Team Development, Political Violence, Remote Work, and 2020 Lessons
Posted on
January 14, 2021
This is Kommon People — the newsletter from Kommon which highlights stories about people, organisations, technology and business which will make you a better manager. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.
It may be an odd admission from an HR/People company, but generally we think workplaces would be better if leaders spent more time listening to their teams than people consultants and the Harvard Business Review. So when we write, we try and find stories from individuals which give some insight into what good and bad management looks like.
So we’re pleased this week to be able to bring you a feature article based on a crowdsourced analysis of the number one thing employees feel their manager has done to boost their growth. We’ve also got various personal testimonies of how individuals felt their workplace dealt with the political violence in the US on 6 January. Oh and we’ve also thrown in a piece on the future of remote work and some people lessons from 2020.
The Number One Thing a Manager can do for their Team's Development
Managers are usually busy. So if you could know the one thing which would contribute most to your team members’ career development, it would presumably be useful to know and focus on. Particularly in the new year when you might be trying to change habits and improve things.
Well we don’t have the answer.
But, we’re always on the lookout for it. And when an Engineering Director at Github asked her twitter followers exactly this question she got over 100 responses. We’ve broken down the tweets into various categories to see exactly what team members want from their managers. You can find out in the article.
You can also access our table of all the tweets here.
Managing through a Coup
Just to be clear, the title of this section has its tongue firmly in its cheek. Any article that promises to give you all the answers to managing your team through the kinds of events that happened on 6 January 2021 is almost certainly lying.
Kommon is not an American company, and we don’t currently have any American employees but nonetheless the shocking events of last week caused pretty much all work to stop as we tried to process what was happening. We can only imagine how Americans of all different backgrounds felt.
The most important lessons from 6 January won’t be learned in the workplace (or something’s gone even more wrong). However, at times of significant upheaval and trauma in people’s lives, employers and particularly managers, are amongst those who can have the most immediate impact - for better and for worse. So whilst we won’t claim to have all the answers, we’ve been following some of the advice to managers which has been circulating over the past few days, and accounts from those at work, and we wanted to share some of it. Hopefully in a small way, it may help you and your team prepare for and process the next crisis, whatever that might be.
We’ll actually start at the company level. Mainly because a supportive organisational environment can significantly alter the type of role that a manager has to play. To look at the range of responses on the day, we’ll turn to Angelique Weger, a Senior Software Engineer from Baltimore who has been cataloguing different companies’ actions. She found everything from this:
To less positive stories:
From reading through individuals’ reactions, we get some insight into what employees appreciate at times like this:
Acknowledge the issue: sounds basic, but as those responses make clear, in some cases leadership didn’t even acknowledge the existence of an event which might affect employees. Not only is this deeply uncaring, but it doesn’t create the permission structure to change working patterns and take any exceptional steps in response (see following points). Not remaining silent is the first and essential step.
Create Space: having acknowledged the event, leadership can define the expectations on employees at this exceptional time. The more specific the better. Opt-in phrases like ‘take the time if you want to’ place the burden of judgement on employees and are less helpful than specific guidance, like, for example, rescheduling meetings, extending deadlines and how to communicate with customers.
Offer Support: if they are available, leadership can highlight any corporate resources for employees to draw on (e.g. mental health support) and broadly emphasise the firm’s support for its employees. In reality, a lot of the actual frontline support will be pushed to managers (see below).
Talk to people: how this scales will depend on the size of the organisation, but it was striking to see accounts of how much people appreciated group Zooms with their colleagues and leadership just to talk through the events. Clearly this should be optional, it’s not how everyone chooses to process these things. However, offering to get out from behind email/Slack/Teams and speak in person seemed invaluable for some. On a lighter note, the events did highlight the issue with using automated project management tools to communicate at times of intense stress.
Now for the manager. As you can probably see, if your employer doesn’t do any of the above, a lot of that burden falls on the manager instead and you need to start from the top. However, assuming these things are done, as a manager you can assume a more tactical role, which means:
Steady yourself: are you ready to support others? You’re an employee too. Take a moment to understand how events are impacting you and whether you’re ready to do you job. You might not be and may need to lean on others for help.
Assess what’s important: you’ll be aware of the outputs your team delivers, which are critical and which can be postponed if team members do need space. Reassess your deliverables and liaise with other stakeholders so you know what absolutely has to get done.
Offer specific support: depending on the size of your organisation, leadership can offer the words and permission structures, but it will often be up to managers to create meaningful change. Work with each of your team members to understand how they are, what they need over the coming hours/days, and how you can help.
Managing Hybrid/Remote Work in 2021
Many countries are still trying to cope with the second wave of a pandemic which has kept people locked down in their homes. However, some optimistic operations managers and commentators have dared to start thinking about what work might look like in 2021 when people have the option of meeting in person as well as remotely. A wild thought.
