Category: Talent Development

3 ways organizations can improve their managers’ effectiveness

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

Managers play a key role in companies as the connective tissue between leaders and the larger workforce. Tasked with communicating expectations and goals, motivating teams, overseeing workflow, and providing feedback, they set the example for how employees should work together and treat each other. And they do so to varying degrees of success, generally with limited oversight from senior management.

A Gallup survey found that 50% of employees who quit are quitting their boss, not their job. Given this, it’s no surprise that manager performance accounts for at least 70% variance in employee engagement. The most common reasons employees cite for quitting a job is not feeling valued (54%), followed by lacking a sense of belonging at work (51%.) This points to a skills gap in empathetic leadership.

Being an empathetic manager isn’t easy. Managers are often overwhelmed, overworked, and lack the training to lead and mentor people with varied working styles. Much like public speaking or negotiation skills, knowing how to be a better manager and motivate teams effectively isn’t something most people are born with; it’s learned.

Building better leaders

Research by leadership development expert Jack Zenger reveals that most managers do not receive training until they have been in a leadership role for almost 10 years. Leaders who go two years without training often end up with negative leadership habits that impede their careers, says Linda Hill, a Harvard Business professor and leadership author, in a recent interview with the Harvard Business Review. 

At Praxis Labs, our curriculum leads have extensively studied management theory to learn the secrets to successful inclusive leadership in the evolving modern workplace. Creating safe spaces for managers to practice their skills supports them to communicate effectively, give feedback thoughtfully, and ultimately build trust. These actions support a psychologically safe and cohesive workplace that values collaboration, innovation, and productivity.

Want to build better managers? Here are 3 steps you can take.

1. Invest in inclusive learning opportunities for managers

Equitably delegating tasks. Recognizing positive contributions. Listening with empathy. 

In management roles, leveraging these inclusive leadership skills is critical. Investing in DEI training is one way to help managers be more mindful of their unconscious biases and equity in the workplace. Leveraging the perspective-taking power of immersive technologies with performance analytics capabilities can support your managers to become more self-aware and effective leaders. 

Pro tip: When implementing an L&D strategy, make sure you consider how and when your employees prefer to learn. For example, in one Salesforce survey, three-quarters of employees said they prefer to learn on the job and in small moments, as opposed to in long seminars. Your people will appreciate your flexibility. 

2. Hold managers accountable.

Feedback should be a two-way street. Research suggests that it’s best practice to give employees at all levels of an organization regular opportunities to give and get feedback that is constructive, specific, and timely. Additionally, we recommend organizing regular pulse surveys where employees can anonymously provide feedback, as opposed to once-annual performance reviews. Surveys should account for seemingly minor things like tone, as well as more serious things like explicit bias. Regular check-ins demonstrate that your company values employee opinions.

3. Embrace new technology

Managers who avoid incorporating the latest tech into their work processes are holding their teams back. Professor Linda Hill cautions leaders against counting on younger team members to carry them forward digitally: “Just because you put someone in the room who has digital capabilities or who has never seen an epidemic before, you bring in a new young person from a different generation, doesn’t mean that person knows how to speak up or how to be heard, and you’re going to have to help with that as the leader.”

Collaborative technologies (i.e. Slack, immersive platforms), when coupled with empathetic leadership training, create a common space for older and younger generations to share ideas. From DEI training to persuasive communication practices, these technologies can enhance a wide range of essential training activities. You can build a more cohesive working environment by prioritizing training on new technologies and incentivizing managers to incorporate new tech into their workflows.

Better managers = better business outcomes

Inclusive leadership is more learned than born, and adaptability is key. By investing in DEI-minded learning and development opportunities and embracing new technology, you support your managers to lead equitably. And by strengthening your organization’s feedback loop, you help them build trusting teams that will follow them into the future. 

 

Looking to improve your manager training? Find expert solutions in our Manager Skills Training guide.

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Creating psychological safety in the workplace

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

In the late 1990s, researcher Amy Edmondson was studying medical mistakes in emergency rooms when she discovered something strange. The best-performing teams in hospitals were reporting making the most mistakes. How could this be? 

Further examination revealed that these teams weren’t more prone to error than their counterparts. They were simply more comfortable talking about their mistakes in front of their peers. The link between cohesive, high-performing teams and “psychological safety,” or the shared expectation that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up or making mistakes, was established.

Today, pop culture’s understanding of psychological safety often misses the mark. 

