One of the most common challenges my senior management clients face is how to foster curious, high-performing, healthy and engaged employees during an era in which constant change and innovation are keys to success (see also Leadership In The Digital Age). The answer is actually simple: The No. 1 factor for preparing employees across functions and business units to become a true asset to the business is trust. And trust doesn’t cost money. It starts at the leadership level, with the behavior of each and every leader.
But nearly all of my clients overlook this. Instead, they expect to hear suggestions like invest more budget in talent development programs, approve requests for more team-building workshops, hire the latest VR-enabled training gadget, offer more flexible work time and other perks, and so on. These are all good ideas and, for sure, they can pay off, but it is trust that makes the real difference.
Why trust? Because trust has the power to inspire and influence. It’s the glue that bonds us to each other and turns threads of connections into steel cables. Trust is among the strongest known predictors of a country’s wealth and it is the basis for long-term investments, motivation, engagement, and innovation. The 2015 Edelman Trust Reporteven ranked trust as the essential factor for innovation. Yet leaders across the globe do a lousy job in building trust with their teams. Although we know from research that key trust-building leadership attributes are beyond the 50% importance rank, only 20% of leaders meet that expected level.
Can you build trust? Yes, of course! Can you do this easily? No, not at all! It takes time, and the trust and reputation you build over years can be destroyed and ruined within seconds. Nevertheless, there are always a few steps you can take to improve:
Talk open-book.
Don’t tell your people only half of the truth – be honest with them. Tell them the full story, explain where you stand, and demonstrate integrity. Leadership isn’t about being the smart one keeping secrets from a stupid crowd of employees. Be transparent and get feedback.
Correct wrongs.
Remember how you told your kids or were told by your parents to say “sorry” if you did something wrong or to fix the sandcastle if you destroyed it on purpose? How come we forget to apply the same principle as adults in the business world? If we as leaders mess up, we should apologize and try to fix our mistake.
See people, not hierarchies.
In almost all the large, medium and small organizations that I’ve worked with, there is a phrase about demonstrating respect written into each organization’s core values. Make sure that you apply this in your daily business life — play fair, play kind, and be respectful regardless of age and gender, and most importantly, regardless of hierarchy.
Do what you said.
Again, this is one of those attributes that we value most and try to teach our next generation. But it’s all worthless if we ourselves don’t live up to being trustworthy, keeping our commitments, and doing what we promised or said we would do.
Listen with five senses.
We experience a lot of information all day (and night) long. Make time for face-to-face conversations with your team members. Then, make sure you listen first, go back and ask for clarification, and then ask for feedback. Listen with all your senses — because sometimes our eyes and our hearts are better listeners than our ears.
Building trust takes time, but investing in these steps now will help you, your employees and your organization succeed.
This article was first published with Forbes®.com
It is a question that many leaders at different levels and industries keep asking themselves at least on a weekly basis: If research is correct that the quality of my life depends on my social connections, which in return impact my happiness, how should I handle those 40+ hours a week with negative and even toxic people around me? They take away my energy, they kill my vision and positive perspective and they just make me see the glass half empty instead of half full!
Whether hiring the wrong people, organizing teams with the wrong players or simply not dealing with toxic people in an efficient way will impact your personal and your organization’s productivity and performance. Together with some of my colleagues from the Forbes Coaches Council, we tried to find positive solutions to that tension.
Wendi’s advice: Disengage Through Diplomacy and Positive Solutions
Remaining diplomatic, neutral and polite toward a toxic employee is one sure way to extinguish any negative discourse or problem behavior. A great way to expand on this is to consider taking the higher road by not feeding into or clashing with a toxic colleague’s behavior. When the toxic colleague displays negativity, you can address it with positive solutions that disengage their behaviors.
Laura’s advice: Be Bold Enough to Care
I often work with leaders on cultivating curiosity and empathy. A “toxic employee” is also a human being. Start by getting curious about what they are experiencing in the whole of their life and practice empathy that demonstrates support. That alone may be enough to cause a shift, or you could discover that their “toxicity” is reflective of something deeper going on in your organizational culture.
