Every month, I post three types of culture inspiration: a visual, a book, and an article to bookmark.
Visual: What makes a great leader, explained in eight counterintuitive charts
Journalist Shane Snow is the author of the new book Dream Teams. While writing the book, he learned eight counterintuitive lessons, which he shares in chart form in this article in Quartz. Above are two charts I like. The first chart shows that the best leaders are those who not only "motivate their teams to work toward a grand shared vision, but who encourage their teams to adapt in order to get there." The second chart shows that the best leaders" are not just flexible. They’re opinionated, too; that’s how they convince us to follow them into the unknown, even when they change their minds." See all the charts here.
Book: Ask a Manager: How to Navigate Clueless Colleagues, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work by Alison Green
Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” She writes the popular Ask A Manager blog, which was recently published in book format. Green goes beyond surface level advice and provides specific and actionable insights and recommendations from her experience as chief of staff of an organization and as a consultant. It's worth a read by everyone, whether you're an employer or a manager. She covers crying at work, salary negotiations, and how to deal with someone who won't respond to your emails (or emails you too often), among many other topics. Here is a good example of what to do if an employee’s stress impacts the whole team:
"If someone vents about stress constantly or just doesn’t control it well, that can end up stressing out everyone around him. If this is happening on your team, start by talking with the person one-on-one and asking what’s going on: “You seem pretty stressed lately. What’s going on?” This might lead to a conversation where you can provide concrete help with things like prioritizing the person’s workload, adjusting deadlines, or suggesting shortcuts or more efficient ways to approach a project.
But if the person is stressed out by things that are just normal parts of the job—issues where there aren’t really solutions other than “just roll with it”—then you may need to explain that, name the fact that his stress is affecting other people, and ask about other ways it might be managed: “I hear you that it can be stressful to have to get input from so many people and to make last-minute changes sometimes. It’s really the nature of the role, though; those things are pretty unavoidable in this type of work. When you complain frequently to coworkers about it and start most meetings by talking about how frazzled you are, it can raise the stress level for everyone. Do you think you can find other ways to manage your stress so that it doesn’t spread to your coworkers as well?”
Depending on how the conversation goes, you might add: “I want to be clear that I’m not asking you never to feel stressed. I know this work can be stressful! Rather, this is about being aware of how your handling of stress might be affecting colleagues. You can of course come and talk to me when you’re feeling overwhelmed; I want to be a resource for you when that’s happening. It’s adding to other people’s stress levels that I want to avoid.”"
Article to Bookmark: What does a more agile HR look like?
I love the Culture Amp blog. If you haven't already subscribed to their newsletter, The People Geekly, you should. In this article, Kate Le Gallez uncovers "how organizations can apply agile principles to the HR function, especially when it comes to employee feedback." The article explores how HR can learn from the agile processes and use them to redesign the employee feedback process to make it more helpful. Learn how you can take a real-time approach to feedback.