“Psychological safety isn’t about being nice” Edmondson explains on a Harvard Business Review podcast. “It’s not about “coziness.” It’s about taking risks, giving candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes and learning from each other. It’s about being able to ask for help when you’re in over your head.” 

Psychological safety in the modern workplace

Since Edmondson’s initial report the case for psychological safety’s role in the modern workplace has only grown stronger. Between 2012 to 2014, Google data scientists began a study, Project Aristotle, that used statistical analysis to discover the secret behind its most effective teams. 

Psychological safety, again, was the main differentiator. An individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk directly correlates to their performance. When employees didn’t feel comfortable making mistakes, they were less likely to point out errors and more likely to disengage at work. 

The impact of creating psychological safety in the workplace on overall employee engagement should not go unnoticed. Low employee engagement costs businesses hundreds of billions every year. 

Yet the reality is that cultures centered on learning, growth, and honesty are not the norm in the modern workplace. And building them is easier said than done. It requires a strong example set by leaders, frequent, transparent communications, and thoughtful incentive structures.

How to promote psychological safety at work 

Creating psychological safety in your workplace can help you take advantage of the benefits that equity and inclusion can bring. Here are a few things you can do to get started: 

Lead by example

Organizations win when employees at every level feel comfortable making mistakes and learning from them. But in order for this to happen, leaders have to go first. “They have to show that they’re fallible human beings,” says Edmondson. 

Asked for an example of a leader who does this well, Edmondson pointed to Pixar Studios’s co-founder Ed Catmull, whose humble, honest communication style created a culture of psychological safety that many credit for the studio’s long record of success. Catmull is famous for admitting “Early on, all of our movies sucked.” He framed the production process as a learning journey. As a result, people felt comfortable raising questions and sharing their opinion before the finished products hit the box office.

Be inclusive in decision-making

When people feel like their opinion is valued, they’re more likely to stay engaged. Soliciting input, opinions and feedback from your teammates is one way to set a two-way communication precedent that encourages people to speak their minds. 

Explaining the reasoning for your decisions and acknowledging helpful feedback is another way to improve engagement. Google, for example, teaches managers to call out when team members were contributors to a success or decision. 

Prioritize a safe learning environment

Investing in learning & development is one way to show your employees that you value them and want them to succeed. Emerging tech like immersive learning is helping learning leaders build technical and even human skills like empathy, leadership, and communication while creating psychological safety.  

Immersive learning puts learners in a simulated environment in which they can make mistakes and fail forward in a safe, judgment-free zone. Look for solutions where learners can replay a learning experience multiple times and understand how their actions impact real-world outcomes. This can be particularly helpful when practicing navigating a difficult conversation, or advocating on behalf of yourself or a colleague when encountering bias.

Don’t forget that building a robust learning culture that encourages employees to grow in their careers starts from the top. Helping employees make space for learning, or working with vendors that offer engaging experiences that embed within a learner’s flow of work, helps make learning frictionless and more impactful. 

Managers and leaders can go a step further by connecting skills growth outcomes with professional development goals so that employees understand how learning connects to their career ambitions.  

The business case for creating psychological safety in the workplace

A survey of 400 companies with 100,000 employees each cited an average loss of $62.4 million per year because of inadequate communication to and between employees. Directly correlated to psychological safety — this research shows that communication and empathy skills gaps come at a serious material cost. By investing in safe learning environments and prioritizing inclusive decision making, organizations promote a culture of honesty and mutual respect. This supports a psychologically safe and inclusive working environment where employees want to give their all. You can guarantee your teams will be better off for it. 

 

4 tips for strengthening employee engagement during tough times

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

The reality of running a business during an economic slowdown is that you need to do more with less. Nobody is happy about this — not your managers, or your business partners, and certainly not your employees. 

When businesses cut costs, workers usually have to contend with higher workloads and absorb responsibilities outside of their job descriptions. Longer-term projects that may have given them a sense of purpose are shelved to cut costs. And to top it all off, rising living costs make it harder for people to make ends meet. 

The sum of these factors can make it difficult for workers to feel confident about their future with the company. And it can be difficult to motivate them to continue doing good work. 

Navigating a business through a difficult and unpredictable business environment is stressful. Here are some tips to improve employee engagement and help them perform to their full potential.

