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834: How to End Micromanagement Once and For All with Lia Garvin

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Lia Garvin discusses how employees and managers can work together to put an end to micromanaging.

You’ll Learn

  1. The three telltale signs of micromanaging
  2. How micromanaging makes everyone less effective
  3. How to expertly respond to a micromanager

About Lia
Lia Garvin is the bestselling author of Unstuck, TEDx speaker and workplace strategist with experience leading team operations across Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Bank of America. As the Founder of the The Workplace Reframe organizational strategy firm, she equips innovative organizations of any size and industry with the tools to cultivate inclusive, motivated, high performing teams resulting in higher retention, more efficiency, and better business results. She is a sought after expert in the media, featured across Inc, FastCompany, ABC News, CNN Business, US News & World Report, HBR, and more.

Resources Mentioned in the Show

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Lia Garvin Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Lia, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Lia Garvin
Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be back.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into what you’ve been up to lately, and I understand, in particular, you have developed a fascination with the topic of micromanagement. What’s the scoop here?

Lia Garvin
Yes, with micromanagement and how to end it once and for all, I would say.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, lay it on us, what’s the story?

Lia Garvin
Yeah. Since we last met, I actually ended up leaving my corporate job and launching an organizational consulting business really dedicated to bringing out the best in teams. And since we’ve all heard people don’t leave jobs, they leave managers, diving in and really making sure managers are equipped with the tools they need to be effective and empower their teams, that was one of the first places that I wanted to start. And then micromanaging was one of the biggest sorts of acute problems in that space.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, I’ve heard it many a time. So, maybe to kick it off, could you precisely define what is micromanagement? Because some folks will say, “Oh, no, no, that’s just management,” like if there’s a gray zone. Is there a bright dividing line between, “This is when you’ve gone too far, buddy”?

Lia Garvin
So, I think a lot does depend on the kind of job and the industry, so I’ll say that. I don’t think there are the hard and fast answer that applies to every situation, and I think that’s where it can get tricky because if we’re used to something in one environment, we may be bringing that to the next environment. Let’s say we’re in a sort of job where instructions need to be followed exactly one specific way. And if you deviate from that, it’s a real problem, maybe a safety issue.

Let’s say we bring that into a job that’s more about ideas and many paths to success, then you’re going to be in a real complex. So, I think the first thing to do before we dive into how to recognize if you’re micromanaging is if you’re a manager, to being open to adjusting, and saying, “Hey, what’s the right way to interact with my teams depending on what kind of the working norms are in this team?”

So, as I thought about it a lot, reflected on my own personal experience with many, many managers over the years and feedback that I heard from other colleagues, I think there was three real tells that I landed on around how to know when you’re a micromanager. And the first one is you are spending every waking moment in meetings.

So, this is a big problem that I think has gotten even worse with COVID and remote work and everything we do with a video conference but this is not an excuse to not reflect and say, “Hey, am I in the right meetings?” So, when a manager is in every single meeting, it’s a sign that they’re too far in the weeds, they’re too much in the details. And if you are finding yourself where you have no time to drink a glass of water, go to the bathroom, or eat lunch, there’s an opportunity to let your team members step up.

And so, I would suggest in that situation to take a look at your calendar and see, “Which meetings am I absolutely critical, critical to be at? Am I a decider? Am I approver?” And all the rest, which one of those could you delegate to somebody else to drive?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what are the other two tells?

Lia Garvin
Number two is everybody’s coming to you for every single little decision, nobody is actually taking action, it’s always coming back to you. This is a sign that people either don’t feel empowered to make decisions, or they think that you want to be involved in making all the decisions. So, if you’re finding yourself where every single kind of question decision comes to you, this is a moment to have a conversation with your teams around what decisions you want to be and should be involved in, and which they’re empowered to run with on their own.

So, I think sometimes one thing I’ve suggested to managers is to classify the kinds of decisions, “Which ones are this category where they need leadership, discussion, and buy-in? And which ones can they push on the organization?” Because if everyone is coming to you, that means they’re responding to a signal you’ve probably sent them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And number three?

Lia Garvin
So, the third thing is when people are continually coming to you and saying, “Hey, I have bandwidth. I want to take on more responsibilities,” or, “What can I help with?” and you’re not necessarily taking them up on it. And this is a sign that people are recognizing that you may be spread really thin as a manager, you’re not noticing it, or you’re holding on to too many things. And when people are actually asking you to let go, that’s a real moment to listen to them and think about that.

And if you’re finding that situation, it’s a moment where you can think about, “Well, what are all the tasks on my plate? What’s everything I have this week or this month? And what are the things I can let go of that are actually worthy for someone else to take on?” Delegating isn’t about giving people all the list of stuff you didn’t want to do, that nobody wants to do.

It’s about finding, “What are the high-impact activities that someone else can do that’s going to be worthwhile because it gives them visibility or development opportunity, or something in line with where they want to go in their career?” So, if we’re finding ourselves in those three places, too meetings, too much control over decision-making, and people are asking for more, that’s a sign, “Oops, I’m in too deep. Got to take a step back and let go a little bit.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s how we know when we’re there. And I’m curious, could we maybe zoom out a little bit on the macro scale, do you have any sense for just what’s the cost of micromanagement? And I don’t know if there’s a study, like billions of dollars, or attrition rates, or percentage of people who say they suffer it. What’s kind of the scope of things here?

Lia Garvin
Yes. So, there’s a lot of data coming out of the Gallup organization around employee engagement going down. And one of the big reasons that’s cited is a micromanager, or feeling your manager either doesn’t have the right sort to skills, is not invested in you, or is not managing effectively. And I think the cost of someone being a micromanager is pretty widespread.

So, first, for the manager themselves, they are so much more likely to reach a state of burnout because they are taking on too much. And so, I think if only it affected the managers, this is already really an expensive cost because people are getting burned out. They’re feeling like, “Okay, I can’t scale right now. Folks are having to do more with less, with layoffs and cutbacks.”

And so, it ends up putting so much more work on someone’s plate and creating more single points of failure. But it’s really detrimental to the broader team because when people can’t step up and own more, they often feel kind of disillusioned with the work. They start losing motivation. I think this is a real contributing factor to quiet quitting, people feeling like, “Well, I’m kind of giving it bare minimum and that’s about it because I’m not really empowered to do more.”

And, also, what can lead to so many people leaving the workforce because they’re not given the space to really grow, to demonstrate their strengths, to solve problems in their own way. So, micromanagement, I think, can really light the spark that starts to have someone questioning, “Do I have a future here on this team?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right, Lia, so we’re talking micromanagement. We’ve also had some guests speak about the concept of undermanagement, they’re kind of managers sort of checked out, not paying attention, not really aware of the stuff that folks are working on. Do you have a sense for which is more dangerous?

Lia Garvin
Ooh, I love that. I think it goes back to depending on the situation and, potentially, the level of seniority that you’re managing, the level of complexity of the work. But undermanaging is a serious issue especially for folks that are newer, if there’s no onboarding, if you kind of get hired, you’re working out a year, bedroom, you haven’t seen anybody in person, and you’re trying to figure out how to navigate life in a new company, and your manager said, “Okay, figure it out.”

This can drive that same sense of disconnection with the work and with the company than having someone with all the details because you feel like you’re left on an island and you have no idea what to do. So, I think they both have serious consequences but they both kind of have the same, I would say the issues at its core, of a manager not having potentially the right confidence or the right skillset around how to actually manage effectively.

So, there’s a real skill gap, and that’s what I love to dive in with teams, is just figuring out, “Well, here’s the sharing, the fundamental skills that will help bridge that gap, how someone can feel more comfortable assigning responsibilities, or reining it in a little bit, but finding that balance, finding your own authentic style, and then where to deploy these different tools and different situations.”

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a sense for, given the state of management these days, roughly what proportion of managers are micromanaging, managing about right, versus undermanaging? It may vary wildly by industry, by geography, but what’s your sense on the ground?

Lia Garvin
I got to say I think a lower number are managing just right.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Lia Garvin
I don’t know, I would say, the under and over. I think I know less about, like, the percentages-wise. I think what I would guess is they come as a pair. Micromanaging can often look like that helicopter managing, which you know we’ve all heard of helicopter parenting, where you’re really, really in it and you’re kind of out on the sidelines where I think it can look like both.

And for different people, I think, doing micromanaging and then being absent, that’s a reaction to needing a sense of control, or feeling stressed, or feeling overwhelmed. People sort of fall onto these different patterns. So, I think it could both be a personality type and situational, which is your tendency as a manager when you have this skill gap. But I think, like I said, the lowest, and I got to say I think the lowest percentage would be people that found that balance and are doing it just right.

And that is because, again in this Gallup data, most managers are in the position of a people manager because they’ve been in the company a long time, or they were a really, really strong individual contributor, or they have really strong technical skills, so they’re given a team, and it’s like, “Go for it.” And there are some stuff that’s got to happen between getting a team and leading a team effectively that, I think, not enough companies are investing in.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, let’s say we see some of ourselves in that description, we’ll go both sides, as the manager and the managee, or the person working with the manager, if we are the manager and we’re doing some micromanaging, how can we cut it out?

Lia Garvin
So, I think the biggest thing that managers can do is switch from problem solving to coaching because when managers take on the responsibility of, “A team member brought this up, so I need to solve it for them,” they are never going to teach that person how to fish, so to speak. They’re always going to be needed to solve that problem again and again.

And so, talking to your team members using a coaching mindset, using open-ended questions when someone comes to you, saying, “Hey, I can’t solve this problem,” you’re saying, “Here’s how I would’ve done it.” You jump right in with a solution. That person hears that and maybe they go in, take that solution, and they don’t deploy it exactly as you would, and then they’re still stuck. Or, they take the solution and they deploy it, and it works out well, but then that happens again. Now, they come back to you for another solution.

So, I think when folks come to us with a problem, one of the easiest reframes a manager can do is to ask some open-ended questions, “What do you think went wrong? What are some of the other factors we can consider here? What did you learn here that you want to try next time?” So, these different kinds of open-ended questions allow the problem to be kept in the sort of problem-bringer’s court so that they’re working through the solution.

There’s absolutely opportunity to course-correct, and say, “No, no, no, here are some of the things that I’ve seen go wrong in that situation,” or offer more support, but really keeping that in the other person’s court helps ensure that you’re not holding on to too much control over a problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Anything else?

Lia Garvin
Yeah, I think I mentioned the strategies of making sure you’re checking in with yourself continually. I think for managers, when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed or burned out, or you’re in too many things, to just check in. So, maybe you start and put in the calendar, “Every Friday, I’m going to do a gut track. What does my calendar look like?”

“What kind of questions did people bring me this week? Where does my delegating look like?” so that you’re not letting it get too far where it’s been six months and you realize, “Oh, gosh, I’m in it and I think people are starting to quit, and I didn’t even realize it.” So, I’d say, to really have a routine where you check in on those three tip-offs of being really too far in the weeds so that you can course-correct before it gets worse.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if we are the one being micromanaged, how do we speak up effectively? That could be tricky, that managing up discomfort.

Lia Garvin
Oh, it can be really tricky. And this is why I think sometimes we take the route of just quitting, and going, “Well, I’m going to look for someone because I don’t want to deal with it.” I think a lot of folks struggle with doing that managing up, as you call it out, and giving that feedback.

And so, I think a couple things that I’ve tried in my career, I’ve seen folks find in order to deal with this, are, first, have a conversation with your manager around skills and things that you want to develop so that, at least, you’ve put it out there on, “Hey, here are some projects I’m interested in taking on this year. Here are some different things that I want to be building. Here are some things I’m interested in.”

So, you, first, feel like, “Okay, I’ve done the first step of having the conversation, putting it out there,” to the extent that you feel comfortable. If you’re in a situation where your manager, let’s say, dives in and starts, like, line-editing an email you sent, or telling you who to add to all the invites to a meeting, or whatever is happening that feels a little bit heavy-handed, saying something like, “I’m really excited to take the lead on this and to try and demonstrate that I kind of got this and I’ve figured it out, so I’d love the opportunity to take the first step and then come back to you for feedback.”

I’ve tried this, something along those lines, and it’s been well-received because you’re not saying in an accusatory way. You’re framing it around the way that you’re wanting to learn, and a good manager wants you to be wanting to learn, so it’s a little bit of a win-win there, and you’re still offering them an opportunity to give feedback.

So, you’re not saying, “Get out of here. I got this,” but you’re saying, “Hey, I’d like to try this. And can we check in once I’ve done the first round of it so that I can learn and then you still have an opportunity to give feedback?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, Lia, could you give us some really juicy stories of micromanagement and the uncomfortable details folks are living with and, hopefully, some happy endings for how they resolved those issues?

Lia Garvin
Yes, absolutely. So, one of the examples that comes up a lot is with writing and communication. I mentioned line-editing emails, and I worked with folks that have shared they’ve had managers where they had to…let’s say they had to send out an email that’s going to the whole team, maybe a couple hundred people, and the manager wants to read the draft of the email, give inputs, they have 95 iterations.

Then it goes from structure into word choices, then you have a really robust in the Google comments on the side, a discussion of “Do we even want to send this? Is this the right word?” you’re getting grammatical suggestions, you’re getting all sorts of things, another person is added to the chain, that person is removed, we go back to thinking, “Do we want to do this email?” when you’re just supposed to write one email that was going to not really be a big deal. It’s announcing, like, a lunch that’s happening next Friday.

And so, I think this is the kind of thing that happens, is someone either they’re feeling out of control and so they go in and they just go to town on you. Imagining if you’re that person, “I was just trying to send this email out,” and the amount of kind of time and energy being spent on picking apart your little insignificant trivial email, it starts to really feel yucky for that employee.

Pete Mockaitis
It does, indeed. And so then, in that world, do we do just the things you mentioned? How might we say that? Like, “Hey, I’d love to show you I got this. I’d love to demonstrate my skills. I’d like to take the first crack at it.” It sounds like there are multiple cracks taken in this story.

Lia Garvin
Right. Which of the cracks are we…? Well, I think in that situation I might ask, and again it always depends on the relationship with our manager. I want to caveat that because I know some people listening might say, “Well, I can’t say that to my manager.”

So, let’s say if you have a dialogue where you feel like you could say something on the lines of, “It’s looking like we’re spending a lot of time on this email, and I want to better understand which of the situations where we really want to roll up our sleeves and dive in with this level of involvement? Or, which are the ones I can kind of run with to just be done with and get off our list?”

So, I think it can sort of flag, like, “Hey, this is a little bit much,” and also giving opportunity for feedback by asking an open-ended question that doesn’t sound defensive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Could you give us some examples of these questions or key verbiage, sentences you love that can be really handy here?

Lia Garvin
Yes. So, I think a little phrase that’s really useful is “I want to better understand.” Another could be, “So we can all be successful, I’m eager to learn and give this a try on my own, to build up my own skills here.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, “I want to better understand” is way better than “So, what’s your deal, dude?”

Lia Garvin
“What the hell, man?” Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Well, and that really does help you out because that’s, I think, what’s frustrating with the micromanaging situation, is that that’s how I felt, it’s like, “Am I missing something here because it seems like this isn’t that big of a deal? You know, the time and effort and iterations you’re putting on this would make it seem like it is a big deal. So, seriously, help me, like, genuinely, help me understand. Isn’t this just a fun lunch that we’re announcing? Does it matter if everyone goes or doesn’t go?”

And then maybe, sometimes you’ll get a great answer, it’s like, “Well, actually, the issues being discussed at this lunch are very sensitive from a legal and liability perspective, so it’s very important that we don’t say anything that, in the course of a discovery, should we be sued, is going to put…” It’s like, “Oh, I had no idea.”

Lia Garvin
“Well, now I know.” Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
“Well, thank you, that makes a lot of sense why we’re getting into it.” Or, maybe they’ll just chill out, it’s like, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

Lia Garvin
Exactly, yeah. And the key here, I think, a couple things, is really it could be frustrating when you’re in that moment, it’s like, “Oh, my God, literally, what’s going on?” When you’re under the micromanagement wrath, it can be very frustrating. But to take a step back, to sort of let that subside, to remove the frustration from the way you’re communicating, and to not come across as defensive, offensive, whatever, whichever one is more appropriate, like to not come forward with that.

Because I think when someone on the counterpart feels accused, it just makes it…it throws the whole thing off, and that’s going to be, I think, someone could say, “Well, of course, it’s important.” Especially, if they had a real big reason, they could think, “How do you not know that? Are you not taking care in time?” So, I think really having the conversation when you’re not feeling defensive or frustrated, really having an open, with curiosity, “I’m genuinely curious around this level of oversight and involvement, I’d love to learn more, I’d love to better understand.”

And so, this might mean it should not be written in an email or a chat. Like, I think there’s so much open for misinterpretation in written communication that just walking up to your…if you’re in person, walking down to your boss’ desk, and saying, “Hey, got a second? I want to better understand,” or asking to have a quick five-minute meeting over video conference, I just think it’s going to spare so much further miscommunication to actually talk face to face or over the phone if needed.

Pete Mockaitis
And as I think about the times I’ve been micromanaged, it’s funny, I think sometimes it’s my own fault and it’s necessary, it’s like, “Hey, Pete, there were several errors last time that were problematic, so we’re going to take some time to make sure we go through those.” And, in a way, that really was coaching.

But it felt like, “You’re all up in my business and I don’t like it,” but the older, wiser Pete recognizes it was necessary at that time and that season and that piece of work in that context for them to be up in my business, even though it was unpleasant and I didn’t like it. So, I think those were kind of my takeaway.

Lia, is it fair to say, sometimes, like the boy who cried wolf, the colleague who cried micromanagement, it may, in fact, just be appropriate management that just is uncomfortable and unpleasant in the moment?

Lia Garvin
Absolutely. And so, this is why one of the core programs and workshops that I offer for teams is how to give feedback effectively because, I think, feedback given ineffectively can feel like micromanagement. When you don’t have a strong relationship with your team, it can feel like micromanagement but, actually, we should be able to give feedback.

And I don’t want any manager listening to this to go, “Well, I can’t say anything to my team members.” It’s not that. It’s about, I think we said in the beginning of the conversation, getting to understand the style of communication that’s really the norm in the organization, in the company, in the team, and then meeting that, and if you’re really finding yourself hitting those kinds of tip-offs.

And that’s why the tip-offs weren’t people coming to you and saying, “Stop micromanaging.” It’s like, “What are the external signals that I’m too much in the weeds?” And so, that’s the difference there, is if we’re finding, then it’s a moment to check in. But giving feedback is critically important, and it’s one of the most important things you can do as a manager. And receiving feedback effectively is one of the most important things you can do as a non-manager because this is how you’re going to grow and develop.

So, I think feedback and micromanaging is very different. I typically see micromanaging as level of involvement, I think, in your direct reports or in your management chain beneath your business affairs day to day. And then if your level of involvement sort of could feel like you may think it’s feedback if it’s around some kind of deliverable.

