Ed Batista

Talking with Colleagues About Divisive Topics

A theme in my practice in recent years is the leader who's aware that a number of their employees have strong feelings about a divisive topic, often a pressing social or political issue. The leader may or may not share these feelings, and the issues may or may not directly affect the business, but there's an evident gap between what people are feeling and what's being openly discussed. And this state of affairs is creating a sense of uncertainty and discomfort within the organization that could affect the team's working relationships and ability to perform.

This presents the leader with some difficult questions: Should we address the issue? Should we discuss our feelings? If so, where and how would we do that? What's the purpose of such a discussion? What are our goals and objectives? What's the agenda, and how should it be determined? And what role should I play in the process? If you're a leader in this situation, here are some areas to explore and recommendations to consider:

1. Risk

People are often reluctant to address divisive topics in a work setting. Sometimes this is a mistake, because the suppressed feelings may leak out in counterproductive ways. And sometimes this is the right decision, because exploring a divisive topic in a group almost always involves some risk. There's the risk of further inflaming heightened emotions, leaving people more upset and distracted than they were before.

There's the risk of failing to reach any sort of resolution in the time available, leaving people feeling incomplete and frustrated. And there's the risk of open conflict between colleagues, who may find their working relationship damaged. This doesn't mean we should avoid directly addressing divisive topics, but it's important to be aware that such efforts carry risks and to have a plan to mitigate them.

2. Resistance

If you're prepared to address these risks, one of the first steps to take is anticipating resistance from your employees, which can range from mild reluctance to outright refusal. Resistance should generally be viewed as a form of self-protection that stems from anxiety, so it's essential to avoid taking any steps that people might experience as coercive. This will only affirm their anxiety and redouble their resistance. Even if people feel obligated to participate in order to appear compliant, they will remain guarded and wary. At best, the discussion will be an empty, superficial exercise, and you will have lost trust in the process.

This doesn't mean that you must always defer to resistance, but you need to meet it with thoughtfulness and care, not force. And it's surprisingly easy for leaders to be perceived as acting more forcefully than they intended. [1] A little social pressure--a "nudge"--is tolerable, but no one should ever feel "shoved" or compelled to participate in ways that make them feel less safe.

3. Safety

The paradox is that talking about the divisive topic may ultimately make it a safer environment, so it can be worth taking the risk to make the effort. The key is ensuring that people feel as safe as possible along the way, although what is meant by "psychological safety" is often profoundly misunderstood, a topic I've addressed before:

Psychological safety entails candid and direct communication. It requires asking and answering hard questions. It does not mean "being nice." It does not mean avoiding difficult conversations or fraught topics to ensure that no one experiences distress. To the contrary, a setting in which people are reluctant to be candid and direct for fear of triggering any distress in others is psychologically unsafe. [2]

A deep-seated problem with many formal programs intended to address divisive topics in recent years is that they mandate a particular point of view on an issue. Participants are expected to adhere to the officially sanctioned doctrine. Questions are viewed as resistance, and resistance isn't tolerated. As a consequence, these events are little more than theatrical performances. They may enforce compliance, but they never build commitment. [3]

4. Intentions

Sometimes it's our intention to enforce compliance--that's why so many mandatory HR programs are designed the way they are. But if you have other goals in mind for this discussion, it's necessary to clarify those intentions and get people aligned around them. Because of past experience with mandatory HR programs, people may assume that the purpose of the discussion is to obtain (or dictate) a group consensus about the issue. Or they might assume that the goal is to problem-solve and recommend a solution.

But neither of these outcomes is feasible for a meaningful discussion on a divisive issue of any consequence. If you want everyone to be in agreement, you'll get hollow HR theater. And if you think you and your employees need to "solve" a weighty social or political issue, you're setting everyone up for failure and frustration. I'm not suggesting you can't accomplish something important--you can. There's a significant goal within reach for you and your team in almost all circumstances: empathy.

5. Empathy

Medical professor and researcher Theresa Wiseman has explored the concept of empathy because of its importance for nursing and healthcare. She identifies four defining attributes of empathy:

• The ability to see the world as another person sees it.
• The ability to understand another person’s feelings.
• The ability to suspend judgment.
• The ability to communicate this understanding, which is essential "if empathy is to be felt." [4]

Note that empathy is not sympathy, which Wiseman makes clear: "Sympathy involves 'feeling sorry' for the other person or imagining how we would feel if we were experiencing what is happening to them. Empathy differs in that we try to imagine what it is like being that person and experiencing things as they do, not as we would." [5] Similarly, empathy is not agreement, a point I've made previously:

We typically associate empathy with agreement, and we act as though empathizing with someone entails endorsing their perspective and their feelings, but this need not be the case. Understanding someone’s perspective and their emotions while suspending our judgments about both does not necessarily imply that we agree with that perspective or believe that the resulting emotions are justified. It simply means that we comprehend their perspective and emotions, and we are able to envision ourselves experiencing that perspective and those emotions under similar circumstances. Just as we can empathize with someone without sympathizing, we can empathize with someone while disagreeing with them and considering their perspective inaccurate and their emotions unwarranted. [6]

6. Emotions

It's inevitable that this will be an emotional discussion. The primary reason you're having it is your awareness that people have strong feelings about this divisive topic that they're not expressing with colleagues, and you're concerned that if people continue to suppress such feelings it may exacerbate the climate of uncertainty and discomfort. But a critical counterpart to emotional expression is the capacity for emotion regulation. [7]

In almost all professional settings we err on the side of regulation--one way of distinguishing between professional and personal relationships is that the former are usually much more regulated than the latter, and this is an essential feature of most organizational cultures. Cultures are defined by behavioral norms, and in this discussion you're likely seeking to alter the norms that govern emotional expression without suspending them entirely. [8]

It's hard to create an environment that simultaneously invites greater emotional expression while supporting the necessary emotion regulation that will allow everyone to return to work when it's over. Hard, but not impossible, and this is why it's so important to mitigate the risks, meet resistance with understanding, and work to ensure safety. These are the conditions under which people are willing to be vulnerable, and expressions of vulnerability in a safe environment are the most reliable means of evoking empathy. [9]

7. An Invitation

If you're ready to proceed, consider the collective capacity of your team to handle such a discussion, and ask your key leaders to share their impressions. If you and your leaders are in sufficient agreement, initiate your efforts by extending an invitation, and asking people if they'd like to join you in a discussion. Make it opt-in and not mandatory, and make it clear that people are truly free to opt out, and that no one is obligated to attend. As I note above, it's fine to "nudge" people to attend, but no one should feel "shoved"--this will make it a safer environment for everyone.

Convey your intentions in this invitation. The goal is not to obtain consensus or to get everyone to agree on any particular position. The goal is not to "solve" the problem. The goal is empathy. This will require people to make disclosures, to explain the world as they see it, and to talk about their feelings. This will require listening to understand those feelings, and the suspension of any judgments that may arise along the way. This will require expressing that understanding, in words that ensure that others feel heard. This will not require agreement. Setting these expectations will help people decide how and whether to participate, and will enable them to aim toward a successful outcome.

8. The Agenda

Consider how you want to develop the agenda. You could simply craft it and present it to your employees--this will be simplest, but it may also be a missed opportunity to build commitment. An alternative could be to invite the most interested members of your team to join you in a working session to co-create the agenda. This will also help ensure that you surface ideas about what people would like to do with the time, rather than simply making assumptions about what they think would be best. Yet another option would be to conduct a survey to gather input. However you determine your agenda, circulate it in advance. This will also help people determine whether and how to participate, and will make it feel safer by giving people visibility into what will happen.

9. Logistics

• Timing: You don't want people to feel rushed, and you don't want it to last too long. An hour is probably the minimum, but two will probably feel taxing--90 minutes may be a good compromise.
• Configurations: Consider having people participate in multiple configurations over the course of the discussion, such as pairs or small groups, in addition to the full group. This is one area in which working virtually on a platform like Zoom offers advantages, because you can move people into pairs or small groups and back into the main room very easily. The pairs and small groups can be assigned in advance, or chosen by the participants, or selected at random, but you'll want people to be prepared for the process.
• Facilitation: The presence of an outside facilitator for such a discussion has pros and cons. They're not a member of the organization, which may make people feel less safe, but they may also be perceived as a source of expertise. Their presence will enable you to participate more freely, but if you're not aligned you may get in each other's way. I encourage clients to consider facilitating such discussions themselves, while recognizing that at times it's valuable to have an experienced partner.

10. Next Steps

Finally, be prepared to think of this as an ongoing dialogue, not necessarily a one-time event. The feelings evoked, both positive and negative, may not be fully resolved in a single session. There may be an appetite, and even a need, to continue the conversation. Consider how much time and energy you'll be able to devote to this effort, if any, beyond an initial discussion.

 

This is a companion piece to Talking With Colleagues About Suffering.

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Footnotes

[1] The Blue Problem (Communication and Power)

[2] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[3] Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)

[4] A Concept Analysis of Empathy (Theresa Wiseman, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 1996)

[5] Ibid.

[6] The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

[7] The Tyranny of Feelings

[8] Group Dynamics: Norms and Emotion

[9] Brené Brown, Vulnerability, Empathy and Leadership

 

For Further Reading

CONNECTIONS: Meaningful Virtual Conversations

 

Photo by Adam Cohn.

Talking with Colleagues About Suffering

A theme in my practice is the leader who's aware or senses that a colleague is suffering and would like to offer support but is unsure how to broach the topic--and a version of this occurs in my own work. In most cases when a client is suffering in some way our coaching sessions provide them with a setting in which they can express those feelings freely. But at times it's clear to me that a client is suffering and yet it's not the focal point of their agenda, or even on the agenda at all.

It's not my place to determine our agenda--that's the client's job--but it's not uncommon for people to want to talk about something while also feeling ambivalent about raising the topic. If I ignore my intuition and defer to their stated agenda, we might miss a meaningful opportunity. And yet the client must always feel a sense of agency in our work together.

It's complicated, but at least I have the benefit of being a coach, and in my relationships with clients it's expected that at times we'll explore troubling and even painful topics. But my clients may not have that kind of social contract with their colleagues, making it hard to know how to proceed when they sense that a co-worker is suffering. If you're in this situation, here are some suggestions:

Take the Initiative

Some people prefer to suffer in private, or they may be reluctant to discuss it with colleagues. They may resist or even resent our efforts to address the topic, and we should be careful to avoid "inflicting help." [1] But most of us tend to err on the side of caution, and while we tell ourselves we're "being sensitive," this also reflects our fear and anxiety. We're afraid that our efforts will be rebuffed, and we'll feel embarrassed. So instead we sit back and wait, hoping that when they need our help they'll ask for it.

Sometimes this is true...and sometimes it's not. The suffering person may in fact feel embarrassed themselves, and they may want us to relieve them of the burden of initiating the conversation. They may wonder if we see their suffering at all, or if we even care. Or they may conclude that this isn't the kind of relationship, or the kind of company, where we talk about such things.

So find the courage to take the initiative. This will be fraught, and it will feel risky, and sometimes you'll get it wrong. But you'll only improve your ability to sense the right time and to find the right language with practice. [2] Extend the invitation, and don't be discouraged if it isn't accepted at first. Try again later. Don't insist--the other person has to feel in control--but by signaling your interest you make it easier for them to respond when they're ready.

