Management

How Emotional Bookending Can Help You Make Better Decisions…

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Making difficult decisions can be an emotionally charged experience. Whether you’re hiring someone, firing someone, or reshuffling your team, the complexity of the decision can cause a range of emotions to surface, such as fear, anxiety, overwhelm, or excitement. However, these emotions can be harnessed to help you make better choices by using a technique called “emotional bookending.”

Emotional bookending involves identifying the decision you need to make and naming the exact emotion you’re feeling in response to it. By acknowledging and naming your emotions, you create a little space between your emotions and your actions. This space allows you to become more self-aware and better able to understand why you’re feeling the way you are.

Once you’ve named your emotions, the next step is to visualize how you might feel on the other side of the decision. Will you feel a sense of accomplishment or relief, or will there still be some anxiety there? This exercise allows you to project the emotions you’ll feel in the wake of your decision, which can help you untangle the discomfort you’re feeling in the face of it.

For example, let’s say you’re considering firing an employee who’s been with your company for years. You might feel a sense of guilt or sadness about letting them go. By emotional bookending, you can acknowledge these feelings and then visualize how you might feel on the other side of the decision. Perhaps you’ll feel a sense of relief that you’ve made the right choice for your company, or maybe you’ll feel a sense of sadness but also a sense of opportunity to find someone who’s a better fit for the role.

Emotional bookending is a powerful tool that can help you make better decisions. By identifying and naming your emotions, you create space between your emotions and your actions, allowing you to move forward with greater clarity and confidence.

Delegating to your Team…

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Giving employees autonomy to make decisions and solve problems is critical for your team’s innovation, performance, and motivation. But for many managers, trusting your team’s ability to self-manage is easier said than done. 

Here’s how you can mentally prepare to delegate. 

Reflect on what’s holding you back from empowering people to make decisions in the past. Is a specific failure haunting you? Are you a controlling person by nature? What were your feelings when you delegated in the past, and what can you learn from them? 

Next, plan for a gradual transition of responsibilities. Start by giving low-risk decisions to capable people. This approach will help you build up confidence in yourself as a delegator—and in your employees as decision-makers—before you distribute responsibility more widely. Think of this as an opportunity to grow. 

As you develop as a leader, it’s natural to shift your focus from small, in-the-weeds decisions to bigger-picture ones that inform strategy, innovation, and growth. Embrace these newer, higher-stakes responsibilities. 

Finally, remind yourself that increased autonomy is good for your team’s morale. The best leaders give their people opportunities to develop and harness their own insights.

Appreciate Problem Finding…

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Sometimes it’s best to throw the old leadership adage – “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.”

In fact asking your team for input on what isn’t working, what’s missing, and where the bottleneck for the status quo is critical. 

Problems are a prerequisite for innovation.

How to get the best out of your team…

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As a manager, you need to have confidence in your team’s engagement, effort, and performance. How to get the best out of your team? Start by asking yourself these six questions.

Have I been clear about expectations? Without this cue, your team won’t feel a sense of purpose—or be able to strategically organize their time, energy, and resources.

Are those expectations reasonable? If the current goals are unrealistic, you may need to seek out more resources or recalibrate your expectations. You may also need to provide more guidance to help your team achieve its goals.

Could something else be going on? If you notice a dip in someone’s performance, have a direct and kind conversation to find out the cause. Be patient: There may be personal events at play, such as an ailing family member, a breakup, or additional caregiving responsibilities.

Am I in the way? Grant your team the autonomy to realize your vision. Don’t micromanage.

Am I holding everyone to the same standard? Beware unconscious bias. If you’re unsure whether you’re being fair to everyone, talk with a trusted colleague to get their perspective on the situation.

Am I providing good and timely feedback? Reach out and set up a candid conversation as soon as a potential misalignment appears. It’s much better to catch it early, and not let issues fester.

How to coach your team…

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Being a great manager isn’t just about helping individuals reach their full potential—it’s also about leading your team as a unit. Here are the three main coaching approaches that can help your team develop together and achieve collective goals.

No-blame coaching. Treating both success and failure as opportunities to learn will allow your team to become more willing to challenge assumptions, admit when something isn’t working, and pivot from mistakes—which, in turn, enables faster and cheaper failures, and bigger breakthroughs.

Discussion-based coaching. Take a Socratic approach to team discussions, asking great questions and giving your team the space to problem-solve and brainstorm in their own way. With this approach, you’ll gain insight into how well team members understand the work and where additional support may be required.

Problem-based coaching. Treat problems and challenges as opportunities for team development. Rather than stepping in and taking over when a problem arises, encourage your team to work together to solve it—with your availability and support. This approach will lead to accelerated learning, boosted confidence, and collective investment in the work.

