“What a ridiculous waste of time”?

Meetings have such a terrible reputation exactly because of these moments.

The worst thing about not taking meetings seriously is that everyone starts associating them with being a waste of time.

People don’t think they’re worth anything, so they don’t bother preparing. They turn up to meetings already checked out, treating them as if they’re taking a break from work. Participation is negligible, if not completely non-existent.

The person running the meeting, often the manager, gets frustrated and annoyed. It’s all a downward spiral and the worst meeting culture you can have.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Characteristics of a good meeting

Every meeting is an opportunity.

People gravitate towards success and effective meetings are a much better way to achieve that. On the banal, basic level: time saved is money saved.

Remember that a one-hour meeting with five people in it isn’t just a one-hour meeting at all. It’s really a five-hour meeting. That meeting has to be worth five hours of productivity for it to be effective.

Having multiple bad meetings in a row can be both demotivating and mentally draining. The people involved get stuck with a feeling of no progress, no sense of accomplishment, and no enjoyment in their work.

A great meeting is about as far away from that as you can get. Good meetings are hubs of creativity, motivation, and affirmation. They’re essential for clear communication, making sure that everyone is on the same page and understands what the next steps are. They can help you get unstuck and push forward with a project or a task if bouncing ideas off other people or getting clear direction is what you needed.

Meetings are one of the best opportunities to not just exchange information but to engage with your colleagues and interact with them. Those are the kind of meetings that are worth having and working towards.

Here is how you can achieve that.

7 strategies to adopt for good meetings

1) Never schedule a meeting without a clear outcome in mind.

The purpose of a meeting should be crystal clear to you, as the person scheduling it, and to every participant. Why are you all here? What are you trying to achieve?

You have to figure this out and communicate it clearly.

There’s a huge difference between trying to make a decision, keeping everyone updated, or having a coherent discussion. They call for different kinds of meetings and different styles of moderation. Having a clear outcome in mind is even more important than having an agenda because the outcome is what dictates the agenda.

Possible desired outcomes are things like:

• Agreement on the next steps of a project
• Exchanging information so that everyone knows what everyone else is up to
• Involving people in a decision that has multiple stakeholders
• A space for social interaction and team-building

If you get invited to a meeting and you aren’t clear on what the desired outcome is, ask! It’s better to say “I’m not actually sure what the purpose of this meeting is” than to sit there and think it.

2) Avoid starting a meeting without an agenda.

This is an old-school favourite.

Agendas are one of the easiest ways to give a meeting structure.

Agendas can rarely be judged as “good” or “bad”. A bullet point list of topics is enough to work with, in the vast majority of cases. Having a standing document where you just jot down topics whenever they come to mind is a good start. That’s a simple solution for recurring meetings.

Sometimes, you should put some effort into crafting an agenda e.g. for long meetings.

• Do you need an icebreaker at the start, so that people relax and can get into a topic?
• Should you set the scene or present background information to make sure everyone’s on the same page?
• If you’ll be covering multiple topics, what’s the best way to structure them, so that conversation flows naturally from one topic to the next?

Not every meeting has to have an agenda.

Having an agenda for any kind of social meeting is a good way to ruin the meeting.

3) Only invite people who have to be there.

Sometimes people prefer to invite everyone, even if they’re only peripherally involved, on the off-chance that one of them would feel left out or miss important information.

In those situations, it’s better to document and consciously update people than to have them involved in the discussion, if they don’t need to be.

A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if it’s possible to achieve the outcome that you’ve set out without this person’s presence. If yes, would it be the optimal outcome?

What you want to achieve is a meeting where everyone is engaged and everyone is participating.

Having people sit there who aren’t paying attention because they don’t feel like their input is necessary brings down the whole atmosphere and is a waste of their time.

The only way to avoid that is to structure the meeting in such a way that it brings value to every person in the invite.

4) Give all participants guidance on what to prepare.

Most people show up to meetings with full faith they can wing it and, honestly, that can work. Sometimes.

But does it often limit how effective a meeting can be? Definitely.

If you’re meeting to come to a decision:

• It’s much better to prepare pros and cons before,
• Ask everyone to think of any additional ones,
• And to sort out their own thoughts and figure out how to articulate them before they even walk into the room.
• You’ll spend a lot less time in the meeting with long pauses because people need time to process and think about something.
• People will have the time they need to come up with good feedback.

If what you’re looking for is a laid-back exchange, someone to bounce ideas off, then you can forego the preparation.

The ideal and perfect meeting culture would be one where it’s expected that you prepare for every meeting and those situations are the exceptions that prove the rule.

5) Make the meeting interactive.

Assume that everyone who’s in the meeting cares about the topic and wants to participate. You want to give them opportunities to do that.

If you’re finding it difficult to get engagement, think about how you can change the style of the meeting to facilitate it.

Putting in just a little more effort to prepare something closer to a workshop, like bringing in models or sketching out a mindmap, can completely change the atmosphere.

It’s also likely to give people the impression that they learned something new. That’s one of the best feelings to walk out of a meeting with.

6) Moderate! Be strict.

The idea of a moderator is to have someone present in the meeting whose primary responsibility is to lead the meeting.

Good moderation is extremely complex. It takes a long time to learn but everyone has to start somewhere.

Moderating involves:

• Directing the discussion so that the desired outcome is achieved.
• Cutting off anything that will derail the meeting. This includes off-topic discussions, as well as getting stuck on very small details that aren’t important.
• To step in if things get too heated for a rational conversation.
• Prompting participants whose opinions are valuable.
• Interceding if there’s an awkward pause or if everyone “gets stuck.”
• Reading the language of the room. Is everyone bored or still listening? Does someone obviously disagree with something but isn’t speaking up? Are people starting to look out the window or at the clock? This is how you assess if the meeting is on track or if you need to shake things up.
• Making sure that the meeting ends on time.

Moderating can be difficult. Achieving the right balance between letting the discussion flow naturally and knowing when to step in doesn’t come naturally. Cutting people off too often is frustrating for the people in the meeting. Letting a discussion go on too long can derail the meeting and make it difficult for people to come back to a topic.

A moderator has to toe the line between those two.

You need to become comfortable with interrupting people and asking them to stay on topic or to leave a topic for a later time. This feels terrible the first few times but it’s better to be strict.

This is also why having a moderator who is mainly interested in participating can be quite risky. It’s very easy to forget to do all those things because you get caught up in the discussion. The moment your focus is on what your opinions are and what you want to say is the moment you’ve stopped moderating.

Keep in mind that it’s better to end a meeting early or to stop for a break in the middle than to ignore the body language of everyone participating.

It’s also better to jump in and address moments of conflict than to let everyone notice certain behaviours and not comment. If, for example, someone rolls their eyes at what a presenter says, it’s better to ask them to speak up than to let it go. All of this is something that can be brought in through having a moderator.

7) Only schedule a meeting if it absolutely has to be a meeting.

Meetings are often the easiest and quickest solution that comes to mind when you want to talk to someone.

Scheduling a meeting for every discussion is often the first resort.

This lends itself to an environment filled with distractions, where meetings take over the entire workday. That isn’t an environment that’s conducive to real productivity.

A better way to think about meetings is that they’re great when they’re necessary.

And only when they’re necessary.

If a discussion can be resolved in written form, then it’s better to send an email, a Slack message, leave a comment on a Google document, or whatever method is most commonly used in your company.

Lots of discussions are too complex to have through writing, need to be resolved more quickly, or involve too many people for a different channel to be ideal.

Those are the situations in which you can and should schedule a meeting.

Good meetings enhance leadership

Meetings are likely a big part of your everyday responsibilities as a manager, in a remote environment.

Investing time in getting great at them will change how your team views your leadership and how much value you can get out of working with your team.

Zoom meetings (that is, video calls) are different in that you can’t read body language in the same way and you spend a lot of time over-compensating for that.

Your intonation gets a little more exaggerated, the way that it would if you were on stage, or you focus a little harder on the ground dynamic and interactions because it’s much more difficult to avoid interrupting people.

Casual conversation and small talk feel more forced and harder to get through. Awkward pauses where no one knows what to say feel even more awkward. It definitely calls for a different way of communicating and that’s more mentally taxing because most of us are used to in-person interaction a lot more.

What causes Zoom fatigue?

Zoom fatigue is a type of mental exhaustion that can occur after spending extended periods of time on video calls. It is characterized by symptoms such as difficulty concentrating, feeling drained, and having headaches.

There are a number of factors that can contribute to Zoom fatigue, including:

• Increased cognitive load: Video calls require more cognitive effort than face-to-face interactions because you have to process more nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language. This can lead to mental fatigue, especially if you are on multiple video calls in a single day.
• Constant self-monitoring: When you are on a video call, you are constantly aware of how you look and sound. This can lead to increased self-consciousness and stress, which can also contribute to fatigue.
• Lack of mobility: Video calls can be physically restrictive, as you are typically limited to sitting in one spot. This can lead to muscle fatigue and stiffness.
• Unnatural eye contact: On video calls, everyone is staring at each other all the time. This can be unnatural and stressful, especially if you are not used to it.
• Increased distractions: Video calls can be more distracting than face-to-face interactions because there are more things to look at, such as other people’s faces, your own face, and the background. This can make it difficult to focus on the conversation.

How to battle Zoom fatigue

The best solution to Zoom fatigue is shaking up your methods of communication across your company and making them more suitable for remote work. That means:

• Letting people report to you without necessarily having to sit in a meeting for it.
• Looking at every video call you set up and really asking yourself if it’s necessary. Could you achieve the same outcome by having shared project management tools that you work to keep updated?

You can’t get rid of all meetings and that’s fine. Some aspects of work will always be more efficient or more fun with synchronous communication.

Being successful at working remotely means leveraging the unique aspects of remote work that are actually helpful for people. You can’t take advantage of the freedom it offers you if your environment is so heavily regimented.

Investing in asynchronous communication and reducing the need for video meetings, to begin with, will always be the best, long-term solution.

That doesn’t work in all scenarios though.

If you’re onboarding people remotely you should invest heavily in video calls because that will help you build relationships in a way that just isn’t the same in pure text or asynchronous communication.

It’s incredibly hard for someone to feel like an integrated member of the team and like they have the opportunity to ask questions continuously if you don’t dedicate that time.

You might have some weeks or months that will just always include a ton of time in Zoom meetings and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. These are some of the ways you can manage that.

Recognising the symptoms of exhaustion

Zoom fatigue can be characterised by any of the following signs:

• Plain and simple exhaustion.
• Feeling burnt out and worn down.
• Struggling to focus during the meetings themselves.
• Struggling to focus after meetings because you feel harried or rushed like you’re getting pulled in too many directions.
• Losing your ability to interact with your full presence and attention or feeling like you have to force yourself to speak up during those meetings.
• Tiredness of your eyes or tension headaches.

I barely notice the symptoms when I’m actually in a meeting.

Depending on how engaging the meeting is, I tend to have an easy time ignoring my tiredness and focusing on the meeting itself, which works as a good distraction.

It really sets in afterwards, when I notice the number of Slack pings I have, when I find myself staring at my screen and struggling to make progress, or when I turn off my computer at the end of the day and just want to close my eyes for an hour.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that these symptoms will build up and get worse over time.

If you start feeling like this and don’t see an end in sight, that’s a red flag that you should try to change something about your environment.

Spend time outdoors

This is by the far the most underrated way to manage not only Zoom fatigue but any other source of stress in your life.

Spending time in nature, getting as far away from your everyday routine, breathing in the fresh air: all of these are incredibly simple and incredibly powerful ways to reduce your stress levels across the board.

There’s something about spending time outside that feels like a balm on very raw nerves after spending a longer period of time over-compensating in your tone of voice and body language over a video camera.

To make this very effective, try to go outside during your workday.

Exercise regularly

Exercising here isn’t about exhausting yourself even more.

Some people might find high-intensity exercise energising after a hard workday but most people will find that piling on physical exhaustion on top of mental exhaustion isn’t the best solution.

Movement is incredibly soothing for your body though and will make you feel better.

Look for activities that you can do lightly, with focus and concentration and spend that time exploring your body and different aspects of a movement.

Take regular, short breaks

Short breaks throughout the day will definitely help, especially if you can pair it with either of the above.

It’s easy to feel like you need to just power through and it’s easy to underestimate how much taking a break can help. Sometimes just having ten minutes in between meeting marathons where you don’t have to talk, engage with anyone, or look at a screen is already enough to let you recover just a little bit before you switch back on.

Cluster meetings together

In a day with multiple, spread-out, shorter meetings, the most you can get done is replying to some emails in between or small, menial tasks. That generally makes Zoom fatigue worse.

Clustering meetings together instead means you can maximise the time you spend outside of meetings.

This assumes that you’re able to prepare for those meetings comfortably in advance or that those meetings aren’t the type to require a ton of preparation. If that isn’t the case, spreading the meetings out and just focusing on having great, productive meetings might be a better solution for you.

Create blockers for focus time

The ultimate secret to breaking up an endless streak of meetings is to block out time in your calendar.

If you’re so busy that you can assume gaps in your calendar will be filled up by your colleagues, consciously block out time for yourself to focus on other tasks.

