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Best Ways to Counteract False Urgency Culture at Work

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Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, characterised by heightened connectivity and relentless competition, the need to work with a sense of urgency is more prevalent than ever. However, not all urgency is created equal. False urgency, often disguised as high initiative and activity, can be counterproductive, leading to stress and burnout among leaders and employees. In this article, we’ll explore the signs of false urgency and how leaders can address this issue within their teams while fostering a culture of true urgency.

We are more connected and agile than ever, working at high speed to stay on top of workloads and remain competitive. A sense of urgency and scarce time permeates every day.

However, too often, much of the frenetic activity in organisations is false urgency: unproductive busyness that doesn’t lead to meaningful progress. While false urgency has always existed to some degree, the pandemic, heightened connectivity, and the expectation for rapid responses have stealthily solidified its presence.

Of course, you want your team to act with genuine urgency about what matters most. But it’s easy to mistake false urgency for true urgency — both look like high initiative and activity. As stress and burnout in leaders and employees remain alarmingly high, leaders must recognise the distinction and root out false urgency from their teams.

Recognise the Signs

False urgency can insidiously infiltrate an organisation, even without deliberate intent. Leaders may unknowingly create an atmosphere of chronic overwhelm and reactivity, causing their teams to constantly respond to perceived crises. This continuous “jumping” between tasks can hinder meaningful progress and drain team energy. To identify false urgency, leaders should look for signs such as apologising for frequent fire drills, working on evenings and weekends, and receiving feedback to prioritise more effectively.

Pinpoint the Source of Urgency

Understanding the source of urgency is critical to distinguishing between genuine and false urgency. False urgency often stems from anxiety or fear of negative consequences. For instance, an employee may rush to complete a task out of the fear of disappointing clients or damaging relationships with senior executives. Leaders should introspect and question their motivations, reframing limiting beliefs that may contribute to false urgency. Encouraging respectful challenges and spirited debate can help shift the focus from anxiety-driven urgency to a more productive work environment.

Prioritise Ruthlessly

One of the challenges in addressing false urgency is prioritising the important over the urgent. Research indicates that humans tend to prioritise tasks with shorter deadlines, often neglecting more significant long-term goals. To overcome this, leaders can create psychological distance by imagining the situation from a future perspective or by considering what advice they would give to another team. Focusing on the potential gains of abandoning efforts that have already been invested in can also be an effective strategy.

Creating psychological distance is one technique that can help you stay focused on the big picture. Imagine physical distance, a separation in time, or that someone other than you is involved in the current situation. For example, you might ask yourself, “If I imagine it’s a year from now, what is the most important thing for us to do now?” Or “If this was someone else’s team, how would I advise them to prioritise what’s on their team’s plate?”

Additionally, deliberately focusing on the potential gains of abandoning ideas and endeavours into which you’ve already invested time, money, or effort. Ask yourself: “What are the advantages of discontinuing? What will it cost us if we don’t suspend our efforts?” It can be helpful to create reminders that subtraction is an advantageous option. Challenge your team to develop a list of everything they think the team could subtract or stop doing in the coming year.

Employ Strategic Procrastination

Procrastination, when used purposefully, can contribute to better outcomes. Strategic procrastination involves starting a task and gradually working on it over time to allow for deeper thinking and creativity to emerge. This approach may require resetting expectations and repatterning relationships with stakeholders to ensure more sustainable work practices.

This tactic may require resetting expectations and repatterning relationships with stakeholders, as it did for Ram. As Ram allowed himself and his team more time to complete stakeholder requests, he effectively managed their expectations by proactively communicating timelines and articulating the reasons for them. Over time, this reset stakeholder expectations and reduced their dependency on his team to quickly solve their problems, allowing for a more sustainable pace and often better final product.

Vet External Requests and Buffer Your Team Leaders

often face a deluge of external requests that may contribute to false urgency. It’s essential to shield the team from unnecessary pressure by evaluating the true urgency of these requests. Leaders can engage in discussions with stakeholders to consider trade-offs and strategic thinking before committing to new demands. Empower team members to question requests that have unrealistic timelines or fall outside their scope, and offer support in delivering “no” or “not now” responses to external stakeholders.

For example, let’s say your boss makes a new request of you or your team. While you want to show willingness, leaders are often unaware of the effort necessary to fulfil their demands and the trade-offs required. Rather than quickly agreeing to the new request, you might say, “We’re willing to do what it takes, of course, but would you be open to discussing the trade-offs first?” After all, considering the costs and benefits of different courses of action is strategic thinking at its core and fundamental to effective executive leadership.

If your team members are juggling many outside requests, give them clear guidelines about which ones to accommodate and empower them to question requests that have unrealistic timelines or fall outside the team’s remit. Be aware, however, that team members may be reluctant to push back on external stakeholders and more senior leaders. Bolster their efforts by consistently offering to step in and convey a considered “no” or “not now” to external stakeholders.

Foster a Team Culture of True Urgency

Creating a team culture that promotes true urgency is key to combating false urgency. Define clear criteria for urgent tasks, such as strategic alignment or critical client needs, and schedule regular reviews to reassess priorities. Establish communication channels and response-time expectations to ensure efficient and focused work. Encourage team members to challenge the urgency of tasks, making it psychologically safe for them to do so. Leaders should actively listen and acknowledge their team’s input, even if they ultimately maintain a deadline.

Work with your team to create norms that foster a reasonable operational tempo. Consider defining specific criteria for what constitutes an urgent task — such as strategic alignment, critical client needs, or safety concerns — and schedule regular reviews to reassess priorities and identify instances of false urgency. Also, establish appropriate communication channels and define reasonable response-time expectations based on urgency levels. For example, you might set a 24- or 48-hour response time to emails unless marked “urgent.” Without an explicit norm, your team will likely drop what they’re doing to answer your emails, even if they aren’t urgent.

Conclusion

Managing urgency in the workplace is a delicate balancing act. Leaders must recognise the signs of false urgency, pinpoint its sources, prioritise effectively, employ strategic procrastination, vet external requests, and foster a culture of true urgency. By addressing these issues, leaders can create a more productive and sustainable work environment, ultimately benefiting both the organisation and its employees.

CURIOUS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF OUR UNBIASED HR SOLUTIONS?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.        

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.        

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.        

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.        

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success. Request a Free Demo Assessment.        

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Sources:

https://www.businessreport.com/business/how-to-combat-a-workplace-culture-of-false-urgency
http://insightswithimpact.org/2023/10/23/say-no-to-false-urgency/
https://www.africatalksbusiness.com/2023/10/18/what-is-false-urgency-and-how-to-combat-it/

Making Your Work More Meaningful

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Image by wayhomestudio on Freepik

Curiosity is critical to professional success. A curious mind will spot and solve problems, while being unafraid to try something new. It will seek out the insights of others, and open itself to expanded thinking. A curious person will never succumb to apathy, instead pushing consistently for growth, innovation, and improvement. Anyone seeking to build a successful career must embrace curiosity.

But curiosity isn’t just essential to professional advancement — it’s central to crafting purpose and meaning at work. We all want to feel that our work is meaningful, and we all have an opportunity to make it so. But it takes curiosity — about ourselves, our work, and the people we work with — to unlock deeper purpose each day.

Craft Your Work

One of the best ways to enhance the meaning you get from work is through job crafting — the art of making small changes to your work life to turn the job you have into the job you want. The idea is that by making small changes to your work, you can tailor it to your unique passions, personality, and interests in a way that maximizes its meaning to you and others. My favorite example is Curtis Jenkins, a Dallas bus driver who managed to revolutionize his position to create what reporters called a “yellow bus utopia” while changing hundreds of lives. 

Curiosity is a necessary pre-condition for job crafting. It starts with a self-evaluation. Ask yourself questions such as what am I good at (really)? What do I love to do? What makes me happy on the job? A thoughtful self-understanding explored deeply and with an open-mind can provide the foundation upon which job-crafting is built. 

