Leadership

21
jan
HRDQU Webinars | Optimistic Leadership in the Age of Uncertainty

Optimistic Leadership in the Age of Uncertainty

Posted by LeadershipNo Comments

By Devin C. Hughes

People thrive on positive reinforcement — nothing feels better than receiving a compliment for a job well done.

What about those little day-to-day tasks that keep things flowing smoothly, though? Those are often forgotten in the shuffle, but the reality is, these deserve acknowledgment just as much as the big accomplishments.

What does this have to do with anything? Well…

Tell them and mean it

Your job for the rest of 2021 is to get into the habit of showing appreciation (authentically) to your co-workers. This will require you to actively seek out things that they are doing well. If your assistant does a stellar job, tell them so! Did your boss nail that difficult negotiation? Let them know it was awesome!

Do you work remotely or have perhaps the toughest job of all — stay-at-home parent?

No problem! Show gratitude to the front desk person or the folks in the mailroom, or the helpful sales clerk that went the extra mile. These verbal reinforcements not only give them a little boost they may have needed, but you will actively be showing your gratitude for a job well done, whatever that may be.

Make it a habit

When you get in the habit of acknowledging these positive acts, you, yourself, will find that you feel better about your life and how full it is, rather than focusing on the things you don’t have. There’s something to be said for the power of positive thoughts and actions.

Try to show your gratitude toward your co-workers at least two or three times a week. After a week, you’ll find you’re doing it more and more without even thinking about it.

That’s the power of gratitude. It’s self-perpetuating. It’s an acquired taste but one that they will get used to.

On a side note, Be spontaneous and have a little fun

Everyone wants to have fun at work—even though everyone defines “fun” a little differently. Fun happens when people feel well-connected with a team where there’s mutual respect, open communication, acceptance of who people are, and everyone’s collaborating and working toward the same goal. When teams are working well together, it makes it easier to be spontaneous and have some fun – whether it’s a last-minute Football Friday party after a project launch, or a brief pause in the afternoon to tell stories and have a few laughs over topics that have nothing to do about work.

Sometimes we all need a break from the seriousness of business.

Some Ways to Show Employees How Much You Really Care and be an Optimistic Leader

Boss for the day

Let an employee be “Boss for the Day” and proclaim a jeans day, potluck or make a speech at a team meeting.

Lunch with the Boss

Take your employees out to lunch and let them choose the location. Do your best to keep work-related discussions to a minimum. Take this time to get to know more about what your employee’s interests and hobbies are beyond their work lives.

Impromptu time off

Spontaneous late arrival or early departure days are always a motivator. For example, send a quick email that says, “It’s a beautiful afternoon. Go enjoy it.”

Time off coupons

Give out coupons for 15 minutes of time off as a spot award. Employees can collect them to add up to leaving an hour early one day or coming in late one day.

Work-from-home day

Remember significant events in your employees’ personal lives, such as a child starting kindergarten, and give them a work-from-home day so they can participate without worrying about coming into the office on time.

Indoor food truck (when you are back in the office)

On a hot day, have the leadership team go around the office with a cart handing out ice cream (e.g., Klondike bars, ice cream sandwiches, etc.). On a cold day, have them push around a “Cocoa Cart,” serving hot chocolate to the team.

Cookies for a cause

For an employee who’s an active volunteer, have specially shaped cookies made and delivered with a thank you card. The shapes should reflect the cause the employee cares about. For instance, if the employee volunteers with military veterans, the cookies might be in the shapes of stars and flags.

Winter fun in the office

Put on a season of “Summer Fun” from Valentine’s Day to Labor Day where everyone is in for a drawing of a sleep-in day, long lunch, or early release. Each week winners are announced, and everyone usually “wins” something twice per summer.

This blog is from the webinar The Optimistic Leader | Managing Stress and Building Resilience During Uncertain Times.

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8
jan

Convert Classroom Activities to Engaging Virtual Activities

Posted by Leadership, Virtual LearningNo Comments

by Cindy Huggett, CPTD

You may be wondering…. Can you really do anything in a virtual classroom? Can it be as effective as an in-person learning experience? Can you engage a remote audience? The answer to all of these questions is “yes”, and more!

You may be thinking, but what about experiential exercises? What about hands-on technical topics? Or about simulated role plays? The answer to all of these is “yes.”

The reason for the positive answers to these questions comes from three key decisions when setting up your virtual training. First, to get creative with your program design. Next, to choose the right online platform for your program’s needs. And third, to upskill your facilitators for virtual delivery. With the right tools and the right mindsets, you can do anything in a virtual classroom.

Let’s take a closer look at getting creative with the program design and tools, using two examples.

