herb Kelleher and Southwest Airlines as models of love in action and the success it brings. Why haven’t more leaders and organizations adopted the same approach? What gets in their way?
There are a lot of reasons that leaders and organizations, especially companies, fail to prioritize people over profit.
In some cases, unfortunately, it’s because owners and senior leaders are greedy and self-serving, and only care about enriching themselves. However, I think this only true for a small percentage of profit-focused companies.
I believe the vast majority of leaders want to prioritize people over profit, but there are many forces that prevent them from doing it. In the case of most publicly traded companies, leaders face incredible pressure from the board to maximize stock performance.
Unfortunately, most shareholders have no connection to a company other than the stock they own. They’ve never met a single employee in the company they own. Thus, the company is nothing but numbers on an exchange listing to them. As a result, these shareholders generally only care about whether the numbers are going up or down. And, they want them to be going up every quarter.
Thus, most boards hire and incentivize senior leaders based on their abilities to make the numbers go up every quarter. It only takes a bad quarter or two, and leaders start losing their jobs. That type of pressure to hit the numbers in the short term makes it very hard to do the things necessary to create a culture that drives long-term success, which is a people-first culture. However, all leaders face similar pressure to hit the numbers to some degree.
And, it seems that the bulk of the conditioning all leaders have received most of their lives has been to prioritize winning, or hitting goals, over loving well. This just seems to be what our modern culture values most, especially in the for-profit business world. This conditioning to focus on goals and winning is not easy to overcome, and it hinders our ability to love well.
3. What role does ‘trust’ play in loving your employees?
Trust is an absolute non-negotiable requirement for loving team members.
If members cannot trust leaders, it is essentially impossible for the leader to consistently have a positive impact on the well-being have team members. There will always be a subtle anxiety present whenever trust is absent. This is going in the complete opposite direction of making a positive impact on well-being.
Also, giving trust away is a powerful way to demonstrate love. When leaders convey unquestionable trust and their team members, those team members are empowered to grow personally and professionally, and to be the best version of themselves.
4. What are the top 3-5 behaviors/actions/strategies you suggest leaders follow to start putting these concepts into practice?
First, and most important, we need to consciously make love the top priority to begin undoing the conditioning that I mentioned earlier.
An easy but effective way to do this is to change one’s job description. This doesn’t mean asking HR to officially rewrite your job description. What it means is just internally, for yourself, rewriting the job description in a way that reflects what’s most important. Most job descriptions start with a description of the responsibilities to the organization. Instead, I recommend people rewrite their job description so that it starts with this:
“My job is to help the people I work with to thrive: to help them to grow both personally and professionally and to do my best to contribute to their long-term well-being.“
Everything else in the job description would be listed as additional responsibilities. Once the new job description is written, I recommend reading it out loud multiple times every day to gradually undo the conditioning that leads us to believe that achieving the goal and winning are what’s most important.
By reading the new job description out loud multiple times each day, we are telling the brain that loving well is important to us. As a result, we start to see more opportunities to love better, and we’re much more open to opportunities to develop our ability to love better.
It’s kind of like when you buy a new car, or learn a new name, and then, suddenly, you start seeing it or hearing it all over the place. This doesn’t happen because that name or that car just magically multiplied all around you. It happens because the part of the brain that filters out information we don’t think is important has stopped filtering that information out, and is allowing us to see what we now think is important.
Second, we need to look at the problem of being too busy. Most leaders I’m aware of try to do too many things. Unfortunately, there is a direct, negative correlation between how busy we are and how likely we are to love team members. The busier we are, the less likely we are to love well. This was demonstrated in the now famous Good Samaritan study conducted at Princeton University.
So, I highly recommend taking measures to do less and spend more time just being. For those who think that their productivity will somehow go down, I think you’ll be surprised. I feel very confident that your productivity will increase. Productivity is not a function of how many tasks we complete. It’s a function of the value we produce.
Doing less helps you to get clearer on what really matters and spend more time doing that. And, of course, the most important example of this is getting clear on the truth that what is most important in life is loving well. By reducing the number of things we do, we are much more likely to love better.
