The Management Tip of the Day

  High sensitivity, also referred to as sensory processing sensitivity, relates to having a more reactive nervous system, attuning to subtleties in the environment, and processing information more deeply. It’s a trait that’s been researched for more than 30 years, and is found within 15% to 30% of the population. And yet, the majority of managers aren’t aware of it. Here are three distinct strengths of highly sensitive people (HSPs), and how to properly supervise, nurture, and retain them.  HSPs are skilled at spotting patterns, reading between the lines, and picking up on subtle cues. With this in mind, assign them work that gives them a chance to identify opportunities or risks that others might miss.  Because they’re attuned to others’ emotions and needs, HSPs can be savvy persuaders and influencers—as well as experts at fostering teamwork and camaraderie. Assign them interpersonal work that will allow them to put these skills to the test. Leverage HSPs’ heightened abi...

  More than ever, companies need leaders who can harness ingenuity and foster engagement. It’s not enough to be a technical expert or a visionary strategist. You also need to invest in your people skills to empower and enable your employees. These skills take different shapes in three areas: in small groups, across distinct networks (like teams and units), and across your entire organization. Here are the most important skills to develop in each area. In small groups and one-on-one interactions, prioritize listening. Asking good questions, empathizing with, and empowering your employees will allow you to draw wisdom, insight, and creativity from them, solve problems collectively, and foster a sense of psychological safety. Across networks, focus on collaborating and influencing. Agility and innovation depend on cross-functional cooperation and the ability to build and work through informal relationships. Across the organization, concentrate on culture-shaping and aligning. To empow...

  It can be difficult to tell your employees about a tough decision that will negatively impact them. Whether you’ve decided to cancel a project or are conducting layoffs, here’s how to deliver tough news in an honest, respectful, and compassionate way. First, don’t bury the lead. When you make the announcement, state the news clearly and at the top of your message. Obscuring or sugarcoating it will only make the experience more difficult for your team. Next, after delivering the news, take a pause. Give your team a moment to digest what you just told them, and don’t ramble to fill the silence or avoid eye contact. Then, take responsibility. You could say something like, “I know this is a lot to take in and comes as a shock to many. I will take a few minutes to explain how we came to this decision. I don’t expect you to agree with our conclusion. But I owe you an explanation of how we got here.” Finally, take time to show empathy, acknowledging the impact of the decision and the em...

Job rejection is always difficult, but it can sting even more when you don’t get chosen for an internal role. How can you continue to work not only in the same organization after hearing “no,” but also with the same people who rejected you?  Resist personalizing the decision.  In most cases, being passed over isn’t a reflection of your skills or personality. It’s likely that another candidate was simply more qualified, or that the company wanted to bring in someone external for reasons that are entirely out of your control.  Act with integrity.  It may be tempting to throw in the towel and disengage in an act of retaliation, but that will only undermine your position. Responding with grace will bolster your reputation and set you up for success in the future. Mine the experience for lessons.  What have you discovered about your organization during this process? How can you use that information to your advantage? Who holds influence and decision-making power? Wha...

  Before rolling out a potentially costly diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative, it’s worth running an experiment to verify that it could actually work at your company. Fortunately, A/B testing can help. To A/B test your DEI initiatives, start by determining your goal. What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? What does success look like? Be specific: “Reduce gender and racial bias in our hiring process” is a better goal than “Create an inclusive culture.” Then consider what success looks like and establish a way to measure it. If success means increasing the diversity among new employees, for example, you might choose to measure the diversity of not only your final hires but also the applicant pool and set of interviewees. Focus on quantifiable outcomes, not just self-reported sentiments, attitudes, or other qualitative indicators. Next, roll out the initiative only on some randomly selected teams. And finally, compare your treatment group (the one that was assigned t...

  Turnover isn’t inherently a bad thing. As a manager, how can you shift your team’s culture to treat healthy employee attrition as a normal fact of organizational life, rather than an awkward, unexpected breakup?  At the outset, acknowledge that the relationship won’t last forever.  As early as onboarding, establish transparency and realistic expectations with your employees. You don’t expect them to stay forever, but you do expect them to do their best work while they’re working with you.  Regularly promote stellar internal candidates and rehire boomerang employees.  In other words, keep your talent pipeline flowing. Rewarding your highest performers with upward mobility will help you retain them, and rehiring superstars who have left the company will demonstrate your long-term commitment to employees’ growth, even after they’ve left your company.  Engage your alumni.  Consider setting up an alumni newsletter, Slack workspace, or LinkedIn group where...

  Workplace discrimination and exclusion remain significant challenges for many workers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+). As a colleague, how can you move past performative allyship and toward the real thing? It requires three simple but powerful steps.  Be accepting.  Acceptance is the foundation of authentic allyship. Your language, demeanor, and behaviors need to demonstrate that you accept and validate LGBTQ+ individuals’ gender and/or sexual identities.  Take action.  Acceptance is insufficient without actions to back it up. Seek out opportunities to learn more about LGBTQ+ issues, both in your workplace and your broader community. And speak out against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, whether it takes the form of interpersonal bias (e.g., a coworker making an offensive comment) or systemic bias (e.g., a workplace dress code that discriminates against gender-queer individuals).  Have humility.  Listen more than you...

