"Can I offer you some feedback?"

Scared you, didn’t we?

According to the SCARF model created by Dr. David Rock, this question can induce the exact same response in our nervous system as fast footsteps walking behind us at night in a dark alley. And we really do mean “exact.” In the first one-fifth of a second, your brain can’t tell the difference between physical danger and what we call “social danger.” In this case, it’s the “fear” that you’re about to be criticized.

This is what we call triangulation: Person A (Will) has a problem with Person B (Jada), so they talk about that problem with Person C (Jaden). It happens in families and in organizations alike, and if these behaviors are common in your workplace, beware.

Triangulation can be so common in the workplace that we can fail to recognize it. During our 25 years of working with organizations, we’ve seen organizational cultures truly damaged by workplace negativity, and often the leaders in these companies have no idea of the source or even the nature of the problem.

Meetings can’t just stop because work teams are now distributed. Work still needs to get done and managers still need to connect with their teams. Duh, right?

Many of us are now participating in a massive work-from-home experiment. As we learn to adjust to the new working conditions that the COVID-19 pandemic has created, it’s important that leadership teams upgrade their toolbelts, including the skills needed to run effective and enjoyable remote meetings. When they’re done right, these meetings can foster an environment of connection and collaboration where stuff gets done. When they’re done poorly, they can really suck.

Some of us have been managing remote teams for years, but for many this is a brand new (and slightly anxiety-producing) experience.  Our 3-hour virtual workshop Managing REMOTELY with Mind and Heart (a spinoff of our popular 5-day leadership development workshop, Managing with Mind and Heart) provides new and experienced managers with ready-to-use skills for maintaining employee morale and engagement, communicating effectively, reinforcing team commitments and values, and managing productivity. 
 
Here are some quick and easy(ish) practices and tips to help you set your remote team up for success: 

The only thing worse than a poorly run meeting is a poorly run meeting filled with people who are behaving poorly. 

So how do you get people to bring their best selves to meetings?  Here are a few tips:

This meeting started 10 minutes late. Jerry has his head down on the conference room table. Glenn, our “note taker,” is writing a long political piece on Facebook while my manager tries to rein in people who are having side conversations about the drama in this year’s Oscars. Can we just get this meeting started already? What are we talking about anyways? I literally have no clue what we’re meeting about. The only agenda item said, “Discuss important matters.” At least we got something that resembles an agenda this time. Boy, do I have a lot of work to get done that I’m not doing as I sit here in my fifth meeting of the week. (It’s Tuesday.) This meeting has officially sucked my soul right out of me.

Consider the case of Jane and John, two coworkers who once had a cordial relationship with one another:

Meet Jane. We all have a Jane in our workplace. Jane talks to think, meaning when she is processing a thought or idea, she does so out loud. It often appears as if we are witnessing her think in real time. She is quick on her feet, excellent at motivating others and tends to get a lot accomplished. She’s funny, social, welcoming, and people seem to like her and tend to rally behind her.

Sheila, a leader for a team of project managers, has a tight deadline to deliver on an important client project. Her back is against the wall. She is getting a lot of heat from the client. Sheila grabs one of her employees, Anthony, and tells him, “I need you to put together an up-to-date expense report for the project and send it over to me. It’s important that we have all the information ready for the next time I see our client. Please get this to me ASAP.” A week later, Sheila is preparing for a big meeting the next day with the client when she realizes Anthony has yet to get her the report she asked for. What the hell! She thinks to herself. I was clear on how important this meeting was and that I needed it right away. Sheila gives Anthony a ring but he doesn’t pick up. . .

According to research, one of the strongest predictors of success for middle managers is that they held regular one-on-one meetings with the people who reported directly to them. But we don’t need research to recommend this. After 23 years of training managers and helping organizations become healthier, we have found that there’s not a more effective, broad-reaching, morale- and relationship-building practice than intentional, regular, scheduled one-on-one meetings with employees.

The short answer? Yes, but with caution.

The longer answer:

Many leadership consultants will tell you, “Absolutely NOT! Do not be friends with the people you supervise.” We respectfully disagree.

In our experience, most organizations do an abysmal job of preparing “individual contributors” (the current euphemism for non-managers) for the challenges associated with moving from being a peer to being a manager. In most cases, the “preparation” consists of…well…zilch. Sort of a “welcome to management – good luck” approach.