But feedback, let’s say, on an email or on a presentation is reviewing it at a certain point maybe later on, not every second, and then giving some specific tips and waiting for someone to come back to you, as opposed to rolling up the sleeves and thinking you’re going to sit side by side and finish banging out the email together.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that expectation alignment is huge because, like, when it comes to decision rights or how that unfolds. I’m thinking other times I felt micromanaged, both of them I was like planning social stuff, and so I thought, “Okay, this is just for the kids,” if you will, the folks on the team who are in larger numbers, and there are relatively fewer sort of managers, directors above.

And, one, it was to say, “Okay, so what are going to do for the office-wide fun time?” And so, I did the survey, I put it out there, and I said, “Hey, what do you know, sailing is the thing they like the most out of the options. That is kind of cool.” And so, this director just kept digging into it, like, “Well, I’m curious if we really segment that data, my hypothesis is there’s a small subsegment of folks who are strongly in favor of this sailing, and many others…”

And it was like, “Okay, that is pretty convoluted, and, well, no, we could slice the data survey another way,” which we had, which is kind of ridiculous for a survey about the social stuff, it’s like, “Well, no, it still looks like this.” And then so what my takeaway was, “All right, dude, you just don’t want us to go sailing. It’d be nice if there were options that were totally unacceptable to you that you just let us know in advance, like, ‘For whatever reason, hey, sailing sounds really cool and fun but we can’t do that because of X, Y, Z. that’s going to be problematic for a large swath in our office who are seasick.’”

I was like, “Okay, fair enough. All right, you know what, we won’t even put it on the survey, and it’s good to know that upfront,” as opposed to, “We’re all stoned out sailing and then…”

Lia Garvin
And he said no, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Then to approve for these not great reasons in terms of, like, if we squint and sliced the data in such a way we can get there. And other times, there’s just a team event, like, “Hey, let’s go let’s do laser tag.” And I guess the manager who was in the room, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for that, like, “Yeah, yeah, let’s do it,” and he’s like, “You know, I don’t recall seeing a survey collecting the team input regarding the team activity.” I was like, “Oh, sorry. Well, we just got to talk about a few things, and this one was, by far, had the most energy and enthusiasm.”

And so, it was just sort of like…and then I was sort of shamed for inappropriately gathering incomplete feedback. It’s like I would just respect them so much, it’s like, “Dude, just say, ‘Hey, I want to participate, too. I know this is like for the kids or ‘whatever’ and I hate laser tag, and so I’d really appreciate it if you could find something else to include me.’” I guess maybe that’s too humble and vulnerable, or I don’t know, for them.

Lia Garvin
No, but I think that and then the example around the previous, where we’re talking about the email, what you’re saying is it’s transparency and context. Like, if there was a reason, say it upfront.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally, yeah.

Lia Garvin
Yeah. And I think you mentioned director in that, and that stood out to me as I think that’s a real…the level of seniority and the level of depth should match. And I think that’s another thing that can be frustrating, is when you have a VP or SVP or director that’s very in the details around planning something or orchestrating something that it just doesn’t feel like an appropriate match.

I think a senior leader, it’s really critically important to demonstrate interest and support for the team, this kind of stuff, but is it really necessary to be providing inputs on activity level beyond setting some expectations and constraints? Not really. Because what happens is that person, whether they mean to or not, will have veto power because they have the highest level of hierarchy, and then it throws off the whole dynamic.

So, I think for any senior leaders listening to this, I’d say recognize your own position in a company or a team, and think, “Hey, do I need to be in this conversation? Am I actually inadvertently throwing it off? Am I sharing my opinion and it’s carrying more weight because of my hierarchy, when it really shouldn’t?” and then taking a step back.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And just expectation, alignment, I guess I was thinking, like, “Hey, the senior leaders…” I guess the way I view the activities were, “These are primarily for us, because, one, we outnumber you, and, two, you make gobs of money, and then this is part of the recognition and appreciation for that.” So, anyway, maybe that’s an unfair view or characterization or expectation for the social activities. Wow, this is really…

Lia Garvin
Well, that’s interesting because I had that same observation working on my roles in tech or around team operations and establishing team process. And I always found that the recipients of process were actually very open to it. It was like other people that would say, “Oh, I don’t know about this,” other team operations or other managers, never the recipients of that thing.

And I think I understand what you’re saying because, like you said, the people that want it, they were going to engage in the activity, they’re all like downed with the laser and with the sailing. And so, that’s another question maybe to think about when you’re maybe shutting down an idea or giving feedback. When I talk about feedback, I always think I encourage people to ask, “Am I the right person to give that feedback?”

And so, in your situation, like, “Am I the right person?” is, “Am I even attending this event? Do I really care? And what’s my stake in this situation?” And I think, for the leaders in your situation, it’s like, “You know, I’m best suited just to support the activity, to pay the bill, and show up and welcome everybody, and like leave it at that.” So, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And then, again, if they had a differing expectation, it’s totally cool to share that, it’s like, “Hey, you know what, this is a cool opportunity we have to really just flatten the hierarchy, in which the managers, directors, VPs, whatever, get to be silly and ridiculous right alongside, and it’s so stressful dealing with blah, blah, blah.”

Lia Garvin
Exactly. So, it’s setting that context up front.

Pete Mockaitis
“So, I know it might seem silly but we want to play, too.” And I would find that endearing, it’s like, “Okay, okay, director. Thank you. I understand. That’s cute. Let’s do this thing you like, too.”

Lia Garvin
Exactly. And so, like you said, it’s setting the context. I think with these team-related activities, there’s a lot of…I think it’s really important to be inclusive, make sure everybody can actually participate in the activities, that there’s not overtly focused on alcohol, or in they’re in the right times of day where people can participate if they have to be doing caretaking and pickup.

So, like there’s a lot of constraints, and I think sometimes, so it’s really important for leaders to set that context for folks so that they can then plan something that’s inclusive and appealing to everybody. So, there’s a lot to navigate, and it can be a trap for micromanagement, so a little bit of both.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it really can because I think it’s funny because, it’s like, “All right, let’s let the junior employees run with something.” It’s like, “This isn’t that important so you can just own it, but you don’t own it.”

Lia Garvin
Yeah, “But you don’t really own it.” And so, this is something when I talk about delegating that is so critically important, is there’s a lot of ways in delegating but saying, “What is the task? What does success look like? And then what is my expectation of involvement?” I think that’s the one thing that managers don’t always talk about.

They say, “Okay. Here, go run with this. This is what success looks like. We’re all good.” And then the manager is like, “Well, where we at with that?” And they want it to be regularly updated, they want to be in the loop, they want to know what’s going on at these different time periods. That goes in the conversation upfront.

So, if we say, “I want you to take on this status report that goes out every Friday,” if you really want a preview of that status report on Wednesday, you’re going to say that, not just show up Wednesday, like, “I need to see this today,” because someone thought they had till Friday, and then they’re going to feel like, “Oh, gosh, I had no idea that was coming.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Lia, tell me, anything else you want to make sure before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Lia Garvin
Yeah, I think there are so much opportunity right now with so much change in the workplace to really get right how teams are operating. And I think a lot of that comes down to, as we talked about today, really making sure our managers are set up for success, both for themselves so they’re not burning out, and for their team members so that they’re staying motivated, engaged, and enabled to do their work best.

So, I love working with teams, that is my focus, diving into figure out what’s really getting in the way of teams operating their best. So, if you want to learn more about that work or how to support your team, reach out at LiaGarvin.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Lia Garvin
Ooh, favorite quote. Oh, man, I’ve got to think about this in a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. No problem.

Lia Garvin
Oh, man. Ooh, okay. So, something that I’ve been finding inspiring is the quote, “Make the why bigger than the fear.” And this is something, I think, for any of us to think about that are doing something new. So, this was really motivating for me as I launched my own business and left the corporate world, was the thing that’s really fueling you to do it, let that be bigger than all the reasons that are telling you to stop and go back and keep it safe.

And I think, for teams, right now where there’s a lot going on, it’s really uncertain, people are cutting back, and so remembering, “Why are we here? What are we trying to create?” I think that can really help, especially if you’re a manager. Create a sense of certainty even when there’s so much uncertainty happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Lia Garvin
Yeah, my favorite study, I’d say, year over year, is the Lean In and McKinsey & Company Women in the Workplace report. It’s a wealth of information around people’s experiences. They’ve added in the recent years the intersection of gender and race, and really deeply understanding the experiences of women, why women are leaving the corporate world in higher rates than ever.

This year, a lot of the information talked about lack of recognition and visibility. This is something that managers have so much control over, making sure people feel seen, like their work matters, making sure it’s getting the right level of visibility. So, that’s a study I go back to every single year as they put it out to really inform where I focus and some of the things that I can highlight for the teams I work with.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Lia Garvin
So, a book that I read over the holidays was Lead to Win by Carla Harris. And Carla Harris has these series of books around her pearls of wisdom. She was vice chairman at Morgan Stanley and has a ton of great insights around career, sponsorship, how to really build up your skills as a leader.

And this one specifically dives into how to build great teams, how to drive inclusion on teams, really kind of a playbook for managers trying to break through the next level. So, that’s something I’ve been really loving reading.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Lia Garvin
Tool, yes. Otter.ai, I believe, it’s called. It’s an app where you…it’s a voice notes app, but it does AI transcription, so it’s pretty flawless transcription. And whenever I have to write an email, now this is great if you’re, like, writing a cautious response to maybe some passive-aggressive behavior, or you’re trying to get your ideas out. I will speak out this email into the voice app, and then I have a great thing to copy and paste into my email.

I think a lot of times when we’re writing, we can get stuck on having the perfect wording. So, if I’m writing a bio for something, or, like I said, a difficult email, or something I’m just getting stuck on, grabbing the app, talking it out into there, and then copying and pasting, and taking the good parts, and having that be the written form is just a huge shortcut.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Lia Garvin
Favorite habit, I guess it’s called multitasking, but I have a walking desk, and I do work while I’m walking on the desk. So, I like to do two things at once that allow me to get two things done at the same time. Some call it multitasking. I would call it layering two activities.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Lia Garvin
Yes. When you’re feeling stuck, or you encounter rejection or failure, it’s not you. It’s your approach. And when you change your approach, you will change your outcome.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Lia Garvin
Yeah, so I would say connect with me on LinkedIn. Wait, let me do that again. Sorry. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to hear from folks, especially what resonated from this episode, or reach out on my website at LiaGarvin.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Lia Garvin
Yeah, I think for folks, giving yourself a little bit of permission to be figuring it out right now. Right now, it’s a really, really hard time in the workplace. There’s so much uncertainty. And figuring out what do you need to be able to face every day feeling more optimistic or more supported. So, if that’s taking a walk, doing a meditation, whatever, making your favorite coffee, whatever it is, figuring what that thing is and building that into your routine so that you have a sense of, “I’m doing something for myself every day.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lia, thanks. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and little micromanagement.

Lia Garvin
Thank you so much.

825: The Six Steps of Masterful Delegation with Aaron Schmookler

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Aaron Schmookler shares practical, hard-won wisdom on how to delegate wisely to minimize time, and frustration.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to get over the resistance to delegate
  2. What you need to do before delegating anything 
  3. The simple trick to ensuring follow through 

 

About Aaron

For nearly 30 years, Aaron has helped people find their intrinsic motivation, their capacity to collaborate, and the fulfillment that comes from harnessing their creativity. As the co-founder and CEO of The Yes Works, he specializes in supporting business leaders who believe that people are their greatest asset to create environments that bring out their best. 

Aaron and The Yes Works serve clients across the country and across industries including Microsoft, MOD Pizza, DiscoverOrg, Burkhart Dental Supply, SOG Knives, 9th Gear, and Textainer to make work good for people and people good for work. 

Resources Mentioned

Aaron Schmookler Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Aaron, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Aaron Schmookler
Thank you for having me, Pete. It’s exciting to be talking to you again.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited too. And I was taking a gander at our last conversation. Fun fact, in the transcript of Episode 497, the phrase “Tell me more about that” appeared 13 times.

Aaron Schmookler
Oh, fun that you counted.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I could just do Control-F find. It’s funny because I think we’re both such fanatical fans of the phrase and how useful it is for a variety of purposes. And, listeners, I recommend you check that out. It may transform your lexicon forever. But I’d love to hear, over the last three years, have there been any interesting stories or discoveries or saves of that day that have emerged with you trying out our favorite phrase?

Aaron Schmookler
Boy, I’m sure that there have been countless times that that has come up. I had already experienced the time when somebody called me a jerk or some other less kind, less family-friendly term, and I said something to the effect of, “Well, clearly, I’ve rubbed you the wrong way. Tell me more about that.” And that turned the relationship around.

Since then, I’m sure it’s helped with the health of my marriage and with my daughter. I’m sure, also, that it’s helped with my business partners and with my clients. It’s such a natural and consistent part of my lexicon now that I don’t think that I have the dramatic stories that I might’ve had when I first started to employ that phrase as a tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. Well, it has continued to serve me well also, particularly when I just need a beat to think, to orient, to, “What the heck is going on right now?” as well as, “I genuinely don’t understand what you said,” and it’s much more friendly than, like, “What the heck are you blathering on about now?”

Aaron Schmookler
“What? That doesn’t make any sense,” is what I’m often tempted to say.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, good to know. So, now, I’d love to chat with you about delegation. You sent me a beautiful proposal. Thank you for that. And I thought that’s exactly something that we should talk about, so let’s do it. Can you kick us off with any particularly surprising or fascinating or extra counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about delegation in your 30 years of working with different folks?

Aaron Schmookler
Well, I’ll skip to the end and say I love the book Who Not How. And I’m trying now to remember the name of the author, but “Who Not How,” the premise or the thesis of the book is, essentially, “Stop trying to figure out how to do it. Somebody already knows and they can do it better than you. So, figure out who should be doing this instead of how you are going to do it.”

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much that I was frantically Googling in the background. It is Dan Sullivan. I believe that’s the strategic coach Dan Sullivan.

Aaron Schmookler
That’s the guy, yeah. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Who’s got a wealth of goodies that I’ve enjoyed.
Who Not How
, I think that really holds true. And I am astounded at how people can often do things so much better than me. Maybe I shouldn’t be astounded. I should just expect that by now, having learned it so many times. Where I thought, I’ve got a rental property in Chicago, and I thought, “Okay, I’ve checked out the BiggerPockets podcast, okay, I’ve got a little bit of sensibility associated with finding a bargain and renting it out and making it look okay.”

And then I get a property manager who just, like, ran circles around me in terms of, “Oh, yeah. Well, that’s actually a two-car garage so you just got to paint a really good line in there.” I was like, “Oh, but it’s kind of tight.” He’s like, “Welcome to every parking space in Chicago. Also, here’s how we can make them pay for their own water.” It’s like, “Whoa, you should be doing this and not me.”

Aaron Schmookler
One of the things that’s coming to the top of my mind as you’re sharing that story, as a counterintuitive truth about delegation, when I’m training managers to delegate effectively, one of the questions that I ask them in kind of preparing before we got to the “What are our six-step model looks like?” is I ask them, “What holds you back from delegating?”

And, very often, I get responses like, “I don’t want to give people things that I wouldn’t want to do. I don’t want to just push the scut work off onto somebody else.” And the remarkable truth is all the stuff that I hate doing, somebody else loves.

Pete Mockaitis
It is remarkable and true. Hence, a remarkable truth.

Aaron Schmookler
Right. I thank God every day for inventing accountants, for example.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. You’re speaking my language, and I love accountants too. I hope I haven’t been harsh on them just because I dislike doing accounting work so much, but if it’s in the realm of bookkeeping or compliance-y things, today, we had to find a title for a car in order to renew a thing, I was like, “What? Is a paper I was supposed to have received in a mail and then held on to for a year? That’s really pushing my capability.”

Aaron Schmookler
As my friend Dave would say, “I resemble that remark.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right, so that’s cool. So, it’s who not how, and Dan Sullivan wrote a great book called just that, which is nifty. And some things we sure dislike doing, other people love doing. That’s cool and a blessing. So, then lay it on us, is there, maybe, a particularly inspiring story to tee this up and get us going, “Oh, yeah, I’m fired up to delegate”? Maybe there’s someone who’s overwhelmed and transformed their effectiveness and their stress levels with delegation. No pressure, Aaron.

Aaron Schmookler
I’ll tell a story from my own history. I don’t know if we talked before, Pete, about the fact that I come from a theater background, and my primary training there was as a director, but on the way, I was also a technical director. And one of the things that the technical director is responsible for is, at the end of the show, the very night that the last audience sees the show, as soon as the audience is out the door and those doors are closed, at that very moment begins what’s called strike and they start tearing down the set.

A lot of it goes, ridiculous amounts of the set goes into the trash, all the lights are removed, those that aren’t part of the regular repertory in the theater. And the technical director’s job at strike is, essentially, to make sure that it goes and that it goes off without a hitch. And the first time that I ever led strike, I remember standing on the stage, I’ve got my tools in my hands, I’m spending a fair amount of time working on the materials myself, and pointing and telling people, “Okay, go do this,” and giving them a single task to do, and people would be flocking to me.

I, eventually, had to put my tools down, and it was just so much work for me to try to direct 23, or something like that, people to go and do this task and then this task, and then this task, and then this task. I was so exhausted at the end of that night that I might as well have done the strike myself in order to have gotten that exhausted, and it wasn’t very effective. And we were there much longer than we should’ve been, and we made much less progress than we should’ve been.

So, I called up the last tech director that I remembered working for and really enjoyed, and I said, “What did I do wrong? What do I need to do better?” And he said, “Okay. Well, tell me about what you did.” So, I told him the story of the night, he said, “You are assigning things task by task. And then he said, “You got to break things down into objectives, what’s the result that you want to see, and put somebody in charge of that result.”

“And when somebody comes to you and says, ‘What do I do next?’ you say, ‘Go join Mary over there,’ or, ‘Go join John over there. He’s got this project and he’ll put you to work.’” And so, by delegating objectives, I was able to create mini-teams of my team. And the next time, we got more done than we had anticipated. We got out earlier than we had anticipated.

And so, just that one shift from delegating or assigning tasks, and this is a distinction that I was expecting to talk to you about by the end of our conversation, this distinction between assigning tasks and delegating end results, delegating outcomes, was tremendously powerful for me in an instant.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it, and it really does resonate. I am thinking about events. When you talked about striking the stage, like, “Oh, I did some theater stuff back in the day.” And some events, like putting on these, it was called HOBY, Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership, sophomore leadership seminars for high school students, as well as my wedding. Like, one of my favorite things to do was carve out zones of responsibility for people.

And sometimes, I even like to make up new names. It’s like, “Okay, Michelle, you’re fantastic and I’m going to trust you to be the person who answers all of the guests’ questions that they would like answered when me and my bride would rather not be tied to our phones on our wedding day.”

Aaron Schmookler
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
Because I’ve been on both sides of that equation in terms of, “Oh, I’ve got some questions but it’s not quite clear. Like, where do I go? What do I do? Can I do this at the wedding? I don’t want to bother the bride and groom but I kind of like to know.” And so, I was like, “Michelle, you are the director of guest experience. That’s your role. And we’re letting all the guests know, ‘If you have any questions, you call Michelle.” And so, that was really cool.

