Organizational Reflection
So now that our people are heading back to the work place, or have newly returned. It is time to have a look in our organizational mirror so to speak. As a coach who works with organizations, a consistent theme for the past 8 months has been looking inside our organization. The time for attributing our results to the effects of lockdowns and realities of managing a pandemic is drawing to an end.
This is a time for leaders
For the last couple years, we have been forced to respond to outside factors impacting our lives and organizations. It hasn’t been easy for most organizations to keep afloat and it only takes a few minutes to look at lease opportunity signs to recognize many didn’t survive. It is pointless to regurgitate the endless list of stresses we have had to deal with, let’s put those aside and focus our energy on what we need to do now. As operations resume, its time to look at ourselves as leaders, workers, teams and organizations a little differently.
Lead people. Manage resources
External forces stressing our organization has required effective strategy and leverage of our management abilities. Covid pushed and stressed our leaders to become even better managers in an age with uncertain resources and the situation constantly in flux. With so many people working remote it required us to focus on managing, making sure everything kept getting done. Managing peoples expectations, tasks and results became a priority and if you weren’t good at it, you became good at it. We all did.
Now though, after years of meetings over computers, independent work and working around our home schedules, we find ourselves back in a workplace. Things are different, how people live their lives are different. Routines that have adapted to family, puppies and a crowded home are now being asked to change in order to return to work. Our team make up is different, many organizations have multiple team members who have never met their co-workers in person. That was rare 2 years ago. It is easy to fall into the trap that going back will all be the same as it was years ago, but it is not. You remember the challenges that happened when working remote became a thing, after a couple years, those challenges are reversed to go back. We are coming back to the workplace, but ask yourself what is making it difficult for each person to be fully present.
We lead people; What does that mean exactly? There are countless amazing books on leadership. There is no one mold of leadership. Each of us leads different. Leadership is natural to a point, we have a lot to work with. All great leaders, however, put effort into developing themselves to be the leader their organization needs and that fulfills them as individuals. When we meet a leader that we think, “wow, that person is amazing or a natural”. Chances are their leadership ability did not come entirely natural. Top leaders put a lot of effort into being effective. I want to share some of the situations that I have come across over the past few months, in hopes some of this will resonate with you.
What is important now for leaders to focus on right now:
Honesty and Safety:
The relationship between safety and honesty is massively important, and right now it is higher universally than it has been in some time. When I refer to safety in this context I am referring to mental or emotional safety. The whole world has become expert at distrusting opinions and information. We learned that through the Covid experience. It has become a habit of most of us to judge what is being told to us. If this point is ignored in an organization, this will become a bit of a mine field. Simple to avoid, proactively do the things that build trust and avoid things that propagate distrust. Trust is easy as math, do the things that create trust and you get trust, don’t do those things and you don’t get it. More could be said, but for our purposes here, lets leave it at that.
There is a powerful relationship between honesty and safety. Think about yourself for a moment. When was a time that you felt unsafe? Maybe select a time in your career. What would you have done to become safe? Have you ever felt you needed to lie to keep safe or keep your job? When unsafe, would you speak up to share bad news or risk saying or doing something that made you less safe? Some might, most won’t and lots will wait it out being cautions. How do your people feel right now? How do you know? Maybe you have never come across this. What about in your life? Have you had a time when you felt threatened. You do everything you can to create safety.
I was recently asked to support a leader who had made a decision not to be overly transparent. He shared what he felt his people needed. His intentions were good, he wanted to keep things simple for his people. When it blew up on him, his people accusing him of withholding information which led to negative conclusions being drawn; he called me to support him work his way out.
His first challenge was the lack of team alignment. People didn’t have a clear understanding of operational realities and as motivated as they were, this led them to begin work in different directions. They made their daily micro decisions without the nuances of the bigger picture. Even when workers thought they knew the objectives, they didn’t have the whole picture. They were unnecessarily working towards different priorities and resented when they found out. Even worse, once they did, they found themselves struggling to understand why the organization wasn’t headed where they thought it was headed. This took longer and a lot more money and energy to get people on board. His people were, upset they wasted their time, they were also suspicious and critical of their leaders, including him. He turned it around, but they lost a couple good people in the process.
Creating a safe and honest space where people ask what is on their mind is money in the bank. Do that by engaging, answer what they ask about, when you are available, they will bring ideas and issues to you. If people complain “there are too many meetings” it is because those meetings are ineffectively structured or not addressing what needs to be addressed. It means you need to fix the meetings, not stop having them.
Leader’s influence because of the people they are. Most of the workforce want to be part of something bigger than themselves. When effectively engaged they will solve problems you didn’t know you had. They will spot possibilities and opportunities beyond their scope of work and bring those forward. They know what watch for and navigate. Coming back into the workplace, engage people, create the space that people want to be in. Get support from someone objective.