Bill’s advice: Top Leaders Get Beyond Labels
The best leaders understand when they make an inference that a colleague is “toxic” they aren’t ready to “deal with” them until they unpack the word. What does “toxic” look like? What is a person doing when they are being “toxic”? Once a leader can describe the behavior, then they should confront the behavior (e.g., “When you [fill in the blank with such and such behaviors], it has the following impact…”)
Jessica’s advice: Be Direct and Open Their Eyes
Many times people don’t realize they are the ones who are contributing to the toxic behavior. Be direct and make them aware of what you are seeing. Don’t make an ultimatum, but present them with support and solutions allowing them to make the decision to change. If they choose not to change their behaviors, this is when you make a business decision later to part ways.
My personal advice: Listen, Lead and Leave
Normally toxic people aren’t toxic to the entire organization. It is just the wrong minds in the wrong crowd with wrong tasks. Good leaders listen first how their team feels about this toxic colleague and how this person pictures him/herself. Then they take the lead and re-shape the environment. If nothing works, leaders have the duty to protect their team and make toxic members leave the party.
This article was co-created by international executive coaches and initially published on forbes.com
By now, it’s considered a fact that employee engagement is an issue for senior leaders all over the world. And where there is missing engagement, there is high turnover. This is where companies lose millions. But they don’t have to. A Gallup study estimated that millennial turnover due to lack of engagement costs the U.S. economy about $30 billion annually. Given that figure, consider the potential additional earnings businesses could create if they had the best, smartest and most engaged workforce collaborating and creating true value through innovative products and services. So the question to be asked before signing off on talent strategy for the next year is this:
What do I have to do to improve my retention rate — especially related to millennial talent — and build a culture of engaged, motivated and healthy teams that truly collaborate and bring agility to the table?
Make “people time” a priority.
In our eagerness to optimize, standardize and raise efficiency, many organizations throw tons of operational to-dos onto their leaders. By doing so, they rob the leaders’ focus from what they are meant to be doing: listening to and guiding their people. With a calendar fully booked — with 60-hour work weeks, packed with meetings plus travel time, plus being responsible for delivering the numbers — no human being has time for “human stuff.” After all, why should a leader with such an agenda have a serious interest in freeing up 15-20% of his time for people if he is measured by KPIs that are only finance related? Not too many organizations put “people time” or “mentoring time” as a desirable KPI.
So, what to do if your leadership team is busy and can’t free up their schedule to accommodate that 15-20% for people topics? One option is getting personal support from an “employee experience guide”: an external, on-demand professional supporting the individual leader in opening up that communication chain with the team again — listening, asking, translating, engaging, and speaking both languages — until leaders can take over their anticipated role. This employee experience guide must be a professional with a strong track record in people topics and personal leadership experience. It should be a well-reflected person who can bring understanding and a different perspective to the table.
If this isn’t an option, you could count on your leader’s own insight to make room for their colleagues after making it a known KPI. Practice shows that as soon as top-down KPIs related to serious people management are implemented and tracked, organizations see a shift in priorities. It’s almost like giving your leaders the “official approval” that they should spend more time with their team — only now, they get credit for it.
Throw away your old, rusty watering can and implement “talent size of 1.”
If you pride yourself with KPIs, such as “training days per employee” or “X-thousands of dollars spent on training per employee,” just forget them! Those are the KPIs for what I call the “watering can principle,” where each employee, regardless of strategic importance, personal interest and work-life situation, was given the same talent development attention. That principle only works in the old, push-based economy where we think in terms of product output and where humans are considered an expendable resource.
Instead, you should do your homework with Pareto: Figure out where the top 20% most critical millennial talent is in your organization that accounts for 80% of your success. Once you’ve done this, go and learn from your operations department, which is focused on meeting the high demand for individualized products or services. Nobody wants the one-style-fits-all; much more desirable is the self-designed, tailor-made-to-my-needs products. This customized approach, where each part goes through the process separately, designed to the customer’s individual needs, is also referred to as “lot size one.”
