Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Manager Tools how to action engagement Survey Results Chapter 3 the Questions Part 7. The Questions this cast answers are how should I respond to my engagement survey results? What should I do with my scores on an engagement survey? And how can I improve my engagement survey results? If you'd like answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Organizational training can provide you with two significant economies of scale benefits, their time and money. For starters, when we come to your organization, we work with a group of people on site in your offices. Your very own conference room becomes the training location. Which means no extra time associated with having everyone travel to a different location. That that and if you can put up to 30 people in that room, which is the number we accept, you'll save 50% the cost per head versus attending a training like our in person public conference offerings. For more details, contact Maggie. Her email address is maggienager-tools.com to learn more information.
- [01:18]
B
All right, Mark, we're still in the category of questions regarding communication in this engagement survey with 140 questions.
- [01:28]
C
Yes. You know, it's funny, I was thinking about how many parts this is. I think this may be our longest multi parter. It's certainly the longest by word count cast I've ever written. And it reminded me of something I heard years ago about the difference between two writers. Some of our casts are one parters. They're maybe 25 minutes. There's an easily encapsulated thing, easy to explain and so on. And you would call that Hemingway. This is more like Dickens. Or for those of you, for those of you who are into it. Gosh, I was going to say George R.R. martin for game of Thrones. But there's also the Wheel of Time. I can't remember the author. You know, pages and pages. Pages I should know since I'm Jane Austen too. Very much. You know, pages on I'm in the.
- [02:19]
B
Middle of will time. One of the little middle. I'm in the second book at will time.
- [02:22]
C
Oh, you will not live to see the end.
- [02:25]
B
Oh my God.
- [02:26]
C
Yeah.
- [02:27]
B
All right. Yeah, we could go on. The actual TV series did not do it justice.
- [02:32]
C
Oh, it didn't. Okay. Yeah.
- [02:35]
B
Okay. Anyways, sorry folks, there's a question wrong. As long as the job gets done, I have the freedom to work in a way that suits me.
- [02:43]
C
Okay, so there is a kernel of goodness here. This question gets to this issue of autonomy which has pretty good data showing it makes a difference in employee effectiveness. If you don't feel you have some. I don't want to use freedom because freedom is just the wrong word in a corporate culture. But if you don't have some autonomy to make your own decisions about certain things, you will tend to do less. Well, now some of the data on autonomy is a little sketchy. Like they. Somebody did something well and they asked them questions like, did you feel like you had autonomy? Yes. And then they did something poorly. Did you feel like you had autonomy? No. And they're sort of cart for the horse, chicken and the egg kind of thing. The problem with this one though is that freedom, if you know, autonomy may be a word that's a bit of a stretch for some, but freedom, people understand that. Not that it applies in the corporate environment, but some people define freedom in an incredibly expansive way. I think the rest of the world thinks America describes freedom in an incredible, incredibly expansive way. And unfortunately for this question, even though there's a kernel of goodness here, it provides an opening for those who really want to be free of all the processes and systems that have been developed and improved over time that greatly improve productivity. You know, they think that any process limits their freedom. Some employees just don't like processes, frankly. There are some that say, well, that's micromanagement, which is dumb. I mean, it's just literally dumb. In fact, sometimes when I was younger and more direct, and I'm sure there are people who are listening, they're going, like, what? More direct? You're not direct now. Yeah. If somebody said, well, I feel like you're micromanaging me, I want more freedom, I said, well, I can give you freedom. Yeah. So also it says in this, as long as the job gets done, I have the freedom to work in a way that suits me. That standard, as long as the job gets done has always been stupid and dangerous in a competitive environment. Look, it's possible that the company with this question is looking for burdensome processes here. And your organization definitely has. Some bureaucracy inevitably creeps in. Heck, I think Google, who's not that old, 20 years old or whatever, I think they have some pretty burdensome processes based on some people I've talked to there, but far more often in our experience, individuals don't understand it. Individual contributors certainly don't understand it. Organizations don't understand the necessity for sort of dynamic tension between autonomy and process, between creativity and reporting, all of this stuff. Having processes and having autonomy are both possible, but. But too many of the curmudgeons in the world just want to do it their own way, no matter what. Look, this