Leaders don’t need authority to influence people. Managers need authority, because they are working their resources. Leaders influence without authority. Look at all the companies or organizations you have ever been part of. Take a second and think of the people who pop into your mind who were the great leaders, not just the people in charge. Who were the leaders, who get people going, who’s ideas were considered. Not because of their status or position, but because of who they are. I remember high school football. The defensive captains were the older experienced players, they called the formations. But when we were down 2 touch downs and needed the ball. I can tell you the guys, the leaders, who showed up to fire the team up weren’t our captains. Ask yourself: What do you do that influences people for the positive? What do you do to create a safe and honest environment? What type of workplace do you want to live in? What do your workers want from you? If you can’t answer these questions, you need to find out.
Decisions based on anything other than complete honesty are going to be ineffective, inefficient and at worst case work against you or your organization. Anyone who has ever laughed at the question “Do I look fat in these pants?” knows that 100% honesty isn’t always easy. Creating a culture where honesty is a value is incredible. If you are or have been in one you know. Honesty is just the beginning. The effects on your culture and performance are immense.
A decade back I was working a program in South Africa. In attendance I had about 60 people. This was a communication program aimed on improving how the team communicated and inevitably to improve their results. Just as I was beginning to start, 2 very high brow men walked into the room. The walked to the seats at the front and quickly urged the people who were sitting there out of their seats. To say the least I was stunned. I looked over at the woman who was coordinating the program. She looked at them and looked at me and gestured to continue.
As I began to speak, one of the men interrupted boisterously. “I know how to lead, I am a natural leader and I don’t need to sit in some room to listen to some coach.”
I replied, “perhaps you don’t, I am curious though, how do you know you are an effective leader?”
The second one joined in, “I have been doing this for a long time. I know how to be in charge…” he went on about himself.
After they discussed their abilities and experience for a couple minutes they still hadn’t answered the question. So I asked again “How do you know you are effective?”.
They looked at each other, looked at me and the second one said, “I just told you?” Realizing this moment was the real opportunity for this particular organization.
I continued, “but please explain clear and succinctly so we all understand, how do you know you are an effective leader?”
The first one rambled on about his experience again. Nothing substantial. When he was done; I asked the group. “What do you think? Are these men effective leaders?”
The room was silent. Except for one young man.
“No, certainly not effective leaders.” he answered.
Before the reddening faces of the two leaders could say anything. I spoke up, gentlemen you are not required to be here in this room today, we would love to have you, in truth there is little point in moving forward creating a high performance team if you aren’t interested in being part of it. However, I should share with you, I base my observations on evidence not opinion. In my humble experience, I have learned that the best way to determine the effectiveness of a leader is to ask the people they lead. What I am hearing is that you are experienced leaders. Which is a great asset to the organization, I think what we need to determine is whether it is the right type of experience for the people you lead.
The first guy leaned back in his chair, took a big pause crossed his arms and made an audible sigh while starring at me. He was solid, not even a little awkward.
The room was silent waiting for one of them to respond.
“Well”, he said, and then took another long pause.
We watched him forcibly shift his energy, the tension in him moving around his high status posture. This lasted about 20-30 seconds, which felt like forever.
Then he continued, “So far this course has been really informative”.
It took a moment, but someone cracked a laugh, then someone else started to chuckle and then another, he cracked a smirk and his counterpart blurted out a laugh. Slowly like a steam train gaining momentum everyone in the room joined the laughter.
He broke out a smile, “Clearly I brought my rotten morning into this room and I would like to apologize. First though would you like your seat back he asked the person he had displaced.
The woman said, “yes please” and he moved to sit with some of his junior managers. The second man followed suit, he just stood up cleaned the table back to what it was when he sat down, made eye contact with the person he displaced and moved for them to return, which they did, not sure what exactly just happened.
When all was done, the room remained a little awkward. I said, “This is my first time coaching in South Africa, tell me does this happen every meeting?” People began to howl with laughter. Once the laugher subsided, I asked “what was special about being South African” and let conversation ensue, they were teaching me about things that mattered to them. This was pure gold to everyone in the room. The room was safe and people were speaking honestly. The session went off great. I couldn’t have created a better icebreaker, although, conflict like that can go a completely different way and I am glad nothing like it has happened since.
How are you leading your people? What are they telling you? One sign you are doing well is that people speak comfortably about things that are not going well. They don’t feel the need to become animated, stressed or nervous bringing bad news forward. If there is no bad news or it comes out tense, dramatic, bitchy or involves blaming someone; there is work to do at the honesty and safety stage. Resist blaming your people, it does not lead to safety or honesty from the team. Leadership owns everything. It always strikes me odd when a leader blames their people, everyone else can see whats going on, except of course the person doing the blaming. Owning mistakes, own your role in others mistakes.