Normalize Vulnerability

Acknowledging suffering often evokes a sense of vulnerability in both parties. This is almost certainly true for the person who's suffering, who may believe that such acknowledgment is a form of weakness that will leave them feeling exposed and unsafe. They may worry that they'll be seen as less competent or capable, or that they'll be considered "emotional," a liability in many professional settings.

But this is also likely true for the leader seeking to offer support, particularly when it's unclear if such support will be welcome. The leader may lack experience in having these conversations, or this may be a new frontier in their relationship with this individual. Or the person's suffering may be apparent while the underlying cause is unknown, compounding the leader's uncertainty about whether or how to proceed.

The paradox is that in most settings expressions of vulnerability trigger an empathetic response, a mechanism that may be rooted in our evolutionary psychology. [3] This isn't guaranteed, of course, and it's necessary to take small steps at first and read the signs with care. A starting point is conveying any trepidation you might feel and letting the other person know that it's OK if they feel similarly.

Understand What's Needed

Leaders often rise to their position on the basis of their effectiveness as problem-solvers, and that's an identity as much as a skillset. In some circumstances colleagues are seeking a solution that will solve the problem, but much of the time there's none to be found, or at least not one that the leader can provide. This is certainly true of our greatest difficulties--a grievous illness, the loss of a loved one, a global crisis. [4]

If you find yourself in such a discussion there are many ways to offer useful help and support, but it's important to understand what the other person actually wants. Even when you don't have a definitive solution, they may still value your advice on how to address or think about the problem. But note the tendency of problem-solvers to offer advice, even when it hasn't been asked for.

Before jumping in to share your perspective, be sure to slow down and listen. The experience of truly feeling heard is surprisingly rare in organizational life, where people often listen in order to reply. Put your advice on hold, at least until it's requested, and just be fully present. You may find that this is sufficient.

And you may also find that something more is called for, even--and perhaps especially--when there's no advice to give and listening isn't enough. The other person may simply need a literal or virtual hug, which can be daunting territory to navigate in organizational life. While it's essential to be aware of and respect another person's boundaries, we can be so cautious about avoiding offense that we inadvertently appear callous. Tone of voice and body language can go a long way toward expressing the sentiment. A murmur, a sigh, a moment of silence, or holding our hand to our chest can speak volumes.

Why Bother?

All of this work is easier if we take steps early in our professional relationships to lay a foundation for more meaningful dialogue later on. One of the most straightforward ways for a leader to accomplish this is by scheduling regular one-on-ones with direct reports, honoring that commitment by minimizing cancellations or rescheduling, and ensuring that employees feel a sense of ownership over the agenda. [5] And yet it will still require effort and a modicum of risk, and a leader may well ask, Why bother?

One very pragmatic reason is that people who are suffering are incapable of doing their best work. They may be in the grip of a threat response, aka a "fight, flight or freeze response," which will impair creative thinking and render them more risk-averse and prone to distraction. [6] Talking about their distress and anxiety can play a significant role in helping them manage these feelings, enabling them to redirect their focus to other matters. [7]

I would add that our professional relationships have the potential to be sources of belonging and connection [8], not merely vehicles for value creation, and we realize this potential fully only when we're willing to have hard conversations. This doesn't mean that companies are "families"--I agree with Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke that this is an inappropriate metaphor, and that colleagues are best-served by viewing each other as fellow members of an elite team who earn their positions by virtue of their performance. [9]

Cultivating the ability to have hard conversations about suffering develops a set of skills that are equally valuable in hard conversations about performance: the courage to speak up, a sense for the right timing and the right language, comfort with vulnerability. This is yet another reason why "accountability and empathy are not mutually exclusive." [10]

 

This is a companion piece to Talking with Colleagues About Divisive Topics.

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Footnotes

[1] Inflicting Help

[2] Conscious Competence in Practice

[3] Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts (Dacher Keltner interviewed by David DiSalvo, Scientific American, 2009)

[4] This section is adapted from What Do You Need Right Now? (Advice, Listening, A Hug?).

[5] How to Have Better One-on-Ones

[6] Neuroscience, Leadership and David Rock's SCARF Model

[7] Talking About Feelings

[8] Abilene: Loneliness and Belonging in Organizational Life

[9] Shopify CEO email to managers: We are not a family (Tobias Lütke, internal email, 2020, shared by Lukas Naugle, LinkedIn, 2021)

[10] Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

 

Photo by Christopher Matson.

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 3 (On Attrition)

In Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 1, I discuss the factors that cause leaders to mistakenly delay a necessary termination. In Part 2 I explore why leaders rush to fill an empty role when they should actually slow down. Here I address a third, related situation in which a leader's misplaced concerns can contribute to suboptimal outcomes: the unwanted departure of a valued employee, which I'll call attrition.

Leaders strive to avoid attrition for understandable reasons. Valued employees represent a substantial investment of time and effort, ranging from recruiting and hiring to onboarding, training, and management. They possess hard-earned institutional knowledge. And they've demonstrated their trustworthiness and sound judgment.

So a theme in my practice is how a leader can retain valued employees in order to ensure that the organization will continue to benefit from these qualities. But such retention efforts can go awry when a leader is so concerned about a potential departure that they make choices they later regret. What issues tend to arise in these circumstances, and if you're in a similar situation, what can you do about them?

Fighting Inflation

When a leader learns that a valued employee is thinking about leaving, they may feel that they're in a negotiation that they must win, and their response is to offer more: a bigger compensation package, a higher-status title, a broader scope of responsibilities.

In many cases these negotiations conclude successfully, and leader and employee resume their productive partnership, albeit on modified terms. But sometimes that "must-win" attitude causes a leader to offer too much. They retain the employee, but on inflated terms: a compensation package dramatically higher than the employee could command elsewhere, a title that outstrips their real level of expertise or authority, responsibilities that they're unable to truly fulfill.

If you're a leader in this position, what can you do? How can you fight inflation? The first step is assessing your attitude toward the negotiation. Roger Fisher and William Ury, founders of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, suggest an approach to ensure that you don't "win" a negotiation on inflated terms:

The reason you negotiate is to produce something better than the results you can obtain without negotiating. What are those results? What is your BATNA--your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement? That is the standard against which any proposed agreement should be measured. This is the only standard which can protect you both from accepting terms that are too unfavorable and from rejecting terms it would be in your interest to accept... If you have not thought carefully about what you will do if you fail to reach an agreement, you are negotiating with your eyes closed. [1]

When you take a "must-win" approach, you assume that you have no BATNA, increasing the likelihood that you'll retain your employee on inflated terms. You'll "win" today but may well lose in the long run. I'm not suggesting that you make no effort to retain a valued employee, but, rather, that you reassess your options and calibrate the terms on offer accordingly. You may well find that what your employee really wants are other "currencies" that are less subject to inflation. [2]

Short-Term Pain vs. Long-Term Pain

As was the case in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, a challenge leaders face when they learn that a valued employee is considering a transition is the assumption that the short-term pain will be greater than the long-term pain. This belief is at the root of a leader's assumption that they have no BATNA and must avoid attrition at all costs, so it's necessary to challenge its accuracy.

Seeing a valued employee leave will undoubtedly cause short-term pain in a variety of ways: the loss of their individual capabilities, a potentially expensive and time-consuming search, the prospect of a gap in continuity and important work going undone. But leaders sometimes fail to appreciate that their efforts to avoid short-term pain may make the long-term pain even worse.

Retaining an employee on inflated terms can have far-reaching effects. Compensation packages don't always remain confidential, and when significant discrepancies come to light other employees will be rightfully upset. Titles are by definition visible, and raising one person's status can make others feel that they've been demoted, triggering a cascade of discontent. [3] And employees who are "over-scoped" tend to under-perform, making it necessary to level them [4] or manage them out. [5]

If you're a leader facing the departure of a valued employee, balance the value of their retention against the costs of the means required to do so. And some of these costs may not be evident for a length of time, requiring you to project into the future and think well beyond this specific individual.

Irreplaceable?

The anxiety leaders experience in the face of attrition is exacerbated when they imagine that the employee is "irreplaceable" in some way, and on occasion this fear has merit. I've worked with many leaders whose valued employees included co-founders, personal friends, or family members. Those unique individuals couldn't be replaced, nor could the unique relationships the leader enjoyed with them. Leaders may also view an employee as truly mission-critical, fearing that their departure would permanently impair company performance or even, in extreme cases, cause it to fail.

If you're a leader facing the departure of someone you're close with, I appreciate your desire to avoid the loss of that person and your working relationship with them. And yet in my experience it's vital that a leader grow more comfortable with the inevitability of such departures. You can't replace unique individuals, but accepting that colleagues will come and go over time allows both you and the organization to be more adaptable in the face of change.

More generally, if you're concerned about company performance I'm not in a position to tell you that your anxiety is misplaced. It's conceivable that a particular employee is so essential to your business that you'll struggle to succeed without them, especially if you're at a very early stage of development. Should they depart, there will be some short-term pain, to be sure. But I launched my coaching practice in 2006, and I've never seen a company fail because of the departure of any one individual. I've concluded that organizations are often far more resilient than leaders think they are.

Optics

Even when leaders recognize that a valued employee isn't irreplaceable, they may be concerned about how a departure will be perceived by fellow employees, customers, investors, and other stakeholders. Leaders are right to pay close attention to the potential optics, as I wrote in Part 1 of this series, on terminations:

Perceptions matter, particularly for a growing company that may be facing a great deal of uncertainty. In this context leaders must attend closely to the narratives that surround the company and actively shape them through storytelling... The departure of an employee contributes to a company's narrative and may well be perceived negatively, particularly if they're a senior executive or have strong relationships with other employees or external stakeholders.

This is even more pertinent with attrition, and an unwanted departure may well raise questions about the company's future prospects and your capabilities as a leader. But the solution may not be to induce the person to stay--again, the costs may outweigh the benefits. As with terminations, the key is agreeing upon a shared public narrative that helps others make sense of this potentially troubling development, and this is generally easier to accomplish in the case of attrition.

The narrative shouldn't be false or misleading, but it will focus on certain reasons for the employee's departure at the expense of others. This allows the narrative to serve both parties' purposes, but it's also a function of the fact that all public discourse has a limited capacity for nuance and complexity. A shared public narrative must be true, but it need not encompass the whole truth.

The Risk of Changing Minds

Optimally a leader has some awareness that a valued employee is considering a transition, enabling them to intervene before any decisive commitments have been made. But sometimes a leader is completely surprised by an employee's sudden resignation or announcement of a new position. This may prompt a frantic effort to undo what's been done.

Not only is this likely to yield inflated terms, but there's also an inherent risk in trying to change someone's mind here. The employee was reluctant to be candid with the leader, or the leader was oblivious to the employee's discontent, or both. Reversing course won't necessarily change the circumstances that led to this outcome. I'm not suggesting that you should never try to talk someone out of leaving if they've tendered their resignation or accepted another role, but you should be circumspect about the possibility that it might happen again.

When a departure is unavoidable, the leader may seek to negotiate a lengthy transition. This can offer some benefits, but it will also come at a cost. Even a well-meaning employee will find it difficult to give best effort beyond a reasonable length of time, and people underestimate how quickly and dramatically motivation and power dynamics can change once an impeding departure has been made public. If you're a leader in this situation take care not to pressure a departing employee to agree to a transition period that's too long.

