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Stories from a journey in building a better world of work | Culture Amp podcast

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Sometimes, it's just about listening and not fixing. Watch this great 1:41 minute video.

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Tool: Samples of Feedback Statements (Redirecting & Reinforcing Feedback)

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Tool: Samples of Feedback Statements (Redirecting & Reinforcing Feedback)

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15-20 minutes on the basics of the dynamic shift and what to expect!

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HBR: 7 Ways a Manager Can Help Their Team Focus

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HBR: 7 Ways a Manager Can Help Their Team Focus

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It's no surprise that people struggle to focus. We're bombarded with distractions, burdened by unrealistic expectations, and drowning under too many incoming requests. Our team at Crucial Learning polled 1,600 employees and managers to better understand the severity of our collective failure to focus. The data painted an even bleaker picture of our tenuous attention spans.

One of our findings should be particularly alarming for people leaders: 60.6% of employees admit that they rarely to never do even an hour or two of deep, focused work each day without distraction. Where is all their time - and your money - going?

We found that two out of three respondents said they struggle to fully focus on a single task or person. And when they get a rare moment of concentration, one in three said they can only focus on a task for 10 minutes or less before getting distracted. And the effects of unfocused behavior are severe and far reaching. Specifically, respondents listed the greatest costs of their inability to focus as overwhelm, lack of energy, stress, decreased efficiency, less fulfillment, and disappointment.

Let's just play this out in the life of Damian, a high-performing product manager. The first thing Damian did when he woke up this morning was grab his phone and check his email. While lying in bed, he could do nothing about the requests contained in those emails, so instead, he started his day feeling overwhelmed. Luckily, his calendar was clear, and he'd have time to put the finishing touches on his project proposal that was due to Lisa.

As soon as he arrived at the office, Rajiv cornered him to ask for his quick input on the Q3 projections. It would only take a minute, so Damian agreed. Forty-five minutes later, Damian sent off his opinions to Rajiv. Next, he jumped into that long list of emails he had peeked at earlier that morning. He got a few quick dopamine hits by responding to several. But the next email was a big request and one he couldn't reasonably get done that morning. So he decided to save it for later, but the task loomed.

Finally, at 11:15 a.m., he opened his project proposal, but 15 minutes later, Rita stopped by to chat, and before he knew it, it was lunch time.

After lunch, Damian tried to get to that project proposal again, only to be called into a quick working session with his manager to address a client concern. It was 3 p.m. before he got back to his proposal, and by then, he was feeling drained and tired, so he opened his email for some quick wins. After processing the afternoon email backlog, including that large request from the morning, it was time to head to his son's soccer game. Damian sighed. He'd been busy all day, and yet it felt like very little actually got accomplished, including the one thing that had to get done - his project proposal.

Sitting at the game, all Damian could do was think about his incomplete proposal, unanswered emails, and looming commitments. While there were no dings or notifications, he was still fully distracted when he should have been present with his family.

This day wasn't an exception - it was the norm. No wonder our people are feeling more burned out and disengaged than ever. Distractions - some of which may be important but are distracting nonetheless - are getting the best of them. At the end of the day, our people have been busy, but have they been productive?

As people leaders, what can you do to encourage your team to limit distractions and find focus? How can you create an environment where your people can say no to low-priority work, block out the latest and loudest requests, and commit their time and energy to the most important projects and people?

For the last several decades, we've studied and coached leaders in the skills to stay productive in a hyper-stimulated world. This work has been shared in our book and course, Getting Things Done. But let us lay out more clearly what you can do to enable your teams to stay appropriately engaged. Here are seven ideas for helping your people focus:

Inventory tasks and projects.

This is a discipline where common sense is not common practice. If your people don't have a complete list of their commitments and projects, they can't realistically prioritize. As a leader, hold people accountable for keeping current to-do lists and give them time each week to do a full weekly review of these commitments so they can stay in control.

Clarify and curate communication channels.

Most of our distraction is the result of a plethora of internal communication channels people must navigate in a typical workplace setting - and that's not to mention actually processing the content in each channel. Clarify what each channel should be used for and the expectations around response times.

Normalize saying no.

Leaders need to create psychological safety around airing overwhelm and burnout. One brilliant example comes from Rich Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations, a custom software development company. Rich understands the value of employees communicating their bandwidth. He not only encourages employees to speak up, he also normalizes and rewards the behavior.

When an employee says they don't have bandwidth or are burned out, Rich teaches his project managers to smile and say, "Thank you for sharing that bad news with me." Why? Here's what Rich told us: "Most leaders want to quash bad news. But bad news doesn't just go away. Instead, it permeates the culture, creates quality and morale issues, and leads to endless hours of overtime." Normalize saying no by making it safe for employees to communicate their overwhelm. Reward the behavior by being deliberate in your reactions.

Make meetings meaningful.

Most people's workdays are monopolized by meetings. Help employees stay focused by allowing them to decline meaningless meetings. To improve meeting efficacy, one manager we coached set a bold precedent. He said, "If someone invites you to a meeting without a clear agenda and reasons why you're vital to the success of the meeting, you have my permission to decline it." This manager put the onus back on the meeting creator (which was often himself) to show greater respect for others' time. It also put employees in control of their days so they could focus on high-priority work.

Enable purposeful productivity.

During your weekly 1:1, don't ask your people if they're "keeping busy." Rather, ask them if they have the time and space to do the work they need or want to be doing. If the answer is no, support them in addressing that gap. Perhaps they need help prioritizing their to-do lists or are being pulled into fringe projects and tasks and need your help getting removed from those requests. Maybe they need support to block out their calendar for focused work time or need to adjust their hours to work more seamlessly with their ability to focus. Find the gaps and close them.

Formalize focus.

Perhaps the easiest way to encourage focused work is to put it on the calendar. Create a team norm of protected work time. For example, tell the team to block out Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for focused work. During these hours, no one is allowed to schedule meetings, and others across the organization will see the employees are unavailable as well. But a word of warning: If you're simply going to schedule over this blocked time, don't block it in the first place. That will only lead to a mistrust of your calendar.

Respect boundaries.

When people say they're in focused work mode as indicated by their status on team chat tools or their calendar, honor it. As their leader, you may feel these rules apply to everyone but you - but as soon as you interrupt this time, it sets the norm for everyone else to do the same. It sends the message that protected time is a myth and anyone is allowed to encroach on it.

. . .

These practices will help you build a culture where your people can focus on the work that really matters. It's vital that leaders understand these principles because they're what will keep your team efficiently engaged in a world designed to keep them distracted. Support their ability to focus, and everyone wins.

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7 Ways Managers Can Help Their Team Focus

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We know that in our hyper-stimulated world, people struggle to focus. The authors' recent survey of 1,600 employees and managers revealed findings that should be particularly alarming for people leaders: 60.6% of employees admit that they rarely to never do even an hour or two of deep, focused work each day without distraction.

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Free 341 Question Emotional Intelligence Assessment

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Free 341 Question Emotional Intelligence Assessment

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Take this and then partner with L&D | HR to support areas that you identify as developmental for yourself

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Emotional Intelligence Test

One of the major missing parts in the success equation is emotional intelligence, a concept made popular by the groundbreaking book by Daniel Goleman, which is based on years of research by numerous scientists such as Peter Salovey, John Meyer, Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg and Jack Block, just to name a few. For various reasons and thanks to a wide range of abilities, people with high emotional intelligence tend to be more successful in life than those with lower EIQ even if their classical IQ is average.

Read every statement carefully and indicate which option applies best to you. Choose responses that reflect your typical thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. There may be some questions describing situations that you may feel are not relevant to your life. In such cases, select the answer which you would most likely choose if you ever found yourself in such a situation.

After finishing the test, you will receive a Snapshot Report with an introduction, a graph and a personalized interpretation for one of your test scores. You will then have the option to purchase the full results.

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daniel goleman emotional intelligence test

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Emotional Intelligence Test One of the major missing parts in the success equation is emotional intelligence, a concept made popular by the groundbreaking book by Daniel Goleman, which is based on years of research by numerous scientists such as Peter Salovey, John Meyer, Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg and Jack Block, just to name a few.

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CultureAmp: New Manager Checklist (7 Things to Keep Top of Mind)

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CultureAmp: New Manager Checklist (7 Things to Keep Top of Mind)

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Having someone from your organization promoted into a manager role for the first time should be exciting for them - their skills and dedication have been recognized, and they've been given the responsibility of leading others. It's a big step.

But it can also be intimidating for them. They have to quickly get up to speed on new projects while finding the time to acquire vital new skills. They have to oversee and direct the work of an entire team while still handling many tasks of their own.

New managers aren't the only ones feeling overwhelmed, however. Managers across the world, and of all experience levels, are being asked to do more, with less, in an increasingly difficult environment - and, depending on their company's L&D initiatives, they may or may not have access to management training to help them meet these high expectations.

But we know that for organizations to succeed, managers need to succeed. So, as part of our ongoing campaign to provide managers with better resources and support, we've compiled a checklist of tips and skills to help guide new managers as they go through this exciting (but demanding!) transition. We encourage you to share this with any and all new managers in your organization.

New manager checklist: 7 tips to keep at the forefront

Below are seven useful tips to help guide new managers to success as they embark on the next leg of their career journey.

Tip #1. Be ruthless with calendar invites

After just a few days in the new role, a new manager will probably notice their calendar becoming stacked with meetings. They'll need to cut through the noise and only attend the vital ones - otherwise, they'll likely end up putting in excessive overtime handling their own workload on top of those meetings.

This means being comfortable with saying "no" to some catch-ups. It's vital for them to remember that refusing to meet isn't being rude. It's being discerning - making smart and responsible decisions about their time is in the best interest of everyone on their team.

