Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders

As leaders, we almost always have great intentions, but our intent isn't always the same as our impact. In this episode we explore three principles for leaders when thinking about intent versus impact.

Welcome to episode 19 of the Leadership Today podcast - it's great to have you join us today. I really appreciate those who have taken the time to share, rate and review the podcast. Here at Leadership Today our mission is "Enabling thousands of leaders to achieve results through people", so it's great to see the global reach of the podcast continue to grow. Today we're looking at intent versus impact.

As leaders, we almost always have great intentions - our intent is typically positive. However, if you've been leading for a while, you will recognise there are times when people might misunderstand your intent - that your intent is not the same as your impact. And that creates problems for us - it leads to miscommunication and can create distrust.

Joseph Luft and Harri Ingham were studying group dynamics in the mid 1950s - exploring how we see ourselves versus how others see us. They developed a process that involved individuals choosing words they thought best described themselves from a list of 56 adjectives. Their peers did the same.

Not surprisingly, they found that some words overlapped between the individual and their peers and some didn't. They could then sort each word into one of four quadrants, based on whether a characteristic was known or unknown by the individual, and known or unknown by others.

When the words lined up, this meant the characteristics were known to self and known to others - Luft and Ingham described this quadrant as the arena - others have called it public or open.

Then you have words people chose for themselves that others didn't choose - these characteristics were known to self but not others - this quadrant was called hidden, like the person was wearing a mask.

Finally, there were words others chose to describe someone that the person didn't choose for themselves - this is known as a blind spot. It's also where intent versus impact gets interesting. When there's a misalignment between your intent and impact, you could argue that it's just others' perceptions, but those perceptions are their reality whether we agree with them or not. And a blind spot can be positive or negative - you are just as likely to be blind to a strength as you are to be blind to a weakness.

When we think about intent versus impact, there are three principles for leaders:

1. If you want people to understand you, make your intent clear

2. If you see people doing strange things, take the time to understand their intent

3. Use feedback to let people know the impact they're having

Let's look at the first principle - If you want people to understand you, make your intent clear.

I was working with a leader who had received some feedback that his team saw his leadership style as highly directive, and almost never coaching. As I worked with him, he just couldn't understand this feedback - he thought he was coaching his staff all the time. I asked him for an example of how he coached his team, and he said "Well, I coached one of my team members earlier today. I was walking past his desk and noticed he was doing something in Excel in a pretty inefficient way. I knew a much simpler way, so I asked him to move across. I pulled up a seat in front of his computer, and then showed him the easier way. I then suggested he do it that way next time. I coached him." It was pretty easy to see where the impact of being directive was coming from. I asked him to replay the story, but this time from his team member's perspective. What would it feel like to have your boss move you to one side then start working on your computer in front of your colleagues? How might the team member have interpreted the situation? He soon saw how his positive intentions could have been taken in a negative way. Even if he had done exactly the same thing, but shared his intent - that is, that he actually thought this team member was doing a great job, and wanted to help him become more efficient so he could go home earlier - the impact would have been entirely different. It's important to make ourselves known to others, to let them into our head, and to share our intent. This will lead to greater alignment between how others see us and how we see ourselves.

Now the second principle - If you see people doing strange things, take the time to understand their intent. Our home used to have vinyl floor tiles in our living room. I walked in one day to find about a square metre of these tiles had been lifted up and placed in a pile by a combination of our three sons. They had managed to get under the edge of one tile, lifting it up, which then gave them access to several other tiles that they could then pull up, and it quickly escalated from there. Several of the tiles had cracked in the process. Now, clearly, I was pretty frustrated by this wanton destruction. It seemed like the kids were trying to vandalise and destroy the house. But I asked them - what were they trying to do? They told me that they were simply trying to build a tower out of the tiles. Understanding their intent helped me to explain their behaviour. It didn't remove all the frustration, but it did help me to understand why they were doing what they were doing. The same is true in the workplace. People are typically logical and rational in the behaviour - it's the perceptions of situations that often differ. So when people are doing something strange - failing to get on board with an initiative, focusing on the wrong things, whatever it might be - that the time to explore their intent. Often you will find that it's actually a miscommunication or misunderstanding that lies at the root of the issue.

The third principle is - Use feedback to let people know the impact they're having. As a leader you're in a unique position to help others to decrease their blind spots. And I would encourage you to particularly focus on helping people to uncover their strengths. One of the greatest satisfactions I've had as a leader is encouraging people to do things that they initially didn't think they could. I could see strengths in them that they couldn't see in themselves.

Intent versus impact is a powerful way of improving your influencing, understanding others, and helping others to develop. Try these three leadership principles this week and let me know what impact you make.

Having a mentor provides a wide range of benefits beyond development, including higher pay, more promotions and greater career satisfaction. But asking for a mentor isn't always easy or the best approach.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 18 of the Leadership Today podcast. Today we're looking at finding a mentor, and why asking someone to be your mentor may not be the best approach.

