Think Strategically
13. Periodically do a Start-Stop-Keep analysis to evaluate how your team spends its time.
You and your team constantly need to adjust to new information and shifting priorities. But it’s easy to keep doing things the way you always have out of habit. To make sure your team prioritizes what’s working well — and makes room for promising new projects and processes — devote 15 minutes to this simple exercise.
This week, do a start-stop-keep analysis with your team
Why do it?
You’ve been so busy you haven’t had a second to think. Or changes have been coming at your team nonstop. Your direct reports are doing what they’ve always done, but does that still make sense? The start-stop-keep technique is a classic for a reason — it’s a clear, simple, and quick way for your team to pinpoint what’s working, what’s not, and what opportunities to pursue, if only you could make time for them.
How to do it:
1. Before your next team meeting, send prompts to your team.
For example:
- At our next team meeting, I’m going to lead us through a simple activity to help us evaluate how we’re spending our time and to make sure we’re not missing opportunities. In preparation, I’d like you to think about the following:
- What do we wish we could start doing?
- What should we stop doing?
- What’s working well that we should keep doing?
2. During the meeting, facilitate a team brainstorm around each question.
Ask the questions in whatever order you choose. Because unstructured verbal group brainstorms tend to favor extroverts, solicit responses in a way that ensures everyone’s ideas get equal attention: Write ideas on sticky notes, type them into a group chat, or consider them in small groups; then capture all of the ideas in one document or on a whiteboard. To get the ideas flowing, experiment with different ways of asking each question, such as:
- Start (What do we wish we could start doing?)
- If we had an extra person on our team, what would we be able to do that we aren’t doing now?
- What adjustments could make our current work better or make our lives easier?
- Stop (What should we stop doing?)
- What do we do that you never want to do again?
- Is there something we do that takes a lot of time for relatively little payoff?
- Keep (What’s working well that we should keep doing?)
- Which tasks or processes do the most to help us meet our top goals?
- Which responsibilities do you personally find the most fulfilling?
3. After the meeting, determine which ideas your team will start, stop, and keep doing.
Either as a team or on your own, decide which ideas are most promising. Some of your team’s ideas may be straightforward and easy to try (e.g., ending meetings five minutes early to give people a break before the next one). For ideas that might affect people outside your team (e.g., publishing an inventory report quarterly instead of monthly), share your plans with them before you commit. Then schedule another brainstorming session in three or six months to make sure that your team is regularly looking for start-stop-keep opportunities.
14. Use the “5 Whys” technique to get to the root of problems.
What appears to be a problem may actually be a symptom of a larger issue. If you fix only the immediate problem, the issue is sure to resurface. To dig into what’s really going on, use this classic technique.
Why do it?
Sometimes what appears to be a problem is really just a symptom of an underlying issue that’s lighting fire after fire for you to put out. By uncovering and addressing the real root cause of the problem, you’ll be able to stop those surface-level fires once and for all. The “5 Whys” problem-solving technique, which has been used at companies like Toyota and IDEO, is a simple way to drill down to those deeper issues.
How to do it:
1. State the problem as clearly as you can.
Before you can drill down into a problem, you need to know exactly what to dig into. The more specific the better. For example:
- Vague problem: “Something’s off with my 1-on-1s.”
- Specific problem: “My 1-on-1s feel like a waste of time.”
2. Ask “why” to uncover another level of the issue.
To continue the example above, ask yourself: “Why do my 1-on-1s feel like a waste of time?”
3. Answer your own “why,” then ask “why” again.
Asking a string of “why” questions might feel childlike, but that’s the point. Endless curiosity is exactly what’s going to get you to the heart of your problem. For example:
- Q: “Why do my 1-on-1s feel like a waste of time?”
- A: “Because I can’t tell if my direct reports are getting anything out of them.”
- Q: “Why can’t I tell if my direct reports are getting anything from our 1-on-1s?”
- A: “Because I’ve never asked them if our 1-on-1s are useful.”
4. Continue to ask “why” until you feel like you have arrived at a root problem.
Despite the method’s name, there’s no magic number for how many “whys” it will take — it could be more or less than five. The important thing is to keep asking until you realize, “Aha! That’s the real problem.” For example:
- Q: “Why have I never asked if our 1-on-1s are useful?”