1. Communicate openly and with empathy

During hard times, communicating frequently and transparently about the state of your business is critical to preserving trust and boosting employee engagement. During the 2008 crisis, Judith Blanton, Ph.D. stressed that this trust was contingent on on making communications personal, rather than remote or artificial. She said that “people need to feel a highly personal presence and connection” and cautioned that “talking about the long-term visions and strategies of the company will not be effective when people are bracing for further bad news or emotionally recovering from previous disclosures.”

If you think your company will have to make cuts of any kind in the future, whether that means reducing headcount or rolling back benefits, communicating with workers ASAP is always the best practice. 

And while timing is of course important, tone is also critical. One way for leaders to make communications feel personal is to be vulnerable about their own feelings and provide outlets for employees to support one another: “If and when dramatic events occur, give people opportunities to safely express their emotions. Reach out to employees on a personal basis. Get out of your office and into the hallway. Be there for them,” said Blanton.

2. Aim for collective decision-making

Abrupt, unilateral notices to employees about company decisions send the message that management is uncaring and out-of-touch. People-centered companies today opt for a more collaborative approach that engages employees by bringing them along in the process. 

Asking for employee input on potential cost-savings plans is one way to practice empathetic management while acknowledging the reality of a hard situation. A virtual Town Hall enhanced with a compelling presentation and Q&A is one effective way to field employee questions in a controlled and respectful manner. 

3. Set realistic expectations

It’s important to find the right balance between empathy and accountability when leading employees through hard times. Consider setting micro-expectations that ease anxiety but keep people moving forward. 

This could look like setting daily goals rather than monthly or weekly ones. Goals can be anything from making progress towards KPIs to commitments that support greater equity and inclusion, like expanding one’s professional network or setting inclusive meeting norms. This validates the challenges folks are facing while improving employee engagement in the work and company mission.

Above all else, communication is key. If annual bonuses are going to be smaller than usual, for example, consider making commitments to rewarding employee’s hard work down the line. And think twice before slashing employee programs like learning opportunities and DEI initiatives. These activities show that you’re committed to your employees’ success. 

4. Double-down on learning resources

If you need to run a leaner team during a slowdown, make sure your employees have the proper training to excel in their expanded roles. Investing in strategic L&D solutions allows you to support, retain, and upskill your people to prevent costly turnover and minimize skill gaps. 

The challenge, of course, is proving the value of the investment to your executive team. Innovative tech, still in great demand despite a slowing market, is one way to maximize the value-add of your L&D programs and prove it, too. Modern, strategic L&D initiatives come equipped with reporting capabilities and access to robust analytics. When choosing L&D providers, make sure they can help you show impact and ROI from your programs. This will help you set goals that reinforce the impact of learning, talent development and DEI. 

Build trust from the top

Tough times create the opportunity to demonstrate resilience and build trust with employees. This means backing up your words with actions and not shying away from discomfort. Being transparent about the challenges your company is facing and taking active steps to thoughtfully address them supports a people-centric culture where employees feel heard. 

Performance Review Bias: What Is It and How Can You Avoid It?

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

“Articulate.”

“Competent.”

“Friendly.” 

All of these seem like perfectly nice words with positive connotations, right? On the surface, yes. These are all qualities you’d be happy about a friend or coworker associating with you. However, when they show up on performance reviews, these words might actually indicate bias. How they’re used has everything to do with identity.

Unfortunately, not only is bias all too common in performance reviews, it is something every single person inherently possesses. That doesn’t mean that we should throw our hands up and give up. In fact, there are steps managers can take to become more aware of their biases, mitigate bias, and make the performance review process more equitable for all employees. 

This article will take you through some tips you can put into practice today and explain why all companies should strive to reduce bias in their performance review.

What is Bias and How Does it Show up in Performance Reviews?

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines bias as ‘partiality: an inclination or predisposition for or against something.’ Another word closely associated with bias is prejudice, or ‘a negative attitude toward another person or group formed in advance of any experience with that person or group.’ 

Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who has dedicated much of his career to studying bias, concluded that the vast majority of human decisions are actually based on biases, beliefs, and intuition, not facts or logic. 

This is where performance review bias come in: even when well-intentioned managers believe they are evaluating employees based on “hard facts” or “quantitative metrics,” bias almost always seeps through.

In performance reviews, biases have major implications in situations that inform decisions about promotion, compensation, hiring, or even firing. What does this mean for employees from diverse backgrounds?