This doesn't mean they won't be able to get involved in projects or initiatives they care about. Rather, they'll need to learn how to clearly communicate their needs and establish firm boundaries about how their time is used.

For example, if someone invites them to the kick-off meeting for a project that they aren't essential to (especially if lots of other people are also invited), they could respond by saying something like:

"Thanks for including me in this project! I won't be able to join you for the kick-off, but I'm happy to have a look at the meeting notes and provide any insights or context I might have. Feel free to ping me with any specific questions you might have."

This will allow them to share their expertise without spending hours on calls that demand their undivided attention with little to show for it.

Tip #2. Shape your schedule

Becoming more comfortable with turning down meetings is a significant first step for a new manager looking to actively control their schedule - but it's also a good idea for them to block off sections of time in their calendar and dedicate this time to their individual contributor tasks or general admin tasks (like answering emails or checking in with colleagues).

They should allow a little more time than they think they'll need for each task because things rarely go exactly as planned, and emergencies won't pay any heed to a "Do not book" message.

If the administrative work takes up too much of their time, they should try automating some of their processes. For example, do they still schedule meetings manually? In that case, they should try an online scheduling tool like Calendly or share their Google calendar with people and ask them to find an open slot. Or do they receive notifications about the same information in multiple places? Instead of receiving an email, a Slack notification, and a mobile ping every time someone leaves a comment on Asana or Google Docs, we suggest choosing one place to receive all their notifications and changing their settings for the other channels.

Tip #3. Cut yourself some slack

Mindfulness and resilience training can powerfully transform a person's experience at work - but unfortunately, not everyone has access to that training. And if someone has just stepped into a new role as a manager, they probably have more pressing concerns than learning to meditate.

But they don't have to sign-up for a three-day retreat to make some progress in this area. In fact, there's one small thing they can do that will make a big difference: reminding themselves that being a manager is not supposed to be easy.

Being a manager is a famously stressful job. They're accountable to many different people and objectives. They're meant to look after their team's engagement, performance, and well-being while also cultivating a healthy relationship with said team. They're expected to strategize, report, and problem-solve every single day. It's a lot.

They'll feel the pressure coming at them from all directions, and in the midst of that, self-compassion will likely seem inaccessible. But they need to find self-compassion because it directly affects their ability to develop more emotional resilience.

To start rebuilding their self-compassion, they should begin by taking a deep breath and kindly observing any of their feelings that arise. Then, instead of telling themselves that they shouldn't feel those things or that they wouldn't if only things were different, they should say to themselves: "It makes sense, and it's okay for me to feel this way."

Once they've managed to do this once, they should go to their calendar and plan short breaks throughout their day to check in with themselves to remind them of this idea.

Of course, while self-compassion is essential to managing emotions at work, it won't solve every problem. Sometimes, the pressure on managers will be overwhelming, and they'll have more on their plate than they can handle. This is where the next tip comes in.

Tip #4. Know when to give away your "Legos"

Becoming a manager means having more tasks to deal with than ever before - so new managers will need to find a way to avoid becoming a bottleneck by prioritizing time management.

They should start by identifying their top three priorities for the week and rank these in order of priority. Some project management tools like Asana let them add priority levels and estimated time requirements to tasks, helping them get a clearer picture of why things feel chaotic (thus allowing them to better navigate the chaos.)

Once their priorities have been identified and they've started straightening out the chaos, it's time to delegate. One way to identify tasks that can be delegated is by looking at any recurring items on their checklist and asking themselves: Can someone else do this? Or could someone else be trained to do this?

This is where the concept of "giving away Legos" comes into play. If you're unfamiliar with Molly Graham's article " Give Away Your Legos" and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups, we highly recommend reading it. It has become central to our understanding of what being "culture first" means, so much so that we interviewed Molly on scaling culture in this episode of the Culture First podcast.

But, to summarize - if something can be delegated, it probably should be. New managers should try to avoid being a middle person unless essential. Sometimes, this can be emotional, as some things are hard to let go of. But it can also be an opportunity for them to empower their direct reports - or, in some cases, their peers - to take on more responsibility in areas that will offer them growth opportunities.

Tip #5. Track down a mentor

It can be easy for new managers to think that the crises they face are unique - but the truth is that other people have walked in their shoes before. And thankfully, most of those experienced leaders are happy to help (especially when they can empathize with the struggle).

We encourage new managers to identify a couple of people they'd like to learn from, whether inside or outside the manager's organization, and ask them to share their expertise or skills! If they're unsure how to proceed, asking the potential mentor for an initial 15 or 30-minute conversation is an excellent place to start.

In this meeting, they can describe the kind of coaching or guidance they seek. The mentor might also possess knowledge that the prospective mentee is unaware of, so they could ask the mentor some open questions that will allow the mentee to get to know them a little better. The most important thing is that the mentee is willing to learn and follow through on commitments. They should let the mentor know that the mentor's time is respected and will not be taken for granted.

After this meeting, if the prospective mentor agrees to start a mentor-mentee relationship, the new manager should propose the frequency and duration of meetings and some initial challenges they'd like help with.

Tip #6. Go hard on soft skills

Sure, practical, "hard" skills will still be a big part of the new manager's work-life once they transition - but their communication and relationships with their team members will become the priority. That's where " soft skills" come in.

At times referred to as "leadership skills" or even "life skills," soft skills are defined as the "personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people." And while they might sound light and fluffy, they enable us to develop as leaders, professionals, and people. Not only are they crucial to our performance at work, but they also significantly improve our experience of work.

Here are some key soft skills:

Tip #7: Create a feedback loop

The best way for new managers to keep growing and improving is to continuously "check the pulse" on their progress and areas of growth.

Similarly, one of the best ways for them to encourage growth and development in their direct reports is to give regular feedback, both positive and critical. Good feedback benefits everyone - so new managers need to cultivate a healthy feedback model and culture within their team.

Giving regular feedback, and explaining why they are doing so, will help the manager show their people that they care about team members. And while not every action requires feedback, it's important to make feedback a habit. When positive feedback is given often, it prevents occasional constructive feedback from becoming an ordeal.

The hierarchal divide between a manager and their direct reports can make receiving candid feedback more difficult. This is why we have developed our 360° review template, which allows managers to receive specific feedback on areas of their choosing from direct reports, peers, and leaders.

While asking for this kind of feedback can be daunting, knowing where they stand, how their efforts are being perceived, and how their co-workers would like to see them grow will give managers a framework for their development. And this, in turn, could offer them peace of mind while they navigate the ups and downs of their new role.

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New manager checklist: 7 things to keep top of mind | Culture Amp

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Being a new manager is exciting, but means taking on new responsibility, tasks, and pressure. Use our checklist of 7 tips to help new managers transition.y

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It's never been more important - or more difficult - for leaders to be good listeners. Job switching is rampant, and remote work means we don't get the nonverbal cues we'd pick up from an in-person conversation. Employers who fail to listen and thoughtfully respond to their people's concerns will see greater turnover. And given that the highest rates of turnover are among top performers who can take clients and projects with them, and the frontline employees responsible for the customer experience, the risk is clear.

While listening is a skill universally lauded, it's rarely, if ever, explicitly taught as such, outside of training for therapists. A 2015 study showed that while 78% of accredited undergraduate business schools list "presenting" as a learning goal, only 11% identified "listening."

Listening well is the kind of skill that benefits from not just teaching but coaching - ongoing, specialized instruction from someone who knows your personal strengths, weaknesses, and most importantly, habits. Reading this article won't turn you into a champion listener any more than reading an article on balance will turn you into Simone Biles. Our aims are to increase your understanding of what good listening is, and offer research-backed advice to improve your listening skills.

Becoming a Better Listener

A participant in any conversation has two goals: first, to understand what the other person is communicating (both the overt meaning and the emotion behind it) and second, to convey interest, engagement, and caring to the other person. This second goal is not "merely" for the sake of kindness, which would be reason enough. If people do not feel listened to, they will cease to share information.

This is "active listening." It has three aspects:

Cognitive: Paying attention to all the information, both explicit and implicit, that you are receiving from the other person, comprehending, and integrating that information

Emotional: Staying calm and compassionate during the conversation, including managing any emotional reactions (annoyance, boredom) you might experience

Behavioral: Conveying interest and comprehension verbally and nonverbally

Getting good at active listening is a lifetime endeavor. However, even minor improvements can make a big difference in your listening effectiveness. Here's a "cheat sheet" with nine helpful tips:

1. Repeat people's last few words back to them.

If you remember nothing else, remember this simple practice that does so much. It makes the other person feel listened to, keeps you on track during the conversation, and provides a pause for both of you to gather thoughts or recover from an emotional reaction.

2. Don't "put it in your own words" unless you need to.

Multiple studies have shown that direct repetition works, even though it may feel unnatural. Rephrasing what your interlocutor has said, however, can increase both emotional friction and the mental load on both parties. Use this tool only when you need to check your own comprehension - and say, explicitly, "I'm going to put this in my own words to make sure I understand."

3. Offer nonverbal cues that you're listening - but only if it comes naturally to you.

Eye contact, attentive posture, nodding and other nonverbal cues are important, but it's hard to pay attention to someone's words when you're busy reminding yourself to make regular eye contact. If these sorts of behaviors would require a significant habit change, you can instead, let people know at the beginning of a conversation that you're on the non-reactive side, and ask for their patience and understanding.

4. Pay attention to nonverbal cues.

Remember that active listening means paying attention to both the explicit and implicit information that you're receiving in a conversation. Nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice, facial expression, and body language, are usually where the motivation and emotion behind the words is expressed.

