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Question Of The Month
What does ‘acting in employees’ best interests’ mean with respect to communication?
Clear Performance Expectations Enable Employee Success
Legitimate Leadership often finds that a lack of clear performance expectations is the most important factor in people’s unhappiness at work.
Employees will complain about the desk, the chair, a colleague and the coffee. But when you really do a root-cause analysis, they are unsure of what is expected of them and thus are not gainfully engaged in what they must do. So complaining about what they do know is so much easier.
How To Handle Remote And Blended/Hybrid Teams
One of the challenges that has hurt collaboration across the board was lockdown.
Isaac Stern, the famous violinist, said music is what happens between the notes. Trust is what’s built between the meetings – it’s the chatter as you’re walking into the meeting, it’s the meeting that happens after the meeting, it’s the bumping into someone in a hallway and ‘Oh, I meant to tell you …’, ‘You want to grab lunch?’, ‘You want to grab a coffee?’
It’s all those little innocuous things that by themselves do nothing but over time build trust and support collaboration.
For more information regarding the above, please e-mail events@legitimateleadership.com
Question Of The Month
By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.
Question: What does ‘acting in employees’ best interests’ mean with respect to communication?
Answer: It means that management commits to communicating even when it appears not to be in their best interests at the time. They communicate with their people even when it does not seem to be the most utilitarian or expedient thing to do. They tell it like it is even if there’s no advantage to them in doing so.
If they communicate when it suits them and stop communicating when it doesn’t, they won’t be trusted.
Secondly, they tell their people what they want to know, not what management wants to tell them. And what employees want to know is primarily two things: How is the business doing? And how am I / my team doing? Only when management consistently delivers on these two primary information needs will they be seen as acting in their employees’ best interests.
Thirdly, management never lies to their people but rather always speaks the truth. This is because when management lies, they destroy trust. They create the conditions that, going forward, their people can no longer take them at their word. As Frederick Nietzsche said: ‘What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that I can no longer believe in what you say.’
Lastly, management goes beyond responding honestly to questions asked. They actively disclose and give feedback. They provide the ‘why’ behind their decisions. They share both their thoughts and their feelings, as well as the facts. They both tell their people what they expect of them and how well they are doing against those expectations.
Living up to these standards is not easy. The benefits to management, long-term, of doing so are immense, however.
To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com
Clear Performance Expectations Enable Employee Success
By Leonie van Tonder, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
Legitimate Leadership often finds that a lack of clear performance expectations is the most important factor in people’s unhappiness at work.
Employees will complain about the desk, the chair, a colleague and the coffee. But when you really do a root-cause analysis, they are unsure of what is expected of them and thus are not gainfully engaged in what they must do. So complaining about what they do know is so much easier.
Legitimate Leadership is built on the foundations of CARE, MEANS, ABILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
Video Excerpt: How To Handle Remote And Blended/Hybrid Teams
By Simon Sinek, American author on leadership and motivational speaker.
COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: You get what you pay for. Legitimate Leadership believes that people should be paid primarily for their contribution against a standard, not the result. Part of contribution is behavioural standards – including collaboration, face-to-face engagement, and getting to know people as human beings not human resources. Virtual interaction has its benefits but is never first prize. It can never replace the benefit of spending time in person with colleagues in one-to-ones, in team meetings, and out in the field watching the game. I liked Sinek’s ideas with respect to getting people back to the office in a way which is encouraging and supportive rather than by dictate.
OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO EXCERPT: One of the challenges that has hurt collaboration across the board was lockdown.
Isaac Stern, the famous violinist, said music is what happens between the notes. Trust is what’s built between the meetings – it’s the chatter as you’re walking into the meeting, it’s the meeting that happens after the meeting, it’s the bumping into someone in a hallway and ‘Oh, I meant to tell you …’, ‘You want to grab lunch?’, ‘You want to grab a coffee?’
It’s all those little innocuous things that by themselves do nothing but over time build trust and support collaboration.
But when we work at home we just have the meeting. There is no ‘between’.
READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO EXCERPT BY CLICKING HERE
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