Then, apply this self-awareness to the job: 

  • What elements of my job could I tweak to be more meaningful for me and more impactful for others? 
  • Can what I currently do be done differently? 
  • Is my job, as structured, solving the most important problems — for the organization and those we serve — in the best ways? 

To get started on this practice, make a list of the core people you serve in your work, then list the outcomes of your job that help to serve them well. Then reflect on your current tasks and see if there are ways in which you could serve those people as well or better by doing your work differently. You may find ways in which to craft your work that are both better for them and more meaningful for you.

Make Work a Craft

The second way to make work more meaningful is to make it a craft. For much of history, people would often practice professions inter-generationally. Trades like farming, carpentry, and cobblery might pass generation to generation in a family. And often a person would painstakingly perfect the craft over a lifetime. This quest for perfection and constant improvement created the most memorable achievements in history — from the murals of the Sistine Chapel to breakthroughs in genetics and the elegant simplicity of the original Mac. 

This commitment to craftsmanship offers a sense of purpose in and of itself. As I explain in my book, we all gain meaning from work well done. There’s intrinsic motivation and purpose in knowing that we’ve put our best efforts into something, that we’ve honed a craft in a way that challenges us.

But how can we find opportunities for craft in our modern jobs? After all, building financial models or leading a team in a factory can feel a bit distant from Michelangelo’s historic masterworks or the genius of Steve Jobs. But craft is not about historical impact. It’s about self-improvement and a quest to push the limits of our own performance — to take on new challenges and achieve something hard and unique. When I was an analyst at McKinsey, this looked like building beautiful Excel models with elegant formulas that could last clients years. I did this whether the partners noticed or not because I took pride in challenging and improving myself. In your job, it’s something else. Curiosity can unlock it. 

Ask yourself: 

  • What are the core elements of your job that require excellence? 
  • What skills do you need to perform that job well? 
  • What are one or two areas you can focus on now to make a craft, and how can you improve day-by-day until you do those things better than anyone else and to the best of your ability? 

To begin, pick one area of your work you’d like to try to hone and perfect. Make this something you enjoy that is important to your job. Then assess the 5-10 ways you could make it better and begin working to improve them and challenge yourself. Keep notes each day or save old versions sequentially so you can see your improvement over time.

Connect Work to Service

There’s almost nothing in life that improves our sense of well-being and purpose like service to others. Numerous studies have shown that acts of service have an immediate impact on happiness and fulfillment. And in my own life, I’ve rarely felt as purposeful as when building a Habitat for Humanity home with colleagues, serving in a soup kitchen, or reading to kids at a local school.

Service doesn’t have to be confined to volunteer work in a community, however. As I’ve outlined in a previous article, there are at least six opportunities to serve others in any job: clients or customers, colleagues, capital, community, partners, and people we love. Knowing this and seeking opportunities for service in each of these areas can bring meaning to work. 

But identifying the people we serve and ways to serve them requires deep-seeded curiosity. Consider these questions: 

  • Who are my clients? 
  • What do they need? 
  • What are the key obstacles to their well-being that I’m helping to overcome in my work, and how can I do it better? 
  • Which colleagues need my help the most? 
  • How can I effectively offer that with no expectation of return? 
  • Which two or three people could I best serve today?

These questions, founded in curiosity, are at the heart of service to others. Pick two of the six areas you like above — colleagues and customers for example. Think of 2-3 individuals in each of those two groups you could serve better and spend the next month trying to really understand them, and ways to use your work to serve them well. 

Invest in Positive Relationships

In social science literature, perhaps nothing is as central to happiness as meaningful positive relationships with others. Such relationships are essential to Martin Seligman’s PERMA framework for flourishing and the findings of the Harvard Grant Study that “Happiness is love.” And those findings are echoed in the works of many others.

Relationships aren’t confined to our personal lives. Each workday we spend more than 8 hours with work colleagues, whether remotely or in person. And trying to navigate work in the absence of meaningful relationships is a recipe for disappointment. Positive relationships at work can help us to flourish, can make others happy, and can create extraordinary corporate cultures. 

At work, as at home, relationships rest on empathy and curiosity. We can’t have a relationship of mutual care and respect with someone if we don’t display a genuine curiosity for that person. Ask: 

  • Who are they? 
  • What matters to them? 
  • What are their anxieties and fears, passions, and purpose? 
  • On any given day, how are they feeling? 
  • What are they interested in intellectually? 

Constantly approaching others with curiosity will naturally build your own empathy and show those people you care — creating meaningful relationships in the process. When you are interacting with work colleagues over the next month or two, consciously make a game of trying to know them better. Ask more questions than you answer. And carve out time for conversations and interactions with your colleagues that don’t just accomplish your work tasks but (in a professional way) enhance the relationship you have with them. Improving your work relationships will make you and those around you happier, and it will probably make you more productive as well. Curiosity is undoubtedly essential to professional success, but it’s also at the heart of purpose. Living with greater curiosity at work can help us to craft jobs and professional environments that help us and others flourish.

CURIOUS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF OUR UNBIASED HR SOLUTIONS?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.        

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.        

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.        

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.        

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success. Request a Free Demo Assessment.        

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Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2022/07/26/10-tips-for-defining-and-achieving-meaningful-work-in-your-career/
https://stressandresilience.com/3-ways-to-make-your-work-more-meaningful/
https://achievecentre.com/blog/5-practical-ways-to-make-work-meaningful/

When Should You Discuss A Problem With HR?

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Working in a toxic environment can rapidly erode your feelings about your job. Just dragging yourself to the office every day can fill you with dread. And evaluating whether to speak up to HR about the toxicity — How much should you say? — can be incredibly intimidating.

We know this from firsthand experience. A few years ago, we were asked to analyse and assess what seemed like an edgy, dynamic startup. After three weeks we realised we had unwittingly joined a team trying to navigate a destructive workplace culture. The team was led by an impossible-to-please micromanager with an explosive temper. The office environment was fraught and tensions were always running high. The organisation didn’t have an HR leader, or any other senior leaders, so people didn’t know where to turn for help. It took us 18 months to start changing mentalities and toxic work habits.

To this day, we help professionals solve workplace challenges that can feel insurmountable. Toxic norms and cultures are among the hardest issues to deal with, and can make people question their values and competence, and even wonder if quitting is their only option. If you’re feeling similarly, you aren’t alone — study after study shows that these kinds of cultures drive attrition. Other people make or break our experiences at work.

Toxic Versus Irritating

For someone to be considered “toxic,” they can’t just be annoying or unpleasant. We’ve all had colleagues or bosses who we found irritating or didn’t get along with, but that doesn’t necessarily make them toxic. To be toxic, a person or situation must be outside the bounds of normal workplace behaviour. A colleague whose work style and preferences regularly conflict with your own isn’t necessarily toxic. A boss who actively undermines your career progression or a leadership team that encourages cutthroat competition between departments, on the other hand, could qualify as toxic.

This distinction is important because if you go to HR about an issue that is more annoying than toxic, they may be happy to serve as a sounding board or to offer advice — but they’ll approach it far differently than they would something truly toxic. From an HR perspective, disagreements, irritations, or isolated incidents rarely warrant escalation. If there is ongoing friction due to conflicting work styles and personalities, HR will probably advise that you and your coworker find a way to discuss and resolve the challenges. You may receive support from HR on how to have the conversation, with an emphasis on working together to find a solution. For personal support, however, I encourage you to talk to someone you trust outside of your organisation. A mentor, former boss, therapist, or career coach can be a sounding board and an objective partner to help you clarify your next steps.

You may be considering going to HR about a toxic situation at your job. If possible, you should discuss the situation with your manager first to get their input and counsel. HR will most likely ask if you’ve gone to your boss for help, so it’s a good idea to do that first. However, if your manager is contributing to the toxic environment, you should talk to a senior leader you trust to receive an objective perspective and guidance. And if you are experiencing a situation that goes against company policy or could have legal implications, HR should be your first stop.