Let's start by defining mentoring. In a mentoring relationship the focus is on development of the person being mentored in a particular set of skills or capabilities, by engaging with a mentor who has demonstrated experience and expertise in these areas. Sometimes the individuals arrange the mentoring directly with each other, and at other times organisations either support or drive these pairings.

Reseach suggests that the benefits of having a mentor go beyond the individual's development. When compared to those without mentors, those being mentored had higher remuneration, were offered more promotions, and they demonstrated greater career satisfaction and commitment.

And mentoring also has benefits for the mentor as well. Mentors report feeling more positive about the organisation and their senior leadership. Mentors also experience greater levels of job satisfaction.

Given mentoring is such a win win, why don't we see more mentoring in the workplace? Here are some reasons:

• People are often afraid to ask for a mentor - plucking up the courage can be hard, particularly when we recognise it's such a big commitment from the mentor
• Mentors are reluctant to commit time - the traditional model of mentoring often soaks up a lot of time, sometimes outliving its original usefulness
• Mentors may already have someone to mentor - they may therefore be reluctant to commit to a second or third person

So my advice - if you want a mentor, don't ask for one - at least not straight away. Here's a process I recommend:

1. Identify the areas you want to develop - be really clear about what mentoring is going to address
2. Identify a range of mentors that could help - it may be more than one person, and you can draw on your networks to suggest people
3. Request brief meetings with the potential mentors of around 20 to 30 minutes each - be clear that you have an area you're interested in developing, and would like a conversation about their advice and guidance in this area - being willing to use phone or video calls will broaden the potential range of mentors you can access
4. Assuming they're okay to meet up and the meeting goes well, ask if they would be open to another meeting in two months time
5. Don't waste their time - turn up prepared with questions, take notes and stop asking for more meetings once you've learned what you want to learn

Mentors are great. And, while it sounds counterintuitive, if you really want a mentor, don't start by asking for one. As always, I've included the references used in this podcast in the episode notes.

References

Allen TD1, Eby LT, Poteet ML, Lentz E, Lima L. (2004) Career benefits associated with mentoring for protégeé: a meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology Feb;89(1):127-36

Rajashi Ghosh & Thomas G. Reio Jr. (2013) Career benefits associated with mentoring for mentors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior 83 (2013) 106–116

Sange, Rabiya; Srivasatava, R. K. (2012) Employee Engagement and Mentoring: An Empirical Study of Sales Professionals. Synergy (0973-8819);Jan2012, Vol. 10 Issue 1, p37

What can prisoners teach us about performance ratings? And how can we better measure performance and support development as leaders? Check out the research and some ideas that will help improve the way you lead.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 17 of the Leadership Today podcast - let's dive straight in.

There's a great piece of research out of England that involved people who had been jailed on violence and robbery offences rating themselves on a range of traits. Initially they were asked to rate themselves against the 'average prisoner'. As we see in many studies of this sort, the prisoners rated themselves more positively than their peers - they saw themselves, for example, as more kind, dependable, honest and law abiding that the average prisoner. They were then asked to rate themselves on the same traits when compared to the average member of the public - and it's here that the results become even more interesting. The prisoners saw themselves as more moral than the average person. They also saw themselves as more kind, more self-controlled, more compassionate, more generous, more dependable, more trustworthy and even more honest than the average person in the community. The only trait they didn't rate themselves so high on was how law abiding they were, which makes sense given they were imprisoned for breaking the law. However, even then they rated themselves as on par with the average person on the street.

This over-rating isn't just limited to prisoners - people in a work setting are also notoriously poor at rating their own performance. Of the hundreds of people I've surveyed in my own research, the same pattern comes up again and again - 85% of people think their performance is above average, with 15% of people seeing themselves as just average. Not a single person I've surveyed has ever rated their performance as below average.

This creates a range of challenges for leaders. If the vast majority of people over-rate their performance when compared to others, how do we manage their performance? Do you want to be the leader that runs around shattering these self-delusions that are so common? Probably not.

Let's take another angle. I want you to think back over your own career, and identify some points when would you have rated yourself most positively. For me, I have been most positive about my own performance when I wasn't being stretched or challenged. I felt confident and on top of things. I felt like I was really delivering for the business. Interestingly, that probably also lines up with the times when I wasn't as engaged in my work - now it's not like I didn't like my work, but it was just easy. I felt like I was contributing and doing my part, but didn't need to try too hard. In contrast, as I think about the times when I stretched and challenged myself, my views on my performance dropped. It was in those moments that I doubted whether I could deliver what was being asked of me - did I have what it would take to perform? It was in these moments that I needed support and encouragement, because development feels hard. Having a leader that challenges you, but also supports and encourages you, is a great way to take your performance to the next level.

