As a kid, I was never great at getting to appointments on time. Unfortunately, this bad habit trickled through to my first job out of university, working in human resources at a downtown hotel. 

One morning, my manager hosted a meeting of other HR leaders and asked me to join. As usual, I showed up ten minutes late, even though I tried (in my mind) to be there on time. After the meeting, she asked me into her office, explained how disappointed and embarrassed she’d been by my lateness, and told me politely, but firmly, to never be late again.

I took that feedback to heart and made sure to never be late to that job again. Why? Because I knew the expectation was reasonable, she delivered the feedback perfectly, and also I respected the heck out of her.

Building on that experience, this article digs into the basics of why dealing with underperforming employees is important, how to know when a team member is underperforming, and five simple steps for managing underperforming employees.

What are your options when dealing with an underperforming employee?

There are many examples of underperformance, or when an employee fails to meet performance standards or expectations, such as:

• Poor work quality
• Inability to meet goals or deadlines
• Continued interpersonal conflict
• Poor time management
• Excessive absenteeism or lateness
• Insubordination.

When a team member is demonstrating poor performance in some area of their work, you can either:

1. Ignore the problem: stick your head in the sand, and hope the poor performance will miraculously fix itself.
2. Fire the employee: terminate your team member’s employment and hire someone new.
3. Do the employee’s job for them: step in and take on the aspects of their work that they’re underperforming in.
4. Move them to a different role: they’re underperforming in their current role, but maybe they could do better in a different one.
5. Correct the performance issue: implement a structured performance improvement process, which can include additional training and development.

While the focus of this article is on option ‘5’ above, generally because it’s the best option to explore first, it’s not always the right option.

Why is dealing with poor employee performance important?

When it comes to deciding on one of the options outlined above, consider the following:

• Costs of employee turnover: according to Benefit News, a single resignation can cost a company up to a third of the employee’s annual salary. Two-thirds of this cost can come from things like reduced productivity and training someone new, with the other third coming from “hard” costs like recruiting.
• Impact on team morale: unless the underperforming employee works in a bubble, the odds are their co-workers are being negatively impacted in some way by their performance. Ignoring the problem or doing things for them doesn’t send the right message to the rest of your team.
• Respect for employees: firing someone might sometimes seem like an easier path, but if you’re “too quick on the draw”, especially if it’s an issue that could be corrected with a little effort, your team may see that as a lack of respect for the people you’re responsible for and can undermine feelings of psychological safety.
• Costs of correcting performance: sometimes, getting an underperforming employee to perform may simply be too expensive, too time-consuming, or impossible for other reasons. In these cases, you may need to make the tough decision to let someone go or move them into a different role.

How do you know when an employee is underperforming?

In the case of my habitual lateness, the issue was made clear to my manager when I finally showed up late for an important meeting. However, it’s not always this obvious. 

I remember working with one team member, a manager, who I thought was doing well. He was delivering on his performance goals, I’d received positive feedback from other managers, and customers liked him. 

However, when I talked to people who reported to him, I learned that there were issues. This prompted me to begin a performance improvement process.

Below are some of the many systems of checks and balances you can put in place to give you early warning about real or potential performance issues.

1. Establish SMART goals or OKRs: these provide a solid foundation that you and your team member can use to check progress. For example, if you both agree on a goal to “achieve weekly sales of $10,000”, and your employee is only closing on $5,000 per week, this could be an indication of poor performance. 
2. Regular check-ins and one-on-one’s: whether they’re virtual or in person, 1:1s are a critical part of assessing how an employee is performing. You can check in with your employee, hear from them about what they’re working on, learn about their progress toward goals, and understand any issues that may be affecting their performance.
3. Employee feedback systems: I learned about my team member’s poor performance from skip-level meetings I had with members of his team. Employee surveys, 360-degree performance reviews, and casual conversations with your employee’s co-workers are all feedback methods that can alert you to possible performance issues.
4. External stakeholder feedback: in addition to employee feedback, it’s important to get feedback from people outside of the organization, such as customers, partners, and suppliers. Data from things like customer reviews, Net Promoter Scores, and satisfaction surveys can often yield valuable insights into an individual’s performance.
5. Performance management software: most of the checks I’ve listed above can be implemented using good performance management software. This enables you to capture individual, team, and organizational performance data. Many software packages also provide data analytics, reporting, and automation to make things easier.

What steps can you take to correct an employee’s performance?

One of your early warning systems has helped you identify a performance issue with one of your employees, and you’ve decided to try and correct the problem. Great, so now what? 

The steps you take will vary slightly on the exact nature of the performance issue, but the ones outlined below will apply to most situations where it’s just one aspect of an employee’s performance that’s a problem (e.g. lateness). 

If it’s the rare case where they’re underperforming in all areas, it may be worth considering moving the employee into a different role or out of the organization entirely.

Step #1: Check your facts and do some research

Before you even talk with the employee, be prepared to do your homework. There may be a variety of other reasons unrelated to your employee’s work that are impacting their performance, such as personal issues, underperforming colleagues, or lack of understanding of the expectations.

For example, if a customer is complaining about the technical support they received from someone on your team and the phone or email interaction was recorded, take the time to review the information. If your employee is behind on a project that relies on other individuals or teams, check in with those other employees to see if they’re on track with their deliverables.

Step #2: Reassess your performance standards

I remember working with salespeople to set revenue targets and, as often happens, pushing them to achieve higher numbers. In hindsight, there were many times when my expectations were completely out of line with the reality of what was achievable. 

Before you talk with your underperforming employee take a long, hard look at your expectations of their performance and ask yourself these questions:

• Have my performance standards recently changed e.g. become higher?
• Has my employee ever met these standards since they’ve been in place?
• Have other team members been able to achieve the same standards?
• Have I added new responsibilities that might be interfering with their performance?   
• Have I provided my team members with all the training and resources they need to meet my expectations?

Step #3: Conduct a performance management discussion

Once you’ve done your research, reviewed your performance expectations, and are reasonably certain there’s a legitimate performance issue, it’s time to talk with your employee. 

In my experience, performance discussions are an art form. There’s no recipe on how to conduct one since every issue is different and every person takes feedback differently. That said, you can find some best practices in our article, “How to Conduct a Better Performance Review”.

In addition to those practices, try the following:

1. Be concise: don’t beat around the bush; get right into explaining as concisely and factually as you can what the issue is from your perspective, and that the purpose of the meeting is to get their thoughts and come up with an action plan.
2. Be clear: they may not be meeting performance standards simply because they don’t understand why they’re important or how they impact their team or the organization.
3. Be honest: it’s OK to tell them if their poor performance leaves you feeling disappointed, embarrassed, or even angry. Similarly, if the issue is so serious they’re on the verge of being fired, they should know that too.
4. Be respectful: honesty is never an excuse to be rude or demeaning to an employee. It’s good to communicate hard messages as long as you’re doing it calmly and with respect.
5. Be empathetic: try to imagine how the conversation is going from their perspective. Is this a big surprise for them? Are they feeling overwhelmed or anxious? Are they dealing with personal issues?
6. Be curious: make sure to solicit their thoughts and opinions, and ask lots of open-ended questions. This will help you get the whole picture, help them realize there is an issue (if they’re defensive or defiant), and get them involved in the solution. For example:

• How are you feeling about your progress toward your project milestones?
• What support are you getting from engineering on building that new feature?
• Why do you think we missed that customer’s deadline?

7. Be supportive: explain to them how you’re prepared to support them, whether it’s with additional training and development, changes to their job, or simply emotional support.

Assess how the performance discussion goes before deciding whether to jump right into the next step of developing the performance improvement plan, or postpone it to a subsequent meeting. 

In some cases, your employee may be emotional and not in the right state of mind to discuss an action plan, or the issue may be more complex and require some deeper work to figure out.

Step #4: Develop a performance improvement plan

Once you and the employee agree that there is a performance issue and that you’re both committed to resolving it, it’s time to put together a performance improvement plan. This will typically include:

• Performance standard description: describe the aspects of the employee’s performance they’re working on e.g. sales goal achievement, co-worker communication, etc., and the specific standard they’re trying to achieve e.g. weekly sales of $XX.
• Action plan with SMART goals: detail the specific “baby steps” that the employee can take to achieve the performance standard you’ve set e.g. take a strategic selling course by XX date, reach out to YY prospects on LinkedIn by ZZ date, etc.
• Time period for evaluation: define how long the employee has to correct their performance. Typical plans range anywhere from 1-6 months depending on the performance issue.