And for HOBY, we got someone who’s talented with design things but she didn’t want to be in charge of the whole programming thing, so we said, “You are the artistic director. If there’s any sort of color or logo or design or image that goes on a T-shirt or a booklet or a nametag or a door decoration, you are the master of that.” And she’s like, “Oh, sweet.” I knew it was fun for both of us because it decimates ambiguity, it was like, “Oh, that’s me.” It’s like, “Oh, lights? You say lights, Aaron, that’s me.” “Oh, did you say the huge backdrop? Oh, that’s me.” And you get to feel good when you own that thing.

Aaron Schmookler
That’s right. That’s right. And I’ve created an event recently that we called “I’m not participating in this recession.” And it was an event for C-suite folks to come to. I had a CEO, who had been the CEO of SOG Knives, to come because he had taken his company through some recessions. And one of the things that he shared with our attendees was that he likes to make people the CEO of their realm within his company because it just creates so much leverage for him to be able to say, “You handle this.”

And one of the things that I advise, when people are contemplating, “Can I delegate this?” is that if somebody can do a job up to 75% as well as you can, 75% is a good marker to say to them, “You, go take care of this.” Because if you can delegate to three people 75% of what you could accomplish, well, the leverage of all that multiplicity is tremendous.

Aaron Schmookler
Seventy-five percent of three things is much better than 100% of one.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I dig that. And I think it’s really useful to note, “The thing that you’re delegating, is it super crazy mission-critical?” Like, there are very few things in this world, although there are some, in which if you do it a hair better, the rewards are huge. I’m thinking about maybe direct-response copywriting. I’m thinking about Google search engine optimization. I’m thinking about Olympic swimming. Hundredth of a second, like, gold versus nothing.

Aaron Schmookler
Yes, that’s correct.

Pete Mockaitis
But almost everything else is, “You can do this 75% as well? Well, then have at it, and away we go.”

Aaron Schmookler
Especially within our companies, part of the time and effort that we put in our companies is on the core competency of our company, “This is what we do. This is what we do different from other people. This is what we do better than other people. This is what you have come to us for. Everything else in our company is not that.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Bookkeeping, you didn’t come here. Or, invoicing. Yeah, that’s good. All right. Well, lovely concepts. Now, you actually have a pretty precise five or six, depending on how we’re counting, steps for effective delegation. Can you walk us through these?

Aaron Schmookler
Sure. And you’ve hinted at the idea that this is a six-step model with five steps, in a way, because step zero, I’m considering step zero because, though this is the first step in delegating, it is just you, all by yourself, getting yourself ready to go and do the delegation. And there are some questions for you to answer before you go and do that.

One, “What is the desired outcome? What do you want? What is the end state that you need to have accomplished?” In the military, they call this commander’s intent, “What’s the commander’s intent?” It sounds simple but it’s often very hard, and one way to get there is to think about, “Why do I want this done?” That will help you to conceive what is the end result look like.

So, then when you’ve got your end result mapped out, you also need to answer the question, “When do I need to have this result in hand? And, therefore, what’s a decent margin for failing?” So, if I’m going to delegate something to you, Pete, that I need on Friday by 3:00, if I asked you to deliver it to me by Friday at 3:00, I’ve set us both up to be in real trouble. Better that I should ask you for it by Thursday at noon so that we’ve got time to look it over, make some adjustments, figure out that we’ve got problems, resolve them before I need the thing.

The next question to ask yourself, and we’re still in step zero, is, “Who will be served by taking on this responsibility? And who is able to serve the purpose?” That’s kind of a two-part question. So, who is the right person because they’re going to be served by this? Maybe they really enjoy this kind of work. Or, when I have somebody working for me, I ask them, “Where do you want your career to end up? Where do you want your career to be a year, five years down the line? Okay, what skills and talents are you going to need to get there? Oh, well, this project is going to serve you developing that. So, that is a good reason to give this to you, also, because you’re going to be capable of serving the purpose.”

And then the last question to ask yourself, but still in prep, is, “What are they going to need to succeed? What’s the information that they’re going to need? What resources are they going to need?” And do not skip this one, “What authority, what decision-making authority are they going to need in order to succeed?” That’s step zero before you even begin to delegate, preparing yourself to be ready.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, I’m wondering, for those who have a hard time letting go, delegating, they might say, “Well, nobody is sufficiently qualified or able to handle this.” How do we respond to that?

Aaron Schmookler
Two things. One is, “Are you sure?” We talked already about that 75% rule. If somebody is going to be able to deliver 75%, then maybe it’s time to reassess what nobody looks like. The second thought that I have is Dennis Bakke wrote a book called Joy at Work in which he suggests that you push decision-making down. And in delegating, he says, “You can set parameters. Without withdrawing the authority to make decisions, you can set parameters.”

So, if I delegate to you, Pete, and I think you don’t have the judgment yet, I might say, “I want you to talk to Betty and Bob about everything that you’re considering before you make the decision. At the end of the day, the decision is yours, and I want you to have the benefit of their insights before you make the final decision.” So, that’s another way of cranking up people’s capability while leaving their decision-making authority intact.

And I’ve actually thought of a third thing to share, which is, “If they can’t do the whole thing, what parts of it can they do? What parts of it can you delegate and then maybe you retain the rest?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. I like that notion of the parameters. So, one of it could be, “If it’s you get the input from these people, another one could be if it’s over X thousand dollars or whatever, then you check in with me,” or, “If it’s concerning super client A, B, or C, I want to know about it. If it’s any dozens of other clients, have at it.”

Cool. So, we’ve got the parameters, so it’s not a sort of 100% carte blanche, “It’s all yours,” but rather, “Okay, here’s a slice of it,” and it may very well still be the vast majority, which is cool. All right, so that’s step zero. What’s our step one?

Aaron Schmookler
Step one, and this one is a little bit counterintuitive, is to ask somebody, to give them something to do without giving them any details. And this is counterintuitive on a couple of levels. When we’re training managers, some people push back on the idea that they should ask anybody anything instead of just simply telling them, “Hey, here’s what you’re going to do.”

And then the other reason that they push back is they say, “What do you mean with no details?” So, here’s what I mean, “Hey, Pete, can I get your help with something?” “Pete, may I give you a project?”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s so funny, like, when you asked me that, you’ve galvanized my attention but maybe in an anxious kind of a way, it’s like, “Ahh, what do you have in mind exactly, Aaron?” And maybe…

Aaron Schmookler
So, the maybe is important because the maybe is correct, and we’ll get to that in a moment. The galvanizing your attention is the biggest part of this. One is I’m treating with respect by asking for permission. And then I can’t count the number of times, somebody will poke their head into my office and simply start to ask me questions, and my attention is on whatever I’m doing, and I have no idea what they’ve said, it goes in one ear and out the other.

And with my attention deficit disorder, and I’m very much like this, and even neurotypical people are like this as well, we all need a basket to put things in. So, when you say, “Can I get your help with something? Can I give you a project? Can I give you a new responsibility?” I now have a basket to put all of the details that you’re going to give me in and create order for my brain, and that’s going to serve everybody.

And with respect to the anxiety that I’ve created, largely that’s because you and I don’t have a relationship where we’re doing this, where you know what’s going to come next. So, one of the things that I recommend to any manager or anybody who’s in a position to be delegating is to tell people in advance, “Hey, when I delegate to you, here’s what it’s going to look like. I’m going to go through these six steps.”

“And what this step I’m going to do before I even get to you, then I’m going to come and I’m going to ask you, ‘Can I get your help with something?’ I’m going to ask you, ‘Can I give you a new responsibility?’” And no is a perfectly good answer, and here are the other steps that I’m going to go through so that that anxiety is alleviated in advance by your knowing, “Okay, this is just step one in a five-step process.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And then I think you say no is the acceptable answer to, “Can I get your help with something?” I guess, also, maybe any number of context-sharing things, like, “Well, I feel wildly overwhelmed by this crazy important task that’s due in two hours, but what did you have in mind?”

Aaron Schmookler
Right. And if you tell me you have a crazy important task that’s due in two hours, I’m going to say, either, “Thank you for telling me, Pete, you’re not the right person,” or, “Oh, well, this is not pressing. Why don’t I come to you three hours from now to give you a chance to get that turned in and catch your breath?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good.

Aaron Schmookler
So, that takes us to step two, which is now we’re going to lay out the details of who does what by when, what is it that I’m asking you for. And there’s another podcast called Manager Tools, and one of the things that they suggest at this point in any delegation is that instead of delegating the task be done, delegate the reporting that it is done.

And I think that is just a brilliant insight to say, instead of, “Hey, Pete, will you do this?” to say, “Hey, Pete, please tell me by 3:00 p.m. on Thursday that this is complete,” or, “Please send me an email with the file of this report by 3:00 p.m. on Thursday.” So, you’re delegating the reporting because if I don’t know it’s done, it has no value to me.

So, delegate the reporting, “Tell me as soon as this is complete. Here’s the outcome I’m looking for,” the manager’s intent, what is the end state, rather than all of the meticulous details, “Here’s the deadline and here are some resources, here are some considerations, here’s the authority that you have.” When I say consideration, that might be you might be tempted. If I’m asking you to rent us a truck, I might say, “The last time we went to U-Hall, we had these problems, so consider looking at Penske and Budget before you go talking to U-Hall.” So, that’s step two, is to lay out what it is that I’m asking for.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So you’re elaborating, so who does what, by when, to what standard, for what reason, with what resources. Can you elaborate a little bit on the standard? Like, how can we go about unpacking and delineating what is good optimal acceptable versus what is not?

Aaron Schmookler
So, you’re going to want to ask yourself the question of, “What do I need to see?” So, the standard for a truck might include it needs those rails on the wall that you can latch things to. The standard might include the budget. The standard might include the size of the truck. If I’m asking you to create a report, the standard might include margins for error.

Or, if I’m asking you to design something, the standard might be, “I want this to look opulent.” What are the ways that you can describe what it should look like, what it should feel like, what it should be like? And what are the questions that you’re going to be asking when you assess its success?

Aaron Schmookler
In other words, how do we know if you’ve succeeded at the end? Are there no grammatical errors? Are there no spelling errors? Does that matter? And perfectionism, when we talk about perfectionism, perfectionism is somebody insisting that they go beyond the standard, which wastes time, effort, and peace of mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. Cool. Well, now, can you share with us the step three, negotiate?

Aaron Schmookler
Yeah. So, step three, as you said, is to negotiate, “I asked you if I could give you something. You said yes. And you said yes sight unseen, or maybe you said it depends, so you don’t know what…you didn’t know until now what I was asking for.” So, at this point, the negotiation includes asking the questions, “Okay, now that you know what I’m asking for, Pete, are you still in? Does this still work for you? Do you have what you need?”

“I’ve told you about these resources, I’ve told you about that authority, I’ve given you these tools. Is there anything else that you need that I haven’t thought of? Do you need help? Do you need people? People are some of the resources that you might need. And if you’re tempted to say no, and/or if you’re not sure how to meet the rest of your obligations, then we may be reallocating your other priorities and your other responsibilities.”

“I don’t have time to do that because I’ve got this.” “Oh, well, let’s delay the deadline on that,” or, “Okay, let me take back this thing that I was trying to delegate to you because, clearly, this isn’t going to fit on your plate,” or, “Let’s take this other thing off your plate and give it to somebody else so that you have the bandwidth to handle this.” So, the negotiation is, “Okay, what will it take to make this work if, in fact, it does?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then step four?
Aaron Schmookler
So, step four is to keep in touch, and this is very often an overlooked step because people say, “Okay, go do this. I’ll see you at the end.” Tools for this include if you’re a manager having weekly one-on-ones where you’re checking in with your direct report, or the weekly one-on-one is focused on your relationship in general where you keep touch, “How is this going?”

Or, if this is a longer-term project, you set, “Here’s the final deadline,” that there are benchmarks along the way, “Here’s how we know we’re on track. This is going to be accomplished three weeks away from the deadline,” “This is going to be accomplished four weeks away from the deadline,” “This is going to be accomplished five weeks away from the deadline.” So, you’re keeping touch of, “Are we on track at each of those benchmark locations?” And you’re checking in on the standards at those times as well.

So, you create a channel for reporting and keep in touch at least weekly, at least briefly. So, that’s step four, is to make sure that you’re keeping in touch.

Pete Mockaitis
At least weekly, that’s handy. And then you mentioned that fine is not a status report in terms of, “Hey, how are things going?” “Fine.” What more precisely are we looking to hear when we’re keeping in touch?

Aaron Schmookler
Here’s where the benchmarks come in, “Oh, well, I’m two days behind on this benchmark,” or, “I’m two days ahead. I’ve reached this benchmark even though it’s not actually due until two days from now.” So, that’s one thing. Or, a status report is, “We’re on track and, in terms of we’ve hit all the benchmarks, up until now. And there’s an obstacle emerging that I didn’t anticipate. Let’s talk about how I might get around this obstacle. Can I have your insight?” Or, “I’m going to need a $100 or $1,000 to level this obstacle that’s come up.” “The price of lumber has changed.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then step five, debrief?

Aaron Schmookler
Step five is after the fact. So, arguably, this isn’t part of a delegation model. It’s part of a checking in, and I think it needs to be there because I don’t consider it complete until we’ve learned what there is to learn from the process that we just went through, “What worked and what didn’t? What worked in terms of how our communication went? What worked in terms of my execution of what you delegated to me? What worked in terms of did our standard actually meet the need?”

“I delivered this entirely on standard. This is exactly what we designed and it still didn’t solve the problem that this project was intended to solve. So, what needs to change?” So, a few questions to ask here, “What do we need to keep? What do we need to stop, to just get rid of this entirely? This was completely extraneous. What do we need to add? What wasn’t there that needs to be there? And what do we need to adjust? We got the blue one, it was the wrong blue. Or, we got these but, instead of five, we need seven.”

So, what do we need to keep, what do we need to stop, what do we need to add, what do we need to adjust. And that takes us, Pete, through six steps if you include step zero to prepare yourself for the delegation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then maybe zooming out or cutting across all these steps, what are some of the top things that make all the difference for preventing disasters, disappointments, oopsies, and stressful moments?

Aaron Schmookler
So, I’ll start with perhaps the answer that people are going to like the least. I remember when I took my first advanced level biology class in college was a genetics class. And I sat down for the first exam, and I looked at the cover sheet of the exam, and what it said was, “This is one test in one class, in one part of your schooling, which is just one part of your life. Your performance on this exam, while it may be important right now, is not critical to the outcome of your life, so don’t fret.” That was the cover page of this exam.

And then I opened up the exam, and the first question was, “For ten points, what color is a Golden Retriever? Hint: Look at its name.” So, that story is intended, Pete, to illustrate that part of how you can prevent disasters is by chilling out, both because the things that you’re thinking of as disasters are probably not as disastrous as you think they are, and because fearing disaster makes disaster more likely. And so, one illustration that I love about this, I used to be a hang glider pilot.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Aaron Schmookler
And when you land a hand glider, generally, you’re looking for a big open field to land the hang glider in. And what happens more often than you would imagine is that there’s a big open field with one tree in the middle, and the hang glider pilot hits the tree in the middle. There’s lots of open space, and the hang glider pilot flies right into the tree.

And the reason is that in the fear and anxiety of not wanting to hit the tree, the pilot looks at the tree. And your brain is designed to take you where you’re looking. Millions of years of evolution have made our brains direct where we go to where we’re looking. So, if you’re looking for a disaster, you are much more likely to steer into it. Look instead for the clear open field, and you think, “Open field. Open field. Okay, there’s the tree, that’s where I don’t want to go,” and then you spend the bulk of your time and attention on, “Here’s where I do want to go. Here’s where I do want to go.”

Another part of the answer to your question, Pete, is to consider those benchmarks, and to really not get lazy about checking in with those benchmarks, and assessing along the way, as part of your keep in touch step, “Do these benchmarks still make sense or do they need to be reassessed? Are we still on target to meet the deadline? Are we still on standard? Are we getting further and further? If we start to fall behind, are we getting further and further behind, or are we finding that, over time, we’re catching up?” So, those are a few of the thoughts that I have about that question.

[39:21]

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then when it comes to micromanaging, I think folks don’t like being micromanaged, and, on the flipside, managers are scared to be micromanaging. How do we make sure we strike this balance appropriately?

Aaron Schmookler
Micromanaging is about backseat driving. It’s about checking in so regularly that people can’t get into a flow. Micromanaging is about making decisions that other people could make. It is not about the frequency of your check-in, provided you’re allowing people to accomplish stuff and get into a flow state before your next check-in. People are so afraid of micromanaging in my experience. The tyranny of micromanagement is the fear of micromanaging far more often than the tyranny of micromanagement is actual micromanagement.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that’s reassuring and comforting. So, then any maybe pro tips or indicators, like, “Oh, you might be getting close to that line”?

Aaron Schmookler
Of micromanagement?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Aaron Schmookler
If you are tempted to take back the project that you’ve given to somebody, think twice. Taking back the delegation is often a piece of micromanagement. If you are trying to get marginal improvement by changing the decisions that they have made, you’re very likely micromanaging. And it’s important to think about… micromanagers are very often, what they’re trying to do is risk management, “I don’t want this to go badly. I want this to go as well as it possibly could. I want the outcome to be 100%.”

The risk there, the risk that you actually attain is demoralizing people, is losing the leverage that you have as somebody who can delegate, to get more than one thing done at a time. And so, if you are wasting human capital, if you are wasting people’s potential and fulfillment in pursuit of marginal accomplishment, you are a micromanager. It’s time to rethink your priorities.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now, Aaron, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Aaron Schmookler
I’m glad you brought up micromanagement because that probably would’ve been how I would’ve answered that question. I think I’m ready for favorite things.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s do it. Could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Aaron Schmookler
This quote is often attributed to Goethe and it, evidently, is not his, and it’s not known where it came from. So, it is, “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Aaron Schmookler
there’s an experiment around something called enclothed cognition.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Aaron Schmookler
And enclothed cognition is, essentially, enclothed, meaning the clothes that you are wearing, cognition, meaning thought. And so, this experiment took people and put them in a smock, like a painter’s smock, and asked them to do accounting work, like work on a spreadsheet, the kind of stuff that you and I were talking about we don’t really like.

And wearing a smock, they were worse than if they were just wearing their normal clothes at doing that task. And wearing a lab coat, they were better than they were at doing that task than if they were just wearing their normal street clothes. And by contrast, if they were asked to do something creative, like create a painting, then they were better wearing the smock than they were in their normal street clothes. And if you put them in a lab coat, they were worse at being creative and original and interesting in creating their art than they were…worse in a lab coat than they were in their street clothes. Fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Aaron Schmookler
Today, I’m going to name Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. A very compelling book about negotiation.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job.

