How to Get Better at Virtual Meetings in 2020

When you're meeting in person, you can read a teammate's body language, make eye contact, and connect more effectively. Face-to-face meetings are always better, but they're not always possible. When you have a distributed team, virtual meetings are a necessity. While meeting remotely provides a ...

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When you're meeting in person, you can read a teammate's body language, make eye contact, and connect more effectively. Face-to-face meetings are always better, but they're not always possible.

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When you have a distributed team, virtual meetings are a necessity. While meeting remotely provides a connection challenge (and not just because of spotty internet), it's still possible to have a great meeting -- from anywhere.

How to Run a Virtual Meeting

In a related post, we outlined a basic distributed team meeting template with principles on how to structure a virtual meeting. Here's the agenda we recommend:

Check in personally and professionally. If you're following the Level 10 Meeting methodology, this is known as the segue.
Discuss each item on the meeting agenda. Ideally, everyone will be looking at the same list in a tool like Strety. To move through talking points more efficiently, ask all team members to review and contribute to the agenda before the meeting starts.
When decisions are made and action items are assigned, check off the talking points and add tasks for the appropriate parties while still on the call.
When you've checked off all your agenda items, ask everyone to rate how the meeting went. You're shooting for 10s all around but all feedback is worth knowing. If someone gives a low rating, that might be a cue that your meeting processes could be run more smoothly.

Strety Users: If you're using our Meetings tool and your meetings don't feel as efficient as you'd like, email our Success Team - We'd love to give you some customized advice on how to spend less time on the phone with your team and more time doing high-impact work.

So: you have the structure down. You're tracking your goals, you're documenting action items, and you're taking notes in a centralized hub. That's a great start -- but if you're used to meeting in-person, it can still feel like something's missing. Using our template for virtual meetings will help you address existing pain points, but it can be trickier to read someone's body language to understand what's *not* being said.

The best meetings preempt issues before they turn into problems. To do that virtually, you need a blend of communication best practices and the right systems for automated team management.

How to Uncover Unspoken Issues in a Virtual Meeting

Structuring a meeting is pretty straightforward -- if you're using a tool like Strety and have a set agenda, the meeting almost runs itself. (Almost.)

Understanding team dynamics and preempting issues that employees haven't yet voiced is murky in any situation. Reading people can feel like a talent you either have or don't -- and, certainly, some are more naturally talented at it than others. Luckily, it's also a skill that can be learned. To have an effective remote meeting that preempts issues before they turn into problems, add some communication best practices to your software stack:

Default to Video

We'll get this out of the way: it can be annoying to hold a video call instead of a phone chat. If you're on the go, or multitasking, or just haven't showered (we won't judge), a video call can feel disruptive or frustrating.

Much of the way we communicate is non-verbal, and picking up on those cues is crucial to connecting effectively with teammates. Without video, it's impossible to read someone's body language. Make video calls the rule and an audio-only call the exception.

Listen With Your Eyes

Have you ever gotten halfway through a video call and realized you've been watching your own face the entire time? We all do it. While it's human nature to watch your own thumbnail on Zoom, try to resist the urge. Instead, watch other faces for reactions and nonverbal cues. That's the magic of defaulting to video: you have a way to see those nonverbal cues instead of just relying on tone (which can be misleading).

Watching to see how your employees' faces change when things are discussed will help you understand where friction lies, what people are really excited about, and what could turn into a big problem down the line. If you're using Zoom, try switching to the Gallery View instead of Active Speaker View. You'll see more faces at once and will be able to \"read the room\" more quickly.

Make Time to Check In

When you're meeting in-person, there's time in the margins to chat about your weekends, talk about your lives, and generally catch up. It happens when people are milling about or walking to the conference room. While idle chatter can sometimes feel like it's delaying the important stuff, idle chatter has a crucial purpose: it warms people up to meet.