Statement on importance: briefly describe why the performance standard is important to the organization. If the poor performance is serious enough, you may also need to state that their continued employment may be at risk if they can’t meet expectations.

Step #5: Check progress and recognize results

With everything clear and your performance improvement plan in place, it’s time for you to support your employee through executing it.

A critical part of this execution is getting regular feedback from you that they’re on the right track (or not).

Conduct regular 1:1 check-ins on their progress and, wherever possible, recognize and reward positive results. You can also use these check-ins for course corrections, help them through any obstacles to progress, and adjust the plan if necessary.

One last piece of advice

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! As a small token of my appreciation, let me leave you with one last piece of advice that I’ve taken to heart when it comes to managing underperforming employees: always assume positive intent. 

In my experience, most people want to perform their work well, and they take pride in a job well done. No one likes feeling or knowing that they’re doing a poor job so, until you know otherwise, assume that your team member will want to fix their performance as much as you do. This can help pave the way to a great collaboration and get things back on track.

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Everyone knows that a morning routine can lead an entrepreneur to a productive day. In other words, a good morning is essential for entrepreneurs. However, what about the other critical parts of a day? Do we forget to take advantage of the last fifteen minutes of our work?

Here are a few tips to ensure you are ending your day to the best of your ability. Doing so will help ensure that the following day starts off right.

Turn Off the Phone

Getting caught up in technology can be easy but can also lead to stress. One way to reduce the amount of stress that you are experiencing is by turning off your phone every night. Having a real alarm clock can help you wake up and start working on your morning goals. 

Look Back Upon the Good of the Day

Most of us are so focused on our business and ourselves that we rarely spend time celebrating our achievements. Instead, try taking a minute to acknowledge and thank those who have helped us along the way. This will allow you to set yourself up for success.

Look Ahead

A calendar that shows your upcoming meetings and appointments is a great way to prepare for the day ahead. It can also help you remind yourself of any breaks from your routine. Having a well-organized calendar can help you keep track of your significant changes. End your day by looking at this calendar to help inform you of what lies ahead.

Take a Break

Most importantly – give yourself the time to take a break. This means leaving work (or shutting down the computer for those that work from home) and doing something that isn’t related to work. Read a book. Watch your favorite television show. Take a walk. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you enjoy it (and that isn’t work-related!).

Journal

Having a journal can help you keep track of all of the details of the day. Entrepreneurs find it helpful to write down their achievements and failures.

Being able to keep track of all of your goals can also help you create a routine that will help you manage your day. Having a well-defined plan can help you set goals and track all the changes you want to make.

The post The Best Way for an Entrepreneur to End the Day first appeared on Rob Elkington | Business & Entrepreneurship.

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We’re passionate about the world of work, and how we can make it better. To help satisfy our curiosity, we’ve launched an interview series where we pick the brains of experienced leaders, business owners, managers, and individual contributors to get their thoughts on how we can collectively build better workplaces.

Join us in our next installment below as Leeatt Rothschild—Founder of Packed with Purpose—shares her insights with us.

We’d love to get to know you a bit better, tell us a bit about your backstory.

My life has been a dance between the world of social impact and business. A few stops along the way include: being a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, working in Marketing Consulting, and advising Chief Sustainability Officers and Marketing Execs how to maximize the ROI of their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) budgets. At that time, over the holiday season, our office was riddled with corporate gifts, from popcorn, to cookies to fruits. It dawned on me that gifts were a powerful tool that companies were using to strengthen their most important relationships. But those gifts lacked any social impact, which companies were equally committed to. 

That’s when I had the idea to start Packed with Purpose, a better gifting company. One that embeds social impact into the daily act of gift-giving.

If we were to ask a friend to describe your personality to us, what would they say?

Energetic and very positive!

Thinking back to your career journey, what’s an interesting story that stands out? 

While I was getting my MBA and Masters in International Studies I traveled to Easter Island to conduct research on women entrepreneurs and specifically met with a woman who created a series of comic books as an effort to preserve her country’s indigineous language and culture. 

It was a learning experience on many levels but one of the key things she shared was: You constantly have to be refining your offering to ensure it is what your target customer or buyer is interested in and that if you are determined you will never fail.

What’s the most impactful lesson you’ve learned over your career thus far?

You can never ask for too much help. 

There are so many opportunities to learn from people who have done this before (whether it’s being an entrepreneur or growing a business or cultivating a team). The faster I am at speeding up my learning the better I’ll be at continuing to grow the business and the impact that we create.

Thanks for giving us some insight into who you are! Let’s jump into things. When you hear the phrase “build a better world of work”, what comes to mind?

The need to create a better team—one that is fully excited, mission-aligned and has the core values of the business while at the same time is motivated by the actual work that they have to do. 

For us, building a better world of work is ensuring that we are always connected to doing good in our day jobs because it motivates and drives our purpose. 

But it is also building a better internal culture that is motivated, engaged and appreciative of their colleagues and what we do together. Yes, our work has a social impact, but it must start with the people.

For you, what’s the main blocker you see as standing in the way of building a better world of work?

The main blocker is probably “change”. 

Change is hard for everyone and however that manifests (whether it be a new manager, a new product or service or a new system) I am always making sure that my leadership team and I are communicating that change and the rationale behind it.

It is the biggest challenge, but it is also the biggest opportunity for us to succeed.

What’s one thing within our control that we can practically do to build a better world of work today? And, how do you recommend going about it?

Embedding appreciation easily into the work day. How Packed with Purpose does this is with our shout outs. 

It’s every day and it’s part of the culture to shout out to a colleague on slack, in a meeting or even on LinkedIn. It’s a small gesture that makes someone feel good about their contribution and there is very little barrier for anyone to participate.

The key is to make it easy, accessible and commonplace to share appreciation, whether with a shout out like us, sending a gift (we like this one!), a personal note, or using something more codified like an employee award.

Can you share one thing you’ve experienced, seen, or read about that is leading us towards a better world of work?

I think the experience of Covid has allowed the working world to accept that we are all humans. 

Just because there are bumps in your personal life (be it childcare challenges, caring for elderly parents, unexpected illness), it doesn’t mean that you are “less than” when it comes to your commitment and what you do for your team and the company you work for.

I’m curious, thinking about building a better world of work, is there a company and/or leader who stands out to you as someone we should follow? If so, what are they up to?

Co-Founder, Anouck Gotlib, from Belgian Boys, one of our Packed with Purpose Impact Partners, our 140+ purpose-driven product suppliers. She spoke to our full team recently during an Impact Partner Spotlight Meeting about the origin of the business and their mission, as well as how she embeds this mission into the culture of her workplace. 

She is so bold about bringing happiness, joy and fun to her brand and her workplace. She’s ambitious but she can translate that ambition into passion to motivate her team and a clear direction for what they can all achieve together. 

She spoke about the joys of the journey toward success. For her, work is a part of life, a big part of life, and it is up to us (colleagues, leaders) to make it part of a happy part of life. 

It’s leading with compassion and understanding to support her team to be fulfilled in what they do with work, life and work-life integration.

I recognized my own values and a lot of what I have been trying to cultivate as well.

How can our readers follow your work?

Our website, where we often have updates on our blog, our LinkedIn as well as my personal LinkedIn. Or send a gift—it’s the best way to get to know us.

Thank you for adding your voice to People Managing People’s interview series on How to Build a Better World of Work! 

Add your voice to the conversation

Join our interview series and share your ideas for how we can build a better world of work!

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Large corporations like Google, LinkedIn, and Airbnb use the OKR framework to help them set and push toward goals that are aligned across the business. Intrigued?

This article explains the OKR framework in more detail and why you should consider using it across your organization. We’ll cover:

• What is an OKR?
• Types of OKR
• Benefits of OKRs
• How to set OKRs
• OKR examples

Let’s dive in.

What is an OKR?

The OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework is a goal-setting methodology businesses use to set goals and track their progress towards them. The objective part is the overarching individual business goal e.g. reduce employee turnover. The key results are the actions that need to take place to achieve the goal e.g. send out employee engagement surveys with 100% completion.

The OKR framework’s philosophy is that companies achieving 100% of their goals are setting goals that are too easy. The sweet spot for achieving your OKRs should be between 60% and 70%.

An OKR’s progress is measured on a scale of 0 to 1, which is essentially the percentage of the goal achieved. 1 (or 100%) represents complete goal achievement.

For example, say your goal is to reduce employee turnover from 5% to 4%. If your employee turnover rate is 4.3% at the end of the quarter, you’ve completed 70% of your goal (0.7 on the OKR scale). If you achieve a 4% employee turnover rate by quarter end, you should reassess your goal since it may have been too easy to achieve.