also applies to how people feel about change. Half the world. Your percentage depends on the type of work your team does. The more technical you are, the higher. The percentage above 50% doesn't like change. So any recent process, system, product, service, reporting change that by definition they didn't like is going to affect your scores here because they see that as impinging upon their, quote, freedom, unquote stupid. So keep that in mind when you despair about scores here, because I don't think the standard. We don't think the standard should be. As long as the job gets done, you have the freedom to do whatever you want, because that's not repeatable. The underlying principle here is we want you to have enough autonomy to look at things you're doing and figure out better ways and so on. But the way in which you do it cannot be your own personality, your own way, your own cleverness. I talk to people all the time. I ask, when I'm interviewing, I ask them, you know, tell me about how you did that last time. And they say things like, well, I don't know. It just, you know, it just sort of came naturally. That's a person I won't hire. Because if they don't know how they did it before, they don't know why they did it. They don't know how they saw the problem. They won't be able to bring that forward. If they got great results before, you're looking just for people who have great results that may be great. We want that. Except that they can't reproduce it in a different situation. And more importantly, they can't teach it to other people. Well, this is just the way I do it. I don't, I don't really. Can't really describe it. It's just sort of magic or some other word like that. So when you ask and capture, ask your team, how could we give you more freedom while also having some good management and measuring principles in place? Now? You might say, well, they might just want more freedom. I say, yeah, okay, but again, there's a dynamic tension. Yes, we want them to have autonomy, and we also need good management in place with things that can be repeated and taught to other people. I mean, you don't even have to think about the person leaving and having to replace them. You can just think about them going on vacation for two weeks and everybody looking at their desk and say, I can't tell what that is. I, I have, I have no idea what this is. It's not even obvious to anyone what he does or how he does it. Now, look, if somebody complains about measuring we're being a little facetious here, but ignore them. Okay. Most employees, 95% of employees in the world are massively under managed. Now, we know that surprises you. All you hear about is micromanagement this and micromanagement that and too much reporting. Mike, last night, it's. It's Tuesday. So Monday night at the very latest, I write things. We think, we think that goes out to our licensees. You have to be a licensee to get it. And I wrote about a website. I was doing some research, sort of behind a book that I'm reading, really good book called Turn the Ship around. And I found this post that said, I can't remember where it was and I don't want to repeat it. I don't want people to go find it because it'll just make them dumber. But it says, it said, oh, lateness is not a problem. If you're trying to make people on time, you shouldn't do that because for some people, lateness is a personality trait. Late people really are naturally more creative. There's no data for this. Right. They're just saying it because it's a blog post. And when there are no. When there's no curation on the web, you can, you know, as the original cartoon said, one dog sitting in a computer talking to another dog on the Internet. They don't know you're a dog, but the Internet is full of this stuff. And this blog says, yeah, lateness is not a problem and you should respect it. Oh, they also said lateness isn't a sign of disrespect for everybody else on the team. I mean, I never heard such a thing. And I'm sure a person who thinks lateness is part of their personality would say a boss telling them, hey, when you're late, it slows things down, keep you out of time. Well, that's just my personality. Right, right. That's just crazy. But everybody always talks about micromanagement this, micromanagement that, too much reporting, too many meetings and so on. But frankly, it's just whining. Our data show that on a scale of 1 to 10, the average direct is managed about at a level of 3, 0 being freedom and 10 being massive micromanagement. Okay, so the average is 3, but. But the highest performing teams are managed about a level of six. Actually closer to seven. But think about it. If you're at level three and you think, you know, you're micromanaged, if a manager tries to take you to level four and puts in place processes and systems, and reporting. Oh, there we go with the reporting again. They screen, they scream bloody murder. You can't go to four. No, this is jail. I feel like I'm. This is indentured servitude and I have no choice kind of thing. So be careful. Understand that there's a lot going on in this question and ask and capture. Find out what they have to say, and you may learn something interesting. There may be a process that's broken or a process just massively bureaucratic. And that's good. But be prepared for the whining.