If you're meeting virtually, make time for some idle chatter. We recommend allotting 5 minutes to catch up at the beginning fo a meeting. Some teams have success sharing personal good news one at a time, and others do well just chatting for a little while before moving onto action items. Try a few formats and see what works best for your team -- but don't skip it.

Follow Up Privately -- and Immediately

If you noticed a nonverbal reaction from a team member that hinted at a potential issue, follow up after the call. Asking a team member about their body language outright during a video call can derail the conversation and potentially bring up resentment that someone might prefer not to discuss in front of everyone. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't talk about it at all -- it's just more effective to do so privately.

Message your teammate privately after the call and leave it open ended. Vague is better; \"how are you feeling about X\" will go a long way.

$\"private$

Strety Users: if you're sensing unspoken issues during your virtual team meeting, add a private check in question for teammates to answer after every meeting. It'll prompt employees to answer automatically, saving you time and giving people a space to respond to top-of-mind issues they'd rather not discuss publicly.

How to Run a Virtual Meeting

In a related post, we outlined a basic distributed team meeting template with principles on how to structure a virtual meeting. Here's the agenda we recommend:

Check in personally and professionally. If you're following the Level 10 Meeting methodology, this is known as the segue.
Discuss each item on the meeting agenda. Ideally, everyone will be looking at the same list in a tool like Strety. To move through talking points more efficiently, ask all team members to review and contribute to the agenda before the meeting starts.
When decisions are made and action items are assigned, check off the talking points and add tasks for the appropriate parties while still on the call.
When you've checked off all your agenda items, ask everyone to rate how the meeting went. You're shooting for 10s all around but all feedback is worth knowing. If someone gives a low rating, that might be a cue that your meeting processes could be run more smoothly.

The best meetings preempt issues before they turn into problems. To do that virtually, you need a blend of communication best practices and the right systems for automated team management.

How to Uncover Unspoken Issues in a Virtual Meeting

Structuring a meeting is pretty straightforward -- if you're using a tool like Strety and have a set agenda, the meeting almost runs itself. (Almost.)

Default to Video

Listen With Your Eyes

Make Time to Check In

Follow Up Privately -- and Immediately

Message your teammate privately after the call and leave it open ended. Vague is better; \"how are you feeling about X\" will go a long way.

$\"private$

How Do You Conduct a Performance Review?

Some general principles:

Do it in cycles. The first step should be asynchronous and individual, and the second should be a meeting in real time (whether virtually or in-person)
Start with a template of questions that the employee fills out about themselves (a self-appraisal) and the manager fills out about the employee. If your team wants to try 360 performance reviews, add a set of questions for the employee to answer about their manager.
A manager and employee should both share their answers with each other prior to meeting. Springing information on an employee in the moment helps nobody. Give each other time to process and think about the information in the review, whether positive or negative.
Prepare questions and comments prior to your meeting. If you've done most of the work in advance, you're ready to have a productive discussion when you meet.

How Do You Start a Performance Review?

So you've written your self-appraisal, you've read the review from your boss, you've written your team's reviews, and you're about to log into a video chat or step into a one-on-one. What do you say? How do you start?

Whether you're the manager or the employee, we recommend starting with positivity. Beginning a review with meaningful praise and celebration creates an environment in which team members feel valued and in which constructive criticism can be heard. If you start with criticism, praise feels like a consolation prize. If you start with celebration, critique feels more fair and is more likely to be adopted.

At the beginning of the review, find a few specific things to celebrate from the last 6 months. If you're the employee, come prepared with notes of things you did that went well, specific people on the team that contributed to that success, and personal growth you've achieved. This is your time to brag about yourself; use it.

If you're the manager, come to the review with a few specific things to celebrate about your employee. Avoid being vague; instead of complementing someone's work ethic in general terms, for instance, praise their performance during one particular week when they really showed up.

How Do You Give Good Feedback in a Performance Review?

If you've started with meaningful praise (not empty celebration), then giving good feedback will probably flow naturally. To keep up the constructive, effective process, remove blame from negative feedback.

