Till recently, most of us believed that leadership required us to be just hard driving and results focused. Compassion was considered a “weakness” that came in the way of success. Not anymore! Today we are at the cusp of change in the way we lead, as more and more leaders realize that compassion is critical to their and their companies long term success.

So, what do leaders mean when they see “Compassion” as a leadership value?

Understanding & Empathy

At work, leaders show understanding and empathy by being respectful of their teams and co-workers. Showing our teams that we care and are not just enforcing rules and regulations. Creating an understanding workplace helps build trust within teams and supports camaraderie. An empathic leadership style can make everyone feel like a team and increase productivity, morale and loyalty. Understanding and empathy are powerful tools in the leadership belt of a respected leader.

Understanding and empathy are not just “touchy, feely” stuff! In reality it means-

1. Watching for signs of overwork and burnout and stepping in to help
2. Showing sincere interest in the needs, hopes and dreams of your team
3. Practicing patience
4. Avoiding making assumptions

Kindness

Asking people to be kind in the workplace, sometimes feels strange. But the reality is that kindness creates a ripple effect.  It impacts the general level of positivity, boosts our team’s mood and it’s contagious. The best part? It encourages people to ‘pay it forward’. 

Kindness does not mean creating an unproductive or ineffective workplace. Practically it means-

1. Saying Thank You and meaning it
2. Complimenting people on their work achievements or abilities
3. Listening well
4. Being timely and honest with feedback

Support

Support is something all humans want, need and crave. Support comes in many forms and can be given in words or actions. It is one of the things, most leaders lose sight of in the rush of everyday business. There are many stressors we can’t fix for our teams. But there are steps we can take to make their work lives easier. 

On a day to day basis, supporting our teams means-

1. Prioritizing employee wellness
2. Being Flexible
3. Asking if the team needs help and provide resources and information
4. Making time for the team

Perks like foosball tables and free lunches are great, but when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent, what employees really want is a compassionate organization. According to a 2018 study by Businessolver on the state of workplace empathy, 60% of employees  would be willing to take a pay reduction to work for an empathetic company!

But building a compassionate leadership style or organization culture, does not happen overnight. The first step is to understand how we can be compassionate everyday and make a series of small changes that add up to a massive, long-term impact!

I hope that 2021 will be a breakthrough year for all of us to become more compassionate leaders!

Happy holidays everyone!

More often than not, some of our own behaviors and fears play a big role in our burn out.

There are a lot things that are going on in our lives that affect our mental well being. But I have found that there are some simple things that we can all do that help reduce burnout.

Social Expectations & Self Image

In some cultures, social expectations play a big role in how we view ourselves and how others view us. Being successful is often linked to how busy we are. Working 24/7 is viewed as hallmark of success. The best of us sometimes feel subtly encouraged and validated when people around us say things like “she can’t make it for the family gathering because she is in the middle of a big deal”. Being aware about how these expectations set us up for burnout is a big first step to avoiding it.

Job insecurity

The exceptionally volatile economic situation around the world has made many of us insecure about our jobs. We think that if we work longer hours and are available all the time, the organization will value us more. If they value us more, then we will not be part of any job cuts. Unfortunately, often this is just a fallacy. No doubt that if an organization values us, they will work hard to retain us. But working 24/7 and sacrificing all personal time does not translate into being valued by the company. Overworking is no longer a certain way to retaining our jobs. But it is definitely a certain way to burnout and health breakdown!

Lack of personal interests

I have seen many of my friends sacrifice their hobbies and interests to dedicate themselves to their career. So many people I know  who enjoyed outdoor hobbies like bird watching or hiking have given it up, because they cant “afford” to be away from work over the weekend! Slowly over a period of time we become unidimensional- focused solely on our work and professional networks. Almost all of us talk about pursuing our interests after “retiring”! But why should personal interests wait for retirement? Our belief that we can’t pursue our personal interests while we work at full time jobs is just a self- limiting one! It’s truly time to break this belief.

