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Tag: Facilitation

5 Tips to Employee Engagement for Remote Teams

Written by Andre Oentoro on . Posted in Articles.

After hiring candidates, companies often ignore the importance of their employees’ well-being. If you’re wondering why some companies can have a high turnover rate, regardless of how popular they are among giant names, the percentage of employee engagement is one of those contributing factors to this situation.

While managers can set up a fun activity to keep their employees engaged at the office, they can’t really do the same now due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This dreadful situation has forced many to put employees’ safety first. Hence, working from home isn’t that odd anymore.

That doesn’t mean managers can’t initiate an employee engagement program on remote terms. This article will dive into how businesses can thrive by improving employee engagement even though they are working away from the office.

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The Importance of Employee Engagement

Employees are companies’ biggest assets. Keeping them happy at your workplace will greatly benefit your business. After all, happy employees will do their best at work, resulting in better outcomes.

Here are a few benefits of getting your employees engaged.

Reduce turnover rates

Turnover is often one of the manager’s biggest enemies when it comes to ensuring a running project. Sometimes employees can quit at a time when companies need them the most, and that’s something managers can’t avoid or hold them to stay longer. This is where employee engagement plays a big part in avoiding this situation.

When companies pay attention to employees’ difficulties at work and provide them with a solution that helps overcome the situation, employees can put more trust in the organization. More trust means higher loyalty, which decreases their consideration to move out.

This can be done if the company provides a number of onboarding processes via training videos to help employees get the experience of what they can expect from the company. The onboarding also improves the communication between the company and employees so that they get engaged from the get-go.

Improve productivity

Productivity has been linked to employees’ ability to finish a task and handle a situation in a timely manner. But when said employees are unable to concentrate at work, whether it’s from internal or external problems, they may lose their performance. If companies have engaged with employees well, things that may potentially reduce productivity can be identified and avoided quickly.

Better customer service

Enthusiastic employees at work bring such a positive vibe around them. This can often be seen in the way employees treat and communicate with customers. Highly engaged employees don’t see work as an inevitable responsibility as an adult. They consider getting up every day to work to ensure they provide solutions to customers they are communicating with while also benefiting from working.

5 Tips to Improve Employee Engagement for Remote Team

1. Encourage two-way communications

Communication is key in every part of life, including the workplace. Make sure to always have clear communication with employees, so you can get rid of misunderstandings at work.

After all, the workplace is one of the common areas where people get misunderstood easily. If you can’t initiate direct, two-way communication with people working in your organization, they may feel left out and consider you don’t provide the solution they are facing at the moment.

2. Listen to them

Make sure your employees don’t get left out even though they are working on a remote term. While they don’t often show any difficulties because of the distance, managers should ensure if they are doing okay in the first place.

Many won’t initiate a conversation due to location and time differences. That’s why employees keep almost everything about work themselves—asking if they face a certain problem while remote working can improve their connection with you and possibly open up for more conversation in the future.

3. Recognize their efforts

Companies often don’t see what their employees have done in maintaining their performance at work. Managers only see the result without considering how much effort one has put into gaining such an outcome.

Make sure to recognize your employees’ efforts and appreciate them for what they do. After all, everyone’s hard work has made it possible for the company to thrive in this difficult time. So, show them that you acknowledge their work.

4. Reward your employees

The act of acknowledging someone’s work may come in many forms, including giving a simple ‘thanks’ and round applause. While these are common and relatively inexpensive, you can go as far as giving points or a bonus as a reward for their hard work.

Your employees will surely appreciate it if their boss shares gifts or free coupons to the nearest villa when they achieve a goal. It shows that companies take care of their employees by giving them a reward after working hard.

Knowing how companies take little things, such as small wins matter, will improve how employees see their workplace. This convinces them more that they are working in the right place.

5. Create fun activities together

Sometimes working from the home policy can greatly impact employees in terms of getting burnout quickly. Compared when working in the office, employees could say hi to each other and wind down a little bit when the tension was too serious or when the workload was so heavy.

Remote working means the ability to communicate with other teammates is limited, which often causes more stress to employees. In order to avoid a quick burnout, managers can provide fun activities or games virtually. Getting into games can reduce stress and boost the employee’s motivation to work after it’s done.