We recommend focusing constructive feedback on learnings, future changes, and growth. Don't waste time rehashing bad blood or scolding someone for a mistake that happened months ago. Instead, provide an opportunity for your team to talk about what they've learned, what didn't go well that they'd do differently, and what growth they hope to make before the next review. Criticism that feels like improvement and like cheering for each other, not blame or chastising, is more likely to be heard and implemented.

Often, this is a matter of a simple rephrasing. Reviews are vulnerable situations that call for thoughtful wording. This is particularly true when giving constructive feedback.

Strety Users: Drastically reduce prep time for reviews by filtering recent 360 feedback, 1:1 notes, and Check In responses for each person on your team.

How do Goals Come Into Play?

There are two types of goals to consider in the performance review process:

Company goals that an employee owns or contributes to, and
Goals the employee has for their own professional development.

When the two intersect, it's serendipity. They won't always intersect, so it's important to speak about both and prioritize both whenever possible. When speaking about company goals, document initiatives well in advance and ask your team what they want to impact and help them find role-appropriate ways to do so. Give your team time to think about it, solidify ownership or areas of impact in the review, and spend proceeding meetings checking in on that goal's progress.

Company goals are crucial to the business, and an employee's goals for their own development are crucial for employee retention. Make space to discuss both.

In Review: The Template

Create a list of 2-3 questions for each of the following categories:

Celebrating\n
- What went well?
- What are you proud of?
- Who else on the team do you want to celebrate? etc
\n
Learning\n
- What did we learn?
- What might we do differently in the future? etc
\n
Growth and Goals\n
- Which company initiatives do you want to own?
- What impact do you want to have on the company before your next review?
- What personal goals can I help you achieve? etc
\n

If you're ready to incorporate better reviews into your continuous performance management system, contact Strety for a demo of our tool. We'll make this easy!

","head_html":null,"post_body":"

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How Do You Conduct a Performance Review?

Some general principles:

Do it in cycles. The first step should be asynchronous and individual, and the second should be a meeting in real time (whether virtually or in-person)
Start with a template of questions that the employee fills out about themselves (a self-appraisal) and the manager fills out about the employee. If your team wants to try 360 performance reviews, add a set of questions for the employee to answer about their manager.
A manager and employee should both share their answers with each other prior to meeting. Springing information on an employee in the moment helps nobody. Give each other time to process and think about the information in the review, whether positive or negative.
Prepare questions and comments prior to your meeting. If you've done most of the work in advance, you're ready to have a productive discussion when you meet.

How Do You Start a Performance Review?

How Do You Give Good Feedback in a Performance Review?

Often, this is a matter of a simple rephrasing. Reviews are vulnerable situations that call for thoughtful wording. This is particularly true when giving constructive feedback.

Strety Users: Drastically reduce prep time for reviews by filtering recent 360 feedback, 1:1 notes, and Check In responses for each person on your team.

How do Goals Come Into Play?

There are two types of goals to consider in the performance review process:

Company goals that an employee owns or contributes to, and
Goals the employee has for their own professional development.

Company goals are crucial to the business, and an employee's goals for their own development are crucial for employee retention. Make space to discuss both.

In Review: The Template

Create a list of 2-3 questions for each of the following categories:

Celebrating\n
- What went well?
- What are you proud of?
- Who else on the team do you want to celebrate? etc
\n
Learning\n
- What did we learn?
- What might we do differently in the future? etc
\n
Growth and Goals\n
- Which company initiatives do you want to own?
- What impact do you want to have on the company before your next review?
- What personal goals can I help you achieve? etc
\n

If you're ready to incorporate better reviews into your continuous performance management system, contact Strety for a demo of our tool. We'll make this easy!

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Management Tips

A Performance Review Template that Really Works

Performance reviews get a bad rap. Many of us have been in situations where a not-great manager used a review as an opportunity to parade failures and ...

