Have you ever been faced with managing a new team to find that your employees are unhappy, or aren’t performing as well as you hoped?
Whilst there could be a myriad of contributing factors, managers should consider learning the work style of their employees as soon and as thoroughly as they can.
Global CEO Coach and former HR Director at Microsoft, Sabina Nawaz, believes: “When your team knows how you like to work and how you plan to manage them, they’re able to produce results faster.”
Writing in Harvard Business Review, Nawaz believes that understanding both yours and your employees work style can help you get to the bottom of any underlying issues.
She gives the example of ‘Sveta’, a leader that likes to solve complex, technical problems that was promoted to manage a new team.
With her keen attention to detail and high value on efficiency, she was direct with her team, calling out problems but failing to recognise when people performed well.
As a result, her team spent an excessive time perfecting things before bringing them to Sveta, which led one colleague to start looking elsewhere. Three of the direct reports had complained to Sveta’s manager about her micromanaging behaviour and they said they were unclear about her expectations.
In addition, Sveta felt overwhelmed and felt that she didn’t know her team well enough to start delegating.
Nawaz suggests that creating ‘work style’ tables to better communicate and understand each other’s ways of working is one way to improving such situations.
Here’s an example from Sveta’s table:
My work style | How to respond to my work style |
I try to understand something deeply by asking a lot of probing questions. | Engage and debate with me to formulate the best solution. |
I raise tough issues upfront and directly. | If you feel that my response is blunt or direct, realise that it’s about the issue, not about you personally. |
After sharing her own table, Sveta asked her direct reports to create their own work-style tables. They had a follow up meeting and asked questions about each other’s tables to clarify. This resulted in Sveta being able to delegate effectively and team member’s productivity increased, with fewer misunderstandings.
Whilst this is a useful exercise, Nawaz adds that it doesn’t solve all the problems and people should be willing to adapt their behaviours. For example, if the team say they like positive feedback and this isn’t something you often do, make a conscious effort to praise and commend employees.
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SOURCE: HR Grapevine
Rianna Fulham
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