Leaders should treat their employees like children. Or like hostage-takers. Wait! Before you start that complaint email bear with me for a minute and see if you don’t agree.
Eric Barker – one of my favorite bloggers – recently published a great article with advice for parents on how to talk to kids, especially during highly emotional conversations. As the parent of a 12-year old daughter with whom I frequently have emotional conversations, I was eager to pick up a trick or two. The more I read, the more I realized Eric’s advice is great advice for leaders too.
The basic idea during these high stakes conversations is to acknowledge and understand the feelings of the other person (this is similar to the article I wrote last week on empathy). People don’t want to be told how they feel or how they should or shouldn’t feel; they first and foremost just want to be heard.
Child psychologists list 4 steps for dealing with upset kids:
Listen With Full Attention: Everyone needs to feel understood. The big mistake is thinking kids are any different.
Acknowledge Their Feelings: Paraphrase what they said. Don’t say you understand, show them you do.
Give Their Feelings A Name: “Sounds like you feel this is unfair.” It calms the brain.
Ask Questions: You want to resolve their underlying emotional needs, not get into a logical debate.
Barker compares this strategy to the FBI’s “behavioral change stairway” – used to resolve hundreds of hostage negotiations each year:
What I really like about these two models is how each step builds to the next, higher connection steps. Both models start with Active Listening. In the 4-step conversation with children the goal isn’t so much to change behavior (like in the hostage negotiation model). But those next two steps certainly build empathy and rapport. Asking questions, especially if you ask the right questions, is also a great way to begin to influence someone. Finally, both models make clear that this is at the end of the sequence not the beginning.
As I read each of these models I considered how important these same steps are in connecting with employees. The two models of course reminded me of the Approachable Leadership model:
The Approachable Leadership model is more about mindset than it is the steps you take, but it ends up in the same place. You build connection (or a calmer child, or rapport and influence with a hostage-taker) first by creating the right space. In the Approachability world this is about making the other individual welcome, safe, and shrinking power-distance. The exact same idea applies in these other high-stakes situations.
The second part of the model is about understanding the other person. This is the empathy and rapport step. Notice how it happens only after you have created the right, safe space. Finally you get to action, but this is the last step and very often isn’t needed – many times people just want to be heard and understood. If action is required following through and being trustworthy builds confidence in all relationships, including with children and I assume hostage-takers (thankfully I don’t have personal experience in that last situation).
When our Workshop attendees start their 30-Day Challenge we always remind them that Approachable Leadership skills don’t just apply at work. They apply in every relationship. So go ahead, treat your employees like children. Just don’t tell anyone I told you to do it. I have enough highly emotional conversations!
For most of us, this completely contradicts what we thought we knew. We kindly remind others, “Yes, I totally understand. I’ve been there too. I made it through. So can you.” According to HBR, this is ineffective for two reasons.
First, people generally have difficulty accurately recalling just how difficult a past aversive experience was. Though we may remember that a past experience was painful, stressful, or emotionally trying, we tend to underestimate just how painful that experience felt in the moment. This phenomenon is called an “empathy gap.”
Second, people who have previously overcome an aversive experience know that they were able to successfully overcome it, which makes them feel especially confident about their understanding of just how difficult the situation is. The combined experience of “I can’t recall how difficult it was” and “I know that I got through it myself” creates the perception that the event can be readily conquered, reducing empathy toward others struggling with the event.
Think about how this relates to approachability. A big part of being approachable is shrinking the “power distance gap” between you and your coworker. This “I’ve walked in your shoes” conversation increases distance instead of shrinking it. The person expressing frustration is likely to feel misunderstood or believe you think they are thin-skinned.
When an employee comes to us with an issue – whether it be personal or professional – we try to relate it to our own past experiences. This is natural and at least starts in the right direction. But instead of focusing on past experiences, we should instead focus on past feelings. Instead of trying to give their story a happy ending, just share about when you’ve felt a similar feeling. Sit in that uncomfortable place for a time. That is true empathy.