You may worry that going to HR about a certain person or situation could backfire. Maybe you fear that the toxic person will find out you said something and take action against you. Or maybe you’re nervous that going to HR about a toxic norm in company culture could hurt your career if senior leaders hear about it. These are normal fears, and before you do anything, it’s worth thinking carefully about what you want to do and make sure you understand the possible outcomes.

What to Consider Before Going to HR

As you weigh the pros and cons of speaking to HR, here are three questions to help assess your options.

1. Have I documented what happened?

If you plan to report toxicity to HR, you will need detailed records to clearly outline your claims. Make sure to document the following:

  • What was said or done
  • The date and time of the incidents
  • If there were any witnesses

For example, your record may state: “On Tuesday, July 11, at approximately 12:30 p.m. ET, I heard [insert name] use the following language [insert exact words] within our weekly Webex team meeting. The following people were present: [insert names].”

In addition to documenting any verbal exchanges or physical interactions, it’s important to also have available text messages, emails, photographs, or any other relevant evidence of what happened. Employment lawyers recommend keeping your records at home, not at work or on your company devices. If your employment status changes in the future, you will lose access to your work computer and the emails or records may be deleted.

Documenting the details in advance allows you to provide a full account to HR and specific feedback when needed. A detailed record will also give you the opportunity to cross-reference what you’ve documented against company policies. Finally, since many toxic situations can bring up strong emotions, especially while they’re happening, documenting what occurred will ensure you have a clear, fact-based record to refer to later.

2. What’s my objective?

By the time you decide you need to talk to HR, the toxic situation may feel like it’s becoming untenable. I encourage you to identify your overarching objective in speaking up.

In other words, be clear on what you hope to accomplish. It could be that you need HR to help resolve the issue. For example, the person who is instigating a toxic situation may need professional development training or coaching to address their behaviour. You may also be hoping to bring some accountability to their actions. Or, if there’s an ongoing issue and previous interventions have failed, HR may work with the relevant supervisors to create a performance improvement plan. Clarifying your overarching objective before you act allows you to consider the implications of the potential outcomes, ranging from the best possible response to a dismissive reaction.

Remember, too, that it’s important to acknowledge the remit of the HR team, which is to serve the best interest of the employer. As an employee, any expectations that an HR person will become your primary advocate are unrealistic. This is not personal; it’s just the nature of how organisations operate.

3. Is what I’m experiencing illegal?

Finally, before going to HR, consider whether the toxic behaviour you’re experiencing is illegal.

Dealing with toxic behaviour at work — whether it’s related to harassment, discrimination, ethical concerns, safety infringements, or retaliation — can be deeply distressing. HR departments have a responsibility to ensure that companies adhere to employment laws and regulations. An employer also has a legal obligation to investigate any good-faith complaint of harassment; discrimination based on race, sex, religion, disability, or other protected status; or retaliation for reporting an issue.

If you are unsure if what you are experiencing is illegal, seek out professional counsel. An employment lawyer can answer your questions based on the applicable laws and regulations, assess the evidence, and determine the merits of your claim. If you do have a case against your employer, an attorney can explain the legal process and advise you on how to navigate your interactions with HR.

On the other hand, if what you’re experiencing isn’t illegal but is toxic, I encourage you to explore all the potential options you can pursue that align with the objective you identified. To do this, start by considering whether additional stakeholders might be able to assist. Questions to consider include: Is anyone else impacted by the toxic behaviour? Is my supervisor already aware of it? Are other contingent factors contributing to what I’m experiencing? You may be able to seek counsel from additional stakeholders before instigating a conversation with HR.

CURIOUS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF OUR UNBIASED HR SOLUTIONS?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success.Request a Free Demo Assessment.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is B_txt_01.png

Sources:

https://www.wework.com/ideas/professional-development/creativity-culture/when-to-go-to-hr-for-a-problem
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-your-hr-department-is-your-friend/
https://fairygodboss.com/career-topics/when-to-go-to-hr

6 Tips for Creating a Balanced and Engaging Work Culture in 2023

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In the past, people believed that the only prerequisite to succeed in business was a great idea. While this is a prerequisite, people noticed that some businesses with great ideas last longer than others. It didn’t take them long to figure out the deciding factor was the work culture. 

With that in mind, here are the top six tips for creating a balanced and engaging work culture that will last in 2023. 

1. Become better at solving scheduling problems

The majority of workplace issues arise from scheduling problems. This is what makes people stressed out and causes conflicts in the workplace. So, by creating a balanced and engaging work culture, you have a better chance at creating a balanced and engaging work culture.

First, the easy way out. You can handle most scheduling problems and solutions via employee management software. So, getting one should be a top priority. This level of automation and coordination is hard to achieve manually. 

Still, even outside of this, there are many different areas that you should improve in so that you can create more efficient schedules. 

First, you need to understand the problem, and these problems can come in many shapes and forms:

  • Optimizing employee shifts
  • Meeting room allocation
  • Project timelines

These are just some of the issues that you’ll be facing.

Then, you need to understand that there are many constraints and that the schedule is not completely arbitrary. There are legal regulations. This may not be legal even if an employee agrees to do a 20-hour shift. 

Then, there are employee preferences and even resource availability. For instance, if you have operating space for just ten employees, having all the employees from both shifts appear simultaneously will not increase productivity. It may even decrease it.

Most important of all is the data. By getting enough information on the efficiency of your scheduling (overlapping, missed deadlines, etc.) and employee feedback, you’ll understand the problem much better.

2. Develop a better understanding of staff management

Staff management is an organizational skill that requires a lot of intelligence, multi-tasking, and empathy. Now, even though this description, it’s implied that this field requires a lot of talent, at the same time, it’s a skill, which means that you have a lot to improve.

Once again, ideally, you wouldn’t do this manually but, instead, use appropriate software for staff management. This will make your actions more accurate and proficient at core management tasks.

Other than this, you need to be better at communication. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu states that if the order is unclear, it’s the commander’s fault when they’re not executed. So, you must become better at setting clear expectations. 

Another thing you need to do is learn how to listen actively. Regarding feedback, people want to know that you’ve heard the point they were trying to make, not just nod silently while they’re speaking. You need to provide feedback while getting feedback, which is not nearly as intuitive for many people. 

Conflict resolution is one of the most important tasks of any manager. You’ll often be summoned as an arbitrator in a conflict you know little about. At this point, you must offer a compromise and remember that you can’t take sides even if one party is 100% at fault. You need to be fair and just but also conciliatory. Preserving the unity of the team is your high priority.

Your work culture is a great idea that needs to be enforced. You can achieve this through good management. 

3. Allow flexible work arrangements

You must allow people to work independently and under their conditions. This is incredibly important for many reasons. First, it can help people achieve a much better work-life balance. Second, it may drive productivity up. Finally, it will make you more appealing as an employer and drastically boost your talent attraction rates.

Just remember that setting this up isn’t a small thing. First, you need to make a choice:

  • You can set up a deadlines-based system where you put people on performance pay.
  • You can monitor their work via employee monitoring software like HubStaff. 

Each of these two has its advantages and disadvantages.

Second, with a flexible working model, you’ll likely allow people to use their devices from home. This means you must introduce a BYOD policy to ensure a higher level of cybersecurity for your entire enterprise. 

You also need to ensure that you have a positive hybrid work culture. Believe it or not, even a hybrid workplace can become toxic if you’re not careful enough. While remoteness changes workplace dynamics, this change won’t always be for the better. It also won’t eliminate some of the worst aspects of the workplace. 

By giving people a choice to work in a remote or hybrid setting, you’re not forcing them into this business model. You’re just giving them more options. This is always positive and may even help increase their sense of ownership over the workplace. 

4. Put more emphasis on recognition and rewards

One of the first things you need to do to create a better work culture is to base your organization on the appreciation and recognition of your staff. Your organization is made of people putting their work and effort into reaching your goals and objectives. Your organization is not your vision, mission, or brand – it’s the people.