People First
Now that you have a safe and honest workplace, what next? Reconnect with your people. Chances are creating safety meant you had already begun to do this. Invest your time, get to know them all over again. Get to know yourself through their eyes.
I will save you thousands of dollars right here. Have each of your leadership team take everyone in the company to coffee for an hour one on one. Yes, it might take months. Spend some time getting to know them again. I did a session for an executive leadership team after the oil downturn in 2013. After 3 days of intense sessions, heavy discussion and working through some big differences on alignment and strategy, I asked “what are your next steps?” They were unanimous, every leader would take out every one in the company for coffee over the next 3 months. They put together a spreadsheet so the same person didn’t have multiple meetings in the same day or week with their boss, or their bosses boss. I have to admit after 3 days of intense and often heated discussion, I was surprised.
I asked “is that it?”
The CFO responded, “What do you mean”.
“Well, I look around at the fact we have the most influential people of this organization in the room to do everything and anything to be successful and your priority is coffee? Put it to you this way, if in the first hour of our session on the first day, I told all of you to take all of your people out for coffee what would you have thought?”
The CFO laughed, ya, you are right. Seems ridiculous when you put it like that, but this is exactly what we need to do.
The CEO followed up, it is interesting when we shift our perspective what seems so minor is so massive and what is massive is so minor. Then he asked me, what else should we do? I answered, go and enjoy getting to know your people. No agenda, simply put them first. Then after that is all done, lets plan a town hall with everyone and see what you get when you ask them for input.
They all nodded in agreement.
It worked like a charm. When I walked into the office a few months later, after everyone had been engaged the common comment was; “Steve, what did you do with our executive team? What a turn around!” I shared these comments with the executive team and asked; what had changed? They all looked around the room at each other, I don’t know, I don’t think anything has changed with us? They mentioned that they learned about the people who worked with them and eluded that things were a lighter and friendlier around the officeI, but nothing significant.
That is significant. Everything might be the same to you, but its different for them.
So again save yourself a 3 day coaching workshop; take all your people to coffee.
Safe, honest, connected… now what?
Once you have connected with everyone, it is time to have that vision conversation. No doubt leaders hold that vision, but so does everyone in the organization. Its important to be aligned. I know, I know, when people read the word vision from a coach they think, “oh god here we go, something pointless to post on the wall”. Fair point, the term is misused enough to garner scrutiny. So use a different word, what is your direction, your intention, mission, objective, goal… what are you working towards? You have to know, so do your people. It needs to be a conversation, not a one way marching order. If you are going to drill 100 wells, buy an asset, open a division, expand a product or service, leadership shares the goal or objective, then the team needs to pull together to make that happen. How your organization gets there, what do you want to achieve on the way, organizational priorities are fair game for the team to be part of. With your new safe and honest workplace and stronger relationships this will be productive and your sense of identity will be much stronger. People will want to be at those meetings.
People transition at their own pace
As all of this begins, be patient, people are trying the whole team thing on again post Covid. As a colleague said to me yesterday, “its like my clients are socially starved and struggle to digest a cracker.” Conversations are going to be a little clunky, sometimes awkward and may go on a little longer than you hope. But its like when you learned to walk, it didn’t go well at first, but look at you now. Make time, the pay off will be enormous. The first time you heard “do I look fat in these pants?” there was a lot of processing going on. Give your people some time to get into the grove. A lot of loaded questions are going through their minds right now on how best to respond.
The thing about people on high performance teams is, once they get a taste of high performance, they never want to return to good. As a coach I rarely get calls from low performing teams. It is high performers who want to be even better and are looking for outsiders to provide experiences and objectivity to get them to the next level. When your people are asking for support outside the company, that is a positive reflection on the leadership team, because that team brought them to their highest level and they are hungry for more.
The best leaders I work with call and ask for support, not because they are unable to develop or lead their people, but because they have grown so much they are spread too thin. They need someone in the organization who is not someone’s boss, to influence positively and contribute to the big picture vision and success of the organization. You are not on your own.
There is no denying things are different after Covid. No matter what your stance is on how the pandemic was handled. What matters now is how you will lead your people to the next level of your success. No external excuses anymore. What is happening now is up to us as an organization and completely within our control.
Steve McGrath is the president of Fluid Experiences Ltd (www.fluid.coach) is a coach, speaker, traveller and aspiring writer. Steve provides experiences for a living. He can be found in board rooms, offices, field operations and in wild places on adventures with his dog Spirit.