Aaron Schmookler
I love Calendly. I’m not that great at tracking administrative details, so being able to give somebody either a link to go and book time on my calendar, or Calendly gives you this one-off meeting thing where I can tell you, “Here are a bunch of times. Click one and you’ll appear instantly on my calendar.” Very, very useful for me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Aaron Schmookler
“One more” is my favorite habit right now. There’s a lot to do in my life, as there is in all or our lives. And I might go to the sink that’s maybe full of the day’s dishes and start to wash the dishes and start to be tempted to go, “I’m feeling hungry. I want to go dirty another dish.” And I just say, “One more.” And one more will often get me all the way through all the dishes, or all the phone calls that I need to make, or any of those things. So, I have a habit right now of saying, “One more,” when I start to feel like, “I’ve got to move on from this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Aaron Schmookler
I’ve mentioned some of the manager training that we’ve been doing lately, and this is something that hits all managers, I think, where they live. I’ve had CEOs audibly kind of get hit, they sound like they’ve just been punched in the stomach when I say, “If there’s no consequence for consistently missing a job requirement, then that thing is not actually a job requirement. It’s something that you’ve put on your wish list and it’s a resentment-builder.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Aaron Schmookler
You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m the only Aaron Schmookler on LinkedIn. And you can find me on all the work that we’re doing at TheYesWorks.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Aaron Schmookler
Yeah, I’ll stay in keeping with the theme of the day – delegate. Go delegate. Are you not good at it? Delegate it. Are you not interested in it? Delegate it. You don’t have time? Delegate it. Delegate it. Go delegate. There’s almost nobody that I know who delegates too much, but there are lots of people that I know who delegate too little. Myself included, by the way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Aaron, this has been a treat. I wish much luck and fun in all your delegations.

Aaron Schmookler
Well, thank you. Likewise, right back at you.

799: The Unspoken Rules of High Performers and High Potentials with Gorick Ng

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

 

Gorick Ng lays out the unspoken rules and expectations of managers that explain why top performers get ahead.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three questions everyone is asking about you 
  2. The A+ way to ask for help
  3. The mentality that keeps professionals from progressing 

About Gorick

Gorick Ng is the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right, a book published by Harvard Business Review Press. It is a guide to help professionals, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, take control of their careers, based on 500+ interviews with professionals across geographies, industries, and job types. Gorick is a career adviser at Harvard College, specializing in coaching first-generation, low-income students. He has worked in management consulting at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), investment banking at Credit Suisse, and research with the Managing the Future of Work project at Harvard Business School. He has been featured in The Today ShowThe New York TimesThe Wall Street JournalBuzzFeedNew York PostFast Company, and CNBC. He was named by Thinkers50 as one of 30 thinkers to watch in 2022. Gorick, a first-generation college student, is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.

 Resources Mentioned

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Gorick Ng Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Gorick, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Gorick Ng
Thanks so much for having me, Pete. Excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to chat with you and hear some insights from your book The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right, but I think we also need to hear a little about your other career as a magician.

Gorick Ng
Well, I have the perfect storm of being awkward, shy, and introverted. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I was in elementary and middle school, I picked up magic tricks after seeing David Copperfield levitate on stage on TV.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I watched that too and was sad that I couldn’t fly. My mom had to break the news to me, like, “No, it’s just an illusion. It’s not actually flying.”

Gorick Ng
I had to temper my expectations after realizing that magic tricks start off with playing cards and coins, not necessarily levitating in front of a big audience. So, it took some getting used to but I ended up spending summers upon summers at the local magic shop where I ended up interacting with strangers and often folks who were double my age, triple my age sometimes, and, in retrospect, it was the best thing that could’ve happened to me because I got out of my shell.

I forced myself in a way that I actually wanted to force myself, to put myself out there, talk to strangers, and be vulnerable. I was deathly afraid of having folks see behind the tricks and know the secret. So, if you’re talking about putting yourself out there in front of an audience and having the imposter syndrome, I guess magicians face it all the time. I certainly did.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’re quite literally an imposter because you’re not actually doing the things that…

Gorick Ng
Exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis
…you’re purporting to do. Well, tell me, was there a particular crowd favorite trick or illusion? I’m thinking of Gob from “Arrested Development” now. Was there a particular crowd-pleasing bit that you did frequently?

Gorick Ng
I would take a dollar bill and turn it into a 10-dollar bill.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Gorick Ng
And it’s actually one that my mom still tells people about when she pulls aside family members. She’ll say, “Well, what about that trick you showed us ten years ago?” and I thought to myself, “Oh, no, mom, let’s talk about this some other time.”

Pete Mockaitis
Are you still able to pull it off?

Gorick Ng
I’m a little rusty, I have to say. It’s been a while since I’ve picked it up but I still actually have a big cabinet full of equipment at home that I just haven’t been able to get myself to sell.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear that. Okay. Well, now let’s talk about increasing the value you can offer an employer or a business or nonprofit, etc. You have written a book, The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right and so I’m excited to get into some of those rules which I imagine will not be applicable only to people fresh in their careers but these rules probably apply, is it fair to say, to most professionals?

Gorick Ng
Definitely. Actually, it was a big, not debate, not argument, more of just a longstanding discussion between me and my publisher Harvard Business Review around what the subtitle of the book should even be. We had a Google Doc going, containing 20, 30, maybe 40, 50 different potential subtitles, one of which is “How to be a High Performer and High Potential at Work.” It’s a bit of a mouthful but we decided to hone in on the early-career audience.

But what I’ve realized since engaging with companies large and small, and becoming a consultant speaker at companies like GE, IBM, etc. is that what is a must for some is good for all. So, my audience now, yes, it consists of early-career professionals, but those who find my message to resonate most are actually in their mid-careers and above.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Perfect. Well, lay it on us, to start, is there a particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discovery you made while doing all these interviews to put together this book?

Gorick Ng
The biggest takeaway for me is actually a framework that I call the 3Cs, which stand for competence, commitment, and compatibility. And the idea is the minute you show up, whether it’s at a coffee chat, a client meeting, a one-on-one with your manager, etc., the people around you are sizing you up, and they’re asking themselves three questions.

Question one is, “Can you do this job well?” which is the question of, “Are you competent?” Question two is, “Are you excited to be here and to grow with us?” and that’s the question of “Are you committed?” And the third question, the final one, is, “Do we get along?” which is the question of “Are we compatible?” So, “Are you competent?” “Are you committed?” and “Are we compatible?” the 3Cs.

Your job, and frankly all of our jobs, and this includes the CEO, is to convince the people around us to answer yes to all three questions all the time. Demonstrate these 3Cs and you’ll build trust, you’ll unlock opportunity, and you’ll get closer to reaching your career goals.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, that makes sense in terms of segmenting that into three handy categories. So, how do we go about demonstrating these things?

Gorick Ng
Well, the first thing is to look left, look right, and to understand the unspoken expectations around how people demonstrate these 3Cs, and it depends on the workplace. So, I’ll give you a few examples here. When it comes to demonstrating competence, for example, what I realized is there’s actually a certain song and dance that you’re expected to do in many workplaces when you have a question.

So, the C+ plus way of approaching an ambiguous situation is to, well, do what I did, which is to put my head down, put some extra effort into it, and just hope it’ll work itself out and not ask questions because I’m worried about coming across as incompetent or lazy. The B+ approach is to go to your manager or a coworker and to say, “I’m stuck. What do I do next?” which is an open-ended question.

An A+ approach is to say, “Pete, I’m struggling with this. I tried looking here and here. I couldn’t quite find the answer, so I approached my colleague Sally, and we couldn’t quite sort it out either. Shall I be taking approach A, approach B, or approach C? I’m leaning towards approach B but let me know if I’m not thinking about this the right way.”

So, what are you doing? You’re actually demonstrating a few unspoken rules, one of which is to bundle and escalate, so to do your own homework before approaching others. The next is to give others something to react to. So, instead of opening the conversation with a big broad question, you’re giving people options.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And I remember, geez, I might’ve been in like fifth grade when I was a really judgmental fifth-grader. You’re bringing me back to my youth, Gorick, this conversation. And I remember, sometimes when they would ask the teacher for help, they just say, “I don’t get it,” and I can tell the teachers were frustrated by that too, even though teachers are often paragons of patience and they’re accustomed to having to go through something multiple times.

And I remember thinking, “You know, it just doesn’t seem like the best way to ask for help.” It feels a little bit like, I don’t know if I would use these words at the time, but almost like an abdication of responsibility. Like, “You, you fix this because it’s not working for me,” as opposed to getting a little bit more specific. It’s like, “I understand that…” I don’t even know what we’re learning in fifth grade. Igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks maybe, that’s what comes to mind.

“But what really is the difference between sedimentary and igneous?” the geologists are appalled right now, and I’m saying, “Because it would seem that they’re almost the same in that A, B, and C,” and say, ahh, that gives you a whole lot more direction, like, “Oh, yes, I can see where you’re coming from there, and I’m better able to help you given that context. And here’s the precise prescription for what your knowledge needs to be augmented with,” as opposed to, “Well, I guess I’ll just maybe say everything I said before again.”

Gorick Ng
Hundred percent. And it brings me back to a conversation that my manager had with me early on in my career. This was after I did exactly the C+ approach, which was put my head down and hide away for weeks and not show my face at all, only to come back and do the wrong work. My manager said, and I mean for those listening who…well, everyone has had that experience of going from school to work, and realizing that what we learned in school doesn’t exactly align with what we’re expected to know in the workplace.

And so, it’s part of this right of passage, my manager pulled me aside, actually slammed the conference room door behind him…

Pete Mockaitis
Dramatic.

Gorick Ng
…and said, “Look, we hired you to think. If we just hired you to blindly follow a set of instructions, your job could’ve been automated by now. There’s a reason why we hired a human being, a living breathing human being with a brain. It’s because you can solve problems. It’s because you can think critically, so think.”

It was a scary conversation. I’m chuckling at that in retrospect but it really did make a lot of sense, and it reminded me of this side of our brain that just gets turned off by school because, in school, we just have been conditioned to think that textbook has all the answers, there’s a right or wrong to everything, that professor knows best, and that just isn’t the case in the workplace where there’s very rarely a right or wrong answer. More often, there’s just a difference in values and perspectives.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Cool. All right. Well, that’s a great approach right there from the get-go in terms of the A+ way of asking for help, bundle and escalate, make it clear. You tried some things, you have some options in mind, as opposed to, “I don’t get it. Fix this,” or toil away and hope that it hits the right thing. That’s high risk because it may very well not be the right thing. So, lay it on us some more unspoken rules and best practices for following them well.

Gorick Ng
A big one is to understand what matters to those who matter. So, put yourself in the shoes of the higher-ups in your team, in your department, in your organization, and ask yourself, “What goals are they trying to reach? And what pains are they trying to alleviate? What’s causing them stress? What’s wasting them time?” And look left, look right, find a swim lane. So, find something that hasn’t been done before, and occupy that swim lane because the more you understand what matters to those who matter, the more you’ll do work that matters. And the more that you do work that matters, the more you will matter.

And I have a story here, if I may, of someone who unexpectedly did this. And this is actually an individual who’s hired into a staffing company as an administrative assistant. So, the staffing company has a business model where they would place nurses into hospital jobs, and this individual was hired on a six-month contract, and her job was to simply process paperwork. And just like the dozens of people who had come before her, she would work for six months and she’d be off to something else.

She took a very different approach, and just approached her job with a different mindset, which was, “Wait a second. I didn’t just get hired to process paperwork. I got hired to help this company achieve its goals.” So, one day, after doing her work fully, accurately, and promptly, which is really the basis of competence and to show that you’re reliable, she found herself overhearing a conversation between some higher-ups, and they were complaining about how they couldn’t find enough nurses to place into these hospital jobs, at which point she thought, “Well, duh.”

This is a story from the Philippines, by the way, “The company I’m working at is relying on the telephone, on antiquated websites to hire people, when all of my friends are relying on social media to find their next jobs.” And so, she opened up her smartphone, went on to a few of these Facebook pages, and she discovered that actually many of her company’s competitors were quietly lurking in these groups, posting job opportunities, getting the word out.

And she then approached her managers and said, “Hey, maybe this is something you’ve already thought about, but I couldn’t help but notice that, actually, a lot of my friends who were coming out of nursing school are actually finding about job opportunities on social media, something that it doesn’t seem like we’re trying right now. Is this something we’ve considered?”

At which point, her manager thought, “No, this didn’t even occur to us at all. Well, why don’t you go ahead and lurk a little bit.” Fast-forward several months, and she ended up creating a social media presence for her company, ended up providing market intelligence to senior leaders, multiple layers up in the organization.

And so, one day, her manager’s manager came up to her, and said, “I know your contract is due to end. I hope you’re not going anywhere because we want you to lead marketing for our company.” And, just like that, she ended up becoming the youngest manager in her company, leading a division that hadn’t even existed before. And that was all from just seeing her job as more than just a set of tasks but rather as a set of goals to be achieved for the broader team.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And it’s so easy to let those opportunities just float away. Like, you overhear a conversation, and you’re like, “Not my problem.” You just move along, or you just say, “Duh,” and you don’t say anything, or you feel kind of nervous, it’s like, “You know, I got an idea here but I don’t know if it’s my place to say. I’m just an administrative assistant. This is a temporary contract. I’m sure they probably thought of it before.” And you can just talk yourself out of it in seconds instead of pursuing an opportunity which can be game-changing.

Gorick Ng
Oh, yeah. It’s like we’re all walking down an art gallery on a daily basis in our lives, and we’re looking at the same painting but coming to different conclusions around what this painting depicts. So, someone else in this very same situation might look at the scenario that this individual was in, and think, “Yeah, this is someone else’s problem. I’m just an administrative assistant,” to your point. But even the slightest tweak in how we see ourselves and how we fit into the big picture can make a big difference.

So, one of the things that I observe a lot, and I’m guilty of this, is I still have to remind myself to not use the word just, “So, I’m just a planning analyst” which is one way of looking at your job. But another way is to think, “Yeah, sure, I’m a planning analyst but my job is really to get stuff to the right place at the right time. And as a result of my broader mandate, I understand market demand at my company better than anybody.”

Or, if you’re working in manufacturing, for example, “I’m just a machine operator,” versus, “I create the product that makes my company’s products the best. And as a result of having this broader mandate, I know what it takes to be more lean, to be less wasteful, and to be more efficient better than anybody, including the CEO because I’m operating this machine on a daily basis.”

Or, finally, “I’m just a quality manager,” versus, “I ensure that our company’s world-class standards are upheld. And as a result of this broader mandate, I know how to identify when something is wrong and how to fix these problems better than anybody, and this, again, includes the CEO because they’re not looking at these problems on a day-to-day basis. They’re not in these spreadsheets day in, day out. I know more about this topic than anybody, and there is something that is trapped inside of my head that deserves the light of day. I’m just not giving myself credit for what I know and what could be useful.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really powerful, that notion of “I know this better than anybody” is true of perhaps the majority of workers. Like, there is a domain of knowledge that, because you’ve spent more time on it than anybody else, you’re closer to it, day after day, have thought about it than anybody else. And that creates power and opportunity which is really cool.

Gorick Ng
And it creates something that leaders want, which is an ownership mindset. I’ve spoken to over 500 professionals across geographies, industries, and job types to write this book, and the one word that I hear time and time again from leaders is, “I wish that my employees could be owners, could think like an owner, to have this ownership mindset.”

And everyone is capable of doing this. Of course, it’s a matter of self-help so it’s a matter of reframing the way that we exist in the world, but it’s also about all of us needing to help. So, we need leaders and managers to create spaces where people are rewarded for going above and beyond but it can be super simple.

So, one example that I had heard about but that, unfortunately, didn’t make it into the book because I was 40,000 words over the word limit, is of a customer service representative who worked at a quick service restaurant. So, this person was equivalent to the person who scoops up the guacamole in that assembly line.

Pete Mockaitis
Hmm, tasty.

Gorick Ng
Indeed. And this individual looked around the store and noticed that it was total mayhem outside because customers didn’t know where to line up. And so, he approached his manager and said, “Hey, maybe you’ve already thought about this but I couldn’t just help but notice that when people walk into the store, they don’t know if they’re supposed to be lining up on the left-hand side or the right-hand side, and so people are bumping into each other and getting confused and frustrated that they can’t seem to find the beginning of the line.”

“Have we thought about maybe hanging up a sign that says, ‘Start here. Pay here,’ and maybe just drawing some lines on the floor so that people know where to go?” And, just like that, the entire operations of this store ended up being improved, and, of course, this person ended up being rewarded as a result as well.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And you’ve used this phrase a couple times, and it’s really growing on me “Maybe you’ve already thought about this,” which says…it gives you sort of blanket absolution for any potential perception of presumption. That’s a lot of words. But you cover yourself. It’s not like, “I’m not saying you’re an idiot. I noticed this and you may have thought about it, too, and I’m just kind of curious what your thoughts here.” So, I like that.

Gorick Ng
I appreciate you picking that up because it comes back to the 3Cs framework, where it’s not a binary. It’s not a matter of “Are you competent?” versus “Are you not?” It’s actually a spectrum where it’s possible to overshoot and it’s possible to undershoot. So, overshoot this zone of competence and you come across, potentially, as a know-it-all.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “I’ve taken the liberty of getting an architectural blueprint set right up for precisely the most optimized flow.” Yeah, you’re right. In a way, it’s like, “Okay, that’s super proactive and ambitious but I’m a little weirded out and think you probably should’ve consulted me before, I don’t know, spending company money on an architect,” for example.

Gorick Ng
That’s exactly right. And one of the phrases I use a lot in my sessions is the importance of stepping up without overstepping. And that really speaks to just how delicate this balance is between showing just the right dose of competence, commitment, and compatibility without overshooting the mark and coming across as threatening or wanting to make others look bad.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, while we’re talking about specific words, and phrases, and verbiage, any other gems you’d like to share?

Gorick Ng
Well, this one will be likely familiar to those especially in the management position or in an HR function, which is the nine-box matrix. And it’s nine boxes, along the bottom are the labels low performance, medium performance, high performance. And along the edge is low potential, medium potential, high potential.

Now, folks are thinking, “Well, that’s not an unspoken rule. That’s a performance-management framework.” What I didn’t appreciate until I started doing these interviews is that it’s actually not common sense that doing your job is only part of your job. The rest is about showing that you can be trusted with more important responsibilities.

So, what does it mean to show high performance? Well, you’re reliable, you’re doing what you say you will do, you are being responsive, you are showing detail orientation, all of these basics. But what people don’t appreciate is that it’s not enough to simply put your head down, do the hard work, and hope that someone will give you credit for your hard work. You also need to show that you have potential.

So, you need to show that you know why you’re doing what you’re doing, you have to have an answer and a point of view, you have to address issues ideally before they come up, you have to offer ways to make things better, and you have to be seen and heard by leadership. And so, these are the unspoken rules of getting promoted. It’s just that how we’re evaluating employees and how employees think they’re being evaluated are often night and day.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, let’s dig into committed, how you show it. And, first, I just want to…we’re talking about commitment, and I’ve just recently been reading a number of articles about quiet quitting, as it’s called, and I guess there’s multiple interpretations or definitions of this. It’s sort of like you haven’t quit but you’re sort of coasting and you’re going to do the bare minimum, and you’ve sort of quit in your heart, if you will.

