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Effective Leaders Decide About Deciding

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Nancy Duarte 

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/effective-leaders-decide-about-deciding/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Read%20the%20new%20article%20now%20%C2%BB&utm_campaign=Enews%20Leadership%205/24/22

 

Every leader should design and communicate how they want to make decisions. Making it clear what you care about, what you need to know about, and what you’re tasking others to move on will help minimize confusion about who should be making which decisions. It also helps clarify when you as the leader can be kept out of a decision, when you should be pulled in, and how requests for your feedback should be communicated.

I’ve learned this the hard way. Because I’m passionate about multiple facets of my company, my executives were getting confused at times about why I was inserting myself into a conversation. Sometimes, it was simply my excitement, and other times, it was from a place of concern. Sometimes, I didn’t see how their execution of a strategy lined up with what I saw in my mind’s eye. This made my executives blurry about what they had the power to act on and when they needed to loop me in — in part because I wasn’t clear on those things myself. Decisions would stall. Frustrations would run high.

Convoluted decision-making processes waste time. Respondents to a 2018 McKinsey survey, for instance, said they spent 37% of their time making decisions, on average — and they estimated that more than half that time was spent ineffectively. On the other hand, delegating decisions and trusting the people you’ve handed them to isn’t always easy.

But we’re fans of models and visual representations of processes at Duarte Inc., and after talking through the problem and the confusion, the executive team cocreated a new model. In this two-by-two matrix, decisions are categorized into four boxes along axes representing how urgent the decision is and how high or low the stakes are. Each box has a correlating expectation about whether I should be involved, ranging from “Decide without me” and “Inform on progress” to “Propose for approval” and “Escalate immediately.” (See “Help Your Team Make Faster Decisions.”)

Once we landed on the framework, each executive populated a matrix for their own business unit. They piled up all the topics for decisions that needed to be made regularly into the four quadrants. We talked through the choices, and they then had a clear idea of when and to what extent I should (or wanted to) be involved. Each leader could cascade this model as far into their organization as they chose to.

Yes, there are other models about how leaders and managers communicate decisions, like RACI (an acronym for “responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed”), but those are for decisions at the project level, not the executive table. Once we aligned around this model, it became clearer to all of us what I should let go of — while also giving me permission to poke my head in if something was derailing that they thought they had handled.

Here are the kinds of decisions we chose to put into each category.

Decide without me: Your direct reports should have most of their responsibilities piled under this item. This would include successfully executing the agreed-to strategy, fulfilling the duties of their role, hiring, spending, solving personnel issues, and managing the departments through their dashboard. A leader’s job is to help establish missions, not to micromanage how each person gets there.

Inform on progress: A leader may want to “watch” some matters as they unfold. These include initiatives that have risk, general budget creep, or employee issues that might escalate. Sometimes I ask execs to use the channels of their choice to inform me on projects they are working on that I have personal passion for. This way, I stay informed and don’t need to ask about it but still get the joy of watching it develop. We found that before, when I would proactively ask questions, executives thought I was questioning their performance. In reality, I simply wanted to be informed along the way without taking any action.

Propose for approval: Things that come up during the year that fall outside of our planned strategy or approved funding belong in this category. Most approvals can be addressed in our quarterly planning meetings, but sometimes unexpected issues need faster feedback — like spending money over the approved budget, making major policy changes, or quickly deciding on a large opportunity that has popped up. Depending on the scale of risk, the team might send me a handful of slides making a case for the proposal, which I can simply approve over email. Other topics are meatier and need the input and approval of the whole executive team.

Escalate immediately: This category mostly evolves around high-risk or high-reward areas. These include scenarios where there are major risks to the strategic plan, changes in governance, shifts in the market, threats to data security or physical security, or even an unexpected acquisition opportunity.

Probably the hardest category for me as a company leader is “Inform on progress.” It takes a lot of self-control to remember that being informed is not the same thing as being asked to weigh in. Using the matrix has given my staff a polite way of telling me, “Just informing! You said you’d keep your nose out of it, remember? I’ve got this.”

Setting up this kind of decision matrix requires you to feel comfortable asking teams for feedback on whether you speed them up or slow them down. To take it even further, you as the leader can ask the team to grade you on how well you’ve stayed out of their business and stuck to the choices about decision-making that you said you would.

This model can and should be modified with direct reports quarterly based on how the business ebbs and flows and what becomes important for you or the business to watch. Talking about the model at least quarterly helps keep everyone aligned and moving on the work they are tasked to do.

Models like these are an important step in becoming a more professionally managed company or department. For us, this model created clarity. As the owner/founder, it was hard for me to let things go, and I had developed some bad habits. Now my team kindly calls me out when I cross the line: The matrix has given them permission to remind me to stay out of their day-to-day areas — while illuminating which kinds of decisions I always want to be involved in.

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Sincerely, Leaders of Color: Onboarding isn’t just for early career staff

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Here’s how you can help new BIPOC managers and experienced hires succeed.

By Jahna Berry Posted on: 

https://source.opennews.org/articles/sloc-onboarding-isnt-just-early-career/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=early%20career%20staff&utm_campaign=Enews%20BOTW%203/11/2022

About this series: Sincerely, Leaders of Color is written for everyone in the journalism industry who cares about creating a more supportive environment for journalists of color to do their best work. Have a question for the team? Drop it here and watch for it in a future column. This column is proudly sponsored by the Executive Program and the Tow Knight Center at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and our guest writers budget is sponsored by The American Press Institute.

It’s been electrifying for me to see so many brilliant people of color step into powerful leadership roles in the two industries I work in, the nonprofit world and the media world, and it’s made me think more deeply about how to best support those BIPOC leaders and other more experienced hires during their first year of joining a new organization.

As chief operating officer at Mother Jones, it’s my job to hire and support managers. Plus, I’ve experienced this transition personally – I know what it’s like to be a new leader at a new organization, and I also know what it’s like to be promoted from within.

There are a lot of articles that talk about thoughtful onboarding practices (here, Amaris Castillo writes about onboarding challenges during the pandemic), especially for people who are early in their career. But, I’ve seen few that talk about how to support new managers who are BIPOC or experienced hires during their first months on the job. In my experience, they may have a few specific needs.