Takeaway

Remote teams are prone to having burnout because they are limited to doing certain activities like they used to. When employees are easily stressed out without a quick handle from the company, they will feel excluded from the entire organization.

In the long term, such condition may reduce their performance and ownership as they don’t feel connected at all. Managers can handle this situation by taking into consideration what makes these employees engaged again.

It’s crucial to introduce exciting activities to boost up their mood. Make sure to listen to their voices and create a safe space for a private conversation. These will help remote employees engage in the company they are working.

The Power of Silence in Managing Communication

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Silence can be a self-caring haven. A retreat from the noisy stressful realm of everyday life – bathing in silence. It can be a ground for becoming more self-aware and for collecting one’s thoughts. It can be a way to get someone’s attention. And it can be uncomfortable.

In groups, silence can lead to suboptimal performance when used as a conscious passive-aggressive tactic or is a withholding of information. It may be driven by feelings like conflict aversion, anxiety, shyness, unworthiness, or laziness. Sometimes it is nothing more than forgetting to respond to an email, text, or call that has gone to the bottom of the to-do list. Sometimes it is a means for holding on to power and control.

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Silence As a Tactic

A long-respected model identifies five stages of team development – forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Of these, storming is the most critical and the most difficult to work through, particularly if one or more members of the team are averse to conflict.

Silence as a tactic is the purposeful cutting off of communication, without warning or explanation, to avoid conflict or to freeze out someone who is seen as an opponent, an annoyance, or as a threat to the status quo. This is colloquially called ‘ghosting.’

An Example

In one situation, a manager, Jim, felt threatened by a team member, Sue, who challenged his ideas and raised the need for greater attention to project management processes. The manager did not respond to Sue’s calls, texts, or emails that addressed her concerns. Jim ignored her when she requested a one-on-one conversation. In one instance Jim publicly complemented another team member for something initiated by Sue. Jim made a show of being cordial to Sue in front of others while avoiding any one-on-one contact.

Silence Gets in the Way of Storming

It becomes impossible to address conflicts and address relationship issues when individuals do not allow for dialog by disengaging, ghosting individuals, or otherwise cutting communication. This becomes even more damaging when the team has not gone through a forming process to identify roles, goals, and ground rules.

Without well-managed storming, the team is faced with unhealthy relationships and ineffectual conflict throughout its life. The result is suboptimal performance.

Withholding Input: The Abilene Paradox

Another type of silence in teams is the silence of withholding. It leads to poor decisions and unhealthy relationships because it robs the team of valuable information.

The Trip to Abilene is a story by Jerry B. Harvey about how four intelligent and well-meaning people took an unpleasant trip to somewhere that none of them wanted to go.   One came up with a suggestion to take the trip. Each of the others failed to say that they did not want to go because they did not want to disappoint the others.  The one who made the suggestion also did not want to go, he thought the others might like the trip. Had anyone spoken up and said what they felt and why the group would have been happy to stay put and enjoy their time together at home.

The Abilene Paradox is a phenomenon that takes its name from this anecdote. It is the cause of many a misstep by teams and organizations. People do not speak their mind when what is in their mind is opposed to the perceived general opinion of the people around them. In the paradox, people are consciously aware that they oppose the idea and are acting contrary to their own thoughts and insights.

People don’t speak up because it takes effort to come to the table with a compelling argument. More often they may think that what they have to say is unimportant, stupid, and/or bound to upset someone. They may fear retribution and censure a fear that is quite rational given many examples of persecuted whistleblowers and of the negative effects of arguing against a favored idea, design, plan, etc.

Harvey quoted Herbert Porter a Nixon campaign aid as saying that he “was not one to stand up in a meeting and say that this should be stopped”, a decision he then attributed to “the fear of the group pressure that would ensue, of not being a team player.”  Porter was referring to the Watergate scandal.

Few will risk saying that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Hans Christian Anderson’s tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes brings out the difficulty of saying what you think. In this story, a vain emperor is tricked into believing that he was getting a suit of clothes that could only be seen by the most intelligent people.  No one but a child had the courage to appear unintelligent and tell the emperor that he wasn’t wearing any clothes.  The emperor himself was too vain to admit that even he couldn’t see the new suit.