- [10:53]
B
All right, next one. I feel I am contributing toward the organization's overall goals.
- [11:00]
C
Yeah, now full, full props on this one. This is another area where the data supports the idea. The directs who feel they're contributing to the entire org perform better and are more easily retained. That said, there's that word feeling again. We always have to be careful about measuring how employees feel, and this has become accepted now. I think in the next big recession, it'll go away. And I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I think that's what's going to happen. You can quote me on it. But feelings have never been the purview of organizations. And because they're not the purview of organizations, they're not the purview of managers. By definition, they're private. Most of us do an incredibly poor job of accurately inferring other people's feelings. We think we're good at it, but we're not. Right. We assume that whenever somebody does something, they're feeling what we would have felt when we engaged in that behavior. But that's wrong. 50 to 75% of the time you're guessing right. This general principle is why orgs focus on behaviors. As an example, we don't measure feelings in work output, only the behaviors that led to the results. The org needs one of the examples. It's not a great example, but it's close. Is this idea of Net Promoter score, which is a very popular customer service metric which we use here at Manager Tools because it's simple and we don't want a sample. We want a trend to see how things are going. And it asks on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely you are to recommend our products or services to somebody else. That's a behavior. It doesn't ask how you feel. It asks what you will do. That's smart from a management perspective, from a measurement perspective. And in the last decade or so, companies have mistakenly started talking about feelings. The thought is, and We, I suspect many managers believe this as well because it's out there and the Internet says it. So it must be true is that if we can get our directs to feel a certain way, you know, sort of swimming upstream to the cause of behaviors, then behaviors will follow. Swimming upstream. We have hall of fame guidance on this called you are not a psychologist. Nevertheless, companies ask about it. We managers are left to address it. We encourage you to take measurements that include feelings with a grain or more of salt. What you can ask here is keeping it towards behaviors. What can I or the organization do to help you be more connected to our overall goals? And a lot of that is communication. And we've said before in this cast that in this series of cast that you may be left having to communicate the org's goals when in fact nobody above you is doing anything to help you. And so you may have to swim upstream in the organization to find how you're connected or tell a story. And if your boss doesn't do it, fine, tell a story.
- [13:59]
B
It doesn't help you that they don't communicate it because the organization still assumes that it's a key part of your responsibility to do so. Right to your directs.
- [14:08]
C
Yeah, you're exactly right. When you combine the individual manager responsibilities with the company's responsibilities, you can see a two by two matrix really quickly. Right. The ideal one is the company talks about it, tells the manager what she needs to know and she does her job as well. Yeah, yeah. But you could either have the manager doing it without the company or the company doing it without the manager. Believe me, if something's somebody's going to be found guilty, it's going to be the manager. Sorry, that's way too cynical. I'm an optimistic person. But now keep in mind when you look at scores here, that the organization assumes it's a key part of your job, whether they've done a good job of connecting your team's work to the overall goals. A lot of friction, we've said it before. Organizational sandpaper occurs between the org's goals and your team's work. You may have to work harder than you think necessary to protect yourself from the organization's lack of communications and its tendency to encourage the putting out of fires rather than focusing on mission aligned deliverables. This is one of the things that private equity firms do real well. They are very clear about what the deliverables are and they're very clear about killing bureaucracy. And many people don't like it. But successful companies are much more likely to be managed much more like private equity owned firms do than not. October 24th and 25th we're coming to Chicago. We're hosting an EMC and ECC. Effective management and Communication. If you're in the area or just in the Midwest, it's an opportunity to learn the next steps to being a more effective professional. Better management, better communication and you can meet other professionals in the area. We love coming to Chicago and we would really like to see you there too. Sign up at manager-tools.com training okay, I.
- [15:56]
B
Have a clear understanding of what is expected of me at work.