For example, I’ve found that newly hired senior level workers may get invited to more get-to-know-you meetings, but may experience an overall less robust onboarding process than people early in their careers. Why? In past jobs I’ve had onboarding teams say they didn’t want to insult me by going over something that seems like a “101” issue, like workplace conduct norms or basic workflows they assume I’ve seen before. In other situations, a new hire’s supervisor might assume a more experienced hire or someone promoted from within might not require much guidance. If a new hire is joining a small organization or startup, their boss may not have experience onboarding other supervisors.

Here are some things you may want to consider when you onboard an experienced BIPOC employee or a person of color who is a manager.

Create a formal, modified onboarding plan for internal promotions. This doesn’t have to have all of the bells and whistles of a new employee welcome, but consider creating a framework with goals and details about key transitions, like the one below. This is helpful for BIPOC employees who are further along in their careers or taking on new leadership roles, because they may feel additional pressures, which I will talk about in more detail in a bit.

Collaborate on a flexible 30/60/90 day plan, and ruthlessly prioritize. New BIPOC managers and experienced hires often step into their role after a long search, (it’s not uncommon for senior level management searches to take months or more than a year) so right away there are a lot of urgent tasks. Having a 30/60/90 conversation (or series of talks) will help prioritize, especially if it includes what they are expected to master within the first 30, 60 and 90 days. This framework (especially the 30 day goals) will help them prioritize as they are inevitably hit with competing requests. Expect to revisit this 30/60/90 plan often, because they may need more than one assurance it’s OK to deprioritize something. An ambitious new hire may set up their own 90-day plan, but if their manager helps draft it, then it’s easy for the new hire and manager to refine and update it together as things change.

Instead of shortening or skipping parts of the usual orientation when you onboard an experienced hire, try this: After you send an initial orientation schedule, ask the new hire what parts of the organization or their role they want to prioritize briefings on or they think they need to learn more about.

If the job includes any DEI work, help the new employee establish and communicate boundaries around those tasks. If a BIPOC manager works in a predominantly white department, they may feel unspoken pressure – from front line staff, leadership team, or themselves – to help fix or diagnose pre-existing diversity issues in the organization, whether that is explicitly part of their role or not. If the role is involved in DEI, the new hire and that person’s manager should help define the boundaries of that work and, together, proactively message that to the staff.

For example: sending out an email that explicitly states: “Eric leads the task force tracking diverse experts who appear in our news stories. DEI questions about hiring are owned by the CEO and Human Resources.” My boss is great at this and I try to remember to do it whenever I can.

Consider giving the new hire a business briefing. Does business reporting generate the most sponsorships? Does a project’s funding come from a grant with key deliverables? Explaining the nuances of the core business is a really helpful context for senior level hires, even if that information is not crucial right away. This is especially important for editorial hires and promotions. Help folks who have previously worked in silos gain a more holistic understanding of the organization and its revenue model.

Think about power dynamics during orientation. Orientation buddies are great. Don’t forget to give the new hire more than one go-to person for their questions. If possible, give the new hire at least one orientation buddy who is at their level – not a subordinate or their supervisor – so they can ask frank questions and get candid answers. In an ideal situation, at least one orientation buddy is a BIPOC person at their level within the new hire’s department or similar department. Some organizations might be too small or have too few employees to accomplish this, and that’s okay. If you do everything else on this list, that will still be great onboarding.

Ask thoughtful questions about tech needs. Set aside a block of time at the beginning, and perhaps a month after their first day, so the new hire can get answers to a batch of tech questions all at once. It’s my experience that seasoned hires who are BIPOC are often so focused on supporting their new team, they often backburner their own personal tech needs, which may make their jobs harder. For example, I’ve seen experienced hires delay requesting job-specific hardware, ordering ergonomics gear needed for working from home, or seeking training for hard-to-understand systems that they use on a regular basis.

Consider making a user manual about your work style or exchanging one with each other. I have not tried this yet, but I am obsessed with the examples I’ve seen on blogs like this one and this one. At the very least, make sure you have one one-on-one dedicated to this discussion.

Give them the insider’s tour of the org chart about a month in. This is a great opportunity to answer questions they may be pondering after their first few weeks whiz by. Discuss any people, teams, or projects they need to prioritize.

If their predecessor is available, ask them to have a coffee meeting with the new hire about six months after they start their new job. This is a terrific idea I saw from Race Forward’s Maria Smith Dautruche.

Consider offering management training designed for BIPOC managers during the first year on the job. There are some great training programs tailored to support leaders of color like Maynard 200 and Poynter’s Leadership Academy for Diversity in Media. I’ve found that getting management training during the first year at a new job often inspires me to try things in my new role and to shed old management habits that don’t work. Also these programs offer a community for BIPOC leaders, which is helpful because their roles can feel isolating at times. If this kind of training isn’t an option, look at more general training programs that have a DEI lens, like The Management Center, which specializes in training nonprofit leaders. Offer to connect your new hire to a peer who is BIPOC who does similar work at another organization.

 

Keep an eye on their workload. New BIPOC employees who are more experienced or who are supervisors often project confidence, yet have the same instincts and feelings as other new employees. They want to make a good impression. They hope that people will like them. They might be perfectionists. They could be battling imposter syndrome. BIPOC experienced hires may not have spaces at work where they can be vulnerable about this, especially in the early days at a new job. If you are the new hire’s manager, factor in how these very human impulses may play into dynamics at work, including how many projects they voluntarily take on.

Sincerely,
Jahna Berry
Chief Operating Officer, Mother Jones

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How to Instill an Entrepreneurial Spirit Across Your Entire Team

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Let’s face it — instilling an entrepreneurial spirit across your team doesn’t happen by accident. Stale ideas won’t help a business thrive, especially when there’s no entrepreneurial spirit. Competition is…

By 
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/427694?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
 
Let’s face it — instilling an entrepreneurial spirit across your team doesn’t happen by accident. Stale ideas won’t help a business thrive, especially when there’s no entrepreneurial spirit. Competition is so keen in so many industries that you must separate your business from others. Keeping the entrepreneurial spirit alive the way others have been doing it won’t make you stand out from the pack.
 