But it's not just individuals that have trouble accurately rating their own performance. Other research shows that leaders aren't that great at rating people on performance either. Researchers found two factors led supervisors to rate individuals more positively - one factor was if they thought the person was similar to them, and the second factor was when they liked them. So as a leader I'm likely to rate you more positively if you are like me, and if I like you. And there's an associated risk of under rating people that we feel aren't like us, or that we don't like.

Here are some ideas to help with these challenges around providing feedback on performance:

1. Get out of the habit of rating your own and others' performance relative to others - instead focus on the requirements of the job, the objectives and the progress the individual is making. This will help maintain that challenge to keep progressing and improving, rather than getting caught up in comparisons.
2. As a leader, make sure you are combining challenge with support - work with your team to set challenging goals that keep people moving forward in their performance. But also recognise that when people are learning something new or challenging, their confidence is likely to drop. It's in those moments that they need extra support and encouragement.
3. Invite and provide feedback - having a culture where feedback is encouraged will help people to more accurately evaluate and refine their performance.

Thanks for listening and for supporting the podcast. It has been great to hear how the content has been helpful.If you do want to keep in contact, go to the connect page at our website, leadership.today. There you can join our email list, and connect via LinkedIn and Facebook. I look forward to speaking with you next week.

Research

Sedikides C, Meek R, Alicke MD, and Taylor S (2014). Behind bars but above the bar: Prisoners consider themselves more prosocial than non-prisoners. The British journal of social psychology / the British Psychological Society

Sandy J. Wayne and Robert C. Liden (1995) Effects of Impression Management on Performance Ratings: A Longitudinal Study. The Academy of Management Journal Vol. 38, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 232-260

Summary

In this week's podcast we explore what leaders can learn from the way surgical teams manage complexity.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode sixteen of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today's biggest leadership challenges.

Last week we dipped our toes into the waters of complexity, looking at how the storming stage of team development is better thought of as an ongoing process to be managed.

This week we are extending on that theme of operating in uncertainty, seeing what leaders can learn from the way surgical teams manage complexity.

As leaders we operate in a complex world where we are constantly presented with opportunities and threats. Some describe it as a VUCA world - an acronym that characterises modern conditions as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The term VUCA can be traced back to the 1980s where it was used in US Army War College training to describe the conditions faced by soldiers - where the enemy is not always clear and traditional approaches may not work.

In this VUCA world we still need to manage tasks, processes and people within our teams. But we also need strategies that look beyond our team if we are to survive and thrive.

The operating room where surgical teams work is a complex environment. The human body itself is complex and variable, and we're still learning more every day about how our systems work and interrelate. There's complex equipment being used, and emergency situations to be managed. There's input from various specialties - surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and doctors - people who are highly qualified and full of opinions. Often times there are new teams performing surgery that may not have worked together before. This can lead to a lack of consistency, assumptions and disagreements. From a group dynamics perspective, this sounds a lot like the conditions for storming - and you don't want storming during an operation. As a consequence of this complexity, surprises occur, things are missed and mistakes are made. This leads to variable outcomes for patients.

A World Health Organisation initiative sought to address these concerns. They tracked the outcomes of thousands of operations across eight hospitals in eight countries, gaining an initial baseline. They then implemented a 19-item surgical safety checklist - just 19 items that the surgical team would work through a check off. It was an initiative inspired by how pilots and ground crews manage the complexity of air travel through checklists.

So how does a checklist help? One example is the risk of people not speaking up during a surgical procedure, even when they see something going wrong. After all, they may not know everyone in the room, and may not see it as their role to intervene. As a result, the checklist includes a step where all team members introduce themselves to each other by name and role. Further down the checklist, the surgeon flags how long the case will take, anticipated blood loss, and any non-routine steps. This all helps to bring everyone together, building clarity and helping to preempt issues that might emerge.

The results of implementing the checklist were dramatic - the rate of death was reduced by over 40%, and complications were reduced by over a third.

So it would be natural to assume that this 19 item check list would be mandated for use everywhere. However, the researchers stressed how Important it was for local hospitals to tailor the checklist to meet local needs. That could include adding or removing items from the list. They recognised that risks, resources and cultures differ from hospital to hospital. Despite the dramatic results, they were quick to recognise that the true value of their findings was in the principle of having a checklist, rather than the exact checklist procedure itself.

And then there's the people factor. Given how dramatic the results were, you would think people would be thrilled to use the checklist. However 20% of surgical staff thought even a 19 item check list took too long. Interestingly, of that same group, 93% indicated that they would want the checklist used if they were having surgery. As with any change, there's always opportunities to streamline by engaging people in the process - helping to address their concerns and involving them in refinements. It's important to help people to appreciate the principle, rather than being obsessed about the procedure.

