Career & Office

Make Your Organization Change-Ready…

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The best time to prepare for change is before it starts. But you don’t always have that luxury, especially when the future is uncertain and unstable. Instead you need to equip your organization to thrive in a state of constant change by reshaping its relationship to it. Here’s how:

  • Convey a different mindset. Don’t talk about change as something to be controlled and managed. Have an attitude that any change — good or bad, big or small, expected or unwelcome — is an opportunity for growth and improvement.
  • Conduct a “change audit.” Assess your organization’s readiness for a world in constant flux. Where is change hitting hardest in your organization? Which departments, functions, and teams have excelled despite the instability of the last 18 months — and why?
  • Assign someone to be responsible for your organization’s change-readiness. Depending on the size of your organization, it may be time to add a chief change officer whose cross-functional role is dedicated to helping the entire company prepare for a change-heavy future.

Lead with Compassion When the News Is Terrible…

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Chances are, your team is feeling a host of emotions these days — from anger to despair to helplessness. It can feel impossible to focus on work when the world feels out of control. But as a manager, you can’t default to silence when something tragic or traumatic happens. Acknowledge it, and create space for conversation or grief. Address what happened in an email or team meeting.

Share your own reaction, and make sure everyone knows about available resources. Make space for a range of reactions — some team members might see work as a distraction, while others might need to talk. Identify what you can remove from people’s plates: Perhaps you order lunch for your team this week or shift a deadline to take some pressure off.

Finally, help your team channel their energy towards positive change. This could mean establishing a new employee resource group, finding opportunities for the team to volunteer or donate, or simply recommitting to supporting each other when times are tough.

Middle Managers Can Learn from Middlemen…

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The term “middleman” usually conjures up a negative image — someone who creates costs and slows things down. The truth is almost the opposite: Middlemen usually can make things happen more efficiently than those who specialize in other job functions. Middle managers can learn from middlemen in three ways:

  • Look for gaps between the silos. People who can bridge the “structural holes” in organizations, who understand the needs and resources of different teams, can bridge cultural divides.
  • Keep both sides honest. The middleman’s power comes from a unique vantage point that can keep one or both sides accountable for delivering on the end product.
  • Be a single point of contact for your team. Middlemen can help with information overload, filtering out the noise and delivering crucial data.

In-person work doesn’t always hold the advantages it’s often believed to…

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As the hybrid era unfolds, the benefits of in-person work are increasingly misunderstood. To get the most out of your time together as a team, you need to be aware of the common myths about in-person work.

Myth #1: People learn more effectively in person. Because it rarely affords opportunities for meaningful practice and feedback, in-person learning is often less impactful than well-designed virtual learning. Make an effort to regularly design these types of experiences for your team.

Myth #2: In-person events help create (or strengthen) culture. Culture is built upon what your team experiences all day, every day at work—not what they experience when they step away from the normal routine for a workshop, keynote, or holiday party. Don’t depend on these outlier events; commit to building a healthy culture in the day-to-day, hybrid flow of things.

Myth #3: In-person gatherings are necessary to give people a break from screens. Healthy screen habits shouldn’t depend on where your employees are working from. They can—and should—be developed remotely, too. Encourage both your remote and in-office employees to unplug routinely.

Myth #4: Networking and human connection can only happen in person. False! People have long been able to develop meaningful relationships by writing letters and emails and speaking on the phone. Add video calls to that list.

How to Stop Catastrophizing…

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Leaders who create doomsday scenarios out of everyday setbacks—what behavioral scientists call catastrophizing—risk spreading their stress to their teams. If your catastrophizing is trickling down and getting in the way of your leadership, here are some ways to begin addressing it.

First, catastrophizing is a learned behavior, so be curious about how and when you learned it. Think about the formative seasons of your life when you started to foresee impending disasters. These stories may be painful to recall, but identifying the root of your habit is the first step toward interrupting it.

Then, interrogate the data you’re collecting. Ask yourself: What cues are telling you that the worst will happen? Are there circumstances, people, or challenges that regularly trigger your doomsday thinking? Are you fabricating fears based on past experiences? What positive data might you be ignoring?

To regulate your emotional state when you’re anxious about an outcome, first turn your attention to your physical experience. Simple changes to your breathing and environment can calm down your system in the moment.

Finally, acknowledge the consequences your catastrophic thinking has on others. As a leader, your mood sets the tone for your team. To maintain a healthy environment, acknowledge how your tendency to catastrophize might affect them. And, if necessary, apologize for your past behavior and talk about what steps you’re taking to grow.

