Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

  • Career Development as Performance Management

    Career Development as Performance Management

    I recently had the opportunity to work with a young man whose employer was doing things right. He was engaged and eager to advance within the company. The employer reached out to HPC for guidance in talent development. They saw his drive to succeed and wanted to capitalize on that drive to develop his career within their company, and performance management was their go-to tool. We facilitated assessments, discussed results and goals & used our Leaders as Career Agents tool to develop an Individual Development Plan.

    With research showing us that approximately 70 percent of the workforce is currently disengaged, developing leaders who can drive employee engagement in order to produce results is critical. At Horizon Point, we often work with companies who know firsthand that engaging and growing employees is the key to retention and overall company success.

    Here are three steps for implementing career development as performance management:

    1. Facilitate conversations around career goals.
    2. Collaboratively develop career advancement plans grounded in behaviors. 
    3. Provide projects and assignments that foster career advancement.

    When was the last time your employer discussed career development with you? Are you an employer who needs insight into the best way to engage employees through career development? Register for our upcoming webinar, 2021 Career Development as Performance Management, here. 

  • 4 Ways Leaders Can Keep Remote Work Pros from Becoming Cons

    4 Ways Leaders Can Keep Remote Work Pros from Becoming Cons

    I may be the only person in America that actually considered getting office space instead of ditching it in 2020.  Having run a business for almost ten years totally remote, I was beginning to question whether that was the best option for me and the business.

    As a company, three of our core values- people first, passion, and productivity- are guided by this statement: “To help drive passion and productivity, we don’t care how or where work gets done, just that it gets done in a way that meets client needs. This coincides with our desire to put people first by allowing them the autonomy to make decisions based on their personal preferences. We believe this stimulates passion and productivity.” 

    I believe this guiding principle has led to my productivity and the productivity and retention of our team and echoes what has been found in research from Harvard Business Review, among others, that workers (specifically knowledge-based workers in the HBR article) are more productive remotely. 

    So what gives?  This chart found at ventureharbor.com might provide some insights: 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Like many others, I’ve been working largely from home with kids also going to school in our home on and off for the last year.  Unplugging after work has also been a challenge when the to-do list is long and the interruptions are large (“Mom, my teacher can’t hear me, something is wrong with the sound on my computer!”  “Mom, how do you spell contagious?” Mom, I’m hungry!….” It never ends…. Especially when there is also an 18-month-old that isn’t in school but is very BUSY all the time underfoot too.) 

    In addition, people seem to be working longer, or at least working on very different schedules.  From a LinkedIn report on what WFH means: “Workers in Austria, Canada, the UK, and the US are logging 2.5 hours more each day on average, according to Bloomberg, with a longer workday becoming the new normal globally. But while many have more meetings and emails to catch up on, having a longer workday doesn’t necessarily mean more hours working, per The Washington Post. Some people have adopted new work schedules in which they work later but have longer breaks throughout the day.” 

    So even though remote work can and has brought about significant positive outcomes, including potential productivity gains, reduced office space costs, and employees having more autonomy, there are always two sides to every coin. What side of the coin someone is landing on is largely an issue of their current and specific personal circumstances and the realization that too much of a good thing is, well, bad. 

    Leaders need to be mindful that everyone’s situation is different and be aware that the advantages of remote work also lead to challenges. Once this is done, leaders can support their people at the individual level and provide resources to help support productive work.   

    Much of Microsoft’s research on what makes a great manager, which was published pre-pandemic, still holds true in a remote working world.  This guides some ideas for practicing strong remote work leadership: 

    1. Set guardrails around communication, productivity, and working hour expectations.  Many of our clients have talked extensively about the need for manager training around the new way of working, particularly respecting boundaries around work time and response expectations.  One client told me, “I don’t want to go back into the office full-time, but I feel like I’m expected to be checking email before 7 am and I am often called routinely after 6 or 7 pm about unimportant work things by my boss.  Most types of calls would not have been urgent when we worked in the office and could have waited until the next day, but now for some reason, these non-urgent issues seem to need to be resolved before the end of the day. The new expectation is, you’re right there by your computer all the time, so let’s just handle this now. There has got to be a healthy balance.”  As a leader, make sure you are guarding people’s line between work and home when the home is now the office.

    2. Realize these guardrails may be unique to each person.  One person may need to be sending emails before 7 am because they are also a schoolteacher from 8 am to Noon when virtual school is taking place for their kids.  They need to be productive first thing in the morning, take a break, then return to the “office” for an extended time than when the standard workday takes place.  Talk to each of your employees (see number three, hold regular one-on-ones) and see what they need and how you can effectively communicate their needs and working arrangements to all team members that rely on and collaborate with them. 

