Big Empathy

Empathy is not a leadership skill.   It’s not a brand attribute.   It’s not a software design principle.

It’s a natural human quality that enables us to imagine walking in another person’s shoes.

It comes up at work powerfully when we need to have a tough conversation.  When someone is failing, disrupting relationships, or in the wrong role.

Everyone wants to perform well, and to be part of the team.  (If you think otherwise, leading people might not be your strong suit.)

When someone is not doing well at work, they’re not burnishing their resume — they’re burning career time.  Time that they’ll never get back.

The person who’s underperforming usually knows that something’s not right.  Even if he don’t know what it is, or what to do about it.

When this goes on for long enough, other people pick up on it, too.   Sometimes they tiptoe around it.   Or they snipe, gossip and and grumble.   It becomes the elephant in the room.

This is both inefficient and ineffective.

For everyone.

If one of your team members is underperforming, don’t let him flounder because you don’t want him to feel upset when you talk about it.

That’s so much smaller than empathy.

Clear, direct feedback that will help him to improve is the best demonstration of your empathy.

If you don’t know how to deliver the feedback, script it out.   Practice it with your manager, a trusted peer, or your HR lead.

When it comes to managing people, and being a leader at work, you need to enact the largest empathy you can see.

Either help your team member to do a better job, or help him to to move along.  That shows empathy for your team member, their teammates, and the organization’s stakeholders.

And if your future plans involve continuing to lead people, “having a difficult conversation” will come up again and again.

There’s no time like now to build this critical muscle.

Managers, want some basic best practices on performance management and feedback?   I’ve got resources:  painlessreviews.com

Photo: Elephant Close-up by the Wildlife Alliance, via Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0.

The Money Value of Time

1:1 meetings at work.   Pretty mundane.  “Waste of time” activity.  Trivial.

Right?

Unless “Time is money.”

An incomplete notion.

You can’t earn time.  You can’t win it, borrow it, or compound it.

Lose it, you’ll never get it back.  Not so mundane in real life.

Time is more valuable than money.

And, as it turns out, not really trivial at the office.

Let’s do the math.   To avoid confusing myself, I’ll keep the numbers dead simple.

• 1 manager, with 5 direct reports.
• Bi-weekly 1:1 meetings with each team member.
• Meetings last an hour.

That’s a chunk of your manager’s time, if she’s preparing/following up at all.  5-10%.

Or, conservatively value everyone’s time at $50 an hour.

• 25 weeks a year X 10 hours X $50 = $12,500/manager
• 5 managers, 25 team members = $62,500
• Consider opportunity cost.  How do your people’s jobs involve generating revenue, or affecting user/customer experience?

So, not trivial.   You want to leverage everyone’s investment.   Here are a few guidelines.

Have an agenda centered around people’s formal goals, and take notes.  A key purpose of 1:1 meetings is knowing whether people are meeting their goals:  come into the meeting with a standard supporting agenda.

Where does someone stand?  Have they met a significant goal, or made fantastic progress?   Now’s the time to say, “Good job.”

If they’re struggling, what’s going on?   A manager adds value by helping people to move around barriers, and providing support for people to reach their goals.

This might be by giving feedback, by smoothing a cross functional communication, or by helping to prioritize.   It also includes checking in on professional development goals.

Do take notes.   (Not on your phone.)   This demonstrates active listening, and your notes can be extremely helpful when performance review time rolls around.

Create space for open conversation.   Once you’ve covered goals, use the power of open-ended questions to learn, and go deeper.

“How can I help you to do your job better?” enables people to ask for help.  “How can we make this meeting more effective?” builds relationship.

These and other questions can also set the stage for people to give their managers feedback, in a lower-stakes setting.   If a manager is truly listening!

Make 1:1 meetings face to face — or video conference.  You want to communicate, and to build relationship.   All kinds of research indicates that our words are only part of the picture.   Body language, facial expression, and tone of voice are all key.

Stow your technology.  Seriously.   What kind of interruption is truly necessary in the 30-60 minute confines of a 1:1?   A push notification that someone posted a joke to #random?

Unless your spouse may possibly go into labor (etc.), turn off your phone and anything else that might “ping.”   (Here’s why, via Scientific American.)

Now, this post was inspired by a brief exchange in comments over at Brittany Laughlin’s blog.

Brittany commented, “…it’s especially hard to get feedback…since there are only two people in the room.”

Yes.  Setting expectations that people will use a regular agenda is helpful.  Ideally, HR Chiefs and/or senior leaders would keep tabs on this.

Founders and senior leaders need to remember:  your people will mirror your behavior.   That’s how culture operates

Maybe you don’t have weekly 1:1s with the managers on your team.   Behave the way you want your people to behave with your team members on the front line.  In case you didn’t take this in earlier:  put your phone away, and really listen.

My guidelines are suggestions.   Time tested, they’re solid.  Maybe they don’t quite fit your situation.

What’s important:   have guidelines, communicate them, and train your people to use them.

Maybe you think it sounds stupid to train your managers to have 1:1 meetings.

Sadly, having seen organizations where this did not happen, I can tell you that it is exactly the opposite of stupid.

The only way to “leverage” time is to use it well.

Photo:  save-in-time, by DaveBleasdale via Flickr, under Creative Commons license