In the past few weeks, there have been some excellent articles on remote work, office work, and hybrid arrangements. We expect some of you are part of discussions about what this will look like for your organisation so we wanted to highlight some of the main points.
Don’t use the present as a starting point: for many organisations, the last several months will be the first taste of widespread remote work. It may therefore be tempting to look at this arrangement and consider how to mould it for the future. This would be a mistake. Not to be captain obvious, but people are working remotely now during a pandemic. Hopefully the future of your organisation’s work, whilst pandemic-resilient, will not involve this backdrop. So any future planning should really start from first principles, rather than the current pattern of work.
People don’t actually want to get back to the office: As Anne Helen Petersen wrote for the New York Times, you may hear various people in your teams talking about how they can’t wait to get back to the office. Largely, they are lying. As she says, the office still comes with commutes, and too many meetings, and numerous other irritants. Companies should be thinking about creating the things people liked about the office (leaving their homes, having conversations, working with others) without just going back to old, inefficient ways of working. See innovations like Dropbox’s ‘Dropbox Studios’ - company locations in major cities for gatherings, meetings and team building (but not for working).
But people don’t really want to get back to the office. They want to get out of their apartments, their houses, their parents’ houses. They want their children back in school, and also out of the house. They want to see people’s faces again, and have conversations with people who are closer than six feet from them. But that doesn’t mean that they actually want to be back in the office.
Equality of opportunity: when going into the office becomes an option again, companies will have to think carefully about how they create genuine parity between those who work in different locations. It will be easy for leaders to slip into habits where those who are in the office are more visible, and receive more opportunities. As Michael Lopp wrote in 2019, pre-pandemic:
The humans who are elsewhere are at a professional disadvantage. There is a communication, culture, and context tax applied to the folks who are distributed. Your job as a leader is to actively invest in reducing that tax.
The importance of writing: in a more remote working environment, with less meetings, organisations are relying more on asynchronous written communication which employees can read and respond to when they can. This has quickly highlighted the value of employees who can read and write well - and the need to potentially upskill in this area. Former CEO of Evernote Phil Libin recently said he plans to start asking for writing samples during his hiring process for exactly this reason.
Operational challenges: whether creating hybrid offices and organising hotdesking, or trying to hire global remote workers, what looks great on a powerpoint presentation about THE FUTURE OF WORK doubtless comes with innumerable challenges to execute. From legal and compliance issues in global hiring, to decisions on pay differentials, there’s a lot to work through. (Obviously startups like Remote - raised Series A $35m last year - have stepped in to try and help). The promise is exciting, but there’s a lot of work to do to realise it.
1273 people’s lessons from 2020
You may already know Mark Manson. He’s the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and Everything is F*cked: A Book about Hope. Also the owner of the most direct marketing CTA we’re seen so far:
Takes quite a bit to raise our eyebrows at marketing copy, so well done Mark.
Anyway, in keeping with this newsletter’s theme of basing our analysis on other people’s lives rather than our own, he recently asked his email list ‘What have been your biggest lessons from 2020?’. The answers from 1273 people were illuminating, and the article is well worth a read.
We wanted to highlight some of the themes because we suspect they represent pressures that some of your team members may have been feeling - food for thought as you manage your team. And despite our wishes, 2021 unfortunately does not represent a clean break with 2020, so these dynamics are likely to persist.
Some selected insights:
You Only Really Know Who You Are When Everything Is Taken From You: Apparently by far and away the most popular response. In the absence of life-as-normal, many people were forced to confront what they really missed and cared about in terms of their work, relationships and life in general. Often they found some unexpected things. Some of your team may have had similar revelations.
A Crisis Doesn’t Change People; It Amplifies Who They Already Are: You may have noticed this already; compassionate, caring coworkers showing even more thoughtfulness, whilst irritable, disengaged colleagues fall further the other way. Obviously this isn’t true for everyone, but it may be a useful framework for managing expectations about individuals’ behaviour.
The Little Things are the Most Important: as individual activity is heavily restricted, the small things can make a significant difference to team members’ days - for better or for worse. A negative remark will be felt more keenly, whilst a positive intervention may really lift morale. Being aware of this as a manager, and tailoring your interventions accordingly can be invaluable.
We consistently underestimate our resilience and adaptability: He notes that a significant portion of respondents reflected on how resilient they had been throughout the year, despite everything 2020 threw at them. As managers look to draw positives with their team members from a very challenging time, this may be one to dwell on.
“The pandemic has not been kind to me, to be honest. I had a mental breakdown in March, lost my job in June, moved twice in the past four months, slept on sofas and in mouldy rooms, was disappointed by friends and lovers. Despite all this, I have learned that I am more resilient than I ever thought.”