  Where you do your work is a reflection of your professional identity: who you are now and who you want to be in your career. Here’s how to intentionally build a workspace where your best professional self can thrive. First, evaluate your space. How do you feel when you step into it? Is it set up to facilitate your productivity and your workplace relationships? Does it reflect your professional journey, reminding you of your past progress—and your future goals? Little changes can make a big difference. For example, you might personalize the space by adding small identity markers like awards, diplomas, or mementos that conjure warm feelings. Or you might change the utility of your workspace, even adding secondary or tertiary spaces to complete certain tasks that require more focus or a change of scenery. If you’re feeling a dearth of social interaction (particularly if you work from home), consider spending one day each week at the office, a coworking space, or even a busy café. Fi...

  If you’re feeling exhausted, how can you assess whether you’re heading toward burnout? You can track your burnout status with a simple, quick activity: the two-minute burnout checkup. Start by writing down how much stress, on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 being negligible, 10 being extreme), you experience from each of the six factors of burnout: workload, values (how you connect with your work on a deeper level), reward (both financial and social), control (the degree of autonomy you feel at work), fairness, and community. For example, if you’re finding it tough to connect with colleagues after a long period of working from home, you might score community an 8. Conversely, you might rank workload a 2 if you have a good amount to do but find the number of tasks manageable. Your overall score will give you a big-picture sense of how well you’re doing at that moment. While the total number of points (out of 60) is important, what’s more useful are your scores in each of the six categories....

  In today’s world, everyone is a brand, for better or worse. Whether you’re applying for a job, asking for a promotion, or writing a dating profile, your success will depend on getting others to recognize your value—so you need to get comfortable marketing yourself. These seven steps will help you better manage your image and the impact you have on the world.  Define your purpose by exploring your mission, passion, and strengths. What difference do you want to make to the people you care about? And how?  Audit your personal brand equity by cataloging your credentials, doing a self-assessment, and researching how other people view you. Construct your personal narrative by identifying memorable, resonant stories that will best convey your brand—and then tell those stories.  Embody your brand by paying attention to the message you’re sending in every social interaction.  Communicate your brand through speeches, social media, the press, and other channels.  So...

  As a leader, you need to be fluent in negotiation—even if you’re not currently sitting in the C-suite. Whether you’re negotiating the terms of a project, your next salary, or a corporate acquisition, here are some key principles to keep in mind.  Justify your offer.  Negotiators who provide explanations for their proposals are more likely to reach agreements than those who don’t. Even if your offer is too low, a compelling, well-reasoned justification demonstrates to your counterpart that you’ve given considerable thought to your offer and that it’s well informed.  Frame your proposal.  The context surrounding an offer can influence its perceived value and, ultimately, the negotiation’s outcome. Don’t just say a big number—tell a compelling story. Be prepared to assess “anchors.”  A powerful tool in negotiation, anchors are the initial reference point that influences the perceived value of the thing being negotiated. Come prepared to assess whether an anc...

  As a business leader, it can be challenging to know when to weigh in on a hot-button social or political issue. Here are some questions to ask before deciding whether to speak up as a company.  Does the issue relate to our purpose and values?  Most customers or clients aren’t thinking about where your company stands on every issue facing society. They are, however, interested in where you stand on the issues related to what you do—and who you claim to be.  How does the issue impact our stakeholders?  Before making a decision about whether to speak up, consider the interests of your customers, shareholders, and above all, your employees. Staff who feel ignored or alienated are often your most vocal detractors. By contrast, those employees who feel heard and understood can be your greatest ambassadors. What are our choices for engagement?  “Speaking up” can take many forms. Don’t simply follow the trend of the moment, whether that’s creating a social media ...

  Whether it’s addressing a sensitive topic with your team or confronting an employee about a problem at work, difficult conversations are a fact of work life, and they can be uncomfortable and even downright intimidating. To approach them more constructively, start from a foundation of trust. Building trust requires vulnerability, honesty, and an explicit goal of mutual respect. When trust is missing, people are more defensive, less willing to communicate honestly, and less likely to take responsibility for their actions, which can lead to prolonged conflicts and make it even harder to find resolution. Next, understand that, as a leader, you wield a lot of power. Especially in the context of difficult conversations, that power can incite fear in your employees, creating a toxic work environment that erodes trust, stifles creativity and innovation, and even leads to turnover. Approach these conversations with self-awareness, humility, and a soft touch, but don’t obscure your feedba...

