From post-Brexit arrangements to coronavirus contingency plans and economic worries, it can feel as though business leaders are constantly fighting fires at the moment. But are managers’ problem-solving skills up to the challenge? A report earlier this year by the Financial Services Skills Taskforce found that organisations in this sector needed to upskill managers to handle trickier situations such as managing remote workers and to respond to future changes in a more agile way.
As the economy becomes ever more knowledge-driven, the thorny problems leaders will face will often be something to do with their people. This could be clashes between colleagues, a feeling that the office environment is contributing to poor performance, or simply motivating everyone to get behind a goal. Yet because managers are often promoted to more senior positions because of technical, rather than people management skills, difficult situations may be out of their realm of expertise or experience.
Below, we look at five of the most common ‘people problems’ managers and leaders face in today’s workplace, and some strategies to solve them.
Managing difficult conversations
Whether it’s broaching a performance issue or picking someone up on consistently arriving late, there will be occasions when managers and leaders need to have an awkward or difficult conversation. Too often, we feel so uncomfortable about having these talks that we avoid having them altogether, and a situation that could have been nipped in the bud escalates into something much worse.
Digital communication often doesn’t help, according to Alex Efthymiades, director at conflict management and mediation consultancy Consensio. ‘What happens when we’re in conflict with other people is that communication tends to break down and so does trust. So we might send someone a message or an email that can be misinterpreted, or copy someone in so they become defensive,’ she explains.
‘They attack back, and a situation that could have been resolved quite easily with a courageous conversation at the beginning escalates into a complex situation potentially involving other people, too.’ Efthymiades remembers a situation where a manager thought an employee was taking advantage of the company’s flexible working policy. Her manager reported her to HR. ‘The two had not had a close relationship but the woman’s father needed medical treatment and needed to be taken to appointments,’ she remembers. ‘But because she didn’t feel she could talk to her manager she didn’t tell him, while he didn’t feel comfortable to ask. People make assumptions about the other person and jump to conclusions that are wrong.’
To ensure this sort of situation doesn’t happen, Efthymiades recommends that we ‘get out of the blame cycle’ and instead ask ourselves how we are contributing to the situation. Are we saying or doing something that could be misperceived? Then when it comes to having the difficult conversation itself, to go in with an open mind and to see where the other person is coming from. ‘Think about how you will say what you need to say and the language you will use – neutralise your language rather than using words like “always” or “never”,’ she adds. ‘Make some kind of plan for follow-up, such as “Could you let me know when you’re going to be late?” Coming up with actions can help change behaviours.’
Getting teams organised
Ensuring that teams are at their most productive can be one of managers’ toughest challenges at work. Google’s Project Aristotle study looked at the components of high-performing teams, and one of the key findings was that there was a strong culture of psychological safety where everyone felt they could speak up without being belittled or ignored. ‘It’s hard to collaborate effectively with a manager who you don’t feel psychologically safe with, as you won’t feel able to state your case clearly or expect that your opinion will be given the attention it deserves,’ explains Stuart Hearn, founder and CEO of Clear Review, a performance improvement specialist.
Setting goals together and being transparent about how different roles within the team contribute to those goals can also help focus teams. Hearn adds: ‘Whether we’re talking about collaborative in the sense of managers and employees setting the goals together, or whether the goals themselves are designed to help employees across different business units to come together, it’s essential that the outputs are clear and that you can draw a clear line from the employee (or employee group) goal and the wider business objective.’
It’s also important to consider different personality types within teams, and to adapt the management approach accordingly. Often it’s the same people speaking up with ideas or making suggestions about how the team should operate. Nadia Finer, founder of the Shy and Mighty project, argues that organisations could be missing out on ‘silent potential’ by not being more inclusive of quieter team members. ‘Organisations cannot function if everyone fits the same personality type. Different roles require different skills, communication styles and preferences,’ she says. ‘Without quieter people, thinking deeply, having ideas, solving problems and getting on with their work, productivity would take a dive.’