Written By: Strety

July 28, 2020

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Unless you’re a sales rep for Zoom, it's pretty safe to say that whatever goals you had at the beginning of the year now look like a stretch. Now that the dust has settled from 2020’s rollercoaster first half, it’s time to climb up the tree to see if you’re still on the right path. It’s time for a midyear gut check.

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This year more than ever, it’s vital to do a mid-year review with your direct report or manager. Reviewing the last 6 months worth of work and assessing what stays and what goes will yield one of the highest ROI's of any meeting on your Q3 calendar. It does not have to be a very long meeting, but it does have to be very intentional.

For starters it's a good time to check with your counterpart on how they're feeling about their progress this year. You may have done this more casually throughout the year already but it's important to give the discussion some structure, to record the meeting, and to assign and track any actions or to-dos that come out of it.

To kick it off, review what was planned at the beginning of the year: What were the numbers or outcomes that were agreed upon to signal success on your yearly goals? You should both ask yourselves “are these still appropriate goals considering how the year has gone”?. Adjusting goal-targets is a huge key to keeping employee morale and motivation high.

You should also ask yourself “Do we need to scrap any of these goals right here and now?”. Priorities change quickly and what was important or feasible in January may not be any longer. If a goal needs to be scrapped, mutually agree on new 2nd half goals that take the reality of 2020’s 2nd half expectations into consideration.

$\"Goal$

Once you've agreed upon 2nd half numbers and/outcomes, put them in writing and break them down so they're more manageable. Plan out the next major steps (2-3) that will put you on the right track to hit that number or goal for the end of the year. The, most importantly, set a regular recurring time to check in with the goal owner and get updates on their progress towards the goal or KPI.

With less opportunity for in-office face-time, it’s important to get more frequent updates without taking up any additional time. We have personally used Strety's Goals & Check Ins to get more consistent reads on how everyone is doing, feeling, and progressing towards their goals and we haven’t missed a beat; effectively replacing our need for a Daily Stand Up.

Lastly, praise. Everyone has faced their own personal challenges and hardships adjusting their work around WFH and a global pandemic. Remember to use the meeting to also acknowledge and emphasize what’s been accomplished amidst such a tough year. Your team will thank you for it.

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$\"Goal$

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Meetings

Reset & Revitalize 2nd Half Performance: How to Run a Midyear Goal Review Meeting

Unless you’re a sales rep for Zoom, it's pretty safe to say that whatever goals you had at the beginning of the year now look like a stretch. Now that ...

Written By: Larry Garcia

July 22, 2020

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All too often, agendas are made up on the fly, added last minute, or left unchanged from week to week. This renders the agenda lazy and hollow and leaves your team likely uninspired, or worse, wondering “What was the point of that meeting?”

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When we put so little effort going into a meeting, we grow accustomed to very little coming out. A Harvard Business Review study supports this sentiment, reporting only 17% of executives agree their meetings are productive uses of group and individual time.

This routine, err vicious cycle, perfectly sums up how & why (most) meetings are generally viewed as colossal wastes of time and disruptions to real work. There’s not enough time invested in pre-meeting prep work. No matter how familiar you are with leading meetings - whether you’re a first time manager or a seasoned pro - we want to make sure your meetings are set up for success, and that all starts with a meaningful agenda.

In The Surprising Science of Meetings, Steven Rogelberg likens an agenda to an event plan. When planning an event, we think about the details, the flow, the experience, and the approach. We should apply that same mindset and process when planning a meeting. In fact, once you factor in attendee time, salaries, and time away from equally essential solo work, meetings can become fairly expensive events in their own right, further justifying careful planning.

Think about showing up to a client without being ready to discuss their account, any services issues, or potential projects coming up. That should never happen right? That same focus should be brought to your internal meetings!