And so, that’s creating a buzz in some conversations. But I’d love it if we could address the mindset or the attitude in terms of, “Well, okay, yeah, an ownership mindset would be great but I’m not an owner. I don’t have equity or stock options or performance compensation of any kind. So, yeah, I bet you’d like it if I had an ownership mindset but I don’t because I’m, in fact, not an owner, and that even seems potentially unfair for me to go above and beyond when the rewards are not in play.” I just want to let you respond to that kind of attitude or mindset.

Gorick Ng
Well, this is a good example of where leaders and employees are really talking past each other. And, actually, if I may return to the 3Cs framework because the way that we often, at least when I approach the workplace, I thought that it was all about just doing my job. And, actually, I have a quote from someone, an accountant who was new to corporate America and who thought that, “Well, is it my job just a simple matter of showing up, doing my work, and then going home? That’s what a job is, right?”

And I thought to myself, “Well, yeah.” If I think about my single mother who worked in a sewing machine factory, that was her job. You show up, you do your work, you put your head down, and you leave.” But in this increasingly knowledge-based economy in which we live, it’s hard to evaluate your outputs on a daily basis. So, you can’t just walk up to someone and see how many garments they sewed and the quality of the zipper they sewed onto that garment.

So, in the absence of, clearly, discernible outputs, we start relying on inputs. We rely on, “Well, how responsive are you in emails? How confident are you coming across in conversations? How much are you coming to the table with solutions rather than just problems? How much are you showing excitement?” I have a story of someone who worked in a cinema who thought that his job was simply to, well, collect change and give tickets to people. But he was labeled as “not a team player” because, during his breaks, he wasn’t socializing with his colleagues, and that was, in retrospect, dinging this individual’s commitment and compatibility.

And so, while he wanted to make it to be a general manager, folks didn’t see his leadership material. So, I want to come back to this idea of competence and commitment because when I speak to leaders, they care about competence and commitment. Whereas, when I speak to employees, the misnomer is that, “Well, it’s all just about competence. If I’m just doing my work, why am I not getting rewarded?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, there’s a mismatch, folks talking past each other. Understood. So, in a way, there’s simply a misunderstanding on the part of the employee, that commitment is necessary. Whereas, leadership says, “Well, of course, that’s a given to us. We recognize it.” I’m thinking about more about the employees’ attitude or perspective or mindset that, “That’s just not fair or just or right or appropriate.”

Gorick Ng
Yeah, that’s a big one, and this is where we move from self-help to all of us needing to help. So, it’s one thing to lay bare these unspoken rules. It’s another to make sure that you have the structures and incentives in place to make sure that people are actually motivated to perform at this higher level. And so, when it comes to compensation, yeah, it’s hard to ask your employees to go above and beyond if you’re paying below market rates.

It’s hard to ask your sales and marketing team to make more money if all that money is going to the folks high up and they don’t see a penny of it. So, the fairness thing, I think we need to be talking more about because it’s one thing, it’s necessary but not sufficient to have expectations. You also need to make sure that folks feel excited, folks feel supported, and folks feel valued. Those are really the three essential ingredients to motivating your team versus just having a conversation with them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, attitude point addressed. Now, share with us, how do we demonstrate that we’re committed?

Gorick Ng
Well, I spoke to the importance, for example, of being responsive. And, here, we rub up against also an area where folks may talk past each other, which is some organizations have this always-on culture, or this hidden expectation that if someone higher-up emails you, no matter what time of day it is, that you’d be jumping at that email and responding right away.

And if you speak to leaders, they’ll say, “Well, yeah, of course. If I asked for something, I expect you to be there.” And then if you talked to employees, they’ll say, “Well, I’m not getting paid at this hour. And just because you want to empty your inbox at 11:00 p.m. doesn’t mean that I want to be up at 11:00 p.m. answering your emails.”

So, here, there is the self-help piece and there’s also the all-of-us-need-to-help piece. So, I interviewed, for example, a superintendent at a school district who had this habit of emptying her inbox on Saturday evenings. And from her perspective, it was, “Well, I’m just trying to empty my inbox, trying to get ahead of the following week,” but in doing so, she had established the unspoken rule in her team that everyone needs to be up at that hour.

So, my message to leaders is to be mindful of your intent which I assume is positive, but, moreover, to be mindful of your impact because you know that your intent is positive but how your actions may be perceived on the other side may not be so positive, in the case of the superintendent.

When it comes to employees, it’s important, and here we come back to this idea of quiet quitting, for example, which is drawing boundaries, to use a synonym here. Often, when I speak to leaders, and why they have these requests and why they tend to micromanage, it’s not because anyone wakes up in the morning, thinking, “How can I be the worst micromanager that has walked the face of the earth?” It’s that they’re nervous. It’s that they’re anxious.

And so, as an employee, you can get ahead of this commitment C if you apply the unspoken rule of why, what, how, by when; where, whenever you’re delegated a task, it’s important to be in alignment with your manager about, “Why is this being asked of me? What’s the broader purpose behind this work? What do I need to do? What’s the deliverable exactly? Is this an email? Is this a presentation? Is this a phone call? How am I supposed to do this? So, am I supposed to find it with my friends? Am I supposed to go on Google? Am I supposed to look at our internal knowledge management system?’

And, moreover, and this is the real one, is by when. So, if my manager asks me to do something by, let’s say…well, actually, let me be clear. Most managers will just say, “Can you please look into this?” So, they won’t even give you a deadline, even though in the back of their heads, they have a deadline of, “Well, I want you to get this done by Friday.”

So, if you don’t ask and your manager doesn’t tell you, you’re going to be on completely different pages about this deadline. So, the first step is to ask, “Hey, when do you need this?” But there’s also a further unspoken rule here, which is that whenever there’s a deadline in the workplace, there’s also an unspoken earlier deadline.

So, even though this is due on Friday, maybe before I hand this deliverable to you, Pete, I need to talk to Jenny, and maybe Jenny is out on Thursday, so I actually have to talk to her on Wednesday. And before I can speak to her, I need to speak to three other people who I can only talk to on Monday. So, the deadline isn’t actually next Friday, it’s this afternoon.

And so, aligning on this ahead of time when you’re delegated an assignment can go a long way in demonstrating that you’re committed and, at the same time, draw those boundaries because you’ve already had this conversation with your manager about, “Hey, I promised to get back to you by this time. It’s not yet that time,” of course you’re not saying this but you’ve gone on to the same page that, “Hey, I will get back to you, so don’t be so nervous, don’t be so anxious about what’s really going on right now.”

Pete Mockaitis
And I think those conversations are so necessary. When you mentioned unspoken rule or expectation of the superintendent doing the Saturday night email, I think that’s one of the most powerful conversations that managers and teams can have, is, “What are our expectations associated with email or Slack messaging, etc.?” because I’ve facilitated workshops where there are just incredible lightbulbs going off, like, “Oh, my gosh, so you don’t need this right away? Like, generally, I can reply within 24 hours, and that’s fine? Wow!”

And then there’s another ball of wax associated with multitasking, switch-tasking, and the horrors it does to our attention and deep work and focus zone, flow stuff. So, that’s a whole another ball of wax. But it can be so transformational when you clear those up, and say, “Oh,” or made you learn, “Actually, yes, I do expect that,” like, “Oh, glad that I know that. I can tell you what I can and cannot do with regard to that.” When you said boundaries, how do you recommend you have those conversations?

Gorick Ng
Well, it’s to approach this as, “How can we best work together?” versus “These are all the things that I demand from you.” And this is a two-way street, this is a conversation that managers can have with their teams, and that team members can have with their managers. So, when you’re meeting your manager for the first time, my advice is to ask, “Hey, what are your biggest goals and priorities over the next week, month, quarter, year? What are the things that you’d like me to be focusing on? What are the top priorities, the have-to-dos versus the nice-to-dos?”

“And how would you like to communicate, day to day, week to week? Would you like me to send you a summary email at the end of every week? Or, would you like me to try and tack on maybe a two-minute conversation after our weekly standups?” To your point, so much of this is about making the unspoken spoken. It’s about reminding ourselves that we can’t read the other person’s mind, and so just because we don’t talk about expectations, doesn’t mean that there aren’t expectations.

And we have a choice of either guessing and probably guessing incorrectly, and having that conversation upfront. The style by which you ask is really important. It’s a matter of, “Hey, how can we best work together? How can I save you time and stress?” versus “These are all the things that I expect of you.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right, or that I don’t do.

Gorick Ng
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“I don’t do dishes. I don’t do toilet.” Okay. And so, how about compatibility. How do we demonstrate that?

Gorick Ng
This is the toughest one because bias and discrimination are real. And so, whether we’re talking about age, gender, sex, sexual orientation, nationality, vocal pitch, introversion, extroversion, access to transportation if we’re going to a social event after work, internet connectivity, accent.

So, it’s not a level playing field when it comes to the sea of compatibility where some of us, just by who we are and the backgrounds we come from, might show up in an organization and be able to speak like and have the same conversations as those of our coworkers. Versus, someone else who might feel like an outsider and who has to work a lot harder to demonstrate that compatibility.

Let me give you an example of just how tricky and sometimes uncomfortable this sea of compatibility can be with a story that I included in the book of this individual who joined a team that had this ritual of going on pedal bar outings.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Gorick Ng
Now, I don’t know if you’re familiar with pedal bars.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Well, I live near Nashville now. There’s always the Bachelorettes on the strip. They’re going to the bars and they’re pedal…how do I say the word again? Pedal?

Gorick Ng
I think it’s a pedal bar. I have never done it myself.

Pete Mockaitis
P-E-D-A-L. Pedal bar, yes. So, they’re all pedaling on this thing. It’s just like “That cannot be safe.” That’s what I think whenever I see them, it’s like, “You all must have great insurance because I don’t know about this.”

Gorick Ng
Right. Yes. So, this individual found himself in a team where everyone liked going on pedal bar outings while wearing tie dye, actually. So, it’s a tie dye T-shirt pedal bar outing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Gorick Ng
And this individual thought, “I don’t like drinking. This whole pedal bar tie dye business, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” And so, he didn’t end up showing up at these outings. So, he politely declined every occasion, and then got to a point where he stopped getting invited altogether because his coworkers thought, “Ah, maybe you’re just not interested in hanging out with us.”

Fast-forward to the performance evaluation process, and he, like the individual I interviewed who was seen as not a team player at the cinema, well, this person also got the same feedback, which is that “You’re doing great in your job but you’re just not a team player.” At which point, he thought, “Okay, what you’re really asking me to do is to join you on these outings,” and that’s what he ended up doing.

I’m not saying conform, and we’ll come back to this, but he ended up going on these outings. And, fast-forward to the next review cycle, and his review shot up, and he ended up continuing to put himself out there, get to know his team members, and he ended up getting promoted actually in record time, multiple times, actually, in this company.

Now, we can hear this story and come to multiple conclusions. The first conclusion is, well, conform if you want to “fit in” which is one interpretation. The other interpretation is to do some self-reflection around what you hold sacred, what you’re willing to negotiate, and what you’re indifferent about. And this is a big thing that I uncovered in my research, which is different people are going to have different zones of tolerance when it comes to what they’re willing to give up for their jobs and, specifically, for the purposes of demonstrating compatibility.

So, some people will have, for example, a nontraditional name, at least within a particular context. And some people in that situation will say, “Yeah, give me a nickname. Go ahead.” Others will say, “No, I prefer that you call me by my real name, and I would prefer that you learn how to pronounce it as well.” Others will say, “You know, I’m willing to let go of my entire wardrobe and wear the slacks that you all wear and the blue and white dress shorts from a certain brand that you all wear and the loafers that you all wear.”

Others will say, “You know, I’m willing to conform to a certain degree, so to mesh with maybe your level of business casual but I’m going to show my own flare. I might show off my usual hair or I might show off jewelry that I would like to.” And no one can tell you what is the right answer. It’s really about who you are and what you value, and whether this is even an organization that you want to bend to.

And this also speaks to something else about these so-called unspoken rules, which is when you’re faced with an unspoken rule, you have three options as well. You can either follow the rules, you can either reject the rules, or you can bend the rules. So, in this case, in this particular individual’s situation, he ended up conforming to start getting promoted to management but, in the end, ended up using his managerial and leadership platform to make sure that folks coming into the organization after him didn’t have to conform in the way that he did.

So, he ended up leading diversity and inclusion initiatives, he ended up creating managerial training programs that would instill a different style of leadership in the organization, and that’s what this individual did. Not to say that we should all do it in this way, but this is one example of many of just how tricky this compatibility topic can be.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that notion of the three choices, and I actually got this question just yesterday. I was speaking at the IMF, and someone said, “What do you do if you feel like you can’t bring your full self to work because there’s a homogenous culture?” I don’t know if this person was referring to the International Monetary Fund workplace in particular or asking for a friend or whatever. So, not to put that on anyone.

And I thought that that’s a fine question, and it really made me think about, “Well, how are you defining what constitutes bringing your full self to work?” And I think you laid that up nicely in terms of, “Do you care about the loafers or the blue and white dress shirts or the pedal bar, or do you not?” And so, you might have a strong view, you might not, and you got your three options associated with reject the rules, conform to the rules, bend the rules.

And I think maybe a pre-step, if you will, the prequel to that three-part choice, is just confirming that’s really a rule because I think, for example, if it’s like we all happen to wear…I’m wearing jeans and a polo right now as we’re chatting. And so, if I was in a workplace where there are four other people wearing jeans and polos, and then a new person shows up, they might get the memo, “Oh, I’m supposed to wear jeans and polo. Like, that’s what we do here.”

And, yet, if you are engaging in those conversations openly, honestly, directly, proactively, you can mention, “Hey, you’re actually totally free to wear whatever you want. If you want to wear a death metal band T-shirt, that is completely fine here. We just all happen to coincidentally like jeans and polos, yeah.”

Gorick Ng
This is so important a conversation to have, and it has to start from the managerial leadership side. Because if we put ourselves in the shoes of, for example, the individual I interviewed, this is the typical experience of a new hire, which is you get hired, you get radio silence, you have no idea what’s expected of you on your first day, sometimes you don’t even know who your manager is, let alone where you’re supposed to show up and what you’re supposed to know.

You show up, you don’t know a soul. You go to a meeting, everyone’s talking over you or not even acknowledging that you’re the newcomer. You have questions but no one is there to help you out. You try to speak up but you have that imposter syndrome. You try again and folks don’t even acknowledge that you exist. You receive an assignment but you don’t know what to do. You have questions and don’t have anyone to go to. And then, all of a sudden, fast-forward to your performance evaluation, and you’re called an underperformer, not a team player, apathetic, not leadership material.

Now, if we just put ourselves in the shoes of the typical experience of an employee, there are just a lot of really basic things that leaders and managers can do to create a more welcoming environment. And it begins with what you just said, which is “What are the things that really matter in this job? And what are the things that we actually don’t really care about?”

But someone from the outside, if an alien from outer space were to swoop into our organization, this alien might interpret our organization as one where everyone has to be up at all hours, everyone has to wear jeans and polos, everyone has to talk a certain way, everyone has to talk about a certain set of sports and a certain set of teams in that sport, and that may not necessarily be the case.

So, being proactive about this conversation is important because that new hire, who is already feeling uncomfortable, is probably not in a position to spark this conversation themselves. You have to be the one to bring it up.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s great stuff, Gorick. Thank you. Any final thoughts before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Gorick Ng
As I take a step back from my research, my biggest aha moment is twofold. One, it’s that high performers and high potentials are developed, not born. And the second is that, when it comes to onboarding your employees, developing your employees, engaging your employees, and promoting your employees, all of that begins with speaking the unspoken rules.

These unspoken ways that we do things in this organization, that we might assume to be common sense but that’s often not common sense. And this is often a function of privilege, of where we grew up, of our work experience, of the communities in which we live. And deconstructing what those unspoken rules are for all can level the playing field for all of your employees.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Gorick Ng
I wish this were my quote. It’s, unfortunately, not mine but it’s still my favorite, and it’s, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Gorick Ng
I’m a big fan of Erin Meyer’s work on The Culture Map. So, she maps out different working cultures across countries around the world, and then maps them out across eight scales. It helped me gain a better appreciation for this notion of cultural differences and how what may be common sense in one culture, may actually be at odds with how another culture does its work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Gorick Ng
My favorite book is Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus. It’s actually a picture book on a caterpillar who discovers his true purpose in life. And it turns out that it’s not what everyone else is pursuing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Gorick Ng
I love Instapaper. It’s a tool that allows me to save articles for offline reading, and I actually have Siri read those articles to me when I’m on runs.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Gorick Ng
I can’t say this is a habit yet but I’m definitely trying harder to block off time for the important work so that the mindset of just one more email doesn’t turn into an entire day of emails.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Gorick Ng
The takeaway that folks repeat back to me most often is the idea that it’s not enough to simply put your head down, do the hard work, and let your hard work speak for itself. You need to be seen, you need to be heard in order to be remembered. And you need to be remembered in order for you to be promoted.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Gorick Ng
Best place to contact me is at my website, which is Gorick.com, that’s G-O-R-I-C-K.com. I’m also on the various social media networks, so feel free to connect with me.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Gorick Ng
My call to action is to leaders, and it’s to identify one person on your team who may come across as a low-performer, someone who may appear to be apathetic or just not get it, and ask yourself, “What might they not get that I consider to be common sense?” and then reach out to them, and ask, “Hey, how are you doing?” and listen. You might be surprised by what they tell you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Gorick, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and success in sharing and following well the unspoken rules. Keep on rocking.

Gorick Ng
Thanks so much, Pete. Appreciate your time.

670: The Four Keys to Leading Successful Virtual Teams with Darleen DeRosa

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Darleen DeRosa discusses how to build top teams and deliver high-impact work while leading from a distance.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The quickest way to build trust in your team 
  2. How to ensure accountability with the ATC model 
  3. Simple, but effective ways to keep your team motivated 

 

About Darleen

Darleen DeRosa, Ph.D., is a consultant in Spencer Stuart’s Stamford office and a core member of the Life Sciences and Leadership Advisory Services practices. Darleen brings more than 15 years of consulting experience, with deep expertise in talent management, executive assessment, virtual teams, top team effectiveness and leadership development. Darleen works with leading companies to facilitate selection, succession management and leadership development initiatives. She is a trusted advisor to CEOs, CHROs and boards. 

Darleen earned her B.A. in psychology from the College of the Holy Cross and her M.A. and Ph.D. in social/organizational psychology from Temple University. Darleen is the co-author of Virtual Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance (with Richard Lepsinger), as well as other book chapters and journal articles on leadership. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

Thank you, sponsors!

Darleen DeRosa Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Darleen, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Darleen DeRosa
Thanks, Pete. Thanks for hosting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. Well, I’m excited to hear about Leading at a Distance insights. But, first, I want to hear about your love for deep-sea fishing.

Darleen DeRosa
I knew you were going to ask that. Well, people don’t know this and they’re often very surprised for whatever reason, I’m not going to read into that, but I love deep-sea fishing. And wherever I go, whether it’s Hawaii, here in Connecticut, we charter boats and we love to go fishing. And I probably go six or seven times a year. I don’t always catch anything crazy, I’ve never caught a marlin, or anything fantastic, but it is something that I love to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I have fond memories. I think I did deep-sea fishing exactly once for a bachelor party and the father of the bride fell into the water and it was a heroic rescue, so that story. You make memories when you go on those trips.