    For example, I may need to work on the weekends (as I’m doing now writing this post) because this past week my kids were home all week due to the winter weather.  But that doesn’t mean I’m expecting my entire team to be working on the weekends too.  One of our team members has a lot of commitments with her family over the weekends, but her kids are older than mine, so she isn’t interrupted by their needs as much during the week even if they are home. Her regular schedule is working intensely Monday-Thursday so she can have time on Fridays to get personal things done and/or travel with her family for kids sporting activities.  I don’t try to schedule anything for her or with her on Fridays.  We have yet another team member that is a night owl.  The girl can crank out some good work well after I go to bed and it is in my inbox the next morning.  Yet another person has volunteer commitments that are meaningful to her and our work, so I try to be mindful of her commitments there when considering her workload and times for the meeting. 

    3. Hold regular one-on-ones but avoid virtual meeting overload.  In a virtual setting, request that your people turn their cameras on while you are meeting one-on-one.  This provides the needed context for what can be learned by what is not being said through people’s expressions and body language.  You can do this while assuring them that you are not at all bothered by a kid/spouse/pet coming into the picture at times and that if they need to pause the meeting to handle something, that is fine.  In addition, one guardrail to manage is to make sure that just because it is convenient and easy to convene a virtual meeting, doesn’t necessarily mean you need one.  Make sure a meeting is the best way to facilitate communication. Don’t meet when an email will work just as well. 

    4. Provide specific resources based on each person’s needs.  This may be office space for someone to utilize, not all the time, but at certain times when distractions at home seem to be the highest.  As seen in the chart, loneliness is one of the biggest struggles with remote work. What can you do to support human interaction needs in a remote world?  One simple thing may be encouraging people to turn on their camera while in virtual meetings so people can be seen, not only heard.  Likewise, another may need to keep their camera off because their office is also the classroom and their six-year-old is working beside them. The chart also describes a problem, you may need to simply tell someone on your team to take a vacation.  If you’re holding regular one-on-ones and understand people’s unique situations, you should know when someone is approaching burnout. 

    All in all, I’m still on the fence about whether office space is necessary for me and my team.  But if it ever does become something we invest in, I know I’ll make sure that my team knows that the office is available for them, not a requirement of them.  When clear expectations and a mindset of service excellence are set, I still firmly believe that people get their best work done when they get to decide how, when, and where to do it. 

    How are you managing the pros and cons of remote work? 

  • Benefits of Remote Work for Employees

    Benefits of Remote Work for Employees

    Ahh, remote work! Work as we know it will never be the same. At Horizon Point, remote work has always been part of our daily grind, so we definitely know the benefits. 

    Check out these Key Remote Work Statistics (as they relate to employees) from Small Biz Genius.

    • 40% of people feel the greatest benefit of remote work is the flexible schedule.
    • 76% of workers would be more willing to stay with their current employer if they could work flexible hours.
    • People who work remotely at least once a month are 24% more likely to be happy and productive.

     

    Read the entire list & article: The Ultimate List of Remote Work Statistics – 2021 Edition.

    My personal stats: I’m 99% more likely to get everything complete on my work to-do list if I have the flexibility to work from home or from wherever. I do occasionally miss former work besties, but we can always catch up over lunch!

    Here are a few of my favorite benefits of remote work:

    1. I’m present for my family. I love that I can help my kids with virtual assignments if they are schooling from home. 
    2. I can throw in a load of laundry or prep for dinner in between Zoom calls.
    3. I can wear comfy clothes while I plug away at whatever project is a priority for the week.

    Has your employer transitioned staff to remote work? Do you love it or hate it? Stay tuned for more insight on remote work from The Point Blog!

  • Four Simple Steps to Improve Your Business Writing

    Four Simple Steps to Improve Your Business Writing

    I often work with clients who aim to improve communication within their organizations. Many of them naturally focus their concerns on the verbal communication issues within their company but fail to evaluate the impact that their written communication may have. 

    Here are four simple steps to help improve your written communication: 

    1. Consider your audience. When preparing to draft written communication, whether it’s an email, marketing materials, or a business report, consider your audience. How you address a customer may be very different from how you would address an employee. How you present information on your company’s fourth-quarter earnings and goals for the next quarter will be very different when addressing top leadership versus addressing an all-staff meeting. 
    2. Plan out what you want and need to say. What is the purpose of your written communication? Think about what you need to say before you actually start writing. What are your key points and how can you best address those points? If you’re writing a report or preparing a presentation, create an outline of key points and the order in which you want to address them. 
    3. Write and review. Write with purpose and don’t rush through it. And review what you’ve written as you go, and often. Does what you’ve written get the right point across and does it flow well? As I’m writing this now, I’ve already gone back and re-read it four times from the start. After I wrote #1 and #2, I re-read them two or three times and made adjustments. 
    4. Have someone proofread it. While I’m not suggesting you have someone proof every email you send, if you’re drafting longer documents such as reports or proposals, or materials that will go out to the public such as marketing materials or articles, have a second set of eyes look it over. They may just find some minor typos or grammar adjustments, or they may provide feedback on how to improve certain sections or points. When I finish writing this article, one of my colleagues will proof it before we post it.  