Because of technology — even industries with the same basic precepts are wildly different now. For example, consider the news industry; It might still be about reporters who can ask questions, gather facts, and fashion them into a story.

Watch for information, like podcasts you can share with your team that show the entrepreneurial spirit.

Instead of calling people on the phone, banging out a story on a typewriter, and seeing the final product in a front-page headline, reporters can ask those questions via text or email. And those stories that might have lived in newsprint even a generation ago are now being shared on websites, videos, and podcasts.

The changes happening in the world, fueled by technological advances and people’s expectations around those advances, mean your business needs to be iterating and ideating new ideas on the regular. It’s not enough to be merely good anymore.

 

People up and down the org chart in a company need to think with an entrepreneurial spirit and anticipate what their customers might want, especially with companies like Amazon actively transforming how we experience our interactions with businesses and, indeed, the world.

We have some tips on instilling the entrepreneurial spirit across your entire team, so everyone can contribute to helping your business thrive.

 

1. Empower people to share new ideas

Even businesses convinced that there are no new ideas possible in their industries should still take time at least a couple of times a year to think differently. As a result, they could develop fresh, new ideas that might drive the innovation the company needs.

Creative brainstorming sessions can even be more frequently needed if you’re in an industry where new ideas are your lifeblood. So, a company that makes apps might want monthly meetings to generate new ideas.

Conversely, a warehouse business might be surprised with how a process embarked on every six months can unlock incredible innovations.

Like Professor Victor Poirier said in a recent Calendar article, almost everyone possesses innovative traits. While they lie dormant for some, a brainstorming meeting with a skilled facilitator (or even an inviting format) can be the key to getting some really unique ideas to the table.

2. Make sure management listens to every employee

The best way to get great ideas from your employees, and make the entrepreneurial spirit thrive is to make sure each team member feels like they’re heard. Empowering people to share ideas is one thing, but employees will be less motivated to share new ones if management doesn’t show they’re at least considering the ideas.

 

Listening means that there should be time and space set aside to get employee feedback, but it doesn’t need to be traditional meetings — that’s especially true given the last two years where Zoom screens have added a whole new dynamic to meetings.

As Calendar noted in an article on thinking about how teams should coordinate at this moment, “We need to discover new working methods not to spend all our time in meetings and our weekends and nights on ‘serious work.’” If there’s a tool like Slack that connects an office, that can be a tool for “listening” to what employees have to say.

3. Hire the right people (who won’t be okay with the status quo)

Complacency often happens in office settings because the people within them are complacent. Change can be disruptive and even scary. And as such, many people just want their workplaces to be predictable, reliable, and unchanging. But complacency is the enemy of innovation, as it’s hard for people who want things to stay the same to embrace change.

So, from the outset, when you’re in the hiring process, you want to make sure that you’re thinking about the workplace culture that you want to foster. You should design interview questions that gauge how willing candidates are to embrace change and ensure that your workplace culture encourages that change.

This doesn’t just mean putting systems in place that generate new, actionable ideas and then charting the course for change. It also means rewarding employees who have successfully navigated implementing innovation. And it means acknowledging the mental effort that it takes to execute that.

 

It means checking in along the way and ensuring that employees are doing well to keep their bearings while putting the change into motion. It also means checking in along the way with all team members to make sure they’re “playing well in the sandbox.”

Of course, managers need to keep an eye on the prize and keep perspective on everything going on. But, they should ensure that employees are genuinely navigating the disruption that might occur when making changes, whether that’s adding new team members or new technology.

Additionally, checking in will help them feel taken care of and will help them to stay invested, even when it’s at its most unsettling.

 

4. Get different perspectives to instill the entrepreneurial spirit

Part of hiring the right people is hiring a diverse group of people. In doing so, you’re getting a number of different perspectives on the status quo and how it needs to be changed. Of course, there are some obvious markers of different perspectives in our society: race, gender, age, and sexual orientation. But, other kinds of diversity can also be sought after and brought into a team.

Where people grew up and the life experiences they’ve had can shape their worldviews considerably. Consequently, it can be helpful to the composition of a workplace team to have those views in the mix.

Dhristi Shah noted, “Engagement means instilling a sense of welcoming and ownership to the employees. When employees are effectively engaged within their organization, they care more about it. They are involved and focused on the well-being of the organization and to help it grow rather than just a monthly paycheck.”

That means as you’re assembling a team, you not only want diversity — but considerable diversity, as opposed to just seeking a single person representing a particular group of people to tick a diversity box. Think about who you’re bringing on. Consider how the new employees will be able to relate to the existing team. And think about how they’ll help each other feel engaged and bring forth their ideas.

5. Encourage and reward good ideas

Employees might be highly invested in a company and its culture. But, they’re going to respond better in a culture where there are tangible rewards for what they do and accomplish. For example, companies offer performance bonuses as incentives for the work employees do. Reward those who innovate in a way that instills and keeps the entrepreneurial spirit alive — and well — in your business.

So, if you’re seeking good ideas from your employees, it stands to reason that you should offer some sort of reward for ideas that will drive the company forward.

 

In his employee engagement article, Shah also pointed out, “No matter how much you’re paying to your employees, if they do not feel valued and recognized within the company, they won’t stick beside the company. So every company needs to follow a proper recognition structure where the employees’ hard work is brought out in front of everyone.”

So, it’s not just about an employee feeling acknowledged by the management team; It’s also about an acknowledgment that engenders peer recognition. What that reward actually consists of is for you to determine. However, the recognition that comes with it is an essential component of the reward that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Keeping the Entrepreneurial Spirit Alive

An entrepreneur is only as good as the team they work with. If you have a solid group of people working towards your shared goal, you have a chance of succeeding.

But when businesses start and fail every day, you need to ensure you’re instilling an entrepreneurial mindset in your employees. This way, they incorporate it into everything they do to truly help your company succeed.