This generally prevents Zoom fatigue from even setting in because it forces you to limit the amount of time you spend in meetings.

Blockers are a great way to indicate for other people that you simply aren’t available for a video call. Events in your calendar tend to be respected in a way that empty space just isn’t, although this perhaps depends somewhat on your company culture. If you are in the lucky position where you can generally tell when you’ll have a hard week, you can already try to schedule a couple of these blockers as a commitment to yourself to limit your time in meetings.

Dealing with virtual fatigue

Reducing your fatigue will increase your productivity, and your sense of connection and motivation towards work.

The extra effort to mitigate and reduce those symptoms can make you (and your team!) happier at work.

Whether it’s dealing with missed deadlines, uncooperative colleagues, or the ever-present pressure to perform, these challenges can leave us feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, and even resentful.

Frustration is not a sign of weakness or failure; it’s a natural human response to situations that test our resilience and adaptability.

Dealing with workplace resentment

Workplace frustration stems from a multitude of factors, both external and internal.

External factors often involve external forces beyond our control, such as:

• Unrealistic expectations: When faced with unrealistic deadlines, demanding workloads, or unclear expectations, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and frustrated.
• Communication breakdowns: Miscommunication, lack of transparency, or conflicting priorities can lead to misunderstandings, frustration, and resentment.
• Inadequate resources: Insufficient resources, such as time, tools, or personnel, can hinder progress and contribute to frustration.

Internal factors, on the other hand, arise from our own thoughts, emotions, and perceptions, such as:

• Self-doubt: When we doubt our abilities or feel inadequate, it can lead to frustration and hinder our performance.
• Perfectionism: The relentless pursuit of perfection can lead to frustration when we fall short of our own high standards.
• Lack of control: Feeling powerless or unable to influence a situation can lead to frustration and a sense of helplessness.

Here are some of the things that I find helpful when I’m especially frustrated.

Remember that it holds you back from dealing with the situation

Frustration doesn’t help you move forward.

It keeps you stuck.

Your initial response might be to figure out why exactly you’re frustrated and to go through a process where you try to understand every step of failure that got you to the point where you are now.

This is constructive. This is definitely worth doing.

Once you’ve gotten to that point, there’s no more purpose in being frustrated because everything beyond that point will distract you from acting.

Focus on what you can do from now on

The best thing about every frustrating situation is that there’s usually a lesson you can take from it, whatever that lesson might be.

Imagine you were in the exact same situation again, only this time you have the knowledge of hindsight because you’ve gone through it once before.

What would you do differently? What have you learned from this experience for your next time?

You might come out of that exercise with the belief that you wouldn’t actually do anything differently because you still made the best decision you could’ve.

That is also a valuable lesson to learn.

Do what you can

Once you’ve figured out how to respond to the situation and what to learn from it for the future, it’s time to act.

Let’s say there was a major bug that impacted all of your users and now it’s fixed. If you feel that the impact was large enough that you should do a post-mortem with everyone involved, go ahead and do it. If you think it was inconvenient enough to your customers that you should communicate it to them, figure out how to make that happen.

Frustration is often made a lot worse when you feel powerless.

Whether it’s speaking to your manager, seeking additional resources, or implementing new strategies, proactive steps can turn frustration into a catalyst for positive change.

Let go of the rest

Letting go is extremely challenging for everyone (myself included).

Some people seem to do this naturally because they just aren’t the type of person who dwells on things.

Most people need conscious effort and practice. It’s only through a rational thought process and breaking things down intentionally that it becomes possible to let go.

In the end, once you’ve taken the lessons that you can take and responded in whatever way you can, there’s nothing else you can do.

Feeling frustrated beyond that just takes time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.

There’s nothing that can be done to change the situation now because it’s already happened.

Mondays have become synonymous with terrible days. Not only is it the end of the weekend (your happy time), it’s the start of the week, so you have to get through a full five days before the next weekend.

That Mondays suck isn’t surprising, but if they suck a lot every week, there might be something else at play.

What are Monday blues?

Monday blues is such a widespread phenomenon in the workplace. Something about the start of the work week sometimes translates to dread, apprehension, anxiety, or maybe just a lack of excitement or passion.

It’s as if we’ve internalized that what comes with work is more likely to be stress or frustration than the opposite, which is what work should be.

This feeling is perfectly justifiable sometimes:

• If you’re back from a great holiday, getting back in the groove of things is painful.
• If you have a period of high stress, where your tasks and to-dos are growing with no limit.
• If there’s a particular situation you’re dreading but know you can’t avoid.

In those cases, it’s a temporary feeling. It’s because of a specific situation or circumstance that will blow over with time.

Sometimes though, they’re a red flag.

Ask yourself: Why do Mondays suck?

It’s easy to think that Monday blues are just part of life.

Even those of us who are extremely lucky and privileged with the jobs that we have, in that we have a stable income, we work in a secure environment, and we work with people we like, have this feeling at least some of the time.

Not wanting to work sometimes is normal. Maybe your job is starting to feel a little too routine, and nothing particularly exciting is happening right now. Maybe you’d much rather spend your time doing something else.

If your Mondays suck all the time, it could mean that:

• You’re unhappy with your job.
• A holiday is long overdue.
• Your stress levels are getting out of control.

Can I change it?

Understanding where that feeling comes from will help you figure out what to do.

• If you’re struggling with stress, you can manage your emotions better.
• If you need a holiday, take one!
• If a big change is coming up and you’re worried about it, prepare for it.
• If your tasks at work aren’t fulfilling or exciting enough, talk to your boss and see if there are any additional responsibilities you can take on.
• If you’re dreading one particular conversation, maybe it’s worth biting the bullet and having that conversation so you can move on.

Treat it as a chance to improve your relationship with work, even if it’s in a small way. If you can’t do anything that will change it, then think about your mindset.

How can I change my mindset?

Negativity begets negativity.

Work can be extremely fulfilling and rewarding under the right circumstances. No job, even if it’s the best job you can ever hope for, will always be that for you.

It’s worth focusing on the things you get out of work, especially when you’re stressed out or not excited by it. Maybe it teaches you how to interact with people in a way you never would’ve been able to. Maybe it forces you to pick up skills and develop yourself in ways you couldn’t foresee. Maybe it’s just nice to have something to do and to be productive .

Think about how your job has helped you. Find something about it that you look forward to, even if it’s something small.

Written on a Monday, in the pursuit of self-reflection.

The expectations placed on employees can be very different depending on the specific responsibilities involved, the industry the company operates in, and the company’s culture.

There’s a difference between unavoidable circumstances (you have a deadline to meet tomorrow) and avoidable ones.

Should I work overtime?

There are many situations where you might find yourself accidentally working overtime.

• Maybe you find yourself working a few hours extra a day, not because you have to or because other people expect it from you but because you just don’t get round to all of the things you want to do during the work day.
• Or your boss makes a small comment in passing about your slow progress on a project and you find yourself wanting to prove your boss wrong.
• You could be based in Europe, while most of your colleagues are in the US, and so you start checking their very interesting discussions even though you’ve already stopped working for the day.

There are all of these small ways in which overtime creeps into the workplace, especially when more and more people work from home and the usual boundaries that used to exist are getting less and less clear.

There’s a certain conflict around working overtime by choice.

We’re all adults and can make our own choices about how much we work.

If I decide today that those extra hours are going to help me in the future, then I should make that choice.

Some studies around how putting in extra hours does actually pay off, in terms of future promotions, pay raises and so on.

Working more often means you get more done and that does have knock-on effects on your career.

You could choose to do it for any number of reasons:

• You’re feeling especially productive today and are making huge progress on a project, so you decide to not stop working yet.
• There’s an emergency at work that needs to be handled immediately and you feel responsible for doing your part.

All of these are great impulses.

When overtime is harmful

The question is: How much and how often can you work overtime until it starts having a detrimental impact on you and your life.

• By taking up so much of your time, it limits the amount of time you have available for your own hobbies and interests.
• It also cuts into time that you would otherwise spend with family.
• These together can impact your relationships and how satisfied you are with life in general, since you have fewer opportunities to develop your skills and relationships independently of work.
• You also contribute to the culture around overtime in your own company.

Most people take their cues from the people around them.

This is especially relevant if you’re a manager or hold any position of seniority (although it still applies in all cases).

If your company has this culture independently of what you’re doing, then it’s worth thinking about whether you want to contribute to that or not. It’s easy for there to be an unwritten rule or an implicit expectation that people simply put in more hours than they’re required to.

If you consistently work overtime for a longer period of time, it’s likely that this will eventually translate into burnout.

Burnout has become something of a widespread term in recent years but it’s still easy to get caught up in the habits that lead to it despite the awareness of it. Small habits that, when they build up over time, can become huge stressors.

You need to be able to recognise when it’s morphing from being something you choose to do for a rational reason to something that’s actively harming you.

How to know how many hours to work

The trick is: Self-reflection!

• Pay attention to your hours. How many hours are you putting in?
• Look at your habits throughout the work day. Do you take breaks? Is your day structured and focused?
• Every time you choose to work overtime, ask yourself the following questions:
  • “Am I doing this because I feel I have to or because I want to?”
  • Then question that. Why might you feel like you have to? Why do you want to?
  • “What will I get out of doing work on this now?”
  • “Is there anything else that I would rather do right now?”

The moment you start feeling a little bit weary or like you face a certain amount of dread to get through it, is the moment you know you should handle it differently.

I still, very often, turn off my laptop and immediately start thinking about everything that I still have to do.

Sometimes I can help myself by just writing down what’s on my mind – working a little extra for the sake of longer term peace of mind.

Sometimes it takes much more discipline to make the choice to not work.

The volume of applications often reaches in the hundreds, sometimes in the thousands. Having such a high volume means great candidates can fall through the cracks very easily and it also means that job seekers feel like their chances of landing a job are slim.

But, believe it or not, hiring managers are rooting for you. They want to have great applicants. Recruiters spend a lot of time searching for how to source the best talent.

Hiring managers invest an unbelievable amount of time looking for the right fit. What you need to do is show them that you are the right fit.

Here are some of the ways you can set yourself up for success when you’re applying for jobs, written from the hiring manager perspective.

When is the best time to submit a job application?

The best time is whenever you’re ready to deliver the best application you can.

There’s a lot of conventional advice like avoiding weekends or trying to apply at the beginning of the week, so you get a response as quickly as possible. This is mostly irrelevant to your chances of success.

A successful application will always be a high-quality one that stood out from other applicants for some reason. If you need an extra day to deliver that, it’s worth taking the time for it.

How many jobs to apply for per day

Again, this depends on the quality of application you can deliver.

The typical recommendation of applying for 5-10 jobs isn’t ideal. That makes it impossible to properly tailor your application to each company or even to take the time to research the company enough that you know you’d be excited to work there.

That isn’t something you can mask. Apply for one job a week, if that will be a great application.

How to apply for jobs

1. Apply for the right job

What is the right job?

It’s a job that you actually want to do.

You’d be surprised at the number of people who apply for jobs they’re clearly not suited for or that they’re simply not motivated to do in the first place.

The point of this isn’t to say that you need to fulfill the requirements of the position’s description 100% to apply. It’s rather to say: Ask yourself honestly if you would be excited waking up every morning to do this job.

You can’t sell your motivation if you aren’t motivated.

It’s very obvious when someone is applying for a role because they think it’ll be easy, because it’s remote, or because they’re desperate and are applying for anything. None of this will help you get that job.

Rather than sending out 100 lackluster applications, send ten great ones for jobs that genuinely excite you and that you can do well.

2. Research the company and their product

Research here doesn’t mean look briefly through their website. It means:

• If they offer a free trial or a freemium model, create an account and use the product.
• Spend some hours of your time understanding how the product works, who the target audience is.
• Look through their help articles or blog posts.
• Check out their social media.
• Read up on any interviews done by the company’s founders.

This takes a lot of time and effort but it’s worth it.

Nothing shows your motivation the way this will. It’s also an important step for yourself, to develop that genuine motivation in the first place.

How else would you do that if you knew nothing about the company and the people and perspectives present at it?

Your application should make it clear that you know the company you’re applying to. You’re applying for that specific company, to work on their product, and you can say why.

This is really hard if you’re sending out applications based exclusively on the position description.

3. Tailor your cover letter and CV

The extent to which you do this depends a lot on the expectations and requirements of the company you’re applying to but the many companies still ask for a cover letter at the very least, even if they don’t judge based on CVs as much.

What’s important to keep in mind is that both have to sell your abilities.

The cover letter is your main opportunity to convince the hiring manager on the other end that you have the skills required to do the job well and that you have the right mentality and culture fit for the company.

A good cover letter should touch on the main requirements mentioned in the job description and fundamentally answer the following questions: why you, why this job, and why this company.

Your motivation should come through loud and clear:

• Why you’re applying for this job
• Why you believe you’re the best candidate – the experience and skills that you bring to the table that no one else can
• What’s special about this company that makes you excited to work there

CVs might not be looked at in a ton of detail but it’s still important to highlight your relevant experience there, rather than share a lot of information that has nothing to do with the job you’re applying for.