Darleen DeRosa
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to hear, we’re talking about leading at a distance. Can you share what’s perhaps one of the most surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made while researching this stuff and putting things together?

Darleen DeRosa
That’s a great question. And so, what’s very interesting is I wrote a book on virtual teams in 2011, and my co-author, Jim Citrin, keeps reminding me that that is the most, at that time, it was a very obscure topic even though, as you know, companies have been working remotely for quite some time, especially big companies that are more complex and more global in nature.

So, what was surprising, I guess most surprising to me, is that a lot hasn’t changed. Yes, technology, of course, has evolved and business is more complex and more dynamic, certainly, but, in general, what’s fascinating is that a lot of the best practices that we learned way back 10 years ago actually hold true now and have just become even more important. And so, that’s very interesting to me that there’s not a lot of major profound differences in what we found.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is noteworthy in and of itself. You’d think that we, as workers, would have learned a couple of lessons in a decade. So, share with us, what are some of those kind of foundational things that are still at play and maybe overlooked?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah. So, it’s interesting, there’s a number of things, and we try to make the book really practical. What I really wanted to do here, was have a practical hands-on guide for anyone, anyone who’s managing telecommuters, whether you’re managing remote teams, whether you’re a CEO who’s managing a large complex organization with distributed employees. So, we wanted to make it very pragmatic.

And, interestingly, the topics ranged from everything like, “How do you build trust remotely?” to “How do you coach and hold people accountable who you don’t see?” But one of the things that hasn’t changed, as I was mentioning, even from our early research in 2010, is what we found is that, back then anyway, the best-in-class leaders who are managing remotely do a great job balancing the relationship side of things, the interpersonal components, with the tasks and sort of execution-oriented behaviors. In other words, they don’t overly weigh any one of those and they’re really good at managing that big continuum. So, it’s a big complex role.

And what we do know is that managing virtually is hard. It’s harder than managing people who are co-located in the same room. And leaders have really had to adapt a lot, especially in this current environment where you’re leading through technology, but the best-in-class leaders really do a great job at that, balancing that continuum, and we call that RAMP. So, we frame it as the best-in-class leaders are really good at relationships, which is the R; they hold people accountable, which is the A; they know how to motivate people through a screen basically, people they don’t see, or through a phone; and they can use process, things like technology, which is the P, to engage and try to replicate what they would do if they were in person.

So, that’s one framework that a lot of our clients find practical but like the fact that it’s research-based and comes from data on what differentiates best-in-class virtual leaders.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you tell us a cool story about a virtual leader who was struggling and then employed some of this stuff and had a transformation?

Darleen DeRosa
Absolutely. So, we have a number of those but one of the things, and, again, it’s surprising how we fall back on some of our bad behaviors, and we all do this. We all succumb to sort of those bad habits. Especially, in COVID now, I think people have gotten better but we were working with the CHRO of a global hospitality company and he was so focused on results and he had a very large distributed team. And one of the things that he wasn’t really cognizant of was, “How do you build relationships and trust with your team members but also with one another?”

And so, we talked to him about, “Here are some ways on that RAMP continuum to focus on building trust, and how you infuse collaboration and relationships from a distance.” And so, he started doing simple things, things that you would think, “Well, we should all be doing that anyway.” Like, once or twice a week, he blocked time in his calendar proactively to just give people feedback. He had recognition sessions to thank people on the team. He also would call people, and he actually called these care calls, where he would randomly call people and just check in, no agenda, no real need, but just to say “Hey, how can I support you?”

And his engagement scores and the team’s performance, over a period of time, of course, changed dramatically and were much more positive. So, again, it’s a good example of if we focused too much on any one thing, and we’re not very balanced in how we engage and lead, it can become almost like a strength overdone.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear some of those best practice approaches there for each of those four components: the relationships, the accountability, the motivation, and the process. What are some top things people should start doing and stop doing?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah. So, on relationships, and this is by far, when we asked people, “What is the biggest challenge you’re facing?” in our most recent survey for the book, it was that sense of connectivity. So, in other words, if I were to bump into you in the hallway, Pete, or in the lunch room, we could have that spontaneous interaction, and virtually you don’t have that. It’s lacking.

And so, some of our clients have started using apps like Donut, which sounds a little funny, but what it does is it randomly pairs employees with one another all around the world for 15 minutes once or twice a month, and it allows you to create that spontaneous interaction. And some people might think that’s a little strange but it really does replicate, and, again, it’s one example of replicating what you would do if you were in person. So, having a lot of these virtual lunches, building time into your meetings for watercooler conversation.

The chief technology officer that we interviewed at Starbucks for the book, talked about she started using fun warmups at the beginning of her calls, playing Kahoot!, doing Wordles, or Pictionary, putting people in breakouts to do really fun activities. It’s those simple things that really go a long way for relationships. So, those are just a few examples. Again, simple but highly effective.

Pete Mockaitis
And I don’t think I’ve ever played Kahoot! before. What does this consist of?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah, they’re like little quizzes and you could make them up. They’re all random topics. They’re just little fun games. And, again, it sounds crazy but it’s just something to get people to get to know one another, because when you’re building trust virtually, it takes a lot longer. So, what we tell leaders is, “The one thing you can control when you’re working virtually is what’s called task-based trust.” In other words, the most important thing as a leader when you’re managing remotely is to help your people get to know one another and find that they are credible and they’re going to deliver on commitments, and that’s really important.

And, actually, this trust is different in a virtual setting. So, basically, invest in building that task-based trust early on and it will go a long way because it takes a long time to build interpersonal trust when you’re not face to face. So, that’s just, again, a very simple technique but something that best-in-class virtual leaders consistently apply.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, when it comes to building task-based trust, I guess I’m not quite seeing the connection between how the games accomplishes that. Or are there additional practices for accelerating that?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah. Well, it gets people to know familiarity with your background, who you are as a person, your experiences. So, a lot of the games can be around getting to know people so it sounds like it’s task-based but the idea is that it helps build credibility and are simple ways, again, everything together builds trust. But creating fun, not focusing so much on the work, and focusing more on the people is really, really critical.

So, again, we’re not telling people, “Don’t focus on interpersonal trust virtually,” but if you want to get the biggest ROI, initially, helping people learn about one another’s background through, again, it could be fun games, it could be little polls in your virtual meetings, those things have a tremendous impact on trust.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s interesting, and maybe it’s a matter of the terminology we’re using here, but it seems like if we’re getting to know each other better, that’s fun. It has some connections. I know there’s a face and a name and a person and a story behind that. I guess I’m not quite seeing how that makes me think, “And that guy is going to rock out and deliver on the thing I’m going to ask of him or her.”

Darleen DeRosa
Well, yeah, it definitely is the fun component and that’s what I was starting to talk about early when I mentioned the relationship-building piece, the R in RAMP. But, again, it’s almost like it has a dual purpose. So, when people are playing those fun games, especially if people are just getting to know one another, because, basically, no matter what, people are sharing their experiences, who they are through these polls, these chat exercises.

A lot of our clients do fun chats in their meetings, things like, “What’s the first you can’t wait to do after COVID?” “What’s your favorite hobby?” So, it is a way to get to know one another, and sometimes the questions are around projects, which is very linked to task-based trust. So, again, when we think of trust virtually, it’s the combination of task-based trust and interpersonal trust that matters, but it’s easier and quicker to focus on the task-based trust early on. And you can do that through building people’s credibility and helping people get to know their colleagues.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. And then when it comes to accountability, how do we make that all the better?

Darleen DeRosa
So, this is actually a pretty hot topic virtually because, as you can imagine, it’s hard to know what people are doing. And so, the biggest mistake that we see leaders make is they don’t trust and empower their employees. Now, COVID has been a great example because, in many industries, productivity is actually up right now. It could be masking extreme burnout and fatigue, which is actually well-publicized right now, but, in all seriousness, many people are productive. And I think this COVID environment right now has led some leaders who were very skeptical about working virtually to realize that it actually can work.

And one mistake that leaders make is they’re so focused on when people work, “Is it 9:00 to 5:00? Are they available? Are they doing something with their kids when they’re supposed to be working?” and that actually is a myth, and people will be productive, but you have to empower them and find ways to check in and hold them accountable, of course, but just by empowering them alone, you get higher levels of productivity.

So, you’ve got to change your metrics with accountability. You can’t look at when people are working. You have to look at their output, which is much more important. And that’s why many companies have now started to really change the way they measure performance because it’s much different in a virtual setting.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. So, the clock is not going to be your guide in terms of seeing, “Are people performing well?” And so, what are some of the best approaches to do those check-ins and see the output flowing?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah, some companies use software and different technologies to help measure output but, in general, the advice that I give leaders is, “You have to work harder at setting very clear goals for people.” And one of the things we know is more challenging virtually is making sure that people understand the priorities. So, in a more dynamic virtual setting, priorities shift, and if you’re not seeing people in the office where you could do a quick check-in with them, you’ve got to find ways to replicate that virtually.

So, setting clear goals and then being clear about what good looks like, what’s the deliverable, what’s the timeline, and then having checkpoints to actually check in with people. And we call this the ATC model. Again, lots of models today, Pete. But we call this the ATC model because it’s simple and people get it. And what we tell people is, much like an air traffic controller who’s managing numerous flights, “You’ve got to help your people manage a tremendous workload and priorities that are shifting fairly quickly.”

So, the A is really being clear about what it looks like, what’s the product, and being super clear about that with people up front. So, what’s the action and who’s accountable? Sometimes we see leaders say, “The team should do this,” but no one really knows who’s actually on point for that and who’s taking full ownership. The T is timetable, so, “Is it next quarter? Is it May 1st?” Like, what’s the real deadline and being very clear about that.

And then, finally, checkpoints, which is the most important, in my opinion, is, depending on the tenure and experience of that employee, you may need to check in with them more or less frequently, but actually have a conversation with the person to say, “Here’s what we’re going to be working on. When should we touch base? Would it make sense to touch base in two weeks? Next week?” And for people who you’ve known for a long time and might be high performers, you might not need as many checkpoints. For others, where this might be a newer task or developmental task, you might need to check in more frequently. So, the ATC model is a very simple way to make sure that you’re setting people up for success virtually.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, you mentioned some software tools, and I find that intriguing because I guess it will probably vary quite a bit based on what work you’re doing. But it’s really kind of hard to measure one’s true value-add contribution. I don’t know, like if I were to say, hey, lines of code as a metric, or words produced, or invoices processed, in some ways that can be counterproductive to have automated software kind of counting that sort of thing. So, what are the software solutions and what are they doing?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah, a lot of it is things like Teams, which now has a lot of like optionality in there for tracking projects and milestones and things like that. A lot of clients use Basecamp, as one example. But it’s less about tracking, like literally what you’re doing, and more about helping the team members stay on track together when they’re working virtually. So, it’s much more collaborative to help track and measure the team’s performance.

So, to store documents, to have the timeline up there, to keep track of things, to have version control for things that people might be working on together. So, technology has continued to evolve significantly, as you know, over the last decade, and I think it will continue to evolve even more in the next five or six years alone. So, those are just some simple things that some organizations are using but, clearly, depending on the role, the complexity of the job, and the industry, there’s a lot of variability.

Professional services, that’s not how we’re measured. It’s more we’re measured on how we deliver to clients. We’re measured on our productivity. But we have internal software to track that, just as one example.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about the motivation?

Darleen DeRosa
Yes, I love this topic because this is very challenging virtually. So, first of all, you’ve to set people up for success, but what we do know is that motivation takes on a different meaning virtually. It’s harder. Virtual colleagues and employees face very unique challenges. And you probably have seen this in this year alone where it’s particularly difficult for people because people are feeling isolated, there’s much less work-life balance with the blur between work and home being gone, so managers have to think differently and really try to be proactive at checking in with people.

People are exhausted and people are burnt out. Again, I’m making a generalization but this is pretty well documented in all the research. So, encouraging people to take breaks and schedule time for their own personal development is very important. Don’t have meetings just to have a meeting. Having meetings for status updates is one of my pet peeves and it’s very unproductive. Encouraging people to get off video. Non-stop video or that Zoom fatigue that you’ve probably read about, Pete, is real because it’s cognitively draining to sit there and stare at a camera all day.

So, encouraging people to take a walk and just talk on the phone is really good. Again, these are just a few simple ideas but really checking in with people, depending on where they are in their own personal development journey is important, and finding time and encouraging people to make time for non-work interaction, the relationship piece that I talked about, is really important.

The other thing that’s very important virtually is you’ve got to recognize people. So, clearly, recognition is important but many leaders are so busy that they’re not doing it proactively. So, one tip I’ll give to senior leaders that I’m coaching is, “Block time in your calendar, even if it’s once a month, and call it your time to recognize people. Send him notes. You can send gift cards,” a Grubhub Gift Card, for example. Again, it doesn’t have to be monetary. Just send someone a text to thank them. It’s simple things that really go a long way to recognize the team.

One of my clients, it’s a pharma company, they have guest speakers come in, they have recognition sessions where they actually get the team to talk about, like, a colleague who’s been helpful to them. And, again, it sounds really simple but these are critical drivers of motivation when you’re working remotely.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And how about process?

Darleen DeRosa
So, process, the most simple thing about process is technology, that’s what we think about. So, there’s a bunch of processes that fit in the P but the one that’s probably most relevant here is match your technology to your task. So, I talked earlier about using technology well. What we learned is that best-in-class virtual teams don’t necessarily have the most sophisticated technology, they just know how to use it.

So, really, as a leader, what’s most important is if you’re going to have a meeting, don’t have a meeting for a status update, that’s just one simple example. Don’t use email to coach someone. And, again, it sounds crazy but I see this all the time. So, you’ve got to be very thoughtful when you’re working virtually about how you use technology appropriately depending on what your goal is and what you’re trying to accomplish.

So, if you’re going to have a tough conversation with someone or you’re going to give someone feedback, do it by video or phone, obviously. It has to be that high-touch environment. So, really being thoughtful about that and making sure that teams are not overwhelmed by technology, that everyone is using the same thing, that’s very important. So, those are just a few quick examples. But this idea of Zoom fatigue is very real.

And I don’t know if you’ve seen like the articles in Forbes, in Fortune, and the Times, HBR actually has an article on this. Basically, people are sick of video. And I think many organizations went to the extreme with video in COVID because they were unsure how to connect with people, but being thoughtful about video, encouraging people to take breaks, some of our clients are doing video-free Fridays, or video-free half days. So, for those of us who are on video nonstop, it actually really matters. So, being thoughtful about how people are working is really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Darleen DeRosa
So, I think one of my favorite quotes, is from this book Illusions by Richard Bach, and it’s this quote that says something like, not verbatim, but something like, “Every person, all the events of your life are there because you’ve drawn them there, and what you choose to do with them is up to you.” And I love that because, throughout my career as a psychologist, I really believe that we have some control over how we respond to things, how we handle stress, how we handle all of those types of things that really build our resilience, so I’ve loved that quote even from more than a decade ago.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Darleen DeRosa
I think one of the ones that has been the most profound for me was one that what I read about in grad school, so a long time ago when I was doing my dissertation on virtual team work. And it was a study that looked at trust and how you build trust virtually. It’s exactly what I was talking about before. It was one of the first studies, it was pretty old at that time even, but it still rings true about, “How do you build that swift trust or that task-based task virtually?” and that it’s actually more important.

And that, again, it’s interesting because I never realized, way back then, how much of this would be part of what I do day to day many years later, this idea of studying virtual teams and helping leaders be more successful remotely.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you share a favorite book?

Darleen DeRosa
One of the books that I love that has been profound in my CEO succession practice is The Leadership Pipeline mostly because I’ve always been fascinated with “How do you identify high-potential leaders?” So, besides the virtual team stuff that I do, that’s a huge part of my work and I’ve been fascinated with, “How do you identify people who have potential to do more? What does that really look like?” and then building assessments around that. So, it is a bit specific but it also has been a big part of the work that I’ve been doing over the last decade.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m just kind of curious. And what are some of the top telltale signs that someone has great potential?

Darleen DeRosa
Yeah, that’s a good question and one that we continue to try to evolve on, Pete, over time. But definitely, people who take initiative, which isn’t a surprise; people who are engaged and advocate for their organization; people who have learning agility, which is one of the most important predictors of leadership potential, so someone who’s put in unfamiliar situations who can really thrive; and then, lastly, someone who’s self-aware. So, self-awareness and then they’re able to flex and adapt and learn very quickly. So, I think, again, these are just some of the dimensions that I think are quite well documented when we think about what really defines people who have the potential to do more over time.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Darleen DeRosa
Honestly, right now, video conferencing because, besides all the virtual team stuff that I do, I am on video every day. So, using Microsoft Teams and other technologies I use constantly. But the other thing that I do, and I’ve been using a lot more, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with these tools, but in a lot of my training work where I do leadership development with top teams and companies, we’ve been experimenting and using collaborative software technologies to help teams brainstorm, share ideas, whiteboard, and also have fun while they’re working together in our leadership development virtual classrooms.

So, we’ve been using tools like Mural and Miro which are really fun, innovative, collaborative tools that help people. It almost replicates what you do if you had people around the conference room table, so I love those two.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you frequently?

Darleen DeRosa
I think one of the things, this was in an article that I wrote in the Wall Street Journal years ago, and it was this idea of out of sight but not out of mind. And it’s the notion, at that time when I was writing this article, it was something that I said and is now very widely quoted. And, at the time, I was writing about “How do you, as a leader, own your career? And even if you’re not in the same office or geography as your boss, how do you win over a boss who’s remote?”

And I started talking about this idea of out of sight but not out of mind. You’ve got to work a little harder at it. And I do really believe, and it’s a great lesson for all of us, that being virtual or hybrid in this kind of some of us in the office, some of us not, really requires more initiative and ownership, as like us managing our time, managing our calendars, and taking initiative to reach out and not just rely on our boss or manager reaching out to us. And I think that’s really important.

And I think it’s actually more true than ever because most organizations, about 80% of companies, are going to land in what we call a hybrid environment where you’ve got some people in the office and some people at home. And, frankly, that is the most challenging environment to manage in because of lack of equity, some people feeling like they’re not next to their boss, they might not get cool projects so they might not get promoted. So, that is the hardest model to manage in but it’s going to be the one where most organizations land.

And so, I think this idea of trying to create an even playing field is going to be really critical for all of us as leaders in the next decade.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Darleen DeRosa
They can go to my LinkedIn page. They can go to the SpencerStuart website. We’re actually going to be putting up some pretty cool self-assessments and technologies, or quizzes rather, that people can use as the book launches. So, the SpencerStuart has a Leading at a Distance page that people can go to as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Darleen DeRosa
I would say get feedback. That is something that I believe is true. Again, super simple but let me end with this one statistic. In our first study in 2011, this was based on 50 global virtual teams that we ended up publishing in the book, more than two-thirds of the leaders were not seen as effective by their boss and other stakeholders, and they had no idea.