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Don’t Hire for Culture Fit

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Hiring for culture fit is among the most widespread and exclusionary hiring practices today. Leaders must concentrate on culture add to be inclusive.

By Ruchika Tulshyan

https://www.shrm.org/executive/resources/articles/Pages/dont-hire-for-culture-fit-tulshyan.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=exclusionary%20hiring%20practices&utm_campaign=Enews%20BOTW%204/15/2022

 

Tiffany Tate was eagerly awaiting the phone call informing her that she had gotten the job as career center director at a recognized college.

Not only was she qualified—overqualified, in fact—as a college career development expert with two degrees, her interviews with the university’s hiring team had gone exceptionally well. The team was selling the role to her; she had spent ample hours in the interview process including having dinner with the team that she was sure she would be working with.

Tate was excited to move to a beautiful part of North Carolina with her then two-year-old daughter. The role would give her a growth opportunity, she would manage a significant budget, and the person she would be reporting to had bonded with her over the fact that they graduated from the same college.

It was all laughs and smiles. The fact that the 12 people who had interviewed her were all white was par for the course in Tate’s experience in North Carolina. As a Black woman, she had learned to navigate being the only at work.

When the hiring manager called back, she had all but packed her bags. She was ready. “Tiffany, I really hate to call you with this. It was such a tough decision. The search committee struggled with it, and it came down to you and one other person. And they just felt like the other candidate was a better fit. I’m sorry,” he said.

The blood drummed in her ears. Did she hear correctly? But she quickly collected herself, dusting off the disappointment.

“OK, well, can you offer any feedback?” she inquired. “Can you share what would make me a better fit for this role?”

He responded, “No, I just want you to know you asked all the right questions. I don’t have any feedback, I want you to keep being who you are. I love your transparency. You are obviously very skilled at what you do.”

It’s been five years since that day, but Tate remembers those words perfectly.

She wonders, “Weird! I’m not a good fit, but they’re telling me to continue being the way that I am. That doesn’t make any sense.”

When a hiring manager can’t offer constructive feedback, despite a candidate having all the experience and certifications, despite them being able to demonstrate skill in navigating institutional leadership and customers—students in Tate’s case—it’s a red flag. Considering that she had all the pedigree and all the best references, but was then told she wouldn’t fit the culture of the institution, she couldn’t ignore the only noticeable difference she had with everyone on the selection committee and eventually the person they hired: her identity as a Black woman.

“I felt defeated,” she says.

Culture Fit Is Exclusionary

Hiring for culture fit is among the most widespread and exclusionary hiring practices today. When you’re hiring for a fit—given that most companies in Western countries are led by white men—by default, you’re hiring for sameness. “Culture fit” is an unspoken code that people have around what’s acceptable and what’s not within an organization, or even in society.

It reminds me of when I first moved to the United States as an adult in my twenties. When people encountered my unfamiliar name, they frequently asked if there was an easier or shorter way to say it. Depending on the situation, I would come up with an Anglo-Saxon nickname (like Rachel). If I had to interact with them often, say at work, I’d let them call me Ria, removing most of my name to make it easier for them to write or read it.

As I grew older, I got more comfortable with telling people I didn’t have a shorter name and that Ruchika was the only version I would respond to. But even then, for years later, I wouldn’t correct them if they mispronounced it. A common mispronunciation still is for Westerners to call me “Roo-sheek-ah” instead of “Roo-cheek-ah” (like it’s spelled). Now I’ll correct people and remind them until they get it right. In the past, I was so eager to fit into the culture—both what I considered U.S. culture as well as assimilating into the workplace culture. Now I see that my biggest asset is the difference that I add to the culture.

Focus on Culture Add

Rather than focusing on culture fit, organization leaders must concentrate on culture add to be inclusive. A plethora of research shows that harnessing the power of diverse teams leads to better outcomes, such as less groupthink, more innovative solutions, and overall more profitability. My favorite data point, though, is how culture add can lead to justice and fairness.

Tufts University psychologist Samuel Sommers created a mock jury experiment with 200 adults. Some juries were racially mixed with white and Black jurors, and some were all white. After watching a video trial of a Black defendant facing charges of sexual assault, the juries were first to submit their own verdict of guilty or not guilty, and then deliberate as a group. Even prior to deliberation, the mixed juries were nearly 10 percent less likely to presume that the defendant was guilty, compared with the all-white juries. During deliberation, the racially diverse juries had a more thorough consideration of the evidence and deliberated on average for longer, making less factual errors and being more open to discussing the role of racism in the process. In general, even though there may be more debate, or what psychologists call “interpersonal conflict,” when teams are diverse, the benefits of better outcomes far outweigh the drawbacks.

When teams prioritize hiring a candidate who would be a culture add rather than a culture fit, they’re more likely to benefit from out-of-the-box thinking and better outcomes.

Culture Fit Persists

Yet the language of who is a culture fit persists—and one survey of global organization found 84 percent of recruiters look for it in their selection process.

Think back to the last time that you talked about someone being a fit or not. The more trouble you have articulating why a candidate is not a culture fit, the more likely your judgment is biased. Instead, seek to hire people you don’t already have represented, whether by race and gender, educational background and experience, country of origin and languages spoken, or other identities.

Tate, whom we met earlier, is a hiring expert with over a decade of career development experience. She advises her clients to move away from an outdated model of assessing how much you “like” a candidate to how well could they do their jobs.

“The old culture fit model relied on deciding whether to hire someone if you thought you could be stuck in an airport or blizzard with them. It’s a bizarre metric—and riddled with biases, because you would likely choose to be stuck in an airport in a blizzard with someone who looks like you,” she says. But that isn’t the best assessment of who would best perform a job on your team.

Hiring practices that revolve around assessing for culture fit result in bias. One such example? Black women are earning college degrees at record numbers, but remain underrepresented and underpaid in corporate workplaces, with low access to leadership opportunities, as most workplaces still hire for a fit with Eurocentric culture norms.

Structural racism cannot be dismantled overnight, but declaring that your workplace is no longer seeking a culture fit for new roles and disrupting peers when they reject a candidate for not being a culture fit is a quick win. So is creating a workplace environment where diversity and inclusion are valued, and culture add is celebrated.