Example 1: Icebreakers

The start of any training program typically includes introductions. In a traditional in-person class, participants may take turns introducing themselves in small groups, or if it’s just a few attendees, to the large group. Often a “fun” icebreaker element is added in, to help participants get comfortable with each other and to set the stage for interaction.

When transferring this activity to the online classroom, it’s tempting to skip over the introductions and jump into the content. But don’t make this mistake… it’s even more important to create a social environment in a virtual classroom and to set the stage for interaction. It’s also easy to do using simple platform tools.

You can invite introductions in chat, and then use poll questions to find out what everyone has in common. Or you could place everyone into small breakout groups at the start of the event for a quick, 5-minute introductory conversation. Or, have a discussion question on screen and do a ‘round-robin’ to have each person answer it via status indicators or a quick verbal response. What all of these methods have in common is that everyone gets involved in a social experience, right at the start of the event.

Example 2: Case Studies and Role Plays

Case studies and role plays are common methods used in traditional training classes. They simulate real-world scenarios and help participants apply lessons learned back on the job. There are several methods to replicate these activities in a virtual classroom, ranging from simple to complex.

One easy way is to post a case study description on screen and ask participants to discuss it verbally or via chat. Alternatively, you could provide the case study details in an electronic handout and use breakout rooms for small group discussion. Collaborative whiteboards allow for group note taking and brainstorming, if the case study calls for that.

If you’re creative with the program design, and the case study has enough depth, you could invite the small groups to work collaboratively together, returning to the virtual classroom after an extended period of time. This technique is especially useful if the training curriculum is a series of virtual classes, and the same group works together throughout.

For role plays, a ‘fishbowl” style activity allows two attendees (such as the facilitator and a participant volunteer) to demonstrate a technique. To get everyone involved, you could offer a paired chat discussion by assigning each participant to a partner and allowing them to privately chat with each other for discussion. Or make use of the platform’s breakout room feature to place partners or trios into a private room for practice. Just be sure they have clear instructions and timeframes, along with directions on how to ask for help when needed.

For more information

Converting classroom activities to virtual ones involves creativity and consideration of how to maximize the platform tools. A combination of both elements will lead to your success in the virtual classroom.

This blog post comes from the webinar Convert Classroom Activities to Engaging Virtual Activities.

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25
nov

SPOILT FOR CHOICE!

Posted by Leadership, Virtual LearningNo Comments

By Sally Foley-Lewis

With so many online platforms available to meet, inform, share, collaborate, allocate, and chat … it can be daunting to know which ones to use for what purpose. The trick to making the best decision is to be guided by:

  • what your organization sanctions and pays to use as a whole of organization license.
    • Ensuring access to support services that would be included in the license.
  • what your team tends to find easy to use and actually use regularly.
    • Minimizing the time to learn a new platform
  • using free versions to trial until you can be clear about which platform/s will serve you best.

Remember that you may already have access to reliable and effective platforms for online communication, ask around your organization, IT department and team.

Technology is meant to help!

“Email was going to help the world go paperless!” Do you think that worked? Tech tools that help teams collaborate can help share the workload, engage the team and provide a way to help people learn and understand standards and expectations.

Email is never urgent!

Jane-Maree was incredibly frustrated that her time was almost fully consumed by sending emails asking team members to fix their work. She would spend many, many hours beyond a standard workday, including many weekends, editing, re-writing and proofing work. She was correcting homework like a teacher! Email after email with edits, corrections and changes.

She knows that her direct reports get just as annoyed as she does with the emails. Jane- Maree shared a few typical email examples and every one of them started with, “Just a few things to fix…” and every one of those emails was easily beyond 1500 words in length.

ISSUE NUMBER 1: Just is a contradiction to the rest of the email. Jane-Maree’s intention was to soften the email but the reality is all the emails were containing direction for significant work, not just a few things.

FIX NUMBER 1: Stop using indirect language.

ISSUE NUMBER 2: Only using email. A paper trail makes sense but it’s also not contributing to maintaining a positive relationship or actually ensuring learning. The team came to expect Jane-Maree to do all the proofing and fixing so why bother to try for perfection. They weren’t deliberately doing poor work but they certainly weren’t empowered to strive harder.

FIX NUMBER 2: Have a meeting to discuss the purpose of the piece of work. Use a shared screen to discuss and agree the purpose of the work and expected standards. Check to understand that team members know what’s expected. Encourage team members to aim for final draft quality and provide guidance on language style. With the team start creating, if one doesn’t already exist, a style guide. Refer the team to the style guide and be mindful of any essential variations for different regions.

ISSUE NUMBER 3: Productivity (time management) – using up personal time to do work that is keeping the manager from doing more role relevant (leadership) work.