5. Ask more questions than you think you need to.

This both improves the other person's experience of feeling listened to, ensures that you fully understand their message, and can serve as a prompt to make sure important details aren't overlooked.

6. Minimize distractions as much as possible.

You'll want to avoid noise, interruptions, and other external distractions, but it's important to minimize your internal distractions as well. If you are preoccupied with another topic, take time to re-center. If you know a conversation might be upsetting, calm yourself as much as possible before going in.

7. Acknowledge shortcomings.

If you know going into a conversation that you may be a subpar listener - because you're exhausted from a dozen intense conversations earlier that day, unfamiliar with the topic under discussion, or any other reason - let the other person know right away. If you lose your footing during the conversation - a lapse of attention or comprehension - say you didn't quite get it, and ask the person to repeat themselves.

8. Don't rehearse your response while the other person is talking.

Take a brief pause after they finish speaking to compose your thoughts. This will require conscious effort! People think about four times faster than other people talk, so you've got spare brainpower when you're a listener. Use it to stay focused and take in as much information as possible.

9. Monitor your emotions.

If you have an emotional reaction, slow the pace of the conversation. Do more repetition, pay attention to your breathing. You don't want to respond in a way that will cause the other person to disengage. Nor - and this is a subtler thing to avoid - do you want to fall into the easy defense mechanism of simply tuning out what you don't want to hear, or rushing to discount or argue it away.

The Skills Involved in Active Listening

Listening is a complex job, with many different subtasks, and it's possible to be good at some and bad at others. Rather than thinking of yourself as a "good listener" or a "bad listener," it can be useful to evaluate yourself on the subskills of active listening. Below is a breakdown of these subskills along with recommendations for what to do if you're struggling with any one of them.

First, let's start with what we call the "picking-up skills," the skills that allow you to gather the information you need.

1. Hearing

If you have hearing loss, be honest about it. For whatever reason, people will boast about their poor vision but hide hearing loss. Help break that stigma. Ask for what you need - e.g., for people to face you when talking, or give you written materials in advance. Let others know, so that they will be alert to indications that you may have missed something.

2. Auditory processing

This refers to how well the brain makes sense of the sound cues. If you're struggling to understand someone, ask questions to clarify. If it's helpful, from time to time recap your understanding of both the subject and the other person's reason for bringing it up - and ask them to validate or refine it. (Make it clear that you are doing this for your own understanding.)

3. Reading body language, tone of voice, or social cues accurately

The advice for auditory processing applies here. Asking a trusted colleague to be your nonverbal communication translator may be helpful in situations where accurate listening is important, but confidentiality is not.

The next two skills involve staying mentally present in the conversational moment.

4. Maintaining attention

If you often find yourself distracted when trying to listen to someone, control your environment as much as possible. Before you begin, set an intention by taking a moment to deliberately focus on this person, in this moment, in a conversation that will be about this topic. If appropriate, use a written agenda or in-the-moment whiteboarding to keep yourself and the other person aligned. If you do have a lapse in attention, admit it, apologize, and ask the person to repeat what they said. (Yes, it's embarrassing, but it happens to everyone occasionally and to some of us frequently.) Arrive a few minutes early to acclimate yourself if you are having a meeting in a new place.

5. Regulating your emotional response

Meditation has both immediate and short-term benefits for relaxation and emotional control, regardless of the particular practice. The key is to do it twice a day for 10 to 20 minutes, focusing on a mental image or repeating a phrase and dismissing other thoughts as they come.

In the moment, focus on your breathing and do a "grounding exercise" if you feel agitated. These are simple psychological practices that work to pull people back to the present moment by directing attention to the immediate environment. Typical exercises include naming five colored objects that you can see (e.g., green couch, black dog, gold lamp, white door, red rug) or identifying four things that you are hearing, seeing, feeling, and smelling (e.g., hearing birdsong, seeing chair, feeling chenille upholstery, smelling neighbors' cooking).

Finally, the active listener has to pull the entire package - receiving the message and acknowledging its receipt - together, in the moment. It can be challenging!

6. Integrating multiple sources of information.

At the very least, you are both listening to words and watching body language. You may also be listening to multiple people at once, communicating on multiple platforms simultaneously, or listening while also taking in visual information, such as building plans or sales projections.Figure out what helps you listen best. Do you need information in advance? A "processing break"? A chance to circle back and confirm everyone's understanding? This is another situation where it can be helpful to have another person taking in the same information, who can fill you in on what you might have missed.

7. "Performing" active listening (e.g., eye contact, nodding, appropriate facial expressions).

If you have a natural poker face, or find it easier to pay attention to people's words if you don't make eye contact, share that information with your conversation partner, and thank them for accommodating you. Do extra repetition to make up for the lack of nonverbal communication. You may want to practice better performativity skills, but don't add that mental burden to important conversations. Ask a five-year-old to tell you about their favorite superhero, then practice acting like you're listening.

Please note: This list is not intended to be diagnostic instrument, but if any of the skills listed above seem truly difficult to you, you may want to consult your doctor. Scientific understanding of these processes, from the sensory organs to the brain, has expanded greatly in the past years. Many successful adults have discovered mid-career that they have undiagnosed sensory, attention, information-processing, or other disorders than can impair listening ability.

For each of these subskills, there is also a range of natural ability, and your life experience may have enhanced or muted this potential. We know, for example, that music training improves auditory processing skills, and acting or improvisation training improves your ability to "read" people and perform the role of an active listener. Having power, by contrast, decreases your ability to read others and accurately grasp their message - don't let this happen to you!

Listening is vitally important, sadly undertaught, physically and mentally taxing, and in the aftermath of Covid-19 has never been more difficult. As we close in on a third year of unprecedented upheaval in work and life, employees and managers alike have more questions than ever - concerns that they may find it difficult to articulate for a variety of reasons, from mental fog to the sheer novelty of the situation.

When this happens, take a moment to listen closely. Consider the questioner, not simply the question. Now is the time for leaders to really listen, understand the context, resist the temptation to respond with generic answers, and recognize your own listening limitations - and improve on them. Have compassion for yourself - you can't scream at your own brain like a drill sergeant and whip that raw grey matter into shape. What you can do is recognize your weak points and make the necessary adjustments.

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Listening is a skill that's vitally important, sadly undertaught, and physically and mentally taxing. In the aftermath of Covid-19, particularly with the shift to remote work and the red-hot job market, it's never been more important - or more difficult - for leaders to be good listeners.

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HBR: How Leaders Can Get the Feedback They Need to Grow

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HBR: How Leaders Can Get the Feedback They Need to Grow

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When uncertainty is high, knowing where you stand - and learning about your mistakes while there's still time to fix them - is more important than ever. To be able to adapt to changing conditions and ensure that your team continues to feel supported and motivated, you need to understand what you're doing well - and where you're falling short. Soliciting clear, actionable feedback allows you to make better, more informed decisions and pivot when necessary.

Asking for feedback also creates a culture of trust and transparency. With concerns about an economic downturn rising, already overwhelmed teams are being asked to do more with less. When employees feel like their input matters, they're more likely to remain loyal, engaged, and productive. They're also much more willing to surface valuable concerns and suggestions.

But uncertainty also makes it much, much harder to get honest feedback. When people feel anxious or like their jobs might be in jeopardy, they're more reticent to speak up, especially to management. Add to that the fact that when people move up the ranks in an organization, they tend to get less corrective feedback, even though a 2014 study by Zenger Folkman showed that by a three-to-one margin, people believe corrective feedback does more to improve their performance than positive feedback.

In other words, right when you need it most, getting an accurate pulse on your performance as a leader becomes really, really hard. So how do you get feedback when people are least likely to offer it? How can you solicit actionable, useful advice from your reports? Neither one of you wants to have a hard conversation, but when you're the leader, it's your job to overcome that reluctance for yourself and help the other person overcome it, too.

Knowing how and when to ask for feedback is a learned skill - as is checking your (normal) defensive reaction in the face of helpful criticism. Based on our books and research, we put our heads together to outline the specific steps leaders should take to ask for feedback. The first thing to do is to ask for criticism, especially if you're the boss. This is awkward at best and can be a difficult emotional journey, so here are six tips for how to successfully solicit Radical Candor from your employees.

1. Embrace feeling "negative" emotions - often.

Hearing what you need to improve rarely feels good. Ask yourself: How many times each week do the people you work with tell you things that make you anxious, upset, or even defensive? How often do they tell you things that make you feel wonderful? If it's all feel-good praise and no hard-to-hear criticism, beware! You're not getting the real story. You need to work harder to get them to criticize you.

Remember, when it comes to soliciting Radical Candor, good news is no news, no news is bad news, and bad news is good news. As one of Liz's former managers told her, "Someone who cares about you tells you that you have food on your face. Everyone else will stay mum because they don't want to feel uncomfortable." Even though criticism is hard to hear in the moment, you need it to get better over time - and in time, it will sting less, too.

2. Have a go-to question.

It can be awkward to ask people point blank about what's going on. And when things are uncertain, it can feel risky to them to say what they actually think. We recommend that you come up with a go-to question that establishes psychological safety. There are three elements to a good go-to question:

The question cannot be answered with a yes or a no, or an "Oh, no, everything is fine" - which is exactly the answer you'll get most of the time if you ask, "Do you have any feedback for me?" Liz and Mollie love, "What one thing can I do to support you?" By asking for "one thing," you make it much more likely that you'll get a specific, actionable response.

Your question must sound like you - something you would naturally say. The question Kim likes to use is, "What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?" However, If those words don't fall easily off your tongue, find words that do.

Your question must be adapted for the person you're talking to. Jason Rosoff, who cofounded Radical Candor with Kim, told her he hates her go-to question, so she needs to ask him a more specific one.