Build a stronger work ethic for success…

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Work ethic refers to a set of principles around work, such as reliability, productivity, autonomy, and ability to collaborate. While work ethic may come naturally to some people, it can also be learned and sharpened. Here’s how.

  • Develop self-discipline. This comes down to better understanding your impulses so you can manage them, creating systems to hold yourself accountable, and setting yourself up to have the energy you need to do good work.
  • Reset your priorities every day. Spend a few minutes in the morning identifying which items you need to get done. The trick is to find a balance between tasks that are urgent and must be finished today and tasks that are contributing to longer-term, but equally important, projects.
  • Be a team player. Collaboration doesn’t just increase the impact of your work and serve your team, it also demonstrates your dependability.
  • Own your work. Take pride in your to-do list. If something doesn’t make sense to you, don’t wait for direction—ask questions to get clarity. If you have an idea that you think is great, pitch it.

Improve Your Listening Skills…

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Becoming a better listener takes time and practice. Here are a few things you can do to improve this critical communication skill.

  • Establish why you’re listening. When entering a conversation, briefly reflect on the goals of the conversation and how you can best listen in that moment. For example, is your conversation partner seeking an honest critique, an analytical reflection, or an emotional connection? Then stay focused on that objective.
  • Don’t make the conversation about you. While interjecting your own personal story can be an act of empathy and relationship-building, it can also derail the focus of the conversation. It’s okay to insert personal comments as long as you redirect the conversation back to the other person.
  • Always ask for more context if you need it. Sometimes, just pausing and asking a probing follow-up question is the most powerful way to glean more information — and to show your conversation partner that you’re really present.

Plan your work relationships for career success…

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As you advance in your career and climb the corporate ladder, your relationships with your peers are bound to get riskier and more complex; your collaborators can become, in many ways, your competitors. Here are three ways to effectively navigate these potentially messy — and critically important — relationships.

  • Don’t always expect friendship. While it’s important to be cordial, there’s a limit to how much emotional bonding is healthy as you ascend to the top. Keep it friendly, but maintain boundaries. Oversharing personal information can cause conflict and awkwardness in the long term.
  • Manage sideways. When you’re being considered for the executive ranks, leaders may ask your peers for their opinions about you. It’s often an informal dialogue and generally isn’t acknowledged as part of the formal performance review process, but it matters. So nurture your peer relationships, and stay attuned to how your colleagues experience you on a day-to-day basis.
  • Assess the political landscape. Candidly evaluate the behaviors that are rewarded in your organization. Figure out who gets promoted and why. Be strategic — broker mutually beneficial relationships with colleagues who are in favor and influential, and pursue mentors who make decisions and can sponsor your development.

Speak with Confidence When You’re Put on the Spot

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To be a truly impactful leader, you need to master the art of spontaneous speaking. This means not just delivering your carefully crafted keynote, but nailing the Q&A and small talk afterward, or making memorable off-the-cuff toasts and speeches. Contrary to popular assumptions, you don’t need to be an inherently charming extrovert to communicate effectively when put on the spot. Here’s how to build the muscle.

First, avoid predictable default responses, which prevent you from connecting with others in more genuine, appropriate, creative, and productive ways. Instead, invoke analogies or shared references that can help you engage your listeners. For example, when you’re asked to make a public introduction, don’t just list the roles on the person’s résumé—tell a story about how they added value to the team. To take some pressure off yourself, remember that you don’t need to be the star of the show. Listeners are more apt to trust and approve of you when you speak like a human being rather than an actor or a robot.

And finally, don’t underestimate the power of listening. Give yourself space to process the information. Paraphrasing or asking open-ended follow-up questions can help confirm your understanding and provide extra time to think about your response.

Don’t Lose Sight of These Critical Leadership Behaviors

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Consider this paradox: As you grow in your career, your brain develops in ways that undermine your ability to excel as a leader. Here are three essential leadership behaviors you need to commit to and protect as you develop professionally.

  • Being future-focused. The higher up the ladder you climb, the farther out you need to think. Resist the urge to value the immediate and short-term future over the long term. Rather than just ensuring the quality of today’s work, you must constantly scan for what’s next—and ensure your team is prepared.
  • Being good with people. As you accrue responsibility, it’s easy to give too much attention to high-level strategy and not enough to your relationships. Becoming a truly transcendent leader means finding a balance between technical and social skills and between goals and people.
  • Being able to drive realistic results. More power tends to make leaders more optimistic about what’s achievable. Make an effort to stay grounded: Pay attention to the data, details, and your employees’ perspectives and set sensible targets accordingly.