4. Go the extra mile

Whatever you can do to make your application stand out will be a meaningful use of your time.

Not only will it help you in your job search but it will also help you develop broader skills and deeper self-confidence.

Start by putting real effort into the application process.

• Answer the questions that they ask for properly and with attention to detail.
• If they do some kind of challenge or project as part of the hiring process, make sure you read it, ideally multiple times.
• Use every opportunity to display an attention to detail and true commitment to that company. This is hard and it takes time but trust me, as a hiring manager, that effort will be noticed and eventually rewarded.

Anything else you can provide on top of that is great.

• Can you create a website that introduces you in more depth?
• Do you run a blog that shows what you can do?
• Can you show that you’ve engaged with the company’s product properly?
• Do you have any other professional or personal profiles that show more of who you are and what you’re interested in?

Whatever it is you do, try to tailor it to the company you’re applying to.

For example, if a company writes repeatedly about their focus on a text-based hiring process, don’t record a video for them. But if a company talks a lot about the value they place on face-to-face interactions as part of their hiring process, consider recording a video. Think about what you can do to show this particular company that you’re a good fit for them.

It could be that you do all of this and still don’t get the job that you wanted.

Don’t get discouraged.

Sometimes hiring managers are looking for specific profiles or types of people at certain times. That’s an unavoidable part of hiring and of job seeking.

You’ll still have written great applications for the places you applied to and that experience will always help you for the next applications you write.

If you’re going to write an application, make it a great one.

Change means instability. Instability leads to insecurity. Insecurity creates fear.

There’s a limit to how effective your support can be, simply because a certain amount of that reaction is personality-driven.

You might not have a formal change manager but treating it as if you are can make a huge difference.

What does a change manager do?

A change manager is responsible for planning, implementing, and managing organizational change initiatives. They work to ensure that changes are successful by minimizing resistance and maximizing adoption. Change managers typically have a strong understanding of human behavior and organizational dynamics.

Here are some of the specific duties of a change manager:

• Develop and implement change management plans: Change managers create plans that outline the steps that need to be taken to implement a change successfully. These plans typically include a timeline, communication strategy, and training plan.
• Assess the impact of change: Change managers assess the potential impact of change on individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole. This helps them to identify potential risks and develop mitigation strategies.
• Identify and manage resistance to change: Change managers work to identify and manage resistance to change. They use a variety of strategies to do this, such as communication, training, and coaching.
• Monitor and evaluate change initiatives: Change managers monitor the progress of change initiatives and evaluate their effectiveness. This helps them to identify areas where improvements can be made.

How to measure effective change management

It’s easier to invest the time if you know what you’re aiming for and why.

Depending on the change, it can impact:

• Employee engagement measured through surveys, focus groups, and interviews. It checks employee morale, willingness to adopt change, and overall engagement in the change process.
• Communication effectiveness: This can be measured through employee feedback, communication metrics, and surveys.
• Adoption rate, by tracking the number of employees who adopt the change, the speed at which adoption occurs, and the level of adoption across different groups.
• Business outcome metrics like financial metrics, customer satisfaction metrics, and operational metrics. The key question here is: Is the change achieving the desired business outcomes, such as increased productivity, improved customer satisfaction, or cost savings?

4 stages of change management

Preparation

The first stage is the preparation.

For example, let’s say you run a Support team and you need a more flexible hiring model, due to the specific circumstances that your company is facing. Because of this situation, you start researching different outsourcing companies.

In an ideal scenario, before you even get to the point where you start researching, you should have already discussed with your team the kinds of challenges you’re facing currently and that you’re thinking of a way to handle them. This means that by the time you actually get to outsourcing some of your support, the shock response is much lower.

As another example, say you’ve been struggling to manage performance in your team, either you’re finding it difficult to understand how everyone is performing in comparison to others or you’re finding it hard to identify what low performance looks like.

To solve this problem, you start thinking about the KPIs that you have available and defining some general standards across your team.

You should also start talking about this openly with your team well before any decision is made. Wherever and however you can include your team in the process that leads up to the change, you should do so. If you can’t include them, for whatever reason, be prepared for the pushback. That’s when the communication stage will hopefully come in handy.

Here’s a quick checklist to get your preparation done right:

• Research the different options you have available for dealing with your challenge
• Consider what the short-, mid-, and long-term consequences of this change will be
• Get as much buy-in from the people most impacted by the change as possible
• If you’re able to communicate it openly to start, try to at least get buy-in from your experienced and senior staff
• Make yourself articulate, as concisely as possible, why it is you’re implementing this change
• Understand how this change will impact the different layers of employees you have across your company
• Talk to others (in the industry or in your company) who have implemented similar changes and learn from their experience

Communication

Communication is one of the most complicated things to get right.

If you approach it systematically, it will likely go better. Here are some tips that might help:

• Create a communication plan for yourself but don’t overthink it. You want to make sure that you’re articulate and you know what you want to say but it cannot sound rehearsed.
• Once again, be absolutely clear on the reasons you’re implementing it. I cannot emphasise enough how essential it is to cover the “why” behind every decision, especially one that has an impact.
• Be as honest and open as you can be about the background and everything that went into the decision in the first place.
• Talk about the goals that you’re trying to achieve with this. Envision the best case scenario and conceptualise it for your team, so they can see it too. It’s easier for people to jump on board if they understand what you’re working towards.
• Ensure that everyone is informed directly, from the source, as quickly as possible.
• Be vulnerable. Maybe you’re also worried about how it’ll turn out or you can’t exactly predict the consequences. It’s better for you to say that than to pretend that you have all the answers.
• Try to talk to people individually, rather than to the group. It’s much easier to listen to someone properly when you’re talking one-on-one, and it’ll be easier for them to hear what you have to say too. One-on-one conversations are by their nature more humanising and bring people closer together.
• Make sure you plan in time to give people room and space to process it.

There are some messages that should come through as clearly as you can possibly make it in your communication. For example:

• You’re happy to discuss it in-depth with people whenever they need.
• You understand they might have questions and concerns.
• You will support them in whatever way you can.

It’s easy to underestimate how much of a difference the feeling that someone’s got your back can make when it comes to adjusting to something new.

There is such a thing as too much communication.

One of the hardest aspects of change management is knowing when to cut your losses. If you’ve invested hours of your time discussing the change with someone in your team and they still aren’t convinced or on board with it, you have to at some point accept that that can’t be helped.

If they’re not only unconvinced by it but they actively raise the discussion repeatedly with you or other teammates, you need to disengage from it and shield your team from it as much as possible.

It’s important to recognise that you have limited time, energy, and resources. One of your key responsibilities is to invest that in the right place and trying to have the same discussion repeatedly is not a good use of your time.

The more you humour it, the more it’ll hold your team back from adapting to the change and moving on.

Communicate. Communicate a lot. Expect that it will be necessary for a long time but pay attention to whether it gets too much.

Implementation

It’s time to actually roll out the change.

Assume a longer timeline

The first one is to assume that it’ll take weeks, if not months, for people to adapt to it. How long exactly will depend on the person, the type of change, the kind of environment you have and many other factors.

Once people have started adjusting to it, they might have new suggestions and feedback that didn’t occur to them before. Maybe some of those suggestions will be things that you didn’t think of previously either. Have an open ear for all of these things.

It could be that everything is technically rolled out but it takes a long time for you to truly understand the consequences of the decision.

For example, it’s possible that rolling out KPI goals across your team will have an impact on the culture and working environment in your team. This isn’t something that you can see or understand in the short-term.

It’s important to give yourself time to really get how people react to it, why they react in certain ways, and what the best way to move forward is for you. It’s much better to build this time into your plan, rather than scrambling to get everything done as quickly as you can.

Demystify the change

The second one is to try to demystify the change as quickly as possible.

If you’re rolling out a process that everyone in your team will have to suddenly start using for large proportions of their working day, show them what it will look like, talk to them about the purpose behind it, and how you’ll use the data from it.

If you’re changing the management structure within the team, give them access to their new managers as quickly as possible, make sure they have opportunities to interact with this person and get to know them and so on.

Establish success criteria

The third one is to establish success criteria early on in the process of implementation.

The more specific you are with your success criteria, the easier it will be for you to evaluate how your implementation went by the end. If at all possible, it’s great to make your success criteria measurable. Even if the main goal you want to achieve isn’t measurable in the first instance, think of ways that you could make it so.

Say you’re rolling out a career path structure across your team so that every individual has the opportunity to advance their careers.

• Perhaps this is something you started looking into because you felt that your retention rate wasn’t as good as it could be and some of the reasons behind that were down to career development opportunities.
• It’s pretty easy to measure whether introducing career paths had an impact (by taking, for example, the 2-year retention rate from before and measuring it against the 2-year retention rate afterwards).
• Maybe your retention rate is actually fine but what you want to increase is employee engagement. In this case, the best way to make the impact measurable would be to run an employee engagement survey before that asks everyone to rate different aspects of their experience.
• Then you could run the same survey afterwards to measure the impact of your project. Your success criteria could look something like “increase overall employee engagement by x%.”

It’s useful to make your success criteria transparent so that everyone understands that you will be evaluating the change and reacting to what you learn.

This isn’t because you need to give the impression that you’ll roll changes back over time but rather to establish an open, transparent culture, in which failure is allowed and accepted.

It’s a way to say: We’ll see if this works and if it doesn’t, we’ll react to it because we’re measuring it and can tell.  

Limit the frequency of large changes

When you’re going through the implementation of something like this, you should always limit exactly how often you roll out big changes across your team.

It’s much better to do smaller changes incrementally, give people time to adapt to them, and then build on them slowly, rather than shaking everything up every few months. It could be that you can’t avoid it because those changes are forced by external circumstances (for example, an acquisition). That can’t be helped. Where you can help it though, you should definitely try.

Change fatigue is real and it will slow your team down.

It’ll also make it hard for them to regain their engagement and vitality, and it won’t help you when it comes to building a resilient, adaptable team.

Evaluation

How long you wait to do the evaluation depends on the kind of change and how long the process to get there was.

If it took 6 months just to roll it out, it’ll likely take 6 months for people to even start adjusting to it.

You want to give yourself enough distance that you can look back and identify both short- and mid-term consequences honestly but not so much distance that you forget how the initial process went.

It might help to keep a “lessons learned” document where you jot down thoughts related to how it’s going throughout so that when you’re doing the final evaluation at the end, you have enough information to look back on without relying exclusively on your memory.

It’s best to share your evaluation and make that transparent.

It’s likely that their perspectives will enrich yours and it will also allow you to establish a culture around reflection and learning from every experience across your team.

Ultimately, to know if your change was really successful, you need to look at its adoption rate (how many people have participated and engaged with it) and what their impressions and feelings about that change are.

These are the teams that everyone always wants to be a part of.

Motivated employees are more productive, happier, and more relaxed, leading to a less stressful and more enjoyable work environment. They achieve higher performance levels, which reflects positively on the manager’s leadership skills.

It also benefits the company as a whole, leading to better products, happier customers, and higher employee retention.

How to motivate employees (without money)

Establishing a people-first leadership style

The best and easiest way to start is to work on your own leadership style.

In practice that means:

• Listening and caring: Take time to listen to your employees’ concerns and worries. React with openness and gratitude when people bring problems to you. Reinforce this until your team gets in the habit of doing this on their own.
• Empowering and delegating: Delegate tasks to the lowest level possible. Provide clear directions, make sure there’s a time frame involved, and an out, in case it doesn’t work out. The goal is to provide opportunities for people to take ownership of their own tasks and feel empowered to make decisions.
• Provide direction and clarity: Have clear expectations for your team members on every level. Communicate your expectations explicitly. Ensure that your team’s perceptions and your expectations are as closely aligned as possible. Prioritize well, meaning saying no to some things and focusing on others.
• Be honest and humble: Be honest and vulnerable in your leadership. Be open to feedback and changing your mind. Question yourself before you question others. Look for ways to improve the situation, even if not solely your fault.

Recognise intrinsic motivators

Knowing their motivators

The best tool that you, as a manager, have to improve the motivation levels in your team is understanding what motivates every individual you work with.

There are many different models and tests that you can use to find these out.

• Gallup’s StrengthFinder 2.0 is a great one to understand the types of areas that someone excels at and finds fun to do.
• Moving Motivators by Management 3.0 is another useful tool to help someone talk through and understand the aspects of a job that are important to them personally.
• Daniel Pink highlights three different, primary motivators in his book Drive.

Using a model like this works as a starting point because it will give your team the language that they need to think about and express what motivates them.

One-on-one meetings provide an invaluable opportunity to delve into the motivations and perspectives of your team members. These meetings should be more than just performance reviews; they should be structured to foster open dialogue and build rapport. During these interactions, ask open-ended questions about their career goals, interests, and what they find fulfilling in their current role.

Take the time to understand their motivations behind their decisions, such as why they chose their current career path or their reasons for joining the company. By exploring these personal narratives, you can gain valuable insights into their intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.

Using motivators

Once you have a grasp of your team’s motivators, you can begin to create a work environment that aligns with their individual needs. This may involve tailoring responsibilities, providing opportunities for growth and development, or offering incentives that resonate with their intrinsic or extrinsic drivers.

