Hey, this is Chris with Hacking your leadership. On this discussion of about
employee engagement, I want to talk about an interaction that I had with a
person a few weeks ago that hasn't really sat well with me, and you
know, kind of trying to figure out why it wasn't sending well with me.
It led me to kind of a thought process in my mind around something
I think is really important if you're a leader of people when it comes to
keeping your employees engaged. I went to a person that I work with with
a problem and I asked them for advice on how to solve a problem.
And their response was not what I hoped it would be. It was,
you know, it wasn't the exact words of don't bring me problems, bring
me solutions. They didn't say that, But what they said was what would
you do? And the impression that I got from that moment was not that
they wanted me to make the decision, but they actually didn't have an answer
for me, and they were trying not to admit that they didn't have an
answer for me. And that was a little frustrating because I would rather have
just admitted that they didn't have an answer, so we could, you know,
kind of work through it together, which is fine like that, you
know, have the humility to say to say no. But it made me
want to just, you know, not go to that person again for any
advice because I felt like the interaction wasn't transparent and real. I wanted to
talk to somebody who actually either A had a solution or B could help me
work through it together so that I at least I could say I did my
due diligence on making sure I wasn't just arbitrarily going forward on my own,
that I was taking a partner and making this decision. So I think this
is really important when it comes to employe engagement because again I found myself actively
disengaging on trying to solve that problem because of the response of that leader and
trying to find out how to instead replace that person with somebody else to try
to solve this problem. I think this happens a lot, and I think
a lot of leaders either inadvertently or intentionally drive employees down this path. I
will be the first to say, I'm Lorenzo, I'm a leader of people,
and I have done this in my career. You have guilty as charged.
I rolled my eyes, Yeah, rolled my eyes. In my head,
have I thought, like, why is this person always bringing me problems?
Like like I have absolutely guilty of this. I think this happens.
This happens in real life, it happens in leadership. I think it's a
great topic to talk about because we talk a lot about employee engagement, We
talk a lot about building trust, We talk a lot about like collaboration,
you know, and working with people, benefit of the doubt, positive intent,
Like we talk about a lot of these types of things. This is
one of those moments when this is such a critical time for those things to
come to life, because you know, if you I'm going to assume,
this is my assumption that people have done the work to figure out what the
solution should be to the problem before they got to me. And so I'm
going to assume you came to me because you really need help getting too a
solution if you come to me consistently. And I'm like, we just had
this conversation two weeks ago, or this is so similar to the last thing
that happened, and we talked about it, and I kind of gave you
some resources and asked you some questions like we took the time to break this
down a little bit, and you're continue to come back to me, then
I have to peel back, as leaders say Okay, what's what's going on
here? Right? Like like maybe maybe we we didn't we didn't get there
together. Maybe like but we have to have a different conversation. But I
want to make sure that it's done in a healthy way, because what I
still need you to do is come to me, like I to your what
you just said. Like if I if I disengage in a way, or
if I make it feel like I'm not being transparent or I don't have time
for you or I'm not willing to give you a solution, then I can
completely turn you off of coming to me when it comes to having questions or
problems, and then you might make a decision that is really something that causes
a larger issue, right, And I do not want to have that.
But if you're if you're getting this from from a from a larger team,
if you're getting this from an individual, as a leader, you have to
step back and say, like what am I doing to cause this? What?
What what am I? What am I doing to to allow this to
be a thing that continues to happen, And how do I have to change
my behavior, my communication style, my clarity of the vision of what we
do, like, what do I have to change to help my team stop
doing this specific behavior, Because if you don't personally own it, you're going
to continue to just either shut it down or they stop coming to you.
And that becomes really a much much larger issue right right, And if an
employee is doing this, it isn't necessarily that they don't care. It could
be that they lack the confidence in being able to make a decision on their
own and they're looking for validation. They're looking for you to validate what they've
they've already figured out, or they've been burned in the past they've made a
decision on their own, or they've they felt like they did the due diligence,
they made a decision and didn't go the right way for them, and
now they know it's kind of what once bitten twice shy. And it's your
job as a leader to find out which of these two people that you're dealing
with, because how you lead a person that is one one style versus the
other style is very different. One of them doesn't care, and one of
them cares very deeply but doesn't want to get themselves into a situation that hurt
them in the past. And how you respond to them to give them the
confidence to move forward that is going to make all the difference in the world
to kind of get them out of that rut versus a person who doesn't care.