How to Prepare for Productive Meetings

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1. Know Why You’re Meeting

Meetings must have a purpose and a desired outcome. Before you begin creating an agenda, figure out if you need to meet by asking why. Do you need to solve a problem, make a decision, or do you just want to check in with a direct report? Meetings should be called to address issues that require genuine interaction and engagement amongst attendees. If the topic doesn’t require interaction, another communication medium, like an email or memo, will likely be more efficient.

Once you’ve decided a meeting is necessary, make the purpose known, even including it in the agenda, so everyone else explicitly knows why you’re meeting.

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2. Collaborate on the Agenda

For meetings to be transformative, they need to be a shared experience. Ideas for your meeting agenda should bubble up from team members. Rogelberg agrees; “When your employees are encouraged to bring their thoughts and ideas to the table and to have them be truly heard, they tend to feel a greater sense of commitment to and identification with the team and organization”. This lends itself to meetings where attendees are actively involved and invested in the meeting, while increasing the chances of hitting topics of critical importance to all who are present.

What employees propose should definitely be considered, but you, as the meeting facilitator have final say. Encourage attendees to submit topics for discussion 2-4 days in advance of the meeting. Ask them to include a 1-2 sentence reason for why they want a topic included in the meeting. If a topic doesn’t make the cut, privately give an explanation to the employee or move it to a more appropriate meeting, like your 1:1. Make sure to always close the loop, though. Your simple acknowledgement goes a long way.

$\"Collaborative$

Strety Users: Our agendas are shared and collaborative. No need to go back and forth about agenda construction. Encourage everyone to add leading up and you can be the gatekeeper for what makes it one. Just get more ideas on the table!

\n\n

3. Curate Your Agenda

Now that all the potential agenda items have been collected, it’s time to whittle the list down. Determine which topics will really add value to the meeting and drop any content that doesn’t contribute to the meeting’s purpose and desired outcome(s).

Studies from Rogelberg suggest that items early in an agenda receive a disproportionate amount of time and attention, so order your topics in order of importance. Know the difference between what’s essential to cover and what would be nice.

Next, look for agenda items that should be addressed in/around one another. This will help your agenda flow more smoothly. If all else is relatively equal, prioritize employee-generated agenda items. This sends a strong message around voice, inclusion, and shared ownership.

Lastly, meetings should always start and stop in the same way. Open with a short ice-breaker or segue. Close with a summation of key takeaways and clarifying ownership of next steps/action items

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4. Share Meeting Responsibilities

A meeting should always have a facilitator but that doesn’t mean they’re solely responsible for leading the discussion around every agenda item. Each agenda item should have it’s own clearly - and publicly - designated owner. If an engineer on your team wants to talk about a specific services issue, they need to prep that agenda item and own the discussion.

Sharing responsibility will also provide an opportunity to develop meeting leadership skills for other team members and it will get more people - and varied voices - involved in the meeting.

$\"assign$

Strety Users: Manage the work that results from your meetings with Action Items. We allow you to assign to-dos and manage their progress from meeting to meeting, so there’s accountability and nothing slips through the cracks.

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5. Plan For Process

Rogelberg says “planning a meeting is knowing not only what you want to cover but also how you want to go about doing it.” This final step in agenda creation is often ignored or assumed as obvious but it’s imperative you put some thought into the process to which you’ll address each agenda item.

There are plenty of tools and techniques to consider when discussing certain agenda items - we’ve even written about a few here. Consider the team, the task, and the desired outcome. For example, if your weekly team meeting has an agenda item to discuss KPIs (we love KPIs, we’re all BrightGauge alumni), the process would be “I’ll lead this topic off discussing my team’s KPIs and we’ll go around the room letting each team lead share theirs”..

Leaders are uniquely qualified to attach process to agenda items given their big-picture understanding and their responsibility in ensuring there’s a positive return on time spent in the meeting.

\n\n

Summary

An agenda alone will not make your meeting great but putting a little effort into it definitely will. By establishing a purpose, opening it up for collaboration, thinking through flow & process, and divvying out responsibility you’ll change the attitude towards meetings in your company and you’ll increase the return on everyone’s time investment.