For instance, if an employee is motivated by curiosity, encourage them to explore new ideas, experiment with different approaches, and share their learnings with the team. For those driven by mastery, provide opportunities to expand their knowledge and skills through training, mentorship, or participation in challenging projects.

If status is a key motivator, recognize their expertise and contributions by assigning them leadership roles or allowing them to present their work to senior management. Similarly, if an employee thrives on autonomy, provide them with the flexibility to manage their own projects and make decisions within their area of expertise.

Employee motivation is not a static concept; it can evolve over time as individuals grow and their priorities shift.

That’s why it’s good to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of your motivational strategies and adapt them accordingly.

Revisit your team members’ motivational profiles every six months or so to assess the impact of your interventions and identify any areas for improvement.

Use this feedback to refine your approach and ensure that you are continuing to meet the evolving needs of your team.

Become your team’s biggest advocate

These are the stages of representing your team well.

When you’re in a middle management position, you’ll often have some issues that you can tackle on your level. Some of the issues that land on your desk, however, will be ones that can only be dealt with on a higher level. Depending on the complexity of your company’s structure, some of those issues might be just one level higher, some might require handling on the highest level, across the whole company.

Most of the aspects of a job that either negatively or positively impact someone’s motivation sit on different levels.

What you want to do as a manager is improve your own level and then try to influence the level under you (which is the individual level) and the level above you.

Understand their perspective

So much of good management starts with simply understanding the problem. This can be difficult because, in some cases, people will identify a problem but it will not be the problem that actually matters the most to them.

There was one point of contention that used to come up consistently in one of the first support teams that I managed, which was the structure and content of our knowledge base.

The knowledge base had been revamped at some point in the near past and the new version was much more concise, covering only the most essential information.

The idea behind this was to create something that was easy to maintain, rather than a comprehensive resource that would require intense maintenance effort.

To a certain extent, this decision was in conflict with some of the department’s goals, around reducing the demand for support.

This was one of the most unpopular decisions across the department of all time.

Even two years after the new knowledge base had been released, there was consistent, repetitive feedback around all of the ways in which it was lacking. The problem might have been the quality of the knowledge base at the beginning and, to hear anyone tell it, it was still the biggest concern of everyone who repeatedly raised it.

After two years of this feedback, the actual problem became the fundamental lack of trust in the relationship between management, the people who maintained the knowledge base, and the rest of the department.

Tackling the root cause of the problem is the only way to solve this:

• Resentment like this can build up over a series of small, maybe inconsequential decisions and interactions.
• The more meaningful solution now isn’t to go back on the decision but to work on rebuilding trust between these levels, starting with processes to encourage feedback and transparency.
• The goal would be to have more robust relationships in place in which everyone feels heard and respected.

The only real technique there is to achieve this is listening and observing. When you have conversations with people, especially emotionally fraught ones, you need to be careful to not get caught up in having the conversation.

Your primary focus should be to ask multiple questions to try to make sense of why someone feels a certain way or where their reaction is coming from.

Observation includes everything else around a reaction: their facial expressions, their body language, whether they seem to disengage from a topic or not.

All of these are signs.

Address the problem

When you understand your team’s response to an issue, you have to react to that information somehow. That might look different, depending on the situation:

• You need to be upfront if you think an issue isn’t worth escalating.
• You need to find the right balance between listening to their concerns and using your own judgement to figure out where and how you’ll react to something.
• You also need to be honest and straightforward when you think a particular issue can’t be fixed.

To take another example that’s fairly typical of a support team, having a mutually useful and productive relationship between support and product often requires conscious effort and work. Most of the support teams I’ve worked with have reported feeling that their feedback isn’t heard or taken into consideration at some point. In every situation, there will have been one event (or multiple events) that led to their perceptions. You as the manager have to sit down and figure out where the actual source of the problem lies.

Sometimes that’s been a valid problem that needed addressing with the product or QA team that received the feedback. Sometimes the real problem was that the feedback wasn’t provided by the support team in a way that was understandable or the priority of an issue wasn’t made clear.

These are exactly the kinds of distinctions that you need to make directly to your team, so they know that their concerns were fully heard and understood but that you ultimately decided to deal with a situation in a different way.

Advocate directly

The final part of this is to genuinely advocate for your team.

You have two major responsibilities as a manager.

1. One is to your team, to enable them to succeed and perform to the best of their ability.
2. The other responsibility you have is to the company, to enable the company to get the highest possible value it can from your team.

In some situations, those two responsibilities will be in conflict.

Let’s say the company is a seasonal business and there are certain times of year you can’t afford to allow vacation, even when it would be ideal for your team’s mental health and wellbeing. Or the company might have restrictions on the kinds of developmental opportunities that they would support, so you have to say no to a course that would be personally valuable for someone.

The goal is always to bring these two needs as close to each other as possible, but it’s normal for there to be situations when that doesn’t work out.

To approach this in the right way, you need to consider the pros and cons of making a decision in either direction and back up your case.

• You want to look for compromises where you can and suggest solutions that you think could work for both parties.
• For example, if your team is understaffed, you have to make the case for why you need additional resources and how those resources justify their cost for the company.
• If your team is struggling to cover a particular task or responsibility because you lack the skills to do it well, you need to look for ways to enable the people in your team to develop those skills.

Any of these situations can be demotivating and frustrating.

You might not be the person ultimately responsible for making the decision that could resolve that. In these cases, your responsibility is to communicate that need and argue for it.

Once you’ve done that, you also have to let your team know how that discussion went. Knowing that you need to close the feedback loop yourself will not only hold you accountable, it’ll also make it easier for your team to trust you and raise those issues.

Act as one team

Understanding and utilizing employee motivators is a continuous process that requires dedication, empathy, and a willingness to adapt.

By investing the time and effort to understand what makes your team members tick, you can create a work environment that fosters engagement, productivity, and overall employee satisfaction, ultimately contributing to the success of your organization.

Making a mistake can be an unpleasant experience.

Depending on how many people notice and react to that mistake, they can trigger a whole host of uncomfortable feelings, like shame, humiliation, embarrassment, regret, or anger.

Most knee-jerk reactions start with looking for a person to blame or a way to absolve yourself of the responsibility and justify whatever it was you did that led to that. Maybe some of those reactions are even right and another person did carry some of the responsibility that led to it.

Either way, there will be moments in your life where you decide to do something and then some weeks, months, or even years later, you realise exactly how much of a mistake it was. That’s just part of everyday life.

Making a mistake at work

Making mistakes at work can be more painful, at least in different ways.

It’s easy to feel like that mistake will sit with you forever, that all of your colleagues will perceive you as the person who did that thing that led to all these problems, or that you’ll never be able to redeem yourself in front of your coworkers. Maybe your hopes for that promotion have been dashed or that your teammates will never respect you in the same way again.

The moment you realise you made a terrible mistake, you’re hit with intense anxiety and fear.

It probably isn’t possible to move away from that feeling completely. There’s nothing wrong with regret, to the extent that it teaches you how to handle something differently in the future.

What is wrong is spending time and emotional energy on an outcome that’s already passed. Nothing you can do or feel in the moment will ever change what’s happened so all you can do is focus on what’s coming.

How to handle making mistakes at work

Think of the types of people that you admire and what characterises them. What type of personalities do they have? What do they do really well? When do you look at them and think “I wish I could be like that”?

A lot of people will start by listing characteristics like they’re inspirational, generous, decisive, honest and so on.

I almost always start with: They’re humble.

Humility is fundamentally about acknowledging that you can’t know the answers to everything, recognising that there will always be gaps in your own perspective and understanding of the world, and then acting that out. This is the characteristic that makes it possible for you to learn from other people when you’re feeling challenged. That’s ultimately how you can start making fewer and fewer mistakes, as you get wiser with experience. The whole point of this is to say: you can only learn from the experiences that you make if you’re actually able to recognise when you make a mistake.

It’s at times when things go wrong that you have the highest potential to grow and develop.

When everything’s going right, you can generally treat it as an affirmation that you know what to do. When things are going wrong, that’s when you know that there’s a lot you have to learn. Every mistake can be an opportunity, as long as you’re willing to grab onto it.

Owning up to making the mistake is the first step

At this point, you might be thinking: That sounds all good and well but why does owning up to it matter? Isn’t it enough if I recognise the mistake I made?

Being able to recognise that you’ve made a mistake is of course the first step, even if it’s just deep, deep down, between you and yourself.

What takes real self-confidence and character, though, is the part that comes afterwards: When you stand in front of the people who’ve been impacted by that mistake and take responsibility for it.

That’s one of those times where you can model the behaviour and the culture that you want to see from everyone around you. Mistakes can have any number of consequences and can impact the people you work with in many ways. It’s hard for everyone to really put it behind them if it feels unresolved and unaddressed. Being able to address it openly is the only way to do so.

Addressing things behind walls or with some kind of pretence doesn’t help at all. In fact, it’s only likely to lead to more frustration in the long run because your avoidance will be what everyone remembers you for.

You need to be able to own up to a mistake if you want others to respect you, if you want to show that you’ve actually learned from it, and if you want to continue building the kind of open, driven culture that most people thrive in. What happens between you and yourself is not visible to anyone else.

How can you do it anyway?

The most important question is:

How can you overcome that fear and make yourself do it anyway?

Some ways to chip away at that reluctance are:

• Train yourself to self-reflect regularly. You want to get into the habit of learning from your experiences. The only way to do that is to regularly sit down and think about why things might have worked out well and when they don’t, why they didn’t. When you start doing that regularly, you will at least have an easier time recognising that when you make mistakes and then actually learning from them for the future.
• Ask the people you work with for feedback, often, especially critical feedback. Even small pointers can give you hints for how to improve and where your blind spots are. When you’re able to train yourself out of getting defensive in response to critical feedback, you’ll eventually be able to transfer that to situations in which you make mistakes too. If you’re lucky, some of the feedback you’ll get will be about honest mistakes that you’ve made, so that can be a great practice run.
• Hold yourself accountable. Tell someone else what you would do differently It doesn’t have to be someone at work or someone who was directly impacted by it at all. It can be just a friend who you know has no reason to judge or care all that much about your minor mistakes at work. Just saying the words “I wish I hadn’t done that, now I would handle it in a completely different way” out loud will make it more normal for you in future.
• Address it. Try to say “I take complete responsibility” or “how this turned out is on me” and see what happens. In the majority of cases, you’ll find that it usually opens up fruitful and meaningful conversations that everyone walks away from a little wiser.

It’s one of the first ways to move away from top-down management, to a more inclusive style that enables and empowers employees. It’s incredibly difficult to do right.

You have to toe the line between delegating just enough that your team members feel motivated and challenged, and not so much that they feel overwhelmed or assume you’re passing off some of your work.

How to delegate your tasks during the work day

1. Cluster your tasks into different levels

Go through all the things that you do regularly and cluster them according to whether they’re possible to delegate and how easy they are to delegate.

Separate them into:

• Complex tasks that could only be delegated to highly skilled team members or that need to be broken down into specific areas. These could be tasks like figuring out how to roll out a whole new system or setting up a project that involves multiple stakeholders from scratch.
• Simple tasks that could be delegated to most people, as long as they have one skill, like writing documentation for a project, answering a specific type of email or becoming a temporary liaison with another department.

Once you’ve built this overview of your own tasks, you can start thinking about what you can delegate to whom.

2. Figure out the strengths and weaknesses of every individual in your team

As a manager, one of your key responsibilities is to assess the performance of your team members.

Start by assessing the skills that are necessary for success in their role. Imagine the perfect person fulfilling this position.

• What skills would they have?
• What would they be able to do really well?
• Figure out a brief schema for each role.
• Evaluate each person’s performance according to the skills you laid out.
• Focus on finding specific examples that match (or don’t match, as the case may be) the behaviour you want to see.

You should also think about their personality and what their natural inclinations are.

Think of how they respond in different situations. How do they deal with challenges? How do they handle feedback? What makes them get defensive? What motivates them? Are they the kind of person who would volunteer for anything? Do they find it hard to do things outside of their comfort zone?

This is the kind of information you can only pick up through observation, time, and experience.

If you don’t feel like you have a clear handle on this already, there are a lot of tools out there that can help you with both.

StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a framework developed by Gallup that identifies a person’s strengths with the help of a quiz. It also gives you suggestions for how those strengths can be further developed. This can translate extremely well when it comes to identifying strengths and weaknesses.

The Big 5 Personality Traits is another model that’s great for understanding where a person’s natural inclinations are.

16Personalities is yet another option and that one is mostly free. It takes a measure of trust and comfort to participate in a quiz like this and then share the results, so it’s usually easier to do it as a team and share your own results as well.

3. Match the tasks that you can delegate to the right person.

To judge if you’ve matched a task to the right person, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do they have the prerequisite skills to have a good chance at succeeding? How have they shown you that they’re capable of doing it?
• Do they have the right temperament or personal inclination to even be interested in this task? Will the task develop them in a direction that they care about? For example, it doesn’t make sense to delegate the task of preparing a presentation to someone who absolutely hates giving presentations and who doesn’t believe that developing that skill is important for them.
• Is there any other person better suited for this task? The answer here doesn’t have to be no but you should be able to articulate exactly why you’re giving it to one person over another.
• Why exactly do you want to delegate this task? There’s a difference between delegating to lessen your own workload and delegating to reward good performance. If you want to encourage someone by giving them more opportunities because they’ve been working extremely hard, the way you communicate this should be very different.