Your employees must know their work is appreciated to give it their best. So, you need to learn how to do this the right way. Generic praises are not efficient enough since people can easily read the intention (or the lack thereof). So, you might even want to consider getting an employee engagement platform. This way, you’ll always have all the insight you need to guide these conversations to their successful outcome.

Next, we need to discuss the rewards. Sure, your employees will love it if everything they do right could result in a pay raise. They would also prefer to get promoted at least twice per month. The problem is that this would be utterly unsustainable from the perspective of your finances and your organization’s structure.

Instead, you must learn how to give proper micro-rewards and create this promotion/pay-raise scheme so your staff never feels underappreciated.

You also want to think about the concepts of autonomy and trust. If you micro-manage everything and insist that your employees seek your confirmation for every decision, you’re not just slowing down your process but also ruining your relationship. Give them more autonomy!

5. Provide a platform for growth and development

Many managers see talent turnover as a negative thing and refuse to acknowledge it for what it really is – an inescapable rule of the business world. Your employees, even the best ones (especially the best ones), will probably, eventually leave. Even those you promote and reward. Even those you consider friends.

You can, however, affect:

  • How long they stay
  • How hard they try while they’re in your employ
  • How well they talk about you to their future coworkers

These three things are monumental, so you must ensure they’re happy in your employ.

Now, it’s only normal that people only look for themselves and your employees work for you for one of few things. They want a decent salary and great work experience to further their career.

You’ll be seen as an ideal employer if you allow them to grow. You need enough room for them to advance and a prospect for their advancement. 

You must also provide opportunities for lateral movement within your organization, a mentorship program, and many training opportunities. Generally speaking, even some of the best books about success and affluence, like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki, speak about experience and skills as more valuable than pay. Some of your most ambitious employees will feel the same. 

6. Introduce wellness programs and social activities

To show your employees that you care, you must go beyond activities that generate profit. Buying your employee a new laptop is a nice gesture, but it’s an activity that indirectly boosts their productivity, which you directly benefit from.

At the same time, by starting a wellness program or creating social activity opportunities, you’ll show that you care about more than just productivity. 

You can introduce daily exercise (or deskercise), introduce healthier options in your work cafeteria, or introduce a mandatory ten-minute meditation break.

This will result in stress relief, morale boost, increased creativity, and more.

You can also combine social activities with employee appreciation (which we’ve discussed earlier) by celebrating milestones. 

The only way for your staff to stay competitive in 2023 is in a balanced ad engaging work culture 

Your employees are the only ones who can decide how hard they’ll try and how long they’ll stay. With an engaging work culture, they’ll feel the intrinsic motivation to do more. A balanced workplace will protect them from burnout and make them feel more pleasant overall. In the end, everyone wins.  

By Srdjan Gombar

Veteran content writer, published author, and amateur boxer. Srdjan is a Bachelor of Arts in English Language & Literature and is passionate about technology, pop culture, and self-improvement. His free time he spends reading, watching movies, and playing Super Mario Bros. with his son.

Let Your Team Struggle In Order For Them To Grow

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In theory, most leaders know how important it is to delegate challenging tasks to employees both to help them grow and create a collaborative, empowered, productive team. But, faced with real workplace demands, it can be tough to put this into practice. Many of my clients say things like “I’m the only one who can do the job” or “If this project doesn’t go smoothly, the whole team will suffer.”

Empathy can get in the way, too. When you see an employee struggling, it’s only natural to want to step in and help. But from the other side, this can feel more like micromanagement than support. And when leaders over-function by keeping too many tasks, they allow their teams to under-function.

Here are some strategies you can use to make delegation easier.

Shift from doer to leader mindset

In my corporate job, we promoted the best doers into leaders. This came with an assumption that they would magically shift from being good at and motivated by performance excellence and rewards to excelling at and caring deeply about developing others’ potential. The mindset shift may be the hardest part of all. So, how can you facilitate this in yourself?

Notice your payoff from doing. The thrill of achievement provides a quick dopamine hit. But that’s something you need to resist to get to the greater fulfillment of having helped others improve.

Claim your leadership identity by getting clear on values. Ask yourself: What three words do I want people to use to describe my leadership style? For example: Do I want to lead with control, urgency, and expertise? Or, with patience, curiosity, and empowerment?

Be intentional about responding, not reacting. In the moments where you are triggered to step in, ask yourself:  Would that be aligned with my values and who I want to become as a leader?

Embrace the discomfort of the learning process

Many leaders have said that, after witnessing an employee falter, taking back the work felt like the most supportive thing to do. But there is power to holding space for struggle. Yes, this creates discomfort for both leader and employee because it’s a new way of working for everyone. However, as Gallup reminds us, one of the keys to engagement at work is the opportunity for stimulating challenges. And when you push through the struggle, the result is growth for all parties.

How can you embrace, rather than resist, the struggle of learning?

Name your emotions, which according to psychologist Susan David, offers clarity and resiliency and can empower you to respond in an intentional way, aligned with your values.

Normalise being uncomfortable, embrace the struggle. Neuroscientists know that these are the periods in which learning happens and perseverance is developed.

Reframe the situation. One potential reframe is: “I was allowed to struggle and that’s where I gained confidence in my skills. So I’m going to give my employee the same gift of time to solve the problem on their own.”

Distinguish between high- and low-stakes tasks

Leaders often tell me they remain stuck as doers because employees make too many high-impact mistakes that require intervention. But this usually happens when the bosses themselves hold on to all the work for far too long and are then forced to delegate at the wrong moment. The key is to instead hand off tasks when the stakes are low and missteps tolerated, or even expected.

What makes an environment low-stakes? Failure will support learning more than it would hurt reputation. Mistakes will not impact team or company success. The environment is safe for stops and do-overs. The people involved have support and compassion for less experienced colleagues on learning curves.

To know which tasks are ripe for delegation, consider ones that now feel easy or rote to you but would be good development opportunities for those on your team? Also think about work that drains your energy and doesn’t align with your skills, talents, and strengths but might excite and feel like a perfect fit for others. 

For example, if your employee’s goal is to develop better presentation skills, try a low-stakes activity like asking them to lead the next staff meeting before a high-stakes one like conducting a client meeting. Or, if they want to get better at influencing others, challenge them to get buy-in from a small team on using a new tool or work process before asking them to persuade your whole division to implement it.   

Be curious and facilitative

Early in your corporate career as a trainer, people may tell me that you are visibly nervous during sessions you are leading. You may explain to your boss that I was worried about not having answers to participants’ questions. Her response: “What if your role isn’t to have all the answers but to facilitate the expertise in the room?” This changed my perspective.

Like trainers, leaders can’t be expected to have all the answers. But they do need to have patience and curiosity and ask insightful questions to facilitate learning. For example: What has your current approach been? Can you apply past experience to this problem? What is this situation teaching you?

Finally, practice compassion and grace. This doesn’t mean tolerating poor effort or careless mistakes. Instead, it means offering understanding and accommodation in the face of someone not doing something exactly how you would do it.

You got to have the courage to delegate to colleagues and team members even if it means watching them struggle. That’s the only way that all of us — leaders and employees — grow.

CURIOUS ABOUT THE IMPACT OF OUR UNBIASED HR SOLUTIONS?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success.Request a Free Demo Assessment.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is B_txt_01.png

Sources:

https://tanveernaseer.com/how-to-help-struggling-employees-find-their-space/
https://www.betterup.com/blog/motivating-a-team
https://www.mindtools.com/aqdolgk/building-trust-inside-your-team

Practice Sharing Emotions as a Team

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Today’s tumultuous environment — the pandemic, the economy, war, divisive politics, the changing nature of work, and continued uncertainty — generates emotions in just about everyone. And those emotions undoubtedly have an impact on people’s engagement at work. According to Gallup, employee engagement has dropped over the last several years to 32%, and 17% of employees are actively disengaged.

To address this issue, some organisations are prioritising caring for employees. But despite innumerable well-intended efforts, a Deloitte survey of 1,000 professionals found that companies are missing the mark. The top driver of burnout is a lack of support or recognition from leadership in terms of emotions.