An Ounce of Prevention...

...is worth a pound of cure, as an astute letter-writer observed in one of Benjamin Franklin's newspapers. [6] Similarly, while efforts to "cure" unwanted departures can be quite expensive and even counter-productive, efforts to prevent them in the first place are generally much more economical. What does this look like in practice?

At the individual level, as a leader you should know the extent to which each of your direct reports are satisfied with their responsibilities, their compensation, and all other aspects of their role. Barring a sudden, unexpected change in an employee's life that may impact their feelings about work, if you're surprised to learn that a direct report is "loose in the socket," that's a managerial failure.

This is one reason not to have too many reports--while some employees will openly express dissatisfaction, many will not, and the leader needs to create the conditions for a more candid dialogue and actively inquire about an employee's fulfillment (or lack thereof.) The best means to accomplish this is holding regular one-on-ones that go beyond a tactical agenda and make sufficient room for an employee's concerns. [7]

At the team level, you should have a contingency plan for the potential departure of any given member. This involves maintaining a network of potential candidates, relationships with search firms, and an up-to-date assessment of skip-levels' capacity to replace their manager on an interim or permanent basis. And at the organizational level, a more strategic approach to People leadership can help a company increase retention, raise awareness of impending departures, and be better prepared to replace outgoing employees. [8] You should certainly strive to retain valued employees, but you need not live in fear of the empty chair.

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 1 (On Terminations)

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 2 (On Hiring)

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Footnotes

[1] Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, page 100 (Roger Fisher and William Ury, 1992)

[2] Currencies (On Motivating Different People)

[3] Very Cheap, Then Very Expensive (On Job Titles)

[4] The Fine Art of Levelling

[5] Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

[6] On Protection of Towns from Fire (The Pennsylvania Gazette, published by Benjamin Franklin, 1735)

[7] How to Have Better One-on-Ones

[8] The Truly Strategic People Leader

 

Photo by Votchitsev Viacheslav.

How to Have Better One-on-Ones

One-on-one meetings with employees are seemingly among a leader's most straightforward tasks. Two colleagues have yet another conversation about work--what could be simpler? But a theme in my practice is that a more deliberate approach to one-on-ones can turn them from perfunctory exchanges into much higher sources of leverage. [1] If you're a leader who'd like to hold better one-on-ones, here are some questions to ask yourself and a set of proposals to consider:

If you're not holding formal one-on-ones, why not?

Andy Grove, the late CEO of Intel, noted that managers from other companies viewed formal one-on-ones as unnecessary, telling him, "I don't need scheduled meetings with my supervisor [or subordinate]; I see [them] several times a day." [2] I sometimes work with early-stage CEOs who feel similarly and view formal one-on-ones as superfluous bureaucracy. But this approach has several problems.

Even when you're communicating frequently with employees, it's likely that those interactions are highly tactical, with with little time devoted to more strategic issues, and no time at all to address the quality of your working relationship or anything of similar complexity. And, as Grove continued, "there is an enormous difference between a casual encounter by a supervisor and subordinate, or even a meeting to resolve a specific problem, and a one-on-one." [3]

The absence of formal one-on-ones means that when you do schedule a meeting to address a bigger challenge, you signal to your employees that such events are for "tough conversations," rendering them more stressful and less likely to succeed. (And this may be equally true when an employee schedules a one-on-one with you.)

Alternatively, holding formal one-on-ones on a regular basis normalizes the experience, allowing you and your employees to grow more comfortable addressing complex or difficult topics. Simultaneously, it highlights that this is a particular type of conversation and not just an ordinary meeting, motivating both you and your employees to be more thoughtful about how you prepare and participate.

Who merits a one-on-one?

Having formalized the process, it's important to assess how you're allocating the time you have available for one-on-ones, which is one of your organization's most precious resources. This isn't self-aggrandizing--it's simply a consequence of the fact that your attention is finite. [4] And a one-on-one meeting involves a major "investment" of attention from which you should expect a substantial "return," just as you would with any other limited resource. [5]

In addition to meeting with their direct reports, some of my clients initiate or make themselves available for skip-level one-on-ones with more junior employees. This practice can provide you with a new perspective on the organization, but it comes with potential dilemmas. It doesn't scale, and can leave you spread too thin. It can also short-circuit normal managerial channels--although if you have concerns about one of your direct reports, this may be the point.

I've had clients who levelled an employee and offered ongoing one-on-ones as a way to cushion the blow, but again, this doesn't scale and is generally a short-term fix. The key is recognizing that people want the leader's attention because it's a valuable resource, and beyond a certain point in your career it's unlikely that you'll be able to meet this demand entirely without compromising on other responsibilities.

What's the appropriate cadence? How long should a one-on-one last?

Here Grove offers some useful guidelines:

How often should you have one-on-ones? Or put another way, how do you decide how often somebody needs such a meeting? The answer is in the job- or task-relevant maturity of each of your subordinates. In other words, how much experience does a given subordinate have with the specific task at hand? This is not the same as the experience they have in general...

The subordinate should feel that there is enough time to broach and get into thorny issues... I feel that a one-on-one should last an hour at a minimum. Anything less, in my experience, tends to make the subordinate confine themselves to simple things that can be handled quickly. [6]

Given that your employees' "job- or task-relevant maturity" likely varies, the cadence of regular one-on-ones need not be uniform, nor is there a single best practice. Most of my clients hold weekly one-on-ones with most of their direct reports, but meeting every other week is also common. A longer cadence with direct reports is less typical, but skip-level one-on-ones are often monthly or quarterly. Ultimately it's up to you and each employee to determine what works best.

The key is predictability, so you should only ever cancel or reschedule a one-on-one as a last resort. If you do this repeatedly you send a very clear message that it's a low-priority event, and your employees will act accordingly. And if you have a direct report who's reluctant to hold one-on-ones or who cancels on you, this merits further investigation. It may be a sign of a deeper problem in the relationship [7], or it may simply be that the quality of your one-on-ones needs to be improved. Make clear your desire for one-on-ones to be valuable to them, solicit feedback on your current arrangements, and enlist them in joint problem-solving.

What's on the agenda? How should we prepare?

As with cadence, there's no universal template for agenda-setting or preparation, but there are some general principles to bear in mind. Grove stresses that the employee should feel a sense of ownership:

A key point about a one-on-one: It should be regarded as the subordinate's meeting, with its agenda and tone set by [them]... So the [subordinate] should be asked to prepare an outline, which is very important because it forces them to think through in advance all of the issues and points [they] plan to raise. Moreover, with an outline, the supervisor knows at the outset what is to be covered and can therefore help to set the pace of the meeting according to the "meatiness" of the items on the agenda. An outline also provides a framework for supporting information, which the subordinate should prepare in advance. The subordinate should then walk the supervisor through all the material.

What should be covered in a one-on-one?... The most important criterion governing matters to be talked about is that they be issues that preoccupy and nag the subordinate. These are often obscure and take time to surface, consider, and resolve. [8]

Claire Hughes Johnson, the former COO of Stripe, expresses similar sentiments:

I generally tell folks, especially more experienced people, that the 1:1 is their time. We set up a mutual doc that we can both edit, and we track action items and link out to goals and career conversation notes. Beyond that, I ask the individual to propose each 1:1 agenda, and I only edit the doc to add in agenda item suggestions when I have them. [9]

When your employees own the agenda, not only is this much more efficient for you, it also ensures that the discussion will focus on issues that are most important to them. But having your employees set the agenda doesn't mean that you have no input, as Grove and Hughes Johnson make clear. You can also give feedback to an employee on the quality of their agenda if you conclude that the time isn't being well-spent. My clients who've asked their employees to take responsibility for agenda-setting typically find it a useful exercise in revealing who's well-prepared and who's not.

A particular form that lack of preparation can take is the employee who treats the one-on-one primarily or even exclusively as a vehicle to report out. If you find yourself listening to extensive updates that should have been written reports or automated dashboards for you to review in advance, you can let them know that it's a missed opportunity to have a more meaningful dialogue.

How should one-on-ones be conducted? What role should I play as leader?

An employee who sets the agenda and provides you with sufficient time to digest any preparatory materials enables you to add value not by directing the conversation or even having answers to all their questions, but by posing questions yourself. While there are limits on the extent to which you can serve as an employee's "coach," you can readily employ coaching as a methodology. [10] This not only scales, it also allows you to add value in one-on-ones even with senior employees who possess specialized expertise that you lack. Grove recommended what he called "dialectic management":

What is the role of the supervisor in a one-on-one? They should facilitate the subordinate's expression of what's going on and what's bothering them. The supervisor is there to learn and to coach... How is this done? By applying Grove's Principle of Dialectic Management, "Ask one more question!" When the supervisor thinks the subordinate has said all they want to say about a subject, [the supervisor] should ask another question. [11]

And your questions should include inquiring about your employee's state of mind and well-being. Hughes Johnson notes that a one-on-one should always begin by "asking how someone is doing--checking in really matters." [12] Grove firmly agrees: "The supervisor should also encourage the discussion of heart-to-heart issues during one-on-ones, because this is the perfect forum for getting at subtle and deep work-related problems." [13]

It's by attending to the logistical details above that you create an environment in which employees are willing to truly tell you how they're doing and be candid with you on "heart-to-heart" issues. Holding formal one-on-ones that are rarely cancelled or rescheduled and for which both of you are fully prepared goes a long way toward creating the psychological safety that's necessary for real openness. This doesn't mean that you should avoid contentious issues, as I've noted previously:

Psychological safety entails candid and direct communication. It requires asking and answering hard questions. It does not mean "being nice." It does not mean avoiding difficult conversations or fraught topics to ensure that no one experiences distress. To the contrary, a setting in which people are reluctant to be candid and direct for fear of triggering any distress in others is psychologically unsafe. [14]

I opened with the idea that better one-on-ones can be a great source of leverage for a leader, and I'll close with Grove's thoughts on the same subject:

What is the leverage of a one-on-one? Let's say you have a one-on-one with your subordinate every two weeks, and it lasts one and a half hours. Ninety minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate's work for two weeks, or for some eighty-plus hours, and also upgrade your understanding of what [they're] doing. Clearly one-on-ones can exert enormous leverage. [15]

 

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Footnotes

[1] 1x 10x 100x (On Leverage)

[2] High Output Management, page 73 (Andy Grove, 1st edition, 1983)

[3] Ibid.

[4] Beyond Simple Multi-Tasking: Continuous Partial Attention (Linda Stone, 2009)

[5] Growth, Profitability and Return on Attention

[6] Grove, pages 73-74.

[7] Better Working Relationships

[8] Grove, page 75.

[9] Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company-Building, page 399 (Claire Hughes Johnson, 2023)

[10] For more on coaching as a leadership tool (and its limitations), see the following:

• Connect, Reflect, Direct...Then Ask (On Coaching)
• How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize
• Investment vs. Attachment

[11] Grove, pages 75-76.

[12] Hughes Johnson, page 399.

[13] Grove, page 77.

[14] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[15] Grove, page 77-78.

 

Photo by World Bank Photo Collective.