- [16:00]
C
Yeah obviously this is an expectation of all managers. You the manager are expected to make clear the work requirements. No surprise you could ask where am I making the expectations clear and where could I make them more clear for your work? I try to make that one a little bit more positive rather than just looking for negatives. But believe me, you've got people on your team. I'm sure that will tell you the negatives and that's okay too. Organizational surveys like engagement surveys are are easily seen by us managers, let's say at the lower levels as a report on the organization managers. Too many managers in my experience not just with engagement but with other surveys like customer satisfaction or employee satisfaction sorry, employee satisfaction surveys. Managers mistakenly believe that the kinds of outcomes to occur will be organizational and it will be leadership that will be held accountable. And that's somewhat true. But the smart manager takes advantage of the data and makes changes in their own work to make things better. A good example is questions like this one. I have a clear understanding of what is expected of me work. The two best tools managers have for getting across what is expected of their directs are one on ones to build trust. That creates robust communication because things are changing a lot so you better robustly communicate. And the manager tools feedback model where you can massively increase your performance communications with them Sometimes people managers read this and say clear understanding of what expect to me work. So I have to have a detailed job description. I've got to have everything laid out. We've got to do tens of thousands of hours of training. No you don't. You need to build trust. And then when people do things that you believe helps the organization move forward toward its goals, you give them positive feedback. And when you notice something that's maybe a little off, could be lateness, could be a hundred other things, you give a little bit of negative feedback. And the negative feedback, if you've done enough positive feedback and you build up trust does not have the sting or the fear or the pain that almost every other feedback mechanism or performance communication mechanism, let's call it, that delivers to individuals.
- [18:04]
B
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. You don't have to have this big elaborate plan. You don't just frankly do simple management basics. Frankly. Right, yeah.
- [18:14]
C
And job descriptions, I spew thee out of my mouth. I find them largely worthless administrative burden. I'm coaching a CEO right now and he was asking for me to review a job description for hiring a coo. And I said, you know, you really don't need a job description for the coo. He's like, really? I said, no, you're the CEO. You know, find the guy you want and make sure he or she is who you think they are and then hire them. There you go. And you don't need to pay a recruiter to do that.
- [18:47]
B
All right, next one. I am given enough authority to make decisions I need to make.
- [18:52]
C
Yeah, look, if you are actually a micromanager, at least in the minds of your directs, this question can hurt you. As we mentioned earlier, with those directs who don't like processes and systems and reporting and quality controls, they will likely take this opportunity to give you a low score. So when you ask and capture on this question, ask them, where do you have enough authority and where are we not giving you enough authority to make decisions? Now, some of you are going to have to be careful with this one because you probably think you've given them enough authority to make decisions because you said something like, hey, look, you can make decisions, but I'd like to approve them. I promise you no one will think that that is decision making authority at their level. They will see this as them not having enough authority, enough authority, and frankly, they're right. Authority means being able to make changes because your manager trusts you. You might think that, quote, asking for approval, unquote, as an intermediate step. You know, it's like, well, maybe after I've approved 50 things, then gradually I'll let them do it. Hopefully it is on the way to full authority for their own work. But directs don't usually see it that way. We'd recommend you manage by exception here. Allow them the authority to make changes when they make the right changes, give them positive feedback, and only get involved on the negative side when changes negatively impact outputs and results. Now, there's a little bit more here we alluded to earlier. The idea that things need to be repetitive, other people need to be able to step in, things need to be teachable so they can't change Things that only they understand. They're going to have to document it because the organization will live on past them. And obviously, I know I'm going to get an email from somebody in safety or quality that says you can't do. You can't give people authority. Actually, you can. But there are going to be some limits on safety and quality and reporting, frankly, because the organization needs to know what's going on at the lower levels. Not that enough executives read the reporting.
- [20:50]
B
I have a very clear job description for my role.
- [20:53]
C
Oh, I already stepped on this one, didn't I?
- [20:55]
B
You did a little bit, yeah.
- [20:56]
C
Yeah. This is a silly question because most roles do not have clear job descriptions or directs don't know what their job description says, even if they do have one. You know, frankly, jobs change so often in small ways. The job descriptions change really, in our estimation, have become an HR administrative process. And what they say is, if you want to hire, you got to give us a job description so the HR person can read it for the first time and that will make them a good screener of your candidates. Oh, my gosh. Do one of the top 10 dumb things of all time. Actually, probably by now, after 20 years. Mike, don't you think my top 10 list of dumb things is about a thousand things?