Setting such ambitious company goals that are difficult to achieve is an integral part of Google’s philosophy:

“We set ourselves goals that we know we can’t reach yet, because we know that by stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected.“

Types of OKRs

Broadly, there are three types of OKR:

1. Committed OKRs

Committed OKRs are goals that everyone on the team agrees should be achieved. These goals are still stretch goals, but within reason.

They should be achievable for the team since they’re critical to the team and company’s success.

A committed OKR is the highest order OKR. Teams might even consider delaying working on other OKRs to achieve committed OKRs within time.

2. Aspirational OKRs

Aspirational OKRs are goals you know your team won’t achieve in full during the execution time window.

However, they encourage the team to push harder. If the team achieves 60% to 70% progress, it’s a success. These goals stay on the team’s OKR list for multiple execution periods until they’re achieved in full.

The team and the company benefit in several ways by assigning aspirational OKRs. It gets the team outside of their comfort zone and tests their capabilities.

On the other hand, organizations achieve their goals faster because achieving 70% of an audacious goal is far better than achieving a 100% of a mediocre goal.

3. Learning OKRs

Learning OKRs are experimental goals used to explore ideas. They’re assigned when you can’t confidently determine the output and outcomes of an OKR.

Essentially, you have a theory that X might lead to Y. To prove this hypothesis, you assign a learning OKR where a team explores ideas. At the end of the execution period, the team reports the findings.

These findings can provide insights into what the output might be so you can confirm your theory’s validity. These insights inform the OKRs for the next period—you can reassign them as learning OKRs if you need more insights or convert them into committed or aspirational OKRs.

Benefits of OKRs

OKRs offer five benefits, as John Doeer explains in his interview with Harvard Business Review. He uses the acronym F.A.C.T.S. for these five benefits:

1. Focus

85% of organizations don’t define key results clearly enough to engage employees at all levels. OKRs help define goals more clearly and make them less overwhelming. Aiming for fewer than ten OKRs during a given cycle (generally a quarter or year) helps ensure each OKR fits in a single line. This way, each team member can focus on a few specific tasks.

Determining the OKRs starts with thinking about your goals over the next quarter and year. The near-term approach forces you to prioritize the most impactful goals and defer ones that aren’t urgent.

2. Alignment

A study by LSA Global reveals that highly aligned companies can grow their revenue 58% faster and be 72% more profitable. Aligned companies also beat unaligned companies on multiple fronts like employee engagement, customer satisfaction and retention, and leadership.

OKRs ensure that every employee’s efforts are aligned with the company’s overarching goals. For example, say the company’s goal is to achieve the industry’s highest sales volume. Each relevant department’s OKR will reflect this goal.

The marketing leader’s OKR could be to generate 15% more leads through focused marketing campaigns. The sales manager’s OKR could be to improve conversion by 5% by reengineering the sales process for improved customer experience. Collectively, OKRs help align everyone’s efforts so the company can achieve the highest sales volume in its industry.

3. Commitment

Employee buy-in is essential for achieving goals because employees that are committed to their goals can achieve them faster. Without commitment, employees are likely to focus on just making enough progress to keep the boss happy.

Managers assign OKRs but, for the most part, employees come up with them. Each employee must set their own OKR, which requires analysis and introspection. Since employees set their own goals, the IKEA effect makes them more committed to the OKRs.

4. Tracking

Ideally, each key result will be based on a metric to hit. The best OKR software solutions can help you track key results and reduce manual effort. An OKR tool can also create reports and present data visually for added insights.

Tracking company OKRs tells you how far the company has achieved its goals while tracking individual OKRs allows you to monitor progress and guide employees when needed.

Monitoring an OKR’s outcome is an ongoing process. You don’t necessarily need to measure the outcomes every day. However, looking at the team’s progress weekly can help address potential roadblocks early on.

5. Stretching

Setting goals a little beyond what is achievable is integral to the OKR framework. As the saying goes, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

It’s the same idea. An OKR example for an HR manager might be reducing the cost per hire by 25%. Even though it might not be achievable, striving towards that goal (called a stretch goal) might bring you closer to 25% than simply setting a goal to reduce cost per hire by 15%.

However, be careful when setting stretch goals. It’s easy to go overboard and set too many. As the author of The Stretch Goal Paradox explains:

“Our research suggests that though the use of stretch goals is quite common, successful use is not. And many executives set far too many stretch goals. In the past five years, for example, Tesla failed to meet more than 20 of founder Elon Musk’s ambitious projections and missed half of them by nearly a year, according to the Wall Street Journal.“

Consider the current business scenario, threats, and risks before you set stretch goals. It’s good to push for more than what’s achievable. However, consistent failure to achieve practically impossible goals can harm employee morale.

How to Set OKRs?

It’s hard to write those first few OKRs. When you put pen to paper, you don’t know where to start, but being methodical makes the job easier. Here is how to set OKRs:

Step 1: Identify Your Priorities

What’s next for your company? What goals are you working on? Do you have problems you need to solve to run the business more efficiently?

Answering these questions provides a great starting point. For example, if you didn’t meet your sales quota last year, dig deeper and find out the reasons. Your objective could be to address that reason and increase your sales by 15%.

When setting OKRs, make sure they’re aligned with the company’s goals. Alignment ties output to outcomes. It ensures that employees have complete clarity on how their work helps the business achieve its goals.

Step 2: Involve the Team

Setting OKRs from the top down sends the message that everyone should just follow the corporate’s orders. Most people don’t like taking orders, making them disengaged.

Make setting OKRs an inclusive process instead of just handing the team a list of OKRs. The team is more connected to daily tasks and can provide deeper insights into goals to prioritize and the strategy to achieve them.

Get their inputs on what’s a good way to achieve a certain objective. Ask them if they can think of other higher-priority objectives than the ones you’re discussing. Encourage them to set stretch goals and why it matters.

Step 3: Quantify the OKR

Once you have a list of objectives, you need a basis to measure goal achievement. You can measure how far you’ve achieved objectives with quantified key results.

Measuring goals helps you identify teammates that are struggling and could use help. You’ll be able to identify bottlenecks earlier and address them so you can continue making progress.

Nolan Hout, VP of Marketing at Unlock OKR and OKR aficionado, told us in our podcast on OKRs:

“The key result should not be something like creating a landing page. There’s no purpose behind that. So you have to ask yourself, what is the purpose of this landing page?

Is it to generate leads? Okay, how will the landing page generate leads? Maybe it’s going to have a high conversion rate. Okay, cool. So then the key result should be to have a landing page that converts, you know, 370 leads or it converts at 7%.“

You can quantify an OKR based on benchmarks or historical data. For example, “might be to increase sales by 15% by running hyper targeted sales campaigns. If your historical sales growth or the industry’s average sales growth has been 8% to 10%, 15% might be a good stretch goal.

Another point Nola adds is to make the overarching goal as memorable aspirational as possible e.g. “fuel the sales team for Lightspeed trajectory of growth in Q3.”

Step 4: Track Progress

Now that you’ve set and assigned OKRs, you need to monitor the progress. When tracking progress, ask the team if they need help even if they seem to be doing fine. If a team member is struggling, help them determine the problem and navigate it.

OKR Examples

OKRs can be set for all departments, including HR, operations, and accounting. Here are some examples of OKRs:

OKRs for HR

Here are two OKR examples for HR:

1. Objective: Be the best company to work for in North America

Key results:

• Survey 100% employees to assess engagement, satisfaction and needs
• Achieve eNPS score 80

2. Objective: Give team members the opportunity to develop and grow

Key results:

• Find and implement a new learning management system with personalized training capabilities
• Ensure team members use 100% training time and budget

OKRs for Operations

Here are OKR examples for operations:

1. Objective: Improve production cost efficiency

Key results:

• Increase labor output efficiency by 10%
• Reduce material acquisition cost by 15%

2. Objective: Optimize working capital invested in inventory

Key results:

• Reduce the value of inventory held by 20%
• Increase the proportion of fast-moving item A by 10%
• Reduce the proportion of slow-moving item B by 15%

OKRs for Accounting

1. Objective: Reduce the cost of accounting processes

Key results:

• Reduce the amount spent on outsourcing accounting tasks by 30%
• Reduce the time spent on them by 70% with automation

2. Objective: Manage cash better

Key results:

• Reduce the working capital invested in inventory and accounts receivables by 20%
• Find five new suppliers to increase average accounts payables balance by 20%

Use OKRs for Focused Growth

Organizations use the OKR methodology to focus on what matters most to their growth efforts. It helps employees focus on specific tasks needed to achieve your company’s bigger vision.

