Tag: social awareness

Rebuilding Trust Within Your Hybrid Workplace

Mark Mortensen and Heidi K. Gardner reported in a Harvard Business Review article that dozens of companies are reporting declining trust in the Hybrid Workplace model, both amongst employers and employees.  They point out that in the early days when the Pandemic hit, people were forced to work from home because of isolation requirements.  In that environment, when everything was in turmoil and everyone was “in the same boat”, there was a lot of tolerance and trust within organisations, despite the existence of some forms of hybrid workplaces.  However, now with the reduction in the Covid19 presence and associated risk, and the return to workplaces (for some of the time), the level of tolerance and trust has dropped. 

The authors attribute the decline in trust to a number of factors including the lack of preparedness of employees for home-based work (such as the absence of established routines), inadequate home technology, and the unpreparedness of organisations to facilitate information flow.  While the majority of people at some stage had to work from home (because of lockdowns), this prevented employers from choosing the most appropriate employees to work from home.  The problem now is that employees have the very strong expectation that working from home for some part of the week is part of their revised, return-to-work employment contract.   They have experienced the real benefits of working from home in terms of flexibility and reduction in travel time and associated costs.  Some employees experienced heightened productivity and the associated sense of accomplishment.

Now employers are faced with many more employees wanting to work from home with high expectations of this highly desirable condition being granted.  This then raises equity issues for employers in terms of who to allow to work from home now, the number of days that people need to be at work and what days of the week individuals will be allowed to work in their home environment.  It is interesting that in Brisbane City at present, Mondays and Fridays are very quiet traffic days (and there is plenty of parking at railways stations), while the other days of the week have returned to normal traffic flows and associated peak hours and delays.

Declining trust within hybrid workplaces

There is a problem that not everyone is suited to a work-from-home environment and not every home environment facilitates effective at-home work.  Desirable traits for work-at-home employees include initiative, ability to work autonomously, reliability, results oriented and resilience.  If employees lack the desired qualities to be effective working from home then a manager’s trust in their capacity and quality of output is eroded.

While people are working from home, there is a reduced opportunity for workplace relationships to develop through such random activities as the “water cooler chat” which has clear benefits for communication flow, collaboration and team-building.  The resulting limitation on relationship-building impacts on levels of trust and tolerance amongst co-workers.  

In the absence of “line-of-sight” for managers and supervisors there is a declining level of trust in how employees are spending their working day at home.  Many managers and supervisors report that they don’t trust their employees working from home because they “can’t see what they are doing”.   Mark and Heidi report that this has led to increased remote surveillance via electronic monitoring (e.g., keystroke counts) and virtual visual monitoring such as webcams and drones. All of which communicates to the employees that their managers do not trust them – which, in turn, impacts the reciprocation of trust (from employee to employer). 

How to rebuild trust in a hybrid workplace

There are many strategies for building trust within a team, especially in a hybrid workplace.  Below are some suggestions:

  • Create culture change: Lynn Haaland suggests that managers of hybrid work teams can actively promote a “speak up culture” so that issues are addressed in a timely manner.  The willingness to share what is not working well is even more paramount within the hybrid context as dissatisfactions can fester and lead to conflict and lower productivity.
  • Provide guidance for working from home: Many people have written about how to be productive while working remotely.  Managers can share the best suggestions and facilitate team exchanges of what works well for individuals in their home environment.
  • Demonstrate trustworthiness: Mark and Heidi stress the importance of understanding that trust is “reciprocal and bi-directional”.  This puts the onus on the manager to demonstrate trustworthiness in their words and actions and to align them so that they are perceived as congruent. 
  • Be empathetic: Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman argue that empathy is one of the three key elements that build trust in a workplace team.  They explain that empathy can be displayed by resolving conflict, building cooperation, providing helpful feedback, and balancing concern for task with real concern for employees’ welfare.  Empathy also helps to build the manager’s own resilience in the face of the increasing demands of their hybrid workplace.
  • Adopt regular “check-ins”:  If the focus of these check-ins is staff welfare as well as progress on assigned tasks, this will demonstrate empathy and build trust.  This focus involves being prepared to really listen to how an employee is feeling, whether they are coping and what they need to rectify what is not working well.
  • Use collaborate planning processes: Collaborative planning processes such as Force Field Analysis (FFA) and Brainstorming facilitate on-going collaboration, the exchange of ideas and the development of a sense of connection.  Genuine Involvement in planning processes develops employee’s sense of agency and demonstrates that their views are valued, trusted and respected.
  • Establish cross-team projects: Going beyond the immediate team to develop cross-team projects with other teams that have a common interest, concern or problem, helps to build rapport and trust, to break down barriers and silos, and to generate new ideas and perspectives.
  • Be a good role model:  The Mind Tools Team suggest that being a good role model is central to rebuilding trust in the workplace.  This involves honesty, transparency, avoiding micromanagement, clearly communicating expectations and being a team player (not putting own promotion ahead of the team’s welfare). It can also extend to modelling working from home.
  • Undertake more conscious planning and thinking: Bill Schaninger in a podcast interview stressed the need for managers to put more planning and thought into how they manage their hybrid teams.  The world and workplaces have changed dramatically with the advent of the Pandemic and the way we manage has to be re-thought and re-designed.  We can no longer assume that it is “business as usual” but be willing to change and adapt and reinforce for employees that we are across their issues and the new demands on them.

Reflection

The demands on managers are increasing with the widespread adoption of hybrid workplaces.  Yvonne Stedham and Theresa Skaar maintain that what defines a leader is their capacity to see a need for change, make things happen, and encourage others to engage in actions and behaviors that create a “new reality”.  They argue that mindfulness is an essential trait/characteristic for leaders in these changing and challenging times.  Yvonne and Theresa, on the basis of a comprehensive literature review, contend that as managers grow in mindfulness they are able to shift their perspective (re-perceiving), increase their flexibility and cognitive capacity, regulate their emotions and behaviour, and grow in self- and social awareness.

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Image by Ernesto Eslava from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Emotional Self-Awareness

Daniel Goleman, in his interview for the online Mindfulness at Work Summit in June 2018, introduced what he calls the 12 competencies of emotional intelligence.  He has recently rethought the emotional intelligence framework and now has four main groups of competencies (instead of the original five) – (1) self-awareness, (2) self-management, (3) social awareness and (4) relationship management – and 12 competencies that sit under the various groupings.  Emotional self-awareness is the sole competency listed under the first grouping.

Understanding “emotional intelligence”

In the interview with Mo Edjlali, President of Mindful Leader, Daniel explained that the term, “emotional intelligence”, challenges people to think about dealing with emotions intelligently, not being under their control nor ignoring them.  He maintained that emotions are “part and parcel” of life and that whatever we do, even if we think we are being rational or analytical, emotions underpin our choices – our thoughts and actions.

This was brought home to me in a recent conversation with a colleague who was describing a number of actions she had taken to help a homeless person she met when interstate.  She had spoken to this person and got to know their domestic violence situation and decided to provide the person with a meal.  This led to helping her in other ways including providing a particular style of footwear required for a job the person was applying for.  After sharing the story, my colleague then identified the emotions she was feeling as a result of her decision and her compassionate actions.  She was asking herself, “For whose benefit am I doing this?”(uncertainty), “Am I doing this because it makes me feel good?”(doubt), and “What expectations am I creating in this person and can I meet them?”(fear/anxiety).

So, to achieve anything, whether improved productivity or compassionate action, we need to be able to intelligently manage the emotions involved.  Daniel mentioned that in recent workshops in Nashville and Romania, different organisations and different countries, participants realised that when they talk about the characteristics of their best and worst bosses, they are talking about dimensions of emotional intelligence.  My colleague and I have undertaken this exercise with over two thousand managers over more than a decade in our Confident People Management Program, and we have found that people intuitively know what are the characteristics of the best and worst managers and can identify their own feelings when working for either category of manager.  There is remarkable unanimity across multiple groups in multiple locations.  The characteristics could be readily matched to Daniel’s 4 groupings and the 12 competencies of emotional intelligence. Emotional self-awareness is the first and foundational competency described by him.