- [21:34]
B
About a. I was just thinking exact name.
- [21:37]
C
Yeah.
- [21:38]
B
Is constantly evolving. You're getting smarter, smarter over time.
- [21:40]
C
Yeah, right. Yeah, it's. Yes, it's academic creep. Yeah. High eyes.
- [21:45]
B
High eyes.
- [21:48]
C
Best ever. New. Best ever. No, no new. New shoes. Best ever. Okay. You're going to get results for this question. And if your score is low, you may end up having to rework job descriptions. The solution here is not to dread the massive administrative burden you think you have to undertake. The solution is to have your directs themselves modify their existing job descriptions with you approving them. Hey, people say they wanted authority. Yeah, they. They say they wanted the authority. Okay, here's the authority. Write your job description. Yeah, you need to check with HR to see if they have a template. On the other hand, you could ask your number two to go do that. But look, you're going to ask and it'll have been a week and they won't have responded. Just tell your directs whose job descriptions aren't up to par to find a recent one from someone else and give you a rough first draft. And don't write 500 words. Just don't do it. Okay. There are some people who are saying, yeah, I'm writing job descriptions with chat GPT. I guess that's dating this, this cast. But we try to be timeless and not timely. But I wouldn't do it unless it gave me pablum that would satisfy hr because I would never allow my recruiting and sourcing to be outsourced to hr. The best thing I have, the ultimate weapon I have as a manager, is the quality of my people. And the person who's responsible for the quality of my people is me. I hate it when HR gets 100 resumes. They don't even tell you what resumes they got and they send you five people. I'm like, well can I see the other 95? Well no, you don't need that. That's our job. Well, actually I want to sync up with you. Actually, I want to find the five people you missed. So ask and capture on this question, what do we think about our job descriptions and what should we do about them next?
- [23:39]
B
One I can see how my role contributes to the success of the wider organization.
- [23:45]
C
This is another question where you should be able to see the dichotomy between what the org might need to do to make this possible and the clear responsibility of the immediate manager connector to the to connect their directs work to what the org does. And you see this theme over and over again in engagement surveys. And look, the org is going to hold us managers accountable, at least to some degree, irrespective of whether our leadership chain is communicating in ways that help us complete that connection. Look, there are a couple of easy things you can do to help your direct see how they're contributing during your staff meeting. Because of course you're having one, right? And we have guidance on that if you're not during the waterfall communication part of it. Talk openly about what you're seeing and hearing from around and about higher level leaders and plans, whatever you do. I think we've already talked about this Mike, but it took me three weeks to write this podcast. Do not just get emails from your boss and or other people above and forward it into your team with an FYI appended Mike, I realize why I wrote this again is because this is 140 question survey, but some people will only have 20 and they'll be looking in the in the list. The licensees will be looking in the list for the questions and so they may not have covered that other question.
- [24:59]
B
We got to cover this in this particular question. Yeah, this compendium will make it a little repetitive. Sorry folks, but sometimes the content has to drive what we talk and how long we talk about it and not whether or not it's going to excite people to get 20 weeks of discount content.