Ensure that your organization prioritizes the hiring of a diverse range of employees, especially women of color. This is not just HR’s job; it is every manager’s responsibility.

As for Tate? She’s since founded a company where she coaches clients to navigate the recruiting process and advises countless leadership teams and boards on hiring and retention best practices.

During these interactions, she advises her clients to inquire of interviewees, “How will you add to the culture on our team?”

Excerpted from Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work by Ruchika Tulshyan. Reprinted with permission from the MIT Press. Copyright 2022.

Ruchika Tulshyan is an inclusion strategist, CEO of Candour and author of Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work (MIT Press).

 

 

 

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Why Stress Makes the Most Empathetic People Less Kind

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By 

Why Stress Makes the Most Empathetic People Less Kind

We know that being stressed affects the way we treat others — especially, adversely. But a new study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience this month, explores the brain processes that drive even the most empathetic of people to be more selfish and less kind when they’re stressed.

To reach this conclusion, researchers asked the participants to make donations before they were asked to undertake a stressful task; they were asked to donate things again after the task was over. While people who were found to have high empathy donated more than the others did before undergoing the stressful task, their charitability declined sharply afterward. Interestingly, the charitability of people who hadn’t stood out for their empathy didn’t sustain much change before and after the task.

To understand the neural mechanisms at play here, the researchers monitored the participants’ brain activities through fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). Turns out, cortisol, the “stress hormone,” may have been at the heart of it. For highly empathetic people, the hormone altered brain activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain. This region is associated with social decision-making — allowing the researchers to understand the neurocognitive impact of stress on altruism.

However, given that cortisol didn’t have quite the same impact on people deemed not-so-empathetic, makes one wonder if the brain process is just one of the many reasons why stress reduces altruism in people. While there are not many studies attempting to investigate the neural mechanisms behind this, experts have often explored the cognitive processes that might make stress diminish kindness.

“Stress spills into our personal lives in many ways, affecting the quality of our close relationships… When people are stressed, they become more withdrawn and distracted, and less affectionate,” Amie Gordon, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan, had written in Psychology Today.

Researchers involved in a 2015 study reasoned that uncertainty — a feeling stress is often associated with — might be at the heart of making people more selfish. “While anger makes us certain in our righteous indignation, anxiety, and surprise make us unsure of what’s going on and what will happen next. And when we feel uncertain, we tend to fall back on what we know to be true — namely, our own perspectives and feelings,” as one report on the findings reads.

Narrating the time she was about to miss a flight for the first time in her life, Kira Newman wrote: “My anxiety surged at the sight of a long security line, but luckily an airport official ushered me to the front. I didn’t care how the waiting passengers felt about my preferential treatment, and I don’t remember much about the people I encountered during that nerve-wracking afternoon. I was thinking only about my goal: to get home… In short, my empathy for others plummeted as my anxiety mounted.” At a juncture when Newman was uncertain whether she would make it to the flight, she focused entirely on trying to achieve that — and eliminate that uncertainty, in the process.

Understanding how being stressed affects the way we treat others may perhaps prevent people from deeming one as unkind based solely on an isolated incident of selfishness. At the same time, it may help us — at least cognitively — be more conscious of the treatment we mete out to those we love when we’re stressed, and try to keep a check on it.

Further, as an article from 2015 states: “…it makes intuitive sense that a stressed-out, anxious, uncertain society might be a less empathic and caring one. But it helps to have scientific evidence to bolster the case for public and workplace policies that might make our lives less stressful — and thus, we hope, more compassionate.”

Not only that, studies like the present one also force us to reckon with the idea that not everyone even has the privilege to be altruistic — no matter how empathetic they may be. This is especially true when people are stressed by work that never ceases to end, worried about paying their bills, and generally, are combating heat-induced stress while existing in a global warming-ravaged world without being able to afford air conditions.

Digital enablement, embrace technology, Edvysor

THE NEED TO EMBRACE INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY

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In a matter of months, the world has changed forever. The global economy, our businesses, and our personal lives have been transformed. While this may be a gloomy picture to some, others are using rose-tinted glasses to assess opportunities from the pandemic.

Here at YVR Consulting, we fall into the latter category and reflect on this regularly. Not only has the process of getting our products and services to the marketing drastically changed, but so too have our clients and consumers.

For businesses to remain sustainable, market understanding and a need to remain agile in our dynamic environments are essential. Businesses are being forced to do so much more with so much less, and have been forced to embrace and leverage technology which has resulted in organizational culture changes. This pattern will not diminish any time soon and businesses would need to embrace the new way of working moving forward. Business owners and Executives will feel the costly effect of staying in their comfort zones. Now more than ever reassessing business- and go-to-market plans and incorporating the learnings from the pandemic, will give businesses a fighting chance of survival. We have detailed why we believe this is the case:

  1. Advancements in technology.

Globally, the adoption of technology can be witnessed – the redesigning of supply- and value chains, a greater focus on reduced wastage in manufacturing plants, and an overall focus on operational efficiency. This has also been catalyzed by the new way of work, be it remote working or hybrid working arrangements. Employees need access to information wherever they are working from along with effective tools – PCs, laptops, or tablets. Other immediate shifts critical for business contingency are noted: – better cyber security, migration to cloud solutions, and even the incorporation of AI /machine learning to help facilitate better employee output and efficiency. These have contributed to more manageable working hours, a work-life balance, and an even better understanding of customers and their demands. 

With the increase in new technologies, apps, and solutions hitting the market every day, we can anticipate some exciting shifts in the way customers and consumers can experience our offerings through the incorporation of Virtual Reality (VR) too.

The pros of adopting technology far outweigh the cons. Initially, there is a steep learning curve as with any software or technological advancement, but the return on investment in the tangible and intangible form is irrefutable.

Scale, upskilling, alignment, and consistency of messaging have become much easier, not forgetting the monitoring, evaluating, and reporting for businesses which have always been one of the age-old pain points.

