Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders

Summary

There are two common mistakes that leaders often make - either over-leading or under-leading.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 154 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we discuss two common mistakes leaders make.

Leadership is tough and it can be hard to know where to start. I think it's helpful to explore what effective leaders actually do day-to-day. I call these leadership practices - sets of leadership behaviours that people apply. Over the next few weeks we are going to explore these leadership practices in more detail. Today we're going to focus on two common mistakes leaders can make - relying on Directing or Avoiding. But first a reminder - leadership is about achieving results through people. A common mistake is when our leadership focuses too much on achieving results, and forgets there are human beings involved.

Directing as a leadership practice is driven a desire for control and compliance. The leader uses close direction, monitoring and instruction. This includes telling people how to do things, not just what to do. It's effectively "do it this way" but without an explanation of why. The Directing practice also relies on negative consequences, such as fear of losing your job, or missing out on a promotion. The leader is watching and monitoring - excessively checking in around compliance rather than supporting people. That feels a lot like micromanagement. And what's the impact of this approach? People are clear about tasks, but just may not care. This fear driven compliance reduces motivation and innovation over time. Eventually this approach actually reduces compliance. People leave or just give up. They become passive.

Some times Directing makes sense. That could include really simple tasks with little scope for variation. Or perhaps there are inexperienced people and high risk associated with non-compliance. Directing may make sense in emergency situations, or as a last resort for under-performer. However, it is unlikely to be regularly required.

The Avoiding leadership practice is at the opposite end of the scale. Avoiding focuses on my own role at the expense of leadership. I just do things myself. I see delegation as a risk - reducing the quality of work and taking longer, therefore not worth trying. The Avoiding leader tends to suck responsibility up, putting their job first before leading others. The end result for others is confusion, misdirected efforts, isolation, and reduced motivation. Sometimes people end up in a leadership position when they didn't want to become a leader in the first place. Or they avoid leading because they just don't know how to lead effectively.

Directing and Avoiding are like over-leading and under-leading. What people need instead is right-leading.

Over the next few weeks we will explore six leadership practices that are far more effective. It's the perfect time to complete our brand new Leadership Practices Assessment. This assessment covers all eight leadership practices, and provides you with a tailored 13 page report showing which leadership practices you tend to rely on, which ones you don't use as often, along with implications for you and your people. The Leadership Practices Assessment is completely free, and you will find a link to it in the show notes. Have a great week.

Access the Leadership Practices Assessment - https://leadership.today/lpa

The workplace has changed forever. This is how teams and organisations can work out how to work.

Welcome to episode 153 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore working out how to work with your team.

Chances are your team and organisation are struggling to figure out how best to work. Are we in the office? If so, how many days a week? Who gets to decide which days? Can't I just work from home all the time? Leaders are thoroughly confused about the best way forward.

So often this conversation happens in exactly the wrong order - we start with the location first, rather than focusing on the work that's being completed. This leads to seemingly arbitrary decisions, such as forcing people into the office three days a week, or allowing people to never come in to the office, or not allowing people to work from home on Mondays and Fridays. Those forcing people in often focus on the importance of things like water cooler conversations, ad hoc innovation, or the need to bring energy back in to the office. Those encouraging completely remote argue that we did just fine working from home during the pandemic. With such a diverse range of opinions, it feels like there's no way to avoid letting people down.

The first thing to accept is that you can't figure this out alone - this is not a challenge that can be solved while locked away in a boardroom. And you can't figure it out for all time - even if you do come up with an approach that works for now, you will probably need to change it again in the future.

Some key principles here are that we need to work with the team to figure this out and to increase acceptance. We also need to bring an experimental mindset where we can try new approaches out and measure their effectiveness. If you can't measure productivity and performance, then you need to figure out how to really quickly.

The central challenge here is trying to decide whether work should be conducted centrally or remote. When I use the term "central", I'm really talking about a location where people can come together. That might be your office or it may be an off-site venue.

There is a core principle that I think helps to clarify this discussion - that we need to focus on what's best to achieve organisational objectives while offering maximum autonomy. We need to start with organisational objectives first. Jobs don't exist to give people autonomy - jobs exist to achieve organisational objectives. But we also need to accept that autonomy is incredibly important to engagement and results - people thrive when they have freedom and autonomy. However it has to start with the organisational objectives first. Delivering results increases engagement and wellbeing. Great places to work balance challenge and support - they focus on achieving results through people.

When working out how to work, we therefore need to start with the work itself, rather than where that work is completed. Here are three key questions we need to work with our team to answer.

Question One: Interdependent or Independent.

If the work being conducted is interdependent, it suggests I need others to complete this work - I can't do it by myself. We can then head on to the next two questions.