So, the biggest learning, again, under this idea of taking initiative and really owning your own career, it’s important to ask for feedback, and most of us don’t do it because we don’t want to hear it necessarily, but even if you don’t want to hear it, people might be thinking it. And so, what I would encourage us to do is to step outside of our comfort zone and check in with people more because it’s more important in a virtual setting where you can actually course-correct and make some improvements.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Darleen, this has been a treat. I wish you all the best as you lead from a distance.

Darleen DeRosa
All right. Thanks so much, Pete. Appreciate it.

621: How to Banish the Four Habits of Time Wasting with Steve Glaveski

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Steve Glaveski says: "Focus on what you can control, not what you can't control."

Steve Glaveski reveals how to unlearn the four habits that make us time poor.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why we often feel like we get nothing done 
  2. The simplest way to keep others from stealing your time 
  3. Why we achieve more when we have less time 

About Steve

Steve Glaveski is an entrepreneur, author and podcast host whose mission is to unlock the latent potential of people so that they can create more impact for humanity and lead more fulfilling lives. 

Steve is CEO of Collective Campus, an innovation accelerator based in Melbourne and Singapore, and founder of Lemonade Stand, a children’s entrepreneurship program and now, SaaS platform, that has been delivered to kids across Australia and Singapore. Steve is also the author of Employee to Entrepreneur: How To Earn Your Freedom and Do Work That Matters, the children’s picture book Lemonade Stand: From Idea to Entrepreneur, and the newly released Time Rich. 

Steve hosts the Future Squared podcast. His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street JournalForbes, the Australian Financial ReviewTech in Asia and numerous other outlets. 

Resources mentioned in the show:

 

Thank you, sponsors!

Steve Glaveski Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Steve, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Steve Glaveski
Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom but, first, we need to hear about your relationship with heavy metal and performance in a tribute band.

Steve Glaveski
Wow, that’s a great question, a great place to start this. Well, I always say that you’ve got to cultivate a positive relationship with adversity, put yourself in all sorts of uncomfortable places, and then everything just becomes easier. So, one of those uncomfortable places for me was wearing zebra-print pants, a snakeskin cowboy hat, and makeup in an ‘80s metal tribute band called Ratt Poison, that’s R-A-T-T, paying homage to the band Ratt many, many years ago now. I think I was about 21 at the time, and, well, I’m still a big heavy metal fan, and that was a great experience. Although I do recall snapping a string at that particular performance and spending about 10 minutes trying to fix my guitar while the band played without me. So, trial by fire, but, yeah, that’s my heavy metal story, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Now you said that this was an uncomfortable position, so you didn’t seek this out, it was thrust upon you?

Steve Glaveski
No, look, I joke. I was looking for a good way to introduce that but, ultimately, I loved it. Like, it was a lot of fun. I mean, looking back now at those photos, they can be used to incriminate me or can be used against me, but I proudly have them up on my Facebook account. So, Pete, if people want to look for that photo, they can find it on my Facebook profile.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, thank you. It sounds like a rich use of time. How’s that for a segue? Your book is called Time Rich, which sounds like an awesome thing I’d like to be. Can you tell us, what does it mean to be time rich?

Steve Glaveski
It really means living life according to your values. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you wake up in the morning and you spend all day in your underwear watching Netflix. It really comes back to having the time to invest your hours, your very few hours, into things that give you a more rewarding experience of life. So, for some people that might be working longer hours, for some people it might be spending more time with family but, ultimately, I think it comes back to how you choose to spend those hours, and spending those hours in high-value activities.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds like the ideal. Can you tell us kind of what’s the state of affairs right now in terms of how much of us, how many of us really do that?

Steve Glaveski
Very few of us do that. I think a typical person now is spending about 12 hours a day staring at screens. That’s actually gone up since the pandemic just because we find ourselves watching more Netflix and YouTube and whatnot. But if you look at what we’re spending our time doing with those screens, particularly now when it comes to work, people’s way of work, we’re effectively taking what we did in the office, which was 50 to 60 interruptions a day, which was 40 to 50 notifications, push notifications popping up on our screen all day long, which was responding to emails within five minutes of them being received, checking email every six minutes, we’ve taken that and we just put it all online.

Like, instead of a one-hour face-to-face meeting, it’s a one hour Zoom call. Instead of taps on the shoulder, all day long it’s a Slack message. It’s actually worse now because we’ve got that Slack channel or the Microsoft Teams channel up all day long, and the red light is always going off, new notification, so we’re bouncing back into that all day long.

And what that does for us in terms of our focus, effectively we’re paying a cognitive switching penalty because every time we switch task, it can take us up to 23 minutes to get back in the zone. And when we’re in the zone, when we cultivate the ability to get into flow, we’re about five times more productive. When we’re totally immersed in one task, the rest of the world seems to fade away and the hours just fly by, we’re way more productive. But we’re in this state of hyper-responsiveness where nothing gets done, and we can be “busy, busy, busy” all day long but have very little to show for it come the end of the day.

And just to close the loop on your question, Gallup ran a study last year which found that 85% of people are either disengaged or not engaged by their works. So, any 15% of us are engaged by our work, which comes back to these organizational cultures where either we’re not aligned with the values of the organization or we’re just not given a sense of control to actually get stuff done because we’re spending all day long in meetings, we’re being interrupted all day long, and we’re glorifying things like inbox zero, which demonstrates that we’re really good at responding to other people’s demands on our time at the expense of our own priorities. So, my sense is that very, very few people are doing the utmost with what little time they’re given.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that 23-minute stat, I think that sounds familiar, like the Microsoft study with email. Is that where that comes from there?

Steve Glaveski
Oh, that actually comes from an organization called Advanced Brain Monitoring in the United States who ran a study on the flow state. It also echoes a study that McKinsey ran, a 10-year study around high executives where they found that when these executives are in a flow state, they are up to five times more productive.

There’s also another study that Advanced Brain Monitoring ran where they found that even micro tasks switches, so a notification pops up on your smartphone and you see it but you don’t tap on it, you just notice it. That one-tenth of a second micro task switch, over the course of a day, they found that that can add up to about a 40% productivity loss because even if you’re in flow, and you notice that, that’s enough to kind of take you out of flow and it’s going to take you time to get back in. Not only does it compromise our productivity but this constant sort of recalibrating our minds around a different thing, it can leave us exhausted as well.

So, we can find that by, say, 1:00 P.M. we’re feeling spent just because we’ve spent the first four, five hours of our day just shuffling between browser windows madly instead of just focusing on that one-high value activity.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, this is quite fascinating because when you said 23 minutes, I thought, “Oh, that sounds like the 24 minutes associated with the Microsoft email study.” But it’s a completely different study which arrived at a very similar number, which I find intriguing and validating. So, can you share with us some details on what was going on in terms of how we tested that and got to that 23-minute figure?

Steve Glaveski
So they basically got a number of control groups and it required a little bit of objective feedback in terms of the interruption and how they got back to it. So, they would look at a performance of, say, marksmen who were able to get into flow in terms of how well they hit the bullseye. And what would happen was they would leave them be to just, say, extended stretches of time of, say, 30 to 60 minutes to just work on their craft, and they performed at a much higher level than when they’d been, say, interrupted or when someone came over and had a quick conversation with them.

And then they’d look at the first, say, 5 to 10 minutes thereafter, as opposed to, say, 20, 30, 40 minutes thereafter when they’d had more time to just really hone in and get in the zone, and it’s kind of the same as, say, you might find if you meditate. The first two or three minutes, there’s a lot of monkey mind going on, but then 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes in, a lot of that stuff kind of starts to fade away and you really get into your element.

So, they ran these studies across a number of different fields where they basically took someone’s performance shortly after an interruption and then compared it to their performance 20, 30 minutes in, and there was a vast difference in that. And then after they’d been interrupted, how long does it take them to get their performance up to that sort of optimal level.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. Well, so there we have it. I mean, it seems like there’s plenty at stake here in terms of whether or not you’re engaged at work, whether or not you’re having fun, whether or not you’re doing well, you’re executing at a high level and just sort of ultimately getting more stuff done during the course of the day in terms of whether we are in flow and doing things well in a time-rich fashion versus kind of just jumping and being scared all over the place with notifications and emails and interruptions in a time-poor fashion.

So, tell me, what are the best interventions, super habits, practices, tips and tricks, for those of us who want to cut out the time-poor behavior and be all the more time rich?

Steve Glaveski
Sure. So, a good visual mnemonic that will help your audience is TYRE. So, I say when it comes to our personal productivity, we’re carrying around spare tires which effectively slow us down. So, the T stands for task switching. So, the best thing you can do there, actionable step is you turn off your notifications; that’s a really easy one. But the second one is really cultivating the ability to focus on one thing for extended periods of time. So, using something like a Freedom app or BlockSite to block Twitter, to block these app sites you’re inclined to jump into, and then just, “Yeah, let me just quickly check my notifications.” And that can send you down the Twitter rabbit hole for half an hour. The other thing there is also the browser windows. Like, rather than having 20 browser windows open, just focus on one. So, these are like some actionable things you can do in terms of that environment.

And then the other thing I would do on task switching is it’s like cultivating any habit. Like, if you’re not used to going to the gym, it can take you a while to get into that. But cultivating the ability to sit still on one task for 30 to 60 minutes without switching, that also takes effort so you might want to start with, say, 15 minutes and work your way up.

Environment design is important too. If you want to build new habits, cultivate an environment where it’s easy to build that new habit, where it’s easier to break bad ones as well. So, I’ve touched on a couple of them there, but also if I have my phone right next to my desk, and I was going to reach for it but I don’t have it here, which speaks to what I’m trying to communicate, it’s much easier for me to just pick that phone and just check Instagram quickly and do things like that. So, whatever you can do to build a habit free of distraction, build an environment free of distraction, do that.

And then the second piece on building that…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, if I may, before jumping to the I of TIRE, so this 30, 60 minutes of not switching, you say that could be hard. We might just need to start with 15. I think maybe it might be beneficial to paint a picture in terms of when we say not switching, I have a feeling you have a higher standard of this than most of us. So, give us an example of when you say, “Hey, okay, for the next 15, 30, 60 minutes, I’m doing this and only this.” What can be some examples and then what are we not doing? We’re not looking at any notification or ding or beep or buzz whatsoever or visiting any place. Paint a picture for us.

Steve Glaveski
Yeah, definitely. So, look, I’m a writer so I spend a hell of a lot of time staring at my Google Docs module, and if I am writing a thousand-word article, I am not checking my phone, I am not checking other websites, and there are no notifications popping up on my screen. I’m focusing purely on the task of writing. Now, there may be, while I’m writing, I might need, say, a reference of some kind to help me elaborate on things but I’m going to go through one round first.

So, if there is a reference that I’m looking for, I might just make a note of that in the article, and write, “Reference,” highlight it in yellow, and keep on going. Because if I stop every 50 words to seek out references, that can slow things down. I want to write it first and then go off and do those other things because it’s, in a world of four million blogposts being published every day, it’s so easy for us to get stuck in content rabbit holes. And, again, we need to be honest with ourselves because it can be easy to conflate doing stuff with being productive because, ultimately, we derive a lot of self-worth from our work, but we need to make sure that we’re deriving that self-worth from productive activities rather than just stuff that makes us feel busy.

So, that’s essentially my definition of not task switching which is really focusing on not just the one task but also, “What’s the task within the task?” because writing, it could writing, it could be researching, it could be fact-checking, there are different elements to that value chain of writing, but focusing on that one task within the value chain of writing at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Yeah, I really like that about the task within a task. And then I guess that’s where things get tricky is when you need to get something else to do the thing you’re doing, whether it’s inside your email, or whether it’s inside a reference, or whether it’s inside your phone text message history. That’s what trips me up in terms of it’s like, “Oh, I need to get this thing in order to finish what I’m doing.” But then as I go to that other place, I’m besieged with all the other stuff, and I hate it. How do I fix it?

Steve Glaveski
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that’s a great, great question, and in some cases, you might get to a point where, “Look, it’s a dead end, and I need to jump into my email to get this widget, to get this attachment, whatever it is, to continue with my work.” So, of course, you need to do that. Now, I would say that in some cases there are tools that exist. So, for example, if I need to quickly write an email but I don’t want to be besieged by all of my new incoming emails, well, there’s widgets like…or plugins rather, like Google Chrome’s compose email plugin, which will just open the Compose email window so that way I spare myself seeing my inbox. Or, it might be that if I’m jumping into my inbox to get an attachment, well, in that case, I might see those other things coming in.

At the same time, I think it comes back to building that muscle and cultivating the ability to be like, “Hey, I see you. I see you, email, but right now I’m working on this other thing, and I’ll get back to you later.” So, that comes back to nothing new. I mean, people have talked about batching before, but really batching the checking of email to, say, three times a day, which is something I talk about in the book where a study showed that once people check email more than three times a day, their sort of emotional wellbeing starts to fall off with it. There was like an inverse correlation, the more times you check email throughout the day and how good you feel kind of tapers off.

So, batching that, whether it’s morning, mid-day, end of the day, and just having that time specifically for checking and responding to those emails is better than sporadically doing it throughout the day. Now there’s probably all sorts of reasons why people feel worse off when they do that. It might be just that they’re spending all day on shallow-level tasks, they’re not getting any high-value work done, and that could be part of it. It’s kind of like Netflix is all, well, and good, but if you spend four hours bingeing a TV series, you feel terrible at the end of it. Like, it’s just shallow-level work. You get into sort of a vegetative state and it can be that that would also happen with that email as well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so let’s hear what the I is in TIRE.

Steve Glaveski
So, I is actually Y, so we’re going with that definition, so it’s higher. But, basically, so the Roman philosopher Seneca once said that, “People are frugal when it comes to guarding their personal property but not so when it comes to their time,” which is the one thing which is right to be stingy with because time, unlike money, cannot be earned back once you spend it.

So, Y essentially stands for yes, saying yes to all sorts of demands on our time, oftentimes at the expense of our own thing. Because, as human beings, we have a tendency, well, not a tendency, we have a predisposition to wanting to be liked. So, if someone requests something of us, we say yes. If someone sends us a meeting request, in most organizations it’s expected that you will say yes, and that if you say no, well, that’s going to create a bit of a tension there between you and that person that invited you. But every time you say yes to something, you’re saying no to everything else.

So, there is a lot of narrative, if you will, particularly in startup ecosystems where they say, “You know, if you say yes to everything, you create serendipity,” and that’s true but, at the same time, you’re saying yes to one thing and you’re saying no to everything else. So, being more diligent about what we say yes to, and making sure that that stuff really aligns with our goals, is going to help us get close to those goals.

But the one other thing that I would say on that is when it comes to meetings, for example, at Basecamp, if you want to book a meeting with someone else’s calendar, you just can’t do that. You need to sell the meeting to them. You need to, like, why is their contribution going to be valuable at this meeting. Whereas, in many organizations, there is just this tendency to just call every man, woman, and their dog to a meeting, and you have, like, 10 people sitting around a Zoom call nowadays, when, really, you might only need two or three people to be there.

One example I can talk of there is Dominic Price who is the resident work futurist at Atlassian. So, he uses this really useful visual of boomerang and stick. So, for so long, his calendar was basically back-to-back meetings all day long, all week long, and after a while, he said, “Look, I can’t keep working like this, I can’t work on my own goals, and I’m not just finding that my time is really optimized attending all of these meetings.” So, he started saying no, and two-thirds of those meetings didn’t come back so they were effectively sticks. He sent back the meeting rejection; they didn’t come back. One-third did and he called them boomerangs.

So, it might be that two-thirds of the meetings that you’re attending yourself, particularly if you work at a large organization, could be proverbial sticks, if you will. And just by saying no, you might save, as was the case with Dominic Price, 15 hours a week that you can reinvest into your own stuff as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really inspiring because I think you said, perfectly earlier, like, yes, there’s this fear associated with, “If I say no to this meeting request, I’m going to create some friction, some tension,” and it sounds like that was not the case for Dominic in terms of he said, “No,” it’s like, “Oh, okay.” Well, I don’t know, maybe they were furious but it sounds like they were just fine with it, it’s like, “All right, that’s fine.” And then the one-third was like, “No, seriously, I really need you.” He’s like, “All right then.”

Steve Glaveski
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that’s a pretty simple filter then right there. And do you have any pro tips on how we’d recommend saying that no?

Steve Glaveski
Yeah, definitely. So, rather than just saying, “No, I will not attend your meeting. It’s not of value to me,” it comes back to human psychology, trying to empathize with that person, make sure that they understand your own position as well, and say, “Look, I’m currently working on XYZ. It’s a high priority for me. I need to get it done by then. I don’t think that my presence at this meeting will be of value but if there’s anything I can share that you think is valuable, I’m happy to email that along. If you think, for whatever reason that I absolutely have to be at this meeting, let me know why and I’ll come along.”

So, it’s just about, I suppose, taking the edges off somewhat and just being human with your rejection. It’s the same as anything. Even last week, I had organized for someone to appear on my podcast, and in line with this philosophy of not saying yes to everything, I had them come back and say, “Oh, you know, our AV guy wants to set up a 30-minute or 15-minute test call.”

And we’re a small team with only so many resources, and I don’t do test calls with anyone, so I went back to them and said, “Look, I appreciate that. I’ve never had any issues with AV. We’ve got a good setup. I’ve published 400 podcasts episodes. I have a small team and we’re very diligent about what we say yes to because if we say yes to one thing, we might find ourselves saying yes to everything, and I won’t have any time to focus on our goals. I hope you understand.” And they were completely fine with that, they responded and said, “Yep, totally understand,” and just about doing it that way rather than just saying no off the bat.

But, ultimately, what’s better than that is just getting to a point where your organization has a culture where you’re not expected to say yes to things and the onus is with the people requesting the meeting to say why you need to be there to spare you from having to say no in a very sort of diligent way.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. And if there are superior solutions, like I think, I don’t know what it was called, it’s like Online-Voice-Recorder.com or something like that, is something I’ve sent people to in that very context in terms of it’s like, “You see if it’s recognizing your microphone, and if you record it, if it sounds good. And then if it does, then that’s really the hard part. So, we’ll be all set by the time we’re meeting up here.” So, that’s great. And then it’s probably for them, too, in terms of they don’t feel embarrassed, like, “Oh, I’m sorry, Steve. Let me try to unplug it and then refresh, and sorry.” Okay, you can be there on your own with no self-consciousness, so everyone is better off.

Okay, so we got the T, we got the Y. What’s the R?

Steve Glaveski
Residual work. So, many of your audience will be familiar with Forrest Gump, and there’s this classic scene in Forrest Gump where he’s playing college football, and he was running towards the end zone, he gets there, he’s got the touchdown, he just keeps on running right into the change room, he takes out one of the band members on his way there. And this is essentially how we tend to approach a lot of our work where we don’t stop at the point of diminishing returns. We just keep on going. And so, we might spend, say, four hours putting together a sales presentation, but then we might spend another four hours tweaking it, working with the formatting, making it absolutely “perfect,” at the expense of just saying, “Okay, we’ve created most of the value. Let’s stop. Let’s move onto something else.”