  1. A new growth mindset is required.

More and more we are seeing that businesses don’t just have to sell tangible products. Cryptocurrencies, the rise in the demand for NFT’s, and the increase in businesses that aggregate services, prove there is far more opportunity to start and grow a business. Copious amounts of data currently exist for hitting the sweet spot of supply and demand, all at the click of a button.

While technology has shifted the way we get our products and services to consumers, our consumers have been demanding far more from us as providers, this includes an online presence. Consumers need to know that other customers have rendered your business credible, they can compare your offerings to that of other suppliers and there is value in your business as a supplier.

The pandemic has proven that side-hustles are now not uncommon, and there has been a massive increase in the number of small businesses contributing to the global economy.

As exciting as it is to see the number of new businesses, our concern remains the sustainability of these businesses, to survive the dreaded business failure rates in the first four years of operation.  

  1. Cost-effective consulting services are the new norm.

The consulting industry pre-covid was already growing year on year. In a post-covid landscape, this industry is highlighting the digital skills needed for a differentiated value proposition. Remote working, shifting human capital operating models, and accessibility of data are all factors contributing to a “new normal” for businesses and consultants. There is no better time to be thinking about the operational effectiveness and performance improvement.

But how do consultants meet the demands of the “new normal”?

For the most part, market-entry initiatives have never been easier, automation is now high on executive priority lists and leadership engagement and capability are more important than ever. If mid-market businesses are to survive and, grow, consultants will need to be able to integrate innovation and technology into their service offerings.

Agile businesses that have adapted to dynamic environments at the onset of the pandemic are seeing growth and sustainability. Digital solutions that have supported their human capital have been the solution. 

  1. Training and upskilling: Considering remote or hybrid working, new operational procedures, consistent application of operational practices across geographies and staff turnover requires a new way of ensuring capable staff, LMS systems available are on the rise.  
  2. Collaboration for remote working: Instant messaging, better internal communication platforms, and project management programs have helped manage workflow and employee output.
  3. Strategic planning to tactical implementation: It is proven that only 4% of Senior Management know what’s happening in their businesses at a tactical level, this is probably lower in a remote environment. YVR Consulting has identified these learnings early in our journey and is proud to be at the forefront of a different type of support that facilitates simultaneous top-down and bottom-up operational performance management – in a single place, at the click of a button. Over 15,000 businesses globally have already been supported through our cost-effective digital business support solutions, for aspiring entrepreneurs, start-ups, or small businesses as well as the medium to large organizations. 

The post-covid world will be an exciting time to adapt to our next generation of change. Contact us to have a discussion on keeping up with the changes for your business.

Yushini Maharaj

CEO – YVR Consulting

yushini@yvrconsulting.co.za

Tel: +2782 377 6950

www.yvrconsulting.co.za

challenges faced by family-owned businesses

A Consultant’s View On Getting Comfortable With The Uncomfortable!

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Between two trapezes – The Transition Zone!

Don’t you feel like life is a series of trapeze swings? You either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments in life, hurtling across space in between trapeze bars, hanging on for dear life to the trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. Today the moment is Covid-19. Six months into the pandemic, it’s carrying us along at a certain steady rate of swing with the feeling that ‘I’m in control of my life.’ I now think I know most of the right questions and even some of the answers.

As I move from one point to another, it’s that in-between, uncertain time of letting go and waiting to grab the next thing – a new trapeze bar, that’s the most challenging at the best of times and for some, even debilitating.

I know that this new trapeze is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart, I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well-known bar or old world and move to the new one, the world ahead.

We really do not like change, so part of me hopes that I won’t have to let go of my old bar completely before I grab the new one. But I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and, for some moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. In that transition, the uncertainty & unknown, I am filled with terror. It doesn’t matter that in the past, I have previously made it. I am afraid that I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks between bars. I do it anyway and leap ahead. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow to keep hanging on to that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives. So, I soar across the dark void of “the past is gone, the future is not yet here.”

It’s called “transition.” I have come to believe that this transition is the only place that real change occurs. I have noticed that this transition zone is looked upon as a “no-thing,” a no-place between places. Sure, the old trapeze bar was real, and that new one coming toward me, I hope that’s real, too. But the void in between? Is that just a scary, confusing, disorienting nowhere that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible?

NO! What a wasted opportunity that would be. I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing and the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void where the real change, the real growth, occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored. Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out of control that can accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in our lives. But we can only experience it by being fully present in it!

We cannot discover new oceans unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Anonymous        

True transformation is about giving ourselves permission to “hang out” in the transition between trapezes. Transforming our need to grab that new bar, any bar, allows ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening in the true sense of the word. In the transition, we just may learn how to fly. 

As Covid’s dizzying spin starts to slow, leaders steel themselves for the long road to recovery. An essential early step will be effectively addressing the anxieties of millions of workers worried about the future of their work and their health. Given the pain of this moment, leaders are urged to handle the journey’s challenges mindfully with resilience, authenticity, and connection.

With the ringing injunction to “normalize the new” and get back on the treadmill.  If leaders want to use this moment to do more than return worried, distracted employees to old jobs they once knew, we need to still the maelstrom in our minds; most of all, we need to break the semi-automated responses that continue to chain us to the old trapeze. If we don’t, we will find ourselves frantically doing the same things yet expecting a different result. We must become comfortable with the uncomfortable and embrace the suck.

To embrace the suck means to have discipline. Having that mental toughness to see the hard work through to the end. You continue with the hard-charging attitude of being able to keep moving forward and never give up.

We are wired for survival and staying in comfort – every fiber in our being wants to hold on to the old trapeze and not let go, but nothing will come of staying put; we have to keep moving. “The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you are not going to stay where you are,” JP Morgan

According to a Green Beret, Jason Van Camp, there are 7 ways to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

1. Start.

The first step is always the most uncomfortable. All you have to do is show up. The battle is half won if you just show up.

2. Don’t quit.

You’ve decided to start. You do not see the results. It’s difficult. You want to quit. It’s OK. Just keep pushing forward. That voice in your head is going to make you think of a way out. Don’t do it. Don’t give yourself an out.