A simple but powerful way to connect with and care for employees is to recognise their emotions — especially negative ones. Research shows that identifying or recognising others’ emotions builds trust. Here’s why recognition is so impactful.

Why Recognition Matters

Positive feedback or recognition makes community members feel valued, reduces power and status differences between them, and may increase everybody’s sense of belonging. Although recognition costs virtually nothing, it’s a tool leaders and organisations underutilise. In a survey of over 20,000 people conducted by Tony Schwartz for Christine’s book, “Mastering Community”, some important data had been found – a mere 42% believed that their manager recognised and appreciated their work, thus impacting employees’ emotions.

When we’re recognised by members of our community, we feel a tighter tie to them. This is also what Schwartz, Founder and CEO of the Energy Project, which focuses on corporate wellness, found (pre-pandemic) when his organisation interviewed heart surgeons and their intensive care nurses at a large, well-known hospital where understaffing, long hours, and burnout were widespread. Schwartz’s team asked dozens of nurses what was the biggest challenge they faced at work. Given the intense demands these nurses face, the team assumed the answer would have something to do with exhaustion or how little time they had to recover and catch their breath. Surprisingly, the nurses said it was insufficient appreciation from the surgeons whose patients they served with such devotion.

Schwartz and his team then went to the surgeons, who were far better compensated than the nurses, but worked under difficult, high-stress conditions. What was their biggest challenge? Again, the team was surprised. The most common answer was a lack of appreciation from the hospital administrators. “I save lives every day, but I sometimes feel like I’m working in a factory,” one surgeon told them, echoing several of his colleagues.

It makes sense that caring cultures matter. Receiving praise releases dopamine, which is associated with well-being and joy, while gratitude gives the giver and receiver a mood boost. With an increase in people feeling disconnected and lonely, recognition is both harder to come by and more necessary because it helps build relationships and improve emotions.

Researchers Sigale Barsade and Olivia O’Neill studied “companionate love” — what they described as “feelings of affection, compassion, caring, and tenderness for others” — at a large, long-term healthcare facility and hospital over the course of 16 months. Compassionate love is manifested by workers “expressing caring and affection towards one another, safeguarding each other’s feelings, and showing tenderness and compassion when things don’t go well.”

Employees who felt caring from colleagues had less emotional exhaustion, less absenteeism, better teamwork, and higher satisfaction. The benefits flowed to patients, who reported more-positive moods, improved quality of life, better health outcomes, and fewer trips to the accident and emergency department. Families reported greater satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

To test whether this was unique to healthcare, the researchers then surveyed 3,201 employees in seven different industries, from financial services to to real estate, and found similar results: Employees who felt free to express care, affection, and compassion for one another were more satisfied with and committed to the organisation.

10 Empathy Exercises

While calls to reduce burnout, implement systemic fixes, and increase retention mount, managers in any industry can implement these 10 strategies immediately to listen deeply for emotions, reflect that understanding, and provide appreciation, connection, and community. These tactics can be used in both in-person and virtual environments, on a regular basis or as needed, in whichever order works for your team.

1.Appreciation round

One person completes the following sentence about a colleague and then tags the next person, or the next person volunteers:

“What I appreciate about you, John, is…”

The more specific and detailed you can be about the behaviour or attribute, the better.

2.Complete-me exercise

Have people complete one of these sentences, either verbally or written:

“Compassion is hardest when…”

“I made a difference yesterday when I…”

“I show up every day because…”

3.Step-in circles

Get everyone together in a circle and ask them to step in when they agree with a statement. After each statement, ask people to step back to the original circle.

Step in if you prefer the beach to the mountains.

Step in if you have not had a chance to exercise in a week … a month … a year.

Step in if you feel like you are not enough some days … most days.

Step in if you worry you are a failure.

Like a funnel, you start superficial, then increase vulnerability. When doing this exercise in a remote environment, ask people to use the hand-raise feature instead of stepping into the circle.

4.Raising your hand

Isolation amplifies shame and guilt — both destructive emotional forces. Knowing that other people can relate to your emotions (by raising your hand in this case) removes that isolation.

Consider the following hypothetical example: A hospital employee notified the wrong family about a patient’s death. The family was devastated. When it was later recognised that the wrong family had been informed, a new family had to be called, a disclosure to the original family had to be made, and a root cause analysis (RCA) was launched.

At the RCA, pain hung heavy in the air as the caregiver described how they felt like a failure, and shame followed, growing heavier with every passing second of silence. Someone asked if anyone in the room could imagine the heartbreak of making a mistake that caused harm to a patient and their loved ones when you’ve dedicated your life to healing others. They were asked to raise their hand if they could. Every hand went up, and the room erupted in tears.

5.The pause

Created by Jonathan Bartels to foster meaning, “The Pause” is a brief spoken recognition followed by 15 to 30 seconds of silence at the bedside to honour the passing of a patient.

However, the practice can be used in any industry. If there’s a workplace accident or shooting, if a colleague or one of their family members pass, or on the anniversary of a loss, make a brief statement about who the person was and their impact, express appreciation for those who cared for the person, and then hold a short, collective silence. These consistent rituals around what matters bind us together.

6.Personal notes

Provide note cards for employees and leaders to use to recognise someone, express gratitude, or acknowledge an emotional event. There is magic in the feel of a card in your hands and the thoughtfulness of a penned note. Remote employees can post their cards or use e-cards.

7.Creative storytelling and gratitude

Many employers read customer, employee, and patient comments or letters about employees at huddles, meetings, and town halls. Even better, ask employees to read the letters aloud. Fill the senses by playing joy-filled recorded customer calls. Ask customers or focus groups to make homemade appreciation videos for staff. Have the executives make some pop-up calls for recognition.

8.Rant exercises

When we’re put in situations that compromise our values, we experience moral distress, which contributes to burnout. Checking in on and identifying what people value helps us expand our capacity for empathy when someone is upset.

Pair people up and ask everyone to think of a frustrating situation at work or in life. Give each pair two minutes to discuss, with the speaker giving a friendly rant about the situation. The rules are that:

No rant should be personal (i.e. about a shared colleague) or inappropriate.

The details will not be shared outside of the room.

The ranting stops when the facilitator’s hand raises.

The second person should listen for what values are at stake for the speaker. For example, if someone feels angry, hurt, and afraid after being shouted at by a customer, they value respect. A person who feels betrayed or hopeless when their organisation says safety is really important, but staffing and training are inadequate — they value integrity. Someone who describes feeling excluded because they weren’t a part of a key executive meeting about their project — they value inclusion.

After two minutes, have the pairs switch roles and then ask everyone what values they heard. The rant allows us to find our collective common ground in the face of strong emotion.

9.Check-ins

Put pictures of different things on a table. For example, we’ve included pictures of a family, the beach, fairy lights, a trail in nature, a labyrinth, a smiling child, a bench in a garden, a sunset with clouds, a storm, and a large dumbbell. Ask everyone to pick one and, in 30 seconds, explain why. People might speak to what they lack, what they enjoy, how they’re feeling (hopeful, heavy, or joyful), or even share a dream. To set an example, you go first.

One-word heart check: “Give me one word that describes how you’re showing up today emotionally.”

Then simply acknowledge the range of emotions people are experiencing.

10.Wow moments

Create fond memories through unexpected “wow” gestures of recognition. For example, after hiring someone, send their family members a thank-you note for being a part of your community and supporting their loved one. Walk long-term employees to their car on their last day. The idea is to make the person feel special in a meaningful way, which will remain in their memory, and might even become the story they tell about your brand for years to come.

Ready to Experience Unbiased HR Solutions?

Great People Inside understands the unique challenges faced by remote workers and teams and has developed a range of customizable psychometric assessments to address these needs.

We believe that by leveraging the power of data-driven insights and objective assessments, companies can eliminate bias and make more informed decisions when it comes to talent acquisition, development, and team optimization. Our remote-ready assessments are specifically designed to cater to the nuances of remote work environments, ensuring accuracy and relevance in evaluating individuals and teams.