Our organization’s culture and our manager’s leadership style play a big part in team burnout. But it is time to acknowledge that the things we believe and do also contribute significantly to our burnout. Most importantly, this is something we can change! It’s time to finally recognize and acknowledge our own dysfunctional behaviors and beliefs and try to change as much of it as possible, before we quite literally burn ourselves out!

As we start planning the next year, can we make this our top priority for ourselves?

I once worked for a leader who was based in California and I was based in India. This meant a 12 ½ hour time difference between us in summer and 13 ½ hours in winter! At first, I was amazed at his responsiveness and availability. No matter how late in his evening or how early in his morning I emailed or messaged him, I always received a response. It was like we were working together in the same location. But the elation soon wore out when I realized that he expected me to reciprocate- basically be available 24/7! In 6 months I was on the verge of a burnout but I just could not gather the courage to tell him how hard it was for me. Fortunately for me, before I had a complete burnout, there was a re-org and my manager changed

At another organization I worked for, I continued responding & sending emails when I was on vacation. I had set an out of office message. But I still felt that I needed to be on top of things! After a couple of days of this, my manager sent me this message- “ We all understand that you are on vacation & need the downtime. If there is anything urgent that needs immediate attention, people will get in touch with me. Please don’t worry and enjoy your vacation!” This message really made me stop, think and realize what I was doing to myself and the example I was setting for my own team. All it took was the kindness and understanding of my manager to show me how to do this better!

According to Gallup, the top 5 causes of employee burnout are

1. unfair treatment at work
2. unmanageable workload
3. unclear communication from managers
4. lack of manager support
5. unreasonable time pressure

All of these factors are linked to how a manager leads his/her team! The impact of a direct manager on employee burnout is significant and an important one to keep top of mind, especially while working with remote and distributed teams.

3 things managers can do better to avoid team burnout-

• Differentiate between URGENT and IMPORTANT

It is important to learn to differentiate between what is important and what is urgent. Everything is not urgent and we need to know how to differentiate between urgent and important. Doing this helps us give our team the right priorities without having to run flat out every time to get things done and reduces unreasonable time pressure.

• Balance the team’s workload

Most of us are very driven by the outcomes and goals we want to achieve. Often this means that our very best people get loaded the highest- because “they get stuff done”. It is very common for a few members of the team to be carrying more than 70% of the team’s load. This often makes our top performers feel that they are being treated unfairly as well makes their workload unmanageable. Look at your team carefully and ensure the work load is distributed well. If there are people on the team who are not pulling their weight, do something about it! Help them get better and if that does not work, have the difficult conversation to part ways. Don’t just move their work to others!

• Role model & Support

Overwork is nothing to be celebrated! When we claim to be working through weekends and vacations and expect our teams to do the same, we set a bad example. Let’s remember that more often than not, our teams are running a marathon and need to pace themselves. Intense sprints to get things to done in a hurry are fine once in a way. Making this our go-to management style only ends up creating a burnt out team & high performer attrition! It is also important to check in with the team to understand if they need support- resources, time and information. Provide as much of this as possible. If you can’t, be open that you can’t and be prepared to reset your expectations because of the constraints.

The direct manager plays a significant role in supporting their teams and in avoiding burnout. The things we inadvertently (or deliberately) say and do sets the expectations for our team. As we have often heard, “With great power comes great responsibility”. As leaders and managers it’s important for us to remember that we have great responsibility to our teams!

The statistics on employee burnout tell a grim story!

A study by Deloitte says that 77% of employees have experienced burnout at their current job. This number is 84% for millennials.

Nearly 70% of professionals say their employers don’t do enough to prevent or lessen burnout.

Digital Ocean’s Developer Trends report reveals that that 66% of remote developers are experiencing signs of burnout.