Don’t Be Too Rehearsed Before a Critical Talk…

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Before a critical presentation, the best thing you can do is rehearse – a lot. That doesn’t mean you need to memorize every line (which will make you sound too rehearsed). Your goal should be to feel confident in what you’re saying while leaving room for spontaneity. 

The trick is to spend extra time practicing the beginning and the end of your talk, including your first and last slides. The introduction sets the stage for your message and gives your audience a reason to care. Your conclusion determines which ideas people will walk away with. If you nail these two sections of the talk, you’ll probably do well no matter what happens. 

You should also repeatedly practice any sections that have complex or technical content. While you rehearse, consider recording yourself on your phone; play it back to watch for distracting habits (fidgeting, avoiding eye contact) and areas where you seem unsure of yourself. Rehearse those sections a few more times.

Make your Team Work Smarter — Not Harder

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At times, we’ve all spent too much time and effort working on the wrong things, whether it’s putting hours into status updates that never get read, or prioritizing a presentation’s design over the message. As a manager, you can help your team avoid these pitfalls and prioritize the tasks that matter the most. 

First, set clear end dates for large initiatives, assign approximate hours for key project milestones, and coach people if they’re spending too much time on a specific task. At the same time, avoid crossing the line into micromanaging. 

Emphasize that perfect is often the enemy of good. Encourage team members to set timers for smaller tasks, like crafting emails or searching for images for presentations. Also, remind them that it’s okay to make mistakes; the typo in the newsletter or the file that wasn’t attached to the email will not make or break their career. 

Finally, help them make connections across the organization so they know who can help them and answer questions when necessary. Emphasize that you don’t expect them to go it alone and that collaborating with others can make sure that you all are collectively working on the right things on behalf of the organization.

In the end, focusing on these will help you and your team work smarter rather than harder.

Build Learning into Team’s Culture…

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How can you help your team learn in the flow of work? Here are three strategies to try. 

Build constructive feedback.

To start, build constructive feedback into your team’s regular workflows. Allot time in meeting agendas and project calendars to consider what worked well and what would make the process and outcomes even better. Proactively showing your team what they’re doing well will increase confidence and prompt people to continue stretching their potential. 

Normalise making mistakes.

Next, normalize making mistakes so employees fear them less and learn from them more. Encourage them to quickly share with someone else when they mess up, focusing on the question: What did you learn from that mistake? To model this behavior, you might start your monthly team meeting by sharing an insight you learned from a mistake you made. 

Encourage experimentation.

Finally, encourage experimentation. Show your team that you’re open to their pitches and willing to prototype and pilot good ideas. You might ask: What is one idea for improvement that would support you in achieving your objectives for this quarter? To make that idea happen, what would you need to start, stop, or change? And how could you test that idea quickly? Asking your employees to think outside the box will stoke learning and development on your team.

How to build trust as a Leader…

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To be effective, leaders need their team’s trust. But how do you get that trust — and how do you get it back if you’ve lost it? Three behaviors are essential. 

Demonstrate expertise and judgment.

The first behavior is to demonstrate expertise and judgment. People are more likely to trust you if they believe you have the technical know-how and the experience to make good decisions about the team’s work. 

Create positive relationships.

The second is to create positive relationships with your team. There are a number of ways to do this, including helping employees cooperate, resolving conflicts between others, giving honest feedback, and checking in with people about their concerns. 

Be consistent.

The last behavior is to be consistent. You must do what you say you will do. Follow through on your commitments and keep any promises you make. You don’t need to be perfect at these three behaviors to be a trusted leader — but you do need to be good at them.

Re-energize Your Team…

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If your team is depleted, demotivated, and drained, you can deploy a few strategies to re-energize them. 

Proactively initiate purpose-driven career conversations.

And make them routine. People want to know they’re on a path of growth and opportunity for a more significant impact. Include caring feedback on areas to improve so that your employees are ready to take on new opportunities when they arise. 

Create team rituals that foster relationships and a sense of belonging. 

When people feel deeply connected to their peers, it energizes work and makes it more fun. You might open team meetings with various prompts—for example, asking people to share something they’re grateful for that day or one word that describes how they’re feeling. The idea is that, over time, the team becomes a place of collective refuge and trust. 

Swap productivity paranoia for helpful prioritization.

Finally, rather than worrying about whether or not people are working enough, spend time helping people prioritize what’s most important. Help them eliminate non-value-added activities and connect each person’s work to the organization’s most important priorities. This will help create a sense of positive productivity as people engage in purposeful work rather than work for work’s sake.