However, OKR isn’t the only goal-setting framework. Companies across the globe use various methodologies to achieve their goals.

For example, you might consider learning more about management by objectives (MBO) and the SMART goals framework.

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According to statistics gathered by Zippia, a leading career resource site, only 48% of workers in North America actually see their company’s leadership team as high quality. 

For most businesses in North America, that leaves a lot of room for improvement. And for many in leadership roles, it leaves them wondering how to be a good leader who gains the respect of their employees. 

In this article, we discuss nine qualities that the most effective leaders possess.

What does it mean to be a great leader?

While the definition of a great leader is somewhat subjective, many who are considered as such tend to share common skills or abilities. 

The foremost qualities of a great leader are empathy and the ability to listen, but that’s not all that goes into it. Great leaders traditionally:

• Clearly communicate expectations
• Motivate their employees
• Build a clear vision of their company’s goals.

Take Apple’s current CEO, Tim Cook, as an example. Following the death of Steve Jobs, Cook had big shoes to fill and an even bigger company to lead. Cook is known to be very involved with decision-making, while also encouraging his teams to fearlessly share their thoughts or concerns.

7 Skills and behaviors that great leaders possess and how to work on them

When you think of successful leaders, a few names likely come to mind. People like Steve Jobs, Estee Lauder, and Warren Buffett built their businesses from the ground up and became extremely successful.

While each of them is known for their confidence and business know-how, a deeper look at each person’s leadership style makes it clear that they all possess several common skills and behaviors.

The nine attributes listed below are common among true leaders—leaders who drive success, not just for their companies or the teams directly beneath them, but also for the people who work alongside them every day. 

To become a better leader, think about where you stand when it comes to the skills and behaviors listed below, and consider doing what you can to work on each. 

With great leadership comes great responsibility, so take it upon yourself to work as hard as you can to become the strong leader your team needs you to be.

Honesty

As the people who are responsible for the success of an entire team, or even an entire company, good leaders know that being honest with their team members, even when the feedback isn’t great, is vital.

Being able to have a truthful conversation with an employee about their performance, skill, or dedication to their work is an important part of effective leadership.

While the truth can sometimes hurt, being honest with people regarding how you feel is the only way to work through difficult situations. This is what ex-Googler Kim Scott calls ‘Radical Candour’, or being truthful while still showing that you care.

Just as it’s important to be honest about their subordinates, effective leaders need to recognize where their own skills fall short and where they shine. As Chinwe Esimai, Managing Director and Chief Anti-Bribery Officer at Citigroup, writes in Forbes, executives who took the time to self-assess learned how to leverage their skills in different situations.

Coaching

As a manager, it’s important to lead efficiently. However, your team will always benefit from good coaching. Coaching differs from managing in that you shouldn’t be directing team members. Ideally, you’ll want to guide individual team members down desired paths. Here are a few key things to keep in mind as you play the role of coach:

• Avoid giving all the answers: you want your people to find the answers for themselves, as that’s what will boost their confidence and help them grow in their roles. Guide them and only step in when you deem it necessary.
• You should be asking the questions: While this might seem counterintuitive, you should be the one asking questions. This is one of the best ways to push team members to think and search for answers.

Related read: How To Go From Manager To Coach

Curiosity

A curious, open-minded leader never wants to stop learning and growing. For team members, that usually indicates that their team leader is always willing to improve and do better. The leader’s curiosity keeps employees engaged and excited to be a part of the team. 

When it comes to curiosity in leadership, the most notable leader who comes to mind is Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple. Jobs was famous for his curiosity and openness to employee suggestions, which led to an array of innovative technology solutions.

In 2005, Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford University and mentioned how his curiosity led to innovation and invention: “Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.” For example, while at Stanford, he took a calligraphy class, an experience he said helped shape Apple’s beautiful typography.

Work on your curiosity as a leader by seeking out new situations and staying open to suggestions from your employees and welcoming their opinions. Don’t be afraid to explore different ways of doing things, and encourage your team to think outside the box as often as possible.

Shifting perspectives can be a challenge, so consider these tips:

• Start with your final goal and work backwards from there.
• Consider a brainstorm session with your team, but conduct it on a timer and in a closed location such as an office or conference room.
• Don’t be afraid of failure and let your team know that their curiosity should guide them.

Mentoring

Mentoring is an important part of leadership. As a senior employee, there is a chance that you’ll eventually take a more junior person under your wing. By mentoring them, you’ll be using your experience and expertise to pass vital information and processes to a new generation. 

Mentoring can be as simple as providing best practices for working with company tools or as in-depth as giving career advice. Your mentee expects you to offer insight when they’re making decisions or facing problems. 

Consider the leadership style of Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin. Branson may be an eccentric leader but he’s also known for sharing his business prowess and knowledge with others, helping those with a desire to learn and enter the world of entrepreneurship. 

Branson’s goals with mentoring are twofold. Not only does he set up businesses for success, he also allows himself the latitude to step back when needed. 

His thoughts are evident in a 2005 Wharton piece in which he states “I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.”

As a mentor to your employees, provide them with new ways to approach situations, and don’t be afraid to be honest with them if you don’t think they’re making good choices. 

Furthermore, take time to check in with your mentee on a regular schedule. Add a weekly reminder to your calendar to call or visit them for a chat that’s focused solely on your mentor-mentee relationship.

Empathy

Empathy is often said to be the most important trait in a great leader. An empathetic leader isn’t just one who listens to their employees’ frustrations; it’s one who speaks to them on a relatable level and strives to understand the challenges they face personally and professionally. 

According to a survey conducted by EY, 89% of workers agreed that empathy makes their leader a better person while 88% said an empathetic leader drives positive change in the workplace.

If you want to be a more empathetic leader, take time each day to see what challenges and successes your team is experiencing. Give them the opportunity to share frustrations, and listen to them actively without judgment. When possible, offer solutions and support to help them overcome their hurdles.

Related read: Engaging Employees Through Empathetic Leadership: What I Learned

Values

If you have great values, your team members and leaders above you will notice. Think about who you are and what you value as a leader. Is it respect? Honesty? Communication? Make a list of 5 to 10 values that are nearest to your heart, share them with your team, and commit yourself to abiding by them in everything you do at work.

In fact, a 2018 study indicated that 63% of consumers prefer to purchase their goods or services from companies with a strong set of values and leaders who display high morals.

Accepting criticism

It’s never easy to hear someone criticize you or the way you do things, but, if nobody took time to offer you constructive criticism, you might never recognize that there’s room for you to improve. 

In an article published by Harvard Business Review, Jennifer Porter, Managing Partner of leadership and team development firm, The Boda Group, discussed the importance of obtaining honest and productive feedback as a business leader, suggesting that it’s important for leaders to ask their team members for feedback often.

As a leader, you have to be willing to take the bad with the good when it comes to feedback. When someone offers you criticism, as difficult as it can be, don’t take it personally. Instead, accept it as a challenge, and strive to make positive change if and when it’s warranted.

Strong Leaders Never Stop Learning

When you’re learning how to be a good leader, the best way to build your leadership skills is to practice leading with honesty, empathy, and strong core values. And, of course, never stop learning and improving. 

Some further resources to help:

• Clarity, Responsibility, And Accountability (CRA) Model Of Leadership
• The Secret Code To Exceptional Leadership (with Ian Mills from Transform Performance International)
• How To Be An Effective HR Leader (with Andrew Bartlow from People Leader Accelerator)
• 13 Best Leadership Certificates To Help You Become A Better Leader 2022
• 10 best leadership development programs
• 19 best leadership conferences of 2022-23.

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We’re passionate about the world of work, and how we can make it better. To help satisfy our curiosity, we’ve launched an interview series where we pick the brains of experienced leaders, business owners, managers, and individual contributors to get their thoughts on how we can collectively build better workplaces.

Join us in our next installment below as Dr Tammy Watchorn—Director AnSás Consulting and QUBE unlimited—shares her insights with us.

We’d love to get to know you a bit better, tell us a bit about your backstory.

Following a brief career as a scientist, I worked for many years in a large health based public sector organisation in the UK, initially leading projects before moving on to complex organizational change programmes and innovation. Leading complex change and innovation in bureaucratic, hierarchical, governance heavy and risk averse organisation brings many challenges, but with those challenges was an awful lot of learning about how to successfully lead change. This learning I felt needed to be shared wider. It wasn’t the kind of learning you get on traditional courses or from traditional books and so I wrote a ‘choose your own adventure’ type book full of often funny scenarios where the reader gets to decide what happens next. It’s called the Change Ninja Handbook.