FIX NUMBER 3: a) As Jane-Maree still has to sign off on the work, bring the deadline forward to allow extra time to read and sign-off. b) Schedule unavailable – do not disturb – time during your workday to proof the work, even 20 minutes of uninterrupted time earlier in the day gives more time later in the day for editing from the team.

LIGHTEN UP!

Taking a short break from the serious work to have some fun will help strengthen the team. It may look and feel like playing games, socializing, chatting and that’s because it is. Having a short segment of the regular online meeting allocated to something fun and social is no different to the odd morning tea, birthday cake celebration, work lunch that happens in workplaces quite regularly.

The opportunity to simply pop over to someone across the office or factory floor needs a remote or virtual equivalent. Allocating some fun or socializing while online will make reaching out online a little more receptive given time and distance.

A touch of creativity and a bit of willingness might be all that’s needed. Managers quite often think they need to have the answers, need to set the agenda, build trust and engagement over distance by inviting the team members to suggest ideas for socializing online.

Team Activities

“I Spy”

  • Cameras on
  • No virtual backgrounds
  • One person spots something in another person’s background. And just like in the original game, the person says, “I spy with my little eye something … [beginning with the letter… or something that is the color …]
  • The rest of the team have to guess. The winner takes a turn to spy the next item.

Two Truths and One Lie (2+1)

Everyone thinks of two things that are true but might seem unbelievable to others, and one lie. For a small team, there might be time for everyone to have a turn at sharing and everyone else guessing which are the truths and which is the lie. For bigger teams, consider using the breakout room functions or small group set up provided with some technologies. Alternatively, nominate/invite only a few people to offer their 2+1.

Online Collaboration

While it can be overwhelming to ask the team to learn new technology while also staying productive with their standard workload, there are some online tools that are simple to use and a fun way to collaborate on social ideas. IdeaBoardz is one simple tool you could use, it’s free and simple to set up. You can use it here: ideaboardz.com.

The following table was collated by Deloitte, the purpose was to demonstrate that a significant technology investment may not be necessary, it’s more about the strategy managers and teams implement to ensure the technology is fit for the purpose of the activity.

Attend the upcoming HRDQ-U webinar, Leadership via the Lens: Remote Leadership, on Wednesday, December 9 at 2pm EST/11am PST.

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19
nov

The Keys to Engaged Remote Workers (it’s not what you think)

Posted by Leadership, Virtual LearningNo Comments

By: Kevin Eikenberry

For several years, engagement has been a big topic among consultants and the business press. Organizations and leaders want to have more engaged team members, and so all manner of programs, tools, apps, processes, and surveys have been created to support and encourage employee engagement.

And the focus has only increased in the last few months as millions of more people have been working from home. The slippery issue of engagement seems to be even more, well, slippery.

Regardless of where people work there are two underlying starting point questions which must be acknowledged and answered first:

  • What is engagement?
  • Who owns engagement?

What is Engagement?

Too many efforts to improve engagement assume the goodness of the idea and further assume that because it is a good thing, that everyone knows what is being strived for. I agree that engagement is good – and that it is worth pursuing – but we must know where we are headed before we begin.  Here is a short section from our upcoming book the Long-Distance Teammate: Stay Engaged and Connected Anywhere that addresses this point:

Engagement is more than employee satisfaction. You can be satisfied, and your job’s fine. Nothing’s wrong, but it doesn’t mean that you’re engaged. Engaged is a level of caring beyond just “It’s okay.” How much discretionary effort are you putting in? How much of your heart, soul, and effort are you putting into your work? Are you satisfied with just the bare minimum, or are you doing your best most of the time?

Engagement then is about caring, believing, and being motivated by the work, your co-workers and the importance and purpose of the work’s output.  If you doubt the value of this, consider two people: one who is all those things and another for whom those things wouldn’t be true.  Who do you want on your team (to lead or work with)?

Who Owns Engagement?

Here is another brief snippet from our upcoming book:

Contrary to popular opinion, we believe your engagement largely belongs to you. How much you care, how hard you try, how much effort you put into your work, is in your control—all of these are your choices. Can those around you (including your boss) make those choices easier or harder? Sure—but the choices are still yours.

If engagement is about caring, believing, motivation and meaning, who has control of those things?

You do – the individual (perhaps remote) worker.

Engagement doesn’t belong to your boss, the HR Department, or the Engagement Project Team – it belongs to you.

The Organizational and Leadership Role

This doesn’t mean leadership should be given a pass or organizations shouldn’t think about creating greater engagement. There are many things that can support and encourage the decisions that individuals make regarding their level of engagement.  These ideas should be studied and considered – but only in the right context and with the proper goal.  Individual leaders should look for ways to support engagement, not be looking for some perfect solution to “get people to be engaged.”