What is “emotional self-awareness”?

If you have “emotional self-awareness” you have developed  awareness about some personal aspects such as:

  • what you do well and what you do not do well
  • what you are feeling and why you are feeling that way
  • how your feelings impact your thoughts
  • how your feelings and thoughts impact your performance
  • why you are doing what you are doing or being able to answer, what am I doing this for? – your purpose/meaning.

Emotional self-awareness underpins everything because it is the gateway to self-improvement – in all its mutliple aspects, including acquiring the other emotional intelligence competencies.

Daniel suggests that you may not achieve complete emotional self-awareness if you rely on mindfulness alone.  He argues that because of the internal and individual focus of mindfulness, you may be unaware of blind spots.  He suggests that mindfulness in combination with 360-degree feedback can help you to identify and act on these blind spots or hidden gaps in emotional intelligence competencies.  He has developed, with his colleague Richard Boyatzis, an Emotional and Social Competence Inventory (ESCI 360) as a 360-degree feedback instrument to measure the twelve emotional intelligence competencies and to enable identification of blind spots in relation to the competencies.

As Daniel acknowledges, a competent coach can also help in this area of developing accurate emotional self-awareness.  I recall coaching a manager where his blind spot was defensiveness and it was only after providing persistent and constant feedback over a few months that he finally accepted that he was being defensive.  He was then able to demonstrate emotional self-awareness by pulling himself up whenever he started to get defensive and, in the process, name his feelings.   Mindfulness can also help us to accept feedback that is uncomfortable but accurate.

Another route to developing emotional self-awareness and overcoming blind spots is participation in an action learning group where the group norm is “supportive challenge” and feedback is designed to help you be the best you can be and to achieve the best outcomes for your project and yourself.   The action learning set may be less contaminated by political considerations (such as fear of repercussions) or revengeful action, than a 360-degree feedback process.  The honesty norm underpinning action learning may also help to ensure that the feedback is uncontaminated.

As we grow in mindfulness and engage with others through feedback we can develop increased emotional self-awareness and be able to act on the feedback given.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of johnhain on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence

In a recent discussion, Daniel Goleman spoke of the influence of mindfulness on emotional intelligence.  In this discussion, he relied heavily on rigorous research that he and his co-author, Richard Davidson, drew on to write their book, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.

In an earlier book, Daniel had explained how emotional intelligence influenced decision-making, thinking processes and success in leadership and other roles.

In discussing the research behind his new book, Daniel focused on “altered traits” only – those characteristics that tended to be sustained over time, outside the meditative state.

His conclusions from the rigorous scientific studies focused on a number of aspects of emotional intelligence:

1. Self-awareness

The foundational element of emotional intelligence is self-awareness.  This is developed through mindfulness.  People who grow in mindfulness, through meditation practice, are better able to identify their own emotions and the impact that they themselves have on others – through their words and actions.

2. Self-management

The research strongly supports the contention that people who develop mindfulness can understand the triggers that set them off, can more readily gain control over impulse responses and are better able to stay calm even when under stress.  This self-management capacity is very important for people in leadership roles as others take their emotional cues from them.

Self-management, in turn, helps people to stay focused and positive in pursuit of goals, despite setbacks.  It helps us to ride out the waves that disturb the calmness in the ocean of life.

3. Social awareness

Mindfulness helps people recognise social cues and the feelings of others.  It contributes to empathy, particularly where people engage in kindness and compassion meditation.

4.Relationship management

The rigorous research is not strong in supporting the contention that mindfulness enables people to inspire others, coach/mentor people effectively and handle conflict.  However, anecdotal evidence and intuitive thinking suggests that self-awareness, awareness of others’ feelings and the capacity to self-manage, would all contribute to effective people management, but may not be the sole influence in the development of the requisite skill-set.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Quangpraha on Pixabay