However, if the work is independent then we should allow that work to be completed remotely, unless some central resource is needed, or being available centrally is important for some other function. There are very few situations where a truly independent task or responsibility needs to be completed in a central location, but we force this to happen all the time. For example, providing an update to a group of people is effectively independent - the people attending the meeting aren't required to respond. Bringing people together centrally for a one-way communication just doesn't make sense.

Question Two: Synchronous or Asynchronous

Asynchronous work, where we don't have to be working on something at the same time, should be remote. If something is truly asynchronous, completing it in a central location adds no value. Again, there may be an exception where that central location houses equipment or resources that are required for the task. As more and more work becomes asynchronous, it has implications for the systems we use. For example, people are likely to need the ability to edit documents simultaneously. Also, we shouldn't be relying on email to get things done asynchronously - there are many other systems that work much more effectively when managing asynchronous work than email. The key here, again, is to experiment. Try new systems and approaches out and measure productivity and performance. Importantly, even synchronous work can often be remote. For me the key tests are the extent to which emotion, body language, gestures and shared resources are important. If these things are important, that suggests bringing people together centrally for that task or activity.

Question Three: Central or Remote

Our choice of central or remote is largely driven by our answers to the first two questions. If the work is interdependent and synchronous, assess the level of emotion, body language, gestures and shared resources required. If the task or activity is something you undertake regularly, you might want to try both centrally and remote and gather feedback about the effectiveness of each.

In a previous episode I unpacked five reasons to bring people together that aren't just about the work - focusing on community, collaboration, culture, climate, capability. You might want to go back and review that episode. Also, I've recently recorded a webinar on Working Out How to Work where we go into more detail. You can find that at Leadership Today On-Demand.

Best wishes, and have a great week.

We talk all things future of work and what it means for leaders with Dr Ciela Hartanov.

Ciela has a doctorate in Culture and Human Behavior and has applied that knowledge to tech organizations for almost two decades. She now runs humcollective, a boutique strategy and innovation firm.

Ciela was part of the founding team of The Google School for Leaders and Head of Next Practice Innovation and Strategy at Google, where she developed projects designed to help shape the future of work. She is a psychologist, and expert in creating organizations that are more effective, wise and future ready.

Our conversation covers her experiences at Google, the future of work, the importance of being open minded, whether we can still strategically plan for anything, and what it all means for leaders.

Learn more about Ciela and her work - Hum Collective

Background music impacts the way we work in surprising ways.

Welcome to episode 152 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we look at the impact of background music upon the way we work.

I remember an office I used to work in that had a radio. I know - I'm showing my age a bit here, but the modern equivalent might be putting on some headphones. At the start of the day someone would turn the radio on to a fairly bland radio station. The radio wasn't too loud, but it was a constant presence in the background. There was always some mix of music or conversation.

I didn't mind the radio much. For me it made the office space feel less sterile and more active. Others weren't so keen on the constant music. But what impact did that background music have on our work performance? I would have assumed very little, but research has demonstrated that background music can indeed impact the way we work.

Researchers had participants complete a range of tasks with three different conditions - in silence, with background music at a relatively slow tempo, and with the same music at a faster tempo. The researchers found that background music resulted in people working faster but less accurately. And that effect was independent of the tempo of the music. The researchers believe the background music made people less cautious. This allowed people to work faster, but also produced more errors.

Brain processing is a limited resource. It appears that processing music can reduce the resources available for decision making. To compensate, our brain throws some of our usual caution to the wind.

The researchers did consider that perhaps it just wasn't the right music for the participants. Maybe when you have that brilliant track you love playing it feels like you can work more effectively. What we want to aim for is music that improves our mood, but that doesn't distract us. Familiar music could be fine. But if you're regularly listening to new music while working, you might want to try mixing things up a bit. It could be impacting you in ways you don't expect.

If you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you could take a minute to provide a rating and review. This really helps others to find the podcast. Have a great week.

Perez Santangelo, A., Ludwig, C. J. H., Navajas, J., Sigman, M., & Leone, M. J. (2022). Background music changes the policy of human decision-making: Evidence from experimental and drift-diffusion model-based approaches on different decision tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001189

Some leaders worry working from home may limit creativity. Research partially backs this up, but there are changes we can make.

Welcome to episode 151 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore the impact of working from home on creativity.

Some leaders have expressed concerns about people working from home, particularly around the risks of reduced collaboration and creativity. They argue that having people physically together is more effective when we're aiming for creativity and innovation. The reality is it depends. It depends on the nature of work, the technology you're using, the way you're approaching creativity, your people and what you're trying to achieve.