Dealing with uncooperative people
We’ve all come across them at some point in our career: employees who challenge every statement in a meeting or object to being asked to take on an extra task that would help the rest of the team. The temptation will often be to respond in kind, but this can escalate the situation, according to transformation coach Elva Ainsworth. ‘It can be hard to do anything other than react, but the key is not to be governed by your emotional reaction,’ she says.
In these situations, it’s important to get our ‘egos’ out of the way and approach things objectively. ‘Ask others for feedback, gather evidence and take a bit more time to gain some clarity. If you want to change someone’s behaviour, the most powerful technique is to hold up a mirror to them, so ask them to reflect on their behaviour and how it might have impacted other people.’
Mindset coach Kamal Chaballout adds that lack of cooperation at work can be due to several reasons, but one of the most common is a lack of listening. Sometimes managers can enter situations with their own agenda, meaning they focus on that perspective rather than listening out for others. ‘The key factor in communication is that it is a two-way road, meaning that your ability to convey your message should be equally as important as receiving the message from others,’ he says. ‘Another point to consider is that there are different types of communications and some individuals have a preferred method. For this reason, try to learn the preferred communication method of the individual you are working with and use it to hear them out as well as sharing your message simply, clearly and respectfully.’
Overcoming a failure
Historically, leaders were often perceived as ‘heroes’ at the top of highly hierarchical organisations, so if they failed, the impact would be major and filter down right through to everyone below. ‘Leaders were expected to have all the answers, so the freedom to develop solutions and to take greater responsibility for business outcomes was relatively limited for people in the layers below,’ says Natalie Carrick, client director at Black Isle Group, a leadership development business. One of the pitfalls of this approach was that it could lead to a fear of failure and an ensuing lack of transparency if problems arose.
Increasingly, though, more inclusive organisations are allowing staff space to fail, and to learn from their mistakes. Carrick adds: ’Lean and agile methodology used in many tech start-ups is one of the best examples – the concept of “minimal viable product” is used to launch products/services before they are fully developed in order to learn from feedback in the market and to get to market faster. Whilst in the pharmaceutical industry, there’s a concept of “fail fast” for new drug candidates because the process of drug discovery and development is astronomically expensive, so if a drug is not going to make it through to market then companies want to know quickly.’
There needs to be a climate of ‘psychological safety’ to accompany this, however. Carrick advises that managers speak up about the fact it is OK to make mistakes, and offer opportunities for people to stretch themselves and experiment. That could be through allowing people to explore side projects or sharing stories of lessons learned from failure.
Turning around a toxic culture
Horrific stories about toxic cultures that allowed sexual harassment and bullying to go unreported have hit the headlines recently, with charity Save the Children being the latest to come under scrutiny. But if an organisation spins out of control or faces damage to its reputation because of its culture, how can the balance be redressed?
Elva Ainsworth believes the approach, in some ways, is similar to how we deal with difficult people – by encouraging reflection and building evidence. ‘The main difference is this is not a one-person job. You can’t do it alone,’ she says. ‘Anyone who has tried to turn around a culture will understand that a culture has its own life. Leadership, process change around things like recruitment, behaviours and values all need to be in alignment if you’re going to make a change. If any of these is out of line, the culture will likely stay as it is.’
She adds that toxic cultures often come about because there is conflict between individuals’ motivations and the purpose of the organisation, or perhaps the purpose of the organisation is not clear. ‘The clearer the purpose of an organisation, the clearer the cons of not delivering on that purpose, the healthier and more productive it tends to be,’ she explains. Where this is looser, there is room for ‘big personalities’ to come into play and a culture can go from ‘great’ to ‘toxic’ fairly quickly.
To combat this, organisations need to identify the processes or pressure points that are keeping that culture in place, and look at whether they can be changed. There also needs to be a reason to change, adds Ainsworth: ‘It could be a failure, or people are leaving for your competitors. Culture is the way it is for a reason, it’s something bigger than the organisation itself.’
About the author
Jo Faragher is an award-winning business journalist and editor who writes for Personnel Today, People Management and national newspaper business supplements.
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