Err on the side of giving ambitious people the more challenging tasks because they’ll be driven and committed to following through.

People who prefer stability and comfort will need many more incremental changes over a longer period of time.

Both are completely fine. You just need to identify the right tasks for the right people.

4. Communicate the task and your vision

In order to set someone up to truly succeed, your communication about your expectations has to be on point.

When you talk to your team member about the task, make sure you talk about the why. This will help them understand your intentions and give them a clearer impression of what you’re looking for.

The next thing you need to do is imagine the perfect end result. Focus purely on the outcome and then break it down, so you can describe it better. What aspects are essential? What aspects are nice to have? At what point is the task officially finished? What would make it successful?

5. Monitor delegated tasks

Be clear about how often you’ll be checking in with each other.

• Figure out a schedule and a format.
• Every check-in should include an overview of the current status, progress made in the last while since you spoke, and an idea of what the next steps will be.
• Ask if there are blockers or if there are additional things they need help with. This should cover the basics when it comes to providing ongoing support.

Your responsibility is to provide exactly as much direction as they need, whenever they need it.

If they don’t need very much, then all you need to do is check in at regular intervals and give them feedback on how they’re doing.

If they need a lot more direction, you might have to step in more often. Maybe the person you’ve delegated to needs help in getting started. In that case, you should set up a meeting where you try to prompt them to break the task down into chronological steps and then get them to document it before they start working on them.

Your focus should always be on coaching and guiding them to coming up with things on their own though. If you’re doing 90% of the thinking and they’re simply following your lead, this is a sign that the task might be too complex for them.

Watch out for any signs that someone is uncomfortable asking for help.

• A certain level of independence and desire to manage things on their own is of course important.
• It’s okay for you to make an effort to check in more often with that person but if tasks stop moving completely until you do that, this is another thing to address.

That said, be very self-critical. It’s possible that the reason you’re stepping in so much is because you have a very clear idea of how the project should be done. In this case, you need to learn how to coach without micromanaging.

If you’re keeping such a close eye on their progress because you need it, not them, then this is something that you should work on and try to improve. The point of delegation is the exact opposite of micromanagement.

Remember that you need a basic level of trust that this person can do a great job at this specific task before you delegate it. If you’ve done your preparation work properly, there’s no reason to not give them more space.

If it doesn’t seem to be working out, you should step in and take over that task again.

How soon you do this depends a lot on how urgent the task is.

Make sure you give the person enough of a chance to really work on it. Give them feedback regularly, explain what isn’t working, and give them time to improve or change it. If you do this two or three times with no progress, then it’s time for you to act. Don’t let things like this drag on for a longer period of time because they’re uncomfortable to address.

6. Be clear about the decision-maker

Try to clarify who the final decision-maker is from the very beginning.

Is the purpose of the project to make a recommendation based on some criteria but then you, the manager, will be deciding what the best course of action is? Is the purpose to actually implement something? Do you expect them to simply inform you of what they’re implementing, do you want time to give advice but let them make the final decision, or do you want to approve what they’re doing?

These kinds of nuances can make a huge difference. If they’re clear from the beginning, it’ll be much easier for everyone involved. Lack of clarity about who’s responsible for making a decision will always slow a project down and can lead to easily avoidable conflict when someone acts but you don’t want them to.

There are good tools like Delegation Poker from Management 3.0 that you could use to figure this out.

Become a better delegator

Delegation is simpler in theory than it is in practice but breaking it down with objective criteria makes it much easier.

It also makes you a better leader, who can recognise people’s skillset and adapt their tasks to their strengths easier.

Taking the extra time here can develop your team’s development and help you level up as a manager.

Negotiating for a higher salary feels deeply uncomfortable.

The manager and employee perspective tend to be very far from each other.

The manager should be:

• Assessing the current performance level of the employee.
• Looking at growth and development since the last raise.
• Deciding if there’s been an increase in contribution and the value generated for the business by this employee.

Typically, the employee perspective includes:

• Wanting to be rewarded and recognised for their work.
• Difficulty maintaining motivation and high performance if they’re disappointed.
• A desire to see their salary increase as their experience increases.

Here’s the essential tip: If your argument is a list of responsibilities that are key to your job and that you’ve been fulfilling at the same level of performance for years, any raise at all is hard for the manager to give.

This is where your argument could fall through the cracks.

As an employee asking for a pay raise, there’s a lot that you can do before you even start the conversation that can transform the discussion for you.

When you don’t get the raise you expected

Negotiating is hard:

• Talking about money is deeply uncomfortable. Something about asking for money often makes people feel like they’re being greedy.
• It requires assertiveness. If you’re more of an agreeable person, you’re more likely to shy away from conflict or put yourself in these situations where there are opposing sides.
• Self-assessing the value of your work isn’t objective. How do you know if you should be asking for more money? How do you know if you’re contributing more than you’re getting paid for? In most companies, there’s very little salary transparency.
• Dealing with little salary transparency. Minimal structure in your company could also translate to not understanding what types of skills you need to develop and what kind of contribution they’re looking for when they’re considering paying someone a higher salary.
• Managers typically don’t articulate clearly what conditions are required for a higher salary. Deciding on a salary is often a mixture of different factors and explaining these factors completely in a way that’s comprehensible to the employee is complex.

External circumstances could make this even worse.

For example, there may be generational differences in salary (earlier employees got paid more). Even if you know how much you’re getting paid in comparison to your colleagues, that might no longer be in line with what the company is willing to pay.

How could I ask for more money?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to earn more money and to better yourself.

Earning more money can have a huge impact on your life when it comes to your living standards, your investment opportunities, your independence, your goals, and the life you’re able to provide for your family.

A higher salary is often an indication of progression: you’ve levelled up in one aspect and one area of your life. That’s something that you can be proud of.

This is what would happen if you’re successful.

The point of the advice below is to increase your chances of success as much as possible.

That said, whether you’re successful or not, the act of asking alone is a way to take a step forward and learning to negotiate on your own behalf. Asking for a pay raise is a way of advocating for yourself and looking out for your future.

Some of the content here is around figuring out whether you should even get a pay raise or not and building a case for yourself. Going through these steps, in general, is a great way for you to understand where your performance level is at, what the usual salary range for your position is, and what your chances of getting paid more are.

This is research that will pay off in your future, even if it doesn’t work in your current position. You can use this experience if you ever have to change jobs, too.

How to ask for a pay raise

The essential steps to ask for a pay raise are:

1. Create objective performance criteria.
2. Research the salary ranges for your position and market.
3. Break down your own contribution to the company.
4. Understand how salary negotations are managed at your company.
5. Set personal targets for your salary.
6. Decide on the raise (if any) you’ll ask for.
7. Prepare a list of arguments.
8. Talk to your manager.

Create objective performance criteria

The most difficult prerequisite is being objective.

Everything else, in terms of doing research, being prepared, and how to have the conversation itself, will be very hard to do, if you are not approaching it from the most objective mindset possible.

Being totally objective is obviously impossible, to a certain extent, because you will be assessing your own performance and deciding what kind of salary you, personally, feel that you deserve based on that. Whatever you can do to make that assessment as objective as possible will have a huge impact on the likelihood of success.

There’s a tendency to say “I deserve more money because I’m working incredibly hard and I’m doing the best job I can.”

This isn’t a bad tendency, in and of itself, but it isn’t enough.

• You need to be able to demonstrate value that everyone around you recognises.
• What’s the actual, visible impact of you working incredibly hard?
• You need to find a way to separate your own personal investment in the outcome of this conversation and this objective assessment of your performance.
• That means developng enough emotional distance to be able to have the conversation even if it isn’t heading in the direction that you want.

Build an external persona

Imagine someone else in the same position doing a perfect job. What does doing a perfect job look like?

• Define this on a per-task basis.
• Then think about all of the other aspects of your job that aren’t task-based: teamwork, giving and receiving feedback, living your company’s values, impact on your own team and on other teams.
• Use this to develop a set of criteria, by which you can judge and assess performance in your position.
• Now that you have these criteria, try to think about your performance in comparison to them. What aspects are you great at? What are you not so good at?

Getting used to thinking about your performance from this lens should make it easier to handle the whole conversation.

For all this conversation will feel immensely personal, remember that your manager and company have other aspects that they have to take into consideration, many of which will never be fully transparent to you.

Approach it as a learning exercise and try to learn from the experience. Do your best to not get hung up on the outcome. It would be great if it works out! But it’s okay if it doesn’t because you’ll hopefully learn what you need to do for the future.

Research salary ranges

Try to find out what the salary ranges for your position are. Try to also search for your industry, field, and area.

Since salary ranges differ dramatically depending on where you’re located, it makes sense to consider that as well.

If you’re lucky, your company might already have salary ranges that are transparent to everyone. This is a great starting point but take the time to do independent research as well. You want to get example ranges from multiple different sources, just start by using Google and see if you can identify a few sources that seem reliable.

You should have an idea of what the usual range is for your position. Ideally, your current salary should sit somewhere within that range.

• If it’s already in the high end of the range you find, you will likely have to make an argument for why your contribution is even higher than the expectations of your position.
• If your salary is rather on the lower end, you’ll hopefully have an easier time making the argument that your contribution is worth more.
• If your salary is even below the lower end, you can make an argument that you’re actually underpaid for your position in your industry.

Break down your own contribution

This is the point at which you can start looking at your own contribution. Break down the value that you bring to your company. There are a lot of different aspects to this but here’s a starting point:

1. Experience. How many years have you been working in total? How many years have you been working in this industry or this position in your company? Is there anything unique about the experience you have to date?
2. Education. Education includes degrees, certifications, and courses as well. If you’re actively investing in your education and you have paperwork and documentation that back that up, that’s something to include here.
3. Unique skill set. This is essentially the outcome and combination of the above two points. What skills do you have? What can you do really well? How easy is it to develop those skills from scratch?
4. Performance. What would it take to bring your performance to the next level? Are you a high performer or an average performer? Be as honest as you can be with yourself. In an ideal scenario, your perception of your performance should always be pretty close to your manager’s. If that isn’t the case, that’s something you have to address with them.
5. Responsibilities. What are the tasks that you do on a day-to-day basis? Have they changed or grown in complexity since your last salary discussion?
6. Impact. What is your impact on your team and the people who work with you? Would they notice if you weren’t around? Does your team work better when you’re around? This is another huge lever when it comes to salary discussions.What is your impact on your team and the people who work with you? Would they notice if you weren’t around? Does your team work better when you’re around? This is another huge lever when it comes to salary discussions.

Say your performance is stable and your responsibilities haven’t grown. You can only base your argument on experience. This isn’t the strongest argument if you aren’t able to demonstrate how that experience resulted in an improvement.

Growing in responsibility doesn’t have to translate to managing people if that isn’t where you want to go. It can mean managing tasks, growing in expertise and therefore becoming better able to help other people in your team, or taking ownership of certain areas.

Ultimately, you need to use these factors to demonstrate that there’s been a development since your last raise.

Understand salary negotiations in your company

Before you sit down and talk to your manager about your salary, find an opportunity to talk to them about salaries in general.

Many of the misunderstandings and conflicts I’ve seen happening around this topic are because people don’t start on the same page, so the communication gets very confused.

• Under what circumstances does your company generally provide a pay raise?
• What do they take into consideration?
• What kind of structure do they have around it?
• How do they ensure fair pay?
• What kind of pay raise do they give to denote “good job, we’re happy with your performance” versus “great job, we’re impressed with your performance”?

Every manager or HR department should be able to have that conversation with every one of their employees.

The point of this isn’t to interrogate your manager or to question them thoroughly. Sometimes, especially if people are taken by surprise and aren’t prepared, they won’t have great answers for you. Your approach should be curiosity and open-mindedness.

The great thing about having this conversation before making any requests is that your expectations will be more realistic. If your manager says “usually a 10% pay raise constitutes significant growth in terms of responsibilities,” you’ll know if this is a requirement that you meet.

The best outcome would be to walk out of it with an idea of how your manager and your company approaches salary negotiations.

One of the more frustrating experiences I’ve had was with a member of my team, who built a completely false impression about pay raises in the company based on someone else’s experience. This is very easy to avoid

Set personal targets for your salary

It’s incredibly difficult to understand exactly where you want to be, in terms of salary. It’s also hard to link that to what is realistic for you in your current position and in your current company. Most of the limits that come your way aren’t explicitly set, but you should always go into it with the expectation that there will be a salary cap somewhere. There are two things that you should try to set as targets for yourself:

1. What is your ultimate goal from a salary perspective? How much money would you like to be earning from working full time?
2. What is the maximum that you can expect from your current position?