But what about individual creativity? Surely working from home doesn't reduce the effectiveness of solitary creative work? If anything, you might expect the ability to work uninterrupted would increase creativity.

Recent research finds a surprising connection between free movement and creative thinking. They found it's not the movement per se that helps with creativity, but rather the freedom to move. When people can freely move around, they are more creative. You can imagine how that might apply in educational settings. When people are learning from home on a screen rather than interacting and moving around freely in a room with others creativity is likely to be reduced.

But it can apply more broadly too. If you're needing to complete creative work, sitting at a desk staring at a screen is unlikely to help. You're better off finding a new place to work or using voice memos on your phone to allow you to move freely. That applies equally at home as it does in the office.

So, if you want to be more creative, mix things up, work somewhere new and move around.

If you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you could take a minute to provide a rating and review. This really helps others to find the podcast. Have a great week.

Supriya Murali, Barbara Händel. Motor restrictions impair divergent thinking during walking and during sitting. Psychological Research, 2022; DOI: 10.1007/s00426-021-01636-w

We explore the impact of good people doing bad things upon our assessment of others.

Welcome to episode 150 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. That's right - episode 150. Thanks to everyone for your support on the podcast over the past four years - it is much appreciated. This week we look at the impact of good people doing bad things upon our assessment of others.

Have you ever been let down by someone? Perhaps you thought they were a "good" person, but found out they did something surprisingly bad. What impact did that have on your perception of the person?

Research demonstrates that when we evaluate someone as "good" but they then do something unexpectedly "bad", it understandably shakes our faith in the person. However, it also makes us question our ability to judge character generally. If we were wrong about them, maybe we're wrong about everyone else?

There are plenty of famous examples of seemingly good people doing bad things than we could cover here, whether it's in government, the entertainment industry or in corporations. The research suggest that the immoral act of a "good" person makes the world feel more confusing. In fact, the researchers found that the larger the difference between our initial impression of the individual and their bad act, the greater the impact on our ability to make sense out of the world.

So what do we do about this?

1. We need to have realistic standards of others. No one is perfect and we are all going to let people down from time to time.

2. We need to recognise that one person's bad behaviour doesn't make everyone else slightly worse. We shouldn't let it shake our faith in humanity.

3. When people do slip up, it's helpful to demonstrate empathy. Listen to the person and understand their experience. We don't need to endorse or agree with what they've done, but we also don't need to write people off over one act.

4. We need to set up work environments where people can speak up and be honest. Maybe someone was tempted to take financial advantage of a customer, or to cut corners on a project. As their leader, I'd rather have that open dialogue early so I can coach someone away from an even worse outcome.

If you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you could take a minute to provide a rating and review. This really helps others to find the podcast. Have a great week.

Guan KW, Heine SJ. When Good People Break Bad: Moral Impression Violations in Everyday Life. Social Psychological and Personality Science. February 2022. doi:10.1177/19485506221076685

Research reveals cooperation among strangers has varied over the past 60 years and the results may surprise you.

Welcome to episode 149 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how cooperation among strangers has varied over time.

It's easy to think that society has become more individualistic and self-centred. With that, you might assume that cooperation between strangers has decreased over time. However recent research demonstrates that the opposite is true. In the US at least, cooperation among strangers has steadily increased since the 1950s.

The researchers worked through over 500 studies conducted from 1956 to 2017. This research included over 63,000 participants. In summarising the findings, one of the researchers, Van Lange, said "U.S. society may have become more individualistic, but people have not." Today we'll explore what that means for us in a work setting.

Edward Deci and Richard Ryan have contributed greatly to our understanding of human motivation and needs through their research. According to Deci and Ryan, the need for connection, belonging and support is a basic human need. They found that supporting others is also part of that need - we are motivated to help others. We want to help people and cooperate - it motivates us and makes us feel more positive.

As we have steadily moved from regional areas towards cities with more people living alone, we now meet these basic needs more through strangers. Pre-pandemic our days would include many times more interactions with strangers than would have been common in the 1950s. However, with a move towards people working from home, perhaps this trend has shifted back, if only for a few years. Maybe we will build deeper connections in our immediate area around where we live. Only time will tell.

Part of what makes work engaging is the ability to work with others - to provide and receive support that contributes to something bigger than ourselves.

This week, why not put these findings to the test. Find ways that you can support others, even those you don't know very well. It won't just help them, it will help you too.

If you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you could take a minute to provide a rating and review. This really helps others to find the podcast. Have a great week.