How Review Bias Harms Employees from Underrepresented Groups

The relationship between performance review bias and the experiences of diverse employees in the workforce has been studied extensively. Academics across disciplines generally agree that people from different groups are often rated differently for identical behavior. Additionally, expectations for certain functions, like leadership, can themselves be gendered or racialized.

Often, these biases are difficult to quantify because they do not typically rely on standardized rubrics or numerical measurement. Instead, bias is revealed in the type of language used. 

For example, recent research by Correll and Simard showed that “women were described twice as often as men as supportive, collaborative and helpful, and their appraisal contained twice the number of references to the team as opposed to individual accomplishments. In contrast, men’s appraisal focused on assertiveness, independence, and self-confidence, and feedback was much more often linked to business outcomes or technical expertise.”

Obviously, “supportive” and “collaborative” are positive attributes. Yet these traits can hinder women who want to be seen as leaders and promoted to managerial roles. 

In an article for Harvard Business Review, the Center for WorkLife Law detailed the “sobering” results of an audit they conducted at a U.S. law firm’s performance evaluations. Most dramatically, they reported that fewer than 10% of people of color received mentions of leadership in their performance evaluations. This was more more than 70 percentage points lower than white women, and these leadership mentions typically predicted higher competency ratings the next year.

Luckily, following the audit, they were able to help the firm deploy some tactics that actually work to reduce performance review bias. Let’s explore those tactics and how you can put them into place. 

The Solution: Ways to Reduce Performance Review Bias

Bias creeps into our performance reviews whether we realize it or not. The good news is that there are actionable steps leaders can take to confront and mitigate performance review bias.

1. Recognize Your Own Bias

The first step is admitting there is a problem. Simply recognizing that bias exists is not enough. That’s where a comprehensive Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) program comes into play. 

While educational DEIJ initiatives — especially immersive ones — create a deeper understanding and context for the types of biases a manager might have, it is important to note that recognizing bias is an ongoing process. The reviewer or evaluator should be able to identify bias throughout the evaluation and check in with themselves or colleagues at several points in the process. 

One should always start from a place of empathy and understanding. This applies not only to the person you might be reviewing, but to yourself as well. 

2. Reconsider Performance Indicators and Metrics

The subjects brought up in performance reviews should never be a surprise. Managers should work with their team to craft a performance review process that works for them. This means talking through specific, measurable goals well ahead of the final review.

Additionally, an organization should create a clear evaluation structure for all managers to follow and train them on how to use. This will help improve accuracy and remove bias in the process. Otherwise the reviews will be left up to individual discretion with potentially open-ended, bias-producing questions and criteria.

This is a continuous process. Managers should review employee progress on established goals throughout the year, not just during annual review time. It is often helpful to source feedback from other coworkers throughout the year, as it can help check your own biases.

Bias Reduction as a DEIJ Initiative

Reducing bias in performance reviews is a key step towards unlocking opportunities for your employees, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds. 

While bias is ever-present, being aware of it and consciously working to reduce it are incredibly important. These steps may appear small, but they can have massive implications for individual employees’ career paths. 

The more managers and middle-managers understand the extent to which their word choice matters in performance reviews, the more aware they can be about their own biases. In turn, they can build a more equitable employee experience within their team and company. 

 

Ready to take the next step? Learn how practice can help you create a more equitable and diverse workplace.

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Want to Retain Diverse Talent? Launch a Mentorship Program

Posted on by Anthony Santa Maria

First there was “The Great Resignation.” Now, “quiet quitting” is the new big threat facing companies nationwide. The common thread across these phenomena is that many employees are just not satisfied. 

Recent data paints a picture for why employees are seeking greener pastures. According to a survey by McKinsey, the most popular reason why people quit their jobs in the last 18 months was due to a lack of career development and advancement. Other popular responses included uncaring leaders, a non-inclusive or unwelcoming community, and lack of support for health and well-being.

The call for business leaders has never been clearer: people success is business success. When employees feel they can bring their authentic selves to work, and that they will have opportunities to grow and advance, they’ll bring their best ideas that drive your business forward.   

How can companies keep their employees engaged and happy while developing their talent and helping them grow? More importantly, once organizations have gotten diverse talent in the door, how can they create a culture of inclusion that drives belonging and opens opportunities for career advancement? 

One way forward is to develop a strong mentorship program, particularly one that centers employees from underrepresented groups and works in tandem with other Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) efforts. 