There are a number of lessons for leaders from this study in how we navigate through a VUCA world:

1. Always improve - even in the world of modern surgery there was still an opportunity for dramatic change, and even 1% improvements add up over time
2. Look outside your field - in the research surgical teams applied lessons learned from air travel - maybe there are similar lessons that apply in your industry
3. Identify principles - these provide ways to operate in the grey, and should be developed by incorporating input and feedback
4. Principles not procedures - rather than rolling out more and more procedures, we are usually better off communicating a principle that applies more broadly
5. When communicating a principle, start with the reasons why it matters - if people don't understand the reasons for a new way of working, they will often block the change or just avoid it

I hope you found that helpful. Let me know what you think via our website leadership.today, or feel free to leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Reference

A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population - January 29, 2009 N Engl J Med 2009; 360:491-499 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119

Over 50 years ago Bruce Tuckman described four stages of team development - forming, storming, norming and performing. This week we explore whether these stages still apply, and the implications for leading in an increasingly complex world.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode fifteen of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today's biggest leadership challenges.

Now if you ask a leader to describe the stages of development a team goes through, they will most likely say the now famous words - forming, storming, norming, performing. It was over 50 years ago that Bruce Tuckman originally described these four stages in small group formation. He later worked with Mary Jensen to add a fifth stage - adjourning (which unfortunately doesn't rhyme quite so well with the other four stages when forced through an Australian accent - and a big shout out to our many international listeners who have spent the last 14 episodes trying to work out what accent I have - there's your answer). But does this model still apply today? And what's the relevance for the way we lead?

First, let's do a quick overview and reminder of the five stages:

• Forming - a team first comes together, they orient themselves to the task, establish relationships, test boundaries around ground rules and behaviours - at this point people are usually positive, polite if not a little unsure.
• Storming - a lack of clarity around roles and ways of operating means this stage is marked by interpersonal conflict, lack of unity, polarised views - at this point people often actively or passively resist forming into a team - in fact the team may even fall apart at this point.
• Norming - achieve greater cohesion as roles, norms and ways of operating are established - people seek to maintain the group and find effective ways to work together.
• Performing - Tuckman saw the group at this point as having effectively "solved" interpersonal problems and become a "problem-solving instrument" - roles are flexible and functional, structure is clear and fixed, with shared commitment and effort towards the task.
• Adjourning - winding up the team - may be some sadness as people need to let go of the role they've had and go their separate ways.

So where did these stages come from? Tuckman's work was based on a literature review process rather than direct research. He wanted to bring together various ways of thinking about how teams develop and become productive. The studies he looked at were based on therapy groups, training groups, and laboratory experiments. Through this process, he was able to identify common themes - thus the initial four stages.

It is a theoretical model that has proved helpful in practice, and has mostly held up under research scrutiny. The framework has been widely applied and proved to be highly effective in encouraging further exploration of team performance.

However, there has been some more recent disagreement around the storming stage and where it fits, or even if it is a distinct stage at all. Even Tuckman's original paper highlighted mixed evidence around the storming stage, with some researchers combining elements of storming with both the forming and norming stages.

Not surprisingly, a common question from leaders is "Can't we just skip the storming stage altogether?" The answer is maybe in the short term, but not forever. In fact some researchers have conceptualised storming as the management of conflict and difference that occurs across the life of the team, and I think that's a more helpful way to think about it.

Whether storming is a discrete stage or something that rears its head occasionally, the storm is never far away. And the storm is not necessarily generated within the team. There's greater awareness now that any team is constantly being barraged with opportunities and threats as part of a larger complex system. No team works in isolation - it's constantly being tilted, nudged, and pushed off balance.

I served as part of a very effective leadership team in a professional services firm as we sailed directly into the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Each of us had weathered recessions and downturns before - we had each seen the market move up and down - but the speed and scale of the GFC impact was still difficult. The GFC was a complex environment in which to operate, where we couldn't fully shield the team and business. The ways of working we established became strained, and we needed to work hard at revising our norms and maintaining our relationships. We were able to do that successfully by changing the way we worked in terms of task, people and process. If we had just focused on our team and ignored the environment around us, we would have failed. It's a good example of how we had to step back into that storming stage to then create some norms and agreed ways of operating to help us to move forward.

So here are some practical ideas for you as a leader:

1. Don't just focus on the task - make sure as a team leader you place equal attention on the people and the process. A very powerful question to start with and return to is 'How can we best work together?'
2. Negotiate through difference - conflict, if well managed, is your friend. But conflict management needs willing and skilled individuals, along with effective team processes.
3. Be attuned to your surroundings - keep a weathered eye on the horizon for opportunities and threats. Build a network outside the team that can help feed in information, advice and support.
4. Influence beyond the team - shape the world around you. Be proactive, not just reactive within the broader system in which you operate.

I hope these ideas help you to improve the effectiveness of the teams you lead and are a part of. Next week I'll be expanding on this idea of operating in uncertainty, drawing on lessons from the operating theatre. See you then.