Currencies (On Motivating Different People)

A theme in my practice is the leader who's seeking to increase employee motivation. In this context it's important to bear in mind the work of Frederick Herzberg, a 20th century psychologist who had a profound influence on our understanding of motivation in organizational life. Herzberg offers a sharp critique of the conventional approaches to motivation, which he refers to as "kicks in the ass" or KITA. These aren't only negative, in the form of criticism or threats--they can also be positive, in the form of desirable rewards:

Let us consider motivation. If I say to you, "Do this for me or the company, and in return I will give you a reward, an incentive, more status, a promotion, all the quid pro quos that exist in the industrial organization," am I motivating you? The overwhelming opinion I receive from management people is, "Yes, this is motivation." I have a year-old schnauzer. When it was a small puppy and I wanted it to move, I kicked it in the rear and it moved. Now that I have finished its obedience training, I hold up a dog biscuit when I want the schnauzer to move. In this instance, who is motivated--I or the dog? The dog wants the biscuit, but it is I who want it to move. Again, I am the one who is motivated, and the dog is the one who moves. In this instance all I did was apply KITA frontally; I exerted a pull instead of a push. When industry wishes to use such positive KITAs, it has available an incredible number and variety of dog biscuits (jelly beans for humans) to wave in front of employees to get them to jump. [1]

Herzberg is exaggerating for comic effect here--I don't think he ever kicked his dog. [2] But his larger point holds: rewards like dog biscuits and jelly beans may result in movement, but that's not the same thing as motivation. This doesn't mean rewards are irrelevant as incentives, but a key in deploying them effectively is understanding that there are two different types of motivation, intrinsic (deriving from the work itself) and extrinsic (deriving from by-products of the work or aspects of the environment in which work occurs). As I've written before,

Herzberg's research suggests that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction aren't endpoints on a single spectrum, but two distinct scales. Satisfaction is derived from sources of intrinsic motivation such as a sense of achievement, recognition, responsibility, and opportunities for growth. In contrast, sources of extrinsic motivation (also known as "hygiene factors") such as working conditions, compensation, status, and security generate dissatisfaction if they're perceived as inadequate. [3]

But this understanding only gets a leader so far. Intrinsic motivators increase job satisfaction, and a sufficiency of extrinsic motivators prevent job dissatisfaction--but what does this look like in practice? If you're a leader seeking to increase employees' motivation, what can you do? Leadership experts Allan Cohen and David Bradford offer some suggestions. [4] In Influence Without Authority they articulate a set of principles and frameworks to support the development of stronger working relationships and more effective collaboration. [5] Although the title indicates that they're writing for people who lack directive control, I find their ideas highly relevant in my work with leaders. My clients are typically in senior positions, but their employees expect a high degree of latitude and autonomy, and leadership in these settings rarely involves "giving orders." [6]

One of Cohen and Bradford's most useful concepts related to motivation is what they call currencies: "resources that can be exchanged [as] the basis for acquiring influence." The list below is adapted from Chapter 3 in Influence Without Authority, "Goods and Services: The Currencies of Exchange." I've followed Cohen and Bradford's general schema, while modifying some of their terminology.

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Inspiration-Related

1. Vision: A compelling view of the company's future and a description of how someone could contribute to its accomplishment.

2. Excellence: Opportunities to work at the highest standards of achievement.

3. Values: Opportunities to pursue moral or ethical virtues through work.

Task-Related

4. Resources: Additional budget, personnel, technology, space, etc.

5. Challenge: Opportunities to pursue difficult goals and develop enhanced skills and capabilities.

6. Assistance: The ability to delegate unwanted duties or obtain support in facing difficulties.

7. "Air Cover": Public or private help in influencing decision-makers and overcoming resistance.

8. Speed: Confidence that requests and inquiries will be met with a rapid response.

9. Information: Access to restricted or private organizational knowledge.

Position-Related

10. Recognition: Public or private acknowledgment of effort, accomplishments or abilities.

11. Visibility: Opportunities to be known by and interact with senior figures.

12. Reputation: A positive image that opens doors to additional opportunities.

13. Status: Participation in select groups or events.

14. Contacts: The ability to join or build a larger or more valuable network.

Relationship-Related

15. Inclusion: Feelings of closeness and emotional intimacy with specific individuals or groups.

16. Understanding: Opportunities to voice concerns and feel heard.

17. Kindness: Thoughtful and timely expressions of support during difficulties.

Personal

18. Gratitude: Expressions of appreciation in the form of thanks, deference, or a recognition of indebtedness.

19. Ownership: An intrinsically fulfilling sense of control and responsibility.

20. Affirmation: Reinforcement of a person's values, beliefs, sense of identity or self-worth.

21. Comfort: The minimization of headaches, hassles, interruptions or embarrassment.

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If you're seeking to increase employee motivation, Cohen and Bradford's inventory offers a wide range of potential interventions--and here's where it's important to apply Herzberg's insights. Any number of the currencies above can be dispensed like "dog biscuits or jelly beans," but will the result be motivation or merely movement? When people move in response to a promised reward, that's a form of compliance, but motivation springs from a deeper level of commitment. And as I've written before,

Compliant people remain so only as long as they aren't too dissatisfied, but the absence of punishment and the promise of rewards doesn't generate sustained motivation. Committed people are motivated, and the fulfillment they find in the pursuit of their aims makes them more likely to persist in the face of difficulties. [7]

Herzberg indicates that the most significant intrinsic motivators are "[a sense of] achievement, recognition for achievement, the work itself, responsibility, and growth or advancement," while the most significant extrinsic motivators are "company policy and administration, supervision, interpersonal relationships, working conditions, salary, status, and security." [8] Some of Cohen and Bradford's currencies fall readily into one category or the other, but in many cases the distinction is unclear or may be highly contextual.

None of this is to suggest that intrinsic motivators are somehow superior, but recall that Herzberg originally dubbed extrinsic motivators "hygiene factors" to express his finding that sufficiency prevented dissatisfaction, but a surplus didn't necessarily yield more satisfaction. This is where I see many leaders make a category error--they're surprised when increases in compensation or status don't result in sustained motivation, and yet that's common with extrinsic factors that are subject to the process of hedonic adaptation. [9]

But all of this guidance needs to be assessed in light of the needs and preferences of the specific individuals you're seeking to motivate. Herzberg's work can be viewed as a map to help you navigate these issues, and yet, as with all findings from social psychology, "the map is not the territory." [10] Hopefully Cohen and Bradford's inventory expands the possibilities under your consideration, but what ultimately matters isn't whether a given currency is intrinsic or extrinsic in an abstract sense, but the value it holds for a particular employee.

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

• Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)
• Mind the Gap (On Leading Senior Executives)

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Footnotes

[1] One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? (Frederick Herzberg, Harvard Business Review, originally published 1968, republished 2003)

[2] I don't really know anything about how Herzberg felt about dogs. But he helped liberate Dachau as 22-year-old U.S. Army sergeant, an undoubtedly searing experience that influenced his interest in motivation, and I'd like to think that such a man would only be kind to animals.

[3] Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)

[4] David Bradford has been an important mentor to me.

[5] Influence Without Authority (Allan Cohen and David Bradford, 2nd edition, 2005)

[6] Force Isn't Power

[7] Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)

[8] Herzberg, 1968/2003

[9] Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" by "Getting Better"

[10] The Map Is Not the Territory

 

Photo by Philip Brewer.

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 2 (On Hiring)

In Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 1, I discuss the factors that cause leaders to delay a necessary termination. A mirror image of this fear can affect leaders during a hiring process, one that causes them to rush. They're so concerned about a role going unfilled that they make missteps or discount potential red flags along the way. Sometimes this is the result of inexperience, but even long-tenured leaders can be affected. What do leaders driven by a "fear of the empty chair" overlook or ignore when hiring? And if you're a leader preparing to make a hire, what can you do about it?

Cognitive Biases

There's ample research on the limitations of job interviews in predicting performance. [1] A particular problem is the unstructured interview, in which the interviewer lacks specific questions designed to elicit responses about the candidate's real-life experiences to test for a desired set of characteristics. The unstructured interview moves randomly from one topic to the next, with the candidate guessing what the interviewer wants to hear and eagerly seizing on any points in common. And the results are readily subject to cognitive biases, the mental shortcuts that preserve our limited capacity for logical reasoning at the cost of systematic errors:

• Confirmation bias: Searching for and promoting data consistent with pre-existing hypotheses about a candidate, while rejecting disconfirming data.
• Halo effect: Viewing a candidate's attributes more positively (or negatively) than is merited on the basis of positive (or negative) impressions of other attributes.
• Stereotypes: Assumptions about a candidate's fitness based on similarities to (or differences from) the interviewer's often vague assumptions about an "ideal candidate." [2]

Leaders will obviously continue to rely on interviews, despite their drawbacks. This isn't irrational behavior--even unstructured interviews have benefits [3], and structured interviews can be difficult to implement. [4] However, as organizational psychologist Robert Dipboye has noted, "The evidence is compelling that the inclusion of formal job analyses, standardized questioning of applicants, and behavioral rating scales improve the validity and reliability of interviewer judgments." [5]

If you're a leader who's feeling a sense of urgency about making a hire, it will likely be worth the effort to slow down and take the advice of Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman: 1) Create a structured set of questions to prevent you from simply pursuing the questions that you find most interesting, 2) Use the time available in an interview to obtain as much information as possible about the candidate's life in their normal environment, 3) Do not make decisions solely on the basis of your global evaluations, and 4) Rely upon statistical summaries of separately evaluated attributes. [6]

Defensiveness

More specifically, hiring processes should screen for defensiveness, which I define as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for setbacks, characterized by a disproportionately hostile, anxious or evasive response to critical feedback. When one of my clients has an under-performing employee, defensiveness is almost always an issue. Jean Leslie and Ellen Van Velsor of the Center for Creative Leadership studied "derailed" executives who left their organizations non-voluntarily or were plateaued at a level short of expectations. The two leading factors in such cases were "inability to develop or adapt" (61 percent) and "poor working relations" (57 percent), and in my experience defensiveness is a primary contributor to both. [7]

But a candidate is unlikely to show signs of defensiveness during hiring, when they're striving to be their best selves, so if you're a leader making a hire it's up to you to test for it. Here are three questions to ask candidates during the process, and in this order (although not all three may be necessary):

1. Tell me about a time when things went wrong.

If the candidate can't answer this question thoughtfully, that's an initial red flag, suggesting that they're unwilling to be forthright about their setbacks or unable to observe and interpret such situations without experiencing distress. But some candidates will provide an adequate answer while leaving themselves out of the story, blaming the setback on the failings of others or inescapable misfortune. In these cases, proceed to the next question:

2. Tell me about a time when you made a mistake.

The wording here is deliberate, providing the candidate with an opportunity to take responsibility for a setback without using unduly fraught language. We all "make mistakes," and only the most defensive among us will refuse to admit it. Still, some candidates will respond with an example in which the consequences of their mistake were relatively trivial, providing little data on their capacity to acknowledge and learn from serious missteps. In these cases, proceed to the final question:

3. Tell me about a time when you failed.

The wording here is also deliberate, inviting the candidate to identify a situation in which they bore personal responsibility for a meaningful setback. Some candidates who were less forthcoming in response to the first two questions will finally avail themselves of this opportunity--and others will not, providing examples of inconsequential "failures," or evading the idea that they failed, finding others to take the blame.