Consider making your go-to question a recurring part of your 1:1 agendas. If your team knows what you'll be asking ahead of time, they'll have more time to prepare a useful answer.

3. Embrace the other person's discomfort.

No matter how good your go-to question is, the other person is likely to feel uncomfortable. And you're likely to feel uncomfortable because they're uncomfortable. It can be tempting to let the person off the hook at this point. But if you do that, you'll never get the feedback you need to succeed.

The only way out of this discomfort is through. Try asking your question and then remaining silent. Count to six, slowly, in your head. Very few people can endure six full seconds of silence. They'll tell you something.

4. Listen to understand, not to respond.

When listening to feedback, your motivation matters. You should want to understand what the other person is telling you, rather than listening so that you can deliver a response. It's the difference between, "I hear what you are saying, thank you" (great) and "I hear what you are saying, but..." (not so great).

Feedback opens us up to seeing our behaviors from different points of view. If we're focused on defending ourselves, we lose out on the opportunity to learn and improve. A helpful hint about listening to understand: look for the criticism. Often people will hide the criticism. Sometimes you'll get "oreo" feedback: two positive thoughts around a negative one. (This is sometimes called, less appetizingly, the shit sandwich.) Make sure you don't miss the criticism. Other times the feedback will be more like an oatmeal raisin cookie. Don't miss the raisins!

5. Close the loop: Make your listening tangible.

The best way to ensure you'll continue receiving feedback is to follow up and share the actions you've taken based on what you heard.

When you receive critical comments, it's useful to immediately outline what you'll do with the suggestions or concerns that were flagged. Try, "Here's what I'll do moving forward." And remember: You don't need to promise to make massive changes (you might not be able to deliver on those promises). You can say something like, "My next step will be to talk to other leaders to see what's possible."

Take Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who gets an annual 360-degree written assessment that any employee can contribute to. Hastings closed the loop on his 2019 360 by writing a memo to all Netflix employees. Here's an excerpt from his book No Rules Rules:

I find the best comments for my growth are unfortunately the most painful. So, in the spirit of 360, thank you for bravely and honestly pointing out to me: "In meetings you can skip over topics or rush through them when you feel impatient or determine a particular topic on the agenda is no longer worth the time...On a similar note, watch out for letting your point-of-view overwhelm. You can short-change the debate by signaling alignment when it doesn't exist." So true, so sad, and so frustrating that I still do this. I will keep working on it.

Once you've taken action, make sure you share the changes you've made. Ask if you overcorrected or undercorrected. Helpful hint: If the problem is something you've struggled with for some time, it's usually a good idea to try to overcorrect. If you get feedback that you move too fast, work on slowing down until someone tells you you're moving too slowly.

And if you weren't able to do anything differently, communicate why. When an employee told Kim she interrupted him and other employees in meetings, she wore a rubber band to her next staff meeting, told everyone about the feedback, and asked for help in changing this deeply ingrained bad habit that she couldn't realistically change overnight. She asked people to snap the rubber band on her wrist when they noticed her interrupting. (She knew that the people on her team would actually do that, and with a laugh - you might decide to take a different approach.) The rubber band helped her interrupt less. But more importantly, it made her listening tangible - and explained that although she couldn't change things overnight, she was working on it.

One of the biggest missteps we see leaders take is staying silent when, after careful consideration, they realize they're unable to act on feedback. When employees never hear back after giving feedback, they'll assume that their suggestions were ignored. It's much, much better to come back to your team and say something like, "Unfortunately, due to the executive team's priorities for the quarter, we won't be able to do ____, but I'm going to keep it in mind," than to say nothing at all.

6. Make giving feedback - not venting - a team habit.

Consistent venting, when you rehash the same problems without trying to understand or solve them, can make you and your team feel worse. This is because you're ingraining the frustration in your brain by talking about it over and over, without actually focusing on what can be learned or changed.

Even worse is when a person doesn't feel safe giving feedback to another person and instead vents their frustrations to a neutral third party. This may make the frustrated person feel better in the moment, but it doesn't solve anything long-term, since the other person is oblivious to their frustrating behaviors. When someone comes and talks to you about someone else who is not in the room, it may feel like you're being an empathetic listener. But really all you're doing is stirring the political pot. Instead, encourage them to go talk directly with the other person. Offer your services as a mediator, but remind them that it still requires both of them to talk to you at the same time. There are obvious exceptions - if a person is being bullied or harassed, don't tell them to go work it out directly.

Make feedback a team habit so that people feel safe giving it directly instead of venting to someone else. The place to start is soliciting feedback. If everyone is soliciting feedback, it's more likely to be met with open ears.

. . .

When things are up in the air, it can feel comforting to avoid difficult feedback. But creating stability for your team - and success for your organization - depends on your ability to learn what needs to change. Burying your head in the sand is never the safe thing to do. A culture of ruinous empathy or false harmony is not the path to success! Instead, invite criticism.

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How Leaders Can Get the Feedback They Need to Grow

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When things are uncertain, it can feel comforting to avoid difficult feedback. But creating stability for your team - and success for your organization - depends on your ability to learn what needs to change. Burying your head in the sand is never the safe thing to do.

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Employees are three times more engaged when they feel supported by managers, study shows

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PeopleManagement: Employees are 3x More Engaged When They Feel Supported by Managers

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PeopleManagement: Employees are 3x More Engaged When They Feel Supported by Managers

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Commentators call for more training and development of line managers as survey highlights their impact on the workforce

Compassionate Eye Foundation/James Tse

Employees who feel well supported by their line manager are 3.4 times more likely to feel engaged at work, a study has found.

The study of 50,000 employees by Inpulse found that 81 per cent of those who felt trusted by their line managers were engaged, compared to 28 per cent of employees who didn't.

The survey also revealed that employees feeling trusted and supported had the "greatest impact" on how engaged people were at work.

Balancing individual and organisational power

Inequality at work cannot be solved without love-based leadership

How to manage a quiet quitter

Clare Kelliher, professor of work and organisation at Cranfield School of Management, said the findings underlined the importance of line managers in employee engagement, and advised that organisations invest in their development.

"Organisations need to invest in line manager training to help develop their people management skills and particularly how to demonstrate their trust in and respect for the employees they manage," said Kelliher, she added that it is also key to foster a culture that is "conducive to employee voice" which focuses on employee wellbeing.

The survey found that the majority (80 per cent) of employees felt trusted by their line manager, and 83 per cent felt respected.

Get more HR and employment law news like this delivered straight to your inbox every day - sign up to People Management's PM Daily newsletter

It also found that employees who felt supported by their line managers had an Engagement Index Score of 74 per cent, while those who did not had a score of 22 per cent.

Gemma McCall, chief executive and founder of Culture Shift, advised that managers need to encourage transparency in the workplace and take advantage of their ability to work closely with their employees.

"My advice to line managers would be to empower your employees by encouraging a speak-up culture, which breaks down barriers and creates a safe space to share issues, should they arise," said McCall, who added it is "important not to forget that line managers are in a "unique position to listen to colleagues, and implement real change for the whole team to benefit from".

Anthony Painter, director of policy and external affairs at the Chartered Management Institute, said managers could make a difference for employees at all stages of their working lives, and that the "best managed" teams are fostered by a supportive culture where employees are encouraged to bring their best selves to work and take ownership of their development.

"Employers of all sizes and shapes - in business and in public services - need to equip their managers with the skills and behaviours they need in order to bring out the very best in their teams, including protecting their wellbeing on a day to day basis," said Painter, adding that management, just like everything else," is a skill set and one that needs to be taught and nurtured".

However, Isabel Collins, culture specialist and founder of Belonging Space, said that management training often falls by the wayside in organisations which has a direct impact on employees.

"Too often managers are left unsupported, working from individual [ability] or copying leaders - for good or bad," said Collins, who warned this would result in "an inconsistent and sometimes poor employee experience".

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Employees are three times more engaged when they feel supported by managers, study shows

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Commentators call for more training and development of line managers as survey highlights their impact on the workforce

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INC: How Emotionally Intelligent Leaders Embrace the 10-Second Rule to Handle Difficult Conversations

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INC: How Emotionally Intelligent Leaders Embrace the 10-Second Rule to Handle Difficult Conversations

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Mattering at work is secret to management in a fragmented world

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World Economic Forum: Mattering at Work is a Secret to Management in a Fragmented World

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World Economic Forum: Mattering at Work is a Secret to Management in a Fragmented World

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Davos 2023

Employees want to know that their work matters, and the management is uniquely positioned to help provide this sense of mattering to the workforce. Image: Unsplash/Brooke Cagle

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, BetterUp Inc

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Mattering at work is secret to management in a fragmented world

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Davos 2023 Employees want to know that their work matters, and the management is uniquely positioned to help provide this sense of mattering to the workforce.

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Fearless Culture: The Power of Clarifying Questions

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Fearless Culture: The Power of Clarifying Questions

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An introduction to clarifying questions - and why your colleagues should use them more often

The quality of your team's conversations is directly correlated to the questions people ask. It has never been more important to facilitate fruitful discussions. Unfortunately, proper questioning has become a lost art. The rush to act now - to keep up to speed with the fast-moving world - leads us to poor decision-making.

Great leaders avoid jumping to conclusions or assumptions; they rely on powerful questions to understand the facts before passing judgment. Clarifying questions help leaders understand what others are saying - they can better understand a problem, identify new solutions, and evaluate alternatives.

In today's world, organizations need to think more than ever. Regardless of whether you are a leader or team member, active listening can improve communication and, above all, collaboration.

Here's how to improve your team's conversations by asking better clarifying questions.