Curious about the impact of our unbiased HR solutions?

Take the first step towards transforming your remote work culture by requesting a free demo assessment from Great People Inside.

Our team of experts will guide you through the assessment process, showcasing the effectiveness and value of our tailored solutions for your organization.

During the demo, you will have the opportunity to explore the comprehensive features and functionalities of our psychometric assessments, experiencing firsthand how they can empower your HR strategies and drive positive outcomes. From personality assessments to cognitive abilities and team dynamics evaluations, our assessments provide valuable insights to enhance talent management and foster inclusive remote work environments.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to test the power of unbiased HR solutions. Request your free demo assessment from Great People Inside today and embark on a journey of fair and effective talent management in the remote work era.

Together, we can unlock the true potential of your remote teams and achieve remarkable success.Request a Free Demo Assessment.

Are Work Friends Invaluable?

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Millions of people suffer from loneliness. More than 300 million people globally don’t have a single friend, according to Gallup data. And more than 20% of people don’t have friends or family they can count on whenever they need them, let alone any work friends.

The average person spends 81,396 hours — the equivalent of more than nine years — at work. “Americans are now more likely to make friends at work than any other way — including at school, in their neighbourhood, at their place of worship, or even through existing friends,” according to the Survey Centre on American Life.

So, people spend a lot of their lives at work, and that’s where they’re most likely to develop friendships. Yet of everything companies do to improve employees’ lives and promote their happiness, social well-being is the aspect they invest in least, according to a Gallup survey of CHROs of the world’s largest companies. Indeed, Gallup finds that globally, only three in 10 employees strongly agree they have a best friend at work.

Why Should Companies Care?

Despite claiming “people are our greatest asset,” many executives I’ve met expect employees to leave their personal lives at the door when they come to work. Yet Gallup’s data shows that having a best friend at work is strongly linked to business outcomes, including improvements in profitability, safety, inventory control, and employee retention.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Minnesota not only confirmed that close friendships increase workplace productivity, they also found out why — friends are more committed, communicate better, and encourage each other. And according to a global study by the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), “Interpersonal work relationships have a sizeable and significant positive effect on the job satisfaction of the average employee. Relationships rank first out of 12 domains of workplace quality in terms of power to explain variation in job satisfaction.”

If increased productivity, profitability, job satisfaction, and retention aren’t enough, Gallup’s latest findings show that since the start of the pandemic, having a best friend at work has an even greater impact on important outcomes — like workers’ likelihood to recommend their workplace, intent to leave, and overall satisfaction. With the unavoidable increase in remote and hybrid work, best friends at work have become lifelines who provide crucial social connection, collaboration, and support for each other during times of change.

Unfortunately, the pandemic not only exacerbated global loneliness, it also took a toll on workplace friendships. Among people working in hybrid environments, Gallup has seen a five-point decline in those who say they have a best friend at work since 2019.

Whether a workplace is fully in person, fully remote, or hybrid, a culture that prioritizes and encourages work friendships is good for employees and good for the bottom line. So how can managers create and maintain a friendship-friendly workplace that delivers measurable results while also helping to combat the global epidemic of loneliness? Here are some actions to take right now:

Establish a buddy system

Everyone needs a buddy, especially when they’re new to a company. Teaming up new hires with veteran employees can expedite onboarding and productivity. Workplace buddies not only give new hires tips like where stuff is and what the unwritten rules are, but they help them make connections with other people in the company. And some of these initial connections will almost certainly lead to long-term relationships.

The key to an effective buddy system is the frequency of the interactions. Microsoft found that when its new hires met with their buddy more than eight times in their first 90 days on the job, 97% said that their buddy helped them become productive quickly. But when new hires met with their buddy only once during the first 90 days, that number was only 56%.

Increase face time

Before the pandemic, work was a place where colleagues could get coffee, have lunch, and run into each other in the hallway for impromptu conversations. For people who started working remotely full time in 2020, one of the biggest changes was the sharp decrease in hours they spent engaging socially with work friends.

Building friendships requires talking to, seeing, and being with people. The best way to connect is to see each other — even if it’s on Zoom or FaceTime. But at a minimum, co-workers need to talk more and email less. Email will never live up to face-to-face dialogue. Plus, it’s much easier to misinterpret what someone means over email.

Business leaders need to set an example: Communicate in person more and email less. Further, leaders can encourage in-person interactions by revising expectations, establishing new cultural norms, and even updating workplace configurations. For example, encourage cross-training or have workers rotate job duties so they can collaborate with people in other areas of the company. Exposure to new people creates opportunities to meet new friends. Plan on-site social events, meetings, or lunches. Move people’s workspaces closer together. Where else do you spend so much time with people from different walks of life organized around a common mission? And where else are you so dependent on the efforts of others?

Jam constantly

When people share a common goal and achieve great things together, they form a connection. The joy is in working together to produce magic. Using the Beatles as an example of a high-performing team, The Economist states: “The Beatles love what they do for a living. When they are not playing music, they are talking about it or thinking about it. They do take after take of their own songs, and jam constantly.”

If you’ve ever been part of a collaborative “jam session,” you know the feeling. Your employees want to feel that too — the satisfaction and pride of creating something great while having fun. Best friends trust, accept, and forgive each other. And when they work together, Gallup research has shown that they are significantly more likely to engage customers and internal partners, get more done in less time, support a safer workplace, innovate and share ideas, and have fun on the job.

Don’t force it.

Thanks to the pandemic, the days of all-but-mandatory happy hours and “kindergarten offices” full of games and colourful toys designed to encourage workers to stay late for fun team-building activities might be behind us. According to Paul Lopushinsky, founder of Vancouver-based consultancy Playficient, “That culture isn’t really about fun; it’s about getting people to stay longer.”

You can mandate policies, training or timesheets, but you can’t make people be friends. You don’t want your employees to start hating the very thought of company parties. If your company still discourages workplace friendships despite the proven benefits to business outcomes, remember this simple premise: To ignore friendships is to ignore human nature. In the battle between company policy and human nature, human nature always wins. The evidence suggests that people will fulfil their social needs, regardless of what is mandated. Companies do far better to harness the power of this kind of social capital than to fight against it.

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/business/work-friends.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katecooper/2021/09/28/the-importance-of-work-friends/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/forget-work-friends-more-americans-are-all-business-on-the-job-11660736232

Career Goals May Prolong Feeling of Overwhelmingness

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In many organisations, it’s the season for individual and team goal-setting. Deciding on career goals is generally something we want to be a rational and evidence-based exercise, combining a careful consideration of possibilities, resources, and obstacles with just the right amount of stretch. But what do you do when you feel like you have a very limited sense of what’s possible? When new obstacles seem to pop up around every corner and the sands are always shifting? When the idea of stretch seems laughable given how stressed and overwhelmed most of us are?

Setting goals in times of uncertainty and burnout can feel pointless, but it isn’t. Research shows that to engage our motivational systems and direct our brain’s energy to the right actions (both consciously and below our awareness), we need to have a clear sense of where we are, where we’re going, and whether we’re closing the gap between the two at the right rate. Without goals, we make bad choices and miss opportunities to act. But just as important, we can’t feel effective, which many psychologists believe is the most powerful source of life satisfaction and well-being humans have.

To set goals that make sense and motivate ourselves and others in such strange and often discouraging times, we need to set them with a growth mindset. And by that I don’t mean just “believe you can improve” or any of the other common oversimplifications of growth mindset. Having a growth mindset is a bit more nuanced (and more powerful) than simply believing that improvement is possible.

Your mindset is what you believe to be the larger meaning or purpose behind the work you do every day. A growth mindset is about believing that developing and making progress is the point of what you’re doing. As I’ve said before, it’s about getting better as opposed to just being good. And it’s about engaging in specific growth mindset strategies and habits to help keep you focused on the potential for growth in everything you do.