Perspective-taking, or the ability to take the perspective of another person (or recognizing that their perspective is their truth)
Staying out of judgement
Recognizing emotion in other people
Communicating that emotional recognition
Notice none of those steps is trying to make the other person feel anything other than what they are already feeling in that moment. These steps are all about being present with them. It’s OK to recall walking a similar path before. But don’t be in a hurry to tell where that path ultimately led for you. After all, your path was your path. If you want to shrink power distance just stand right there with the other person wherever they happen to be on their path. Then walk that path together.
Watch this brief 4-minute video on how leadership effects employee enthusiasm and engagement at work and how disengaged employees kill business results.
Employee engagement is defined here as “unlocking employee potential” and releasing discretionary effort at work. The video is long on the business reasons to seek engagement. It’s short on how to unlock that potential.
Employees are people and people are unique. What works for one won’t work for another. That’s why the number one way to unlock employee potential is finding out what they need, what is getting in their way, and to help them make progress. In other words, be an approachable leader.
Employee engagement is the foundation of a successful business. Like any building, a weak foundation can be a big problem. It’s expensive to fix and if it gets too bad you have to scrap the whole house. Worse yet, if you aren’t paying close attention your foundation can be dissolving beneath your feet and you not even know it.
As my friend Greg Hawks teaches, you may be creating a culture of “renters” instead of “owners” (people who take pride of ownership in their job and their organization). If you have created a “renter” culture, your people may be taking a jackhammer to your foundation when you’re not looking. And you provided the jackhammer.
Gallup’s research shows that actively disengaged employees cost companies $450 to $550 billion per year in the U.S. alone. Globally, “actively disengaged workers continue to outnumber engaged employees at a rate of nearly 2-to-1.” So what’s the key to moving those numbers in your favor – to building a strong foundation?
Greenbiz wrote a interesting article last month suggesting some answers to this question. While the article is worth a read, I part ways with them on some of their suggestions – 3 out of 4 to be exact. Greenbiz suggests:
Strategy and leadership philosophy – “Although more businesses are beginning to recognize the central role of employee engagement, many senior managers still fail to ensure engagement is deeply connected to the company’s mission and growth strategy.”
Accountability and performance – “The most engaged organizations infuse engagement into their culture through the tone their leadership sets and the way employees and managers do their work.”
Wrong: Engagement is about being real and creating a safe place for people to express themselves every day. It’s not about slogans or manufacturing a “tone.” If people – especially leaders – feel like they have to put on a front they won’t be engaged themselves and they definitely won’t be engaging others.
Communication – “Leaders in the best organizations find ways to communicate engagement’s impact on business performance throughout the year and share engagement tools and best practices within the organization.”
Wrong: Talking about engagement is not engagement. Just engage.Act. Talk to people about what is happening in their lives at work and outside of work. What are they excited about? What’s keeping them up at night? It’s not that these behaviors don’t have a positive impact on businesses (they absolutely do). But “communicating the impact of engagement” is about the least engaging thing I can think of.
Development and ongoing learning opportunities – “The world’s best performing organizations start engaging employees from the minute they show up on the first day. These organizations have well-defined, thorough and ongoing employee development programs. They take personal and professional development seriously.”
Nailed it: People do their best when they are excited about making progress. Give them something to be excited about. Help them see and feel the progress they’ve made. Talk to them about the next steps on their journey. And absolutely do it the moment they walk in the door, not months (or years) down the road when they’ve already checked out.
The most important thing you can do to build a solid foundation? Be approachable. Create the right space. Interact in ways that creates the right feeling. Take the right action. These are the keys to building up a group of owners who will keep your foundation solid and strong.
For nearly two decades workers have been confiding their workplace frustrations to me, first in my role as a union activist and organizer, and for the past five years as a labor relations educator and consultant. From minimum wage workers to highly skilled professionals, in home visits and focus groups, hundreds of workers have expressed the same core frustration to me – management just doesn’t “get it”. (And judging from the investment most employers are making in “employee engagement” it sure isn’t for lack of trying.)
