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Does the world really need another article for managers about giving feedback?
Well, judging from our conversations with new managers, absolutely! Despite the fact it’s so widely discussed, we consistently find ourselves answering questions about it. So we’ve tried to answer some of those questions in this article.
We cover:
We look at each area in detail and offer lots of practical tips on how you can not only get comfortable with it, but make it one of the most rewarding parts of managing your team.
Another week, another set of dispiriting headlines about employee burnout.
But this week, something was different. It may just have been a coincidence, but there was a series of stories from different media outlets, in different parts of the world, about the long-term effects of the pandemic on good, well-paid white collar employees who had largely kept their jobs during the pandemic. If this describes your team, this piece is for you.
In London, the Financial Times warned ‘professional services face losing junior staff to burnout’. In Canada, The Globe and Mail reported that ‘people are at the point of emotional exhaustion.’ In the US, 13 junior investment bankers at Goldman Sachs mimicked the firm’s pitch decks to create a damning record of the state of their mental health and working conditions, which they posted online. Recent reporting suggests Goldman employees in the UK are also starting to speak out.
Now some may think the world’s smallest violin is reserved for overworked investment bankers cutting pandemic-driven M&A deals. Yes, in many ways these are incredibly privileged jobs. But some people, particularly junior employees, are miserable. And some of the same dynamics which have caused such misery at Goldman Sachs and global law firms may also exist in your workplace.
It isn’t complicated. Take long working hours, conduct them impersonally over zoom/email/Slack, add in a cramped remote work environment, and finish off with no prospect of breaks or social engagement, and you have a recipe for a deeply unhappy workforce. In particular, the drop in holidays is alarming. According to Statistics Canada, the number of hours employees spent away from work on vacation fell to a 40 year low last year.
As managers, we should of course be keeping on top of the mental health and wellbeing of our teams. But sometimes this can be hard to assess. Team members can be reluctant to speak up, particularly if they think it will be perceived negatively when everyone is trying harder to impress and look ‘switched on’ whilst remote.
In that respect, amidst all the negative headlines, it was pleasing to see Citigroup take some action from the top to help with some of these problems. This week Jane Fraser, Citi’s new CEO, announced that the company would have Zoom-free Fridays, a company-wide holiday on 28 May, and offer renewed encouragement to staff to book holidays.
We note that in the competition for talent, it may not be a coincidence that the week one global bank gets slammed for ‘inhumane’ working conditions, another makes headlines for its management of the problem. It won’t solve all the issues, but it’s a start.
It shouldn’t just be on the individual to manage the working conditions created by the pandemic. If you work in a sector with some of the characteristics above, consider any actions which help spread workload (it’s a relay race not a marathon), limit meetings, and encourage holidays and time off. Even if your team hasn't asked for it, they will surely appreciate it.
One of the reasons we started Kommon was because we came across too many managers who wanted guidance in the role and were ‘just given a few Harvard Business Review articles and told to get on with it.’ So we feel slightly nervous, well, just passing on an HBR article. But this one really is outstanding.
Given the proliferation of ineffective unconscious bias training, and a lack of action in other companies, we’re fairly sure there’s a few managers out there who would:
If that describes you, this HBR piece titled ‘How the Best Bosses Interrupt Bias on Their Teams’ from Joan C. Williams and Sky Mihaylo could give you some ideas.
It’s so practical and tightly written that it makes it hard to distil it down much further, so really we just encourage you to read it. Essentially they identify four ways in which bias plays out in everyday work interactions, and then three areas in which you can interrupt it:
We’d challenge most managers not to take at least one thing away from the piece that they could implement today.
A few weeks ago we published our manager’s guide to writing (it’s still one of our most popular posts). In it, we spoke about how one of the most effective ways you could use writing was to replace meetings and free up your team’s time. In particular, we spoke about the ‘update meeting’ where someone tries to get other people ‘up to speed’. Generally speaking, this should not be a meeting.
In a world where we’re all trying to have less meetings (see our first story), we were encouraged to find Mark Brooks, Managing Director of Permanent Equity, offering several more tips on meetings which could be emails.
By his framing, there are only three reasons to have a meeting:
In every other case, chances are, it could have been an email and saved everyone a lot of time and distraction.
He identifies six reasons why other meetings find their way into diaries:
If you’re trying to transition your team away from too many meetings, these are useful points. They show the importance of leading by example as a manager in the meetings you call and what you put in writing to model behaviour and change habits. If you want to make a change on your team, you’ll need to start with yourself.
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