3. Push yourself past your comfort zone.

At some point, you are going to say to yourself, “I’ve never done this before” or “I don’t know what I’m doing.” We’ve all been there. Here’s a trick: Just pretend to be confident. Fake it till you make it.

4. Embrace “the suck.”

The situation is bad–deal with it. And don’t just deal with it–open your arms and welcome it as you would an old friend. You know him well. You are building your mental and physical toughness.

5. Be around like-minded people.

Create a support network. Talk about your experiences. The worse the experience it is to you, the better the story it is to everyone else.

6. Recognize your improvements.

Track your progress. Revel in it. You are now a changed person. You know it because you see it. Build your confidence by going back to what before was uncomfortable and go through the experience again.

7. Rinse. Repeat.

“repetition is the mother of learning.”

The more you perform the same activity, the more confident you become. Confidence is a tangible thing–it comes from practice and repetition.

 

Perhaps the most difficult part of this pandemic is the uncertainty we are all facing.  Uncertainty about how contagious and deadly Coronavirus is.  Uncertainty about the travel that we have planned.  Uncertainty about the economy. Uncertainty about our jobs. But the real world is highly uncertain, and that can be uncomfortable. So, to succeed, we must keep moving, take that next step in faith, and welcome in the discomfort of the transition zone as you reach for your new trapeze of growth.

 

-Priyal Ramdass

How to Use Your Expertise to Start a Consulting Business

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We all reach a point in our careers when we start getting questions about our experience or expertise. Perhaps you’ve been asked if you can do someone a favor and “look something over.” Or maybe someone has even asked if they can pay you for a consulting session. Perhaps you tapped into a new way to create marketing campaigns or conduct market research that you know other people would want to know about. Whatever your expertise is, it’s likely you’ve felt the tug at one time or another to offer consulting services. 

Here’s how to get started marketing your expertise to do just that.

1. Understand your unique expertise, then offer it for free.

Of course, the first step to starting a consulting side hustle is to know what it is you have to offer. This could be based on experiences you’ve had or an area of specialty you’ve studied at length. Depending on your reputation in your industry, you could go out there and immediately start selling sessions. But, you’ll have more luck on sales calls and in marketing yourself if you have clear deliverables on what you’ve done for companies and individuals in the past. 

So, commit to working for 2-3 companies for free at first. This will give you a good sense of your consulting style, and there’s a clear difference between being able to say, “I can help you increase your profit margin” and “I helped two companies triple their profit margin.” Potential clients want to hear about clients you’ve worked in the past. The Ambition Plan writes that offering to work for free is also a great way to “meet and spend time with influential people in your industry.” Get out there and show them what you have to offer!

2. Craft an offer and a payment plan. 

Once you get some experience under your belt, craft an offer that makes sense. Choosing a price is also why it’s so important to know what exactly you can do for companies or individuals. If you help companies hit six figures in their first six months, it’s reasonable to charge at a higher price tag than if you just “help companies become profitable quickly.” Cory Jean, a credit and receivables consultant, noted to this end that, “Clients respond well to numbers. Telling potential clients exact percentages in sales growth helps them understand the full picture of what their investment in you is, and what it will reward them with.” 

Then, figure out if you’ll offer consulting on a retainer or just on one-off sessions. Both serve different purposes. If you have one core branding strategy session for startups, perhaps it will just be a two-hour immersive meeting at one set price. But, if you help with a longer-term strategy and go into the trenches with them, a retainer would be more appropriate. Consulting services usually go on retainer.

3. Create materials promoting your consulting business. 

It’s important that all numbers associated with your consulting promises are listed somewhere; ideally on a funnel or a landing page. Create the exact specifications of what your consulting services entail, including hours spent in 1:1 meetings, materials included, and what the potential client can expect to learn and get from you. The more specific you can be, the better. Make sure to write to their pain points and rely heavily on past experiences for credibility.

Then, brand strategist Erin Feree recommends marketing through a blog, a newsletter, and a small website. Create more succinct versions of your sales script, such as small paragraphs that can be used as a bio on blogs or in the “about” section on a newsletter.

4. Engage in content marketing.

Finally, remember that the best way to demonstrate your expertise to your audiences online is to release content associated with what you consult on. This type of content is often referred to as “top of the funnel content,” and will give potential clients a taste for your style and insights, thus establishing trust. They need to be able to see your obvious expertise in order to want to hire you. 

Do you offer social media consulting? Post a few social media tips a week. Do you offer HR consulting? Post a few HR tips or stories a week. Over time, this will begin to equate with your brand and appeal to your audience. If you feel like you’re running out of content, Tsavo Neil recommends asking your audience what they’re struggling with. The more you can start to solve their problems, the more they’ll see you as the industry leader. 

Over time, as you continue to land clients and help them, you’ll have enough case studies and numerical evidence to expand your consulting business beyond a side hustle. You have something to share and a way to help entrepreneurs or businesses; get out there and show them!

These two women are pushing companies to become more gender equal

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If Latin American businesses were doing anything at all to create more egalitarian workplaces, they were “doing [it] quietly,” says Mia Perdomo, who launched Aequales in 2014 with Andrea de la Piedra to promote gender equity in business. Although some regional divisions of international companies had been implementing overseas policies, most local companies “had never spoken about this out loud, and they had never compared themselves to other corporations to know if what they were doing was right,” says de la Piedra. The duo, who first met at a Georgetown University summit for young Latin American leaders, developed a signature ranking system to assess how companies are faring, which measures such factors as the percentage of women who join a company’s entry-level ranks, how many women are in top leadership roles, and whether a company forces its suppliers to be more gender equal. Aequales generates revenue from consulting fees and convening its community of Latin American leaders to learn from each other (and gives the highest-rated companies some reputational capital). After expanding from Peru and Colombia to Mexico (in 2018) and now all of Latin America, the company has analyzed more than 800 companies. Perdomo and de la Piedra are currently developing a tech platform that will allow firms to compare their progress with their peers and predict what impact such changes as flexible work policies might have on their business. 

 

How Good Managers Influence Employee Happiness

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People join organizations and leave their managers. Considering the labor market situation and the challenges that organizations are facing when trying to attract and retain top talent, employers must think more than ever about the topic of leadership quality. 