- A: “Because there’s too much to talk about in 30 minutes, and we always run out of time.”
- Q: “Why is there too much to talk about in 30 minutes?”
- A: “Because we have a lot of status updates to cover and those eat up all the time.”
- Q: “Why are there so many status updates?”
- A: “Because we don’t have a good system for doing status updates outside of 1-on-1s.”
- “Aha! We need a better system for status updates, so we can address other things in our 1-on-1s and ensure they’re useful.”
5. Check to see if the logic of your whys works in both directions.
Starting at your final answer, work your way back up to your initial problem. For example: “We don’t have a good system in place for status updates, so they use up all of our 1-on-1 time. That means that I never have time to ask whether 1-on-1s are useful, so I can’t tell if my direct reports are getting anything out of them, which is why they feel like a waste of time.” Does it make sense? If it does, your logic checks out and you’ve uncovered a root cause of the problem you started with.
15. Regularly ask your team, “What could we be doing better?”
Keep your team continuously looking for better ways to do things — run more effective meetings, make processes more efficient, or maybe even come up with the next big idea — when you ask this simple question.
Why do it?
In the flurry of everything that you and your team need to get done, it can feel like you’re stuck on your heels reacting to things. To take a more proactive approach, try periodically asking your team, “What can we be doing better?” An open-ended question like this is also a simple way to help build a feedback culture that ensures your team is communicative, empowered, and eager to improve together.
How to do it:
1. Before your next team meeting, pose the question to your team in a way that encourages people to come up with good, honest suggestions.
As with any time you ask for feedback, you are more likely to get thoughtful, useful answers if you ask specific questions and allow plenty of time for reflection. For example, you could send a group email that:
- Asks each person to bring a specific number of suggestions: “What are three things, big or small, that we could be doing better?”
- Focuses on one specific area of work: “What could we be doing better when it comes to communicating with other teams?”
- Frames the question specifically for an individual point of view: “What’s one thing that is holding each of you back right now?”
- Considers the question from a team perspective: “What are the things that are holding us back as a team right now?”
- Opens the door to discussions about what not to do: “Are there things we regularly do that we should consider stopping?”
2. During the meeting, listen carefully to each answer and ask follow-up questions for clarification.
Remember, your job is to clearly understand each piece of feedback your team offers without becoming defensive or argumentative, even if it’s based on something you’ve done (or haven’t done) as a manager or if you disagree with what they have to say. The more clearly you can understand each person’s perspective, the better equipped you and your team will be to determine the best solutions. Ask clarifying, open-ended questions like:
- “Can you give me an example?”
- “Can you explain what makes you think we no longer need to do that?”
- “Is there anything else you want to add?”
3. Generate ideas for action steps with input from your team.
Once you have targeted specific areas for improvement, have the group suggest potential action steps to address them. For instance:
- In response to one direct report who thinks the team could do a better job not interrupting each other unnecessarily during the day, another person suggests setting interruption-free hours during the day.
- The team’s been having a hard time starting meetings on time, so someone proposes that the last person to each meeting next week is responsible for cleaning up.
- One direct report thinks that work has been steadily creeping into personal time, and another suggests setting email off-hours for the team.
4. Decide which action steps to implement.
If your team generates a long list of good suggestions, there’s no way you’ll be able to address every one of them right away. Pinpoint one or two things to tackle now as a team — but be sure to keep track of the rest for a later date.
5. Follow up after the changes have been implemented.
Discuss how well the changes have been working, and if further improvement can be made. Also take this chance to identify which items on the original list your team should tackle next. Wash, rinse, repeat.
16. Develop questions to help you determine the importance and urgency of tasks.
The demands on your time can seem endless, but the reality is that you can’t do it all — at least not right this second. To figure out what you should work on first, use these simple questions.
Why do it?
You’ve heard the time management advice: Prioritize the “important” over the “urgent.” But for managers, the options can be dizzying. How do you prioritize coaching a direct report on a project against responding to your boss’s request for a budget update — or reviewing resumes to make a critical hire? When everything feels both important and urgent, take a few minutes to analyze your options.
How to do it:
1. Develop questions to help you judge a task’s importance.
These questions help you understand the impact a task will have. For example:
- How much will doing this task help me, my team, or my company meet an important goal?