When you approach career goals through the lens of a growth mindset, you become more comfortable with uncertainty and more willing to entertain the idea of longer-term career goals. Here are two strategies to help you get there that you can use for yourself or with your team.

Use growth-mindset trigger words to frame your goals

When researchers want to study the effects of a growth mindset, one of the ways we do this is to describe the goal or task that someone is about to perform using certain words that evoke the idea of getting better rather than being good: improve, develop, over time, progress, become, and of course, grow.

These words serve as both explicit and implicit “primes” to your thinking. In other words, they shift the very meaning of the goal to being about developing, and they shift your mindset along with it. To use them, start by writing out your goal the way you would normally think about it. For example, your goal might be to “be an effective communicator” or to “increase sales by 5%.”

Then, rewrite it again using one or more growth mindset triggers. “Be an effective communicator” is now “become an effective communicator,” and “increase sales by 5%” is “develop our network of leads to improve our sales by 5%.”

This way of framing your goals isn’t about lowering the bar or being okay with poor performance. In fact, research shows that people who approach their goals with a growth mindset set more challenging stretch goals for themselves, not less. For example, in one study of medical supplies salespersons, researchers found that those who approached their work with a stronger growth mindset set more ambitious sales targets, put in more effort, engaged in more territory and account planning, and ultimately sold more units.

Establish progress and pivot points

In such uncertain times, it’s important to explicitly establish progress and pivot points on a timeline right at the outset, so you can monitor both your rate of progress and the need to shift in light of new information along the way.

It can be all too easy to lose track of your goals, or to not think much about them until you get closer to the time you expected to reach them. When that happens, you may fail to adjust when progress is slow, or cling to a goal you should have revised when resources or customer expectations started shifting. For example, you may set a goal for yourself of developing a specific skill or reaching a particular sales target by year’s end. To succeed, what should you accomplish in the first month? At six months? If you don’t know, you won’t be able to course correct and, if necessary, try a different strategy or set a revised goal to have the impact you want to see for yourself or your team.

By using these two strategies to prepare for and engage in your goal-setting conversations, as a leader or a team member, you start out with a firm growth mindset foundation that you can then sustain as you pursue your goals through uncertainty, setbacks, and challenges of all kinds — something we all need now more than ever before.

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://story-level.com/setting-career-goals-when-you-feel-overwhelmed/
https://hbr.org/2022/09/setting-career-goals-when-you-feel-overwhelmed
https://headtopics.com/us/setting-career-goals-when-you-feel-overwhelmed-30317001

Building Everlasting Resilience

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Over the last decade, a complex web of economic, social, political, and environmental crises has challenged the conventional laws of organisational physics, calling into question our resilience and relentless pursuit of operational efficiency. As a result, many leaders who spent their careers operating and investing in relative stability were caught off-guard, and many enterprises may not have survived the Great Recession or the Covid-19 pandemic without massive government support.

However, in our research, we have discovered a category of family businesses that are naturally more resilient — those who understand the existential need for sustained investment in organisational agility, even at the expense of efficiency and profitability. Their unique approach to managing risk provides an innovative playbook for leaders everywhere as we enter what everybody is calling a new Age of Uncertainty.

Many of these families have operated for decades and even centuries in emerging and frontier markets, where uncertainty is the rule rather than the exception. In these more volatile environments, threats to property and security are more pervasive, access to capital more limited, corruption more rampant, supply chains more fragile, planning horizons much shorter, and talent harder to find. This is in addition to the familiar organizational challenges that all businesses must manage in terms of operations, finances, marketing, and leadership.

Over the last eight years, thorough research has been documented on how enterprising families survive and even thrive in the face of these chronically-elevated risks. What follows are three simple lessons that we’ve seen families deploy successfully that can help all leaders cope with the sustained uncertainty that lies ahead.

Resilience requires intention

Family businesses that operate in more volatile conditions understand and anticipate that tomorrow could be materially different than today. In these environments, public markets and institutions are often weaker, less efficient, and more opaque. There is a natural scarcity of capital, resources, and talent, since all three prefer the predictability that comes with the rule of law, freedom of information, and reliable infrastructure. Family leaders can wake up one morning to discover that their companies have been nationalized, or their profits regulated, or that their work force is facing sniper-fire on their daily commute.

Having the foresight to anticipate and plan for such volatility requires a fundamental shift in organizational design — treating operational inefficiency as a feature, not a bug. I’ve observed that family enterprises who thrive under these conditions follow the wise advice of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus that “Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.” Their managerial mantra is “just-in-case” rather than “just-in-time.” Consequently, they actively invest in organizational redundancy — frequently observed in resilient biological systems — to ensure that they can bounce back quickly from adverse shocks and sustain operations whenever they lose access to critical capital and infrastructure.

Consider the example of a Middle Eastern family that built back-up manufacturing facilities and an entire residential neighbourhood in a nearby country in anticipation of a devastating civil war. Or the Haitian hotel operator who invested in backup generators for their backup generators and multiple internet connections to cope with persistent blackouts and network failures. Or the Japanese soya sauce manufacturer who rescued the local community from famine countless times over the centuries by sharing the company’s strategic grain reserves — earning cherished access to the Imperial Court. Or the Hong Kong family that built an expensive offshore nest egg in Canada as a hedge against rising regulatory risks to their Chinese operating business.

Though each of these investments in redundancy required substantial time and resources — precious commodities for any organization — being intentional about foregoing profits to build resilience helped these families prepare for, withstand, and recover from serious disruptions and chronic stress. Like keeping a spare tire and a jack in the trunk of the car, these adaptations become a form of continuity insurance and are particularly valuable in uncertain environments, despite their additional cost. As the old military saying goes: “Two is one, and one is none.” In other words, always have a back-up plan.

In contrast, many leaders who have spent their careers operating in relatively stable markets often view these investments as wasteful or inefficient — until they are blindsided by Black Swan events like the recent conflict in Ukraine and are forced to reimagine their global supply chains, foreign currency exposure, and interest rate risk. After all, when conditions are relatively predictable — as they have been for most of the last half-century in the world’s most advanced industrialized economies — optimizing for efficiency can be one of the most reliable drivers of profitability and prosperity, so it’s no surprise that this strategy has become ubiquitous even if it is short-sighted.

Consequently, effective leaders in the Age of Uncertainty need to be more intentional about investing in resilience — paying the “tax” of organizational inefficiency to help prepare for the broad array of risks that lie ahead. 

Resilience is a systems-level challenge

For many leaders operating in more stable developed markets, the last few years have been a painful reminder that our external context can’t be fully controlled, and many outcomes can’t be reliably predicted, despite our best efforts. These investments must extend beyond internal structures and processes and project outwardly beyond the enterprise — aligning with broader efforts to support social and environmental resilience.

In the Age of Uncertainty, enterprising families need to understand that their long-term health and continuity is even more dependent on the ecosystems within which they are embedded — a form of symbiosis often observed in resilient biological systems. As in nature, neglecting or failing to adequately support the health and development of all their key stakeholders only undermines their own resilience. In other words, retreating behind the castle walls and hoping for the world to set itself straight is not a durable strategy for surviving a political revolution or an environmental catastrophe.

Once again, all family leaders should take inspiration from their peers in developing markets who have seen this all before. These resilient family enterprises are more inclined than their peers to invest in and care for their communities, in many cases funding critical infrastructure when public institutions fail to do so. Some of our client families have built roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, community centers, housing, news agencies, and even telecommunications grids, in the absence of government investment in these critical public goods. This not only fosters a loyal and trustworthy source of local labor, but also increases the likelihood of long-term success as norms of reciprocity emerge to sustain and expand the healthy ecosystem. In contrast, when companies and citizens don’t have reliable access to these resources, or they are willfully undermined by populism and campaigns of misinformation, trust in third parties is diminished, transactional costs increase, and the economic machine inevitably slows down.

