It's Them. Hi. They're the Problem, It's Them.
Image: Getty.
Tech start-ups, corporate financial firms, small businesses, nonprofits from diverse regions… Leaders in all sorts of contexts are approaching me with essentially the same challenge of late.
“We’ve hired a raft of people - at a premium and with good titles. But their performance isn’t on a par with the rest of the team.”
“Newer folks aren’t stepping up. When I was in their position, I grasped things quickly. Delegating anything right now feels like more hassle than it’s worth.”
“I have next to no time to train these newer people and they’re not getting up to speed on how we do things as quickly as we’d all hoped.”
So what’s going on here?
A lot of things, it turns out. Here are a just a few. And read on for some potential solutions…
The job market. In this moment, employers are extending job offers at interview, offering more compensation than they might have even 6 months ago, and giving people titles a rung above where they otherwise might.
You don’t have to wait longer for your morning latte to know that there are more jobs than people these days. With employment at a very high level, the job market is fast-moving and competitive, and organizations are under-staffed.
Companies are snatching up new hires quickly and often on different terms than previously. Existing employees are taking notice. (And some are giving notice, as you might expect.)
Heavy workload and pandemic fatigue. Where business is robust and new hires are hard to come by, workloads increase. But workload alone doesn’t account for the challenges leaders face.
Workload plus lingering pandemic fatigue plus “how come all these new folks have it better than I did” plus finding time to train, retain, and motivate colleagues have leaders facing new stressors.
A new sensitivity to employee needs. The (let’s hope) worst of the pandemic forced leaders to raise their emotional intelligence and put the human before the role. But being a caring leader carries a weight of its own.
“I am completely overburdened, but so is my team. I hesitate to delegate to the person who just confided that they’re under extreme stress.”
“My deputy just told me that they are looking for another job. They’re one of my best people and now I am hesitant to ask too much of them for fear that they’ll leave even sooner. This would be the worst time for them to go, but I risk burning out, too.”
Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Or, rather, leads the team.
And this list is from the leader’s point of view. Imagine being hired onto an over-stretched team, with managers too busy to train you, people leaving and joining each week, and watercooler chatter suggesting you have things easy. And perhaps a lingering feeling that you should have taken the offer from that other company.
Like any complex leadership challenge, a multilayered approach is demanded.
Here are few places to start. (And let us know: what’s working or not working in your organization?)
Address the foundations. How soon can your organization do a compensation audit, clarify salary bands, and (easier said than done) address inconsistencies? This might mean meting out more raises - but before your reflexively resist, consider the cost of losing and trying to replace your most-tenured colleagues. Beyond the financial angle, the cultural hit of losing a well-liked colleague usually ripples across a team.
Similarly, when can you audit and clarify roles and job descriptions? It’s worth mentioning here that clients regularly raise this in 1:1 coaching: “my role description doesn't match my work” or “I’m clear on my new role - but the rest of the team isn’t and still approaches me like I’m in my previous role.” Consider how you can communicate any changes clearly and proactively.
You can’t motivate people out of not comparing salaries and titles. Take this opportunity to get your processes in order and catch up to your growth.
Foster peer relationships among managers. Being a manager can be a lonely road - but by connecting with peers in other parts of the organization, your leaders can enjoy the more social side of work that they perhaps lost when first promoted. (Which is good for morale and retention.)
They can learn from more-experienced managers. And they can compare notes on (and begin to address) the challenges faced by the organization. This can be as informal as encouraging them to set up the occasional lunch or coffee, or as deliberate as having me facilitate a townhall discussion or leadership workshop for peers (hi).
Invest in training, internally and externally. “What if we invest in training someone and they leave?”
What if you don’t and they stay?
Cutesy industry sayings aside, if you want people to step up you have to set them up to succeed.
Hoping they’ll pick up how things are done by osmosis doesn’t work in today’s climate - for one thing, it takes longer than you perhaps have to convince them to stay and to set them up to thrive.
Consider what can be done as a group. Perhaps setting up a monthly or quarterly onboarding session to walk new hires through policies, culture, and the like, ideally with a mix of speakers and a component of fun.
Similarly, training in skills like team communications, management, and team effectiveness can be handled by an external facilitator. That leaves the matter of job training. Are your managers experienced and skilled at this sort of training? Do they have time?
Give thought to how you will ensure those doing the onboarding and training have the time and resources to do it well. (Unsure of where to start? Ask them.)
As we’ve been saying a lot over the past almost three (!) years, these are unprecedented times. What can you and your team do to keep up and be proactive?
(Shoutout to Taylor Swift for lodging these lyrics in my brain.)
Ellie Hearne is an expert in strategy and culture and founder of Pencil or Ink. She has worked with dozens of industry-leading companies, one or two government agencies, and a handful of non-profits. She holds a Master’s from the University of St Andrews and a postgraduate diploma in Organisational Leadership from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, where she also teaches part-time on the Strategic Innovation program. She’s been quoted in The New York Times and the Irish Times on workplace communications and in Business Insider and Nasdaq on entrepreneurship. Ellie is also a parent, a dog person, and a half-hearted runner.