Three things contribute to our burnout-

Organizational Culture

Direct Manager’s leadership style

We as Individuals- the combination of who we are, what’s going on in our lives, our physical and mental health

In this blog, we’ll talk about Organizational Culture

Early in my career I worked for an amazing manager. She was knowledgeable, supportive and had great business acumen. The stories of her hard working nature and commitment were legend in the organization. One famous story that my peers talked about was the time when our manager was pregnant with her first child. She went into labor while at work and continued to email while in labor, until it was impossible to do so! She returned to work full time in 6 weeks!

The organization talked about this behavior as heroic. Something to be admired and emulated! Personally for me, that ended up setting the bar for the commitment we must have towards our jobs and our companies. Very late in my career, I discovered the hard way, that I was wrong!

These behaviors and stories are not about heroes! They just set a wrong precedent and expectation for the organization. The stories that we tell and behaviors that we admire and encourage find their way into our culture. An organization culture that glorifies and rewards late nights & weekend working on a regular basis or staying “on” 24/7 is a hotbed for employee burnout.

The price of employee burnout is eye popping!

Burnout costs between $125 billion and $190 billion every year in healthcare costs in the US alone

Studies show that burnout has a big impact on employee turnover- between 20%-50% or more, depending on the organization.

Is there anything we can do?

Make it ok to talk about it

Employee burnout has been a taboo topic for the longest time. Most of the time, employees experiencing burnout are afraid to talk about it- fearing impact to their jobs and careers. This only ends in a downward spiral with significant impact to the employee’s physical and mental health and with productivity losses and employee turnover. Not talking about burnout is helping no one! Let’s equip our leaders and managers to have these conversations with their teams.

Be clear whether your organization is running a sprint or a marathon

Have you seen how athletes train for a sprint and a marathon? The goal is very clear. In a sprint, the priority is speed while a marathon needs endurance. Athletes train differently for these and their mindsets are different too! The same is true for our organizations. If we are asking our teams to sprint a marathon, we are doomed to fail! There may be teams within the organization that is running a sprint to get a product to market. That’s ok, as long as the company is not expecting the team to continue sprinting for months on end.

Allowing a team to pace themselves does not have to mean loss of accountability. It means building steadily and creating sustainable results and teams.

Stories and Recognition

Becoming aware about what are we recognizing and celebrating in the organization is super important. It’s so tempting to celebrate and tell the story of that time when the team had to make  many personal sacrifices like missing their child’s birth or any other milestone life event, all in the cause of the company. While these sacrifices are significant & must be acknowledged, can we stop for a moment to consider why we are asking people to make this sacrifice in the first place? Being aware as leaders is the first step in creating the culture of the organization.

No doubt employee wellness programs are critical to supporting employee physical and mental health. But these programs will have an impact on our teams, only when we create an organizational culture that truly values an employee’s well being!

How does a learning sprint work?

The biggest challenge with learning and development at the workplace, is that we all want to develop. But we are unable to follow through– either because of time constraints, lack of discipline or lack of support and accountability. It is the biggest reason why so many of us are motivated to sign up for online programs and drop out around the 25% completion mark!

With a “learning sprint” we set a time frame of 3 months. Each team member identified one area they wanted to work on- some chose hard skills (related to their job) and some others picked soft skills (like assertiveness, written communication etc). People chose just one thing they wanted to work on.

Each team member’s development priority was shared within the team- in full transparency.

We divided the team into pairs. The purpose of the pair was to hold each other accountable and provide support when we were getting too busy or lazy to follow through. Each pair set their own rhythm for discussions and catch up. We met once a month as a full team to discuss our learning progress – in a 1 hour team meeting. We openly discussed what was working and what we were struggling with. Some of us sheepishly admitted that we had not done much and that we would try harder!

At the end of the 3 months, feedback from the team showed that we had made considerable progress! Transparency, support and mutual accountability helped the team progress in their development. This in itself was a huge win! The biggest surprising side effect was team camaraderie! Completely unexpected and what an awesome outcome!

With the success of our first learning sprint, we made this our rhythm and started to run 3 sprints a year of 3 months each with a month between sprints. With this we saw a visible big spike in the development of the team.

