Culture

  • Anonymoose Trolling

    With the growing prevalence of virtual meetings over the last five years, I’ve had the debate many times on whether anonymous Q&A should be provided. I’ve had this debate at Avanti and with other companies and leadership teams. Providing an anonymous submission option can surface a lot of Q’s. Leadership teams are generally hesitant or explicitly uncomfortable with anonymous Q&A because they worry the anonymity will lead to people trying to throw “gotcha’s” in, or even blatantly trolling the presenter or company. And those concerns are warranted. We’ve been offering anonymous Q&A during virtual townhalls and company wide meetings for years and we’ve had some pretty gnarly and aggressive loaded questions come through. Not always and not consistently but on multiple occasions.

    Despite that, I am adamant in my belief that it’s always worth providing the option for anonymous Q&A. My rationale is if someone is willing to submit a trolling question in the Q&A, they are almost certainly willing to say that same comment behind closed doors to their peers and colleagues. I’d prefer the opportunity to address a harsh comment publicly and provide my own position on the topic, even if it’s uncomfortable, then allow it to circulate privately.

    Over time, I’ve come to believe there are two approaches to take when someone puts a loaded question in that has the obvious intent of being hurtful or insinuating something negative. Either you ignore the clearly cynical intent and address the comment head on without becoming disturbed by it OR you must be aggressive in defending whatever topic, objective, or team is clearly being attacked. Anything in between comes off poorly. I’ve only taken the “defend aggressively” approach once and consider it a tool for a particularly offensive question.

    To use an example, let’s say someone makes a comment clearly intended to discredit a specific team and the work they are doing. Perhaps one team has an important goal, is working exceptionally hard, but hasn’t made as much public progress as you would like. And someone says something like “is it even realistic to believe team A achieves their goal by the end of this quarter?” You know the whole company knows the answer to the question so it’s probably not coming from a place of curiosity but a desire to highlight the team’s miss. I would accept the concern and speak to the situation transparently, acknowledge the shortfall, discuss why you believe it occurred, and what steps you believe can fix it (e.g., “No. I don’t think the team will accomplish their goal by the end of the quarter. With the benefit of hindsight, we set the wrong goal. Here’s why. Here’s what we’re doing about it”).

  • Showing up for your team

    At some point in your professional career, your team will go through a challenging period. It’s natural for there to be ups and downs at work, as there are in life. Through some of my own mistakes and trial and error I’ve come to believe there are certain principles that resonate with teams when addressing challenges, regardless of the cause.

    1. Address the issue head on. Never shy away from a problem. If you see it, your team sees it. If you proactively address it, it will be better received than if your team has to raise it with you. Never put on an overly positive air or insinuate the situation is better than it is. Pretending it’s all good, if you don’t feel that way, is sure to be poorly received. People pick up on inauthenticity and it reduces trust in you and raises questions about your judgement.
    2. Be as transparent as possible. The more information you can share about the situation the better. Calibrate what you share based on the maturity of the team, and in some cases, limit information to respect people’s privacy. For example, if I’m speaking about financial performance with a more junior team, I will likely use higher level references and go into less detail than I might with a senior executive team. But generally, the more you can share the better. It contributes to the team’s professional development and breeds trust.
    3. Share how you’re feeling and discuss the plan. It’s ok to be vulnerable, even if you’re feeling stressed or anxious. Vulnerability based trust is powerful. And if you’re feeling that way, the team has probably already picked up on it. But make sure to pair those feelings with a clear sense of direction and ideally an action plan. Hearing your leader say “I’m really, really stressed about the timeline for our new plant opening and I’m worried we might be delayed” is scary if that’s the end of the message. Hearing, “I’m really, really stressed about the timeline for our new plant opening and I’m worried we might be delayed. I’ve put in an order with two alternative suppliers for the key part we need and have reached out to our facilities in Mexico as an alternative backup. I should have more information next week on where we are” is better.

    Every leader will be put in the position of managing through a challenging time with their team. How you do so and communicate will leave a lasting impression. More so than how you navigate the good times.

  • Promotions (1/2)

    Promotion decisions often receive far too little consideration given how critical they are to the culture of an organization. I strongly believe promotions are the single biggest culturally re-enforcing action you can take. Much more so than anything you say, the action of promoting someone tells the organization, “this person exemplifies the behaviors that we as an organization respect and celebrate.” Promotions send a message to the organization that says: this person is a role model of our culture (even if it’s not the culture you want!). The more senior the promotion, the truer this is; promoting someone to VP sends a much stronger cultural message than promoting someone to Team Lead, and accordingly, the consequences are higher (i.e., if you make a mistake promoting someone as a first-time manager, it will be far less culturally damaging than mistakenly promoting someone to VP).

    Despite their importance, promotions regularly happen for the wrong reasons. Here is a list of bad reasons to promote someone, which can be all too tempting:

    • Retention. There’s someone on the team who’s great. But you don’t think they are bought in. You’ve heard they are looking for roles elsewhere. To try and retain them, you give them a promotion. By itself, a promotion alone is unlikely to solve a lack of engagement, nor should it be the driving factor for why you promote someone.
    • Compensation. You promote someone to push them into a higher salary band so that you can pay them more. Mission accomplished in getting them additional pay; however, if they aren’t a good fit for the new role they’ve been promoted into, that is all the organization will see and experience.
    • Tenure. They’ve been doing the job for a long time, and they want demonstrated career growth. So you promote them. If they aren’t capable and deserving of that promotion, it will be obvious to the organization.
    • Because you promised it to them. This is probably the most damaging of all. If you commit a promotion to someone based on a timeline, to satisfy that individual’s desire, you are putting yourself in a very difficult situation. Promotions need to be earned, not given. When given, the team will know.
    • Because you have no one else. I have a lot of empathy for this one. Sometimes you have a missing role you desperately need filled, which can make it tempting to prematurely promote someone into a position. Unfortunately, this can have the unintended consequence of setting them up for failure.

    Promotions should exclusively be awarded to individuals who are high or top performers in their current role, are eager to progress their career and take on an additional or new scope of responsibilities, and are a role model for your company’s core values. When done well, promotions can be hugely rewarding to your team and positively enhance overall culture.

    A major watch out for more junior leaders is making poor promotion decisions. It can be really hard to deny a promotion to someone who isn’t deserving of one but believes strongly they are. That’s why, for the sake of the broader culture, it’s important at an organizational level to ensure these are treated as critical decisions.

    *This doesn’t quite account for firms that operate on an “up or out” promotion framework (e.g., certain investment/consulting/banking firms) but the principles generally still apply.