And so, high performers tend to have a good relationship with that point of diminishing returns, and this is something that I find myself doing sometimes as well, and often it comes back to doing something that’s familiar, that’s comfortable, and that gives us that sense of being busy, again, at the expense of starting something new. Because when it comes to switching and starting a task afresh, something that’s perhaps somewhat challenging, our brain needs to recalibrate around that, it’s like staring at a blank page, you can get writer’s block or coder’s block or whatever block is associated with your work.

And the way around that, again, comes back to just breaking that up to its smallest possible unit, and getting started on that, and getting those wheels rolling because that comes back to Isaac Newton and his first law of motion, “An object at rest stays at rest. An object in motion stays in motion,” which effectively means that once that ball is rolling, the amount of energy you need to apply to keep it rolling is much less than what’s required to get it started in the first place.

So, when you do find that you are at that point of diminishing returns, stop, maybe go for a 20-minute walk because that helps us release some BDNF, brain drive neurotrophic factor, which is like our cavemen brain sensing movement as a fight or flight moments, and that helps us focus. So, taking that walk, coming back, and starting on that fresh task, breaking it down to its smallest residual part, getting that ball in motion, and once it’s in motion, it’s so much easier to do that.

And the benefit of this is we’re not talking about this over one day, but if you do that over, say, a hundred days, you’ve saved yourself countless hours just kind of tweaking stuff, inconsequential activities that you do on a task long after it’s been done, and you’ve actually spent a lot more time working on high-value activities. So, the compounding interest benefit, if you will, over long periods of time is significant.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what are some telltale signs that you are approaching or have hit or have passed this point of diminishing returns?

Steve Glaveski
You’ve got to be objective based on your own work, so it’s hard to answer that without knowing the kind of work that people are working on. Like, I know myself that if I am getting into that state of just doing stuff because it’s comfortable, because it’s easier than moving onto something else, I have a pretty good relationship with that. Like, yes, there is value in, say, writing an article and then going over and making sure it’s spellchecked and it sounds good and everything else.

But once you’ve done that once or twice, you might just yourself scrolling up and down, and just looking at it ad infinitum, and that’s perhaps the point where you want to move on and go to something else because it really depends on the individual task at hand. I can’t think of a perfect way that we would say, “Okay, here’s a telltale sign around when you have hit that point of diminishing returns.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, I think that’s…I’m picking up what you’re putting down there with regard to you kind of know it when you see it and feel it with regard to, “Has anything useful happened here in a while?” Like, for me, I find it often occurs like maybe I was in a good groove for like 90 minutes plus, and I’m still working but it’s more of a coasting at that point than a creating new stuff, and it’s like my brain is tired but I haven’t yet acknowledged that my brain is tired.

Steve Glaveski
Yeah, you might find yourself, like if you work in social media, you might spend a bit of time putting together some content, and then you go off and you publish it, and then you might just find that you’re spending too much time refreshing the screen and seeing what kind of engagement you’re getting. Now that’s past the point of diminishing returns. People might say, people who work in social media will say, “Well, that’s part of my job.”

But, like the email, you can batch that. You don’t need to be doing that refreshing the page every five minutes, and then while you’re there, checking out some of the other things that have been posted, going into analytics and doing all these little inconsequential things that perhaps you should be batching once a day, and then moving onto another activity.

So, again, that comes back to that sort of the value chain of work, “What is the nature of your work? What’s the value chain within a task?” And batching that stuff rather than finding yourself kind of just in this hamster-on-a-wheel sort of mode. And the value in that case was creating the content, publishing it, and that’s it. But refreshing the page ad infinitum? That obviously isn’t a high-value activity.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think you’re really nailing something there with regard to when there’s real-time stuff happening. It’s funny, we’re recording this on Election Day in the U.S., you’re in Australia, and so there’s a lot of refreshing I think going on in a lot of places to see, “What’s the news? What are the numbers? And how are things potentially unfolding?” But I found that that is a temptation, like when I’ve done my listener surveys, I’d refresh, “Ooh, we got two more. We got two more. What do they say? What do they say? Ooh, they love the show. Great!” It’s like, “Ooh, we have three more.” So, there’s that real-time temptation, I think maybe people who if they’re doing trading in the financial markets as well.

And so then, as I’m thinking about this real-time, it kind of gets back to, “Hey, what am I trying to accomplish in this moment?” And there may be a great reason to say, “Okay, hey, I just launched a survey, and I want to see the first 5, 10 results right away to see if maybe I had a really unclear question, and folks are not actually giving me answers that are what I’m after, or they’re confused, or skipping it. So, yeah, I do want to check, maybe repeatedly, in the early moments to do a quick correction and make sure I don’t let it run for five days and get 200 responses that are not what I wanted because I was unclear with my question.”

So, in a way, I think that that’s super helpful to do that refreshing, it’s not a diminishing return. It’s a great return. But other times, it’s just like, yeah, it’s almost like you go into a state of, “Duh, refresh anymore.” It’s like there’s less life and juice and drive and goal domination going on in terms of how it feels in my psyche.

Steve Glaveski
Yeah, which comes back to what I was saying earlier, like you know it when you see it, essentially, when it comes to that point of diminishing returns. And what you’re talking about there is so valid as well. I’m not a big fan of absolutes and all-or-nothing type of advice or guidance on anything. I feel like most things in life exist on like an inverted U, like stress as well. Like, “No, stress is not a really good space.” I mean, some stress actually helps us get to that point of optimal performance. So, that inverted U, you want to look for that space at the very top of the inverted U, or the bell curve essentially.

Pete Mockaitis
Or an N, lowercase N.

Steve Glaveski
Yeah, whatever the case it is, lowercase N, but then you’ve got two like peaks, so. But, essentially, finding that space. So, yes, maybe check it for a little bit, get the feedback you need. It’s the same with running an ad. You want to run an ad and you want to see that it’s performing in the early stages, and if not, you want to tweak the ad and make sure that you’re getting a better click-rate, for example, that you’re reaching the right people, whatever the case is. But if you’re sitting there, refreshing the ad all day long, “Oh, our cost per click has gone down a little bit. Oh, we’ve got a few more clicks now,” like that is obviously the point where you’re like, “Okay, let’s move onto something else.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got the T, the Y, the R. And the E?

Steve Glaveski
So, the E, essentially, I suppose dovetails off something we touched on, which was the path of least effort. So, human beings, biologically, we’re predisposed to taking the path of least effort. I mean, that comes back to evolutionary wiring whereby tens of thousands of years ago, when we were naked running around the African savannah, we didn’t know where our food would come from, and so we needed to conserve energy for extended periods of time in case we needed to hunt out some prey or evade some predators.

This now shows up in our work when we sit down to our desks and we take that path of least effort, checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. And we already touched on some of the ways to circumvent that by breaking things down to their residual parts, environment design, and cultivating the ability to get stuck on the most difficult task perhaps first thing in the morning or first thing in the afternoon, whenever it is you tend to do your best work, which is something we touched on in the book as well, which is that about 50% of people are actually night owls, which means they do their best work 10 hours after waking. Otherwise, if you try and get a night owl to work an hour after waking, they actually suffer from a form of social jetlag, which can also predispose them to developing anxiety and depression over the longer term.

So, this whole idea of getting people to the office at, say, 9:00 A.M., getting them out of bed at 7:00, particularly if they’re night owls, it’s really detrimental to their health, but not only their health but their ability to perform at a high level. So, when you think about the fact that about 50% of the population are night owls, like they have these preferred sleeping patterns but they’re forced to get to work early, and I think it’s encouraging to see that now with the move to remote work at scale, hopefully more organizations stay that way.

It does create the conditions to move to more asynchronous communication where we’re not expecting real-time responses, where we’re not conflating presence with productivity, and people aren’t expected to be on Slack all day long and expected to all be on these back-to-back Zoom calls. It does give people the ability to design days as it best suits them, as it best suits their biological predisposition, the realities of their lives, their families and everything else, and they can get work when it best suits them.

And, ultimately, that benefits everyone. It also benefits the organizations because if you can create those types of cultures, it also is a compelling recruit tool because people want to work at places where they can create their own days as it best suits them but also work in organizations where they can actually get stuff done and not be bogged down by bucketloads of process and policy that just gives them no sense of control or agency over their work.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well-said. Well, so I also know you’ve got a take on the eight-hour workday. Lay it on us, are shorter workdays better and why?

Steve Glaveski
Sure. So. Shorter workdays, there is no yes or no answer. Ultimately, a six-hour workday experiment was something we ran two and a half years ago and I wrote an article about this for Harvard Business Review and called “The Case for the Six-hour Workday.” And what you find is when you have a shorter workday, if you’re an organization that has a lot of bloat, that isn’t intentional about how it goes about creating value, a shorter work day forces you to focus on high-value activities. It’s a forcing function.

So, one, it will force you to, say, automate and outsource rudimentary process-oriented lower-risk activities so that your people aren’t doing that. Two, it will force you to focus on, say, high-value tasks. So, applying the Pareto principle, focusing in on those 20% of tasks that create the majority of the value rather than just focusing on those low-value tasks that feel good, that you’ve done because you’ve always done them before but don’t really move the needle forward. It forces people to cultivate the flow state, to get better at getting into that deep-work state, do away with those notifications, those distractions, and those meetings that inhibit our ability to do our best work. So, a shorter workday will help you in that regard. So, if you do have a lot of bloat, and you’re working at eight-hour workdays, and you come back to six, you will find more productivity.

Now, over the past couple of years, there’s been a trend as well to four-day work weeks. We saw Microsoft Japan run a four-day work week, and they suggested that their productivity improved by 40%. Now, me, personally, I would argue that five shorter work days is better than, say, four longer ones because if you have created this environment and culture where people can get into flow and people can do that for, say, the max amount of time, which is about four hours a day, maybe five, then if you’re keeping them there for, say, eight hours for four days a week, that suggests that maybe there’s two, three hours of waste there rather than running, say, five days at four or five hours a day, which I think is more beneficial if people are spending that time in flow.

Now, again, there’s something to be said about not all hours will be in flow. Like, for example, you may have to have some meetings. There is collaboration that’s required at organizations, there are things that need to get done where you’re just not working in isolation, so that’s why adding maybe a couple of hours to that workday, so it’s six hours rather than just four, I think makes sense.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you mentioned automation and outsourcing. Do you have any favorite tools or services or tricks?

Steve Glaveski
Yeah, look. I think Zapier, for me, is probably one of the most powerful ones. So, Zapier, or IFTTT, which stands for If This Then That. So, these tools will basically help different tools speak to each other. So, recently, during the pandemic, I spun off a media company called NoFilter, and one thing we found was taking up a lot of time was getting people that we had paid to take Google Docs that our writers had developed, take them, copy them, paste them into our CMS and publish that.

So, we created a very simple automation between, say, a web HTML form and our CMS so that our writers will just plug the content right into the HTML form, and that would get picked up by Zapier and come into our CMS, so then us, as editors, we just jump into that CMS and we just need to publish it, or we might need to just make some changes if we feel like the content is not good enough, or just delete it if it’s crap, right? But that saves us a lot of time copying and pasting, but it also meant that we could operate at scale because, then, we could reach out to a lot of different writers, and say, “Hey, if you want to write for us, here’s the online form. You can republish some of your old blogposts too and we’ll link back to that, and we’ll give you an article links and whatnot.” And that just helps us make the process a lot more seamless. So, that’s one.

Another example is tools like repurpose which help you effectively repurpose content for different platforms. So, you can think about something like recording a Facebook Live video and then using a combination of tools like Zapier, Repurpose, record posts, for example, where that Facebook Live video could get turned into a transcribed blogpost, an audiogram, a YouTube video, and social media post with a click of a button essentially.

Now, again, inverted U, sometimes there is an element of personalization that can get missed with that but these tools are slowly getting better and better, but just by recording that Facebook Live video, you can have all these other forms of content basically at the click of a button, and that just means that we’re creating a lot more content, we can reach larger audiences, and it saves us a hell of a lot of time in trying to manually create different versions of that content ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Steve Glaveski
There are a couple. Another couple of tools people might want to look out for: WebMerge and Airtable. So, I mentioned earlier our sales presentations, we use Airtable to automate our sales proposal generation, right? So, rather than having to manually seek out, “Hey, where’s that proposal we prepared for that client about six months ago?” getting that PowerPoint or keynote, and then manually putting that together, we’ve created this tool where all we do is plug in the prospect’s name, their logo, and choose the color scheme, and also just choose what products they’re actually interested in, and this will spit out a presentation that we might spend 5 to 10 minutes customizing. And, over the course of the year, that also saves us a bunch of time when it comes to just automating these rudimentary process-oriented tasks.

So, I would challenge people that whatever task you’re all currently working on, like whether it’s customer service, sales, marketing, testing, administrative tasks, like so many things can be automated, and the cost of doing so is not high, but a lot of people will say things like, “Yeah, but I haven’t got time or money to do that,” but it’s kind of ironic because over the long term you actually end up spending a hell of a lot more time and money trying to do it yourself rather than just spending that time upfront which will pay itself back in orders of magnitude.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. That’s what I found. It’s like it’s not so much that you don’t have time, it’s just that it’s kind of hard and tiring to figure it out and execute it and set it up, but once you do, yeah, I’ve had many instances of setup a system and a process with a combination of training someone to do something, and software doing something, and bring them together, and I spend two hours and it saves me 40 hours. There’s not a lot of 20-to-1 returns to be had in your investments, but when it comes to time and automation outsourcing, there’s many, many to be done.

Steve Glaveski
Many, many. One quick one there, just on that 20-to-1, if you look at things like a five-minute task done five times a day, like if you just outsource that task or automate it, that saves people something like 15 days over the course of the year, like if you extrapolate that five minutes out. And that’s just that five minutes, like we’re not even accounting for the fact that you need to stop what you’re doing to do that task and then come back to what you were doing, so the task switching as well.

So, it doesn’t need to be a big task to save a lot of time, but it’s the small task that you’re doing often, like even five-minute tasks, think about outsourcing that as well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Steve Glaveski
I’m a big fan of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditation, And one of the quotes in his book was, “When you have power over your mind, not external events, realize this and you will find strength.”

So, essentially, I think that navigating life in that way where things will happen to you that perhaps aren’t pleasant, things won’t go your way. You might pursue business and perhaps it doesn’t work out, but you have control over your mind and how you choose to interpret and respond to these things. Just by having that sort of mindset, it just opens you up to trying things where you might fail and you might not be good because so many of us suffer from a sense of paralysis when we’re scared that things will not work out our way.

I’ve tried to cultivate that adversity in my life just by doing things that scare me. Like, last year, I hit the standup comedy open-mic circuit here in Melbourne, and I did five shows. Now, I’ve done keynotes and things of that persuasion in front of hundreds of people but getting up in front of a crowd of ten in a smokey back-alley bar somewhere and trying to make them laugh, man, that’s scary. Doing these things just, I find, optimized not only your life but just predisposes you to taking that path of more effort rather than the path of least effort. And, oftentimes, even if you fail, you end up in a much better place.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Steve Glaveski
One that I pulled out during my research for the book Time Rich was around some group of scientists that…so there was three control groups: so one was working 20 hours a week, one was working 35 hours a week, and the third was working 60 hours a week. And what they found was that the group that was working 20 hours a week was twice as productive as the 35-hour a week group, and the 60-hour a week group was the least productive of all, which they found came back to the fact that the more hours these groups had, one, they’d spent it on non-consequential tasks, but, two, they also had less time to rest and rejuvenate and come back as the best version of themselves. So, that’s why the 60-hour a week group were just the least productive of all.

So, that comes back to something I talk about in the book, which is burnout. Burnout essentially, where that comes from is the fact that us, as human beings, we might be present on a Zoom call or in the office, but if we’re burnt out, we’re only physically present. On the inside, we’re a shadow of our former selves, and that’s kind of like a house that’s been ravaged by a house fire. It might still be standing but if you go inside, everything has just been burnt out to a crisp. So, that’s an interesting study that I think validates some of these thinking around shorter work days and focusing on high-value activities rather than just conflating hours with output as we might, say, on the factory room floors of the industrial revolution.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Steve Glaveski
For now I’m going to say Ray Dalio’s Principles just because he is someone who’s been in the trenches for a number of decades in the funds-management space. His initial business failed, he effectively came up with ways to codify decision-making based on what’s worked in the past but also adaptive decision-making in a way where he will update his worldview based on new evidence that comes to light which is a core of the scientific method, but just lots of principles in there which I think help us navigate not just business and life.

For example, multi-order thinking, so not just thinking about, “What’s the benefit of making this decision but what are the consequences? What are the second, third, fourth order consequences of this?” So, it’s just a chock-full of these principles that effectively help us better navigate life essentially.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Steve Glaveski
It’s really about a quadrant that I drop on a whiteboard once every quarter. So, not a fancy like tech tool or anything like that, but I just draw up this quadrant and I just write in each corner start, stop, more, less. And so, I’ll do this with my business, I’ll look at, “What should we start doing, stop doing, do more, do less?” And I’ll apply this to sales techniques, marketing channels, products we’re selling, customers, geographies, real targeting, all that sort of stuff, so that every period of time we’re always optimizing, we’re cutting away wastes, and we’re doing more of what works, we’re introducing new things that we perhaps haven’t tried. We’re always experimenting.

But it’s also a valuable tool that you can apply to your own life in a sense that, “Hey, here’s what I should start doing, stop doing. Hey, here’s what’s not really working for me. Perhaps I need to stop doing this, and perhaps I need to be more of a friend to these people,” whatever the case is. But being objective with that and just taking the time out to stop and reflect, as Mark Twain urged us to do, and actually act on those reflections, I think, just helps us get to a place where we’re just living more contended lives.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite habit?

Steve Glaveski
Just getting started to the most difficult thing first thing in the morning, whatever it is. It might be a gym workout. It might be writing a 1500-word article. It could be anything, but I find that if I start my day achieving something, then that kind of permeates the rest of my day in a way. And not only that, but there is something to be said about dopamine release that comes with accomplishment, that comes with achieving something, that puts you in a better state of mind as well, which then, in turn, impacts how you show up with the people around you, and impacts the energy that you bring to the rest of your work. So, for me, that all just starts with making my bed first thing in the morning and then going from there.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you frequently?

Steve Glaveski
Focus on what you can control, not what you can’t control. I think that’s a big one. So often, people don’t delineate between the two and find themselves getting wrapped up with what they can’t control, and that’s really putting yourself in a place of victimhood narrative. There’s nothing you can do about that other than make yourself feel like crap. So, really delineate between the two and focus on influencing what you can control and the stuff that you can’t control, well, there’s no point working yourself up over it because it’s essentially outside your locus of control.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Steve Glaveski
I’d point them to SteveGlaveski.com. They can find all of my links to businesses, social media, books, all that sort of stuff over there. And if they want to learn more about Time Rich, they can do so at TimeRichBook.com. They can download the first chapter for free as well as a 30-page document of Time Rich tools over at TimeRichBook.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Steve, it’s been a treat. I wish you all the best in being time rich.

Steve Glaveski
Thank you so much, Pete. It’s been an absolute pleasure.