Whatever the reason, not speaking up results in suboptimal performance and trips to Abilene.

What to Do – Mindfully Manage Communications

Silence whether it is used as a tactic or is the withholding of information, damages team performance.

It can be addressed by paying conscious attention to the communication process.  Managing communication is arguably the most important aspect of project management. With well-managed communication, teams can avoid or heal unhealthy relationships, address conflicts, and make the most effective decisions

The communication process must be a subject for team discussion and fine-tuning to address the issue of silence. This is best done during the forming stage of team development as part of setting ground rules. Regular attention to the communication process is needed throughout the team’s life to make sure that the ground rules are effective and are being followed.

Mindfulness, self-awareness, self-management, as well as respect and empathy for others, are foundations for effective communication. Cultivate these and do your best to ensure open communication.

Performance, Attention and Focus

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

The way you and your teams pay attention and focus is crucial to achieving sustained optimal performance.

“A primary task of leadership is to direct attention. To do so, leaders must learn to focus their own attention.”[1] Daniel Goleman

Optimal performance is sustainably achieving goals efficiently and effectively, to your best ability within current conditions.  To perform, individuals, teams, and organizations manage and apply situation specific technical and administrative skills, project, program, and process management, supported by relationship capabilities like communications, conflict management, decision making, and expectations management.

These capabilities rely on attention and a realistic perspective informed by positive values like objectivity and servant leadership. A realistic perspective realizes that change is inevitable and that there is uncertainty because we live and work in a complex system (our environment, organization, etc.) [2]

While attention, perspective, and values are equally important, this article focuses on attention. Let’s look at what we mean by attention, its importance, and what you can do to cultivate it.

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Attention

According to Amisha Jha, a neuroscientist, there are three kinds of attention:

  • Focused attention – directed to a specific object. It is concentration like shining a flashlight on an object, for example, a person in a conversation or work on a task. On an organizational level, focused attention directs resources to a specific project or process.
  • Open attention – seeing or being objectively aware of what is occurring in a broad expanse, mindful awareness. Open attention enables a stepping back from focus to be in touch with what is occurring in and around the object of focus.
  • Executive attention – deciding what within the field of open attention to attend to and what to do about it, regulating responses with awareness and discernment.

Objects of Attention

Objects of attention may be anything – a project, an organization, a task, presentation, thought, sound, physical sensation, or any observable phenomena.

According to Daniel Goleman focused attention has three modes: awareness of self, others, and the wider world. [3]

With self-focus, the primary objects are thoughts, physical sensations, and feelings. With other-focus, the principal objects are other people and things and their behavior.  Focus outward is diffuse open awareness without focusing on any particular object. It is seeing the big picture and disengaging from routine attentiveness to allow for creativity and exploration.

Projects are Objects

A project is an object. It focuses an organization’s attention by dedicating human effort and other resources to create or change a product, putt on an event or make a change of any kind. Effective project stakeholders are aware of the impact their actions have on their environment and the way the environment impacts the project. Executives govern to manage a portfolio of projects, avoid distractions, and choose the most effective places to focus attention.

Projects, tasks, or activities, whether performed by teams or individuals, are objects of attention. A project team focuses on the project. Teams and individuals focus on performing, attentive to the way they perform and interact, aware of what impact they are having on their environment and how their environment is affecting them, their tasks, and projects.

Why Focus Matters

Lose focus and performance suffers. Fail to be attentive to what’s going on in and around you and performance suffers.

Concentration and skillful attention elicit a Flow experience, being in the Zone, a state of optimal performance and deep relaxation.

Consider what happens when sponsors or clients lose interest in a project, they once considered important. Other “interesting” things crop up to grab their attention. Resources start getting pulled away. The project manager is less able to influence some stakeholders to fulfill commitments. Performance suffers. The same kind of thing happens when you as an individual are distracted. Performance suffers.

The more undistracted the focus the greater the quality of performance. According to Cal Newport:

“Decades of research from both psychology and neuroscience underscore that undistracted concentration is required to learn complicated information efficiently.”