What we learnt from the “Learning Sprints”

• Learning “one thing at a time” helped us focus and build mastery
• Having a “learning buddy” kept us accountable
• Transparency within the team, gave us the support system and understanding (especially when we struggled)
• The 3 month “learning sprint” time turned out to be just right- It was long enough to go deep and short enough to keep our attention!

We all try to rely our individual discipline and motivation to learn. Working in a “learning sprint” model made me realize that the support of people around us makes this a lot easier!

In the words of Brian Herbert – “The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice”. Learning Sprints support us in making this choice!

As I researched employee engagement during remote work, I came across The Principal Well-Being Index published in October 2020. The study found that for companies in the US-

47% of employees are feeling stressed or overwhelmed due to increased or more demanding workloads

44% of the employees are experiencing low morale because of isolation with remote work

These are significant numbers! And clearly show that nearly half the workforce is feeling the strain of remote work in ways that we had not even considered earlier as important contributors to employee engagement!

As leaders and managers it’s time for us to realize, that now we are solving for somewhat different problems when it comes to employee engagement.

3 things to do differently to address employee engagement-

• Instant feedback

Most companies use an annual or a bi-annual employee engagement survey to measure employee engagement. At this time of extended remote work, this just does not work. Leaders and managers want instant, ongoing feedback that will help them identify issues quickly. We want to know what’s working, what needs tweaking and what needs immediate fixing. An annual survey with 30+ questions just does not cut it any more! Moving to survey that is run more frequently with focused questions is the need of the hour for teams.

• Some dimensions of engagement are more important than others

Annual surveys try to cover all aspects of an employee’s lifecycle in the company. This means long surveys with atleast 30+ questions! With teams working remotely, it is becoming clear that some aspects of engagement are significantly more important than others. It is crucial for teams to identify what these are, get feedback on them and act! Agility with respect to identifying key engagement dimensions is paramount.

• Quick Action

Annual surveys have usually required long lead times for analysis and action planning. Oftentimes this has meant that the actions end up being cookie cutter or irrelevant. With instant feedback, comes the opportunity for quick actions. As leaders and managers, we can focus on the dimensions most important for our teams that need to be addressed. Quick, visible actions can get us back on track if/when we de-rail. It helps us show our teams that we care. It gives us the opportunity to role-model the transparency and openness that we espouse!

Studies show that employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work. Isn’t this a great reason for us to ensure that we act on this?

In the organizations I have worked for, the engagement by tenure curve almost always had a flat U shape. Employees with a tenure of less than a year in the organization, had the highest engagement. Engagement drops steeply in the 1-3 year time frame. It stays low (plateaus) in the 3-5 year tenure band. And starts to go up again for employees with >5 years tenure.

The engagement level never comes back to the <1 year levels anytime during the employee’s tenure in the company!

We all understand that the first year is the “honeymoon” period for new employees. Optimism, novelty of the new workplace, conviction that they have made the right choice and manager attention all play a big role in keeping engagement high in the first year.

So why does this drop so steeply post the first year? And what can we do avoid this?

Data shows that the biggest reasons for the drop in engagement in the 1-5 years of an employee’s tenure are-

Gap in expectations- in professional growth

Most of us join a company with the expectation of career and professional growth. We expect our roles to expand and change on a regular basis. When this doesn’t happen, we are disappointed and engagement drops! More often than not, it is also because we are unable to have this discussion with our managers. Also, our managers sometimes quote “company’s policy” as the excuse, instead of having career discussions!

Tip  

As managers, we have to become comfortable and proficient in having career conversations with our team. We owe it to them to be open with our feedback!

Regular 1:1s and clear performance discussions help the employee understand where they stand and what they need to do.

These 1:1s also help your team know that you care about them and their career. 

Feeling of being taken for granted

New hires get the most attention from their managers. As time passes and the employee settles in the organization, managers assume that things are working well and shift their attention. This results in the employee feeling un-recognized, un-noticed and taken for granted. It’s normal for an employee  to want attention and recognition from his/her manager. It’s important therefore, for us as managers to prioritize this.