If a candidate's unable to provide a satisfactory response to any of these questions, consider that a likely sign of defensiveness. And if you're still bullish on their candidacy, ask whether your eagerness to fill the role might be distorting your judgment. [8]

Leverage

Once the top candidate has been identified, the leader has to close them, sometimes requiring multiple rounds of negotiation across a range of issues. The leader's goal shouldn't be to extract the most concessions possible from the candidate. By adopting such an aggressive stance, not only do they run the risk of losing the best candidates over relatively minor differences, they also increase the likelihood that a qualified candidate will accept the role begrudgingly, or that only less-qualified candidates will remain available, in either case sowing the seeds of future difficulties.

But it can be equally problematic when a leader is so anxious to fill a role that they give up their leverage in the negotiation, making concessions that they later regret. When the dust settles after the hire's completed, the result is an employee who's one of the following:

• Over-compensated: This can take the form of excessive base pay or equity grants, but it may also reflect unsound management practices, such as poorly-structured variable or bonus plans. Even confidential information about compensation rarely remains so indefinitely, and any arrangements that are outside the company's norms have the potential to wreak havoc should other employees come to feel that they're now under-compensated or have been treated unfairly.
• Over-titled: They candidate is really a Director, but they held out for VP. Or they're really a VP, but they held out for C-level. Or the role shouldn't even have a hierarchical title, but the leader felt obligated to award one to close the candidate. As I've written before, "at first...titles may seem cheap--I've even had clients call them 'free.' But not only are those hidden costs eventually revealed, they also tend to escalate--so supposedly 'free' titles ultimately become very expensive." [9]
• Over-scoped: This isn't to say that the candidate is unqualified per se, but, rather, that their ambitions extend beyond their current capabilities, and they negotiated for a set of duties that will stretch them to the point of failure.

Again, the solution isn't to adopt a bare-knuckles negotiation style and pick a fight over every single issue. But if you're a leader in the midst of making a hire, pay close attention to how you feel about the prospect of losing the candidate and the extent to which such feelings might be causing you to underplay the leverage you hold in the negotiations. In this context it can be helpful to better understand your strengths and weaknesses as a negotiator. There's no one right approach, but in my experience there are two distinct negotiating "cultures":

In a list-price culture, there's a high degree of transparency and very little flexibility. An opening offer may not be take-it-or-leave it, but there's relatively little gamesmanship... In a haggling culture, the opposite is true. There's very little transparency and a great deal of flexibility. Opening offers are never take-it-or-leave-it, and gamesmanship abounds. [10]

A challenge in hiring is that you and the candidate probably haven't negotiated before, so you may come from opposing cultures without realizing it, which is a recipe for miscommunication:

When a list-price leader meets a haggling candidate, the leader may be surprised by a seemingly outrageous counter-offer, and the candidate may be surprised by the leader's rigid inflexibility. And when a haggling leader meets a list-price candidate, the leader may be surprised by the candidate's apparent lack of responsiveness, and the candidate may be surprised by the insultingly low opening offer. [11]

Short-Term Pain vs. Long-Term Pain

As I noted in Part 1, a theme here is the belief that the short-term pain will be greater than the long-term pain. When filling an empty role, the short-term pain is evident: Important work is going undone. This includes not only the work that is the purview of the role, but also the work that the leader must defer or forego in order to dedicate time and energy to the hiring process.

It's also not uncommon for leaders to find hiring itself a somewhat painful experience. Even when recruiters or other employees are available to source a pool of candidates and conduct the initial screens, the leader must ultimately spend a substantial amount of time in later rounds with candidates who won't work out--and in many early stage companies the leader is doing all this work on their own. And some leaders enjoy negotiating, but many find it onerous at best. In most cases, the leader is driven to seek relief and put an end to the short-term pain by selecting a candidate and closing them quickly.

However, as I also wrote in Part 1, what gets left out of this equation is the possibility that the long-term pain might outweigh the short-term pain, and perhaps by a substantial margin. Candidates who breezed through a series of unstructured interviews might look the part but be woefully underqualified. Candidates whose defensiveness wasn't surfaced during the process (or, worse, was ignored) will almost certainly fail to fulfill their potential. Candidates who extracted outsized concessions in their negotiation may be overmatched by the role or create perceptions of unfairness, undermining trust in management.  And someone who fits any of these criteria may well need to be managed out or terminated abruptly. The long-term pain of a poor hire is nearly limitless.

If you're a leader preparing for or in the middle of an important hire, you're undoubtedly feeling some pressure to fill the role. But managing your "fear of the empty chair" and tolerating some short-term pain in order to create a more structured interview process, test deliberately for defensiveness, and carefully assess your leverage as you conduct negotiations may well spare you from much more pain in the long run.

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 1 (On Termination)

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Footnotes

[1] For more on the shortcomings of interviews, see the following:

• Stubborn Reliance on Intuition and Subjectivity in Employee Selection (Scott Highhouse, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2008)
• Belief in the unstructured interview: The persistence of an illusion (Jason Dana, Robyn Dawes and Nathanial Peterson, Judgment and Decision Making, 2013)
• Overconfidence in personnel selection: When and why unstructured interview information can hurt hiring decisions (Edgar Kausel, Satoris Culbertson and Hector Madrid, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2016)
• The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews (Jason Dana, The New York Times, 2017)

[2] For more on cognitive biases in interviewing, see Structured and Unstructured Selection Interviews: Beyond the Job-Fit Model (Robert Dipboye, Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 1994) and How Cognitive Biases Make Interviews Unreliable (Huy Tran, TRG International, 2016).

[3] Dipboye, page 112:

Unstructured approaches allow for richer communication among interviewers and between interviewer and the applicant (Daft & Lengel, 1986); as a consequence, those involved in the selection process can achieve greater reductions in the equivocality associated with hiring decisions (Weick, 1979). Second, the political behavior that can emerge with an unstructured procedure can prove valuable in resolving conflict over underlying objectives and alternative job candidates. Third, when knowledge of cause-effect is incomplete and there is no consensus on standards, fairness becomes more of an issue, and the interactional quality of an unstructured interview can provide for greater procedural justice. Fourth, the overall fit of the individual to the job context becomes more important in these situations and as discussed earlier, unstructured procedures seem to provide a better basis for achieving a good fit to this broader context. Finally, it is in these ambiguous situations that the personal commitment of those conducting the interviews is especially important to the ultimate success of the decision, and through providing autonomy, an unstructured procedure may help build this commitment...

[4] Ibid, page 113:

There are several ways that a structured selection process can conflict with the existing system, and as a consequence can be rejected or destructured. In the search for personal satisfaction, interviewers deviate from guidelines by incorporating task characteristics such as variety and autonomy. In the attempt to achieve a good fit to the organization, interviewers stray from the job-related attributes to consider the personality, values, and goals and to allow recruiting, socialization, rind self-selection. Other deviations occur as a consequence of power tactics, such as building coalitions or controlling the decision process. In the attempt to be fair, interviewers deviate from the one-way interrogation."

[5] Ibid, page 94.

[6] Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews

[7] A Look at Derailment Today: North America and Europe, page 11 (Jean Leslie and Ellen Van Velsor, Center for Creative Leadership, 1996)

[8] Adapted from Surfacing Defensiveness (Three Questions for Candidates).

[9] Very Cheap, Then Very Expensive (On Job Titles)

[10] Culture, Compensation and Negotiation

[11] Ibid.

 

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 1 (On Terminations)

A theme in my practice is the leader who's been delaying a hard decision. [1] This can be particularly challenging when it involves terminating an employee. Sometimes this reluctance is well-founded, but my clients often look back on these scenarios and wish they'd been more decisive and less hesitant. [2] Instead, they were held back by a set of concerns that in hindsight don't seem to justify their prior inaction. What's behind this "fear of the empty chair"? And if you're a leader in similar circumstances, what can you do about it?

Self-Doubt

Some of my clients are relatively new to leadership roles, and they don't fully trust their intuition. Termination decisions should not be made purely (or even primarily) on an intuitive basis, nor is our intuition is always accurate. [3] But few difficult decisions are made on the basis of objective data alone--when the data is that clear, the decision is easy. In termination decisions there's always some data--the missed quarter, the botched project, the critical feedback--and it's the leader's responsibility to interpret that data and determine its significance.

This involves a degree of intuition, but it's not some sort of mystical process. Economist and psychologist Herbert Simon offers a straightforward definition: "The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition." [4] If you're wrestling with self-doubt, the first step is creating an environment that's free from distractions, so you can tune into your intuition more accurately. [5] The key over time will be tracking your decisions to assess when your intuition pays off and when it's subject to cognitive biases that lead you astray. [6]

Guilt

Alternatively, a leader may be clear that termination is the right decision, but they're held back by feelings of guilt. They may have hired the employee, and even offered inducements to convince them to accept the role. The employee may be a friend, family member, or classmate, and termination may damage or end the personal relationship. Or the leader may feel that they've let the employee down by failing to provide appropriate resources or guidance.

Guilt is a powerful motivator of prosocial behavior, in large part because we go to great lengths to avoid the actions that induce this unpleasant feeling. [7] But we may also fail to take necessary actions to prevent the feeling from arising in the first place. If guilt is holding you back from following through on what you believe to be the right course of action, the key is emotion regulation. This doesn't mean suppressing those feelings, as I've noted before:

Suppression is essentially an act of make-believe--we pretend we're not feeling what we're feeling and hope to distract ourselves until the feeling passes... In contrast, emotion regulation involves improving our ability to sense, comprehend, articulate and express what we're feeling, and we develop those skills by getting closer to our emotions, not by distancing ourselves from them. [8]

Once you've determined how to prevent guilt from serving as an obstacle, there's still a valuable learning opportunity here for you: If you hired this person, what red flags did you miss or discount? If you have (or had) a relationship with them outside of work, how will you balance your personal and professional relationships in the future? If you failed to provide necessary resources or guidance, how will you alter your approach to management?

Obstinacy

Leaders are often persistent, and that's generally an admirable quality--but at some point a capacity to endure difficulties becomes irrational obstinacy. One way to prevent this is to recognize and write off sunk costs. An under-performing employee usually represents a substantial sum of time, effort and money. Meaningful amounts of these resources were expended to source a pool of candidates, identify the best prospects, select and close one, and onboard them. And the longer they've been in the role, the more resources that have been directed toward their training and management.

Tallying up these resources often fuels a hope that they can be recovered through improved performance and long-term retention. But it's essential to view such expended resources not as investments that may yield a return, but as sunk costs, a concept explored by professors of management Jeffery McMullen and Alexander Kier in their research on why entrepreneurs persist in striving toward goals when the rational choice is to quit:

An uncompleted goal prevents production costs from being treated as sunk because they are mentally categorized as investments rather than expenses until evidence overwhelmingly disconfirms the likelihood that they will produce the expected return... Sunk costs and time invested are costs of abandonment that grow from delay, further increasing the desirability of outcome attainment for decision makers who do not want to appear wasteful. [9]

If you find yourself resisting an otherwise rational decision to terminate an employee, consider the extent to which you remain hopeful that the resources expended over the course of their employment might somehow be recovered. Now write down the value of those resources to zero, and take a fresh look at the situation. Rather than asking yourself how those resources could be recovered, ask yourself whether you should continue trying.