For instance, Gallup’s research shows that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores. A study of 7,272 U.S. adults revealed that one in two had left their job to get away from their manager to improve their overall life at some point in their career. 

Similar findings are revealed with the poll of 2,000 people in the UK conducted by Human Resources firm Investors in People: 49% of employees say that they are thinking to leave their job because of poor management – making that the most popular reason for a potential move.

A National Study conducted by Ultimate Software revealed there is a need for greater focus for Manager-Employee Relationships. For 93% of employees, trust in their direct boss is essential to staying satisfied at work, and over half of employees surveyed say if they aren’t satisfied at work, they can’t put forth their best effort. A good manager-employee relationship can play a significant role in retention too: more than half the employees say they’d turn down a 10% pay increase to stay with a great boss.

“Support from management” is also one of the aspects that affect work-life happiness. All of this goes to show that managers are definitely the key players when we are talking about employee happiness or unhappiness at work.

What makes a Great Manager?

There have been a bunch of different studies and researches that are trying to determine the qualities of best, effective, successful, or great leaders. One size definitely doesn’t fit all! The qualities of a great leader heavily depend on the organization culture as well as the behaviors of their teams. 

In 2008 Google launched Project Oxygen to find out what makes a manager great at Google and determined eight different behaviors that were common among their highest performing managers. 10 years later they looked at their employee survey and found that the qualities of a great manager at Google had grown and evolved. The top ten Oxygen behaviors of their best managers include:

1. Is a good coach

2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage

3. Creates an inclusive team environment, showing concern for success and well-being

4. Is productive and results-oriented

5. Is a good communicator — listens and shares information

6. Supports career development and discusses performance

7. Has a clear vision/strategy for the team

8. Has key technical skills to help advise the team

9. Collaborates across Google

10. Is a strong decision-maker

There are a lot of touchpoints in Google findings with the research done by Sunnie Giles a few years ago when studying 195 leaders in 15 countries over 30 global organizations. Participants were asked to choose the 15 most important leadership competencies from a list of 74. 

Manager Influence on Employee Happiness

When a manager is happy then most likely workers are happy too. According to Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, Happy workers have higher levels of productivity, produce higher sales, perform better in leadership positions, and receive higher performance ratings and higher pay. They also enjoy more job security and are less likely to take sick days, to quit, or to become burned out. Happy CEOs are more likely to lead teams of employees who are both happy and healthy, and who find their work climate conducive to high performance. 

Organizations need both happy workers as well as happy managers. As we saw from the Google study and Sunnie Giles’s research, there are certain behaviors and competencies that people expect from great managers. Because these factors affect happiness,  you must carefully think about whom you are recruiting. 

Whether hiring from the outside or promoting from within, organizations that scientifically select managers for the unique talents it takes to effectively manage people greatly increase the odds of engaging their employees. Companies should treat these roles as unique with distinct functional demands that require a specific talent set. They should select managers with the right talents for supporting, positioning, empowering, and engaging their staff.

5 Ways to Improve your Managers

1. Educate and develop your people! 

A lot of organizations have created programs to train and develop their talents. At Starbucks for instance, there are several different training programs available to prepare people to take the next steps in their career. One of their programs is called the Retail Management Training program that contains information on effective management practices, including topics on motivation, delegation, problem-solving, improving performance, managing the Starbucks Experience and maximizing profits.

In addition to developing potential manager and leaders, organizations need to develop existing managers. There are a lot of organizations that are developing their managers to be better through complex training programs. Some organizations such as ISS that have gone so far to start their one Universities and Academies to train and develop its leaders up to the highest levels in the organization. 

 

2. Promote and encourage communication! 

Communication is often the basis of any healthy relationship, including the one between an employee and his or her manager. Gallup has found that consistent communication – whether it occurs in-person, over the phone, or electronically – is connected to higher engagement. 

For example, employees whose managers hold regular meetings with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged as employees whose managers do not hold regular meetings. 

Gallup also found that engagement is highest among employees who have some form (face to face, phone or digital) of daily communication with their managers. Managers who use a combination of face-to-face, phone, and electronic communication are the most successful in engaging employees. And when employees attempt to contact their manager, engaged employees report their manager returns their calls or messages within 24 hours. These ongoing transactions explain why engaged workers are more likely to say their manager knows what projects or tasks they are working on.

3. Favor collaboration with other leaders! 

Even the very best ones can and shall learn from others. Therefore organizations should encourage their leaders to participate in different meetups, conferences, seminars or similar to meet other industry leaders and to collaborate with them. 

Groups like the Estonian Startup Leaders Club, for instance, are formed with the goal to build strong relationships, provide opportunities for members, encourage communication and collaboration, as well as to develop startup entrepreneurs. Members of the club are from various famous (like Taxify, Transferwise, SportID, etc) and not so well-known Estonian startups who share information and experience on a daily bases.

4. Enroll your leaders in mentoring programs! 

You can either start with your in-house mentoring program or use some public programs for that. A great example is PayPal’s Unity Mentorship program which is implemented with an aim to build a thriving work culture for female professionals. This employee-led initiative matches 100 pairs of mentors-mentees from same or different departments at any given time. 

The pairs, even of mixed gender, are initially matched through a short survey, to make sure an intimate bond can be formed between individuals through the initiative. Both mentor and mentee interact with and learn from each other to build a transparent communication that’s more valuable than exercising professional etiquettes.

5. Start a book club, or create your own (e-)library!

People learn by reading books. So why not initiate a corporate book-club or have your own library from where all your people can lend books, read and learn. A lot of leaders love to read, including Eric S. Yuan from Zoom Video Communication, one of the highest-rated CEO’s in Glassdoor, who learns by reading books.

The importance of good management to the success of an organization cannot be stressed enough! Good managers heavily influence the employees they work with and will affect the overall workplace happiness of your company. Finding manager candidates with a foundation of great leadership qualities and behavioral skills is a great way to start, but remember that management training and improvement is an ongoing process. How do you educate yourself and leaders in your organization?