What Are Clarifying Questions? (And Why They Improve Active Listening)

Most people think being a good listener comes down to paying attention, not interrupting the speaker, and being able to repeat back what they said. However, we've got it all wrong, according to research.

Good listening is not about being a passive observer engaging in fruitful conversations. Questions turn the "speaker versus hearer" division into a dialogue, making everyone feel heard and thrilled.

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman reflect on their research findings: "While many of us have thought of being a good listener being like a sponge that accurately absorbs what the other person is saying, instead, what these findings show is that good listeners are like trampolines. They are someone you can bounce ideas off of - and rather than absorbing your ideas and energy, they amplify, energize, and clarify your thinking."

Questions make your colleagues feel supported and help them refine their ideas or opinions. Good listening is a cooperative conversation.

Asking questions means you want to learn. They improve dialogue and minimize any misunderstanding, confusion, or ambiguity. Clarifying questions help us become better listeners by encouraging us to seek more information, rather than assuming we understand.

For example, instead of reacting to a team member's idea with, "That's a terrible idea," you could ask, "Can you tell me what inspired you to come up with this idea?" or "How do you think it will help solve our customers' problems?"

Clarifying questions also provide feedback to the speaker, indicating which parts of their message were unclear. If you're confused, asking for more details will provide clues about what's missing. For example, ask, "Can you explain more about what it would take to implement this new process you just described?"

There are two types of clarifying questions:

‍Open questions: They ask the speaker to elaborate on a certain part of their message. Most of them have the form of when, why, where, or how types of questions and encourage the speaker to openly expand their thoughts and ideas.‍

Validation questions: They simply reiterate a part of the message and invite the speaker to confirm or not what or whether the listener understood.

Effective team conversations require building off each other's solutions. Uncover the value of an idea before discarding it simply because you didn't understand or like it at first glance.

There are four types of questions (I cover this in the bonus section at the end of this article). However, for now, I want to focus on two: Clarifying and Probing.

Probing questions can come across as confrontational or critical, discouraging open dialogue. Clarifying questions provide a pause, delaying the urge to jump to reactions, while probing questions offer judgment. We want to encourage the first and avoid the latter.

Unfortunately, people usually use probing questions when presented with a new concept or opinion - very few teams leverage the power of clarifying questions.

Here's a comparison of both types of questions with some examples.

Great questions aim not to judge what's been said but to keep the conversation going. Often, at work, we minimize, underestimate, and even attack other people's ideas because we got them all wrong.

We end up judging our interpretation of the idea - not what the other person actually said.

Clarifying questions help team members truly listen to each other. Some of their benefits are:

1. They help you clarify instructions from your manager or colleague

2. They allow you to fill in the gaps so you can understand the whole picture

3. They encourage speakers to be clearer and more specific

4. They promote a fluid dialogue between speakers and listeners

5. They train you to practice active listening

So, why are clarifying questions so important?

The Benefits of Asking Clarifying Questions

Companies have realized that leaders who ask good questions are more valuable than those who want to have all the answers. As I explained in a previous post, facilitating courageous and productive conversations is a valuable leadership skill.

Research shows that the demand for executives who listen empathetically, welcome input, and rally people around a shared future is increasing.

A team of Harvard Business School Professors, who analyzed thousands of executive job search descriptions created over 17 years, found that the demand for social skills is increasing in every category of the economy.

Headhunters and corporate recruiters want executives who can:

Actively listen to others

Empathize genuinely with others' experiences

Persuade people to work toward a common goal

Communicate clearly

Misunderstandings can happen more often in a hybrid workplace as I explain in my book Remote, Not Distant. If we're not careful, issues can get blown out of proportion because we assume rather than try to understand what the other person meant.

Asking clarifying questions before assessing an idea or opinion has many benefits. Let's review the most important advantages.

To pause instead of jumping to conclusions

Asking clarifying questions is a choice to go beyond the superficial. Getting more information, details, or context prevents your team from making poor decisions. It encourages us to assume positive intent - rather than judging, we want to learn more.

This is crucial to turn feedback into a gift. Feedback givers should ask questions to help the receiver reflect on the feedback received; receivers must use clarifying questions to ensure they got the right message instead of jumping to conclusions.

To better understand a position or idea

Clarifying questions are also a good way to properly understand the nuances of someone's opinion. By asking open clarifying questions, the listener pushes the speaker to explain their thoughts or elaborate on their ideas - usually ending in an improved version of the original concept.

To explore ideas outside of our comfort zone

How many times have you felt uncomfortable when someone is sharing a novel idea? It's easier to criticize the idea than to realize that it's our mental frame that needs to be revisited. Asking clarifying questions facilitates our journey - to move from resistance to acceptance.

Often, a set of questions can help you tackle a large problem in small chunks. Follow-up questions make it easier to understand a complex problem or solution. Great ideas are the result of smart questions, while fixed statements often justify our resistance to change. Use clarifying questions to stretch beyond your comfort zone.

To help colleagues think through their ideas

Great questions can help challenge not only your assumptions but also those of the idea owner. It's natural to fall in love with one's thoughts and fail to see what's missing. Great clarifying questions help people reflect not only on the solution but also on how and why it was created.

Asking questions can help teammates consider other angles, uncover the purpose behind a solution, and dive deeper into implementation details.

To elevate the quality of the conversation

Good leaders think like good detectives: they use questions to get to the truth, often tapping into distinct sources. Asking clarifying questions not only helps the originator to think through their ideas but also promotes collaboration - team members feel compelled to elevate the original idea.

Gathering information from diverse sources is vital to make effective decisions - and to drive innovation. Clarifying questions help receivers better understand someone else's thoughts or opinions by encouraging active listening. Asking clarifying questions elevates the quality of the conversation, welcoming the team to think like detectives.

Above all, clarifying questions lead to smarter solutions. Replace judgment with questions that aim to build rather than obstruct.

Clarifying Questions Help Teams Make Better Decisions

Communication is one of the most important leadership skills - it's critical for successful team collaboration. However, listening is hard work. We all fail to master this precious skill.

A study of over 8,000 people found that virtually all respondents believed that they communicate as effectively or more effectively than their co-workers. How can it be possible that everyone is above average? It's simple: we all overrate our ability to be good listeners. On average, we all listen at only about 25% efficiency.

Identifying gaps in your understanding is the first step toward having better conversations - and decisions.

I was first introduced to the power of clarifying questions when I learned how to facilitate the Integrative-Decision Making method - also known as consent (don't confuse it with consensus - check the differences here).

The more I facilitate the Integrative-Decision Making (IDM) method with consulting clients or workshop participants, the more I'm convinced that asking clarifying questions is a vital instrument of conversational acumen.

Team members rarely ask others to expand on an opinion or further describe an idea. They usually jump to judgment. Then, when they do ask questions, their intent is not to seek understanding but to express an opinion or judgment.

The IDM process includes a step to prevent this from happening. Each participant canof pose one or more clarifying questions after hearing a proposal from a colleague. This practice encourages people to listen and, most importantly, to fully understand an idea before criticizing it.

During this step, only clarifying questions are welcome - opinions or reactions disguised as questions should not be allowed.

Let me share a real-life example from one of our decision-making workshops. The team leader shared a proposal and I used the IDM to facilitate a productive conversation between all members.

Proposal: "I want to shift our team's schedule to adopt a four-day workweek, working 9 hours per day instead of 8, as we currently do."

Clarifying questions

Here are some of the questions that the team shared with the leader. He answered them all one-at-a-time often prompting follow-up questions to seek further clarification. Notice how people look for understanding or additional details - there weren't just repeating what the leader said.

When are we starting with the new workweek and how will we manage the transition to the new model?

Why a four-day week?

Can team members choose the days they work or must everyone follow the same schedule?

How will we manage clients' expectations (that we'll deliver support five days a week)?

Is this an experiment or are we going all in into a four-day workweek?

Will the team workload be adjusted to the new schedule?

Avoid opinions disguised as questions

Following are some questions that were rejected because they were opinions, not real questions - the intent wasn't to learn more about the proposal but rather to question its validity.

Don't you think that reducing the workweek will harm productivity? (I'm worried about the current workload and this will make things worse).

How are we going to track that people are working 9 hours a day instead of 8? (I don't trust people are going to work without control mechanisms).

Shouldn't we involve the whole team and do more research before moving forward? (I'd rather delay this proposal)

What happens if it doesn't work? Are we going to stick to the new model or go back to a five-day workweek? (I don't think this proposal will work in the long run).

The facilitator must push back when people are expressing their opinions, encouraging them to use clarifying questions instead.

If you're curious about how the whole consent method works, check this post.

The Quality of Questions Improves Team Conversations

Great leaders lead with questions, not perfect answers. They tap into collective wisdom, leveraging people's unique views, backgrounds, and expertise.

Clarifying questions are a powerful tool for team collaboration, as they encourage active listening and understanding rather than jumping to conclusions or reacting. They also tackle both ends of the (miss)communication spectrum: lack of clarity from the speaker or lack of understanding from the receiver.

To use clarifying questions effectively in team collaboration, everyone should be aware of the different types of questions - prioritize using clarifying ones over probing questions. Make a conscious effort to ask clarifying questions during team meetings and discussions and encourage others to do the same.

Clarifying questions support learning, decision-making, and conflict resolution. They invite in new information, provide transparency, and get everyone on the same page. They can help your team reframe problems, generate new solutions, and evolve existing ones.

Most importantly, clarifying questions help build trust by replacing judgment with curiosity.

Effective team conversations are vital to uncover possibilities, build on each other's ideas, and accelerate innovation. Often, misunderstanding and judgment get in the way, blocking dialogue and exploration. Asking clarifying questions is a simple way to have healthier debates and elevate the quality of your team conversations.