Third, we need to work on the bad habit of being distracted. I would guess that most people spend 90% of their time distracted either by obsessive use of technology or by their own thinking (or both). This, of course leads to increased anxiety, which makes us much less likely to love well. And, it also means that we’re habitually distracted when we’re interacting with other human beings. If we are distracted when interacting with others, people don’t feel loved in our presence because they don’t feel as though we are truly there with them. The simplest yet perhaps most tangible way to demonstrate love is to give a person our complete and undivided attention, to be fully present with them.
This is why I’m a huge advocate have engaging in mindfulness training. With mindfulness training, we can systematically break the habit of being distracted and cultivate a new habit of being mindfully self-aware and fully present. Mindfulness empowers us to consistently embody love.
Matt Tenney is the author of Serve To Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom, and The Mindfulness Edge: How to Rewire Your Brain for Leadership and Personal Excellence Without Adding to Your Schedule.
How do you feel about your employer when you leave work at the end of the day? When you talk to friends or family about your job, how do you describe it? When you eat lunch with coworkers in the break room and the conversation shifts to work, what is the tenor of the discussion? Are there positive sentiments expressed or negative?
How you answer those questions says a lot about the quality of the employee experience at your organization. The employee experience can be defined as the sum of all the interactions an employee has with their employer. It starts from the moment a person applies for a job and continues through the interview, hiring, and on-boarding process. It includes the training process, the daily work experience including the quality of the work environment and the technology they use, career growth, interactions with leadership and the organization’s policies and procedures, and eventually retirement or separation. In essence, it’s the entire employee/employer life cycle.
Why is the employee experience important and why should leaders give a hoot? Well, the answer is pretty straight-forward when you think about it. The way you treat your employees is the way they are going to treat your customers. If you want your customers to have an outstanding experience, then your employees need to have one, too.
Given the expansiveness of all the factors impacting the employee experience, it’s easy to get overwhelmed when considering where to focus your efforts. Let me suggest that there is one critical X factor that has a disproportionate amount of influence on the quality of the employee experience, and as a leader, this X factor is primarily under your control. This X factor is something your employees experience every day and it shapes how they view the importance of their work, their commitment to the organization, and whether they endorse the organization as a good place to work.
What is the X factor of the employee experience? The X factor is you. The leader.
An employee’s relationship with their direct supervisor is the primary lens through which they interpret how they are treated by the organization. Gallup’s research shows that leaders are responsible for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores, so a healthy employee-supervisor relationship is key to an exceptional employee experience. Research on other key dynamics of the employee-supervisor relationship confirm its importance and impact. The 2017 “Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement” report from the Society for Human Resource Management showed the top two contributors to employee satisfaction were respectful treatment of all employees at all levels (65 percent) and trust between employees and senior management (61 percent). Studies have shown that committed and engaged employees who trust their leaders perform 20 percent better and are 87 percent less likely to leave the organization, and that high-trust organizations experience 50 percent less turnover than low-trust organizations.
The employee experience of your organization will develop with or without your involvement. Obviously, it’s in your best interest to proactively influence the process. I invite you to learn more by joining me for the free online Experia Summit, December 9-13, where I’ll be presenting specific strategies for creating an exceptional employee experience. I’ll be joined by several other thought leaders discussing ways you can elevate your employee, customer, product, brand, culture, and leadership experience.
Remember, as the leader, you are the primary influence on the quality of experience your employees have at work. What will that experience be like? What will you be like?
Telling an employee “thank you” is one of the most simple and powerful ways to build trust, yet it doesn’t happen near enough in the workplace.
Whenever I conduct trust workshops with clients and discuss the role that rewards and recognition play in building trust, I will ask participants to raise their hands if they feel like they receive too much praise or recognition on the job. No one has ever raised a hand.
So in an effort to equip leaders to build trust and increase recognition in the workplace, and with the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday just a few days away, I thought I’d share ten ways to express thanks to your employees that will mean everything to them, yet cost you very little. I’ve used these myself and can attest to their effectiveness.