If we were to ask a friend to describe your personality to us, what would they say?

Enthusiastic, creative, always starting new projects, impatient, optimistic, always learning, never idle, makes the most of the opportunities any crisis can bring.

Thinking back to your career journey, what’s an interesting story that stands out? 

I was on a leadership course. Recently I adopted the word ‘leadershit’ course. We’ve all been on them, sheep dipped into some blah blah with the latest buzz words before going back to work and nothing changing. This was one of those. It wasn’t about people. It was more about managing people. Until the final session. Professor Eddie Obeng, someone I followed in various publications, delivered a day of activity including showing us his World After Midnight video. It was at that moment when I realized we were doing it all wrong. When I realized why things failed, took so long to do and caused so much frustration. Eddie teaches real leadership by getting you to have the right insights so you can enact the changes you want. 

What’s the most impactful lesson you’ve learned over your career thus far?

Change is all about people. It’s not about learning a process, obtaining a certificate, embedding dogmatic governance systems. It’s all about people. 

Communication is often confused with engagement. The two things are entirely different. 

Thanks for giving us some insight into who you are! Let’s jump into things. When you hear the phrase “build a better world of work”, what comes to mind?

That we need to stop doing things the way we are doing them and reassess how we work. 

Everyone is busy. Often too busy to do this reassessment. Changing how we work, things we have done for years, it is hard to accept there are better ways, that we may have not got it quite right. 

Moving to remote working for many just lifted office life into the world of Zoom. All the bad practices and some new ones added. Why do we spend all day in meetings? Why do we spend a lot of time preparing papers to review at meetings, often about things that have happened already? Why is email still such a time burner? When do we really get the time to do the work in a way that’s fun, creative, innovative, collaborative and aligned? Software won’t shift this and yet we keep buying new software and burning more time learning how to use it to supposedly help us collaborate. 

Software is pretty much designed around process and not human need. We therefore spend a lot of time learning how to respond to the software the way it’s designed rather than it supporting our actual human needs and doing some of the heavy lifting. I learnt how to work differently years ago. To work in a very human way. There is some technology behind it (www.QUBE.cc) but it isn’t software. It’s designed based on human behaviours. It enables all the things we talk about and yet find hard to do for multiple reasons.

In summary the better world of work needs to stop, reflect, and shift our behaviors, collaboratively and in alignment based on humans not process. If software was the solution… guess what… we would already have all the magic answers and wouldn’t need to ask these questions.

For you, what’s the main blocker you see as standing in the way of building a better world of work?

Technology, or more specifically software (see response to the previous question). Technology is amazing. There is so much out there that can help. But we keep buying the next version, the new features, the next big thing that will help us collaborate, be more productive and more efficient, deliver better projects. None of this is designed for human need or actual ways of working. It’s just more of the same, burns time, zaps energy and rarely leads to better outcomes. When was the last time you or your team took time out to just reflect on how you work instead of thinking you need to buy more software? It feels like a luxury. It should be a requirement.

What’s one thing within our control that we can practically do to build a better world of work today? And, how do you recommend going about it?

Pause, reflect, listen, focus on humans, behaviors, motivators, drivers, fears. 

In the Change Ninja Handbook I describe a series of scenarios, all based on real life experience. Decisions need to be made (you, the reader, get to make them).  Often the decision seems easy, the logical response is to do the activity that will progress your project right? But the reality is that you are potentially just storing up future problems. Problems that will come up after you’ve done a lot of work to get your project to the roll out stage. And that’s when it will go wrong and stall and stall. 

Instead, spend the first 3 months of any project focusing on the people rather than the process, find out their motivators, fears, needs, listen to them, make promises and deliver on them. If you do this the rest of the project is a piece of cake. It might seem like time is being wasted, that project progress is too slow, but you will soon make up time, catch up and take over. Like Aesop’s fable of the Hare and the Tortoise. Slow and steady wins the race. The Change Ninja Handbook includes its own set of fables of how to build a better world of work.

Can you share one thing you’ve experienced, seen, or read about that is leading us towards a better world of work?

I’ve mentioned I work on QUBE. I initially introduced it into the National Health Service in the UK when I was Head of Innovation. I now support many teams working in this way. It’s a virtual 3D environment that is designed around human interactions and behaviors. There are other 3D software platforms out there but they are technology driven and full of ‘fun gimmicks’. They don’t, though, in any way shift how you work. QUBE has some built in rules for alignment, engagement, inclusion and collaboration. It’s built around diversity of thinking to ensure creativity of solutions. It’s full of tools to work collaboratively at speed while having fun. From a neuroscience perspective it’s brain friendly. Most technology isn’t and there is plenty of research describing why. QUBE provides a guide. Much like if you were going to a foreign country and needed to learn the new rules. A guide will help you learn how to immerse yourself in the new culture and norms.

I’m curious, thinking about building a better world of work, is there a company and/or leader who stands out to you as someone we should follow? If so, what are they up to?

Professor Eddie Obeng. He is so far ahead of most of us. He sees the future, the one we find hard to imagine. He teaches the future in ways we can understand and enact. 

How can our readers follow your work?

The Change Ninja Handbook is now on sale in most good book stores. www.change-ninja.com and LinkedIn.

Thank you for adding your voice to People Managing People’s interview series on How to Build a Better World of Work! 

Add your voice to the conversation

Join our interview series and share your ideas for how we can build a better world of work!

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AI is becoming more prevalent in today’s business environment, and many leaders are unsure where to start. This new technology is expected to help them increase their productivity and innovation.

Artificial intelligence is already in our lives. It’s used in every aspect of our daily lives, including smartphones and cars. It has become a part of mainstream conversations. As a result, businesses of all sizes are considering AI as a potential solution to their most critical business problems.

With that in mind, let’s discuss how to further prepare your business for Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Turn Hr into HAIR

To fully utilize the potential of AI, HR departments must become Human AI Resources. This new status will allow them to understand better the various aspects of this technology and its role in the workforce. In addition to being able to provide a variety of AI-based services, HR departments will also need to improve their performance metrics.

Understand What Your Business Needs

Before you start implementing AI, take a good look at your company’s current state and identify the areas where it can improve. This will narrow down the areas where it can help you reduce your operational costs and improve the efficiency of your business.

Know the Risks

Despite the risks associated with AI, learning from your mistakes is the only way to master them. This will help you to understand what areas that can help you reduce your operational costs and improve the efficiency of your business.

Manage the Company’s Culture

A company’s culture aims to create a space where workers and machines can work together seamlessly. This will allow them to identify areas where they can improve and prevent them from experiencing performance issues. Although humans sometimes blame machines for their shortcomings, they should also focus on identifying and fixing them.

Learn Together

AI will transform how people learn. The trick is letting it teach us. In truth, AI still has a long way to go – meaning that it needs to learn. Most AI software requires time for learning. Ideally, a company should leave room for people and AI to learn alongside one another.

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We’re passionate about the world of work, and how we can make it better. To help satisfy our curiosity, we’ve launched an interview series where we pick the brains of experienced leaders, business owners, managers, and individual contributors to get their thoughts on how we can collectively build better workplaces.

Join us in our next installment below as Max Kraynov, Group CEO of FunCorp, a leading entertainment tech company in the memes space, shares his insights with us.

We’d love to get to know you a bit better, tell us a bit about your backstory.

I got my first computer at the age of 13 and immediately jumped headfirst into programming. Before I turned 21, I had already worked on my first mobile Forex trading service and several police-related systems, which helped with identifying bodies and tracking down stolen cars. 

I have been working in the mobile space since 1999, where I had (hopefully) helped shape the downloadable mobile content industry with a one-stop-shop solution built by Unwiredtec—a company I founded. After selling my startup I became more interested in the “big time” stuff—finance, investments, growth, human capital, and everything in between, all with a focus on helping companies build shareholder value.

After spending the last decade building Aviasales—a flight search service, which became the third-largest in the world—I joined FunCorp as Group CEO. Founded in 2004, FunCorp is a leading developer of entertainment tech products and services with global headquarters in Limassol, Cyprus, and U.S. offices in New York and Texas. Our products include iFunny, an app for meme lovers with over 70 million downloads in the U.S., and Yepp—an app that enables meme creators to monetize their content. 

If we were to ask a friend to describe your personality to us, what would they say?

I am a mix of introvert and extrovert—I enjoy human interaction, but require for my internal batteries to be recharged every now and then. I never raise my voice and always communicate with respect. I’m enthusiastic and keen to share my expertise and give advice—but only when I am asked (I’m not a fan of unsolicited advice).