“Focus also produces better results. Recent research on the attention residue effect,  for example, reveals that when you switch your attention from one target to another, there’s a residue left behind from the first target that reduces your cognitive performance for a while before fading. In other words, if you quickly check your phone or e-mail inbox, your brain will operate more slowly for the next 15 to 30 minutes.” [4]

Fatigue and Distractions Get in the Way

Attention is a natural capacity that varies in strength depending on one’s energy level and powers of concentration.

The tired mind easily slips away from objects of focus and lacks the strength to bring focus back to the object. Open attention and executive function suffer because the mind is too easily drawn to the many distractions that call to it and it is too weak to return to awareness.

It may seem relaxing to just go with the mental stream of thoughts, feelings, and external distractions. However, when you regularly allow yourself to flit from one thing to another as they randomly appear, you weaken your concentrative powers.

Improve Your Attention

Three things enhance all the aspects of attention – focus, open awareness, and executive function:

  1. Strong concentration, mindfulness, and objectivity aided by minimizing distractions and managing the ones that cannot be avoided
  2. A process and systems view that recognizes the realities of interdependence, cause and effect relationships, and continuous change
  3. Values upon which to base skillful decision making.

Exercise Your Mind

Let the practice of consciously managing distractions seep into day to day, moment to moment experience. When you notice that your focus has slipped away, make the effort to bring it back. The more you bring your mind back to a chosen object of focus, the more you strengthen your power of concentration.

There are many exercises to strengthen your power of concentration. One is to take a few minutes a day to sit quietly and count your out-breaths from one to ten. If you lose count (it is quite normal if you do), don’t beat yourself up for it. just start from one again. Don’t worry if your thoughts stream like a waterfall. Persist and the concentration will calm the mind.

Cultivate relaxed concentration. Distractions will come. Congratulate yourself for noticing and going back to the counting or whatever your object of focus is. No need to strain or over think it. Your open attention notices distraction and your executive function brings you back or lets the mind wander.

Mindfulness meditation is a highly effective means for honing your focused attention, open minded observation, and executive attention. See www.Self-AwareLiving,com for exercises and information on how to integrate meditation, and systems and process thinking into your life.

[1] https://hbr.org/2013/12/the-focused-leader

[2] For more on perspective see “Putting the Power of Process Thinking into Action“[2]  and Vision And Systems View To Improve Performance[2].  For more on values and decision making see “Making Effective Decisions: What Is The Truth And How Important Is It?“[2]

[3] https://hbr.org/2013/12/the-focused-leader

[4] {https://time.com/4166333/focus-is-the-new-iq/https://time.com/4166333/focus-is-the-new-iq/}

The Power of Not Forcing

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

If your goal is to perform optimally, as an individual, team, or organization, cultivate the power of not forcing.

A friend asked my view on Wu Wei or Flow. “In work and life, should one apply the notion of Flow in full?” My response was, “Yes, aspire to apply Wu Wei in work and the rest of life, being effortlessly present and aware, focused and active.”

Wu Wei – Flow

“The Taoists speak of wu wei, “non-doing,” and the paradox of wei wu wei, “doing without doing” or “action without effort.” In more modern terms, it is Flow – the quality of being totally immersed in action so that there is a loss of the sense of self and time and a natural application of skills, knowledge and awareness unencumbered by self-consciousness, worry, judging and other distractions.”

Wu Wei is not about being passive and accomplishing nothing – floating down the river on a raft and going with the current. It is about working smart. It is about not forcing.

Action without Effort

Life is a stream of thoughts, feelings, sensations, conversations, actions, decisions, intentions, plans and all the rest of the things we do. It occurs in a complex social and physical environment that is constantly changing.

It is as if you were in a fast-moving river. If you go against the current and try to force things, you use a lot of energy and risk getting nowhere. If you go with the current, navigating as best you can to achieve a goal, you use the energy of the stream’s current to your advantage. There may be times when struggling against the current is necessary, but for the most part it is a poor choice.