- If I do this now, what is the potential payoff in a week? a month? a year?
2. Develop questions to help you judge a task’s urgency.
These questions help you understand whether a task truly needs to be done now — and by you. For example:
- How long could this task wait before it needs my attention — a week? a month? a year? Forever?
- If this task doesn’t get done right now, what else and who else are impacted and to what extent?
- Am I the best or only person able to do this?
3. Answer these questions to help you judge the relative importance and urgency of tasks.
For example, to consider coaching a direct report versus providing your boss with a budget update:
- Importance: How much will doing this task help me, my team, or my company meet an important goal? If I do this now, what is the short-term payoff? What’s the long-term payoff?
- Coaching Sonia through this round of design feedback will enable her to produce a high-quality final draft and help her learn how to integrate feedback on her own for future projects.
- Short term, providing a budget update will help my boss see how our department’s spending is tracking against our fiscal year budget. Long term, it will help them and executives make better budgeting decisions.
- Urgency: How long could this task wait before it needs my attention? If this task doesn’t get done right now, what else and who else are impacted and to what extent? Am I the best or only person able to do this?
- Sonia needs to submit a final design next week, and she needs a couple of days to think through revisions. Doing the coaching session as soon as possible can take some of the pressure off and give her a cushion of time in case something else pops up that requires her attention.
- My boss needs to present department numbers to their boss at the end of the month. If I get this to them in one week, that still gives them a week to prepare for that meeting — I could double-check whether that’s enough time.
4. Reprioritize your work.
Based on what you learned from your answers, what should you do first? Which has the bigger long-term payoff? Use your insights to shuffle your existing to-do list and determine where to slot new tasks that come up.
Maintain your well-being — and your team’s
17. Do a quick mental reset before every meeting.
As a leader, you exert an outsized influence on the meetings you attend. To ensure that you bring positive, focused energy to every meeting, pause to refocus your attention.
Why do it?
When you’re a leader, your energy and presence can make or break a meeting. But when you spend your days in back-to-back meetings, it can be a challenge to stay engaged in all of them. Pausing for even a few seconds to take a breath, ground yourself, and mentally reset can help you bring positive, focused energy to every meeting, whether virtual or in person.
How to do it:
1. This week, block time in your calendar before every meeting for a mental reset.
Depending on your schedule, you might take breaks of one, five, or 15 minutes throughout the day to mentally reset. To carve out time between back-to-back meetings, you might:
- Shorten meetings you host by 5 or 10 minutes.
- If appropriate, let the meeting organizer know ahead of time you will be five minutes late, and suggest they start without you.
If you have just too many meetings, ask yourself for each one, Is this a meeting we really need to have? Do I really need to attend?
2. Use the time to mentally ground yourself.
Your reset can take whatever form helps you clear your mind so that you can give your full attention to what’s next. For example:
- Take a deep breath, let it out, and say to yourself, For this meeting, I will be fully present.
- Take five deep breaths. To ground yourself in the moment, as you breathe in, say to yourself, I know I am breathing in. As you breathe out, say to yourself, I know I am breathing out.
- Take a five-minute walk outside and focus on the sounds around you.
Sometimes, you may have to use this time to run to the bathroom or grab water. But don’t let attending to your physical needs keep you from taking even a quick mental pause.
3. No matter how late you are, don’t skip your mental reset.
Inevitably, despite your best efforts, the mental breaks you schedule will sometimes get swallowed up by other obligations. It’s stressful to run late, and it’s easy to feel like you have to rush to join a meeting as soon as possible. But taking even one deep breath can help you enter the meeting more relaxed and focused.
18. Devise an end-of-day routine to create mental space between work and home.
One of the keys to preventing overwork — especially if you work from home — is to keep your job from extending its reach into your personal life. You can make a clean break when you create a ritual to end your workday.
Why do it?
It’s easy to let work follow you after you leave for the day, so you make a few more calls or stew over work problems as you commute home or sit in traffic — and then wonder why you can’t seem to decompress once you’re there. To keep office stress from spilling over into your home life, try building a routine at the end of the workday that helps you let go of work and allows you to reenergize and enjoy the other parts of your life.