Tip

Prioritize recognizing your team members contributions

Personal milestones are important! Remember to congratulate and celebrate!

Lower learning

I have frequently heard employees who have been in a role for even less than a year complain that they “no longer have any new learning” on their job. In the daily rush and pressures, it’s easy for us as managers to forget that our teams want to be constantly challenged. Boredom at work and a the feeling that it’s just “more of the same” is real in today’s world.

Tip

Prioritize development discussions with your team

Be pro-active about sharing opportunities for training, certifications or expanded responsibilities for your team

Be generous about recommending your team member for other opportunities in the company if they want to expand their roles.

Recruiting great talent takes significant effort, time and money. It’s a travesty if the top talent that we hire performs at a sub-optimal level for the most of their tenure at the company, due to low engagement! As leaders and managers we have a big role to play in turning this around and making it better. Ian Hutchinson says it best- “Employee Engagement is an investment we make for the privilege of staying in business”

We brainstormed the issues and possible solutions. Here’s what came up-

Micro-aggression

Micro-aggression has become widely prevalent. Antagonistic behavior from peers has risen, especially because people know that they can get away with it! Collaboration, information sharing and support which is driven largely through “team self regulation” when teams are co-located, has dropped dramatically.

What can leaders & teams to make this better:

• Leaders need to actively discourage “side conversations” and gossip about other team members
• Walk the talk on information sharing- encouraging the team to be open and honest in a team setting.
• Recognize team members who are role models of collaboration. Set expectations that performance is about the “what gets done” and “how it gets done”. There is no place for the “solitary hero” in the team.

Miscommunication & Misunderstandings

With remote work, all communication is through voice calls, chat or email. Written communication, especially when done in the heat of the moment can come across as rude and hurtful. We have all heard that just 7% of communication is through the spoken word, 38% is through vocal cues and 55% through non verbal cues. With virtual communication, teams are losing the context and intention without the face to face non verbal cues. This is leading to people feeling that their peers/leaders are disrespectful or just don’t care about their point of view.

What can leaders & teams do to make this better:

• Use video and voice calls as much as possible
• Resist the temptation to “instantly” respond in anger. Take a minute to re-read the message before sending it
• Read to understand, not just to respond

Marginalization

Women are feeling particularly marginalized in the remote work scenario. On most teams, women are often the minority and were already struggling to make their voice heard before remote work. With remote work and virtual team settings, they are finding themselves in a vicious cycle- they are not able to speak up and are often not heard. Because of this, they are sometimes being viewed as “contributing less” than their male peers.  They are beginning to fear for their future on their teams and company!

What can leaders & teams do to make this better:

Leaders need to lead by example on this one! Encourage the team to let each other speak, listen carefully and respond. This did not mean that everyone should all polite and non-committal. Not at all! There can be heated arguments and discussions. But ensure that no one gets sidelined just because they speak softly or are shy. Coach the team to include their quieter colleagues and making sure that their opinions get fair airtime.

Remote work is new and unfamiliar for many of us. Despite the fact that we will stumble along the way, there is no doubt that we can ultimately get to a good place. Remote work is a great opportunity for us to minimize (& hopefully completely eliminate) workplace toxicity and create workplaces that we can be proud of!

As remote work goes mainstream, more and more companies are hiring talent that is located remotely. The opportunity to bring on board talent with no geographical constraints seems utopian. However, many companies are struggling to make newly hired remote employees successful!

Did you know that the average new hire failure rate (within the first 18 months) is 46%? This percentage goes up significantly when the new hire starts work remotely!

So what are remote new employees struggling with? And more importantly, what can we do to help them?

• Productivity

Most employees use month one to figure out their job- understand where to find the information they need, who to go to, explore existing systems and processes etc. Basically, all things that are required for them to become productive and focused on delivery as soon as possible. New joiners whose first few months are spent remotely are finding it very difficult to find their way around the organization, systems and processes. Not knowing who to ask or go to for help makes it worse!