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The Master Butcher

There is the story of the master butcher who says the knife he has used for nineteen years needs no sharpening. He says it is because he goes at his work by spirit,
“Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and following things as they are. So, I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.” His knife never touches bone.

“However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until — flop! the whole thing comes apart … . Then I stand still and let the joy of the work sink in, … I wipe off the knife and put it away.” Chuang Tsu

Mastering Your Work

There are many stories like that. They point the way to optimal performance, to master your work and let go into it with confidence and mindful focused care. Then there is a joy in not only completing the job but in the process, in the work itself.

Managing people in projects and organizations is more complex than cutting up an Ox. Master managers work with communication and collaboration tools. They use them so skillfully that they cut through the conflicts, complexities and ambiguity to clarity and a way forward that optimally applies the team’s energy to achieve common goals.

The master manager works towards personal and team Flow.

Flow

In Flow, stress and its causes dissolve, time becomes irrelevant, doing happens effortlessly, perfectly in sync with the needs of the moment. The ego steps out of the way and lets intuition and knowledge do their things. Master managers let their mastery do the work.

Flow experiences are common in activities that fully engage the body and mind. Many people experience Flow while immersed in sports, writing, dancing, or doing whatever turns them on. Some experience it during threatening events that trigger fight, freeze, or flight responses.

The challenge is to make everything you do a Flow experience. Imagine being in Flow in a boring meeting (which becomes no longer boring), or during a crisis or conflict.

As I told my friend, aspire to be effortlessly present and aware, focused and active in everything you do, everywhere.

Presence and Aware Knowing

In Flow, in the Zone, you are entirely immersed in the activity at hand, while there is presence and knowing. The doing is unfolding. There is a felt sense of being fully engaged and aware of what is going on.

Note how it feels when undistractedly watching a good movie, identified with the characters and feeling their emotions as your own. Is there a heightened sense of awake awareness of the overall experience? You are not thinking about what is going on or critiquing the film. Your thoughts are not getting in the way of fully experiencing the movie. There is awareness.

Distracted Doing

When not in Flow your mind is in a monolog of judging, commenting on, and monitoring what you are doing. Distracting thoughts take you out of Flow. You think-about instead of experiencing.

It is like a football player thinking about just where and when he or she is going to kick the ball with what part of their foot, worrying about it, as opposed to letting his or her training and natural capacity kick the ball.

Distracted doing is far less efficient. Thinking about the action creates stress and takes the focus away from the doing. It gets in the way of optimal performance, the kind of performance that happens when you are in Flow.

Being in Flow is sailing as opposed to rowing. The sailor works the natural movement of wind and water, steering the boat and adjusting the sails as the wind shifts. The master sailor is in Flow. Distracted doing is more like rowing against the current, much more effort, less effect.

Transition to Doing without Doing

It takes training to go from distracted doing to “doing without doing.”

Learn the skills required to do your work. Become an expert user of your tools and fully know your process. Learn from each experience. Shoot for but do not expect perfection.

On a deeper level, cultivate the mindfulness and concentration required to avoid the distractions that take your focus away from your performance. Cultivate the trust in your capability to perform so you can let go of the reins and let yourself go into the flow.

Be self-aware enough to know when you are reacting rather than responding.

Learn to let things happen, confident in your abilities, as opposed to forcing them to happen.

References

[1] Pitagorsky, George Breakthrough Nov 2017 Three Pillars for Optimal living 

[1] http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/chuang-tzu.htm

Be Straight with Yourself to Get What You Want and Want What You Get

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles.

Being straight with yourself puts you on solid ground for getting what you want. And who doesn’t like to get what they want?

Can you own up to your motivations and limitations, your values, and your intentions? Are you self-aware enough to acknowledge your capacity and capability and to own up to your strengths and weaknesses? Can you manage your emotions to be responsive rather than reactive? Are you clear about your values and intentions and how they motivate you?

What Do You Want?

Here is a little story about owning up to what you really want.

A person came to the Guru to get instruction on how to deal with an exploitive partner (it could be an abusive, uncooperative, or incompetent boss, subordinate, or peer).

Guru asks, “So you want to change your partner.”

“No, I want to change myself” the person answered.