If you’re approaching this from a different perspective because you feel underpaid, then define your minimum acceptable salary and be honest about it. It’s extremely demotivating to work somewhere if you don’t feel like your work is valued and that you’re paid unfairly. It will be a draining experience, not only for you, but also for the people who work with you.

Decide on the raise you want

Now you have a ton of background information that you can pull into making this decision.

• The first decision is whether you’ll ask for a pay raise or not.
• The second decision you need to make is how much of a pay raise you’d like to ask for.

Salary is a qualitative measure of the value you represent for your company.

Can you definitely say that you bring more value to your company now than you did whenever that last discussion happened? If yes, then you should ask for a pay raise.

If your answer is maybe or you’re rather leaning towards no but you’d still like a pay raise, you should approach the conversation from a totally different angle: look for ways to develop first. Talk to your manager about that instead.

The only right time to have this discussion is when you can definitively say you’re providing additional value now.

Prepare a list of arguments

The crux of your argument should be something along the lines of “I am more valuable to the company now than I was when my current salary was decided.”

• You should be able to demonstrate exactly how you’re more valuable to the company now.
• Lean towards providing objective facts, not subjective impressions.
• Provide specific examples. For example, your argument shouldn’t be “I’m a hard worker and you can see that in my everyday work.” It should be, “As you could see from my work on this project, it was successful because I did the following things, and developed and brought in the following skills.”

You want to have around 3-4 strong points with specific examples that you can fall back on.

One of the difficulties here is in avoiding giving the impression that you’re only doing certain things to earn more money.

• Don’t list every single, small thing you’ve done that might be construed as additional to your day-to-day tasks like, “I help my colleagues when they have questions.”
• Avoid falling back on a performance level that’s simply part of your job. For example, if you work in a Support team, an argument on the basis of “I answer tickets” is not convincing. The current base salary that you earn already covers that.

I’ve asked people in my teams to do this in the past when they’ve asked for a higher pay raise than I originally offered. Some people reacted to that with aplomb. Most people gave me feedback that having to do this made them feel undervalued and unappreciated.

This might be a feeling that you have at this point: Why does it take so much effort to ask for a pay raise? Why can’t your manager simply say yes?

The simple answer is: They have a duty towards the company as a whole and payroll is the most expensive cost the company has. Managing that inappropriately can have major consequences on the company as a whole.

In an ideal world, no one would ever feel underpaid and there would never be mismatches between what a manager considers a fair salary for someone and what that person thinks is a fair salary for themselves.

But salary negotiations are rarely that straightforward.

Even if you have a ton of salary transparency in your company, with clearly defined structure and salary bands, there will still be disagreements about where a person sits within a range. Learning how to do your own independent research, and how to break that down into a negotiation in your favour is how you set yourself up for success.

Talk to your manager

Set up a meeting with your manager.

• You can either follow your company’s regular cadence (most companies usually have a salary discussion once a year, in an annual review).
• Or you can set up an individual meeting for it. To do so, just tell your manager that you’d like to talk about your salary, so they’re prepared when they go into the discussion.

During that meeting is when being objective, articulate, and calm really matters.

1. Start by saying that you’d like to get a pay raise.
2. Ask for a specific amount and then explain why you think you should get it, as openly as you can.
3. You can talk about the research you did coming into it but focus on your individual contribution and your impact.
4. Try to cut yourself off if you find yourself rambling. Focus on making the points that you prepared and then wait and listen to the response.

If the answer is a no at this point, try not to get angry or frustrated by it. Your preparation until this point was still valuable and useful. Treat this is a good opportunity for you to understand if there’s something else you missed.

Maybe your manager is taking something into consideration that you haven’t thought about. This is when you can learn it for the future. In this case, you want to walk out of this meaning with a clearer idea of what you would need to do to earn more money in the future.

If the answer is a yes, then congratulations! Your efforts paid off.

While it may seem complex in theory, the process is straightforward.

The crux lies in actively recognizing outstanding performance, whether individual or collective. Express appreciation explicitly and directly. When team members question your perception of their performance, it indicates uncertainty about their standing. Small gestures imbued with this spirit can go a long way.

Overuse of praise can diminish its impact. Avoid generic, routine accolades. If everyone anticipates an annual post-peak season party, the specialness factor diminishes. Celebrate selectively, at meaningful moments.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Celebrating achievements and motivation

Celebrating achievements plays a crucial role in influencing motivation by fostering a positive work environment, boosting morale, and reinforcing desired behaviors.

Here’s how:

1. Reinforces desired behaviors: Recognizing and celebrating achievements sends a clear message to employees about what behaviors are valued and appreciated within the organization. This positive reinforcement encourages employees to repeat those behaviors, leading to improved performance and productivity.
2. Boosts morale and engagement: When employees feel their hard work and accomplishments are recognized, it uplifts their spirits and increases their engagement in their work, which creates a more enjoyable and motivating work environment.
3. Enhances self-efficacy and confidence: When employees receive recognition for their achievements, it boosts their self-efficacy and confidence in their abilities. That can motivate them to tackle more challenging tasks and pursue higher goals.
4. Strengthens team bonding and collaboration: Celebrating team achievements fosters a sense of camaraderie and shared accomplishment, strengthening team bonds and fostering collaboration.
5. Promotes a growth mindset: Recognizing and celebrating incremental progress and small wins encourages a growth mindset, where individuals believe that their abilities can be developed through effort and dedication. This growth mindset fuels motivation and resilience in the face of challenges.

How to celebrate accomplishments at work

Define an achievement

The easiest way to start is to brainstorm what kinds of achievements you think are worth celebrating to begin with.

There are three simple steps to that:

• Brainstorm what kinds of achievements you think are worth celebrating.
• Consider individual and team performance.
• Set goals and track progress.

The key thing to remember is to hit the right balance.

You can use the regularity of that to judge if you’re toeing the line the way that’s most valuable.

If your definition of an achievement is so low and easy to hit that you “achieve” something every day or even every week, then any celebration you do will not be meaningful.

But if your definition is so high that it’s almost impossible to actually hit it, then you need to lower your standards. There’s no general yardstick for how often you should celebrate something.

Once a year is fine, every few months works too.

It depends on the rhythm of your team’s work, the normal stress level on a day-to-day basis, the types of goals you set and so on. You can only look at your own environment and rely on your judgement to see if it’s too often or too rare.

Give public recognition and appreciation

Celebrations are great because they often give people public recognition and appreciation.

Depending on the type of person, recognition can be a huge motivator in and of itself. It’ll also help battle insecurity and self-doubt (or impostor syndrome) like nothing else.

It’ll push people to keep achieving at that level because not only will they feel personal pride in their work, but they’ll feel that other people around them appreciate it as well.

• Recognize achievements publicly.
• Appreciate individual contributions.
• Celebrate project milestones.

Small gestures go a long way

It’s important to remember that celebrating achievements isn’t necessarily about big, grand gestures that require large investments from your company.

Some of the most meaningful ways that I’ve found to recognise someone’s contribution to the company has been around using my available time in company-wide meetings to give them a shout-out.

Maybe you can offer extra time off, have small team events that are just about hanging out and having a good time, or just buy a small gift that you think a person would appreciate.

Small gestures tend to be more personal and targeted.

The person (or your team) will know that you were thinking specifically of them when you came up with whatever it is you end up doing.

That means a lot more than a widespread celebration that doesn’t recognise people personally for their individual contributions. It’s nice to celebrate as a group but it’s more meaningful when it is targeted.

Establish a regular rhythm

I’ve received feedback multiple times from some of my teams that they’d love it if I celebrated achievements more. I tend to be very focused on “getting things done.”

That usually means that the moment we’d finish a larger project or hit some kind of milestone, I’d already be planning on how to hit the next one.

This isn’t the worst way to work. It usually leads to a ton of productivity.

But if you find yourself in a similar position, it might help to just set up a short reminder for yourself to force yourself to think about it on a regular basis. If you do this around the rhythm of your work, it’s much easier to remember.

• Set reminders to celebrate achievements.
• Tie celebrations to your work rhythm.
• Take time to reflect on achievements.

For example, if your company sets goals on a quarterly basis, you can set this reminder up towards the end of a quarter, when it’s a good time for you to evaluate how you’re doing anyway.

If you do retrospectives on a regular basis, you could always set it up right before or right after. The main purpose of this would be to consciously take some time to think only about achievements.

What you’re ultimately aiming for is the kind of environment where people are proud of their achievements, and strive to beat them on a regular basis.

You want your team to feel like their work is noticed, appreciated, and valued by the people they work with, whether that’s you, who you report to, or the company as a whole.

This is one easy way to level up the motivation levels in your team and their overall performance with little effort.

You immediately start finishing things that have been sitting in your to-do list for weeks. You hit inbox zero. You’re extremely focused and can work consistently, productively, for hours on end.

Other days are the exact opposite of that.

These are the days where you find yourself getting distracted every 30 seconds by something new. You start replying to an email and then think “oh, I needed to do that,” switch tasks and find yourself scattered and unfocused. Your workday ticks down very slowly and you look listlessly at your growing tasks, knowing full well that you’re making zero progress.

Those days suck.

They’re inevitable and natural. It isn’t realistic to have extremely productive days all the time and sometimes, your brain just needs a break. These days can be situational. Maybe it’s your first day back from a holiday and you’re out of your routine, or there’s a particular project that you’re blocked with.

Even though none of us can avoid these days completely, there are ways to make the most of them still.

How to stop being unproductive

Avoid feeling guilty for not being product

The most helpful thing to remember is: You cannot force yourself into productivity.

It’s impossible to snap yourself out of it through sheer discipline and willpower.

You want to work with yourself. Move as far away from the mindset of “I will do this no matter what” and much more to an open-minded, curious, understanding mindset.

Treat it like a negotiation. Can you convince yourself to look forward to the task that you have to do? Is there something about it that feels especially fun or appealing at that particular moment in time? Try to find that.

It’s much more frustrating to sit there, stare at your screen, and get increasingly annoyed at yourself for not being able to spend your time productively. Directing that annoyance at yourself just slows you down even more. It’s completely counterproductive.

This is especially important to keep in mind if you do have an urgent task and you are trying to work on that task, so there’s some sense of external pressure being placed on you. If your brain just isn’t cooperating at that moment in time, you won’t manage to force yourself to work on that task either.

Try working on something else

Switching up what you’re doing can be effective.

This is often the case if you’re trying to work on something creative or if you need to conceptualise or visualise something. These are all types of tasks that tend to require a specific mindset to get into and it could be that your brain needs some other input before it can concentrate on them.

Say you’re working on writing OKRs.

You might know the goals you want to write but the output is simple, uninspiring goals that just aren’t motivating.

That’s a failed opportunity. It’s much more helpful for me to get as far as possible with the goal-setting, then tackle a task that you don’t have to think about for a few hours. That can give you a fresh perspective.

Focus on a repetitive task

Some people will have a much higher capacity for productivity under these circumstances. Other people will find that repetitive tasks drain their productivity and make it even worse.

But if you work with them: Repetitive tasks can be great in this situation.

These are the best days to work on something on autopilot. If you, for example, have to upload content online, do any copy-pasting, produce invoices for people, these are great tasks to do when you’re feeling unproductive.

They’re not inspiring and they might not be fun but you’ll feel like you actually finished something that you needed to do, which is very motivating. That’s a huge win.

Timebox

One of the best ways to trick your mind into focusing on something is to timebox it.

Set yourself a timer to work on a specific task for 15 minutes. It almost doesn’t matter how long it is, but try to make sure it isn’t too long. You want to set the bar low enough that you genuinely think it’s achievable, even if you’re struggling with being productive and you know it.

The most effective time spans I’ve found are between 10 and 25 minutes. It needs to be just about long enough that you can get something done, while still being short enough that the endpoint is always in sight.

If you want to try this:

• Make sure that you set up a timer.
• Get rid of distractions as much as you can.
• Put your phone somewhere where you can’t even see it.
• Open a new window with only the single tab that you need to work in.
• Disable all other notifications.
• Set a timer that will ping you when the time is up.

This is so effective because somehow knowing exactly when you’ll stop working on that task makes it easier to focus. You already know that your time will be limited, so no matter what you’re working on, it won’t feel insurmountable.

Reward yourself

Providing yourself with that extra incentive when you’re struggling can be extremely effective.

The more you want that reward, the stronger your motivation will be to keep up with it. Tiny and small rewards throughout the work day when you aren’t feeling productive help in exactly the same way. You can even reward yourself with a coffee break, and spend some time watching YouTube videos, without feeling bad about it because you already did your work.

Find a different productive outlet

If all of the above fails, this can be the one option that saves the day.

This is when it’s worth switching to a completely different outlet.

• Watch an old recording of a webinar.
• Find an article that you saved a long time ago.
• Get into that book you’ve been avoiding

Consuming content requires much less focus than producing content. By lowering the bar for your productivity, you find a way to spend your time on something useful.

Chances are the content will be valuable for your work. That means that you are spending your time on those tasks that you weren’t able to tackle earlier, just in a completely different way.

Write unproductive days off

Whether any of these tips help you or not, once you’ve gotten to the end of the day, there’s no point in worrying about the outcome any more. Maybe you managed to be productive for some of that time. T

hat’s great! It’s definitely something to be proud of. But if you didn’t, it doesn’t matter in the great scheme of things.