Optics

Perceptions matter, particularly for a growing company that may be facing a great deal of uncertainty. In this context leaders must attend closely to the narratives that surround the company and actively shape them through storytelling, as I've written before:

Why is [storytelling] such an important aspect of leadership? Because reality is socially constructed, and the vehicle for that process is narrative. There are few ground truths in social structures, organizational life, or interpersonal experience. Once we get beyond the realm of physics, the "truth" is what we believe to be true, and when enough people, or the right people, profess their belief in a given narrative its influence is as irresistible as gravity. The converse also holds, of course: when enough people, or the right people, withdraw their belief in a given narrative, it has no influence at all. [10]

The departure of an employee contributes to a company's narrative and may well be perceived negatively, particularly if they're a senior executive or have strong relationships with other employees or external stakeholders. This is one reason why terminations should be handled in a way that affords the affected employee as much grace and dignity as possible, maximizing the possibility that the leader and employee can agree on a shared public narrative that explains their departure. This narrative will undoubtedly be simplified--public discourse doesn't afford much room for nuance or complexity. But this isn't always possible, even when both parties make a good-faith effort.

In such cases leaders often overemphasize the risk of bad publicity resulting from a termination and resist taking needed action. But in my experience people are increasingly skeptical about such claims, recognizing that adverse publicity about a company in the media or on review websites represents the subjective viewpoint of the claimant, not objective truth. Further, leaders often discount the possibility that the narrative attached to an unwilling departure may be a net positive for the company, signalling a commitment to high performance or accountability for professional behavior.

If you're a leader who's reluctant to pursue a necessary termination because of concerns over optics, first consider how you might reach agreement with the employee on a shared public narrative. This shouldn't be false or misleading, but it will leave out certain details and focus on others in order to serve both parties' interests. This is why departing executives so often profess a desire to "spend more time with the family"--this is never the whole truth, but it is almost always true.

If agreement on a shared public narrative proves impossible, consider how you might judiciously communicate with your stakeholders. To be clear, in almost all cases you should not make public details regarding the employee's performance or behavior in order to justify your decision. This will generally be perceived as a violation of privacy and undermine trust in you and the company. But in some cases you can comment on general standards of performance or behavior, without sharing any details related to this particular situation. Or you may have an opportunity to simultaneously announce other, happier departures with a degree of fanfare, while electing not to comment on the termination. Silence is also a form of communication. [11]

Short-Term Pain vs. Long-Term Pain

An element in all of these rationales is the belief that the short-term pain will be greater than the long-term pain. Sometimes the leader doesn't even acknowledge the possibility of long-term pain--they imagine that an under-performing employee can be retained indefinitely without causing irreparable damage. More typically, the leader is aware that allowing an under-performing employee to continue in their role will cause long-term pain, but they resist taking action because the short-term pain of a termination seems so much more evident and troublesome.

Moving forward with a termination will compel the leader to overcome any lingering self-doubt and trust their intuition. It will require a confrontation with any feelings of guilt and taking responsibility for their contributions to the situation. It will entail admitting the futility of recovering all resources expended on the employee's behalf and writing them off as sunk costs. It will be necessary to struggle to craft a shared public narrative, or to run the risk of adverse publicity if this proves impossible. All of this work will be painful.

In many cases leaders are also concerned about a gap in continuity, which will generate even more short-term pain. The terminated employee's duties will have to be delegated, and it may fall to the leader to take them on. Or this may simply not be possible, causing pain for customers or other stakeholders. Shortening or eliminating the gap in continuity will require an expedited search for a replacement, which is often arduous work under the best of circumstances. There will be no shortage of pain.

But what gets left out of this equation is the possibility that the long-term pain might outweigh the short-term pain, and perhaps by a substantial margin. An under-performing employee can take a toll on everyone around them, not just their manager, and left unchecked this can cause very painful problems. The employee's poor performance or unprofessional behavior is rarely evident only to the leader, and the leader's inaction will be noted and raise questions. The best employees may choose to leave, while others may lower their own standards of performance. And as education experts Steve Greunert and Todd Whitaker have noted, "The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate." [12]

In encouraging you to weigh the risk of long-term pain more carefully and perhaps overcome your reluctance to move forward, please note I'm not suggesting you act rashly or terminate an employee over a trivial offense or a single setback. Very few mistakes are truly fatal, and the ability to grow and learn from failure is a vitally important quality to cultivate in organizational life. [13] But it's also worth considering that your under-performing employee is also suffering, and allowing them to remain in the role is not merciful, but cruel. As the great management thinker Peter Drucker once wrote, "I have never seen anyone in a job for which he was inadequate who was not slowly being destroyed by the pressure and the strains, and who did not secretly pray for deliverance." [14]

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

On Firing a Senior Team Member

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 2 (On Hiring)

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Footnotes

[1] Kicking the Can Down the Road (On Hard Decisions)

[2] Don't Wait

[3] For more on intuition, see Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut? (Interview with Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein, McKinsey Quarterly, 2010)

[4] What is an "Explanation" of Behavior? (Herbert Simon, Psychological Science, 1992)

[5] How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work)

[6] For more on decision tracking, see Creating a Decision Journal (Shane Parrish, Farnam Street, 2014) and Decision Journal (Shane Parrish). For more on cognitive biases, see When Heuristics Go Bad (On Cognitive Biases).

[7] For more on the value of guilt, see Guilt and Helping (Christian Miller, 2010) and Avoiding and Alleviating Guilt Through Prosocial Behavior (Mica Estrada-Hollenbeck and Todd Heatherton, Chapter 20 in Guilt and Children, 1998).

[8] The Tyranny of Feelings

[9] Trapped by the Entrepreneurial Mindset: Opportunity Seeking and the Escalation of Commitment in the Mount Everest Disaster, page 679 (Jeffery McMullen and Alexander Kier, Journal of Business Venturing, 2016)

[10] The Importance of Shared Narrative

[11] "No matter how one may try, one cannot not communicate. Activity or inactivity, words or silence all have message value... The mere absence of talking or of taking notice of each other is no exception to what has just been asserted." (Paul Watzlawick et al, Pragmatics of Human Communication, page 49, 1967)

[12] School Culture Rewired: How to Define, Assess, and Transform It, page 36 (Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker, 2015)

[13] The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

[14] The Effective Executive, page 89 (Peter Drucker, 1966)

 

Photo by Votchitsev Viacheslav.

Are the Best Salespeople the Best Sales Leaders?

Not necessarily--and sometimes they're terrible. A common figure in my clients' companies is the high-performing salesperson who aspires to sales leadership, is promoted to a managerial role, and promptly fails to meet expectations. In some cases this stumble motivates them to improve their managerial skills, but just as often they have to be replaced, and occasionally they drag the entire sales org down with them. I'm not merely relying on observations from my practice--this dynamic has been documented in the management literature:

Using detailed microdata on sales workers in U.S. firms, we provide the first large-scale empirical evidence showing that firms prioritize current performance in promotion decisions at the expense of promoting the best potential managers. Our findings are consistent with the "Peter Principle," which, in its extreme form, states that firms promote competent workers until they become incompetent managers. In particular, we show that high-performing sales workers are more likely to be promoted, but that prior sales performance negatively predicts managerial performance. [1]

And by sales expert Bruce Sevy, who advises companies on their talent strategies:

GrowthPlay has assessed hundreds of thousands of candidates for sales and sales management roles and we do this in a way that lets us empirically assess a person’s fit to both roles. What we found is more than a bit counter-intuitive. First, only about one out of every six candidates who is a strong fit for a sales role is also a strong fit for a sales management role. Perhaps equally surprisingly, as many as five out of every seven candidates who are poor fits for sales roles are strong fits for sales manager roles. [2]

And by sales SaaS founder Steli Efti, an exceptional salesman himself:

My style of pitching only worked for me. It was a unique way of doing things for a unique person. And by trying to inspire my team to do the same instead of coaching them on the fundamentals, I was taking good, hardworking, ambitious people and setting them up for failure. [3]

What's happening here? There are three underlying factors:

• The characteristics that support exceptional sales performance don't correlate with exceptional sales leadership.
• But many ambitious salespeople remain motivated by status, titles and managerial responsibilities.
• So companies strive to retain top salespeople through promotions while mitigating the costs of their mismanagement.

Part 1: Why (So Many) Great Salespeople Can't Lead

David McClelland was a prominent social psychologist in the 20th century, and his "motivational needs theory" explains the surprising disconnect between exceptional sales performance and exceptional sales leadership. [4] McClelland's research suggests that people have three primary needs--for achievement, power, and affiliation--and that an individual's combination of needs renders them more or less suitable for different professional roles. People with a high need for achievement tend to make outstanding salespeople, as sales expert Sevy underscores:

At the heart of every great sales person you will find a strong achievement motive... What’s special about the achievement motive is that it’s only ever really satisfied by personal accomplishment. It’s not enough that the team did well, I have to excel. And the achievement motive simply adores sales. Sales is the perfect environment for achievement. Sales has everything achievement needs to take root, grow and flourish. [5]

So sales as a profession attracts high achievers, but such people don't make the best leaders. Their emphasis on individual excellence and personal autonomy can cause them to view colleagues as obstacles rather than resources. They prioritize activities that require their direct involvement over building systems that enable groups to accomplish more at scale.

In contrast, great leaders are much more strongly motivated by power. To be clear, as McClelland and his co-author David Burnham note, "Power motivation refers not to dictatorial behavior but to a desire to have impact, to be strong and influential." [6]. The best leaders recognize that power in organizational life is realized through others, and there's a necessary tradeoff between accomplishments achieved through individual effort, and the ability to have extensive influence without being directly involved.

Such leaders also have a relatively low need for affiliation--put simply, they care about power more than being liked. This doesn't mean that they're unpleasant or abrasive, but they're not going to let a desire for interpersonal harmony get in the way of accumulating or exerting the power that's necessary to accomplish their goals.

What does all this look like in practice? In my work with clients I've observed three primary ways in which their highly-effective salespeople typically fail as sales leaders: They're poor systematizers, unable to distill their methods into a teachable playbook. Or they're reluctant delegators, slow to hand off accounts and quick to re-insert themselves at the slightest sign of trouble. Or they're people-pleasers, scared to offer critical feedback and hesitant to hold under-performers accountable. (These failings are distinct but not mutually exclusive.)

Part 2: Why (Some) Great Salespeople Want to Lead Anyway

Not every stellar salesperson aspires to a leadership position, and one of the most valuable resources a company can have is a sales star who just wants to get rich. They don't want to manage, they don't want to teach, and they don't really want to talk to anyone who's not a prospect. Give them the tools they need, and get out of their way.

And yet so many great salespeople yearn for more--why? The specifics vary, but the single most important reason is status, a topic discussed by contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton:

The predominant impulse behind our desire to rise in the social hierarchy may be rooted not so much in the material goods we can accrue or the power we can wield as in the amount of love we stand to receive as a consequence of high status. [7]

Great salespeople will get rich, but in some organizations (and in some domains of life) they won't be viewed as high status. I first realized this when I was an MBA student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business many years ago, where I was astonished to learn that there were no classes on sales. I eventually grasped that sales was viewed as a low-status function, presumably a consequence of the fact that there's no such thing as a PhD in Sales. The GSB has since added courses on sales to the curriculum, but it remains a surprisingly marginal discipline in academia relative to its vital importance in commerce.