    Evaluation is also key to improving your written communication skills. As you implement the four steps above to help improve your written communication, consider ways to measure your success. This may include having employees fill out a brief survey after a staff meeting, evaluating sales after a new marketing campaign, or tracking the number of proposals submitted and how many contracts were won or the feedback that was returned. 

    What is one way that you can evaluate the success of your written communication? 

  • 4 Exercises to Enhance Your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts

    4 Exercises to Enhance Your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts

    I sat down to watch The Social Dilemma with my husband this past weekend. OH.MY. Netflix describes the show as a “documentary-drama hybrid [that] explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.” 

    Besides the realization that our every move and word, maybe even our every thought at some point, is being tracked by our smartphones and computers for the purpose of benefiting a profit machine, I was most fascinated by the premise that social media is one of the key factors polarizing us as a people and growing divides in our world.  Basically, social media and search engines perpetuate our divisiveness by the stuff it “feeds” us. 

    How do we combat these engines? How do we overcome the us versus them in so many aspects of our lives? 

    We’ve always focused on intentional leadership and team development at Horizon Point, but the last year has brought about a hyper-focus on making explicit how it ties to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the workplace.  How do we overcome the us versus them mentality in the workplace has been a question we are continually asking ourselves and seeking to help our clients tackle. 

    Much of what is out there now focuses on training interventions that educate people on conscious and unconscious bias, seeking to build self-awareness and change behaviors. 

    But as a recent Forbes article focused specifically on racism articulates, the head and the heart have to be engaged before the hands- or behavior- can follow.  And a key piece of this is self-awareness but it is also other awareness.  We are polarized because we don’t actually know people.  The Forbes article articulates this so well: 

    I’m constantly surprised to learn that people who work closely together and literally log thousands of hours side by side in the workplace don’t really know each other. Until we close the distance, our relationships remain superficial and transactional. In that closeness—in living, working, eating, and breathing together—regard and affection don’t automatically result unless we deliberately connect and mutually invest in our relationships.

    So what do we do? 

    Using an Encounter Group format (also referred to as t-groups), we can begin to engage people in talking to each other and listening to each other in a psychologically safe way in order to direct the head, heart, and eventually, the hands to embrace each other instead of despising each other despite all the things out there that seem to be programming us to tear each other apart.

    As the Neuroleadership Institute states in a blog post, we have to activate insights to change habits which is necessary for behavior change. “Insights are the breakthrough moments that change how people see the world, and our research shows they are highly motivating — when we have “Aha” moments, we really want to act on them.”

    We can do this through the encounter group format.

    Here are some ideas for exercises within an encounter group or similar group format that you as a leader can facilitate or hire an outside facilitator to conduct: 

    1. Sharing Story.  “To initiate connecting, model and assign your team members the task of sharing their stories with each other. Be the first mover by sharing appropriate background and experiences about yourself. After demonstrating your own vulnerability ask, ‘Would you tell me your story?’” states the  Forbes article.  

    We do this in a group format by giving participants a sheet of paper that has up to seven sections where they can write up to seven experiences that have shaped their life and who they are. We ask them to share stories that are not just work-related and that incorporate not only adult but also childhood experiences.  We give them time to reflect on this and then they come back together and verbally share their stories with the group.

    When done right, people share openly and you can usually hear a pin drop in the room while one person shares the experiences that shaped them.  I’ve never seen people listen as intently to others as when we’ve done this exercise with some groups.  It is also amazing to see how many shared experiences happen amongst the group between people that on the surface seem to share none. There are also many “aha” moments that happen where people say, “Oh, now I understand why you behave that way!” and come to appreciate that behavior that they may have once resented. 

    2. Reading Story.  Assign readings that emphasize the stories of individuals in marginalized groups and have your group discuss them. Our previous blog post can help you with some memoirs to start. 

    3. Living Story.  Get the group to engage with a marginalized group for at least a day-long project. I’ve seen some of these projects last up to a year.  For some thoughts on how business leaders can and should do this, check out this post here.

    4. Critiquing the Story.  Put major news network names (CNN, Fox, NBC, etc.) up separately as labels on the wall.  Get participants to stand/sit by the network they watch the most. Then get them to critique their own source of information with the group they are sitting with.  What leanings and biases do the networks have? Then, what might the impact on their personal conscious or unconscious thoughts and therefore decisions and behaviors be based on due to their news source(s)?  

    You can also do this for social media channels and consider how actually showing The Social Dilemma to the group might enhance the session discussion and opportunities for insights to take place. 

    When we engage in these types of activities, we get to know people. We build relationships.  And when we know people it makes it much harder to hate them, or people that are “like” them.  

    As Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” 

    What do you think is creating the polarization in our country and what can you do as a leader to impact DE&I efforts for your organization?