References

Tuckman, B. Developmental Sequence in Small Groups. Psychological Bulletin 1965, Vol. 63, No. 6, 384-399

Tuckman, B. and Jensen, M. (1977). Stages of Small-Group Development Revisited. Group & Organization Management, 2(4), pp.419-427.

Denise A. Bonebright 40 years of storming: a historical review of Tuckman's model of small group development. Human Resource Development International Vol. 13, No. 1, February 2010, 111–120

Research demonstrates that 90% of the initial impression we form about people is based on two factors - warmth and competence. It also turns out these two factors are difficult to combine. So how do we demonstrate both warmth and competence as leaders?

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode fourteen of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today's biggest leadership challenges.

This week we are looking at leadership first impressions.

It turns out that 90% of the initial impression we form about a person is around two things - their warmth and their competence. In other words - do I connect with you, and do you know what you're doing?

It's important to note that warmth isn't primarily about being liked - it's about making a real connection. That you are a real human being that people can relate to on an emotional level.

Competence is about knowing what you're doing. That you are a leader who is skilled and capable - someone others can respect.

These factors produce two stereotypes of leaders that perhaps you can identify with:

• The first is the competent but cold leader - they're all business, great at what they do, but they just seem to struggle to connect with people. People respect them, but they may not put in an extra effort for them.
• Then there's the warm and friendly but not-so-competent leader - they are great at bringing people around them, but those people gradually drift away when they figure out the leader isn't up to the task.

These stereotypes assume that competence and warmth sit at opposite ends of a spectrum. That a leader can only be all about results, or all about people, but not both. And many leaders assume that this is indeed the case.

So if they're forced to choose between the two, it's perhaps not surprising that many leaders go for the "respected but not connected" version of competence without warmth. That flows into how they communicate and interact with people. Indeed, they have to guard their image of competence, so letting people into who they are as a human being is a risk - and a risk they see as not worth taking.

How does that come across to others? People who take on this competent but cold combination often try to present themselves as an expert. And there's no shortage of experts - LinkedIn has nearly 6 million people who list themselves as experts in various fields. In fact, LinkedIn lists so many people with "keynote speaker" in their title, that to give each of them just five gigs a year would require there to be over 3,000 keynote speeches every single day. Some people really latch on to the need to lead with their expertise.

The good news is that you can combine the two - it is possible to be seen as both warm and competent. The research suggests that it is tricky, but also possible. And the research also suggests that you should lead with warmth. That making a connection with people matters, and provides a foundation to then demonstrate your competence.

I worked alongside a leader who embodied exactly this combination. He was a lovely guy to work with, but also filled you with confidence that he knew exactly what he was doing. He was incredibly calm in a crisis - his body language and tone of voice even made him seem relaxed. Even when things were going horribly wrong, he was interested in others' views, and keen to resolve the issue. He didn't just remain calm himself, but he helped others to calm down. This allowed people to focus on the problem and work towards a positive outcome. They weren't worried about the leader and his response - they trusted him, they felt connected to him, and they knew he valued maintaining and building connections with his team, even when they made a mistake.

As Amy Cuddy and her fellow researchers put it - "Before people decide what they think of your message, they decide what they think of you."

So here are some ideas of how you can combine both warmth and competence in the way that you present.

1. Be yourself. Be a real human being that turns up to work with strengths, weaknesses, interests and concerns. Don't try to be perfect, but do try to become better.
2. Be interested in others. Take the time to understand where they are coming from - their interests, even their hopes and dreams.
3. Let people into your head. Share your thoughts and emotions. Sometimes the calm person can appear as if they don't care enough. Sometimes trying to be friendly can appear flighty. Don't let people have to guess where you're coming from and what's driving your behaviour - let them into your head.
4. Be prepared to present your capabilities with confidence. Try to capture in one or two sentences what you bring and what makes you unique. Then think about how you present that authentic image of you to others.
5. And lastly - get feedback. Ask people about how approachable you are, and what you might do to improve this. Ask for feedback about what makes you appear more and less competent.

I hope you find these ideas helpful as you continue to improve the way you lead. As always, if you're interested in the research, the references are listed in the transcript at our website - leadership.today

And thanks again for those who have taken the time to rate, review and share the podcast with others. It's great to hear your feedback and to see the hundreds of people who are downloading the podcast each week. We'll see you next week.

Research used for this episode:

A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition.

Fiske, Susan T; Cuddy, Amy J C; Glick, Peter; Xu, Jun.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Washington Vol. 82, Iss. 6, (Jun 2002): 878-902.

Connect, Then Lead. To exert influence, you must balance competence with warmth. by Amy J.C. Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, and John Neffing. Harvard Business Review July–August 2013.