1. Let them leave work early – This may not be feasible in all work environments, but if you’re able to do it, a surprise treat of allowing people to leave early does wonders for team morale and well-being. I use this technique occasionally with my team, usually when they’ve had the pedal to the metal for a long period of time, or if we have a holiday weekend coming up. Allowing folks to get a head start on the weekend or a few hours of unexpected free time shows you recognize and appreciate their hard work and that you understand there’s more to life than just work.
2. Leave a “thank you” voice mail message – Don’t tell my I.T. department, but I’ve got voice mails saved from over ten years ago that were sent to me by colleagues who took the time to leave me a special message of praise. The spoken word can have a tremendous impact on individuals, and receiving a heartfelt message from you could positively impact your employees in ways you can’t imagine.
3. Host a potluck lunch – You don’t have to take the team to a fancy restaurant or have a gourmet meal catered in the office (which is great if you can afford it!), you just need to put a little bit of your managerial skills to practice and organize a potluck lunch. Sharing a meal together allows people to bond and relax in a casual setting and it provides an excellent opportunity for you to say a few words of thanks to the team and let them know you appreciate them.
4. Give a small token of appreciation – Giving an employee a small memento provides a lasting symbol of your appreciation, and although it may cost you a few bucks, it’s well worth the investment. I’m talking about simple things like giving nice roller-ball ink pens with a note that says “You’ve got the write stuff,” or Life Savers candies with a little note saying “You’re a hole lot of fun,” or other cheesy, somewhat corny things like that (believe me, people love it!). I’ve done this with my team and I’ve had people tell me years later how much that meant to them at the time.
5. Have your boss recognize an employee – Get your boss to send an email, make a phone call, or best-case scenario, drop by in-person to tell one of your employees “thank you” for his/her work. Getting an attaboy from your boss’ boss is always a big treat. It shows your employee that you recognize his/her efforts and you’re making sure your boss knows about it too.
6. Hold an impromptu 10 minute stand up meeting – This could be no or low-cost depending on what you do, but I’ve called random 10 minute meetings in the afternoon and handed out popsicles or some other treat and taken the opportunity to tell team members “thank you” for their hard work. The surprise meeting, combined with a special treat, throws people out of their same ol’, same ol’ routine and keeps the boss/employee relationship fresh and energetic.
7. Reach out and touch someone – Yes, I’m plagiarizing the old Bell Telephone advertising jingle, but the concept is right on. Human touch holds incredible powers to communicate thankfulness and appreciation. In a team meeting one time, my manager took the time to physically walk around the table, pause behind each team member, place her hands on his/her shoulders, and say a few words about why she was thankful for that person. Nothing creepy or inappropriate, just pure love and respect. Unfortunately, most leaders shy away from appropriate physical contact in the workplace, fearful of harassment complaints or lawsuits. Whether it’s a handshake, high-five, or fist bump, find appropriate ways to communicate your thanks via personal touch.
8. Say “thank you” – This seems like a no-brainer given the topic, but you would be amazed at how many people tell me their boss doesn’t take the time to express thanks. Saying thank you is not only the polite and respectful thing to do, it signals to your people that they matter, they’re important, valuable, and most of all, you care.
9. Send a thank you note to an employee’s family – A friend of mine told me that he occasionally sends a thank you note to the spouse/significant other/family of an employee. He’ll say something to the effect of “Thank you for sharing your husband/wife/dad/mother with us and supporting the work he/she does. He/she a valuable contributor to our team and we appreciate him/her.” Wow…what a powerful way to communicate thankfulness!
10. Give a handwritten note of thanks – Some things never go out of style and handwritten thank you notes are one of them. Emails are fine, voice mails better (even made this list!), but taking the time to send a thoughtful, handwritten note says “thank you” like no other way. Sending handwritten letters or notes is a lost art in today’s electronic culture. When I want to communicate with a personal touch, I go old school with a handwritten note. It takes time, effort, and thought which is what makes it special. Your employees will hold on to those notes for a lifetime.
What other ways to say “thank you” would you add to this list? Please a share your thoughts by leaving a comment.
