Are Your Employees Ready to Bailout from Burnout?

Employee Engagement

Last month, I called my go-to window washer to schedule a much-needed cleaning. I usually have this done twice every year, but…well, you know. He was booked solid for the next two weeks, but we managed to get the job scheduled. When he came to my house, I asked if he’d been extra busy with customers like me scheduling make-up window cleaning. “Yes,” he said, “I’ve had more back-to-back jobs in the last two months than I had all of last year.”

I had similar conversations with a landscaping crew, the dental hygienist, and the manager at my local dry cleaners. Everyone is happy to have plenty of work to do, but managing the sudden surge in demand while trying to deal with pandemic fatigue and get through the upcoming holiday season can set us up for a triple dose of mental drain this quarter.

If this is happening to me and the people who I’m running into personally, it’s likely happening to you and your team. Here are some guidelines for keeping your employees from bailing out from burnout.

1. Check-in. Instead of jumping right into Q3 reports, Q4 forecasts, and 2022 strategic planning, check in with your team members in one-on-one conversations by simply asking them how they are doing in the midst of all that’s going on. It may seem like such a small thing, but it can be surprisingly helpful. If you can provide a safe space to let your team members share what’s occupying their minds, they can feel calmer, clearer and better able to focus on other things.

2. Don’t fix. Just Listen. Listening sounds so simple, right? Hearing what the other person is saying is one thing, but really listening—listening for meaning, and how the other person is feeling—is something that takes discipline. As a manager, your brain may shift into “Let’s solve it” gear. When you’ve invited your team member to share what’s on their mind, this is not the time for a quick fix. Instead, listen to understand your team member’s feelings, then identify and acknowledge those feelings. Be supportive and nonjudgmental, whether your perspective matches theirs or not.

3. Keep extra passes handy. Now is the time to internalize that everyone you interact with is struggling, and in ways you may never fully understand. When you notice your team member acting in an atypical way, give them a pass. Assume that they are acting from a place of good intentions and don’t take it personally. This is not the time to flex your positional power. Instead, give them time to process, then repeat Step 1, above.

Under the best of circumstances, many of us struggle to navigate the Q4 crush. These are not the best of circumstances, and it’s more important than ever to model empathy and help your team members avoid burnout.

Question: How do you keep your employees from bailing out from burnout?

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!

Are Your Managers Ghosting Your Employees?

Employee Engagement

Today’s organizations are fighting a workforce trifecta of facts. Fact 1: There are a million more job openings in the U.S. than workers to fill them. Fact 2: The employee quit rate in the U.S. has hit a 17-year high. Fact 3: Workplace burnout is being upgraded by the World Health Organization in its International Classification of Diseases. In short, managers are trying to get more done with fewer people at a greater risk to their own health.

It gets worse. A study by Harvard Business School found that more than half of a manager’s time is spent on administrative tasks and only 7% of their time (about 2.8 hours per week) is spent on developing people and engaging with stakeholders. After engaging stakeholders, developing people is likely closer to 1 hour per week. This chronic lack of time spent on employee development is equivalent to the phenomenon known as ghosting which perpetuates both the quit rate and burnout rate. To break this cycle, the role and purpose of today’s managers must change in three fundamental ways:

From controlling to coaching. While the world’s workplaces have been going through extraordinary historical change, the practice of management has been stuck in time for more than 30 years. The new workforce — especially younger generations — wants their work to have deep mission and purpose, and they don’t want old-style command-and-control bosses. They want coaches who inspire them, communicate with them frequently and develop their strengths.

From deciding to delegating. Too many managers don’t let direct reports make decisions for fear that mistakes will take too much valuable time to correct. This tendency restricts employees’ ability to develop their thinking and decision making which is exactly what is needed to help organizations remain competitive. Today’s managers don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. They need to tap into the collective intelligence and draw out everyone’s best thinking.

From ‘what works’ to ‘what if’. Managers often encourage predictability. They want processes in place that can be referred to regardless of who is in the role. The problem with this management style is that it leads to perpetuating the status quo at the expense of what is possible. Today’s managers don’t need hired hands to turn raw materials into products. They need hearts and minds that are challenged to find better ways to operate, to discover ways to grow, and to reimagine how things have been done in the past.