Additionally, any efforts to invest in systemic resilience must also extend inwardly — by nurturing the familial and personal resilience of internal stakeholders. Chronic uncertainty generates a particular type of psychological distress that can significantly affect the wellbeing and performance of individuals and teams. Family business leaders who are dealing with this issue for the first time should draw wisdom from the vast literature on managing prolonged stress both personally, within families, and organisationally. They must also acknowledge that not all family members and business leaders will have the same exposure to risk, or cope with stress the same way. Finally, they should take comfort in the natural resilience of their peers in emerging and frontier markets, where strong family ties are often a powerful source of both individual and collective wellbeing.

Family matters

Extended kinship networks have been the dominant socioeconomic unit since the earliest human civilizations first emerged. Our primate DNA enabled and even encouraged us to form deep relationships with genetic strangers beyond our own kin to better manage resource scarcity and existential threat — sustaining the first durable micro-climates of trust. Bad actors in this context were quickly expelled from the extended family and left to navigate a sea of uncertainty on their own, while the increased chances of survival and growth for those who remained help to reinforce norms around trust and reciprocity.

Many echoes of this ancient tribal orientation persist in emerging markets today — from guanxi in China and blat in Russia, to wasta in the Middle East and compadrazgo in Latin America. In these countries, webs of familial connection help lower the frictional costs of doing business and provide an essential lubricant for the economy — conditions we have historically taken for granted in the developed world, where institutions like the judicial system and free press are (mostly) reliable and ensure that others will (mostly) follow the rules. As public institutions around the world continue to be undermined by populism, campaigns of misinformation, and budgetary constraint, family leaders will need to increase their strategic use of familial networks to ensure continued access to capital and opportunity. In short, the Age of Uncertainty will demand a fresh approach to continuity planning — one that extends beyond the conventional strategy, operations, and leadership frameworks taught in every business school and deployed in every boardroom. To succeed, families will also need to make deliberate investments to better prepare for, withstand, and recover from frequent shocks and chronic stress, develop a systems-level view of risk that considers both outward and inward resilience, and nurture deep familial ties to local communities to help sustain an oasis of stability amidst the chaos. Despite the inherent inefficiency and material cost of these investments, in uncertain environments like the ones that lie ahead, it will be much wiser to have them and not need them, then to need them and not have them.

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://hbr.org/2021/01/the-secret-to-building-resilience
https://hbr.org/2016/06/resilience-is-about-how-you-recharge-not-how-you-endure
https://hbr.org/2022/09/building-resilience-into-your-family-business

Quiet Quitting Is About Bosses, Not Employees

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“Quiet quitting” is a new name for an old behaviour. The authors, who have conducted 360-degree leadership assessments for decades, have regularly asked people to rate whether their “work environment is a place where people want to go the extra mile.” Their data indicates that quiet quitting is usually less about an employee’s willingness to work harder and more creatively, and more about a manager’s ability to build a relationship with their employees where they are not counting the minutes until quitting time.

Every employee, every workday, makes a decision: Are they only willing to do the minimum work necessary to keep their job? Or are they willing to put more of their energy and effort into their work?

In the last few weeks, many of those who choose the former have self-identified as “quiet quitters.” They reject the idea that work should be a central focus of their life. They resist the expectation of giving their all or putting in extra hours. They say “no” to requests to go beyond what they think should be expected of a person in their position.

In reality, quiet quitting is a new name for an old behaviour. Organisational psychologists have been conducting 360-degree leadership assessments for decades, and they’ve regularly asked people to rate whether their “work environment is a place where people want to go the extra mile.” To better understand the current phenomenon of quiet quitting, we looked at the data to try to answer this question: What makes the difference for those who view work as a day prison and others who feel that it gives them meaning and purpose?

The data collected indicates that quiet quitting is usually less about an employee’s willingness to work harder and more creatively, and more about a manager’s ability to build a relationship with their employees where they are not counting the minutes until quitting time.

What the Data Shows

We looked at data gathered since 2020 on 2,801 managers, who were rated by 13,048 direct reports. On average, each manager was rated by five direct reports, and we compared two data points:

Employees’ ratings of their manager’s ability to “Balance getting results with a concern for others’ needs”

Employee’s ratings of the extent to which their “work environment is a place where people want to go the extra mile”

The research term we give for those willing to give extra effort is “discretionary effort.” Its effect on organizations can be profound: If you have 10 direct reports and they each give 10% additional effort, the net results of that additional effort are increased productivity.

The graph below shows the results. We found that the least effective managers have three to four times as many people who fall in the “quiet quitting” category compared to the most effective leaders. These managers had 14% of their direct reports quietly quitting, and only 20% were willing to give extra effort. But those who were rated the highest at balancing results with relationships saw 62% of their direct reports willing to give extra effort, while only 3% were quietly quitting.

Many people, at some point in their career, have worked for a manager that moved them toward quiet quitting. This comes from feeling undervalued and unappreciated. It’s possible that the managers were biased, or they engaged in behaviour that was inappropriate. Employees’ lack of motivation was a reaction to the actions of the manager.

Most mid-career employees have also worked for a leader for whom they had a strong desire to do everything possible to accomplish goals and objectives. Occasionally working late or starting early was not resented because this manager inspired them.

What to Do If You Manage a “Quiet Quitting ”Employee

Suppose you have multiple employees who you believe to be quietly quitting. In that case, an excellent question to ask yourself is: Is this a problem with my direct reports, or is this a problem with me and my leadership abilities?

If you’re confident in your leadership abilities and only one of your direct reports is unmotivated, that may not be your fault. As the above chart shows, 3% or 4% of the best managers had direct reports who were quietly quitting.

Either way, take a hard look at your approach toward getting results with your team members. When asking your direct reports for increased productivity, do you go out of your way to make sure that team members feel valued? Open and honest dialogue with colleagues about the expectations each party has of the other goes a long way.

The most important factor is trust. When we analysed data from more than 113,000 leaders to find the top behaviour that helps effective leaders balance results with their concern for team members, the number one behaviour that helped was trust. When direct reports trusted their leader, they also assumed that the manager cared about them and was concerned about their wellbeing.

Our research has linked trust to three behaviours. First, having positive relationships with all of your direct reports. This means you look forward to connecting and enjoy talking to them. Common interests bind you together, while differences are stimulating. Some team members make it easy to have a positive relationship. Others are more challenging. This is often a result of differences (age, gender, ethnicity, or political orientation). Look for and discover common ground with these team members to build mutual trust.

The second element of trust is consistency. In addition to being totally honest, leaders need to deliver on what they promise. Most leaders believe they are more consistent than others perceive them.

The third element that builds trust is expertise. Do you know your job well? Are you out of date on any aspects of your work? Do others trust your opinions and your advice? Experts can bring clarity, a path forward, and clear insight to build trust.

By building a trusting relationship with all of your direct reports, the possibility of them quietly quitting dissipates significantly. The approach leaders took to drive for results from employees in the past is not the same approach we use today. We are building safer, more inclusive, and positive workplaces, and we must continue to do better.

It’s easy to place the blame for quiet quitting on lazy or unmotivated workers, but instead, this research is telling us to look within and recognize that individuals want to give their energy, creativity, time, and enthusiasm to the organisations and leaders that deserve it.

Given our current situation knowing that your colleagues or employees are best suited for this new scenario we find ourselves in. Finding the right talent, the best fit for the job and your organisation can be a very challenging task. It is now important to find out whether your managers or your team is well-equipped of working together from various locations. It requires deep knowledge of their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests, work style and other characteristics. Our technology and solutions will do the work for you, helping you discover if your people are resilient during times of hardship, if they are autonomous, if they are team players, without actual human contact. Given that our platform is cloud-based, everyone can use it from home as well. Humanity finds itself at a crossroad for various reasons now, why not help people discover and develop themselves from the comfort of their own homes?

Request a free demo:

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Sources:

https://www.axios.com/2022/09/07/quiet-quitting-pandemic-labor-jobs-unions
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/398306/quiet-quitting-real.aspx
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/02/how-quiet-quitting-became-the-next-phase-of-the-great-resignation.html