To transfer this thinking to the talent world, it means you listen carefully. What is it that your top 20% needs on different dimensions: work environment, leadership, personal development topics, philanthropic work, etc.? And then implement it to show those most desired millennials that you are serious about making them individually happy again via a talent size of 1 approach: a strategy that fits them personally and is customized to their life and their passion.
Answer the craving for a vision with a job that is worth doing.
In many studies millennials are characterized as job-hoppers — not being loyal to their current employer, always on the jump to the next better opportunity. To a certain extent, that’s correct, and you will start understanding why once you know what drives millennials. They are a generation who isn’t satisfied to understand the “what” of their job. Millennials also want to understand the “why” — why am I doing what I’m doing? And how does this contribute to the bigger vision of the firm? What is this bigger purpose we all serve here? Thus, it’s again the task of the leader to draft a good story about the purpose of the company, where the team is heading, and why.
In summary, make sure you re-emphasize the importance of your leaders’ people skills and engage an authentic employee experience guide where needed. Paint a vivid picture of the bigger purpose of your company, and stop with the watering-can principle. Instead, aim for talent size of 1 — and 2017 will be a game changer for your retention numbers.
To make best performance possible in the digital industry, we need to make sure we change the organizational setting in a way that allows individuals to act autonomously, easily acquire and access the needed competences and understand the purpose of the work they do. For some organizations this sounds like a difficult, tedious task, whereas others consider this the basics of a good management practice. Wherever you and your team are on this scale, let’s highlight the 5 golden rules allowing for great performanceespecially in today’s digital economy:
Clarify the Goals
The mission of the organization must be clear to everybody, including line managers and each individual subordinate. Make every possible effort to keep the lines of communication open, allowing plenty of time for talking and exchanging ideas. In this context it becomes even more important that leadership takes on the responsibility of “chief inspirer”, drawing a picture of the ultimate goal that looks so promising and irresistible that all employees are fully engaged and eager to follow and create outcomes.
Allow for trial and error
People learn and perform best if they are given a large amount of autonomy to test and try things out, to learn by doing it themselves in their own style rather than following their supervisor’s guidance. Making great innovations possible – the ultimate necessity for any business if it should exist in the next 5-10 years – requires a new culture where the one who tries and fails is not damned but celebrated as a hero and admired for the experience–and admired for the courage to stand up again and give it another try!
Immediate feedback
To know what’s next it is necessary to understand where you are, how much closer you are to the goal or what worked well / did not work well in the past. Thus, the best information to receive – and to give – is immediate feedback. This could come from people around you or your work / work-related systems directly, which could provide feedback about the status of your performance. Feedback should also come regarding your own personal standard and how you are performing according to your own goals and core values.
Balance challenges and skills
The usage of each individual’s skills and the entire human capacity of a person should be matched with an adequate level of challenge. The balance of these two never remains stable for a long time but requires ongoing adjustment in order to keep up the performance. No doubt, the winners will be the ones who constantly build and work on their skills as they take on more and bigger challenges over time.
Concentration over monkey mind
For many, stress is not the result of too much hard work but of too much switching attention, handling constant interruptions and dealing with ever-changing requirements. Thus people should be given more control, access to the right skills and tools to reach the requested objective and the trust that they will make the best choices.
One can ask now if those requirements are an organization’s duty or the responsibility of each individual employee to make sure they are met and not overextended. The answer is simple: it’s both parties’ task to ensure that work at least close to a flow-state is possible! Why? Because it will be the individual who enjoys work much more and who can remain healthy while achieving great results and it is the organization that will benefit if its workforce outpaces competitors because of their high level of performance!
What if I told you that your profits don’t come from your great products or services? They also don’t come from your latest online campaign, and they certainly don’t come from your improved multichannel strategy.
So where do they come from? The answer is simple: According to the recent Mercer study, 52% of a company’s long-term profitability is directly related to the quality of their leadership team. When you ask different leaders in an organization about how they would rate their personal leadership performance, though, only 39% see themselves doing a good job with their leadership abilities.