These days are inevitable and are just part of the rhythm of life. If you have a lot of them, it might be a sign that you should think about larger changes in your routine.

Chances are, though, that it was just one bad day. Moving on and focusing on what’s coming next is much more constructive than dwelling on how you spent your time in the past.

It can work out in two ways:

1. Either it’s extremely motivating and pushes you to achieve the most that you possibly can,
2. Or it does the exact opposite. The goals are so unachievable that it’s demotivating.

Here’s an example from my past experience:

We had five quarterly goals, with clear priorities. They were amibitous but motivating. Then the company was hit by unforeseen external circumstances that doubled our normal workload.

Our manager could’ve responded by reducing the goals and letting us focus on the emergency. Instead, he wanted to push all of them through:

• All five goals suddenly became equally as important, so they could be completed as quickly as possible.
• One day, the deadline was set in two weeks. A day later, the deadline got shortened to only week. One week, the direction was “let’s only manage the emergency.” A week later, the direction was “our quarterly goals are the most important thing to focus on right now.”
• Within a month, almost all team members were sitting on a well of resentment and frustration.

This is a perfect example of how focus in your work can have a direct impact on your outcomes and environment.

Why am I so distracted and unmotivated?

This is a question that all of us ask ourselves sometimes.

1. The environment itself creates distractions. Everyone is easy to reach almost all of the time. We get pings and notifications constantly through our phones. Your culture forces you to reply to every messsage you get with a high degree of urgency because the expectations in your environment are that everyone reply asap.
2. You don’t know how to adapt your workload to your current mental state. If you’ve never properly learned under what conditions you are most productive, it’s going to be hard for you to make that happen. You might thrives best under pressure and need strict deadlines, enjoy working on 20 different tasks at the same time or only effective if you focus on one thing. All of these are valid styles of working but it takes time to know which one applies to you, how to deal with its shortcomings, and how to maximise its benefit.
3. There’s a lack of direction and prioritisation. It’s very easy to underestimate how much of a difference having clear priorities can make to your productivity.

How to focus on the task at hand

Minimising distractions in your environment

Physical workspace

Start by thinking about your physical environment when you’re working, whether you’re working from home, in a coworking space, or in an office. Do you sit comfortably? Is the temperature ideal? Is the noise level bearable?

If you find yourself stopping to think about any of these things, you should look into a long-term solution.

Mute everything

Whenever you sit down to focus on a particular task, mute everything. Put your Slack on “do not disturb,” mute your phone and put it somewhere you can’t see it, make yourself as difficult to contact as possible.

You don’t need to do this for whole working days or even for hours at a time. If you’re worried about not being reachable if something urgent happens, set an alarm for yourself in one hour’s time or something similar. In order to be able to work with any kind of focus, your brain needs time.

Communication rules

Set ground rules for communication.

• Is it acceptable to ping at all times of day?
• What’s considered an urgent topic and what isn’t?
• Which communication avenue should be used when?

This is especially important if you’re working in an office setting, where it’s possible for your colleagues to simply walk up to your desk and make conversation. You need to be able to say “sorry, I’m in the middle of something right now, can you set something up for us to talk about this later?” without being impolite or feeling at all nervous about the other person’s response.

Discussing it with everyone sets expectations and will make it easier to do this.

Cultivate independence

Maybe you feel that being reachable is essential for your team.

Why? Are you the only person knowledgeable enough to be able to help them? Do they have to go through you to get certain tasks done?

Look at this as an opportunity to improve processes. Instead of being the only go-to person, you could:

• Document more of your knowledge.
• Delegate tasks to other people in your team.
• Train others in the same areas.

Set boundaries

You need to carve out time to work.

Set clear boundaries for yourself. This might mean:

• Saying no to meetings sometimes and asking people to reschedule for the next week.
• Blocking out focus time in your calendar. Maybe it involves blocking out time in your calendar to make it clear that you’re unavailable during those hours.

Minimising the distractions in your environment is a prerequisite for everything else.

It’s your responsibility to create an environment for yourself in which it’s even possible for you to work.

Increasing your personal productivity

Right mindset

Being more productive is something we all aspire to be.

Figuring out how is the challenging part. It requires discipline and concerted effort.

The following are just some tips and tools that you can use to figure out what works for you.

You are not your own task master. Don’t try to whip your brain into shape, as if you’re a drill sergeant training a cohort. You just want to set everything up around you so it’s easy for you to be productive.

Instill routine

The first thing that helps is some kind of routine.

Productivity is a habit.

The mundane, trivial habits that you have every day are the ones that make up your life when you string them all together.

• What habits do you do every day?
• Are any of them useful?
• Do they help you at work?
• Is there anything you could start doing today that would make your life a lot easier?

Set out priorities for yourself at the beginning of every day and organise your tasks: figure out what the top task that needs to be done today is, what the “nice to have’s” are and what has to be done this week but would be fine if done later.

It’ll make you feel like you have more of your tasks under control and it’ll give you the perspective you need to set yourself up for success.

Effective time

Figure out the time of day you’re most effective.

Do you do the most work in the first two hours of the day? Are you basically half-asleep through the morning and only manage to get your head straight and work on something in the late afternoon?

One way to do this is:

1. Break up your day into one or two hour long blocks and rate your productivity and focus.
2. Think about how alert you felt, how much you got done, and how much of that time you were able to use effectively.
3. Do this for a full week.
4. Work with the patterns you find.

If you always feel very drained after a particular kind of meeting, like a one-on-one, maybe always schedule some break time after that kind of meeting. If you know you always do your best work towards the end of the day, give yourself as much of that time as possible to focus on your tasks. Once you figure this out, you can break up your day into something that makes sense for you.

Focus time

Block out time in your calendar to dedicate to certain tasks or projects.

The longer the period of time you can give yourself to dedicate to a task is, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to get immersed in it. That feeling of immersion is when you hit maximum productivity. It takes time to get there, so don’t get discouraged if your first few attempts result in a few minutes of work, followed by a few minutes of distraction, followed by a few minutes of work and so on.

Experiment, be open and understanding, and remember you’re just trying to find out something that works.

You can use the much-touted Pomodoro technique, which breaks it up into 25 minutes of concentrated work followed by a 5 minute break. There’s a great app called Forest, which you can open on your phone while working on something to watch a little tree grow. It’s a very small technique that helps you stick with what you’re doing for a longer period of time.

These things might seem gimmicky and not very serious but they do work extremely well. You just need to find the thing that clicks for you.

Simplify projects

It’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed when you’re working on a larger project or when you have a looming deadline or when you’re trying to manage multiple things at the same time.

Break it down into smaller tasks.

Focus on what’s urgent, what needs to be done as soon as possible, and set yourself realistic goals of what you can manage. Don’t focus on having the perfect outcome or result at the end. Just drill down, think only about what absolutely needs to be done and get that out of the way.

Organisation system

Figure out your own organisation system.

• Do you work really well with checklists? In that case, a to-do list might help you organise your work enough.
• Do you need to be able to visualise your work and set deadlines or reminders for it? A more comprehensive task management tool like Trello might be best.
• Do you sometimes want to remind yourself much further in the future to do something? A calendar reminder would be the ideal solution.

There is a huge number of different tools and methods out there, all centred around organising your work, keeping track of your tasks, and managing your projects.

Be realistic

Say no!

There is an inherent desire to please in a lot of people. If you give in to it, you can make yourself unreliable and it can make work much more stressful. Don’t do that to yourself. You can be ambitious but also be realistic about what you can achieve.

Try not to get caught up in shiny objects; if you’re in the middle of a task and you come across something that just looks cool and you want to check it out, don’t do it! Note it down for yourself and get back to it later.

A lot of focus leads to a lot of energy

Focus is one of the most undervalued and underestimated commodities we have today.

Finding the right techniques can transform your day-to-day productivity, both in your professional and personal life.

The default reaction is to bite your tongue and not say anything.

Why?

The thing about environments that don’t encourage feedback is that it’s hard to pin down the specific cause.

It takes a long time to even notice that it’s happened. If you do happen to notice, then it’s hard to recognise the specific behaviours that led to it. And if you’re lucky enough to see those, it’s almost impossible to figure out exactly how to change them.

Avoiding a culture of feedback

Giving honest and direct feedback goes against our nature in many ways.

Culturally, we learn sayings like “if you’ve nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” We learn that it’s okay to tell white lies in order to avoid hurting people’s feelings. We almost never exchange any kind of feedback in private life.

When you get to the workplace and you try to do it, you’re fighting an uphill battle, often against your own, deeply ingrained instincts.

Giving feedback is hard:

• It opens you up for scrutiny. You bring attention to yourself. You stand out from the crowd. That takes a certain amount of confidence and self-belief, which is hard to accumulate.
• It could damage your relationships. We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings either. Telling someone that they’ve done something annoying or that their performance isn’t up to scratch and creating more work for everyone around them can feel cruel and harsh.
• Formulating constructive feedback is hard. We’ve all been on the receiving end of some feedback that we thought was unfair or unconstructive.

Giving your boss feedback is even more difficult. understands that your boss has to be the first person to recognise your positive performance because they’ll be the ones making the decisions that could potentially impact your career.

Creating a culture of open feedback exchange has to be something you put active effort into.

The benefits of healthy feedback

Feedback is the cornerstone of any development for you, for your company, and for your employees.

If no one is giving you real, honest feedback, you can only rely on your own perceptions. You’re always going to have glaring blind spots that are obvious to everyone around you but not to you.

Imagine an environment where everyone felt able to speak their mind. You want the people in your company to feel like they can:

• Suggest anything, anytime, anywhere
• Openly criticise and explain when they disagree with something
• Ask questions that are uncomfortable and awkward.

Not having to walk on eggshells in the workplace is essential if you want motivated employees.

Synergy and innovation are just not something you can achieve in a tense, anxiety-inducing environment where people sit on negative emotions instead of addressing them.

One of the best wins of an open feedback culture is that the role of the manager becomes a little less important.

They need to intervene less because people get just that bit more comfortable exchanging feedback with each other directly. Everyone will naturally help the others around them grow without the feeling that they need to “snitch” on someone. This kind of team is the most difficult one to build but it’s by far the most fun one to work with.

How to be open to feedback

As the manager, there’s a lot you can do to transform the feedback culture within your own sphere.

Start with your team. Focus on the people you work with every day, and then see how it goes from there.

When it comes to feedback, the manager’s role is extremely important. People will take their cues from you and follow your lead, so you have to be the role model.

There are two aspects that you’ll need to think about in order to change the culture you have around feedback: how you receive feedback and how you give feedback.

Receiving feedback

Start by creating opportunities for the people around you to give you feedback. This can look like the following:

• Whenever you discuss a company policy for the first time, ask your team what they think about it.
• Whenever you make a decision, ask your team if they think it makes sense or if your rationale is understandable.
• Whenever you present information, ask your team for their gut responses. Was anything about the information surprising to them or did they expect it?

Try to invite feedback in every situation where it makes sense.

Give them prompts to help them out. If you’re asking for feedback on a presentation, say something like “I’m worried that it’s a little too brief and won’t be easy for the others to follow” or “I’m not sure this is actionable enough.”

Show vulnerability, be openly self-critical and articulate your own insecurities. This will eventually, over time, give people the impression that you are actually open to feedback, that it’s important to you and that you’ll act on it.

Avoid defensiveness

Pay very close attention to how you respond to feedback.

If I had to pick one thing that will make or break your feedback culture, it’s how the manager responds to critical feedback.

• Don’t ever immediately respond by questioning or dismissing the feedback. If you can hear yourself think “but that’s completely not true,” do not say it. Don’t even let it show on your face. This makes you sound defensive.
• Remember that feedback has nothing to do with whether someone is right or wrong. You’re completely within your rights to disagree and to explain why you disagree. At the beginning though, you want to build enough trust for them to feel secure in telling you what they think.
• Make them feel heard. Body language like crossing your arms and moving your torso away from them is a signal that you’re not happy. You should reiterate what they said and see if you understand it. Ask questions that are exclusively around getting clarity, until you know exactly what they mean.

Once you’ve understood it and had enough time to process the feedback, you can think about responding.

Good responses might be:

• Choosing one part of the feedback which you will act on and try to change.
• Admitting if you can’t change something because it’s out of your hands.
• Taking their feedback on board but explaining the background behind your decision the first time round.

You can only encourage feedback by showing that you’re open to admitting that you’re wrong. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have your own convictions or beliefs. You just need to communicate them well.

Giving feedback

The other way in which you can be a great role model is by giving good feedback.

Again, assume that your team will take their cues from you, so start by thinking about the setting you choose to give feedback in.

• Praise publicly. This is a way to recognise and celebrate achievements. If you want to see more of any kind of behaviour, public praise is an easy way to encourage it.
• Address critical questions publicly. Don’t avoid or talk around critical issues. If you’re sitting in a meeting and you notice someone rolling their eyes or scoffing internally, call them out on it. Ask them to speak up and say what they think.
• Give negative feedback privately. Calling people out in public if they made a mistake just makes it feel uncomfortable for everyone. The others sitting there will think “what if this was me” and it’s very easy for the person to feel embarrassed. This isn’t an environment that’s conducive for taking feedback on board or trying to change your behaviour. It just makes people angry.