Email is a great tool that can also be a huge distraction. Research shows that if we don't control our inbox, it will end up controlling us. This week we look at some ways to tackle that.

TRANSCRIPT Welcome to episode thirteen of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today's biggest leadership challenges.

This week we are looking at gaining control over our email inbox. It's easy to forget that email is a relatively new addition to the workplace. When I entered the workforce in the 1990s, I was lucky to receive 5 emails in a day. There was no way anyone would send confidential information by email - it was seen as much less risky and more convenient to fax or mail a document.

As leaders, we're still figuring out how to make the most out of email, instant messaging, and services like Slack, while avoiding the downside distractions.

You see it at conferences and training sessions - the leader who is constantly checking their phone and then dashing out during every break to feverishly respond to emails and messages. It's as if their team can't survive even a few hours without them, let alone a day. In some organisations its endemic - as people walk into a room for a meeting, they all set up their laptops, continuing to smash through their inbox while providing only a minimal amount of attention to what's happening in the room. It's like we're constantly skating across the surface of multiple tasks rather than really applying ourselves to the things that matter.

People approach the challenge of email in different ways. I once interviewed a senior executive and asked about how they manage competing priorities. The example they provided involved how they dealt with the hundreds of emails in their inbox when they returned from holidays. They explained that it was quite simple - they just selected all emails and hit delete. They argued that if an issue was important enough, surely someone would get back to them. I still don't know if that approach was brilliant or negligent.

Here's what some recently published research (http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fapl0000343) tells us about email use:

• Researchers found that knowledge workers spend 28% of their workweek reading and responding to email.
• Staff at Microsoft reported that their work was interrupted by email alerts an average of 4 times per hour, with each interruption causing a further 5 minute delay to their other work. Those delays add up to a third of their time, or 2.5 hours per day.
• And it may be even worse than that - researchers found the average worker checks email 90 times per day - that's once every 5 minutes - and that it takes 1 minute to resume work after checking email. So that's another 90 minutes which isn't including the time taken on the email itself. Bouncing from email to email across a day makes it practically impossible to complete any work requiring concentration or creative thought.
• Those with high email demands where email is not central to their job experience a lack of progress. They feel like they're just not getting ahead.
• As a result, researchers found that those with low self-control ended up focusing on routine management activities rather than leadership. Reacting to emails made them a less effective leader.

It's little surprise then that leaders I work with typically list 'email' and 'meetings' as the top two impediments to getting their work done. They feel the stress. They know their being reactive. They see the important being smashed by the urgent. They know they have a fixed amount of time every day, and that email is getting in the way of the activities that allow leaders to be effective. But they're not sure what to do about it.

Here are seven ideas to take charge of your email:

1. Make a mental shift - recognise that your email inbox is effectively a summary of other people's to-do lists. As a leader, your inbox probably doesn't contain your most important work.
2. Switch off alerts on everything - your computer, phone, watch - anything that prompts you that a new email or message has arrived.
3. Instead of checking email 90 times, try 4 focused times. Schedule time in your calendar and use the time you have allotted, then get back to your other work.
4. Don't just hit reply straight away - assess whether a conversation is needed. Try phone calls for a day. Or try grouping issues together so you can have one conversation about multiple topics. The fewer emails you send, the fewer you get back.
5. Set standards - help people to consider when it is okay to reply all to everyone cc'd, that clear subject lines help, and to put requests at the start of emails rather than being hidden in mounds of text. One organisation I've seen sends people a report each month outlining where the individual sits in terms of the number of emails they send. There isn't any judgement - but letting someone know that they send more emails than 90% of others in this organisation usually reduces the number of emails they send.
6. If your team can't operate without you, you probably need to vary the way you lead. Delegate more, be clear about accountabilities, and let them know you trust them to deal with issues that arise.
7. Keep experimenting and trying new approaches - I experiment with multiple to-do lists and approaches to organising my day each year, refining my approach as I go. It's not always big changes - there's a lot of power in continuous refinement and improvement.

Email is like any tool - it's not inherently good or bad. We need a plan and approach that works for us - one that leaves us with a sense of control, rather than being a victim of our inbox. This week think about your approach to email - and take control before it controls you.

When you ask employees about the best thing about the place where they work, they often say "the people". Here are four ideas of how leaders can build connections and collaboration at work.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode 12 of the Leadership Today podcast. My name is Andrew Beveridge, and thanks for joining me.

If you ask employees what they see as the best part about working here you'll often hear "It's the people". Not the pay, not the job, not the location - the people. The need to belong and be connected to others is as powerful a motivator at work as it is in life. It's what Deci and Ryan in their classic motivational research call 'relatedness'.

On top of this, research by Google found the two most important factors for team effectiveness are:

1. Psychological safety - Can we take risks in this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?
2. Dependability - Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?

Connections matter - people are motivated when they have a sense of belonging - that this is this a place where they can be themselves, where they can help others, and where others are reliable and want to help them.