Reach out if you need help coaching your team to ask better questions and have better conversations - or enjoy this article's bonus below.

[Bonus] The Four Types of Questions

Different types of questions generate different types of answers - and responses. Great leaders understand the four different types of questions and which to use when.

Clarifying questions aim to better understand what the speaker is saying - and their intent - before we jump to conclusions. Examples: "Can you tell me more?"

"How will it work?" "What do you mean by?" "Can you give me an example?"

Probing questions challenge the speaker's views or ideas - often to criticize or highlight flaws. While effective in certain contexts, they usually shut people down. Examples: "Do you think this is going to work? Why?" "How do you know your assumption is true? What if the opposite is true?" "Why haven't you considered X, Y, and Z instead?" "Can I play the devil's advocate?"

Avoid asking probing questions before the team has completed the clarifying questions phase. Ideally, ask exploratory questions - even generative ones - before getting into probing ones.

Exploratory questions help consider different scenarios and possibilities. They are a recommended next step once you completed the clarifying question round. Examples: "What are the long-term effects?" "Will this work in all scenarios?" "Are we addressing the right problem?"

Generative questions identify new solutions or improve upon existing ones. Jumping into generative questions too early in the conversation could create friction as the proposer could feel their idea is not worthy. I often recommend generative questions when a team member is stuck and needs input or after completing the clarification questions or exploratory questions rounds.

Examples: "What other possible solutions can we consider?" "What better ways can we develop to solve this problem?" "Instead of solving for this specific problem, what systemic issues should we solve for?"

Clarifying and probing questions help us zoom in on a proposal or idea - the former to better understand, the latter to evaluate.

Exploratory and generative questions help us zoom out and see the bigger picture - the former to consider different scenarios, the latter to discover and explore new solutions.
Article by Gustavo Razzetti, CEO of Fearless Culture
Gustavo facilitates courageous conversations that drive culture transformation. He is a sought-after speaker, culture consultant, and best-selling author of the book Remote, Not Distant.

Razzetti is also the creator of the Culture Design Canvas - a visual and practical method for intentionally designing workplace culture. His insights were featured in Psychology Today, The New York Times, Forbes, and BBC.

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The Power of Clarifying Questions - And How to Improve Team Conversations | By Gustavo Razzetti

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The quality of your team's conversations is directly correlated to the questions people ask. It has never been more important to facilitate fruitful discussions. Unfortunately, proper questioning has become a lost art. The rush to act now - to keep up to speed with the fast-moving world - leads us to poor decision-making.

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HBR: 7 Ways a Manager Can Help Their Team Focus

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HBR: 7 Ways a Manager Can Help Their Team Focus

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It's no surprise that people struggle to focus. We're bombarded with distractions, burdened by unrealistic expectations, and drowning under too many incoming requests. Our team at Crucial Learning polled 1,600 employees and managers to better understand the severity of our collective failure to focus. The data painted an even bleaker picture of our tenuous attention spans.

One of our findings should be particularly alarming for people leaders: 60.6% of employees admit that they rarely to never do even an hour or two of deep, focused work each day without distraction. Where is all their time - and your money - going?

We found that two out of three respondents said they struggle to fully focus on a single task or person. And when they get a rare moment of concentration, one in three said they can only focus on a task for 10 minutes or less before getting distracted. And the effects of unfocused behavior are severe and far reaching. Specifically, respondents listed the greatest costs of their inability to focus as overwhelm, lack of energy, stress, decreased efficiency, less fulfillment, and disappointment.

Let's just play this out in the life of Damian, a high-performing product manager. The first thing Damian did when he woke up this morning was grab his phone and check his email. While lying in bed, he could do nothing about the requests contained in those emails, so instead, he started his day feeling overwhelmed. Luckily, his calendar was clear, and he'd have time to put the finishing touches on his project proposal that was due to Lisa.

As soon as he arrived at the office, Rajiv cornered him to ask for his quick input on the Q3 projections. It would only take a minute, so Damian agreed. Forty-five minutes later, Damian sent off his opinions to Rajiv. Next, he jumped into that long list of emails he had peeked at earlier that morning. He got a few quick dopamine hits by responding to several. But the next email was a big request and one he couldn't reasonably get done that morning. So he decided to save it for later, but the task loomed.

Finally, at 11:15 a.m., he opened his project proposal, but 15 minutes later, Rita stopped by to chat, and before he knew it, it was lunch time.

After lunch, Damian tried to get to that project proposal again, only to be called into a quick working session with his manager to address a client concern. It was 3 p.m. before he got back to his proposal, and by then, he was feeling drained and tired, so he opened his email for some quick wins. After processing the afternoon email backlog, including that large request from the morning, it was time to head to his son's soccer game. Damian sighed. He'd been busy all day, and yet it felt like very little actually got accomplished, including the one thing that had to get done - his project proposal.

Sitting at the game, all Damian could do was think about his incomplete proposal, unanswered emails, and looming commitments. While there were no dings or notifications, he was still fully distracted when he should have been present with his family.

This day wasn't an exception - it was the norm. No wonder our people are feeling more burned out and disengaged than ever. Distractions - some of which may be important but are distracting nonetheless - are getting the best of them. At the end of the day, our people have been busy, but have they been productive?

As people leaders, what can you do to encourage your team to limit distractions and find focus? How can you create an environment where your people can say no to low-priority work, block out the latest and loudest requests, and commit their time and energy to the most important projects and people?

For the last several decades, we've studied and coached leaders in the skills to stay productive in a hyper-stimulated world. This work has been shared in our book and course, Getting Things Done. But let us lay out more clearly what you can do to enable your teams to stay appropriately engaged. Here are seven ideas for helping your people focus:

Inventory tasks and projects.

This is a discipline where common sense is not common practice. If your people don't have a complete list of their commitments and projects, they can't realistically prioritize. As a leader, hold people accountable for keeping current to-do lists and give them time each week to do a full weekly review of these commitments so they can stay in control.

Clarify and curate communication channels.

Most of our distraction is the result of a plethora of internal communication channels people must navigate in a typical workplace setting - and that's not to mention actually processing the content in each channel. Clarify what each channel should be used for and the expectations around response times.

Normalize saying no.

Leaders need to create psychological safety around airing overwhelm and burnout. One brilliant example comes from Rich Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations, a custom software development company. Rich understands the value of employees communicating their bandwidth. He not only encourages employees to speak up, he also normalizes and rewards the behavior.

When an employee says they don't have bandwidth or are burned out, Rich teaches his project managers to smile and say, "Thank you for sharing that bad news with me." Why? Here's what Rich told us: "Most leaders want to quash bad news. But bad news doesn't just go away. Instead, it permeates the culture, creates quality and morale issues, and leads to endless hours of overtime." Normalize saying no by making it safe for employees to communicate their overwhelm. Reward the behavior by being deliberate in your reactions.

Make meetings meaningful.

Most people's workdays are monopolized by meetings. Help employees stay focused by allowing them to decline meaningless meetings. To improve meeting efficacy, one manager we coached set a bold precedent. He said, "If someone invites you to a meeting without a clear agenda and reasons why you're vital to the success of the meeting, you have my permission to decline it." This manager put the onus back on the meeting creator (which was often himself) to show greater respect for others' time. It also put employees in control of their days so they could focus on high-priority work.

Enable purposeful productivity.

During your weekly 1:1, don't ask your people if they're "keeping busy." Rather, ask them if they have the time and space to do the work they need or want to be doing. If the answer is no, support them in addressing that gap. Perhaps they need help prioritizing their to-do lists or are being pulled into fringe projects and tasks and need your help getting removed from those requests. Maybe they need support to block out their calendar for focused work time or need to adjust their hours to work more seamlessly with their ability to focus. Find the gaps and close them.

Formalize focus.

Perhaps the easiest way to encourage focused work is to put it on the calendar. Create a team norm of protected work time. For example, tell the team to block out Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for focused work. During these hours, no one is allowed to schedule meetings, and others across the organization will see the employees are unavailable as well. But a word of warning: If you're simply going to schedule over this blocked time, don't block it in the first place. That will only lead to a mistrust of your calendar.

Respect boundaries.

When people say they're in focused work mode as indicated by their status on team chat tools or their calendar, honor it. As their leader, you may feel these rules apply to everyone but you - but as soon as you interrupt this time, it sets the norm for everyone else to do the same. It sends the message that protected time is a myth and anyone is allowed to encroach on it.

. . .

These practices will help you build a culture where your people can focus on the work that really matters. It's vital that leaders understand these principles because they're what will keep your team efficiently engaged in a world designed to keep them distracted. Support their ability to focus, and everyone wins.

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7 Ways Managers Can Help Their Team Focus

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We know that in our hyper-stimulated world, people struggle to focus. The authors' recent survey of 1,600 employees and managers revealed findings that should be particularly alarming for people leaders: 60.6% of employees admit that they rarely to never do even an hour or two of deep, focused work each day without distraction.

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HBR: How to Ask Whether an Employee is Happy at Work

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HBR: How to Ask Whether an Employee is Happy at Work

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People quit jobs all the time - for better pay or a more exciting opportunity, to escape a toxic culture, or because they've reached an impasse in their current job. Some feel because they don't feel valued by their manager or organization, or because their managers don't spend enough time understanding their level of job satisfaction. And all this comes at a cost. The cost of replacing an employee can range from one-half to two times the employee's annual salary. But this is more than just about losing money. It's about losing your good people, dampening the team's morale, and may be even losing customer relationships along with the employee. While you can't make everyone stay, you can improve your attrition rates by investing time now to keep your team members by really understanding any underlying issues. The author offers recommendations for how to have effective "stay conversations" with your employees.