Thinking back to your career journey, what’s an interesting story that stands out? 

I’ve learned about persistence and the numbers game early in my career. Back in 2001 when looking to relocate to the U.S. for work, I responded to approximately 300 job ads. From this, I got just two interviews, and one offer (which I ended up accepting).

Later on in my career, I had another experience that helped me remain humble. Several years ago I was invited to speak on a panel about travel industry trends. However, the event was so poorly organized that we had more people on stage (5 speakers) than in the audience (4 spectators!). Nevertheless, we still enjoyed our discussion and the experience reminded me to never take myself too seriously.

What’s the most impactful lesson you’ve learned over your career thus far?

I have realized the importance of making connections and staying in touch with interesting people throughout my professional and personal journey.  Human capital is the greatest capital of all to tap into, and I have marveled and appreciated the power of my global professional network. Over the past 20 years, I have come across thousands of people, many of whom are now among my LinkedIn contacts. Whenever I need to reach out to someone, they are normally just  one connection away, which is wonderful to see.

Thanks for giving us some insight into who you are! Let’s jump into things. When you hear the phrase “build a better world of work”, what comes to mind?

To me, building a better world of work means finding a consensus between what employees and employers want by providing an environment that works for people with different backgrounds, ages, and cultural values. This is easier said than done!

• Employees want a fulfilling work environment where they can have opportunities for growth and development, be treated with respect, have some level of job security, and maintain a healthy work-life balance, without having to sacrifice precious personal and family time. 
• Employers want employees to be working towards favorable business outcomes. This includes practicing self-discipline and encouraging a culture of achievement, coupled with healthy interpersonal relationships among team members, and promoting mental health.

There are cultural and generational reasons why there’s no “one fits all” solution for a perfect working environment, even within the same industry or geographic area.

It is the job of top management to engage employees in order to find a stable equilibrium between differing employer and employee objectives.

For you, what’s the main blocker you see as standing in the way of building a better world of work?

It’s easy to blame outdated management models and their shortcomings, but this approach is too simplistic. In my experience, the hardest part is empowering staff to make decisions that don’t require managerial approval or extended supervision. This is easier said than done, and it won’t work for everyone (nor is this necessary in all cases), but simply involving the people who are really invested—those who truly care—into the decision making process (either as observers or as participants) will do wonders for morale and helping build consensus and acceptance of managerial decisions by the rest of the team.

What’s one thing within our control that we can practically do to build a better world of work today? And, how do you recommend going about it?

Many years ago I came up with this rule for myself:

As well as being incredibly simple, this is  such a powerful tool for people to feel appreciated. The higher the perceived power disparity in terms of corporate hierarchy, the higher the impact these two words have. This approach has proven contagious, with many of my current and former colleagues having picked up this habit, which helps their colleagues feel respected and appreciated. This is so easy and effective, and something anyone can start doing immediately.

Can you share one thing you’ve experienced, seen, or read about that is leading us towards a better world of work?

I’m a big believer in purpose-driven goal setting and am very critical of KPIs because many of them can be “gamed”. As such, I think teams should self-organize around goals or their own “North Stars”, which indicate the company’s direction of thought and movement, with specifics left up to the teams to figure out and execute. 

Teams need context and purpose, not hand-holding or a whip. The teams that are self-organized around such large goals will figure out many of the supplementary aspects of work as they implement them: hours, frequency of communication, remote/hybrid/in-person meetings, criteria for meeting or missing the targets, etc.

I’m curious, thinking about building a better world of work, is there a company and/or leader who stands out to you as someone we should follow? If so, what are they up to?

It’s hard to single out just one individual or thought leader, but there are definitely some ideas in the writing of brilliant thinkers that I would recommend getting acquainted with:

• Kim Scott – Radical Candor. A book that helps the reader build the stamina for honest conversations.
• David Epstein – Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. In my opinion, modern leaders must not just be generalists, but be comfortable with the uncertainty that comes with managing people who are smarter than them.
• Hans, Anna and Ola Rosling – Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. A leader is someone who doesn’t just lead by example, but who can also put things into perspective. It is someone who has a number of internal benchmarks allowing them to have a reasonable and justifiable sense of whether things are going great or when they are going terribly (or anything in between).

How can our readers follow your work?

When I have time, I write a substack with my thoughts on the books I have read,  highlighting the key points that stood out for me and putting them into context alongside my own thoughts and experiences. I also love memes, and encourage everyone to download Yepp, which makes it easy to create your own memes and to edit the work of other creators.

Thank you for adding your voice to People Managing People’s interview series on How to Build a Better World of Work! 

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Join our interview series and share your ideas for how we can build a better world of work!

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Telecommuting has been practiced for more than two decades but the COVID-19 crisis of 2020 propelled it forward in different industries that were hesitant to try it before. 

Recent research shows that 35% Americans work from home five days a week. However, remote working comes with its own set of challenges, not least of which is maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Managing these factors, balancing work with personal life, and handling remote teams are some of the important factors for successful and productive remote working. 

What Is Work-Life Balance?

As a kid, you might have climbed trees and walked out on the branches. The tightrope walk that you had to do on the branches is a parallel to work-life balance, where work is the branch and the rest of the space is life. Knowing where work starts and life begins are very important aspects of enjoying your walk on the branch without getting hurt. 

Maintaining a work-life balance is imperative to handling stress. Stress can cause physical and mental symptoms and lead to work fatigue or burnout.

Below are some suggestions for employees and employers to consider for work-life balance while telecommuting.

How To Improve Work-Life Balance When Telecommuting 

Here are 7 things that you as an employee can do to make work-life balance achievable while working from home. 

1. Maintain A Regular Schedule For Working Hours

Flexible hours are one of the essential factors of remote working. While it is an attractive feature, there always is a fine line between office and family time, where the latter generally gets sacrificed. Clocking in hours is a great way of keeping track of your day. 

There are a variety of software options that allow employees to remotely “clock in” and track the hours that they are working in a day. This encourages the employee to take breaks and schedule work according to family priorities. A strict schedule for work hours motivates remote employees to work as they do in the office. 

2. Reduce Distractions During Work Hours

There can be several distractions that come with remote work. The Pomodoro technique is a method of working that focuses on short bursts of work, improving focus. Figure out what distracts you the most and keep it as your motivation to work towards for the day. 

This might include:

• Spending time with family
• Reading a book
• Watching a Youtube video
• Learning to play a piece of music.

Using these types of activities as rewards after work will lead to a better work-life balance. 

Social media, when used wisely, will help you keep connected to family and friends, but it’s important to limit it to after working hours or during break times. Communication and keeping in touch with family and loved ones are very important for mental health and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

3. Take Ten-Minute Breaks

Working in an office usually consists of regular coffee breaks, water breaks, and other small breaks. Research shows that employees working from home feel guilty about taking such breaks. 

As established, telecommuting has its own unique stressors, and taking periodic breaks can help relieve some of this stress.

Here are a few quick ways of reducing these stressors:

• Set an alarm to remind yourself to consciously get up to take a walk
• Take a five-minute break between calls to wash the coffee cup in the sink
• Make a quick snack for yourself and the kids or spend time with your dog 
• Catch up with a co-worker or friend for 5 minutes on a phone call.

These rechargers will help the body and the brain to energize. 

Working from home does not require one to refrain from taking breaks that you would have at the office. 

4. Set Aside Time For “Non-Video” Meetings

Not everyone is comfortable with being on camera 9 hours a day. While Zoom and Google Meet have become part of our daily life, due to personal differences, not everyone is comfortable with video interactions. 

Avoid consecutive video meetings. Let your team know when you are available for video calls, and define time periods for voice calls only, rather than video calls.

5. Establish A Sacred Work Area 

Telecommuting has blessed employees with the ability to choose where they want to work. But virtual work also needs to have specific boundaries so employees get the feeling of being at work. A clearly defined workplace will definitely help in creating an “office” feeling. 

Comfortable office desks and chairs are available from Amazon and other office supply stores. Don’t forget to set yourself up for 8-10 hours of good lumbar support and wrist support. This will eliminate physical stress, which will contribute to reducing overall work stress.

6. Figure Out Your “Me Time” During Or After Work Hours

Reading, listening to music, or catching up with the news are all things we generally do while traveling to and from the office. With remote work, this “me time” is compromised, which can lead to stress, despite a productive workday. 

So how do we achieve this “me time” during telecommuting? A few examples are:

• 30 minutes of exercise
• 15 minutes of reading a book with a cup of tea or coffee
• Taking up a hobby and spending 15-20 minutes on learning something about it
• 20 minutes of meditation.