This need for connections sits in a broader societal context. We are at a point in history where, thanks to technology, people have more connections than ever, while simultaneously feeling more isolated and lonely. Research shows that on average we have fewer people than ever to depend on when we need help. Sociologists tracked this pattern in America between 1985 and 2004. They saw the number of people that said they had no one at all they could confide in triple over that time, while the average number of confidents people had reduced from three to two.

And our office environments haven't helped. The open plan offices that were supposed to help build connections turn out to do the opposite. Recent research into two organisations that moved to open plan saw a 70% reduction in face to face conversations, coupled with an increase in email use of between 22% to 50% (). It's not surprising then that other research demonstrates open plan offices also increase sick leave.

I believe that fostering a culture where people can belong and support each other is at the core of collaboration. And in an environment of ever accelerating change, organisations need collaboration more than ever.

So what can leaders do to help people to feel like they belong?

Here are four suggestions:

1. Office layouts matter - you want to involve your people in helping to building a physical environment that combines places for quiet reflection and deep work, with other areas that encourage connection and discussion. Making it a personal and warm place will go a long way to help encourage those connections.
2. Consider agile work principles - people coming together from across the organisation to tackle a problem or opportunity, and then disbanding once that opportunity is advanced or problem solved.
3. Social connection - just remember that having fun and connecting people with each other is not a waste of time. Have your people generate some ideas around that - what are some ways that we can build those social connections at work.
4. As leaders, we want to demonstrate those connections, we want to facilitate connections, and we want to discuss the importance of connection - always reinforcing that need to connect.

So in summary, connections matter, not just at work but in life in general. I look forward to hearing some of your ideas of how you've built connections at work, and how that's made an impact on the way you operate.

Well that's the end of this podcast. I'm looking forward to joining you again next week to discuss another challenge at work, and some practical ideas about things we can do to improve that as leaders.

Links to research in this episode:

http://repositorio.minedu.gob.pe/bitstream/handle/123456789/2958/Intrinsic%20and%20Extrinsic%20Motivations%20Classic%20Definitions%20and%20New%20Directions.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/

http://happierhuman.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/P13.-Social-Isolation-in-America-Changes-in-Core-Discussion-Networks-over-Two-Decades.pdf

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/1753/20170239#fn-2

http://workplaceohs.com.au/hazards/work-environment/analysis/open-plan-offices-increase-the-risk-of-sick-leave#.W59daf4zbOQ

This week we are looking at how to motivate and retain your best people by helping to build their resume.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode eleven of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today's biggest leadership challenges.

This week we are looking at how to motivate and retain your best people by helping to build their resume.

It's no secret that leaders are struggling to retain their best people. Recent studies (https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australian-jobs-turnover-churn-robert-half-2018-6) suggest that staff turnover rates are on the increase. It's easy to see how repeated corporate downsizing has taught the current workforce that loyalty may not be reciprocated by their employer. Add to this increasingly high levels of education and mobility, and you have a recipe for high turnover.

So what should leaders do? Is keeping your best people all about table tennis. bean bags, and fruit boxes? Well, making offices more 'cool' only goes so far. Some organisations try to take these surface elements from companies that are known for their ability to attract and retain employees and inject them into their own offices. Like all transplants though, they're often rejected. Cool offices are an outworking of the culture of organisations – they're not the driver of the culture.

And we know that pay isn't the answer. My own research indicates that 85% of people think their performance is above average, while only 3% believe they're overpaid. A full 48% of people think they aren't paid enough. It's almost impossible to make the majority of your people happy about their pay when the vast majority think they are above average performers.

Here is one practical way to help retain employees. While it sounds counterintuitive, helping workers to grow and build their resume can make them more likely to stay with your organisation. That's right - making people more employable can make them less likely to leave.

As we discussed last week, there are four main factors that motivate people at work - purpose, development, connections and autonomy. Helping to build someone's resume directly addresses the development motivator. People are motivated when they feel competent at what they're doing, and when they can build the capabilities that matter to them over time.

As a leader, you can consciously help your people to develop skills and experience that matter to them. Here are three ideas you might want to try:

1. During your regular meetings with your people, make sure you set aside some time to identify what further development is of interest, and help to make that happen. It might be a training course. Or it might be using your networks to help pair them up with someone more experienced in their field for a once off mentor meeting. Or it might be an experience - something new that will stretch them.
2. Spend time together looking back at the previous month or quarter to identify the new skills and experience that they have gained. Sometimes people don't notice the development they're experiencing unless they stop and reflect. Making sure you discuss this helps to build awareness of the development that's already happening.
3. Help them to summarise this experience in a way that will fit into a resume or LinkedIn profile. I've had several team members where we actually worked together on their resume as part of our regular catch up meetings.