I want to give some advice to leaders on how to best do this,
but first I want to get upward to one of our sponsors. All
Right, if you're a leader of people and you're dealing with this kind of
thing where people are coming to you and asking for solutions to problems, one
of the questions that I love asking of people who've come to me to kind
of figure out which of the two people they are are. Do they care
deeply about something and they're just worried about making the wrong decision, or do
they not care and they're just trying to hand off the problem to me,
hand off the responsibility to me so that they don't have to make the decision
on their own. The question I asked them is if there wasn't a clearly
defined solution to this by the organization or by a policy somewhere. If it
were truly up to you, what do you want to do? And what
I've found is it you will get one of two responses. You'll get deer
in headlights or you'll get oh, well, this is what I would do
right here, I do this and this and this and this and this.
That answer of being able to clearly articulate what they would want to do if
or up to them, that says, Okay, I have put thought into
this, I do care about this problem. I've exhausted the resources I have,
and I'm coming to you for advice because I really can't find the answer.
If they can't articulate what they would want to do, or if they
have to, like you know, if they're really happy to think about that,
it means they haven't put any thought into it. And that's a different
response. One requires the kind of leadership that says you don't care about your
job, and we need to figure out how to make that happen, or
figure out how to get you into a different role where you do care about
it. The other says you have an employee who is actively engaged in solving
problems and they maybe lack the confidence to do it. On their own without
taking a partner, figure out which of the two employees that it is that
you're dealing with, and respond accordingly. Otherwise you will end up either you
know, actively contributing to the disengagement of an engaged employee, or you will
assume something about an employee that isn't true and that will need to further problems
down the road. Tone matters, context matter, Like, there's so much
of this that I think is important. But I think that as a leader,
you know, having the chance to go in front of the room and
in front of the team and talk about these things and say, hey,
I want us to move into a space where you feel empowered to make decisions
that are going to be the right decisions for our company and for for our
team and for our customers or whatever that is, Like, I want us
to be that, and here's what that looks like. And I want to
talk about what this type of thing. If you run into a situation or
an issue, the first step of that is ask a peer, right,
ask a pere what do they think, like bounced off somebody else to two
heads are better than one, and a lot of these types of scenarios and
and let's let's bounce around a couple of the different ideas, right and then
and then if you're getting stuck or you're not figured it out, or you
need a timely decision, then come let me know. But but tell me
say, hey, I'm coming to you and I need a timely decision because
we've bounce a couple solutions and we're just not getting there, Like preface the
conversation with where you're at with it, what's going on. Like I think
if you do that as a team and you talk about the importance of it,
and you build a work system by definition of what you want them to
go do, then it's super helpful because you've given them the vision of here's
who I want us to be, and here's the here's the empowerment I want
you to all feel and making these decisions. And then here's how you leverage
me as your leader. And I want you to know that it's okay,
Like if you ever need to play there, like Lorenzo, Hey, I'm
coming to you with something, and what I really need right now is just
like a decision that you can make. Like if you just tell me that
I'm going to make a decision for you right then and there, right,
because I also understand that like urgency and time can matter, I'm going to
have some questions I want to seek to understand. I want to I want
to get some more context and what's going on, But I also want to
respect the fact that you may be on a time crunch or something urgent's going
on. So like, if you're not being that clear with what you provide
your team, it makes it hard for them to navigate those waters of how
and where and when and what do we do to make sure that we are
getting a solution as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Right. And the
last thing, and equally is important to all of this is if somebody comes
to you with a question and they're looking for a solution and you don't know
the answer, tell them that right up front, Say you know what,
that's a that's an interesting situation you have there. I don't know off the
top of my head, but let's ask some questions and let's figure this out
together. Being able to say I don't know, but let's find this out
together, let's solve this problem together is a very important step in a in
a leadership role to making sure your people don't think that you're trying to,
you know, put it back on them because it's it's a learning moment.
But in your mind you're thinking, oh, oh, croud, I don't
have an answer, but I don't want to seem like the person who doesn't
have the answer. Just because you're the leader doesn't mean have to have the
answer. It just means you have to be a resource for the person to
help get to the answer, even if you don't know it off top of
your head. That's okay. The moment, you lead the person to believe
that you're trying to turn this into a schoolable moment for them and you're withholding
information, but in actual you don't have the information. You know, it's
like quick, oh, let's let's them to go away so I could research
the answer and then get back to them later, making it look like I
already knew it. You've lost them and you've lost the relationship. So be
very transparent with what you do know and what you don't know about what they've
come to you for, because you will get out of the situation together and
you'll have a much clearer understanding as far as the motivations of the employee and
you'll develop that over time so that they'll be able to hopefully next time you
know, need less of assistance in terms of solving their problem. I want
to thank you all for joining us on this discussion of employee engagement. We'll
see you next Thursday for another one. Have a great day.