If you want to see your meetings improve - and automate much of what you’ve read above - request a demo and let us show you the Strety solution!

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How to Prepare for Productive Meetings

\n\n

1. Know Why You’re Meeting

Once you’ve decided a meeting is necessary, make the purpose known, even including it in the agenda, so everyone else explicitly knows why you’re meeting.

\n\n

2. Collaborate on the Agenda

$\"Collaborative$

\n\n

3. Curate Your Agenda

Lastly, meetings should always start and stop in the same way. Open with a short ice-breaker or segue. Close with a summation of key takeaways and clarifying ownership of next steps/action items

\n\n

4. Share Meeting Responsibilities

Sharing responsibility will also provide an opportunity to develop meeting leadership skills for other team members and it will get more people - and varied voices - involved in the meeting.

$\"assign$

\n\n

5. Plan For Process

Leaders are uniquely qualified to attach process to agenda items given their big-picture understanding and their responsibility in ensuring there’s a positive return on time spent in the meeting.

\n\n

Summary

If you want to see your meetings improve - and automate much of what you’ve read above - request a demo and let us show you the Strety solution!

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Meetings

Prepare for Team Meetings: 5 Keys to Building Impactful Agendas

All too often, agendas are made up on the fly, added last minute, or left unchanged from week to week. This renders the agenda lazy and hollow and ...

Written By: Derek Weaver

July 14, 2020

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A growing company - or the sudden absence of an office - can make it difficult for a manager to keep a steady pulse on the health and performance of their team. Daily Stand-ups and status updates can tell the story during meetings but a good manager needs a process to collect and manage team sentiment between meetings.

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\n\n

At Strety, we call this process 'Check Ins'. Check-ins are recurring single-prompt questions managers and team leads ask to increase engagement and gain proactive insights. The right mix of questions will help surface issues and gauge the real-time health of their team between team and 1:1 meetings, effectively filling in all a manager's blind spots.

In their book Nine Lies About Work, Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall say “A team with low check-in frequency is a team with low intelligence. Data reveals checking in with your team members once a month (during meetings) is literally worse than useless. While team leaders who check-in once a week see a 13% increase in team engagement, those in check-in once a month see a 5 percent decrease in engagement. There’s also a 2.7x increase in retention that accompanies frequent conversations. As if team members are saying “I’d rather you not waste my time if all we’re going to do is talk in generalities”.

Check-ins are not one-sided. You have to give to receive. The engagement boost only happens when team members regularly check in AND regularly get a reply. Buckingham & Goodall elevate this sentiment:

\n
“Checking in with each person on a team - listening, course correcting, adjusting, coaching, advising, paying attention to the intersection of the person and the real-world work - is not what you do in addition to the work of leading. This is the work of leading”
\n

The more frequent and predictable your check ins, the more real time attention you’ll be able to give to your team’s work, leading to more engagement and higher performance from your team. What we’re saying is: It Starts with You!

\n\n

Implementing Check Ins

We use check ins to keep our teams engaged and our managers informed; each one serving as its own asynchronous, one-question meeting. Buckingham and Goodall simplify their approach by recommending managers start by asking each team member two simple questions each week:

What are your priorities this week
How can I help

It’s less about a perfectly posed question and more about consistency, and these two check ins are a great place to start. They’re simple and they put the focus on the actual work your team is doing. This allows managers to know where they can have the most impact right now.