Today’s managers play a critical role in helping your organization adapt to the new workplace demands. Help them succeed by reimagining them as coaches who encourage critical thinking and curiosity.

Question: Do your managers spend more time reporting to senior leaders or coaching emerging ones?

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News! 

From Bureaucracy to Adhocracy: How Far Has the Culture Pendulum Swung?

Employee Engagement

Once upon a long, long time ago, it was good to be king. Being an unchallenged leader was so good, in fact, that the top-down, command-and-control organizational model that sprung from the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers when the Mesopotamians first used mass labor to irrigate crops remained relatively unchanged for the next 6,000 years. 

In early 20th century America, researchers began studying the impact of managerial behavior on employee productivity in organizations. The video titled (I kid you not) The Year They Discovered People documents studies conducted in the 1920s on workers at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in partnership with Harvard Business School. The research first focused on environmental factors, like better lighting, that would result in a more responsive, efficient workforce. Much to the surprise of the researchers, however, was the finding that social factors played a larger role in workforce efficiency than environmental factors. The Hawthorne studies found that manufacturing workers who received additional attention from their managers felt that they were cared about as human beings. Social factors were, in fact, equally important to financial motives – at a time when the average pay was 50 cents per hour.

Fast forward 100 years. Information is the new raw material. Survival in the 21st century information economy means turning information into knowledge, and knowledge into insight at lightning speed. We know that organizational structures still slogging in Mesopotamian mud are doomed for extinction. Somewhere between a purely bureaucratic organizational structure and the notion that every human wants to contribute to something greater than themselves, however, is the question of how to balance organizational structure with flexibility, fluidity, and role ambiguity. You’re probably familiar with the holacracy model famously adopted by Zappos in 2014. Here are two more examples of how far the pendulum can swing from bureaucracy that you may not have heard of:

TEAL Organizations. 

What’s the theory? As human consciousness evolves, so do our organizational systems. The Teal theory shifts from external measures of success to intrinsic needs along a color-based motivational scale. It’s less important if we get what we want (Red), we conform to social norms (Amber), we are effective and successful (Orange) or that we belong and have a say (Green). Now, humans are motivated by Teal — Does it feel good? Am I being my true self? What is right for me to do? Am I being in service to the world? In Teal, obstacles are life’s way of teaching us about ourselves and the world. We embrace the possibility that we were part of creating the problem.

How are they structured? Small teams take responsibility for their own governance and for how they interact with other parts of the organization. Assigned positions and job descriptions are replaced with a multiplicity of roles, often self-selected and fluid.

What’s radically different? No job descriptions, no targets, few budgets. In their place are soulful practices that enable extraordinarily productive and purposeful organizations. People’s actions are guided not by orders from someone up the chain of command but by ‘listening’ to the organization’s purpose.

What company is successfully using this structure? The Morning Star Company

Where can I read more? Reinventing Organizations, by Fredric Laloux

Adhocracy. 

What’s the theory? Employees are encouraged to tap into their entrepreneurial nature, initiate new projects, and choose which of them to work on. Self-selected teams emerge spontaneously where the most exciting opportunities appear to be rather than according to a strategic plan or a product development roadmap.

How is it structured? Instead of projects coming to established teams, teams converge around projects. These are highly collaborative and mostly temporary structures. Their edge comes from the ability to form links both inside and outside an organization. These nimble groups come together around a specific task, recruiting personnel, assigning roles, and establishing objectives. When the work is done they disband their members and take their skills to the next project.

What’s radically different? If a project launch fails, employees move to other, more promising projects. As a result, the organization is market focused—its model resembles that of a venture capitalist: it invests only when it sees a clear pathway toward a commercially viable product.

What company is successfully using this structure? Mundipharma

Where can I read more? All Edge: Inside the New Workplace Networks, by Clay Spinuzzi

Traditional management goes wrong when one powerful individual prescribes what must be done—or how—because of their positional role, not because he or she has more insight into what will produce the desired outcome. Self-managed organization models strip away much of the top-down hierarchical power, and favor process over structure to get the job done.

Compared to 6,000 years of bureaucracy, models like holacracy, teal, and adhocracy are still in their infancy. The next generation of self-managed teams will require leaders with the vision to recognize the limitations of hierarchy, and defend the structure that serves the organization’s strategic goals.

Question: What’s the best mashup of hierarchy and self-managed teams?

Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!