- [25:19]
C
Yeah, you know, I don't look at the stats weekly, so I don't know whether or not us focusing on engagement is driving downloads or not, but actually I'm not thinking about necessarily getting more downloads right now. I'm thinking about taking care of our community. Yeah, too many managers in our community are going through this. In fact, another thing I mentioned in things we think, we think this week, again, it only goes to our licensees. So if you're a manager, support manager, tools person, and you're listening to this and you're not a licensee or we don't know you, that's our weekly email. And in it I talk specifically about a manager who wrote me and said my company is not giving me individual question scores. They're only saying the company has problems in these categories. I mean, it's, it's not just poor management or poor leadership. It's almost a sin, an ethical violation. It's moral opprobrium or something like that. Because look, if you just forward emails and just say, FYI, you're not doing your job, okay, you got to say, here's what this means to us. FYIs are what rookies and amateurs do. I know you don't have time. Well, make time. Managers are not communicated to. We are communicated through. Look, if you don't understand what you've gotten, ask your boss. If you don't want to ask one on one with your boss, fine, ask her in a staff meeting. If you don't want to do that, ask your peer buddy manager. Or if you have good relationships with most of your peers on your boss's team, forwarded to them and ask them in an email. Anyone know what this means? Anybody got any insight? Crickets. Now look, if you have a good network, the second thing you do is ping some of them. Outside of your peers reporting to your boss, ask them the meaning of what you're hearing. There is somebody who knows the inside story and maybe they can even tell you what they think it means for you and your team. That said, be careful. If you get a worrisome notification, do not act on it by sharing it with your team without corroboration from two or three others. You don't want to be Chicken Little here creating a retention problem. Oh, there's a big problem, right. Why it would come out in an email, I don't know, but every once in a while it happens. Heck, Taco Bell, I think, pardon me, I may have the company association wrong. I think they fired people by text messages in London a number of years ago. So clearly an email with bad news wouldn't surprise me. In terms of gathering more data, ask your team, how could we do better connecting your work to the company? Okay.
- [27:49]
B
And next, the volume of work I have is manageable.
- [27:53]
C
Yeah. If you've been doing one on ones here, any answer, good or bad, shouldn't surprise you. If you haven't been doing one on ones, we're sorry about your surprise, but we are not surprised. Dude, you missed it. If you've got a low score, don't assume someone or most or everyone has too much work yet. For now, just ask what's your volume of work and how is it too much?
- [28:17]
B
Taking everything into account, the targets and standards I am required to achieve in my work are fair.
- [28:24]
C
This has been used as a question in previous non engage previous surveys that are not necessarily engagement. Typically, better performers give higher scores in this question. Lower performers give lower scores. The opposite can be true. But then you probably have a retention problem with your higher performers in some cases. A lower score here means that there is a perception that there are not nearly enough standards of any type. That's easily changed by doing our job as managers doing much more performance communication feedback. Performance communication is a target and is a standard. It shines a light on a target and standard they are. They're a form of targets and standards. And the way to do this easily and quickly is using our manager tools feedback model licensees. There's a link to that in the bottom of the show notes. If you've gotten a low score here, ask and capture what targets and standards are unfair. Okay.
- [29:21]
B
I feel that I am trusted to make my own decisions about how best do my job.
- [29:27]
C
Yeah, it's interesting. This is. It's of a theme, right? You can put all these together and often in engagement surveys they clump them together like this one did, by categories like management or quality of life or whatever. And some engagement surveys, some other surveys, once you answer a question, you can't go back and they're looking for fissures in the data. In this particular question, the keyword is trusted. If you want to improve trust, the answer is manager tools one on ones. Look, this question obviously also gets to modes and methods of work and thus touches on issues of process and systems and the dreaded specter of micromanagement. Mythical though it is. We encourage you to refer to our previous guidance for ask and capture. What are we doing that lowers trust and what can we do to help you feel good about making your own decisions. Okay.
- [30:22]
B
I am happy with the way work is allocated in my part of the business.
- [30:27]
C
Yeah, I'm probably a little bit too much of a tripwire. That word happy bothers me. Right. Because it's a feeling in the modern workplace, which we're assuming is virtually identical to the workplaces that do engagement surveys. It's unlikely that work allocation is a big problem, so you may not see it happening if in fact there's an allocation problem. So just ask what work isn't being allocated reasonably and what can we do about it?
- [30:55]
B
Great. Okay, so that concludes the questions around my work. Let's stop there. And next week we'll. We'll pick up with the next topic, which is questions regarding management, which will.
- [31:08]
C
Be a great one, many of which the questions start with my manager. So we are in the weeds on this one.
- [31:15]
B
There you go. All right, folks. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, dude. Appreciate it.
- [31:19]
C
You bet.
- [31:20]
B
So.