How to do it:
1. Brainstorm some end-of-day routines that might work for you.
Depending on where you work, where you live, and your other commitments, here are some possibilities to get you started.
- Before you leave work, you could:
- Write down everything you accomplished that day.
- Spend five minutes reflecting on your performance — what did you do well and what could be better?
- Clean up your desk and leave it ready for the next day.
- Between work and home, you could:
- Get some exercise.
- Stop for a tea or another treat.
- Meet a friend for dinner, a walk, or a drink.
- While you commute, you might:
- Listen to music, a podcast, or an audiobook.
- Make a phone call to a friend or family member.
- Catch up on reading or play a game on your phone (if you’re not driving, of course).
- After a day of working from home, you could:
- Go for a walk around the block.
- Have a cup of tea and read about a favorite topic for 10 minutes.
- Cook dinner.
2. Strive to eliminate habits that hinder your ability to make a clean break from work.
Are pinging notifications sucking you back into your work inbox? Do you use your bus ride home to catch up on reading reports? Breaking these kinds of habits can be just as important as building new ones.
3. Try out a few new routines this week to see how they go.
As you do, focus on how well they provide a real transition between work and home. You might find that different routines work at different times. While you may be able to unwind from a regular-stress-level day with a podcast, you might find it more effective on an ultrastressful day to cool off with an evening workout.
4. Once you find a good routine, challenge yourself to stick to it every workday this month.
If you miss a day, don’t worry. There’s always tomorrow. To help your new routine become a habit, you might:
- Schedule your routine in your calendar so you don’t forget.
- Invite a friend or partner to do the 30-day challenge with you so you can hold each other accountable.
- Reward yourself at the end of each week that you successfully stick to your new routine.
19. Regularly check in on how each direct report is doing.
Your direct reports may be hesitant to bring up issues that affect their mental health and overall wellness. To make them more comfortable, make a habit of talking about it.
Set a reminder to regularly ask each direct report about their well-being
Why do it?
Are your direct reports showing up to work but without their usual energy? For many reasons these days, people feel depleted. Even your stalwart performers are at risk of becoming burned out, disengaged, or so unhappy that they resign.
If you’re not checking in with your direct reports regularly about their well-being, you’ll never know what they’re struggling with — and how you can help. Many employees say that simply talking about mental health and wellness is an important first step to creating a supportive workplace environment. By checking in often, you can make wellness conversations routine instead of a big, dramatic event — and work together to address issues before they become overwhelming.
How to do it:
1. Add a calendar reminder to check in regularly at 1-on-1s with your direct reports about their well-being.
Monthly is generally a good cadence — but if it’s a stressful time for your team or you suspect someone might be struggling, consider a more frequent schedule. Let each person know ahead of time that you want to check in about their well-being so they aren’t blindsided, and prompt them with some specific aspects of well-being that might come up.
For example:
- “I’m checking in with each person on the team about how they’re doing — with their workload, their stress and energy levels, their work/life boundaries, and their connection to their work, the team, and other colleagues. I want to make sure I’m doing what I can to create a supportive work environment.”
2. During the 1-on-1s, ask how people are doing — and be prepared with follow-up questions.
To help your direct reports articulate their challenges, ask questions that touch on the core aspects of workplace well-being:
- Physical and mental health: “When do you tend to feel the most stressed? How well are you able to rest and recharge?”
- Work/life boundaries: “Are you able to get everything done that you need to each week? Do you often have to work longer than you planned to? Do you find yourself checking work messages after hours?”
- Engaging work: “What aspect of your work is most interesting right now? What feels like a slog?”
- Inclusion and connection: “How connected do you feel to the team and other peers? What could improve your connection to your colleagues?”
It’s possible that not everyone will be comfortable sharing with you immediately. Don’t push too hard. They may not have realized that they could ask for support from you for these issues. Reassure them that you want to help — not judge. And be prepared to repeat your message before and during each well-being check-in.
3. When a direct report shares a personal challenge, respond first with, “Thank you for sharing that.”
It takes guts for a person to reveal they’re struggling. Saying “thank you” acknowledges that their challenge is worth discussing and that you’re interested in hearing about it. If you don’t respond with gratitude, they may hesitate to speak up in the future.