So what makes it so difficult to be a good leader? It all starts out with
the bad quality — or sometimes the nonexistence — of decision-making that’s frustrating. Instead of having the guts to say “A” or “B” and have a solid reasoning behind it, many leaders play ping-pong with important and critical business decisions. By doing so, they oversee the fact that in the digital economy fast decision making is critical and necessary.
It gets more difficult when you add the daily dose of rivalry and competition amongst senior members all the way up to board members. Unfortunately, the leadership mindset in many industries is still “old-school,” where fighting over personal advantage is considered success and team-based decision-making is seen as a weakness. And if you then sprinkle this with the expectations of the millennial workforce on leadership — being motivated by visionary people, who inspire and serve as true role models — you realize pretty fast that it is difficult to live up to all these differing expectations.
Hardly any leader is well-trained on these dimensions, since all those skills are neither part of the curriculum at business school nor part of an established training program in the workplace to help leaders develop and prepare themselves accordingly.
Many leaders also miss support from their supervisors yet face unrealistic goals, which makes leading with vision and motivation even more difficult.
In short, expectations for leaders are high — and will be higher in the future. The digital economy, with its new millennial talent, diverse teams spread all over the world, need for fast decision-making based on data analytics, and full scope of digital products and services will demand even more from leadership teams. Below are three core competencies leaders must master in order to be effective today.
Core Ability #1: Master The Balancing Act
The competence to manage and guide through change is a core competence today. From a top-down perspective, leaders are expected to deal with high-pressure situations and still make the right decisions while helping their direct reports adjust and anticipate the future — a balancing act for which one needs training. But not “training” in the classical setting of a short offsite leadership seminar. Rather, a professional, business-experienced coach or mentor is needed for regular support and consulting. Companies can also support growing leaders by offering a monthly peer group where employees can share experiences and learn from each other. This can have a significant impact on mastering the balancing act required by leaders today.
Core Ability #2: Walk And Talk
In addition to driving organizational change, a leader’s ability to collaborate and to successfully communicate with different stakeholders is critical. Times are gone when single fighters made it to the top. To jointly achieve bigger goals in a team effort and to ensure a communicative and participative leadership style are what organizations need to train and coach the next generation of leaders in. If leaders continue to rush from meeting to meeting, are out on lunch appointments, barely prepared for annual employee reviews, and lock themselves in their beautiful corner office for most of the day, they will never get a true feeling for what’s going on with their people. Make time on a leader’s agenda to work with and get to know his or her team members, understand what drives and motivates them, and then take it from there.
Core Ability #3: Mix The Formats
Without a doubt, the requirements leaders face in the digital future are beyond what they learn at any good business school. And in many cases, those unforeseen real-life situations account for the biggest lessons learned. How can leaders prepare for those? How can leaders learn?
By mixing formats.
Yes, make sure your leaders understand the basics and the “theory,” which you can provide in off-site training or online courses. But also make sure that your leaders then get access to experienced coaches or mentors who help them apply what they’ve learned to real business environments.
In conclusion, by making sure that your high potentials have access to mentors, allowing your leaders to schedule more people-time into their calendars, and mixing learning formats, your organization will be better prepared for future success and profits.
Despite all the technological innovations taking place, we need to keep in mind that there is a human factor that plays a vital role in the digital industry. We can automate processes, we can have robots as new team members, and we can work with smart, connected, shared devices that tell us what we want before we even know it. But there is no organization—to date or in the future—that can operate without any human beings at all.
The true success factor for companies in the twenty-first century will be human maturity at the right key positions of an organization.
So the questions of the day are—Who are the main actors in this disruptive digital game? What distinguishes these up-and-coming talents of generation Y from their parents and grandparents? The makeup of the global workforce is in the middle of a massive change, where today half of the employees in the world are considered millennials or generation Y—born between 1980 and 1997. Millennials are the children of generation X and the large group of baby boomers, the majority of whom is about to retire. This Y generation has been strongly influenced by the impact of the Internet on our daily activities: work and life are strongly interwoven, personal opinions are expressed directly and openly, and their new personal lifestyle shapes how entire societies think, act, and collaborate.