Mingliang Yuan, Giuliana Spadaro, Shuxian Jin, Junhui Wu, Yu Kou, Paul A. M. Van Lange, Daniel Balliet. Did cooperation among strangers decline in the United States? A cross-temporal meta-analysis of social dilemmas (1956–2017).. Psychological Bulletin, 2022; 148 (3-4): 129

Staring at yourself in a video call turns out to be a real downer.

Welcome to episode 148 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how staring at yourself on a video call is a real downer.

Video calls can really sap our energy. Our brain isn't very well equipped to focus on so many faces at once, making the gallery view in Teams and Zoom particularly challenging for our attention and energy levels. We can also find seeing ourselves on screen distracting. But recent research shows it's even worse than that - staring at ourselves during a video call actually worsens our mood. Researchers found people tend to look at others more than themselves when on a video call. By tracking participant eye movements though, they found variations in how much time people spent looking at themselves. Those who stared at themselves more tended to demonstrate greater drops in their mood and emotional state across the video call. The researchers even allowed some participants to drink low amounts of alcohol during the experiment, which is usually associated with increased mood and sociability. However, during video calls these same low levels of alcohol did not increase sociability and mood. The nature of the video call dampened these typically positive effects.

So what do we do with all of that? It's unlikely you're drinking during work calls, so let's just park that finding. But one practical thing you can do is to remove your self-view. Once you are setup and sure your camera is working, Zoom and Teams allow you to hide the view you have of yourself. This will help you to focus on the other person. You can also look at other settings that allow you to focus on the person speaking, rather than showing all participants at once. Some leaders I'm working with have even tried phone conferences as a way to change up the approach they take to meetings. So this week, try to stop staring at yourself. It will make you feel better.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau. (2022, June 13). Staring at yourself during virtual chats may worsen your mood. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 27, 2022 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220613143249.htm

Research demonstrates that becoming comfortable with discomfort is the key to progress.

Welcome to episode 147 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore research demonstrating that becoming comfortable with discomfort is the key to progress.

Learning new things requires us to step out of our comfort zone. If we're feeling comfortable, we're not learning.

But it's also natural to want to avoid discomfort. That can steer us away from new learning experiences.

New research shows that how we interpret discomfort impacts our ability to continue learning. The research by Woolley and Fishbach involved participants undertaking an improvisation class. Half of the group were given instructions for the activity and told the aim of the activity was to feel awkward and uncomfortable. The other half were also given instructions, but not instructed around feeling awkward and uncomfortable.

The researchers found that the group encouraged to feel awkward and uncomfortable spent more time actively improvising and took greater risks. They undertook more practice which gave them a greater opportunity to enhance their skills.

When we're looking to grow and develop, we should anticipate and embrace feelings of awkwardness and discomfort. Instead of seeing these feelings as reasons to stop, we should instead see them as signs of progress and development. Changing our mindset around discomfort can help us to progress and develop.

Woolley K, Fishbach A. Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort. Psychological Science. 2022;33(4):510-523. doi:10.1177/09567976211044685

Extraverts are seen to not listen as well - what can they do about that?

Welcome to episode 146 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how extraverts are seen to not listen as well, and what they can do about that.

Extraverted individuals are often seen as more comfortable and confident in social situations. This might appear to set extraverts up for success at work and in leadership, but a recent study suggests there may be a downside.

Researchers, Flynn, Collings and Zlatev studied 147 business students who needed to meet each week working in groups of six on developing their leadership skills. These students rated each other on listening skills. These listening skills included things like appearing to listen when others spoke, and remembering what others had shared. They also completed a measure of extraversion.

The researchers found that extraverts were consistently rated lower on listening skills. Participants also saw extraverts as more likely to modify their approach in an attempt to shape how they were seen by others. When this impression management is obvious to others, it can impact the ability to build trust and connections. Now, this is all based on people's impressions of extraverts - maybe they aren't any better or worse than others at listening. But perceptions are reality in the eyes of the beholder, so it does suggest extraverts may need to modify their approach to avoid these pitfalls.

So, if you are more extraverted, what can you do about this?

1. Number one is pretty simple - listen. Listening is a skill grounded in genuine interest. If you're not interested in others, it will show.

2. Ask open questions - be curious about what the person is sharing, listen with interest, and restate what you're hearing.

3. Remember important details - it's so powerful when someone remembers your name or other personal information.

4. Give people time to open up. While you might be comfortable sharing with others, it might take them more time to warm to you.

Extraversion, like other personality traits, comes with advantages and risks to be managed. If you're more extraverted, make sure you demonstrate your listening to others.

Flynn FJ, Collins H, Zlatev J. Are You Listening to Me? The Negative Link Between Extraversion and Perceived Listening. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. March 2022. doi:10.1177/01461672211072815