By highlighting and increasing their capability, you will be able to demonstrate that staying with the organisation will have value for their development and employability. And the approach works across all employees - it's not just for those new to the workforce. Even as people approach retirement, providing them with skills they're interested in that will help them to pick up part time roles (if that's what they want) will also be attractive.

Achieving this at an organisational level requires leaders who can have skilled discussions with employees. This is likely to involve some investment in development for managers as well. But, as we've seen, this development may also help to retain your best leaders.

Motivation - what's the point? And how do we motivate people as leaders? This week I outline the four factors most important for motivating people at work, and focus in on practical ideas to increase a sense of purpose.

TRANSCRIPT

I'll let you in on a little secret - the truth is that, as leaders, we can't motivate anyone to do anything - well, not directly anyway. But we can create the conditions that are likely to motivate people. In fact, I would argue that, as leaders, the majority of our impact is about setting up an environment where people are motivated about what the organisation is trying to achieve.

Leadership is about achieving results through people, and we do that through aligned motivation. It's about aligning the things that motivate our people with the results the organisation needs to achieve. Here's the good news - if our people are turning up to work, they are motivated. It just might be that their motivation isn't currently aligned with we are trying to deliver.

Motivation matters, because it's through motivation that we produce results. Motivation isn't just about us as leaders and the organisation - it also matters because it provides meaningful and satisfying work for the people we lead.

Think about the times when you have been most motivated in your work - what was it about the organisation, your job and your leader that led to that?

Research into motivation has come a long way over the past few decades, and four factors emerge as particularly important when it comes to motivating people at work.

1. Purpose is the first factor - people are motivated when they know the purpose of their job, and how it aligns with the purpose of the organisation.
2. Development is the second factor - people are motivated when they feel competent at what they're doing, and can build the capabilities that matter to them over time.
3. Connection is the third factor - people are motivated when they have a sense of belonging - that this is this a place where they can help others, and where others help them.
4. Autonomy is the fourth factor - people are motivated when they have freedom over their work - how they do what they do. We talked about this in an earlier podcast about control and health.

Today we're going to focus on purpose - answering that question "what's the point of my job and working here?" It's a great place to start as, without a shared purpose, we don't have a hope of achieving results through our people.

Researchers describe three levels of purpose that can be achieved through our work, each leading to an even greater level of motivation and engagement (Steger, M. F., Dik, B. J., & Duffy, R. D. (2012). Measuring meaningful work: The Work and Meaning Inventory (WAMI). Journal of Career Assessment, 20, 322–337).

1. At the first level, my work feels meaningful and has an identifiable point and purpose in an organisation. At this level I'm clear about my job and what I need to achieve, and also how this fits into the broader purpose of the organisation.
2. At the second level, my work is in harmony with and helps provide meaning in my personal life. At this level my work becomes more than just a job - it's something that I use to define who I am not just at work, but also in my personal life outside of work - I see the two as far more integrated.
3. At the third and final level, my work provides the opportunity to benefit others or some greater good. At this level I feel my work has a broader contribution beyond the organisation and into society. This is where not for profit organisations are able to engage people so well, even if they can't match the salaries offered elsewhere. But every organisation has the potential to make a positive contribution to society.

Here are three ways you can build this sense of purpose for your people:

1. The first is the humble job description. Now I know these are boring but, stick with me, they're also really important. It amazes me the number if times I've come across people who, as their first task at a new organisation, have been asked to write their own job description. That's basically like saying "We've hired you, but we have no idea why". The trap we sometimes fall into is trying to detail all the individual tasks and processes we think are required. But a job description isn't about how to do the job. And a job description doesn't need to be fixed - it should be a living document that grows with the individual over time. But, at a minimum, people need to be clear about the purpose of their role and what they are accountable to deliver.
2. The second is about having a clear and robust goal setting and review process. This allows the individual to put some further detail around what they're going to deliver, with the ability to link this to strategic goals. There are some great systems around that help people to set and track goals - PeopleGoal is one I've used which also helps automate the performance review process. You can find it at www.peoplegoal.com
3. The third suggestion is to share the impact your organisation is having on society. Stories are really powerful here. How have people in your organisation made a real impact on the world we live in? What excites you as a leader about the impact your organisation is having?

I believe these three approaches to building purpose can make a huge difference to an individual's motivation at work. In addition, it provides a greater chance of aligning the individual's motivation with the needs of the organisation. And it also allows you as the leader to set clear expectations for the person to work towards.

Again, the four main things that motivate and allow people to succeed at work are purpose, development, connections and autonomy. Over the next few weeks we will continue to explore motivation in each of these four areas, with practical ideas about what we can do as leaders to engage our people in the objectives of the organisation. Next week we will be looking at development, and why helping people to build their resume actually reduces turnover. Why not invite a couple of colleagues to subscribe to the podcast so you can work through these aspects of motivation together? I look forward to speaking with you then.