It's Not All About You

Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash

Picture this. You recently promoted a team member for their hard work. Outside of seniority, your recently promoted member, let’s call this person Sal, has worked hard to accomplish a great quantity of projects. Recently, one of Sal’s direct reports put in their notice. The report has had trouble for over a year, struggling with personal challenges, something you’ve been very understanding about. 

In your effort to be innovative, you dream up a solution: By offering Sal’s subordinate flexibility to continue to work, albeit not full-time, you allow space for a person who is personally struggling. Your team is performing well and you’ve invested significant time into your team’s camaraderie. 

We often wish organizations would be creative about the “human element.” People are complicated: there must be some allowances. Typically these allowances are measured in policy to ensure folks don’t take advantage. I’m all for standards and policies, but I’m also a strong advocate for innovation. If a company can retain a team member, even if the role and scope look a little different than what they were doing previously, that’s a win for everyone. 

While I could focus on the monumental win here of problem-solving when dealing with personnel issues, I actually want to go back to Sal. 

Sal’s response to this solution was dismal, at best. When approached with the idea to offer this arrangement to the team member, you are met with disbelief. “What will other people think?” “I had a hard year too.” The general tone is negative. 

You decide to proceed, as you feel it reflects the values of the team as a whole, but are troubled by Sal’s self-focused response. What do you do? 

It’s apparent there’s an empathy gap. Everyone has their own “stuff.” And only we know what we go through. But when anyone is put into a managerial position, the truth is empathy must increase. You must try to put on their glasses and see the world through a different lens.  If Sal’s boss also looked at Sal and any direct report without empathy, there’s no way the aforementioned solution would have been dreamt up. So how can we increase empathy, one of the most important attributes for a leader? Stay tuned, as I’ll provide suggestions for you and your team in my next post.

Are you Transacting as a Leader?

Clients are often faced with challenging circumstances at work, and each week we use  these obstacles as learning opportunities to ensure appropriate management. Sometimes in the minutiae of every day life, it’s difficult to allow time for future planning. This is, in part, a job of mine: amidst weekly learnings about effective management and resolving conflict, intention setting is important. 

What’s interesting about the phenomenon of learning is you truly do not know what you do not know. When considering what type of leader you want to be, you might think of descriptors such as charismatic, motivational, or servanthood. But there are actually a number of formalized leadership styles. What’s the benefit of being aware of these differing styles? It allows you to reflect on what you want to be (the intention-setting part). Similar to behavior, you can change your leadership style, but not without the awareness of what direction you want to head in.

Knowing your style helps direct your decision-making, and as a leader, that is paramount. There are numerous styles of leadership that aren’t inherently good or bad—they’re just different. They all have their benefits and drawbacks, as well as their appropriate uses in certain scenarios.

Today, I am sharing information about Transactional Leadership. It is not uncommon for me to see this type of leadership, especially for high performers (who often become leaders of teams due to their impressive track record). 

Simply put, transactional leaders give X and expect Y in return. 

Transactional leaders give instructions to their team members and then use different rewards and penalties to either recognize or minimize what they do in response.

Think of a leader offering praise to applaud a job well done, or mandating that a group member handles a despised department-wide task because they missed a deadline. Rewards and punishment are the way a transactional leader thinks. 

This is a “telling” style, but is often correlated to high-result work environments. So, a natural pro is that confusion is eliminated. Tasks and expectations are clearly mapped out by the leader. An undeniable con is that with such rigidity, creativity and innovation can be stifled and trust decreases. 

Food for thought: Do you transact as a leader? Where might you be falling short?

Managing People, Under Pressure

I naturally can’t help but think of Bowie and Queen when I consider being “under pressure” – and what a relevant description for many working people. We are often under pressure whether that pressure is because of a deadline or the amount of work we need to accomplish. 

What has become commonplace in most of Corporate America is high pressure and high stress. It’s no surprise that Americans work long hours, increase revenue goals YOY, and mandate higher work output (in less time). 

But how does being under pressure affect your ability to manage? It won’t take us long to think of an example when we were pressed for time and reacted poorly to a colleague or subordinate in response to the external stress factor. Stressors can leave you with a short fuse, and will inadvertently create an environment where your team may fear your inconsistency in mood. If you are fostering an environment of fear, trust will be hard to come by and collaboration/idea sharing will slow. 

Since KPIs, deadlines, and aggressive goals aren’t going away any time soon, what can you do to balance the pressures of work while also managing well? 

First, a great practice is being able to acknowledge your feelings without judgment. If you need pointers, revisit my post about mindfulness in management. When you observe that you are mad or anxious about something, you will be more likely to communicate your concern and not misplace your angst on a team member. 

Second, answer what is the worst outcome of the situation you are facing. When you work through worst-case circumstances, you are better equipped to deal with them, according to Hendrie Weisinger and J. P. Pawliw-Fry.

Third, and this may be counterintuitive but it’s proven, slow down. We are more likely to make mistakes when we are in a rush, and are most certainly more likely to make a mess both interpersonally and with the task at hand when we are only processing in our emotional brain (thank you amygdala). By pausing, breathing, and engaging our prefrontal cortex (the most developed part of our brain) we will be poised to solve problems, reason soundly, and even be more creative. 

Mindfulness in Leadership

If we all implemented mindfulness in daily life – whether at work or at home – I have no doubt we would see the benefits as a collective. We might observe a decrease in reactivity, an increase in listening, and likely a shift in focus. As I take clients through my initial 15-session series for individual coaching, we address mindfulness as a self-regulation practice. This methodology is intended to help leaders take a brief pause, assessing feelings throughout the day, especially when feeling “overwhelmed.” It’s efficient to say “overwhelmed” or “busy” but in actuality, we might feel anger, embarrassment, sadness, or even fear. Such feelings might emerge when your team has made a sizable mistake, when you have a tight deadline, when you’ve worked a 13-hour day, when there’s legal trouble, or when there are pending layoffs… the list goes on.

The reason mindfulness can be a powerful tool in a leader’s toolbelt is two-fold. First, it does not require the allocation of funds (no apps or technology needed!). Second, it changes behavior over time; managers will become more behaviorally predictable and anger less readily. With a simple practice each day we can rewire our brains and it will have an immediate effect on those around us. 

In fact, there was a 2019 German study with almost 60 organizational teams. The researchers found that leaders who participated in mindfulness practice (or “intervention”) demonstrated lower aggression (when rated by their employees) and stronger transformational leadership behaviors than compared to the control group. While reading a book on management can surely shed light on topics managers know not of, the practice of mindfulness is just that: A practice. And you will improve over time. 

Ultimately, mindfulness will support you (as a manager, leader, or even individual contributor) to become a more effective communicator. When we are aware of our feelings, we have improved self-regulation which allows for more purposeful discourse and this allows space for diffusing conflict. 

If you’re interested in learning more and want a “how to” on mindfulness, drop me a note here.

First published on LinkedIn