This disconnect isn’t limited to those pathologically unapproachable bosses we so often encounter in union drives. Even in worksites with great engagement scores, it’s not at all unusual for employees to have the same frustrations with well- liked and respected leaders who suffer from the same empathy deficiencies as the lousiest bosses out there. And to make matters worse, these otherwise solid approachable leader can become consistently and blissfully out of touch on the key core sore subjects that burden their employees most – money, work/life balance and job security.
These are the areas where there is typically far less common ground – and more day to day tension — between management and hourly employees. In my union days I trained organizing apprentices how to probe around in these same fertile fields, actively listening for fear and frustration, and to respond with empathy, not platitudes. Judging from what I still hear in even the best worksites out there, many managers, supervisors and HR specialists need to learn how to do the same.
Income
I wish I had a dollar for every manager I’ve known who displays almost a cavalier indifference to the painful economic realities of low wage earners. Most seem like otherwise good people, so maybe the grind of managing within a narrow profit margin has them defensive and desensitized. Yet the employee discomfort is still very real, even after conceding the boss, an otherwise great guy, is just incapable of understanding how an hour cut from the schedule means saying no to the field trip this month or going without a haircut.
Work /Life Balance
The reality is precious few hourly employees are destine for management, and for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with personal initiative. As such, most employees don’t see sacrifices made for the company through the same lens as their management team. To the average hourly worker, going above and beyond is not an investment in their future. To the contrary that mandatory overtime or short notice schedule change is draining energy from the future they can imagine for themselves outside of the job that puts food on the table.
Job Security
The power imbalance between managers and employees makes it particularly challenging for leaders to respond empathetically to concerns about job security. Employee distrust heightens when their leaders seem evasive, dismissive or superficially reassuring about the future. Some (or many) of those same employees may be living on the financial fringes already where losing a job without warning (or a deep cut in hours) doesn’t just mean unemployment in the immediate but perhaps repossession, shutoff, lost custody, even homelessness. Even at the less extreme, an interruption of employment for a low wage worker can drive them (and their loved ones) even further down into an ever deepening financial hole with no leg up or safety net in sight.
A key theme of Approachable Leadership is how we get happiness all wrong, both at work and in life, and how this often sends us off in really unproductive directions (for example, it’s why survey research often fails to deliver the results we think it should). <a href=”https://lifehacker.com/what-research-says-happiness-really-is-1730503184“>This is an excellent rundown on happiness research</a> over at Lifehacker. One of the key takeaways is that happiness is mostly about experiences, relationships, being part of something bigger than ourselves, and making progress in our lives. Happiness is not about getting stuff or winning zero-sum games. Great reminders.
Here is what others have to say about recent Approachable Leadership Keynotes and Workshops.
Great Interactive Session, New Techniques
"I recently attended the Approachable Leadership Session with Phil Wilson at the CUE Conference in Denver. It was a great session. I loved the interactive sessions, they really help you learn some new techniques. Phil does a great job involving the participants and keeping everything moving at a great pace. I am so enthralled with this training that I brought Phil to our location to put my troops thru the paces for approachable leadership!" Laurie Galmeyer, Director of Human Resources, ETFN
Masterful Approach Captured Audience
“Phil is masterful in his approach and paints a compelling vision. He has the ability to capture an audience’s attention and take them on a journey through images and anecdotes. Whether you have 1 or 100 supervisors in your organization, I would recommend Phil Wilson’s “Approachable Leadership” session. And learning how to live longer and make more money wasn’t so bad either.” W. Alex Koch, Manager of Positive Associate Relations, TJX
Demystifies Leadership, Use Lessons Every Day
“Your workshop demystified what connecting with another human being – whether an employee, client, or spouse – can be like. I’ve used his 3-question strategy every day, both in my personal and professional relationships, to become a better coach, sister, and friend.”
Lori Broyles, Business and Entrepreneurial Services Coordinator, Francis Tuttle Technology Center
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