Anything that keeps you connected to yourself is a great way of handling virtual workdays. Don’t hesitate to take vacation time. Even though the amount of time spent commuting during work from home is lesser than when you are in the office, you still need personal time to do non-work-related activities. 

7. Know When To Ask For Help

There will be times when work hours might be long or work piles up, causing higher stress levels. You don’t have to be a hero about it. Just ask for help. Respect yourself to know that you need help so you can reduce your risk of burnout.

Personal life and professional life have to be balanced. Even if you need help with child care, or you are feeling overwhelmed with family needs, help is just an ask away.

How Can Managers Help Improve Work-Life Balance?

It is also the responsibility of the organization to support remote working. When work environments are congenial and team members are supported by managers, stress levels go down. Here are a few things that managers can consider doing for team members that are working remotely.

1. Macro-Manage The Team 

Trust employees to work – working from home does not imply binge-watching the Disney channel with the kids. Employees are serious and responsible enough to know what tasks need to be carried out in the day, even when working from home. Micromanaging the team is going to lead to ineffective, cautious, and sometimes even rebellious behavior.

Assuming that employees are surfing the net, watching Youtube videos, and applying to new jobs on LinkedIn is detrimental to the company culture. Trusting the employees to maintain a good work-life balance and providing the required support reduces stress levels for employees and teams. 

At the end of the day, rather than calculating tasks, focusing on the work and getting the job done is what matters most. Not how long, or when it is done. As long as the overarching targets are achieved, macro-managing is a good way of building trust with employees, while micromanaging will cause you to lose it.

2. Encourage More Asynchronous Time

Expecting the employee to be online and available for every ping of yours is like expecting your employee to get you coffee every hour in the brick and mortar office. Employers are making use of software like Hubstaff to keep an eye on the employees’ screen time and track their work hours. While this may help the manager in tracking employee tasks as in a pre-COVID-19 environment, employees will feel less trusted.

One way of reducing discomfort and accounting for interruptions that accompany working from home is scheduling asynchronous time in the calendar. The managers can complete their tasks before getting into meetings. In addition, employees have the freedom of working without being watched like hawks.

For example, Sophia Kianni (2020) mentions how she has to wait for her birds to stop chirping before she could continue her answer while filming a podcast. Such interruptions are considered the new normal during work hours. 

However, if your kid does bother you during a meeting, apologizing and getting on with your task in a matter-of-fact way is the best thing to do!

3. Support Flexible Hours

The American Psychological Association promotes work flexibility and emphasizes its positive effect on work performance, stress levels, and work-life balance. Industrial psychologists believe in optimizing talent while maintaining organizational culture. 

In these COVID-19 times, figuring out a way to attract the right talent, promote their success, and maintain current talent is a huge challenge for organizations.

Flexible hours are one of the “attractive” ways of holding on to current talent. While Chung (2015) speaks about how telecommuting and flexible hours are suited for families with kids, she also speaks about how flexible hours allow employees to develop their hobbies and other skills.

For example, if a dual working family adopts flexi-time, one of them could work in the morning, while the other could work from the afternoon. Sharing home and family chores becomes easier with different working times.

Keeping open calendars to share commonly available times and having candid open communication with employees about their time constraints creates a productive work environment and improved working hours for employees. 

4. Empathize With And Tolerate Absenteeism

An employee who works from home also needs a break. How much the organization pays attention to the employees’ mental wellness and physical wellbeing reflects upon the organizational work culture. Not allowing breaks or time off to deal with health issues, family issues, or take a vacation; encouraging longer hours; and confiscating lunch breaks are not positive initiatives. 

Managers need to appreciate the value that downtime hours provide to employees who are working from home. The ability to recharge and rejuvenate reduces burnout in employees and encourages them to stick around more. 

5. Change Work Performance Metrics For Telecommuting Employees

While it’s easier to quantify KPIs and define targets for jobs in industries such as manufacturing or retail, defining targets for intellectual or informational workers can become difficult. Using outdated measurements for performance appraisal like coming to work on time and working for a stipulated 8 hours unnecessarily increases the stress levels of the employee.

During COVID-19, some managers showed reluctance to move towards reduced micromanagement of their employees. As work from home becomes a large part of work culture, managers need to find different ways to motivate their employees. 

Consequently, using independently set targets, making employees accountable in tracking time, planning and scheduling, and having weekly 1:1s are a stronger way of motivating employees and improving performance when working from home.

Assuming that the worker away from the office is a lazy worker is incorrect. Employees working from home show a higher performance matrix, with better engagement and innovation.

Change things up and ask your people these 5 Powerful Performance Review Questions.

Final Thoughts

In ongoing research, Microsoft has found that collaboration improved during work from home, and a recent Gartner CFO survey indicated that nearly 74% of employers intend to shift their employees to telecommute.

Balancing work and personal life when telecommuting is the responsibility of the employee and the employer. There is no one solution for the challenges that come with remote work. 

Taking time to figure out a cadence for check-ins, communicating, expressing empathy, standing with the team, and keeping employee comfort zones in mind will help make working from home a successful norm in the coming years.

Some further reading to help with your own and team member’s wellbeing:

• The 7 Best Remote Team Building Activities
• 10 Best Employee Wellness Platforms For Employee Health & Well-Being
• 27 Best Practices For Managing Remote Teams In 2022
• 10 Best Employee Shift Scheduling Software In 2022

The post Maintaining Work-Life Balance While Telecommuting: 12 Tips For Teams And Orgs appeared first on People Managing People.

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“Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength because it shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and that then allows you to learn something new.” — Barack Obama

So you’ve been promoted to the managerial role you’ve been working towards for years. Congrats! You’ve achieved your ambitions, and you’ve been rewarded for your hard work.

But then you start in your new role, and quickly find yourself struggling. You knew that you’d have more responsibility and a heavier workload. Maybe you even relished the challenge. But, with demands coming in from all sides and new situations to navigate, you soon find yourself snowed under, taking work home with you, and wondering if you’ll ever be able to manage it all.  

Perhaps your former peers are now your direct reports and you’re struggling to assert your authority while maintaining good working relationships. Or you’ve just come into a new team who’s morale has been hammered by their previous manager, so building trust is difficult.

You start to doubt yourself. Imposter syndrome sets in. You wonder if you’re really up to the job. 

Stop. Breathe.

It’s perfectly normal for new managers to feel overwhelmed by their new responsibilities. The good news is that it’s okay to admit this and ask for help, as hard as that can be. But when and how you ask for that help matters.

Here, with the help of some experienced manager friends, l outline why it’s okay to ask for help as a new manager and how to approach it. I’ll cover:

• Why Are We afraid to ask for help?
• Why it’s more than okay to ask for help
• When you should consider asking for help
• How to ask for help

First up, let’s get over that fear.

Why Are We afraid to ask for help?

For many of us, a promotion reflects years of hard work and dedication and, naturally, we feel a well-deserved sense of pride in our achievements. So, when we’re suddenly confronted with a problem beyond our abilities, that pride can get in the way of asking for help.

But it isn’t just a question of ego. 

Michelle Hague, HR Manager at Solar Panels Network USA, has seen managers struggling to ask for help for several reasons: 

“First, you may feel like you need to prove yourself and show that you’re capable of leading the team. Additionally, asking for help can make you feel vulnerable—like you’re not sure if you’re doing the right thing. Finally, there may be a fear of appearing weak or incompetent in front of your team.”

Kane Carpenter, Practice Lead of Employer Branding & Growth Strategies at Daggerfinn, agrees, “New managers don’t want to seem like they don’t know what they’re doing and won’t ask for help as a result.”

In fact, our reluctance to ask for help comes down to both our sense of pride and our lack of self confidence. If you’re feeling out of your depth, but you’re too proud or embarrassed to approach your boss for support, remember—you’re not alone. 

Every manager I spoke to for this article agreed that they had found it hard to ask for help when they first started leading a team. A survey by Vantage Hill Partners found that the greatest fear among executives—up to and including CEOs—is being thought of as incompetent. A fear of appearing vulnerable was also high on the list. 

So it’s not just new managers—and it’s certainly not just you. 

Why it’s more than okay to ask for help

The quote from Barack Obama at the top of this article says it all really. If the president of the United States has to ask for help, then odds are you will too. But, if you need specific reasons, here are a few:

You’re new at this

As individual collaborators, we’re encouraged to strive for independence—but great managers know that collaboration and mutual support are just as important. 

The fact is, you’re not expected to know it all on day one. Great leaders never stop learning. You’re expected to ask for help.