4. Ask them if they would like to talk through ideas that might help them with their challenge.
Before offering advice, ask if they are open to hearing strategies you have about their challenge. For example, if they are checking work messages after hours, would it help them if you set email off-hours for your team and gave feedback when you noticed people responding when they should be off?
If they’re feeling unenthusiastic about their work, would they like to hear stories of satisfied customers to remind them of the impact they make? Or if they are bored with their work and would like more variety, you might ask them about tracking the most and least satisfying tasks they do during the next month and then reconvene to discuss possible adjustments.
If they’re feeling isolated, would they be interested in partnering with a collaborator on their next project, appreciate you planning a team event, or be open to setting up 1-on-1s with their peers?
Or if they’re feeling overwhelmed, would they like help prioritizing their work, a temporary shift off their plate of some responsibilities, or a more flexible schedule?
5. Together consider one change to try and then follow up in later 1-on-1s to see if the change is helping.
Start by both of you committing to a small, doable tweak and building from there. For example, if you commit to setting email off-hours, your direct report can commit to respecting them. If it doesn’t seem to be working, try another approach.
And remember to keep checking in on your direct reports’ well-being to stay on top of new challenges that arise. If their situation seems more serious, you may need to enlist your HR department to help your direct report get the professional support they need.
Work well with your manager
20. Frame feedback to your manager as a question.
Giving feedback to your manager can be tricky. You can explore issues without making your boss feel defensive or endangering your relationship if you frame issues as questions.
Why do it?
Giving your manager feedback about a problem or issue is a high-stakes situation. Do it poorly, and you can hurt your relationship with your boss—or even damage your career. This is why experienced manager Michael “Zipp” Zippiroli likes to reframe feedback to his boss as a question. “First, I’ve noticed that most people respond much less defensively to questions than imperatives,” he says. “Second, asking questions provides the opportunity to receive some feedback myself before I dish some out that ends up being off base.”
How to do it:
1. Write down the problem or issue that you would like to give feedback about to your manager.
Capture it in as much detail as you can, so that you clearly articulate the situation:
- Poor: My manager’s decisions about this project are bad.
- Better: I disagree with my manager’s decisions about this project because I don’t think our customers will like the changes they’re suggesting.
- Poor: I don’t like how my manager runs meetings.
- Better: When my manager moderates meetings, they allow one person to dominate the conversation, and I never get to say anything or hear from anyone else.
2. Ask yourself, What impact of the problem would my manager most likely agree with?
For example:
- Problem: My manager made a decision for this project that I disagree with.
- Impact: Our customers might be so unhappy that they don’t renew their contracts.
- Problem: One person dominates meeting conversations.
- Impact: We miss out on the best ideas and solutions.
3. Reframe the feedback you want to give as a question.
Think about it as if you’re enlisting your manager to help you figure out how to avoid the bad outcome that you believe they would be most concerned about. For example:
- Statement: “I think that’s a bad idea and it will confuse our customers.”
- Question: “What questions do you think our customers will have about this, and how could we address them?”
- Statement: “The way you moderate meetings isn’t working. Darrian is the only one who ever gets to talk.”
- Question: “I’m concerned that we’ve been missing some important perspectives in our meetings—especially from people like Joey, who has great ideas but tends to be quiet. Would you be open to talking through ways we could hear from everyone?”
21. When you bring your manager a problem, bring three possible solutions.
You make your manager’s job easier, build credibility, and show off your strategic thinking skills when you not only acknowledge a problem but also offer up ways to solve it.
Why do it?
There’s no avoiding it—when a problem develops, your manager needs to be looped in, and the sooner the better. While delivering bad news is never fun, especially if you feel responsible, every problem also presents an opportunity. By offering viable solutions, you’ll show that you’re more interested in solving problems than in dwelling on them—or pushing them off onto others. What’s more, it’s a great chance to demonstrate how you would handle more decision-making power—and that you deserve it.
How to do it:
1. Set a timer for 10 minutes, and write down all the possible solutions you can think of.
For now, don’t worry about the quality of the ideas. Set a timer, turn off all distractions, and focus on writing down as many potential solutions as you can.
2. Go through your list and cross out any ideas you know won’t work.
If an idea looks possible but you aren’t sure how good it is, don’t cross it off quite yet. Solutions that don’t look great at first can end up being viable “quick fix” options.
