To keep your employees engaged, be curious and challenging

Leaders play a significant role in helping employees understand why their jobs matter, but it’s not just about connecting their work to a larger purpose. You can also do it by demonstrating curiosity:

— Explore, ask questions, and engage people on their ideas about the future.

— Make clear that there is a wide range of possibilities for how work gets done and that you want your employees to try new things.

— At the same time, keep them focused on meeting goals and making progress.

— Remain ambitious in the face of both failure and success, and push your people to continually accomplish more.

(Adapted from “How to Make Work More Meaningful for Your Team,” by Lewis Garrad and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic.)

Don’t shy away from making friends at work

Friendships in the office can be tricky. When the boundaries are blurred between the professional and the personal, there’s a chance for feelings and team performance to be hurt. But just because there is potential for messy entanglements doesn’t mean you should avoid chatting with your colleagues. In fact, research shows that people who have friends at work have higher levels of productivity, retention, and job satisfaction. So take time to get to know people and forge bonds.

(Adapted from “Having Work Friends Can Be Tricky, but It’s Worth It,” by Emma Seppala and Marissa King.)

Set up ground rules for your next difficult conversation

Difficult conversations are challenging in part because you don’t know if or when the discussion will go off the rails. To make sure things go smoothly, agree on a code of conduct with your counterpart beforehand. At a minimum, suggest no interrupting, no yelling and no personal attacks. (Those are basics, yes, but it’s helpful for everyone to be reminded.) Then ask what other rules are important to your counterpart. If you’re concerned your colleague won’t abide by the rules, write them down on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. Then you can gently refer to them if, for example, your counterpart begins to raise his voice: “We said we weren’t going to yell. Can you lower your voice?”

(Adapted from the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict, by Amy Gallo.)

Exude calm as a new manager

When you take on your first manager role, people will be watching. What you think, what you say and how you show up can have a direct impact on those you’re leading. It’s important to project calmness, confidence and competence, even if you feel stressed out. Recognise that a fleeting moment of anger or impatience may end up hurting your team’s morale. Think about the kind of manager you want to be, and remind yourself of that ideal in every interaction. Use your self-awareness to sense when you are getting wound up.

(Adapted from “How New Managers Can Send the Right Leadership Signals,” by Amy Jen Su.)

Scale back your work hours

Stress and anxiety in the workplace are not unusual. This may not be too surprising, given that working hours continue to climb for the highest-paid workers. Here are some tips to scale back on the hours you put in:

— Be strategic: Any good strategy involves setting goals, developing a plan for achieving those goals and tracking progress toward those goals. The same is true for productivity.

— Define a metric: Choose a metric for sustainable productivity, for example the number of weekly hours worked. Then track data on that metric, set goals for improving and run experiments to see what influences it.

— Focus on one change at a time: There’s a lot that goes into becoming more productive. But it’s too much to work on too many skills at any one time. Instead, figure out which one thing is the biggest obstacle to your productivity.

— Change your behaviour: Becoming more productive is more like losing weight than memorising the presidents’ names — it is the product of behaviour or lifestyle change, not (only) knowledge.

— Find someone to hold you accountable: It’s really hard to change your behaviour alone. So find someone who wants to go on this journey with you, and be honest about your progress.

(Adapted from “How to Be More Productive Without Burning Out” at HBR.org.)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, February 12th, 2018