Understanding how these most important players of the future workforce tick and what makes them perform and live a purposeful life is essential for a successful digital revolution in any industry.
One could fill a bookshelf with articles and studies that have been published on this markedly different generation of millennials. Yes, there are differences that are worth remembering, and yes, there are still a lot of values, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and desires that remain the same as in previous generations. Being a millennial myself, I once was asked in a plenary discussion to introduce myself as “the typical gen Y / millennial.” Here is the transcript of my answer:
I (as a millennial) favor the entrepreneurial spirit, a high level of independence, and yes, I’m digitally savvy with strong objections to micromanagement. I love empowerment, I love challenge, and I love excitement, thus I have a more unorthodox approach to my career and my daily job performance that does not parallel traditional paths. I view traditional hierarchies and authorities skeptically, but I bring an impressive portfolio of academic credentials and skills to the workplace. What do I want in return for putting those skills into action? I aim for fast-track promotions, nice salary raises to fuel my nonprofessional areas of interest/hobbies, flexible work arrangements to combine professional and family life, and yes, there needs to be a reason, a bigger purpose, and, of course, fun in whatever I am supposed to be doing. I want meaningful work that adds value, and I appreciate constant feedback, flexibility and recognition. I am also very impatient, so don’t you dare promise a distant pay raise or promotion—this will not get my attention.
It is typical for us millennials to find different and rapidly changing workplaces over the course of our careers. What will remain constant from one job to the next, however, is that we have certain expectations of ourselves, our supervisors, and the organizations we work for. To start with ourselves first, generation Y wants to learn technical or core skills in their areas of expertise because they fully understand how necessary those skills are in a digital environment. We are also extremely interested in learning skills focused on self-management and personal productivity as well as leadership skills, which are needed to solve current management challenges. All this should come with some sprinkles of industry or functional know-how and should be presented in a creative, innovative form or environment.
Our expectations toward the company we work for include the development of skills needed for the future, paired with ongoing professional coaching as we have been used to since our childhood days: whether it was our parents, neighbors, family members, or friends, there was always a good “coach” ready for a good conversation geared toward finding the best solutions. We also want a company with strong values and individualized offerings and benefit packages: from B as benefits to S as salary and W as working time. Organizations ready to gain and retain Y talents have to allow for—but not require—blending work with private life, and a clear career path must be presented.
Last but not least, the question remains of what millennials expect from supervisors or “the boss”—a term Ys would never use because of their dislike of hierarchy.
The “boss” is supposed to help navigate the career journey and provide constant, timely, and thorough feedback. This person should not only help guide but also coach and mentor on an informal basis and act as a sponsor in formal development initiatives. And, by the way, he or she should not have an issue with flexible work arrangements.
In a nutshell one could say that millennials are not willing to trust “old-school” schemes and sources such as preachy old advisors or traditional career tracks.
Given that generation Y will make up more than 50 percent of the global workforce by 2020, any company succeeding in attracting and working with millennials sits on a gold mine for future business success. Gen Y’ers are ambitious for thriving careers and charged lives, thus they will see progress in their professional lives, will see income growth, and see an increased possibility to pay for premium services. So if an organization has not yet disappointed them and manages to be attractive to them as customers and employees, chances are high that these organizations are well prepared for future success.
This Internet-savvy generation Y, with its focus on speed, openness, transparency, and global reach, is contrary to current management representatives who value quality, safety, privacy, and personal relationships. This changed mind-set, paired with a changed approach and a changed set of values and beliefs, will allow for taking on new perspectives and even generating new job descriptions such as a “generation integrator” or “digital disruption specialist.” Whether an organization can then motivate all generations to join forces in creating innovative and successful solutions remains another differentiating yet critical factor for high performance of any business in the digital future.