There is a big difference between hearing what someone said to you and that person actually feeling heard. And it’s a hugely important difference! According to research, most people experience being truly heard as synonymous with being cared about. In fact, in one study teenagers who were being listened to by adults who used a specific set of listening skills (see below) later reported that they believed the adult they had been talking to cared about them – even though there was nothing in the content of the conversation that would have given them that impression. Being listened to feels like being cared about, which makes this particular adaptive skill a “must have” for anyone who manages other people. As previously explored here, for employees to become fully engaged, they need to know that the person they report to directly cares about them as a human being, and not just as a cog in their system. 

THE SKILLS THAT MAKE OR BREAK YOUR SUCCESS

In my ideal manager world the people and situations I encounter day-to-day fit me perfectly: events happen at my pace and on my timeline, so I never need to be flexible; others always agree with my perspective, so there’s no need for me to try to understanding theirs; people “get me” and can read my mind, so I don’t have to work at communicating; I never make a mistake, so there’s never anything to own or apologize for; others naturally do what I want, so I never have to confront or have a difficult conversation; and since everything in my perfect world already fits me perfectly, stress is foreign to me, so I don’t have to learn how to manage it. I am the center of my perfect universe, and everybody and everything in it conforms exactly to what works for me.

And then my alarm goes off, and I wake up.

Any time a group of research subjects are asked what they want or need from their manager/boss at work, some version of “caring and respect” usually comes out on top. This doesn’t mean they want to be friends or that they’re looking for hugs or anything like that. It simply speaks to the very human need to be cared about by people who have authority over us. John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, noted that “human beings are looking to be loved and approved of by someone in a position of authority.” 

“Many people spend nearly half their waking hours in relationship with a person who has power over them, and that’s weird. It’s kind of unnatural, because most people, whether conscious or not, don’t feel comfortable with other people having power over them.” – Mike Nash discussing the workplace power differential on The Managing with Mind & Heart Podcast

* * *

When you stop and think about it, one of the only contexts in which we as adults consciously enter into relationships characterized by actual “authority” (where one person is “superior” to the other in rank and decision-making control) is at work.

Employees need to know that you, as their boss, have their best interests at heart. In fact, whether they know they’re doing this or not, they are checking you out to determine whether or not this is true. If they determine (consciously or not) that you don’t really care about them as people, that you’re not interested in their success, their wellbeing, or their workplace morale (have we mentioned morale?), they will literally experience (again, conscious or not) fear. Why fear? Because you have power over them, and when someone is in relationship with someone else who has power over them AND that person believes that the more powerful person doesn’t really care about them…well, that’s (literally) scary.

If you’ve worked with Nash Consulting for ten minutes, you’ll have heard our favorite quote by Dr. Stephen Covey: “You can pay employees for their backs and their hands, but they volunteer their hearts and their minds.”

We might come across a little obsessed with the topic of workplace morale…mostly because we are.

If you’re a manager, employee morale ought to be near the very top of your job description, your daily “to do” list, your personal evaluation form, your yearly goal worksheet, your list of company values, your yellow sticky notes – you get the picture. Morale isn’t the only thing that matters in the workplace, of course, but here’s the bottom line: If employees aren’t “volunteering” their hearts and their minds – if they’re just showing up in order to get a paycheck – you’ll never get the things you really want.

Tact does not always make its way into corporate e-mail, and what may seem like an innocent announcement from your perspective could be a morale-crushing message to the people on the other end.  Below are a collection of e-mails that executives have actually sent to their employees that may have had a different impact than was intended.

Consider this tip: take a few extra moments to craft your office e-mails, and give them a once-over (or two-over or maybe even a three-over) before sending them out to your employees.  Those extra minutes could save you days – or even weeks – of employee frustration, resentment and low morale. Technically, this is called "organizational empathy" - the ability to predict how your communications (or lack thereof) will impact others. 

In a recent study of 1,500 employees from across the work spectrum, when asked about the factors that kept them motivated, 87% of the participants included the words "recognition" and "reward."  To add to this, what has been shown to be most effective in motivating employees aren't rewards or compensations made by the company at-large, but rather encouragement and recognition initiated directly by the manager or supervisor.  

One-on-one meetings can be an incredibly effective way to help build rapport with your employees and accomplish most of the "Top 15 Management Skills" (see article in "tips").  In fact, when I go back and check in with the agencies I've worked with in the past, I so often find that those agencies that have experienced positive culture change attribute a large part of their success to the fact that every employee is regularly meeting with his/her direct supervisor.  This is much more effective than relying on an "open door policy," which tends to be reactive instead of proactive and emphasizes the employee needing to pursue you instead of you pursuing the employee.  Believe me - these differences make a big difference, in terms of the employee feeling valued and respected.