3. Look at the pros and cons for every potential solution left on your list.
Aim to write down at least two major pros and cons for each solution. Remember, you want to be able to bring this problem to your boss quickly, so don’t get caught up in considering every possible angle of every idea. Stick to the big ones and keep pressing forward.
4. Identify your three best ideas and outline distinct reasons why you think they’ll work.
You want to bring a range of options to the table, but also be sure to have a solid supporting analysis for each. This shows that you’re able and willing to consider different strategic approaches to a problem. For instance:
- One solution could be a Band-Aid that you can apply to the problem right away.
- A second solution could be a long-term fix that prevents this problem from happening again.
- A third solution might be a long shot, but shows some “out-of-the-box” thinking.
Above all, the quality of your thought process is just as important as the quality of the ideas. Finding smart, well-reasoned solutions is a surefire way to prove to your boss that you can be trusted with greater ownership of important tasks.
Build trust and credibility
22. Lead according to your values.
Are you leading the way you want to? Have you taken the time to think about the kind of leader you want to be? You’ll be more authentic and effective when you take a moment to identify your leadership values.
Identify and develop the behaviors that matter most to you as a leader
Why do it?
Plenty of managers jump into their roles, multitasking, making decisions, and keeping their teams running without giving much thought to how they’re leading. But when you proactively define what successful leadership looks like — down to the day-to-day behaviors — your chances of being and feeling successful go up. Way up.
How to do it:
1. Write down one to three leadership attributes you value.
It may help to think about leaders you’ve worked with and what they do that sets them apart. Do they take the time to coach others, speak truth to power, innovate?
If you’re having trouble identifying positive attributes, consider one to three things you dislike in other leaders. Most of us have seen ineffective leaders in action — poor communicators, wishy-washy decision-makers, chronic responsibility shirkers, or worse! Noticing what you dislike in other leaders may help you identify what matters most to you.
2. Break down each attribute into specific behaviors.
For example, maybe you want to be a good listener, unlike a former boss who answered emails during 1-on-1s and talked over others in meetings. So, you list listening behaviors like:
- Putting away technology and not interrupting others during meetings
- Paraphrasing what you’ve heard to ensure understanding
- Prompting the person to expand on his or her point (e.g., “Tell me more” or “Why do you think that is?”)
3. Commit to following through on one good behavior or avoiding one bad behavior this week.
For example, if you want to be the kind of leader whose team members always know where they stand, commit to giving at least three pieces of positive feedback and one piece of critical feedback to each direct report this week.
Then, stick with it! Once that behavior becomes a habit, move on to another behavior for that attribute. Repeat as necessary until you’re ready to move on to the next attribute.
23. Embrace mistakes as chances to gain respect.
Denying or downplaying your mistakes doesn’t make them go away — but it can undermine your credibility. You can preserve — and even enhance — your reputation if you address your mistakes with integrity and a plan to make things right.
Why do it?
You mishandled something. Maybe everything in you wants to crawl under a rock or downplay your mistake. But if you really want to be seen as a leader, hiding your errors can do far more harm than good. It might seem counterintuitive, but taking a deep breath and admitting where you went wrong can be an excellent way to boost your credibility. The key is to do it in a way that demonstrates courage, integrity, and a recognition of what you’ve learned for next time.
How to do it:
1. When you make a mistake or mishandle something, admit it right away.
Not only does this demonstrate a high level of integrity, it also gives you a chance to correct the wrong as quickly as possible, before it has time to impact other people.
2. Describe what you did wrong and apologize in a straightforward manner.
Whether you’re talking to your boss, peer managers, or your team, direct language helps make it clear that you aren’t complaining or making excuses. For example:
- To your team: “I did a bad job planning last week’s team meeting. I’m sorry about that. I know how busy everyone is, and we can’t afford to waste time.”
- To your boss: “I haven’t done a good job managing my time recently, and have been letting requests from the client services team get in the way of my highest-priority work. I’m sorry about that. I know how important it is for you to have the financial analysis in order to finalize the sales presentation.”