Our desire for status isn't just the result of egomania or insecurity, although these can be exacerbating factors. Even the most well-adjusted among us are subject to social comparison, the psychological process by which we gauge our success in life relative to the accomplishments of those we consider peers. [8] Net worth plays a significant role here, but it's not always visible--and obvious displays of wealth will be viewed as low-status in certain settings.

But title, headcount, and managerial responsibility are the self-evident manifestations of status that accompany a leadership role. The great salesperson who's not content with getting rich and desires higher status, either within the organization or in their personal life, will invariably strive for a promotion--sometimes to their detriment.

Part 3: How Companies Respond (and What You Can Do Differently)

As a consequence of these factors, companies reliably promote the highest-performing salespeople into leadership roles--but why? Are they acting irrationally? Not according to the research cited above:

Finding evidence of the Peter Principle does not imply that firms make mistakes. Alternative promotion policies that maximize managerial match quality may lead to the loss of incentive benefits associated with existing promotion policies. Indeed, a promotion policy that favors top sales workers may provide a variety of incentive benefits that justify the costs of managerial mismatch. [9]

Further, as Sevy notes, "No salesperson worth their salt wants to work for a manager who hasn't 'carried a bag.' This is understandable--who doesn't want a manager who has the experience and battle scars to understand what I'm going through? But it leads to the common but mistaken belief that you can't lead a sales team unless you carried a bag." [10]

My clients who have promoted a great salesperson into a leadership role are by no means unaware of the risk that this person will under-perform as a sales leader--this is often one of our main discussion topics. But they also have to take into account the possibility that the great salesperson who's not promoted (or who's levelled under a proven sales leader) may well become a flight risk, seeking higher status elsewhere.

So if you're a CEO or another leader who oversees sales, what might you do differently? How can you keep ambitious salespeople happy while minimizing the likelihood that they'll flame out as sales leaders? The starting point is simply acknowledging that great sales performance alone is no guarantee of great sales leadership and may actually be a risk factor. Then consider the following:

Promote differently.

In addition to sales performance when making promotions, be sure to assess candidates' managerial abilities. One measure cited in the research is their willingness to collaborate, as determined by the number of colleagues with whom a salesperson shares credit on deals. Collaboration is positively correlated with subsequent managerial performance but is generally not a consistent factor in promotions. And yet in companies where sales managers lead relatively larger teams--and where the cost of poor management would be more significant--collaboration is weighted more heavily in promotion decisions, resulting in better sales management. [11]

You can employ any number of alternative metrics or incentives, from peer feedback to team compensation, but the overarching goal is ensuring that your salespeople know that promotions are contingent not only on their personal performance, but also on their ability to positively influence others' performance. Note that this isn't about rewarding likeability--great salespeople can summon that quality at will--but, rather, about creating an environment in which high achievers are motivated to look beyond their individual scorecard.

Manage differently.

As high achievers, great salespeople value autonomy and will resist anything they perceive as "micro-management" after being promoted into a leadership role. But management isn't micro-management, and you can't simply make a promotion and hope for the best. As I've written before, "It's possible for a less-experienced CEO to get in the way of their senior leaders--but more typically I see the opposite problem. The CEO gives their executives a great deal of space, only to find several months or quarters later that they backed off too far, and some important objectives were neglected and fell into the gap." [12]

Even--and especially--if you're not an experienced salesperson yourself, you can still offer your sales leader meaningful guidance and support in the form of active management. But this may well entail revamping your understanding of what it means to manage, a topic I've discussed previously:

Senior leaders manage people who sit much closer to the problems being solved and who may have more expertise in their functional area than the leader. Directive guidance from a senior leader can be counterproductive by preventing execs and employees from making full use of their own knowledge or from taking responsibility for a problem they would rather leave to the leader. Such an approach also keeps senior leaders involved with tactical details and distracts them from larger strategic issues, which is a particular concern in rapidly growing or changing organizations. An alternative approach for the senior leader is to employ coaching skills to help direct reports come up with their own solutions to the problems they face. [13]

Provide status differently.

Finally, consider how to fulfill a great salesperson's legitimate need for status in ways other than a promotion. Leadership experts Allan Cohen and David Bradford discuss the concept of "currencies," resources that can be exchanged as a basis for mutual influence. [14] Of greatest significance here are what they call "position-related currencies," such as public recognition for accomplishments, visibility throughout and beyond the organization, a reputation for competence, a sense of belonging to a group of insiders, and opportunities to expand one's network.

These currencies are precisely the forms of status that cause a great salesperson to desire a promotion, but they can usually be made available via means other than a leadership role. A challenge in some technology-centric companies is that Product and Engineering are the dominant power centers, while Sales is viewed as less important. Occasionally this is a rational arrangement--product-led growth isn't always a fantasy--but it often reflects a set of biases, as I once observed at Stanford. The key is managing the balance of power across functions, so that your best salespeople don't feel that a leadership role is the only path to high status.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Promotions and the Peter Principle (Alan Benson, Danielle Li & Kelly Shue, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2018). For a concise summary of the research that resulted in this paper, see The Best Salespeople Don't Make the Best Managers (Alex Verkhivker, Chicago Booth Review, 2017).

[2] Why Great Salespeople Make Terrible Sales Managers (Bruce Sevy, Forbes, 2016)

[3] Why Great Salespeople Make Terrible Managers (Steli Efti, Close, 2018)

[4] For a discussion of motivational needs theory and its broader implications for organizational life, see McClelland and Burnham on Power and Management. Their original work is best summarized here: Power Is the Great Motivator (David McClelland and David Burnham, Harvard Business Review, originally written 1976, revised 1995, republished 2003).

[5] Sevy doesn't mention McClelland or motivational needs theory in his Forbes piece, but I suspect that he drew specifically on this concept and (understandably) chose not to make an academic reference in an article for general readers.

[6] McClelland and Burnham, HBR.

[7] Status Anxiety, page 6 (Alain de Botton, 2005)

[8] For more on social comparison, see the following:

• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, pages 33-34 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013)

• The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, pages 131-132 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)

[9] Benson, Li & Shue, NBER.

[10] Sevy, Forbes.

[11] Benson, Li & Shue, NBER.

[12] Mind the Gap (On Leading Senior Executives)

[13] Coaching and Feedback Tools for Leaders

[14] Influence Without Authority, Chapter 3 (Allan Cohen and David Bradford, 2005)

 

Image via moviememe1978. If you don't recognize Alec Baldwin as Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross, then you owe it to yourself to watch his (very NSFW) monologue, written by David Mamet:

Zooming Out and Zooming In

A theme in my work with leaders is "zooming out and zooming in." You zoom out to obtain a broader view, and you zoom in to perceive the details. You zoom out to consider alternative means of problem-solving, or whether a problem is worth your time and energy, or whether it's even a "problem" at all. You zoom in to narrow your field of vision, to focus your attention, and to make things happen.

This is easy to describe in the abstract and difficult to put into practice. It's hard to determine the right altitude in any given situation. It's hard to reach the right altitude once you've made that decision. And in the heat of the moment it can be hard to even remember that different altitudes exist. You mistakenly believe your immediate view is the only view, and you forget that you have a choice.

What helps? A starting point is reminding yourself that you do have a choice, that your current view is influenced but not dictated by situational factors, and that you have--and must exert--agency to select the altitude that will enable you to achieve your goals most effectively. In this effort haste and urgency are rarely your friends, which is one reason why the impulse to hurry should often be interpreted as a signal to slow down. [1]

But having paused to identify the right altitude, how do you get there? How do you zoom in and out as needed? There's no single step that works for everyone in all circumstances, but here are some practices to consider:

Zooming Out

Perspective

It's easy to get stuck at a low altitude when facing a challenge. Envisioning a set of circumstances other than your own and locating yourself in that environment can afford you an entirely new perspective. This is one reason to read history as well as fiction--the travails of others, real or imagined, can make your own difficulties pale in comparison. [2]

You can also transport yourself to a future when your current circumstances will likely feel less pressing or even irrelevant. Look out a week, a month, a year, a decade--what do you think your most significant concerns will be at that point in time? Read an obituary and remember that you're mortal. Or simply bear in mind that in five billion years our Sun will become a red giant and engulf the Earth entirely. [3]

Transcendence

You can be so intensely attached to your subjective experience that you operate under the illusion that you're the "center of the world." [4] This aspect of human psychology benefits the species--when the self is so highly esteemed, self-preservation is of paramount importance. But it also makes it harder to transcend the self, to reach outside and beyond yourself in order to connect with something larger. [5]

All spiritual traditions offer a path to transcendence, which is one of the most important functions of a belief structure. [6] Time in nature and exposure to meaningful works of art can also trigger a sense of awe and wonder. But don't wait for a special occasion, such as a holy day, or a museum visit, or a trip to the Grand Canyon. There is magic in the mundane, when we're willing to see it.

Humility

Faced with a given situation, you rapidly construct an "explanatory narrative"--a story that you rely upon to make sense of what's happening and take appropriate action in response. Under most circumstances, your narratives are sufficiently accurate to enable you to make good choices, but not always. This isn't a character flaw--it's a predictable cognitive bias.

When you're feeling stuck at a low altitude, it's helpful to adopt a stance that philosophers describe as "epistemic humility," a heightened awareness of the limitations of one's knowledge. More specifically, remember that your explanatory narrative at any given moment is based on incomplete data, and there's almost certainly more to the story. [7]

 

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Zooming In

Feelings

This refers both to emotions and to literal feelings--the physiological sensations that often precede or accompany your conscious awareness of an emotional state. Feelings aren't always accurate or justified, of course, and in some circumstances they're reliably "noisy signals." But being more attuned to your emotions can help you determine what merits your attention in a given situation and reach the appropriate altitude.

To be very clear, emotions are not unerring guides to right action, but they serve as "discriminant hedonic amplifiers," in psychologist Victor Johnston's phrase, enabling us to identify potential opportunities and threats while filtering out less relevant data. [8] The key is cultivating a capacity for emotion regulation, improving your ability to sense, comprehend, articulate and express what you're feeling. [9]

Focus

To achieve their intended purpose, emotions act as "attention magnets" by interrupting conscious thought and making it difficult to think of anything else. [10] This is a "feature" for the species that contributed to our ancestors' survival, but as individuals we often experience it as a "bug." Having leveraged your feelings to drop down to the right altitude, the next step is filtering out distractions in order to stay there.

This entails the ability to focus for sustained periods of time. You can enhance your capacity for focused thought by pursuing a mindfulness practice, among other techniques. [11] But it's equally important to observe your working environment, identify sources of distraction, and mitigate them, even if just on a temporary basis. [12]

Progress

As the great management thinker Peter Drucker noted, "Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things." [13] Zooming out helps you identify "the right things," while zooming in helps you "do things right." But particularly when you're in a leadership role, zooming in is a costly expenditure of attention, so it's essential to ensure that your time spent at this altitude is productive.