Tips for fostering continuous feedback

• Do it as close to the event as possible. It’s much more awkward to follow up on something a week later than to just address it immediately.
• Focus on finding the right balance between being blunt and being straightforward. Don’t focus so much on not hurting the person’s feelings that you don’t actually end up saying what the problem was. You have to be direct and articulate it properly. Don’t say “your performance is subpar” (too blunt) or “your performance was okay” (too wishy-washy) but rather “a great performance at this task which you worked on would’ve included more comprehensive research, been on time, took more perspectives into consideration.”
• Be prepared. When you walk into a feedback session, you should know exactly what you want to say, what kind of change you expect to see from your team member, and why this is important enough to you that it’s worth addressing.
• Be specific. Don’t say “your demotivation is bringing down the others in the team.” Instead say, “By saying “nothing will ever change anyway, so there’s no point,” you gave the impression of a fatalistic and demotivated attitude, which feeds to an environment in which none of us can be bothered.” You want to focus on the specific behaviour that you observed. Don’t ever give feedback that you can’t back up with at least one example, ideally a couple.
• Be very careful not to assign meaning to an action. Give people the benefit of the doubt. The vast majority of people you work with will not do things out of malicious intent. Don’t automatically assume the worst because of something they said or did. Assume that they made a mistake and they didn’t realise how it might have come across.
• Keep a tight rein on your emotions. If you feel angry, resentful or frustrated, it’s not the right time for you to give feedback. Give yourself some time to calm down. For it to be constructive, you need an environment in which both parties feel able to say what they feel is true.
• Be generous with your praise. Take the time to notice the hard work and the achievements of the people around you and reward them for it in whatever way you can. There’s something to be said for not praising so often that no one notices or takes it seriously, but you don’t want to do it so rarely that your team members think you don’t even notice. Find the right balance for yourself.

A kneejerk response happens when we feel under attack- the fight-or-flight response. Most people rarely experience these situations (when emotions are heightened). But customer-facing and people-oriented roles often involve just that.

If you work in customer service, the last time you got shouted at probably wasn’t that long ago. There’s a huge amount of literature about de-escalating situations in person (relevant to police officers or retail workers, for example). And another set of literature out there about de-escalating situations on the phone (in a typical call center).

Deescalating via text if you’re writing to someone via email? That’s a hard one.

Text involves distance. You’d think that distance makes it easier to de-escalate. It does, in some ways. There’s no vocal shouting involved, so the stress response is a little less intense. In other ways, it makes it far more complicated. The tone is incredibly hard to read. Empathy doesn’t come across quite the same way. Choosing the right words for an emotional situation is three times as hard when you’ll be communicating via text.

The 5As of De-Escalation is a framework to help you craft the right response for that situation.

Imagine your company has rolled out an extremely unpopular decision amongst your team, and one of them emails you a long message explaining why. Or a customer follows your product’s navigation instructions into a forest, gets lost, ends up in a dangerous situation, and then reaches out in rage and disappointment.

These are tough circumstances to handle. Taking a good amount of care with your responses is essential. That’s where using this framework can be helpful.

It has a lot in common with the techniques used in person and on a phone, but it is tailored specifically for text. Here’s how you can start implementing it today to improve your writing. It’s relevant for anyone who gets into an argument or emotionally fraught situation via email.

The 5As of De-Escalation

Deescalating any situation takes courage and a cool head. Follow these five steps to get closer to a successful resolution. They are:

1. Acknowledge
2. Address
3. Assert
4. Agree
5. Appeal

Acknowledge

Starting with acknowledgment is essential. This is the first way to make the person you’re responding to feel heard, so you can break past some of their anger and frustration.

Say you have an unhappy employee who feels they were treated unfairly. Starting with anything other than acknowledging they feel that way gives the impression you don’t care about their feedback. It’s the same with any angry customer. If they’re angry, assume they’re angry for a reason. Validating their emotions brings you both together.

These are some formulations that indicate acknowledgment:

• I’m sorry to hear you had an experience like this. This isn’t what we aim for.
• That sounds frustrating! I’m here to help you sort it out.
• I understand that … didn’t meet your expectations in this case. I’m sorry about that.
• I can see why you’re disappointed. Let’s work through this together.

Address

This is where you get into the meat of the argument. Nothing sends the message that you don’t care the way replying to only one or two points when someone sends you an email (or even text or live chat) with a long list of them.

The best way to address comprehensively is to list out, for yourself, each of the issues they raise and then reply to as many of them as possible. Aim to reply to all of them, but if you have similar replies to a couple, you can merge them.

A good example of this one is an angry customer who reaches out with a series of feature requests. It might be tempting to give them a generic reply like “thanks for the feedback.” A better experience is to go through them, offer workarounds, and provide detailed information about the status quo to each one–even if it takes much longer.

Here are some formulations that suggest you’re addressing their points:

• Let me go through each of your points. It sounds like you…
• I want to confirm I’m on the right page here. Are you…
• This is what I did to investigate what happened. I followed up with…

Assert

The next part is to assert your perspective. If you’re representing your company, this is where that comes through. Being too assertive gives the impression of arrogance or defensiveness. Being too hesitant implies you either don’t know what you’re talking about or you don’t agree with your company policy.

Imagine an applicant expressing frustration because your hiring process is taking too long. Apologizing is fair enough–you don’t want to keep people waiting. What works even better is a couple of lines about you taking time to engage with applications properly. You want to honour the time your applicants invest and make good decisions for everyone while juggling many priorities.

Asserting anything without the next couple of steps is shooting yourself in the foot. You can’t end your argument by explaining your perspective. You have to concede some points as well.

Hitting the right tone with an assertion is hard. Some ways you could phrase it are:

• We decided to do it this way because of these reasons:
• The idea behind … is to enable you to …
• Our intention with this was to…
• Let me explain the thought process behind that.

Agree

This is an essential step. It should always come after an assertion, although you can include it earlier too. Find something about their argument that you agree with.

In the example with the annoyed applicant above, you can concede that you should keep candidates up to date and let them know the status, so you don’t keep them hanging. A little goes a long way.

Agreeing is quite simple in practice. Here’s what it looks like:

• We definitely have opportunities for improvement. We could…
• We’re currently working on improving … for the future.
• I’ll pass on your feedback to … so we can change …
• I completely see where you’re coming from when it comes to…

Appeal

Wrap up with an appeal. Suggest any solution at all, even if it’s a temporary one. You might not be able to do much at all, and that’s fine–own that and let them know. People respond much better to understanding the limitations than if you overpromise.

Appealing works best if you can involve the other person in finding a solution. Some examples of what appealing looks like:

• The best option I can offer for now is to…
• One way to work around this is…
• I hope you understand why our hands are tied here. It might help to…
• It would help us out a lot if you could…
• I’ll be discussing this in more detail with…

Dealing with difficult people

Difficult people come in all shapes and sizes. You might across them in customer service when you have angry and dissatisfied customers. You might come across applicants who are unhappy with your hiring process or employees who don’t engage with feedback.

The term “difficult” doesn’t mean they’re wrong–in fact, it probably means they’re right. They often make a point that sets you back on your heels, so you must take a few minutes to respond properly to the situation.

That doesn’t make this framework infallible. Not every situation can be de-escalated, and sometimes people are angry with just cause. In those cases, engaging properly and trying is still better than the alternative.

Try these, see how they work for you, and adjust your style accordingly.

Starting a new job where you’ll be responsible for a group of people who you don’t know and who don’t know you is many degrees above that level of stress.

You have to be more careful about how you conduct yourself. When you’re responsible for assessing someone’s performance levels, and what kind of salary they get and you have the ability to shape and change the way their role is set up, those first few weeks can be fraught for both parties.

Just as you don’t know them and are focused on forming your first impressions, they don’t know you and have no idea what to expect from you.

43% of new managers who have been in their role for less than a year say they’ve had no training. If your company falls into that group, you have the power to change your circumstances. You can learn to lead meetings, understand your team’s motivators, get delegation right, and create your own 30-60-90 day plan.

Here’s an easy way to get started.

Leading a new team

Here’s an example scenario.

1. The head of a marketing department leaves at short notice.
2. Her replacement starts a week later and makes multiple, large decisions in a row that change the department’s structure.
3. He makes many positions redundant, publicly, in front of the entire team.
4. One of the people impacted bursts into tears and storms out of the room at work.
5. Everyone in the department walks on eggshells for weeks afterward.

This is a situation that happened and caused weeks of stress for everyone involved. Once the changes settled, everyone got along with the new head and had minimal problems.

Much of these situations’ conflict can be avoided if decisions are made from a foundation of trust.

If people already know you, trust your judgment, and believe that you want to make decisions that work in everyone’s favor (and not just your own), there will automatically be less friction. Getting the first few weeks and months right creates an easier transition for everyone. It helps you build the kinds of relationships that can really withstand these types of situations.

The benefits of a plan for your transition

A smooth transition pays off on three levels: for you, for your team as a group, and for the individuals in your team.

1. Start at a higher performance level. Extra stress means distractions that you can avoid, which automatically lowers your performance.
2. Your team can adjust and perform faster. If your team is bogged down and stuck in conflicts, they’ll spend more energy managing those than focusing on their jobs.
3. Enable each individual to succeed. Developing a foundation of trust means people will contribute and provide you with the input they (and you) need to have a successful working relationship.

Most 30-60-90 days plans are unrealistic because they focus on tasks or outcomes. These don’t make it possible for you to adjust based on the circumstances or handle emergencies if they come up.

This broad, big-picture plan will help you carry your team forward, no matter what you experience.

How to tackle the first months

There are three aspects to consider that will set you up for success:

1. Adopt the right mindset geared towards growth.
2. Structure your knowledge and impressions.
3. Focus on the big picture.

Adopt the right mindset

Decide on your mindset before you start working in that role. These are some questions to consider:

• How do you want to approach your position and your first months?
• What are the most important things you want to achieve?
• How long do you think it will take to achieve them?
• What will help you achieve them?

Intentionality is a great starting point. If you intend to be humble and cautious, you’re more likely to succeed at it.

A practical example of mindset in action

Say your team has minimal structure and one of your responsibilities is to help them navigate their responsibilities–by providing that structure. You’ll need to:

• Understand which processes they do have in place,
• Ask which new processes are sorely needed, and
• Improve the ones that exist but aren’t successful.

That means getting to know the people you’re working with and determining their priorities. But it also comes with some pitfalls: If the team needs structure, you might have to implement big changes immediately.

Consider what the right balance for you is. You want to make changes that are necessary and helpful while being a little cautious and holding back from changing anything that’s already working.

Structure your knowledge

Want an easy way to structure what you learn when you start a new job? Write down notes.

You have fresh eyes when you start in a new position. But because your first weeks are so busy, it’ll be hard to remember every small impression. You’re probably wasting brain space if you have the same thought twice. You don’t have to invest a huge amount in this. Find yourself some post-its, a notebook, a Google Doc–whatever tool lends itself naturally to you.

A practical example of structure in action

Take notes throughout your first week. At the end of the week, block out an hour or two to go through them. Now start clustering and structuring them in whatever way makes sense to you.

These are some questions to think about:

• What will bring the most value to your team in the fastest period?
• What has been neglected for a long time and is starting to hold the team back?
• Are there any burning fires you need to handle immediately?
• What parts are going well that you don’t want to touch?

You can use any format to answer these questions that works for you. Maybe you like mind-mapping tools because they’re easy to brainstorm or prefer a visual representation using a tool like Miro. Maybe you’d rather do it all on paper.

Focus on the big picture

Now you can escape the granular details and try to abstract the bigger picture.

The best way to figure this out is to look at the clusters you’ve collected so far, then consider:

• Do any of these topics seem to have a huge positive impact on your team?
• How can you get an immediate win?

Finding opportunities to work closely with your team early on will make it easier for you to get to know them better and quicker while giving you a chance to bond over a quick success. Set some short-term goals with a brief timeline for when you’d like to achieve them.

A practical example of abstracting the big picture

Say your team is working on too many tasks simultaneously without understanding their priorities in relation to each other. They feel a lack of purpose and are unable to finish projects.

• Focus and direction are the big-picture problems you want to tackle.

Another example might be that your teammates don’t know each other well and feel disconnected. The result is a lack of trust and a desire to avoid conflict.

• This is an opportunity to work on team-building and enable the team to work more closely together.

Defining the broader themes is the goal. Each of these issues might come up in 5-10 small ways. When you put them together, it becomes clear that there’s a bigger problem to deal with.

A detailed plan to lead a new team

Taking over a team with the right mindset saves all parties a ton of hassle. Following the steps above is a way to set yourself up for success with just a little work and effort.

If that level of detail isn’t enough and you want some tools to support you on your journey, check out these:

• 30-60-90 day checklist as a new manager
• Topics for your first one-on-ones
• Team-building workshop ideas
• The “5 Stages of Team Development”
• Questions to get feedback from your team after the first 6 months