I believe that everyone (you, the rest of your team, your leadership, and the organization as a whole) wins as individual team member engagement grows.  I hope this short article helps you see this situation differently. More importantly, I hope this article helps you think about your own engagement first.  Since engagement starts with us, work on your engagement first – it is a perfect example of role modeling the behavior you want to influence in others.

Join our upcoming HRDQ-U webinar, Creating Engaged, Productive Long-Distanced Teammates, on December 2, 2020 at 2pm ET/11am PT.

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13
aug

6 More Leadership Guidelines for Turbulent Times

Posted by LeadershipNo Comments

By Pricilla Nelson and Ed Cohen, Excerpt from Riding The Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times From Chapter 3, The Role of Leadership

Optimize Costs, with Retention in Mind

The most common mistake leaders make during any kind of turbulence is implementing cost optimization, which often includes layoffs, without considering the retention of staff. Cost optimization should be discussed and implemented concurrently with a retention plan. If you must optimize costs, then simultaneously work to retain your best people. Your organization will emerge stronger. During and after turbulent times, retention should be one of the highest priorities. You should make cost optimization decisions, keeping in mind their impact on retention. This information allows you to assess risk and make more informed decisions.

Be a Brand Ambassador

The temptation during crisis is to tell everyone everything—the good, the bad, the ugly. Though transparency and adherence to core values is necessary, especially when leading through turbulence, the organization and its people need leaders who are brand ambassadors. As brand ambassadors, you are responsible for representing the organization both internally and externally in a positive manner. This does not mean stretching the truth. It simply means that you should refrain from making negative statements that might cause further turbulence. It also means seeking advice from your marketing and communications group on when and how to interface with the media and providing consistent messages to everyone.

Assess and Rebuild Trust

Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after truth.” There are many advantages to being a part of an environment that is built on truth. People are more open, and there is greater productivity, less internal competitiveness, stronger relationships, and overall a more positive atmosphere. All stakeholders—from employees to customers, investors, and society—know when they are working with an organization built on trust. That said, damage control and rebuilding a seriously injured organization require difficult decisions that not everyone will understand. For this reason, you and the other leaders in your organization must continuously assess and rebuild trust. Seneca, the Roman philosopher and writer (4 bce–65 ce), taught that “no one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.” Can trust be rebuilt? It depends. People trust the trusted. In her article “Trust Fall,” Pat Galagan (2009, 26–28) notes that “there are some who believe that organizations must do more than apologize and be truthful about past sins. The leadership experts James O’Toole and Warren Bennis caution that trust requires more than honest behavior from leaders. Rather, it takes cultures that reward honesty and punish dishonesty.” Galagan continues with a quotation from O’Toole and Bennis: “A new metric of corporate leadership will be the extent to which executives create organizations that are economically, ethically, and socially sustainable.”

Remember, Leaders Are Human, Too

Crisis and turbulence bring out both the best and worst in each of us. When your organization is facing difficult times, you go through a lot. You may feel hurt, damaged, worried—and that’s just the tip of the emotional iceberg. Sometimes you won’t be at your best, although it is important for you, as the leader, to hold it together as much as possible.

Think Like a Child

The guideline to think like a child may seem out of place—how could that help, particularly during turbulent times? But when you think about it, children do not carry the same burdens as adults; they live in the moment and, especially when very young, are constantly playing (figure 3-1). They may sense your sadness or turmoil. They may even ask you about it. Children allow you to take the opportunity to see the big picture; they provide a goal for you to get through things. They simplify everything, and this allows you to stop overanalyzing and complicating matters. Soon they will be running around, playing their games. Join them, the time will pass, and you will have a much-needed break. Try it. Live “in the moment” as children tend to do, and surrender to your playful inner child for a short period. This will remind you of the significance of taking time to tune out and not allow business to consume every moment. Work/life balance can still exist, even in a crisis.

Take Care of Your Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual Well-Being

Your health—your emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being—is important all the time, and it is critical during turbulent times. Don’t put any aspect of your well-being on hold. You will feel like ignoring your needs— but don’t! Calm your mind at night. Get a good night’s sleep. If you need to talk with someone, seek a counselor, a coach, or your best friend. Start or continue an exercise routine. Be more mindful of your diet. And look for the comfort that comes from following your own spiritual path. This is not an easy task for most leaders, who become so consumed by their professional responsibilities that they sacrifice everything else. Change and uncertainty at work are draining, but you cannot allow them to take over your life.

Join our upcoming HRDQ-U two-part webinar series titled “Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times like Covid”.

Part 1: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times like Covid: Leveraging a Lights On Strategy on September 2, 2020 at 2pm ET/11am PT.

Part 2: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times like Covid: Renewing your Employee Value Proposition on September 23, 2020 at 2pm ET/11am PT.

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