Month: February 2017

Leading When Your Team is Not 100%

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unmotivated-employees-in-meeting_pop_18933When your team is firing on all cylinders, it is a beautiful thing to watch.  High quality work gets done on time, on budget and everyone is moving in harmony.  Your team works as one and becomes the envy of your company, heck even your industry.

But what happens when life gets in the way?  Maybe a team member or their family is dealing with a private health issue, or someone just gets into a funk.  How do you work to bridge that noise in the system to get the team back up to speed?

1.       Communication- you need to talk to your team member about what is going on and how you can help them.  You also need to discuss with your team how to improve its performance with that team member potentially pulling less than their weight for a time being. 

2.       Confidentiality- However, you are not to disclose what the issues may be.  That is for the team member to share if they feel comfortable.  The leader should never be the one to break that type of news nor should they speculate on that person’s condition or state of mind.

3.       Clarity- you need to keep the team’s focus and goals in plain sight.  Changing or wavering on the team’s direction because of a personal issue brings great unrest to the team.  Keep everyone focused on the tasks at hand.

4.       Comfort- depending on the situation, you are going to need to assure your team that they can achieve their goals- even if a key contributor is not able to perform at their normal level.  You also need to reassure the team member that they are valued and will have plenty of room for growth when they return to 100% focus.

5.       Confidence- now is not the time for you to lose faith in your team.  You need to believe in them even more in times of adversity.  They look to you for guidance and strength.  Be a pillar for them to build momentum and peak performance off.

One more thing, you need to get HR involved.  They are experts in helping team leaders get through issues like this.  Their insight helps you steer and guide your team through the trials and tribulations of life.  Ignoring them would be foolish.

Good luck and become well versed in the 5C’s.  Unfortunately, your leadership road is going to be filled with adversity.

Leading Means Watching Your Team’s Time

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man late looking to his watchAnyone who knows me, knows that I am not a clock watcher.  I believe you dedicate the time to get a job done- whether it is completing a project or perfecting a skill.  But as a leader in the new workplace, I find myself watching the clock.

 

Labor laws were not made for our 24/7 social media world that we are living in today.  The laws are based traditional 40 hour work weeks with overtime laws based on working more than the 40.  This leads to a huge issue for leaders.  You have a mix of professionals, support staff, and production workers who are all classified and compensated differently. 

 

Not only do you need to be mindful of what your team is doing during traditional work hours or shifts, you need to be aware of their personal time too.   Contacting hourly employees or salaried employees who earn less than the Department of Labor’s thresholds during their off hours needs to be documented, and the employees’ hours need to be adjusted.

 

You might just be asking your admin to check your flight, but that fifteen minutes of work while he is at home needs to be tracked.   The same goes for the texts and emails that get sent (and you expect the recipient to answer) from customers, colleagues on different shifts, etc.  Don’t forget the “Can you post this?” requests as well.  They are all work requests that are not happening during traditional work hours, but need to be tracked.  Otherwise both your team and you are out of compliance with the law. Remember every communication sent and received is time stamped.  It is not hard to figure out that your team is answering out of work.

 

This is especially dangerous with shared services, especially when you are responsible for the cost center, but not all of the work comes from your team.  Multiple bosses may be asking for a person to complete tasks without them realizing it. 

 

There are some ways to make sure your team is covered and compliant. 

 

1.       Ask your “affected” employees to track their time spent out of work on work issues and deduct it from their weekly in office rules.  For instance, if you notice that a person spends three hours a week working at home, let them leave at 2 pm on Fridays. 

 

2.       Encourage non-essential workers to not bring home their laptop, check email or answer company related texts.  This way they are truly out of pocket. 

 

3.       Be more mindful of your requests.  If you are no longer emailing at 2 am, chances are your team will stop too.

 

4.       Shorten your “in office” work week to compensate for the out of work responses. Working 8:30-4:30 reduces your work hours to 37.5 hours meaning that the first 2.5 hours working out of work are covered.

 

Some labor attorneys are going to make a lot of money on this with a class action suit.  Make sure your team is not the reason your company goes under.

 

Yo! Millennials are People too!

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Happy co-workersThat was the comment from one of our Millennial employees after our office was doing our usual bashing of his generation.  And while it is easy to classify an entire group of people as lazy, self-absorbed, and coddled, it is very dangerous to do this as a leader.

From the beginning of time, the establishment has complained about the younger generation.  The Traditionalists complained about the Baby Boomers, Baby Boomers about Generation X and now everyone about the Millennials.  Whether it was blue shirts and long hair or a better work life balance, there has always been a biased against the younger generations.

The true leader is the one that knows how to tap into each of their team members and get the best results from them and the group collectively.  You need to understand what drives each team member in a few key areas:

1.       Values- Millennials tend to value their individualism above all else.  The one size fits all mentality really has become one size fits none.  You need to work to understand and know each team member as a person and what drives them.

2.       Business Worth- Millennials believe that their contribution to the company is the key to their work.  You need to spend time recognizing their good performance way more than you point out how to improve.  Being part of the team is fine for them.   

3.       Business Focus- Millennials have grown up with the “It’s a Small Word” mentality.  They care about the Global impact of their job and how networked their job is to the rest of the world.  You need to explain the big picture to them so that they understand and embrace that their task is making the world and their company better.

You need to adjust your style for Millennials and focus on team work, celebrating small victories, and adding variety to their tasks.  You need to understand that for them, effective work is greater than hours worked, that “paying their dues” is not a reason for a task to be done, and that there is no line between work and family time.  You need to help them grow up in life as well as in the workplace. 

Failure to incorporate this into your management style will cause you to be the “old person” in your office.  And no one wants to be seen as the dinosaur.  Every generation can agree on that.