  You desperately want a new job—but your current one is taking up all your energy. How can you balance the demands of the present with your desire for a better future? It’s all about managing your time wisely throughout all phases of the process.  Plan ahead.  Before starting a job search, take a high-level look at your calendar and decide on the best time to commit to the process. This doesn’t have to be a daily commitment. Devote two to three hours per week to looking for your next role.  Explore.  Block out recurring time on your calendar to explore industry trends, research required skills, make a list of key contacts, and take a cursory look at job postings. It may also be useful to find a secondary workspace (think coffee shop or library) for this phase. Get out there.  Once you’ve done your research, reach out to your network and schedule in-person meetings, video calls, and phone calls with key contacts. These informal and informational conversatio...

  It’s normal to feel mentally checked out at work from time to time. But especially in times of economic uncertainty, when your job stability could be in question, it’s important to check back in and refocus on your professional reputation. Start by determining your career commitments. Ask yourself, “What do I want to be known for at work?” Perhaps it’s your enthusiasm, great communication skills, reliability, or ability to work well under pressure. These might be new skills you want to learn, or old ones you want to fine-tune or improve. Then, commit to an action plan to bring these skills to life. You don’t need to make big, sweeping changes—even small shifts in body language, mindset, communication, visibility, or productivity can result in a significant and lasting impact on your reputation. Finally, commit to solving simple but impactful problems. Don’t underestimate how much value you can add just by sharing or applying what you already know. Being an impactful problem solve...

  When you become a manager, you take on the responsibility of your direct reports’ career development in addition to your own. How can you demonstrate that their growth is a top priority? Start by having career-development conversations with your employees early and often. The dialogue should begin around a year into their tenure. You might send out a prompt in advance of the first conversation, with the goal of better understanding your employee and their aspirations. In the conversation itself, focus on asking questions and listening carefully. Find out what they enjoy working on most, what motivates them, and how they hope to grow. In the follow up, work with them to put together a customized development plan. Then run some small experiments—relatively simple changes to their responsibilities and workweek to point them in the right direction. For example, think about any classes, conferences, or training programs that might match their interests, and encourage them to come to y...

  Failure can be the best teacher, but if you’re not careful, you might take away the wrong lessons. How can you make sure you’re getting accurate, actionable insight from your team’s past experiences? The key is to analyze failures alongside successes instead of concentrating only on what didn’t work. Here are three reasons why this is important. First, if you’re only looking at what conditions and actions led to a failure, you might invest in interventions that won’t solve the problem. For example, if you dig into why 25% of your sales team doesn’t meet their quotas, you may find that those employees aren’t using a particular tool, leading you to conclude that they need training on the tool. But if you analyze the rest of the team’s success, you may find that they’re not using the tool either, meaning a different issue is at play for that 25%. Second, a single-minded focus on what led to a negative outcome could lead you to miss the strategies that led to a positive outcome. For ...

  When you’re looking for a new job, how can you identify if a prospective employer has a burnout culture? Here are some red flags to look out for and questions to ask during the interview process.  Lack of autonomy.  To assess how much choice you’ll have over how and when you’ll work, ask your interviewer questions like: Will I have flexibility over when I do my work during the day? How do you assign workloads and deadlines?  Lack of fairness.  To learn how invested the company is in equity, ask: What sort of employee data do you collect? How are promotions decided? Do you have a diversity officer? How many people are on the DEI team? Lack of reward.  To get a sense of the potential employer’s investment in your career growth, ask: What are the criteria and processes for promotions? How often are people promoted in this unit? Do you have a professional development budget?  Lack of community support.  To assess whether you’ll be working on a suppo...

  Working for an insecure manager can be incredibly demotivating. What should you do if you think your manager doesn’t trust you? Here are some tactics to change the tone of your relationship. First, you want your boss to think of you as an ally, not a rival, so look for small ways to signal that you’re not a threat. In a check-in, you might say, “I admire what you do and I’m hoping to continue learning from you,” or “I’m grateful for your guidance (on a specific issue).” Research has shown that genuine flattery and gratitude helps. Then, build trust by emphasizing how you’re both aligned. To do this, ask about their priorities and how you can best support those goals. You might say, “I want to be sure I understand what success looks like for you and that I’m doing what I can to contribute.” Sharing collective success will make your relationship less acrimonious. Finally, if the issue persists, have a frank conversation with them. You might ask, “Is there something I can do differe...

  Creativity is critical for innovation, and bringing it out in your team requires a lot more than simply scheduling brainstorm meetings and whiteboarding sessions. Here’s how to foster a culture of creativity. Generate lots of ideas—even bad ones.  When you want your team to solve a creative problem, try implementing an “idea quota”: a deliberate practice of generating lots of options to solve a problem instead of going back and forth trying to arrive at the “right” answer. Pushing people to come up with multiple ideas can unlock less-obvious solutions. Emphasize that failure is a necessary part of experimentation.  Take some of the pressure off. Sometimes, discovering what works starts with discovering what doesn’t. End the culture of “schedule Tetris.”  Remind your team—and yourself—that protecting open, unscheduled time on their calendars is not only permissible, but necessary for innovation.  Take care of yourself.  Job hunting can be exhausting. Take ...