Some companies have implemented a “buddy” system that works effectively. A buddy is a colleague/ team member who has been with the company atleast for 3-6 months and knows his/her way around the organization, systems and process. Creating a single point of contact makes it easier for the new hire to figure things out quickly from a work perspective.

• Team Connections

We all know that building strong work relationships with our colleagues is critical to our success. And we have all invested time, energy and effort to build this every time we join a new company or team. Joining an existing team as a remote new hire makes building these critical relationships very hard.

Some of the hacks that team managers are using to help their new hires build these connections are-

1. Running “Know your team” virtual team events. These are a combination of a team social event as well as more intensive team bonding activity
2. Rotational pairing- pairing the new hire for 1 or 2 weeks at a time with another team member for delivery. This pairing changes every 1 to 2 weeks. This gives the new joiner enough time working closely with multiple colleagues on real delivery. Since this is on rotation, the new hire is able to build a rapport with multiple colleagues within his/her first 3 months in the company.

• Manager Sponsorship

As leaders, we play a critical role in setting up our teams for success. With remote new joiners, our responsibility as people leaders increases even further. Many of the effective leaders I know are doing the following to help their new remote hires

1. Setting expectations (& goals) within the first one month
2. Scheduling weekly check-ins with the new hire for the first 3 months
3. Ensuring two way feedback and discussions happen regularly

Supporting every one of our team members to be successful is our responsibility as leaders. Everything we can do to achieve this, for our remote hires, will make us and our teams better!

In the words of  John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and diplomat- “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”

He had put together a very talented team, but some of them were just not able to work with each other. He ended up having to constantly step in to “referee” or resolve issues. This was frustrating especially because he wanted the culture of freedom and autonomy to be the foundation of the team’s culture.

As we chatted it became clear that this situation had arisen after one individual joined the team. He was super-talented, had a history of success in his previous organizations and was someone that the founder believed was critical to the success of his company. The issue was with his style. He  frequently “forgot” to keep the others in the loop on important decisions, decided priorities unilaterally and only showed up for team meetings, if the founder was part of the meeting. The individual was clearly disruptive and dysfunctional to the team! When I asked the founder if he had given this person feedback and asked him to fix the issues- his answer was “No, I haven’t. He is a top performer, I don’t want to piss him off”!

Unfortunately, this story is a very common one. Most of us have been faced with the dilemma of how to deal with a perceived “star” team member who is dysfunctional to the team.

The reality is that “the culture we create, is a combination of what we encourage and what we tolerate”. Most of us get the “encourage” part right. But we frequently miss the “tolerate” part!

Three things to do to bring your team back on track-

• Identify the team behaviors that are dysfunctional

Sometimes, it is easy to fall into the trap that one person is the problem and letting them go will solve the issue. However, more often than not, others on the team would have the same dysfunctional behavior or learnt it quickly as a way to survive and succeed. Identifying the behaviors that are dysfunctional to the team is the first step to creating the team’s culture.

• Call out dysfunctional team behaviors

As leaders, it is important for us to have the courage to discuss dysfunctional team behaviors with the team. Be open about discussing the kind of team culture you want to create. Work with the team to identify team behaviors that conflict with the team culture you want to create. Set expectations that there will be zero tolerance for these dysfunctional behaviors going forward.

• Act

The biggest point of failure is not acting when dysfunction persists. Action does not always have to be a “firing” event. Action includes- feedback, support to improve, recognizing changed behavior …. Letting a person go should be the last resort. But it is important to recognize that sometimes this may be the only option!

When dysfunctional team behaviors are tolerated, it gives the team free reign to continue the behavior and it becomes clear to others that this is acceptable behavior. Acting on this is our responsibility as leaders!

The culture we create is always not just about what we encourage and reward. In the words of Gruenter & Whitaker – “The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate”