Giving feedback is critical to development. Especially now.
In recent years much has been said about diversity and inclusion. Studies continue to show that more diverse companies are both more profitable and faster growing. We are finally starting to have open and honest conversations about what can be done to improve racial and gender equity within the corporate environment.
I started thinking about this a lot recently as I overheard a conversation about a particular person’s performance. The comments, though not aggressively so, were negative. It was clear that the manager did not feel this employee was performing at an acceptable level.
I asked the manager if he had told the employee about these issues and if it was clear to the employee what she needed to do to improve to an acceptable level of productivity. Based upon the response that I got, it became quite clear there had not been the level of conversation that was warranted. The manager was not regularly meeting with the employee nor had he ever sat down to explicitly talk through the performance challenges and lay out an agreed upon improvement plan.
My suspicion is that this happens a lot and the end result is that individuals are not coached and instead end up being terminated. (Let me be very clear here: I am not a researcher nor have I done a study. This is a blog of reasonable OPINION.) A further suspicion is that if you are already part of a group that does not feel engaged socially or connected politically within a company your opportunity to thrive will be diminished. If on top of that you have a bad manager your chances of success are next to naught.
Could cultural differences lead to missed opportunities to learn from each other? When you really break it all down the question becomes is diversity and inclusion as much of a talent management and leadership issue as it is about racial bias and historical prejudices? Do we lose people of color in corporate America due to bad management more so than outright bad behaviors? What factors are contributing to these issues?
1. Everyone is walking on eggshells
I’ve heard from some that they are afraid of giving honest feedback to women or people of color because they do not want to appear sexist or racist. The argument is that the world has become so politically correct that providing feedback is a risk. These individuals often feel more comfortable discussing their colleagues in a forum where random and unrelated people can hear.
Instead of the individual getting the constructive feedback that can help them improve, they are simply getting the negative about their performance from coffee room conversations. This can lead to feelings of isolation. Sharing negative feedback with their peers instead of them directly has a negative impact on the reputation of that person.
2. Secondhand feedback is never as valuable.
Another phenomenon I have witnessed is that feedback is deliberately delivered through alternative channels. In this scenario, individuals who do not feel comfortable directly providing feedback to someone will instead have another leader deliver the feedback. They may not explicitly ask for this delivery but in telling a particular person that they know has a relationship with the employee, they know that the feedback will get back to that individual.
In many cases, they’re showing their subconscious bias by sharing directly with white men while avoiding women or people of color. This ensures that the problem will continue because neither party is learning how to deal with the other directly. The individuals being put in the middle serve as a barrier between the manager and employee.
Feedback is never nearly as effective when watered down through a chain. The addition of an intermediary increases the likelihood that the message will not be delivered as intended and adds the perception that the received message is flawed. Furthermore, any reaction by the employee to the feedback through this back channel will be deemed a reaction to the feedback when it may be a reaction to the channel.
3. Bad management has a greater impact on those “not in the room”
All employees need to have the right amount of engagement and interaction with their leaders to be successful in a job. Direct feedback, regular conversations around performance and objectives, as well as verbal and written praise when appropriate are all things that are important to the development of a professional. Not spending time on coaching and development sessions leads to an inability to fully understand the capabilities of your employee.
Most companies spend a lot of time recruiting but much less time onboarding, training, developing, and engaging. For employees that do not have another network within the company this can be much more detrimental. At the same time, employees who have broader networks within the company have vastly larger opportunities for exposure.
I spoke with a woman leader years ago who told me that on average she had 10 minutes per month of direct one on one time with her manager. She never had conversations about her career aspirations. Her manager knew of the skills that she had relative to her current role but had no clue of all of the other things she had done in the past that might be applied to different opportunities. He did not really know her.
This particular woman was never in the same locker room at the gym as her boss. She did not tend to hang out at the same bar over the weekend. She wasn’t often invited to lunch with the guys. So all of those other opportunities her male colleagues had to expose their personalities, their strengths, their experiences were not available to her.
Her manager might have been just as bad of a manager to all of his employees. However the impact on this person was multiplied due to the fact that as a woman of color her social networks within the firm were limited. Therefore, when a new opportunity came up this employee had very little chance of getting that opportunity because she had less likelihood of even knowing about it.
Strategies for Building an Inclusive Environment
The most effective managers ensure that every individual on their team is being included in the conversation. It is through inclusion that we can tap into the benefits of a diverse working environment. Here are a few tips for being a better manager and building a more inclusive environment.
1. Build and manage around the full employee lifecycle. From hire to retire, everyone is on a tour of duty and should have clear expectations, regular connections and engagement, and a respectful exit when that time comes
2. Provide feedback as much as possible directly to the individual. If uncomfortable doing so face to face, practice. And potentially use other mechanisms like written feedback.
3. Try not to share feedback on one of your employees with a peer or superior before you have shared it with the employee. That’s not fair to the employee and does not show strength. In the end, you are making both you and your employee look bad
4. Look around the room more. At lunch, in meetings, and around the coffee maker. See if there are individuals from your team that are never there. Find them, engage with them, and loop them in.
5. Expand your network and your skills base. If you are uncomfortable handling issues with a particular race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, that is not their fault. It is YOUR issue to solve. Read up, talk to people, ask HR for help.
Building an inclusive and respectful environment is up to everyone, not just the “diverse”. As leaders we need to treat everyone fairly and ethically not only to develop the potential of each employee, but also to serve as an example to everyone with whom we come in contact.
Ultimately, being a better leader and creating a more consciously inclusive environment is good for your people and good for the company.
Are you listening or waiting to voice your own opinions? A recent exchange with someone I respect for many reasons, but struggle to understand for many others, reminded me of how important this topic is today. If we expect to communicate effectively we need to listen for comprehension before we can reply constructively.
There’s so much anger, hatred, and misunderstanding in our world. The problem has been exacerbated by social media and related tools that make it very easy to communicate sound bites but difficult to communicate emotions. With technology getting in the way it’s easy to forget that behind the words are individuals with valid thoughts and feelings.
So the question I have is what can we do about it? I started looking at different communication streams such as WhatsApp and Twitter among others. I noticed that instead of using long form posts there are more people using the ability to string along multiple short messages to more comprehensively express an opinion.
This method of communicating in short bits is susceptible to a specific type of issue. Most of the responses seemed to be immediate responses to individual parts of the thread. As a result, instead of responding to the overall comprehensive thought, individuals are responding to one point which by itself might not adequately capture the idea.
Poor Listening is Bad for Business
The fact is, this is not a new phenomenon. It exists in many corporate offices today. It goes like this …
Me: I was thinking perhaps we should rethink the way our team works ….
Them (interrupting): I totally agree. We tend to only talk to those we think hold power.
Me: Actually, I was more specifically focused on the tools and processes we use for collaboration …..
Them (interrupting again): Yes, totally on point. Because the most important person in the room always takes up too much time during meetings.
Me: That might be true, but I really want to focus on the way we get work done, which as you know is 90% of our time whereas the meetings you are referencing are only 10% ….
Perhaps you have experienced this?
The challenge is that by the time you have finished your first sentence, everyone in the conversation has immediately jumped to a conclusion and their biases have surfaced. Once their opinions have come to the forefront of their mind, it becomes very difficult to shove them back. Therefore you find that regardless of what you say they will get their point out even if it actually has nothing to do with what you intended to cover.
Five Tips to Better Listening and Improved Communication
1. Prepare for the Meeting
Pre-read any materials sent out before a meeting noting important points and referencing things you didn’t know before. This will enable you to more constructively provide feedback both positive and negative. Having an overview of the key points will reduce the risk of you first seeing something that may cause a visceral reaction during the meeting.
Even if you read something with which you vehemently disagree, the additional time to consider and react will reduce the likelihood of a blow up during the meeting. It also gives you the chance to reach out and discuss the point in a one on one manner with the individual if necessary. As an added benefit this allows you time to do your own research and provide supporting information for your point of view.
2. Practice Active Listening
Active Listening is a requirement for both verbal and written communication. Effective listening requires an open mind, paying attention, appropriate feedback, and empathy. Without these skills disagreements and miscommunication are bound to ensue.
A family member of mine has what I call “rapid response syndrome”. He sees the first line of a message, assumes what the rest of the message will be, and begins to reply immediately. The disagreement starts before the first thought is even completed.
When looking at a text message whether it is on teams, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or I message you should be able to see when an individual is still typing. I use this as a great indicator as to whether they have finished their thought and are ready for my response. Once they are finished typing, I read the entire stream, wait a few moments, consider both the words they wrote, the intention and context, then consider how I want to reply.
3. Breathe
Practice breathing. It can be very very uncomfortable, but consider the concept of buffering. Local television stations doing live shows actually broadcast with just enough latency that they can bleep out the errant profanity or crude gesture. It’s not minutes but seconds.
In a conversation, seconds can make a huge difference. Try to let your colleague finish his or her sentence fully, pause and breathe for 3-5 seconds. As you’re reading, it sounds like nothing, right? Try it. To many it will feel like FOREVER. Over time, it will be much more natural. If helpful, simply say “Well” or “Thanks” to cover some of that “long” gap.
4. Don’t Interrupt
Think about how you feel when you are interrupted at work or at home. It doesn’t feel good does it? When we interrupt someone it changes the dynamics of the conversation. They may feel that they are not being respected and that their point isn’t being heard resulting in anger, rudeness, or resentment.
A second but at least equally important problem with interrupting is that we don’t actually get to hear what the other person was going to say. Instead of listening we made an assumption and imposed our ideas over theirs. Additionally we likely derailed their train of thought in which case we may never get to hear where they wanted the conversation to go.
5. Be Empathetic
Always consider context and never forget the person with whom you are speaking is a person. They have feelings and a right to be heard. Try to visualize what you are hearing, put yourself in their position, and listen with empathy.
Effective communication is just as much about listening as it is about sharing our own thoughts and ideas. Consider your own communication prowess. Are you listening or thinking about what you want to say next?
Be well. Lead on.
Adam
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Adam L. Stanley
Connections Blog Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
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I never really liked going to movies as a teenager and most of my adult life was the same. Then, two things happened: 1) Showplace ICON opened a VIP theater near my home in Chicago, offering the opportunity to see movies in a recliner with drinks and gourmet sliders (and popcorn with bacon!); and 2) I started watching the Harry Potter movies to connect with my nieces and nephews. It was the second one that kind of leads me to this blog. You see, while I started off watching for the “action†of the young wizard, I quickly realized how many leadership lessons can be found in movies. Like rap music for inner city children in some schools, perhaps we can use movies to bridge between popular culture and leadership lessons for Gen Y.
I can blog thousands of words from Harry Potter, which is in my opinion as rich as the Godfather movies with leadership lessons. However, today I will discuss “The Helpâ€, a movie about three very different women and the relationships between them and other people in their Jackson, Mississippi town. I have watched the movie and read the book so may interchange them a bit. The movie was a very good adaptation, in my humble opinion.
Here are some simple lessons found from the book which spawned the movie:
1) Communication is more than just talking
“I don’t know what to say to her. All I know is, I ain’t saying it. And I know she ain’t saying what she want a say either and it’s a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation.”
How many times have you been in a meeting that lasted an hour and accomplished absolutely nothing? Sometimes it seems that everyone has something to say and yet nothing is said. I firmly believe that people need to listen more and talk less. Think about what goals have been set for the meeting and how each participant can add value.
A mentor of mine once told me that anyone who came to a meeting and said nothing should not have been at the meeting. However, some people are SO VOCAL that others may want to contribute but do not. Try not to be THAT person. Listen, learn, and watch for non-verbal and verbal cues.
2) Carrots work better than sticks. And they are a lot cheaper.
“…and that’s when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day?”
For many of your team members, you may be the only positive encouragement they have all day. I have had the pleasure of managing help desk technicians as part of my organization for several years. Many of them are the brightest, hardest working, and dedicated employees I have led. But talk about a thankless job. When things are good, no one calls the help desk. So they only get the irate, the frustrated, and often, the …. well, clueless.
Greet your team members, both peers and subordinates, by name and with a smile. Tell them something positive about their work, their attitude, or anything else you can find that is truly positive. Don’t make things up, but challenge yourself to find the best in everyone with whom you interact. You will be amazed what it does for that person and in turn what that person will do for your team and your clients.
3) Change begins with a whisper
There are thousands of quotes out there on change. And everyone says the right thing. Change happens. Change is good. Change is the only constant. And so on…. But the fact is CHANGE IS A PAIN IN THE …. Well, it’s hard.
In the movie and book, Aibileen is known as a solid citizen in the black community, respected for her wisdom and her prayers. Skeeter, who wishes to get several of the maids to participate in her book project, works first with Aibileen, who starts to mention it to Minnie, who then spreads it to others. Soon, the whisper spreads and several women want to speak to Skeeter.
The best way to manage change I have found is to think of every change as both necessary and positive, but to spread the word through individual conversations as much as town halls and large announcements. It is incredibly powerful for you as a leader if the day a major change is announced, you have dozens of people out there who have already been talking about it. Start small conversations with key influencers amongst your team and get them to discuss the change with others. Don’t do this for politics or scheme, you’re not just pandering to junior colleagues. Engage them because your team knows what works and can help make the change more effective. Let your key employee leaders be the whisper that starts a successful change event.
4) Some people will never change. Deal with it. Or Leave.
“It seems like at some point you’d run out of awful.”
I have been blessed to work primarily with great people. Even those that had their rough spots and mean streaks typically showed their good more than their bad sides. But there were two in particular that try as I might, I could not find within them a redeeming quality. They were mean, nasty and completely uninterested in team building and collaboration. One even went so far as to tell me I needed to be more of an [expletive] and that my team enjoyed working for me too much. The implication was that they could not possibly be working hard enough and still like me the way they did. I know, right? Crazy! And this was not in the 1980s.
My solution was to walk away. I knew it could be risky (using up some of my “marblesâ€, as a mentor of mine used to say) but worse still would be staying and working in a toxic environment that could make me toxic. I sacrificed the “glory” of working with this particular team and opted to find my success in other teams. To take the risk to be a respected AND liked leader and not just one that was feared.
If you have this kind of person in your team, try to address the issue head on. Do all you can to make it better, but at the end of the day, some people will never change. If you are the boss, you must fix the problem either by getting them to change or severing them from the team before they spread their negativity. If you are a member of the team and working for the “negative nestor”, you have the option to stay or go. If you can, get out of there before the negativity spreads to you.
5) Relate to and empower all employees.
One of the main characters in The Help convinced herself that building separate bathrooms for her maid was good for the maid as well as protecting her from “their diseases”. Most people watching this today feel this is so far from what anyone would do and thankfully they are correct. But how many times have you personally spoken to the most junior employee in your organization? Do you structure every meeting in layers where you meet with your directs and they meet with their directs and so on? Do your junior associates call you by your last name (Good morning, Mr. Stanley) sometimes and feel they have to ask permission to say hello when walking past your office? Watch for this and consider what you can do to create an environment where all of your team members truly feel equally engaged and empowered. And hang out with the senior and junior staff. A beer tastes the same with a CEO as it does with an analyst. Trust me.
Don’t give your employees the separate but equal treatment. Be a part of the team. As one of my favorite Aon teams used to say, “Hug it out!”
Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, we are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.
I pledge today to be a better listener and communicator, to empower my teams and treat them as equal partners, to encourage and uplift them, and to involve them in change so that their whispers can drive powerful success. Will you take this pledge? Do you have other lessons on leadership from this or other movies? I would love to hear from you. Post your comments below, on my Facebook page, or via Twitter.