A dilemma is that you may confuse motion with progress, particularly if you're a new leader who was only recently an individual contributor, or if you're leading at scale (or leading leaders) for the first time. [14] Early in your career, or in the initial stages of your company's development, there may have been little difference between motion and progress--you just needed to get busy and keep at it. But eventually progress isn't measured by how many fires you put out, but by how many smoke detectors you've installed. [15]

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Importance of Slowing Down

[2] For example, in Two Years Before the Mast (1840), Richard Henry Dana recounts his time at sea as a common sailor in the 1830s. On a voyage from California to Boston they rounded Cape Horn during the coldest months of the year, and Dana and his fellow seamen had to climb the rigging in the middle of freezing storms to furl the sails:

When we got upon the yard, my hands were so numb that I could not have cast off the knot of the gasket to save my life. We both lay over the yard for a few seconds, beating our hands upon the sail, until we started the blood into our fingers' ends... Mittens, too, we wore on deck, but it would not do to go aloft with them on, for it was impossible to work with them, and, being wet and stiff, they might let a man slip overboard, for all the hold he could get upon a rope; so, we were obliged to work with bare hands, which, as well as our faces, were often cut with the hail-stones, which fell thick and large. [pages 284, 290]

Or consider The Naked and the Dead (1948) Norman Mailer's novel about a island campaign in the Pacific theater during World War II, a story informed by Mailer's own experiences as an Army private. At one point a platoon is tasked with wheeling a set of artillery guns through the jungle by hand at night:

They had reached that state of fatigue in which everything was hated. A man would slip in the mud and remain there, breathing hoarsely, having no will to get to his feet. That part of the column would halt, and wait numbly for the soldier to join them... And they would labor forward a few more yards and halt. In the darkness, distance had no meaning, nor did time. The heat had left their bodies; they shivered and trembled in the damp night, and everything about them was sodden and pappy; they stank, but no longer with animal smells; their clothing was plastered with the foul muck of the jungle mud... [pages 138-39]

[3] Why the Sun Won't Become a Black Hole (Sara Frazier, NASA, 2019)

[4] We're Not the Center of the World (But We Think We Are)

[5] My favorite resource on transcendence is Character Strengths and Virtues, the 2004 volume by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman that encompasses the research underlying the Values in Action Survey of Character Strengths. (See chapters 23-27.) In the VIA framework the overarching virtue of transcendence can be achieved through many different paths: appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humor and spirituality:

At first glance, our final grouping of character strengths seems mixed, but the common theme running through these strengths of transcendence is that each allows individuals to forge connections to the larger universe and thereby provide meaning to their lives. Almost all of the positive traits in our classification reach outside the individual--character, after all, is social in nature--but in the case of the transcendence strengths, the reaching goes beyond other people per se to embrace all or part of the larger universe. [page 519]

[6] "A compelling reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship...is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things...then you will never have enough... Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly... Worship power--you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart--you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful--it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings... And the so-called 'real world' will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the so-called 'real world' of men and money and power hums merrily along on the fuel of fear and anger and frustration and craving and the worship of self." This Is Water, David Foster Wallace (2005)

[7] Seeing What Isn't There (The Importance of Missing Data)

[8] Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotions, page 156 (Victor Johnston, 2000)

[9] The Tyranny of Feelings

[10] To Stay Focused, Manage Your Emotions

[11] Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! (Mindfulness for Busy People)

[12] How to Think (More on Open Space and Deep Work) and The Most Productive People Know Who to Ignore

[13] Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, page 44 (Peter Drucker, 1974 /1993)

[14] Confusing Motion with Progress

[15] The Problem with Fighting Fires

 

Photos: Night sky by GPA Photo Archive. Magnifying glass by Flood G.

A Leader's Offsite Survival Guide

I talk frequently with clients who are preparing to hold an offsite with their employees, and at the moment some of these gatherings are the first in-person events they've held in years. If you're in similar circumstances, whether it's a full-company retreat or a small gathering of the executive team, here are ten issues to consider before, during and after your event:

1. To Facilitate or Not to Facilitate?

The question of whether to engage an external facilitator will be influenced by your budget, timeline, and the availability of capable providers, but the determining factor should be the role you want to play during the event. An external facilitator can take on a number of functions often fulfilled by the leader, with a particular focus on process, group dynamics and time management. This can free you up to be a more active participant without dictating the outcome.

An external facilitator is also an independent figure operating outside of the organization's power structure, which enables them to do some things that you can't. This won't happen if a facilitator is too deferential to you (or is perceived to be), so it's essential that they have the ability to strike the right balance. But by serving as another source of authority without usurping yours, an experienced facilitator can have a liberating effect on everyone, including you.

2. The Agenda

It can be tempting to craft the agenda on your own and announce it to your team. This will be more efficient, but when people have no sense of ownership over the agenda, they feel no responsibility for the outcome. It can be equally tempting to delegate the agenda to employees or your facilitator. This will also be more efficient, but you may be unpleasantly surprised to find that the agenda fails to reflect your priorities. Instead, view the process of creating the agenda as an investment in the event's success and an opportunity to build commitment. [1]

Offsites serve various purposes, but they all have the potential to foster stronger relationships and an enhanced sense of social cohesion. This doesn't happen automatically, however, and these goals should be reflected in your agenda. This may involve formal activities explicitly aimed at interpersonal dynamics, but that's not always necessary or even desirable. But at the very least there should be ample time for informal interactions at the beginning and end of each day and in between all formal activities. One of the most common mistakes I see in offsite planning is an over-stuffed agenda that leaves no room for mingling and small talk, which are particularly valuable aspects of in-person experiences. [2]

3. The Welcome

A theme in my practice is the symbolic dimension of leadership. You don't merely make strategic decisions and allocate resources--you also serve as an avatar, a figure who personifies your organization. [3] This role takes on a heightened importance when your team gathers together and looks to you to signify the meaning and purpose of the event. There will be just such a moment at the offsite when everyone is finally assembled, and you'll have an opportunity to kick things off with a few remarks.

If the entire company is present this may take place in a ballroom or as a formal keynote, but no matter the size of the event it's a moment when you'll be onstage. There's no need to speak at great length--this may be counter-productive, especially if people are eager to get started or fatigued after a day of travel. But make the most of the opportunity by having some points prepared that will set the right tone.

4. The Spotlight and the Microscope

If the event is sufficiently large you may spend a portion of it on a literal stage, but remember that you'll be under a spotlight--and a microscope--the entire time. Your comments, demeanor and body language will be closely scrutinized. Even the most seemingly casual interactions will be viewed by your colleagues as potentially significant, a dynamic that will be heightened when facing junior employees who may be meeting you for the first and only time.

This can be exhausting, particularly if you haven't participated in many in-person events in recent years. While dinner and other evening activities are as important as everything else on the agenda--see below--be sure to plan for some downtime alone in your room or at home. Do not try to catch up with other work or personal responsibilities at the end of the day--get some rest instead.

5. Going Offline

Even if your entire company is participating in the offsite, you'll undoubtedly have other stakeholders whose daily lives will continue uninterrupted and who may expect you to be as readily available as always. Some parties may have a legitimate claim on your attention, such as users of mission-critical services who view you as the point of contact in the event of a crisis. But in my experience a great many "crises" can be handled without escalation as long as an appropriate contingency plan is in place.

The problem is that many leaders are unable to unplug from the constantly-available data alerting them to potential issues. [4] They short-circuit any contingency plans by diving into the weeds at the slightest provocation. There's no single solution, but recognize that one cost of such responsiveness will be a clear signal to your employees that neither they nor the offsite merit your full attention, and they will probably follow your example.

6. Eating (and Drinking)

An ample body of research suggests that eating together contributes to stronger relationships among colleagues. [5] In addition to opportunities for mingling and small talk, noted above, this is why meals and coffee breaks during an offsite can be as valuable as the formal sessions. You may choose to deepen existing relationships or to engage with people you don't see regularly, but bear in mind that while these activities may be optional for others, they're obligatory for you, and your presence (or absence) will be noted.

If you don't drink, I'm certainly not suggesting that it's necessary. But in many settings moderate alcohol use contributes to a degree of sociability and informality that can make hierarchical relationships warmer and more personal, and your presence is more important than whether or not you imbibe. As the leader of a global professional services firm once told me, only half-jokingly, "At the end of the day, you have to join your team in the bar. You can't be among the last group there at closing time, but you do have to go." You can always order a Gibson. [6]

7. The Hot Tub

Hot tubs are an HR nightmare waiting to happen, and if your event planner has an ounce of sense there will be none at the venue, but sometimes this is unavoidable. While you may have to go to the bar, take the opposite approach here: Under no circumstances get in (or even near) the hot tub. If there are more than a hundred people in attendance over several nights, expect at least one incident that will require the attention of your senior People leader and possibly your labor & employment counsel, and make sure they're prepared. (I'm being a little flippant here, but I'm not joking!)

8. The Goodbye

Just as your opening remarks played a meaningful ceremonial role, you'll also have an opportunity to close the proceedings. Again, with large groups this may take place during a keynote in a ballroom or on a stage, but even with small teams in an informal setting people will look to you to demarcate the ending, and you may have to seize the moment before everyone begins drifting away.

One of the reasons this moment matters so much is what psychologists call the "peak-end rule"--our memories of events are disproportionately influenced by how we feel during the periods of greatest emotional intensity and at the ending. [7] No matter what happened beforehand, your closing remarks have the potential to shape everyone's perception of the offsite, for better and for worse. Brevity will be necessary--no one wants to hear a long speech on their way out the door--but don't opt out just to save a minute or two.

9. The Return Home

After an offsite leaders often return home to people who are eager to spend time with them and clamoring for their attention. If this describes your situation, you may find it a welcome respite or it may feel like another form of work--or some combination of the two. To the greatest extent possible, let these people know that you're looking forward to seeing them and that you'll be depleted, which may limit your ability to be present and available while you recharge.

Alternatively, you may be riding a high from the constant interpersonal stimulation at the offsite, and home may feel empty or even lonely in contrast. In this case, you'll be well served by reaching out in advance to people who care about you as a person, not as a leader, and enlisting their support in helping you decompress, whether it's over a meal, a movie, or a peaceful walk. The key is giving some thought in advance to what you're likely to need at home, rather than scrambling to figure it out after you arrive.

10. The Day After

A similar lesson applies to your first day back at work after the offsite. You'll probably feel behind in various ways, and as a result you may be inclined to overcommit yourself. But you may still be recuperating from the event, and you're unlikely to be doing your best thinking. Just as at home, at work there may be a number of people who've been waiting patiently for your return and now feel an urgent need to meet. But consider whether these conversations are truly important to you--they may not be. [8]

Try to keep your calendar clear, at least for one day, and if someone helps you manage your schedule let them know that this is a priority. Even--and sometimes especially--when an offsite goes well, the spaciousness will enable you not only to resume your routines at an orderly pace, but also to reflect on what you learned, making the entire experience that much more valuable.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)

[2] Bosses and Birthdays (The Importance of Small Talk)

[3] Leader as Avatar

[4] The Siren Call of Constant Data

[5] For more on shared meals and team-building, see the following:

• Social eating connects communities (University of Oxford, 2017)
• Groups that eat together perform better together (Susan Kelley, Cornell Chronicle, 2015)
• Team Building in the Cafeteria (Harvard Business Review, 2015)

[6] If you actually order a Gibson, you'll get a Martini garnished with a cocktail onion rather than an olive or twist, but according to an undoubtedly apocryphal story, the drink was originally nothing but water, a subterfuge invented by a diplomat or banker to remain sober while fleecing his companions.

[7] Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 380 (Daniel Kahneman, 2013)

[8] Importance vs. Urgency

 

Photo by Bertram Nudelbach.