One mistake leaders often make is assuming that because a team member isn't complaining, they are happy at work.

Take my client Rana (not her real name), a member of a senior team at a large international organization. By every measure, she was highly engaged in her work. She proposed fresh ideas in meetings, completed projects on time, and was responding to messages 24 hours a day as she had for the last several years. But, she was also applying for other jobs. Like many people, the pandemic caused her to reevaluate her priorities. In two years of working remotely, her well-intentioned but busy boss failed to make time to check in about anything other than work, did not talk about her career development, and ignored requests for support. As a result, frustrations built up and she left, and with it went her institutional knowledge, client relationships, and contribution to the team's culture.

Could Rana's departure have been avoided? Perhaps. According to research conducted by Gallup, 52% of voluntarily exiting employees say that their manager or organization could have done something to prevent them from leaving their job. While you can't make everyone stay, you can improve your retention rates if you take the time to check in with your people.

Most people are familiar with the concept of an exit interview, where someone in HR interviews an employee who has given their notice to understand why they're leaving. A "stay conversation" is when a leader checks in to make sure an employee is having an experience at work that makes them want to stay. I recommend having these conversations quarterly and also setting them up around key milestones (like work anniversaries). Research shows just how important it is to keep these "career risk triggers" in mind. The largest risk happens when an employee experiences a change in manager or responsibility, with job search activity going up by 17%.

Here's how to prepare for these conversations and what to actually say when you meet with your employee.

Set the context

Let your employee know this is not a performance conversation or a meeting to talk about projects, but instead a check-in to understand how they are doing and how you can best support them. You could say:

I wanted to let you know that I really appreciate having you on our team. As we start the new year/quarter/etc. I wanted to set some time aside to just check in to make sure you're having a good experience at work. There is no specific agenda, but I would love to have you think about the following before we meet (c hoose 3-4 questions from the list below):

How have you been feeling about work in general?

What part of your job are you enjoying the most?

What aspect of your job do you enjoy the least?

How have you been feeling about being able to balance work and home?

What has been the biggest challenge this year/quarter and is there anything I can do to better support you?

What can I do differently to support you and the team?

Is there anything you want feedback from me on?

Do you feel like you are learning and growing here? If not, is there anything I can do to improve your experience?

Mentally transition to the conversation

Our ability to listen and connect is largely impacted by our frame of mind when we enter a conversation. If you are scrambling to finish a project, or rushing from another meeting, it is unlikely you will be present and empathetic with your team member. When you schedule your conversation, make sure you have a buffer before you meet. When advising leaders, I recommend they take a few minutes to reflect on the below questions to help them get present to the person they are meeting with and why.

Who is the person I am speaking with and what does it take for them to do their job each day?

What would be the impact on me and our team if this person left tomorrow?

Start the meeting off right

Whether you are meeting in person or via phone or video put away any distractions. Turn off notifications, put away your computer and phone, and close out your email and any chat functions. Intentionally or unintentionally, nothing closes down sharing faster than someone looking away or responding to something else when they are sharing.

Then, express the context of your meeting in the beginning. Remind the person that you are here to listen, understand their experience and see if there is anything you can do to improve it. Start by asking one of the questions you listed in your email to them. I recommend you start with a more general question to get the conversation flowing and then move deeper.

Probe, then really listen

When training leaders to have stay conversations, they will often express the concern "What if my team member brings up a problem I can't address, or asks for a raise or promotion I can't give them?" My response is always, "Isn't it better to understand what is going on than to ignore it?" And, in most cases, the act of authentically listening to a person's concerns often addresses them or, at a minimum, helps you identify a path forward together.

In my experience, nervous leaders will enter conversations expecting the worst, when things are actually going well.

As your team member shares their experiences, (really) listen. Then probe by celebrating and reflecting on what's working.
"I have been really enjoying working from home, I feel like we are much more efficient as a team."

Celebrate: "That's great to hear, I feel the same way."

Reflect: "What do you see has been making the difference?"

"I have really been enjoying working on the launch of the new app!"

Celebrate: "I am happy to hear that. I love the passion you have put into it."

Reflect: "What have you enjoyed most about working on it?"

Look for hidden commitments

If the person starts sharing frustrations or what comes across as complaints about their work, working remotely, lack of childcare, etc., remember that behind every complaint is a commitment. Avoid the temptation to try and propose solutions, instead, listen for their commitment, reframe it, and ask about what you could do to address it together.
"I feel like I am in non-stop meetings every day and I am up until midnight every night to get my actual work done."

Reframe: "I get you're committed to doing great work and it is frustrating when you don't feel you have the time during the day to get it done."

Reflect: "What do you feel we could do that would make a difference for you?"

"I feel like I am doing the same thing every single day and I am not getting anywhere in my career."

Reframe: "I get you are really committed to growing and, right now, you feel like that is not happening at all."

Reflect: "What do you feel we could do that would make a difference for you?"

Agree on next steps

In the last ten minutes of your conversation, shift your discussion to the next steps. If there are multiple things you did not have time to discuss, schedule a meeting to continue the discussion. If there are follow-up actions you will each take, put them in writing so your team member knows you really heard them out.
"Thank you for your openness in our meeting today, I really appreciate you sharing all that you did. As promised, I am going to (list follow-up actions), and send you an invite now for another conversation in two months. And, if anything comes up prior, please know we will always make time to check in."
While this may feel like "extra work" that you may not have time for, in reality, you don't have time not to have a stay conversation. Remember, it is the simplest actions that often have the biggest impact.

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How to Ask Whether an Employee Is Happy at Work

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People quit jobs all the time - for better pay or a more exciting opportunity, to escape a toxic culture, or because they've reached an impasse in their current job. Some feel because they don't feel valued by their manager or organization, or because their managers don't spend enough time understanding their level of job satisfaction.

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Forbes: 5 Ways to Increase Your Leadership Presence

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Forbes: 5 Ways to Increase Your Leadership Presence

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Leadership presence, that illusive but "we know it when we see it" quality, is a blending of personal and interpersonal skills that when combined, send all the right signals. It's how you show up, how you make others feel, and how effectively you communicate both verbally and non-verbally. It's the "wow" factor that sets you up for the next promotion and gives your career that extra boost.

That's what leadership presence is. Here is what it is not:

1. It is not an attribute that is automatically assigned to you because of your business results.

2. It is not necessarily reflective of your true qualities and potential.

Instead, it depends entirely on how other people in the workplace evaluate you. The first key to building leadership presence is to realize that it is all about impression management. As Suzy Monford, CEO Andronico's, says: "You need to show up each day the way you want to be perceived - which is simple to say, but difficult to accomplish unless you do your homework and really know yourself."

I agree. Leadership presence needs to be rooted in your basic values - and the "homework" of knowing your strengths, weaknesses, talents and biases is crucial to aligning people's impression of you with your best authentic self. But I am also aware that small attitudinal or behavioral changes can have an instant and powerful effect on how others perceive you.

As a leader (or a potential leader) you are constantly being evaluated on how well you display confidence, composure, credibility, connection, and charisma. Here are five simple strategies that can influence people's impression of you and instantly increase your leadership presence:
1. Power up your confidence by priming your brain.
Self-confidence is the personality trait most responsible for an individual being seen as having leadership presence. In "The Confidence Effect: Every Woman's Guide to the Attitude that Attracts Success," author Grace Killelea sees the lack of confidence in business women as a major obstacle to their career progression: "While men are prone to overestimate their abilities, all too often women sell themselves short and needlessly languish in marginalized careers. Realizing a high level of achievement requires women to speak out, take risks and assume leadership positions with perceptible self-assurance, but too many otherwise qualified women are not living up to their full potential. Aspiring women must become more inherently confident with the kind of authenticity that will get them noticed and take their careers to new heights."

Confident people (male and female) attract followers by being self-motivated, assured, and willing to take risks. But even the most confident people may suffer a crisis of self-doubt, and that's where having a personal strategy becomes crucial.

One key to displaying confidence is to change your physical posture by standing straight, holding your head up and pulling your shoulders back -- or even holding a "Superman" or "Wonder Woman" pose for two minutes to elevate your testosterone (the power hormone) level.

But another, equally effective strategy, is to prime your brain for higher confidence by recalling a time when you had power over another person or performed a task extremely well. Focus on what happened, how you felt, and what that experience was like. This doesn't have to be a business-related event. It's the emotional memory you are tapping into. Research shows that even thinking about a time when you felt physically attractive can increase your level of confidence.
2. Retain your composure with this mantra.
On the popular U.S. television show Shark Tank, entrepreneurs pitch their companies/products/ideas to a panel of potential investors. One of those investors, Barbara Corcoran, describes how the contestants have to stand in front of the "sharks" for a full five minutes without saying a word as studio lighting is adjusted. Corcoran says, "When I watch someone who's under tremendous pressure, that is a great test. Even before they open their mouth I know who I'm out on. I just sort of come up with a reason 'why' that I can say on camera. But the truth is I know when I'm out fight away because the guy takes his hands out of his pockets, then he's shifting, he's no longer making eye contact, he's sweating bullets, his knees are jiggling. I mean is this a guy I'm going to give my money to?"

You may never be a contestant on Shark Tank, but in any job interview, sales presentation or important business conversation, your emotions (and subsequently your performance) can get high-jacked by high levels of stress.

John Sudol, author of " Acting: Face to Face," coaches actors on how to prepare for an audition, and he offers an interesting insight that applies equally well to business professionals: "One of the things that can throw you off a well-prepared game plan might surprise you. It's the snap judgments you make about what you read on the interviewer's face. In an audition, that automatic judgment can provoke a variety of unwanted feelings and thoughts, such as anxiety, self-doubt, and insecurity. If enough stress is produced it can trigger a limbic response and put you into a freeze-fight-or-flee state.

