Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Workplace

Listen and Involve

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All too often, leaders live in a culture of telling. They see their role as instructing others what to do, to plow through by compliance. But true leadership is eliciting commitment.

People want their thinking to count. If there’s a better way to carry out a task, they want to be able to identify it and put it into action. They’re more spurred to prevail at a challenge if they have a commitment to their work by their own volition. Hence, leaders should engage their people in choosing the goals the group needs to accomplish.

Idea for Impact: Leaders who play a participative management style derive enormous rewards in efficiency and work quality. Find opportunities to have direct conversations with individual employees and teams about what can be done to improve effectiveness.

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How to … Deal with a Colleague Who Talks Too Much

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If a coworker has a habit of talking incessantly—mostly about his personal life—and doesn’t heed when you hint you can’t be distracted from work at the moment, address your frustrations directly and respectfully.

When you think he’s ready to listen, have a chat privately and make him aware of the issue. Say, “I like conversing with you, but sometimes you keep talking even after I tell you I need to get back to work. Often, I feel pinned down. Could you please heed when I say our visit impedes my work?” You may add, “I’d always be happy to talk to you when I’m less busy or over a drink in the evening.”

This talk may be briefly awkward for both of you, but so are most tough conversations. Often, problems are best nipped in the bud.

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Don’t Manage with Fear

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The ability to rouse fear has forever been an essential tool of management. Fear can be an effective mobilization tool in the short term. But fear breeds complicity, not commitment.

Instead of fear-based tactics, try soft power. Build trust and gain influence using these methods.

  1. Develop an inspiring vision. Work hard to follow through on implementing that vision and celebrate even little accomplishments along the way.
  2. Communicate expectations. Ask, “How can I help you do your job better?” Follow up. No need to keep everything too close to the vest. You needn’t tell everything you know, but what you say and do has to be true.
  3. Solve problems quickly. Push for results. Set aside some time for review and create options or actions that are apt for your team’s situation. Be tough where you must be, kind where you can be.

Idea for Impact: Don’t take the fear approach with employees. With motivation, fear works—up to a point. Understand how your people view your leadership style and ensure your behavior doesn’t cross the line between pushing them hard and pushing them away.

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Direction + Autonomy = Engagement

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The best way to achieve results as a manager is to give your team clear objectives and then allow them to approach the tasks in whatever manner that makes sense. You can suggest deadlines, schedule check-in appointments, and make yourself available for questions. People tend to take more pride in their work when they aren’t micro-managed. Delegate results when you can and interfere only when you must.

Observe the strengths and weaknesses of each employee and assign tasks based on what will allow each individual to thrive. When employees feel invested in a task, whether because they volunteered for it or because it employs their strengths, they are more likely to take ownership of their work and excel on the project. Have faith in your employees’ ingenuity and give them much latitude in how they do things.

Idea for Impact: Often, the most potent motivator for employees isn’t money—it’s the opportunity to learn, expand responsibilities, contribute and gain appreciation, and be recognized for achievements.

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Learning from Bad Managers

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It’s always nice to have great bosses who’ll teach you many things the easy way. However, you’ll have a boss who’s bad for you at some stage in your career. Bad bosses come in all forms: tyrants, abrasive, unprincipled, insensitive, indecisive, inconsistent, unfair, uncaring, arrogant, insensitive, quick-tempered, manipulative, apathetic, and so on.

If you’re perceptive, you can learn more from these bad examples than you’ll from the great bosses you’ll work for. Remember the axiom: “No one is totally worthless; you can always serve as a bad example.”

When you have a bad boss, ask yourself, what things about this boss will you commit to never doing? Make a list and refer to it occasionally. Avoiding doing these things will help you be a better boss—and be a positive role model for others.

Idea for Impact: Bad bosses can become useful teachers precisely because they provide some of the best lessons in what not to do that you’ll ever be offered. Take it upon yourself to never be like your bad boss.

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Why You May Be Overlooking Your Best Talent

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Many organizations have a hard time articulating their culture. They can’t explain what they mean when they evoke the phrase “culture fit.” Sometimes it’s just an excuse to engage employees better whom managers feel they can personally relate.

Affinity bias is a common tendency to evaluate people like us more positively than others. This bias often affects who gets hired, promoted, or picked for job opportunities. Employees who look like those already in leadership roles are more likely to be recognized for career development, resulting in a lack of representation in senior positions.

This affinity for people who are like ourselves is hard-wired into our brains. Outlawing bias is doomed to fail.

Idea for Impact: If you want to avoid missing your top talent, become conscious of implicit biases. Don’t overlook any preference for like-minded people.

