HomeBlogClient EngagementAsk “How Are You Doing? Like You Mean It (Key for Managing Change and Crises)

Ask “How Are You Doing? Like You Mean It (Key for Managing Change and Crises)

Ask “How Are You Doing? Like You Mean It
(Key for Managing Change and Crises)

“Checking in” is one of several strategies that presenter Mary Kelly advocated for managing uncertainty and mitigating the negative impact of volatility on workforce engagement, morale, and productivity, according to Mary Kelly’s October presentation at the Business Leaders Breakfast Forum. It’s critical to find out: What’s worrying your people? Are they confident in your leadership and actions? What are they thinking about?

But instead of the standard “How are you doing?”, leaders should be asking, “How are you feeling on a scale of 1-10, and what would move you a point higher?” on a regular basis.

Hillary’s Note: Take it a step further and reframe the question to “How are you feeling — today on a scale of 1-10, and what would move you a point higher?” This approach breaks the formulaic “autopilot” response and acknowledges that well-being can vary from day to day, invites an honest answer, shows you genuinely care and expresses an interest in the whole person, not simply in a business context. To effectively help people, they need to feel like you’re asking because you genuinely care about them as a whole person. After all, personal crises trump professional crises.

 

PIVOT Leadership
Kelly shared more strategies and tactics comprising her PIVOT process for leading smarter and making better decisions through crises (geopolitical, economic, workplace, domestic). In other words, how to develop the next generation of leaders.

Successful leaders attract, mentor, and retain the right people to fulfill the organization’s vision, mission, and goals. Here’s how the PIVOT principles help leaders accomplish these tall tasks:

Purpose: People need a sense of purpose, to be part of something larger than themselves. Doing work that is meaningful and matters to others. As leaders, you need to provide positive affirmations to ensure people understand the value of their work.

Influence and Inspire: As a leader, positively influence and inspire people every day. Your people need your magical fairy dust, your charisma. People respond to different influences. Determine how best to inspire and influence your people, using tactics that work for them, not you.

Volatility: Beyond “checking in” as previously described, determine how to be more helpful to people. Ask the questions that will elicit more information that is authentic and then listen openly to hear. Communicate more than you think you should, communicate, communicate, communicate. Communicate more often than you think is enough; learn how they like to receive information (email, text, print, phone). Determine what you need to do to be helpful to your people.

Opportunities: Listen to complaints from people; complaints indicate a need that is not being addressed. Listening then acting could lead to new ideas for products/services to fill marketplace voids, processes to create efficiencies and more. Find the opportunities by reframing the complaint. Consider what are the benefits of having this challenge now are, and in a year, what will we say we are proud of because of the actions we took and what is a good outcome to this situation.

Tools/Technology/Training; Ensure that people are confident they have what they need to accomplish their goals. Find out what could help them perform more efficiently and effectively. Onboarding and new-hire training must include crystal clear expectations about what success looks like and meeting deadlines. To ensure training sticks, it’s critical to hold people accountable. Without accountability, training is a wasted exercise. The goal is to train and reinforce to the point that employee responses to difficult, stressful times are automatic, minimizing the need to think about what they should be doing.

Leadership Malaise
Have you noticed that CEO tenures seem to be more unstable than ever? Some are ousted in less than two years while others hang on for decades, become complacent and unable to manage through change, and are given the boot before retiring. According to Kelly, it’s a symptom of how difficult managing business has become due to these bar-raising factors:

  • More workplace variables/things to know—technology, increasingly complicated supply chains, personnel, finance and budgets, legal and industry regulatory changes
  • Accelerated pace of change
  • Availability of unlimited global product and service resources vs. limited local sources; assess international factors
  • More complex delivery of products and services
  • Attract, engage, and retain a workforce intent on serving customers who want everything NOW
  • People still feeling disengaged/overwhelmed; develop employee resilience to overcome impacts of a challenging business climate
  • Sky-high stakes in an environment where risk can make or break governments and businesses

Balance High-Tech with High-Touch
While technology streamlines business processes, people-centered practices drive results. Price is a purchasing consideration, but people buy from people. Pay is a work incentive, but people derive more job satisfaction from engaging with people and being recognized for their contributions.

When people know that their contributions matter, how they matter and that they’re appreciated, they typically go the extra miles to meet expectations. That’s why a blanket “thank you” or “great job” doesn’t cut it. Add specificity: what did they do, why it is important and how it impacts the organization/department/unit goal. And strike while the iron’s hot. The acknowledgement has to be timely to punctuate the gratitude.