Anyone that knows me knows that I like to read “guru” books on leadership and teamwork but am also often highly critical of such books. It is not that I do not believe that there are people that have through their experiences become experts in these areas. It is more because I still feel the best way to learn to be a better leader is to be a leader. Successes, failures, and time are the best teachers of leadership and the best tools for enhancing and strengthening relationships as a leader.
I have also found that some of the best tips I have read have come not from “guru” books but from fictional accounts of young sorcerers coming of age (“A Wizard of Earthsea” by Ursula K. Le Guin), creatively imagined conversations with God (“The Shack” by William P. Young), and philosophical poets like Lucretius, Dante, Goethe and (more contemporary) Kahlil Gibran. There are a few books that I keep handy and have read multiple times and two of them are from Gibran: “Sand and Foam” and “The Prophet”.
I have tweeted many quotes from Gibran and encourage you to follow me on twitter @adamstanleyatx to read some of the quotes. In this blog, I want to share brief thoughts on leadership from various Kahlil Gibran books.
1. A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
I have been quite lucky in some instances, and strategically successfully in many, at hiring and retaining really smart people. I always brag on my teams as being so much smarter than me. These technologists, business analysts, financial wiz kids, and others have truly shown they know their stuff; the “A” list in terms of knowledge. But, the ones that have truly stood out are those that were actually able to take that knowledge and act on it.
A successful business leader has to be really good at both developing ideas and actually implementing them, and this is one of the things that set smart people apart from effective people. Having a good operations mind that augments strategic thinking is critical as it’s about developing a strategy and making that strategy a reality. I advise my young leaders to learn how to contemplate problems, really analyzing what the root of the issue is and defining the boundaries of your required work. Then, roll up your sleeves, develop a strategic plan, and deliver on the necessary change required to enhance value.
2. Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.
How many times have your employees been made to feel that regardless of what they say, you or other leaders will still act exactly as you initially planned? I had a colleague who was absolutely notorious for this. This particular person would hold meetings with dozens of individuals gathering feedback on a certain initiative. Hours of time would be spent in one-on-one interviews, small group sessions, and through surveys and data gathering. Yet, if you were to do an analysis of the delta between original and final plans of this individual, the result would be close to zero. The fact of the matter is that this person did not really care what others thought, but simply felt there was a need for the appearance of validation. Over time, guess what happened? People began to spend less and less time providing feedback, declined meeting invitations and only supported the initiatives grudgingly after an executive mandate.
How much more powerful could this person have been as a leader if feedback and input from diverse constituents had truly been used as an enabler versus a symbolic validation? I have found that my greatest successes have come from situations where I have allowed people to openly challenge my assumptions and provide candid feedback on my ideas. As a leader, you have the opportunity to leverage the strength of your team to magnify exponentially your power. But only if you truly resolve to listen and react to their feedback.
3. “I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.”
I’m sure you have a few of these teachers in your life as well. Learning from bad leaders and employees is just as effective as learning from the good ones. And I’ve had both. Truly, there is nothing that makes you more cognizant of your listening skills than being in a room with a blowhard that just won’t shut up! A good friend once told me I should use a formula for calculating the optimal participation of each person in a meeting. He basically said to take the total number of time devoted to discussion (i.e., not including the base presentation of content) and divide it by the number of people in the room that are there in a contributory role. If you are one of 6 people in a 30 minute meeting and have talked for more than 5 minutes, take a breath and contemplate the conversation. Yes, you’re smart, and perhaps you do know more about the topic than anyone else in recorded history. But, wouldn’t it be interesting to hear what the other lesser mortals think?
Today, I commit to be a better listener, a more tolerant manager, and a kinder colleague and partner to all those in my professional environment. And via this blog, I give a hearty and most gracious THANK YOU to those of you who taught me so much through your (bad or good) example. You know who you are (I hope)!
Lessons from The Help