3. Then immediately explain what you will do to fix the situation.
Switch to the future tense to steer the conversation toward a solution — and to send the message that you are learning from your mistakes. For example:
- To your team: “From now on, I will send out agendas ahead of time and stick to them. I’ll also be asking for your thoughts about how we can make our meetings better, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.”
- To your boss: “I’m going to take the financial report home with me tonight, so I can make sure everything you need is ready by midday tomorrow. In the future, I’ll also be more careful about delaying non-essential tasks.”
24. Develop go-to phrases to use when someone tempts you to vent about work.
If you join in on gripe sessions, you risk sapping other people’s motivation and tarnishing your own reputation in your organization. Instead, acknowledge what your colleagues are feeling and steer the conversation toward possible solutions.
Why do it?
When a peer or direct report starts griping about something that’s also been driving you nuts, it can be tempting to join in. Although it might feel to you like you’re just commiserating, as a leader, adding your own complaints is unhelpful and unprofessional—and can send the signal that you aren’t invested in the work or the company. And that could prove toxic for the other person’s motivation or come back to bite you if they talk to your boss or other higher-ups about what you said.
How to do it:
1. Choose a phrase to have ready for when someone starts venting to you.
You’ll want a response that feels natural and shows you care about the other person’s concerns—without turning the focus on you and your feelings.
Example 1:
- Other person: “I don’t like the way Tim runs meetings—they’re so boring and pointless.”
- You: “Thanks for telling me what’s been going on. I could tell you’ve been feeling frustrated.”
Example 2:
- Other person: “This new building is too small for all of us! And Rita’s team has the only workspace with a view.”
- You: “Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. I’m still processing these changes myself.”
2. Follow that phrase with open-ended questions designed to defuse the complaint or turn the person’s attention toward solutions.
Be careful not to come across as patronizing or dismissive of the other person’s feelings. After all, there could be some useful feedback buried in the grousing—maybe even a way for you to help.
Example 1:
- “If you ran Tim’s monthly meetings, how would you change them?”
- “What’s one important takeaway you get from Tim’s meetings?”
Example 2:
- “What possibilities do you see for sharing the current space? We could talk through some ideas and then share them with the facilities team.”
- “What kind of space do you think the company should look for if we move again in the future?”
3. If you do need to vent about work, talk to a trusted friend or colleague outside of your organization.
Although you can and should talk openly with peers and direct reports about challenges at your company (“You’re right that this is a tough situation, and we should be discussing it”), devolving into griping (“Yeah, I can’t believe they did this to us!”) is likely to spread negativity. For times when you really need to let off some steam, find a trusted person outside of your work to talk to.
25. Remove check-ins or controls on things your direct reports have competence in.
Your team will perform better when they know that you trust them. To build their confidence and their sense of ownership of their projects, encourage them to do more on their own.
Why do it?
Delegating a task or project is one of the best ways to signal that you trust a direct report. But keeping your same level of oversight over time can erode their sense that you believe in their abilities. As they grow, look for opportunities to extend more trust.
How to do it:
1. Identify a task that a direct report has developed competence in.
Choose something the person has done enough times that you aren’t giving redirecting feedback every time.
2. In a 1-on-1, explain that you believe your direct report is ready to take more ownership of the task.
Make it clear that you know they are capable, have confidence in them, and trust them to deliver with less involvement from you—and that you are there to support them when they need your input.
3. Together identify which control or check-in to remove.
Begin by asking them what control or check-in they believe they no longer need and, if appropriate, offer one of your own (e.g., anything from canceling a feedback round to eliminating the need for your sign-off before sending a client communication). Make whatever you remove meaningful enough that your direct report feels an increased level of trust and the good pressure that comes with ownership.
It may be helpful to think of this as boosting your direct report up a level on the delegation autonomy ladder:
- Level one: Do it exactly as I describe.
- Level two: You recommend some ideas, and then I’ll decide the best way.
- Level three: We discuss the best approach and together decide what to do.
- Level four: Let me know what you decide to do, and unless I see a major problem, go for it.
- Level five: You decide what to do without input from me (unless you ask for it), then let me know what you did.
4. After your direct report completes the task without the control or check-in, evaluate how it went.
If you agree the new process went smoothly, great! If something didn’t go as planned, remind them that mistakes are a healthy way to learn. Then discuss what they might do differently the next time.
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