 

In Fortune’s CEO Daily interview with Schneider Electric’s CEO Olivier Blum last month, he summed up his successful approach to leading the 189-year-old French international energy tech giant and Fortune Global 500 company.

Blum said, “At the end of the day, you can have the best technology, the best brand, but 90% of success is about the selection of the people you will put in the job. You realize how much the culture, the behavior of the people, are impacted by what comes from the top of the company.”

So how can leaders attract, mentor and retain the right people? Kelly suggests a BLT: They must be believable, likeable, and trusted. Trust is not achieved by declaration, but rather carefully designed and earned through a clear, consistent voice, frequent communication, and transparent corrections vs. performative polish.

I think relationships emanate first from likeability, then to belief and trust. People like people who seek their opinions and listen to them. Communication needs to be a two-way street. Create feedback loops that give employees a chance to speak up and leaders a vehicle for understanding employee emotions and concerns. Moreover, employees who are invited into the dialogue feel valued, heard, and are less likely to leave due to concerns or distrust.

 

Plan to Avoid Icebergs
Icebergs permeate northern waters, so how do Alaskan cruise ships avoid catastrophic impact? They plan routes based on the most current information. Speaker Kelly introduced planning tools to help business leaders plan their teams’ navigation around change. Just as it’s the ship’s captain’s duty to stay calm as they steer through rough seas, so too must leaders remain calm during times of turmoil. Calm is contagious (so is panic).

Create Vision—The diagram depicts how to leverage an organization’s four major assets (people, tech and tools, growth, and managing uncertainty) to create a vision for the future. Note how they intersect with each other as well as the central focus on creating value. Leaders need to align their strategies with emerging business trends and build and execute a roadmap that drives performance and sustainable growth, based on the value they provide to the market.

Beyond creating vision, leaders need to continue ensuring that everyone understands and adopts the organization’s vision (where it’s going), its mission (what it does), and its goals (how the vision and mission are accomplished). It’s their ongoing responsibility to stay informed about the impact change is having on their employees’ ability to achieve their goals, as previously described.

Kelly emphasized that setting crystal-clear expectations about what success is and quantifying them when possible are critical, as is holding people accountable.

Monthly Goals Map—Leaders should be mapping out the organization’s top five goals monthly and sharing them with everyone.

  • Do more of these three activities
  • Do less of these three things
  • What activities can you delegate?
  • What activities can you streamline?
  • What projects can you complete?
  • What situation are you going to resolve?
  • What three people will you connect with for advice in the next 30 days?
  • What client decision-makers will you connect with in the next month?
  • Rate the current month by answering “How could we do better?”

Five-Minute Weekly Productivity Plan—Managers should print and distribute a 5-minute weekly productivity plan for their team to complete. This exercise not only lets managers know everyone is focused on the right activities, but also makes employees feel confident that they are contributing to the organization’s goals.

  • Calls/follow-ups/accomplishments/appointments/meetings, etc.
  • Have them list a 10-minute task that they would like to give up, and open up a job exchange.

AI’s Promises and Pitfalls
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to drive 38 trillion in manufacturing gains, a 21% increase in GDP by 2030, and 64% of businesses expect AI to increase productivity; 77% of today’s workers worry they’ll lose their jobs to AI. Like Kelly, many tech pundits believe that those who know how to use AI for greater efficiency will survive. What’s more, AI processing power is no substitute for leadership, mentorship, and development of the right people to evolve our businesses in a changing world.

Prevent Leadership Blindness
Ahead of the program, Kelly allowed registered attendees to complete a questionnaire to determine their leadership style and potential blind spots that could negatively impact decision-making: Competitor (Energizer); Controller Analyzer (Stabilizer); Motivator (Energizer); Connector peacemaker (Stabilizer). She wants leaders to become aware of their blind spots that can prevent them from sound decision-making and urged them to get opinions, skills, and thinking that differ from their own. Outside consultants and business coaches are viable resources who can analyze and make recommendations.

Partnership and Processes
Traditional methods of attracting, recruiting, retaining, mentoring, and managing the workforce are no longer working. How we develop our current and next generations of employees and clients/customers is on the line.

Hyper-change calls for continuous planning, executing, and recovering. If you’re looking for an experienced partner to help you with people-centered processes to keep your business growth on track, let’s start a conversation. Call 800-742-6800 or email us today. For more information and tips for engaging your stakeholders, sign up for our monthly newsletter at askhillarys.com (bottom right corner of the page). Follow us on LinkedIn. If you find this article valuable, please share it with a colleague or two or three.