But when we view someone's face from a place of inner security, we know that what's on their face is about them, so I've adopted the mantra What's on their face is not about me! These words have saved me numerous of times when speaking in large rooms looking out and seeing facial billboards flashing judgment, criticism, boredom, doubt, suspicion. Most often, and ironically, those are the very same people who will approach me after the lecture to thank me for my work and their favorable experience in the audience that day!"
3. Gain credibility by saying the word because.
Credibility is all about how you communicate. It's about body language that's aligned with your verbal message and it's about being truthful, diplomatic, empathetic, succinct, and decisive. But certain words and phrases have almost magical powers to instantly increase your credibility. The word because is one of them.

A study at Harvard, asked people to break into a line of strangers waiting to make photocopies. When asked simply if they could use the photocopier ("Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the machine?"), research subjects were successful 60% of the time. However, when a reason beginning with the word because was added ("May I use the photocopier because I'm in a rush"), the request gained instant credibility, and compliance skyrocketed to 94%.

What's more amazing, it didn't seem to matter what the given reason was ("May I use the photocopier because I need to make copies"), compliance remained at about the same level, 93%.
4. Connect more powerfully by changing your focus.
Capital is defined as "accumulated wealth, especially as used to produce more wealth." Social capital is the wealth or benefit that exists because of your social relationships. I think of social capital as the value created by your connection to others. There is no more valuable commodity in today's business environment, and no more valuable use of your time than to build your professional network, within and external to your organization.

Gayle Hallgren-Rezac and Judy Thomson, networking masters and the co-authors of "WORK THE POND! Use the Power of Positive Networking to Leap Forward in Work and Life" talk about ways to optimize any opportunity to network. They say it begins with a change in attitude: Networking is not about promoting yourself or getting new business. It's about creating or deepening professional relationships.

Try this at your next networking event: Enter each conversation with the goal of finding something that you can do for the other person. The minute you take the focus off promoting yourself and put it on assisting others, you dramatically improve your ability to connect.
5. Display your natural charisma by warming up your body language.
It's well known that people won't always remember what you say, but they will never forget how you make them feel. I've found that when I speak with a successful executive, I get the feeling that he or she is wonderful - but when I speak with a charismatic leader, I'm made to feel that I am wonderful! My emotional reaction has a lot to do with the body language of the two types of leaders: The first embodies nonverbal cues of confidence and power (which accentuates their prestige and status), while the second radiates charisma through warm, inclusive, and open body language. You will have the most impact if you can send both sets of signals, remembering that studies show leaders with warm body language are perceived more positively and are more persuasive.

The body language of warmth includes positive eye contact, smiles (which we don't see enough of in the workplace) and open postures in which legs are uncrossed, and arms are held away from your body, with palms exposed or resting comfortably on the desk or conference table.

Mirroring is another nonverbal sign of genuine warmth and empathy. You may not realize it, but when you are dealing with people you like or agree with, you'll automatically begin to match their stance, arm positions and facial expressions. It's a way of signaling that you are connected and engaged.

And when it comes to charismatic body language, facing people directly when they're talking is crucial. It shows that you are totally focused on them. Even a quarter turn away signals a lack of interest and makes the other person feel discounted. Of course, giving others your complete attention when they are speaking is one of the warmest signals you can send.

While there are many behavioral and attitudinal strategies that increase your leadership presence, these five simple tips are a good place to start.
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is an international keynote speaker and leadership presence coach. She is the author of The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help - or Hurt - How You Lead. Contact her at Carol@CarolKinseyGoman.com.

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5 Ways To Instantly Increase Your Leadership Presence

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Leadership presence, that illusive but "we know it when we see it" quality, is a blending of personal and interpersonal skills that when combined, send all the right signals. It's how you show up, how you make others feel, and how effectively you communicate both verbally and non-verbally.

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HBR: Manager's Stop Distracting Your Employees

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HBR: Manager's Stop Distracting Your Employees

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Managers, Stop Distracting Your Employees

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The rise of remote work has made corporate leaders paranoid, thinking they must monitor their employees’ every digital move in order to maintain productivity. But while people often zero in on Facebook, TikTok, or Netflix as potential sources of employee distraction, in truth, we’re often more distr…

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Gallup: Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement

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Gallup: Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement

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Story Highlights

Great managers create the right environment for engagement

Only 30% of U.S. employees, and 13% worldwide, are engaged

Good news: management talents exists in every company

Great managers consistently engage their teams to achieve outstanding performance. They create environments where employees take responsibility for their own -- and their team's -- engagement and build workplaces that are engines of productivity and profitability.

But not every team is led by a great manager. That's why managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units, Gallup estimates in the State of the American Manager: Analytics and Advice for Leaders.

This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement. As Gallup has reported, only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide are engaged. Worse, over the past 12 years, these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work.

Gallup has studied performance at hundreds of companies and measured the engagement of 27 million employees and more than 2.5 million work units over the past two decades. No matter the industry, size or location, companies are struggling to unlock the mystery of why performance varies from one workgroup to the next. Performance fluctuates widely and unnecessarily in most companies, in no small part from the lack of consistency in how people are managed.

Companies can attack this problem by measuring what matters most. Gallup has discovered links between employee engagement at the business-unit level and vital performance indicators, including customer ratings; higher profitability, productivity and quality (fewer defects); lower turnover; less absenteeism and shrinkage (i.e., theft); and fewer safety incidents. When a company raises employee engagement levels consistently across every business unit, everything gets better.

To make this happen, companies must demand that every team in their workforce have a great manager. After all, the root of performance variability lies within human nature itself. Teams are composed of individuals with diverging needs related to morale, motivation and clarity -- all of which lead to varying degrees of performance. Nothing less than great managers can maximize them.

But first, companies have to find those great managers.
The Talent to Achieve Excellence
If great managers seem scarce, it's because the talent required to be one is rare. Talents are innate and are the building blocks of great performance. Knowledge, experience and skills develop our talents into strengths, but unless people possess the right innate talents for our job, no amount of training or experience will lead to exceptional performance.

Gallup's research reveals that about one in 10 people possess high talent to manage. Though many people are endowed with some of the necessary traits, few have the unique combination of talents needed to help a team achieve excellence in a way that significantly improves a company's performance. These 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers and sustain a culture of high productivity.

Gallup has also found that another two in 10 people exhibit some characteristics of functioning managerial talent and can function at a high level if their company invests in coaching and developmental plans for them. In studying managerial talent in supervisory roles compared with the general population, Gallup finds that organizations have learned how to slightly improve the odds of finding talented managers. Nearly one in five (18%) of those currently in management roles demonstrate a high level of talent for managing others, while another two in 10 show a basic talent for it. Combined, they contribute about 48% higher profit to their companies than average managers do.

But companies miss the mark on high managerial talent in 82% of their hiring decisions. This is an alarming problem for employee engagement and the development of high-performing cultures in the U.S. and worldwide.

Yes, every manager can learn to engage a team somewhat. But without the raw natural talent to individualize, focus on each person's needs and strengths, boldly review his or her team members, rally people around a cause, and execute efficient processes, the day-to-day experience will burn out both the manager and his or her team. This basic inefficiency in identifying talent costs companies billions of dollars annually.

Conventional selection processes are a big contributor to inefficiency in management practices; they apply little science or research to find the right person for the managerial role. When Gallup asked U.S. managers why they believed they were hired for their current role, they commonly cited their success in a previous non-managerial role or their tenure in their company or field.

These reasons don't take into account whether the candidate has the right talent to thrive in the role. Being a successful programmer, salesperson or engineer, for example, is no guarantee that someone will be adept at managing others.

Most companies promote workers into managerial positions because of tenure or performance, rather than talent. This practice doesn't work. Experience and skills are important, but people's talents -- the naturally recurring patterns in the ways they think, feel and behave -- predict where they'll perform at their best.
Management Talent Exists in Every Company
It's important to note that finding great managers doesn't depend on market conditions or the current labor force. Large companies have approximately one manager for every 10 employees, and Gallup finds that one in 10 people possess the inherent talent to manage. When you do the math, it's likely that someone on each team has the talent to lead -- but chances are, it's not the manager. More than likely, it's an employee with high managerial potential waiting to be discovered.

The good news is that sufficient management talent exists in every company. Leaders should maximize this potential by choosing the right person for the next management role using predictive analytics to guide their identification of talent. Specific tools such as talent audits and talent assessments offer a systematic and scientific method for finding those employees who have the natural talent to be great managers.

Author(s)

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Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement

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Story Highlights Great managers create the right environment for engagement Only 30% of U.S. employees, and 13% worldwide, are engaged Good news: management talents exists in every company Great managers consistently engage their teams to achieve outstanding performance.

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Book Summary: Be The Boss Everyone Wants to Work For

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Book Summary: Be The Boss Everyone Wants to Work For

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Be The Boss Everyone Wants To Work For.pdf

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Book Summary: New Leader's 100 Day Action Plan

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Book Summary: New Leader's 100 Day Action Plan

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LifeLabs Learning: Watch Feedback Delivered 3 Different Ways

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LifeLabs Learning: Watch Feedback Delivered 3 Different Ways

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Podcast: The Leader Lab (LifeLabs Learning)

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Podcast: The Leader Lab (LifeLabs Learning)

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The LeaderLab powered by LifeLabs Learning

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Listen to The LeaderLab powered by LifeLabs Learning on Spotify.

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The secret to giving great feedback | The Way We Work, a TED series