“Many new managers have never managed before, and lack confidence in their requests and decisions,” says Jeremy Babener, founder of Structured Consulting. “You might fear that others will realize you’re ‘not qualified’, even when you’re just new to the position. But this is more of a psychological barrier.”

People want to help 

Many of us underestimate how willing people are to help. Studies from Cornell University back this up. They found people are 48% more likely than expected to provide assistance to strangers when asked. 

So, despite what you might think, your boss is far more likely to want to help you than to judge you for asking. In fact, a study in Management Science found that individuals actually tend to see asking for advice as a sign of competence.

Your boss expects it 

If you’re worried about what your superior will think if you ask for support, just remember; they’ve been there themselves. Every manager, no matter how experienced, has at some point experienced being a new manager. They’re perfectly placed to help you get to where they are. 

Executive coach Keiko Toduka has been on both sides of the fence, as a new manager asking for help and an experienced manager being asked. Writing on Medium, she has some words of encouragement: 

“As a manager, I never worry about the people who ask for more time, more resources, or more help from me. I trust that they will always speak up when they’re feeling stuck or in over their heads. Then we can work together on the best path forward.”

In fact, Keiko says she’s more likely to worry about those who don’t ask for help when they need it.

Vulnerability is a learning opportunity 

An analysis of middle and senior managers found that, instead of being seen as weaknesses, openness and vulnerability have a “generative capacity for alternative ways of managerial being and learning.” In other words, by asking for help, you create opportunities to learn and develop your managerial skills. 

Of course, you will feel vulnerable when you realize you need to ask for help. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it may even be an opportunity. In our podcast, How To Own Your Emotion And Lead With Vulnerability, GrantMe CEO Jason Yee told us that vulnerability is an important leadership quality, as long as it’s tied to competence: 

“I think it can create massive trust and buy-in and alignment… We’re all working together on our journey of self-development… I don’t think it’s possible for me to lead without being honest about where I need to improve as well.“

When you should ask for help

If you feel overwhelmed or out of your depth, it’s definitely time to get support. For example, if you’re snowed under and taking work home, it’s time to start thinking about who you can ask for guidance on how to delegate.

“I think when you’re right at the edge of your comfort zone,” says Kane Carpenter, “it’s OK to try and figure something out yourself. When you feel like you are out of your depth completely, then it’s time to ask for help.”

That’s the outer limit, though. You don’t need to reach the end of your tether first. Dan Trichter, co-founder of Accessibility Checker says, “If you’re not sure, err on the side of asking for help. It’s better to ask and not need it than to need it and not ask.”

That said, you don’t want to be running for help at every challenge. You’re a manager now, so it’s vital that you’ve at least tried to have tried to resolve the issue yourself before looking for help. 

Let’s say you’re in that situation where a former peer is now your direct report, but isn’t taking you seriously as a manager. If you go straight to your manager, it might look like you can’t handle your responsibilities. Better to go to your boss once you’ve had a one-to-one with the person, outlined what is expected, but haven’t seen an improvement.

Read this next if you want advice for running an effective one-to-one meeting.

“If you’ve been trying to figure something out for a while and you’re not making any progress,” Michelle Hague says, “it may be time to ask someone else for their input.”

Kathryn Boudreau agrees, “It’s time to ask for help if you have looked into every nook and corner to solve a problem, yet have not found the proper resolution.” 

How to ask for help

There are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you’re asking for help in the most effective way possible: 

Know your company culture

“Some managers are always happy to help new managers, because the company values kindness and communication. On the other hand, other companies do not value hand-holding, and they expect all employees to be resourceful on their own to truly learn and grow. So, getting a sense of the company culture will help you decide how to best approach seeking help as a new manager.” Miles Beckett, CEO and Co-Founder at Flossy

Action Point: If you’re new to the company, refer to your onboarding documents or what you know about the company culture to judge how requests for help will be seen. If you’re familiar with your own manager, you can also think about their personality and the way they tend to talk to you. Will they respond more positively to polite requests or assertive statements? 

Example phrase: “I know that honesty is really important in this company, and I feel like I need to put my hands up and admit that, despite having a few meetings with both of them, I’m still struggling to manage the ongoing conflict between Dan and Christine. Do you have any suggestions?” 

Be open and honest

“Most people enjoy being a mentor and helping others, especially when it comes to leveraging their own experience and expertise to guide and develop new managers. If, as a new manager, you’re asking questions with the genuine desire to learn and get better, just ask!” — Kane Carpenter, Practice Lead, Employer Branding & Growth Strategies, Daggerfinn 

Action Point: Make direct, factual statements without hedging or being apologetic. 

Example phrase: “I’ve been trying to resolve this, but I’m still having difficulty with this point.”

Be specific

“Be specific about what you need help with and why you think your manager can help. For example, ‘I’m having trouble getting my team to work together on this project. I was wondering if you could give me some advice on how to get them to cooperate?’ This shows that you’ve thought about the problem and that you value your manager’s opinion.” — Dan Trichter, Co-Founder, Accessibility Checker

Action Point: Before going to ask for help, plan out the specifics of what you want to explain, what you are asking for help with, and why you’re coming to them in particular. It might help to write it down before your meeting.  

Example phrase: “Since you’re more familiar with the team, perhaps you could give me an insight into this specific dynamic. I’m not sure what I’m seeing here.” 

Ask all the questions

“Remember that you’re only a new manager once. Therefore, you can take advantage of this initial period by asking all the questions you need to ask. Your managers will appreciate your proactiveness and curiosity in learning how to do your job as well as you possibly can.” — Nick Shackelford, Managing Partner at Structured Agency

Action point: Make a note of any gaps in your knowledge of your new position, and ask your manager questions that can fill those gaps.

Example phrase: “I noticed that you give extensive feedback after every client presentation. I’m wondering why you decided to do that and if you have any tips for how I could implement it with my team?” 

Show what you’ve done already

“Always ensure that you have all the facts ready at hand, as well as the questions to ask. Share the steps you’ve taken to find solutions, and ask for their input in finding a better solution. Never be afraid to ask for help or share a new take on an existing problem.” — Kathryn Boudreau, Remote Operations Manager, CallerSmart

Action point: Make sure you frame your request for help as a positive step, not as an act of desperation! 

Example phrase: Instead of saying “I’ve tried everything and I’m out of ideas”, ask “Can you suggest another approach that might be more effective?”

Show how you want to grow

“In almost all cases I find that ‘positive curiosity’ carries the day. Don’t hide when you don’t know something, and show confidence that when you learn the information you’ll be ready to apply your good judgment.” — Jeremy Babener, Founder at Structured Consulting

Action point: Explain why you’re asking what you’re asking and how it will help you improve your own or your team’s performance in the future.   

Example phrase: “Can you explain how to run this process, so that I have it ready for the next time?” 

Offer potential solutions

“It can be helpful to come up with a few potential solutions before you ask for help. This shows that you’ve already been thinking about the problem and you’re looking for guidance on which solution to pursue.” — Michelle Hague, HR Manager at Solar Panels Network USA

Action point: Present your suggested solutions and ask for feedback. Be prepared to say if you disagree—but make sure you can give a good reason!

Example phrase: “I think that moving Samantha to the Sales team might be a more effective use of her skillset. But I’m aware that might create some pushback from the rest of the team. What do you think?” 

Ask for—and listen to—feedback

“Be willing to listen to feedback and take it constructively. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness. By being open to feedback, you’re showing that you’re committed to being the best manager possible.” — Michelle Hague, HR Manager at Solar Panels Network USA

Action point: Turn feedback into learning points—and action points!  

Example phrase:“I’d love to know what you think about the way I handled this recent situation. Do you think I need to be more assertive?” 

Need help? Just ask!

Reaching the manager’s role is not the peak of your achievements—it’s a new beginning. So while you have achieved a milestone, and reached a higher status, you’re also a newbie again. That means you’ve got some learning to do. 

Your new management peers and your line managers have all been in your shoes, and they know they’ve got wisdom to share.

So if you really need some help, just ask.

If you want to invest in developing your leadership skills and abilities, here are some further resources:

• People Management Tips For New And Experienced Managers
• How To Support New Managers With A People Partner Program
• 10 Best Leadership Development Programs to Grow Future Leaders in 2022
• Engaging Employees Through Empathetic Leadership: What I Learned
• 14 Leadership Books For New Leaders To Read In 2022
• Unlearning Leadership: How To Lead In The New World Of Work (with Bev Attfield from Within People)
• 13 best leadership certificates to help you become a better leader

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