How a Robust Mentorship Program Helps Employees and Your Businesses

Generally speaking, a robust mentorship program provides opportunities for skill development and networking that can unlock career advancement. The many benefits of mentoring and the effectiveness of mentorship programs have been studied and supported by scientific studies, and fall into three main buckets: 

  • Mentoring helps employees feel more valued by their employers;
  • Mentoring builds supportive networks with coworkers;
  • Mentoring develops critical skills that help advance their careers.

Employees who feel valued and empowered at work tend to stick around. An Association for Talent Development study saw employee engagement and retention increase by 50% when companies offer mentorship programs. This research fortifies other studies that cite mentoring as absolutely critical to retention, engagement, and a healthy talent ecosystem.

The Connection Between Mentorship and DEIJ

While a mentorship program is useful for all of an organization’s employees, the benefits increase exponentially for members of underrepresented groups. When polled, women and people of color are more likely than others to report mentoring as very important to their career development. 

For Black employees, this likely stems from them being significantly less likely than their white counterparts to report seeing leaders who look like them in their organization. In turn, when Black employees see leaders of their own race, a Gallup study found that they have 12 times more trust in their organization. 

Not only should employees of underrepresented groups simply see leaders that look like them, companies should take the proactive step of creating formal mentorship programs that connect these leaders with more junior staff from similar backgrounds. 

Though it may seem simple compared to other DEIJ initiatives, the impact of mentorship cannot be understated. A 2016 study in the American Sociological Review found that mentoring, in comparison to other tactics (such as diversity trainings, grievance systems or job tests), increased minority representation among managers in the workplace anywhere from nine to 24 percent. Some of the largest increases in leadership positions were among Black, Hispanic and Asian women, respectively. 

What a Mentorship Program Looks Like in a Remote or Hybrid Environment

Now that we can agree that mentorship is highly important for employee retention, what does it actually look like in practice? After all, mentorship can look like anything from informal coffee meetings with a senior colleague to a formal program with metrics and goal-setting. 

The post-pandemic landscape further complicates matters, as some activities traditionally thought of as mentoring are less feasible or effective in a remote or hybrid work environment. And the need for connection when working remotely can be even greater with many employees feeling less engaged or burnt out since the start of the pandemic. 

For large, globally-distributed companies, a remote environment can actually be an asset to mentorship. Mentees can form relationships with leaders in other parts of the country and even world. Mentors can be chosen for reasons other than geographic proximity, which can make connections more meaningful.  

The following four forms of mentorship can be effective in any type of workplace environment, whether in-person, remote, or hybrid:

1. Career Mentoring

This is the traditional type of one-on-one career development that many think of when they think of mentorship. Career mentorship can illuminate employees’ paths to advancement by identifying opportunities for stretch assignments, promotion, and increased pay.

2. Reverse Mentoring

Just as it sounds, this type of mentoring refers to senior leaders being the mentees and more junior employees acting as mentors. When applying a DEIJ lens to reverse mentoring, junior employees from diverse backgrounds have the opportunity to mentor senior executives. This empowers junior employees with an opportunity to influence business decisions and can help the more senior professional learn about new perspectives, technologies, and trends. 

3. Buddy Program

Here, a new hire is paired with someone who’s been at the company for a while to informally share knowledge. The key is that this starts early on, and on a regular basis. This can help build a sense of belonging, especially those from underrepresented groups, cultivate other workplace relationships, and foster connection to the company’s culture. 

4. Peer to Peer

This type of mentorship enables employees to find coworkers with different backgrounds and share experiences as a group. This type of networking increases understanding across an organization. Often, this looks like joining employee resource groups (ERGs) that connect people based on shared identities, such as women or members of the LGBTQ+ community. These have proven to be highly effective for networking, creating community, removing barriers, confronting bias, and building more empathetic relationships in the workplace. Especially when supported by executive sponsors and funding, ERGs can be a powerful tool for culture-building, career advancement, and accountability. 

In all four of these types of mentorship, employees are able to bypass the traditional hierarchical chains of command, creating more organizational trust and empowering those who may otherwise feel alienated or unengaged. 

Don’t Overlook the Value of Mentorship

While they can be a bit of work to get off the ground, mentorship programs are hugely important in helping a company build a culture that supports diversity and inclusion initiatives. It is no wonder that the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies have formal mentorship programs, and that the vast majority of younger workers see mentoring as crucial to their career success.

With the right planning and training, mentoring can save your company high turnover costs, develop employees’ leadership and management skills, and ultimately create more trust and connection within your organization.