For any role, create a profile that encompasses which combination of hard and soft skills will matter for the role and on the team. Determine what matters and focus on the traits and skills you need.

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Why You Can’t Relax on Your Next Vacation

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Some managers can’t slow down even on vacation. They keep worrying about their work and won’t come back feeling rested and rejuvenated.

If you feel the added guilt of being away, it may be time for you to look inward and reflect upon your ability to delegate. Don’t bring fear of inadequacy with you on vacation.

Sure, most people responsible for delivering big things find it difficult to be away. Feeling out of control is always stressful. Here’s how to make time off as restful as possible:

  • Schedule 1-hour check-ins every day.
  • Manage your team’s expectations and make sure everyone knows what matters you want to be bothered about.
  • Build-in buffers at both ends. Don’t work right until you leave for the airport and don’t get back to work right off the plane. Schedule an extra day off before you depart and another when you return. Dive back in slowly.

Idea for Impact: Time off should be time off. Get the most out of your time off by unplugging completely.

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Tokenism Isn’t Inclusion

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This BBC article notes that diversity in many companies can be tokenistic—mere window dressing in fact. Sadly, even after decades of diversity initiatives, inclusion continues to be about numerical requirements and box-checking.

Within a few weeks at her job at a New York salon, hairstylist Cheyenne began to feel like a prop. When wealthy, diverse clients would enter, staff would go out of their way to introduce her and include her in conversations. “I realized the only other black women in the salon were always placed in areas where you could see them from the front. It was almost like they were being showcased. I don’t think the salon owners were trying to be diverse. I think they were trying to seem diverse.” Cheyenne was left feeling like a token: a member of a previously excluded group often hired or promoted as a symbolic gesture toward inclusivity.

Idea for Impact: Stop paying lip service to inclusion. Let’s broaden our understanding of diversity beyond identity-based differences. Let’s thoughtfully and purposefully draw on the unique and varied expertise and experiences that, when integrated, can expand our collective creative potential.

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Hitch Your Wagon to a Rising Star

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If it becomes apparent that someone above you on your department’s org chart is a superstar, let them know that you want to join their team or continue to work with them as they move up. Especially if you sense you’d connect with them intellectually as well as emotionally.

Companies identify their A-players, pour training into them, give them growth opportunities, and build their experience using “stretch assignments.” Partner with such a superstar. Even if they get hired away by a competitor, you’ll stand a chance of moving with them.

Contrarily, if you wind up working with someone whose career is about to implode, try to get a transfer away from that person as quickly as possible.

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Can’t Ban Political Talk at Work

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When politics and social issues are increasingly divisive, workplaces find it challenging to forbid political conversation entirely from the workplace. In April, project management software company Basecamp faced uproar when trying to ban politics at work. Co-founder Jason Fried announced that Basecamp would no longer tolerate discussions around political or social issues “where the work happens,”

Today’s social and political waters are especially choppy. Sensitivities are at 11, and every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy, or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant. You shouldn’t have to wonder if staying out of it means you’re complicit, or wading into it means you’re a target. These are difficult enough waters to navigate in life, but significantly more so at work. It’s become too much. It’s a major distraction. It saps our energy and redirects our dialog towards dark places.

Basecamp’s ban was meant to prevent distraction and souring of work relationships, but the mandate swiftly backfired. Twenty out of some 60 employees threatened to quit.

Banning Political Discussions Isn’t That Simple

I think banning political talk is a lazy way for leadership to not deal with issues like racism, misogyny, stereotyping, and contempt that may be festering among employees.

Often, when people say they want more political discussion in the workplace, they actually mean that they want more political discussion about viewpoints they want others to conform to. Workplaces with lots of political discussions are ones where most of the staff has identical socio-political leanings. Employees with divergent political leanings tend to be reticent and stay out of such talks.

It’s neither productive nor possible to not talk about politics and society at work. Companies can’t tell employees to not bring their real selves to work. People are opinionated about politics, and everyone has views and tries to defend them. Besides, politics isn’t a neatly self-contained issue that doesn’t overlap with anything else. When an employee’s attitudes aren’t in line with the company’s—or even the majority’s—attitudes, “put up or shut up” policies end up more damaging than the bickering or backlash they are intended to avoid.

Group settings are better when divergent opinions are known. An inclusive workforce must be able to embrace a diverse range of views. Conversations will come up anyway, and instead of banning these conversations and encouraging employees to take them outside of work, employers must institute protocols for airing and understanding opposing opinions and dealing with offensive behavior.

Idea for Impact: Canceling conversations about the significant issues of the day simply silences those with unpopular attitudes instead of encouraging a culture of growth.

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