Guru (who is a bit of a mind reader) says, “No. You only say that because you think wanting to change the other is not “spiritual,” not giving and allowing; that it is manipulative.  You might have read somewhere that the only thing you can do is to change yourself and your perception, that you need to accept things as they are.”

Influencing

“Admit it.” the Guru says. “You are unhappy with the relationship, and you want change. You want to change the other or to have them change themselves into someone you’d like them to be, doing (or not doing) the things you want them to do.”

Guru continues, “You want to change the situation and you think the only thing you can do is to change yourself because you can’t change your partner. You are correct, you can’t change others.  But you can change your perception. When you do, behavior changes. When your behavior changes, you influence others, so they are likely to change their behavior. Though the change may or may not be to your liking.

You can’t change others, but you can influence their behavior.”

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Are You Being Straight?

The Guru concluded, “Are you being straight with yourself? Are you acknowledging your true feelings, thoughts, wants, and needs? Do you have an accurate sense of the situation? If not, you won’t get the change you want.

“Once you acknowledge the situation and your part in it, you can look in on it. You can be both a part of it and an objective observer, a witness. Stepping back to objectively observe you can better know the situation and it’s causes. Then you can apply the courage to work to change it or learn to settle into it.”

A Self-serving Boss

Take the example of a self-serving, manipulative manager. She exploits and verbally abuses team members. She takes credit for successes and blames others for failures; expresses no gratitude.  You are frustrated, depressed, and angry.

You’ve read a self-help book or listened to a podcast that says you can only change yourself and you begin to deny that you want to change her. So, you learn some techniques to manage your anger. You apply them and the frustration seems relieved; you’ve accepted the situation. Or have you?

The frustration doesn’t go away, instead, it gets buried or turned inward. You become frustrated with yourself and your inability to accept the situation as it is. You feel powerless. Your anger turns to resignation and depression.

A Solid Foundation

When you acknowledge your desire to change the situation and accept that you can change yourself and influence others, you courageously do it or you learn to settle into it, truly accepting what you can’t change.

If it’s neither change nor settles, then you complain (to yourself or out loud) and everyone suffers. When you are straight with yourself you can decide and do.

What You Can Do

When faced with a challenging other, do a reality check.  Are they behaving in an abusive, exploitive manner or are you overly sensitive or expecting too much? Or is it a combination? Are you being open and empathetic? Are they? What are the risks of being straight with them?

Answering these questions will put you in a position to more effectively manage the situation to get what you want and be more likely to like what you get.

Depending on the situation, voice your wants and needs. You can confront your partner gently but firmly and tell them what you are feeling and how their behavior affects you. You can ask them to change their behavior.  If you don’t say what you want, the likelihood of getting it is small.

At the same time, you can change your perception and become less vulnerable to their abusive behavior. Here we are on a slippery slope. You don’t want to become a doormat or accept the unacceptable. You need to know your limits  In negotiation it is knowing your best and final offer and having the resolve to walk away.

Changing your perspective to unconditionally accept what is, is wise. However, accepting what is does not mean that you can’t do something to influence the future. Remember, you can’t change the past or the present moment, but your thoughts, speech, and actions create a ripple that changes the future.

Knowing what you want and don’t want, influences your behavior. You establish goals and objectives, and these motivate you to do what you can.

Values, Intentions, Implications

What are you willing to do to get what you want? Does getting what you want to harm others?  What are the immediate, medium, and long-term implications?

Being straight with yourself includes knowing your values and intentions. The values may be saving time and making money, health and happiness for yourself and others, environmental health, ethical and non-harming behavior, safety, and security. Your intention might be to win at the expense of everyone or to find win-win solutions. Your highest intention may be to become a great servant leader or the richest and most powerful.

Getting What You Want

Opening to self-knowledge, being straight with yourself, may sound easy, though for many people it is not. It requires the courage to confront your beliefs and acknowledge realities that you do not like. It requires stepping back to objectively observe and accept things you don’t like.

When you own up to your motivations and limitations; your values and intentions, and acknowledge your expectations, capacity and capability, strengths, and weaknesses you can get what you want and be more likely to like what you get.

Cultivate self-awareness and be straight with yourself.