An HR Therapy Session for Managers and the People (Operators) Who Love Them
This week in making work suck less, I got to speak with Hebba Youssef, Ayanna E. Jackson ~ Career Coach and Ciara O'Sullivan (she/her) in an episode of HR Therapy. Our conversation centered around managers: the good, the bad, and the intolerable. Here are some of my key takeaways.
In a word, describe your best and worst managers
My answers: COMPASSIONATE and SOUL-CRUSHING. This audience poll was brilliant and I can't wait for Hebba to share the full word clouds in a future edition of her newsletter, I Hate It Here.
2 in 5 managers say they felt unprepared to lead people. 76% of workers say they have had or currently have a toxic manager. I like to think these two figures are not unrelated. As long as we're sending brand new managers out into the world without additional development, we're setting both sides up for failure. Managers need to learn and practice the functional skills of people leadership (formerly known as "soft" skills, henceforth known as "power" skills). If the panel were to build a new manager toolkit, it would include: Coaching for Performance, Emotional Intelligence, and How to Hire.
As a manager, how should I consider hiring for my team?
Hire people who fill in the gaps. As hiring managers, we need to be brave enough to look inward at our own strengths and weaknesses. Instead of creating a team of folks just like me, I look for diversity. Find people who compliment your skill sets.
Hire the people you'd be excited about and proud to work FOR one day.
A mentor of mine once told me to hire people who are smarter than me. I think that’s definitely part of it–I want to work with people I can learn from, who have skills and perspective that I lack. And, there are definitely other ways my team fills in the gaps. They are more outgoing and are more easily able to build partnerships at work. They have different sets of industry experience and expertise that our employees and leaders need. They are also geographically dispersed, from diverse backgrounds, and are able to provide culturally relevant insight and support to our customers.
What do I do if someone on my team is underperforming?
Get curious. We're all people first. Ayanna hit the nail on the head. A performance improvement plan isn't the first step. The first step is to understand what is going on with this person from a wider angle.
Is there something going on in their life that is taking up their emotional or mental bandwidth? Do they need help prioritizing? Are they struggling because they need to develop a specific functional skill? Do they need top cover or support with managing stakeholders? Do they need coaching or some simple encouragement? Have you recognized their good work lately? Do they feel like they are working on high-impact projects or doing work that aligns with their passion areas? Have we looked across the team and balanced work with strength areas? Do they understand the expectations of them?
The shortcut to getting ahead of "underperformance" on your team is regularly connecting one-on-one with your employees. Ask these questions each week:
What are you excited about? Understand your team's passion areas and interests--what gets them up in the morning. This question also lets them share big wins and keeps you up to date on key milestones.
What is challenging you this week? Understand where your employees are struggling and help them address these gap areas. You can also get ahead of any projects that may fall behind without intervention.
What can I help you with? This is basically your role as a manager--helping your team to remove blockers, get answers, and generally support them.
How do I handle disengagement on my team?
First, recognize that some level of disengagement is normal, depending on the season of life your team is experiencing outside of work. Normalize the cycle of leaning in and pulling back when your team needs it. We do keep a regular cadence of weekly 1:1s and weekly team meetings. We check in with each other and make it not just ok, but the norm, to share big wins and losses from life as well as work. Create the psychological safety your team needs to be human and give them the space they need.
Managers, it's normal for you and your team to disengage sometimes. In fact, it's probably healthy.
Connecting with teammates, particularly if you're a dispersed or remote team, is hard. One thing we did recently as a team was an exercise around identifying our Intention Word for 2023. We shared our words and learned a ton about ourselves and each other. If you know your colleague is currently focusing on health or family or growing professionally, it will help you navigate that work relationship within the context of their priorities.