Don’t expect your questions to be uncovering gold right away. You’ll have to find what works best for you and your team. Test, learn, iterate, repeat. Here are a few things to think about as you roll-out check ins:

Cadence: How often do you want to ask certain questions
Day of the week: Ask the check in when you’ll get the best answer
Public/Private: Do you want answers to be shared with the entire team or only with you

At Strety, our check ins are a healthy balance of daily, weekly, and monthly work and non-work related prompts. We’ve set up questions that ensure we have a holistic view of how our people are doing while also reinforcing our company’s values & culture. Here are some examples of questions we’ve had success with to help you get going:

Implementing Check Ins

What are your priorities this week
How can I help

Cadence: How often do you want to ask certain questions
Day of the week: Ask the check in when you’ll get the best answer
Public/Private: Do you want answers to be shared with the entire team or only with you

Suggested Questions to Ask Your Team

\n\n

Daily Check Ins

1. What are you working on today?

$\"Daily$

2. How was your day?

\n\n

Weekly Check Ins

3. How are you feeling coming into this week?

Ask Monday morning. Can be open-ended or 1-10 scale. This is about understanding everyone’s headspace. Are they coming into the week refreshed and recharged or are they carrying stress?

4. What challenges are you facing?

5. What wins did you have this week?

6. How did you feel this week?

Strety Users: When a Check in response requires further discussion, easily add it to any upcoming meeting agenda

$\"Weekly$

\n\n

Monthly Check Ins

7. What part of your role are you most passionate about? Feels the most draining?

8. Have you been inspired or extra motivated by anything or anyone recently?

\n\n

Culture Building Check Ins

9. What did you do this weekend?

$\"Culture$

10. If you were to recommend one ___ what would it be?

movie/youtube video to watch
album or podcast to listen to
book or blog to read
Restaurant to eat at
Recipe to try

Use these questions - or come up with you own - and you’ll be well on your way to better understanding your team, increasing engagement, and achieving better business outcomes.

","rss_summary":"

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Management Tips

10 Check In Questions to Keep Your Team On Track Between Meetings

A growing company - or the sudden absence of an office - can make it difficult for a manager to keep a steady pulse on the health and performance of ...

Written By: Derek Weaver

June 30, 2020

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Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them.

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Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them.

\n\n

According to the Issues Solving Track (IDS) laid out in Gino Wickman’s Traction, “When addressing issues, leadership teams spend most of their time discussing the heck out of everything, rarely identifying anything, and hardly ever solving something”.

If you find yourself continually punting problems down the road or solving issues you’d thought you’d already solved, it’s time to rethink how your organization approaches problem solving.

The first step to a better problem-solving process is creating an issue list. If you don’t have one already, create one. Ask your leadership team to be open and honest about the issues facing your business and write them down. This will be a transparent, running list that will add structure and organization to your problem solving process. Bring it with you to every leadership meeting.

With your list in place, you can begin to implement Gino’s simplistic & straightforward IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) process. When followed, it can transform your company into a well-oiled, problem solving machine where you tackle issues with little to no wasted effort. Here’s how it works:

Identify

Each meeting, examine your list and rank the issues in order of priority. Don’t jump in and immediately discuss solutions. Wickman says “the underlying issue is always a few layers down. Most of the time the stated problem is a symptom of the real issue, so you must find the root of the matter”.

Continue to pull the string: Is it a communication, process, or person issue? By investing time in the identification phase you’ll not only address your biggest issues but you’ll likely notice a few smaller problems will go away on their own, as they turn out to be symptoms of the root issues you’ve already solved.

Discuss

Once you’ve clearly identified an issue, this is everyone’s opportunity to offer thoughts on a resolution. Push to hear from everyone, open and honest discussion around issues will build trust amongst your team.

According to Wickman, everyone should say what they believe but should say it only once. Get everything out on the table. Offer solutions that contribute to the greater good, not what’s best for you or your department.

One more thing to keep top of mind as you discuss solutions: avoid tangents at all costs! Call them out to stay on track. If a tangent is a legitimate issue worth discussing, add it to your Issue List and continue discussing options, solutions, and concerns regarding the issue at hand.

Solve

The goal for solving any issue should be that once it’s solved, it’s gone away forever. To make that happen, you have to align the solution with the long term vision for your company.

Wickman likens it to driving a car, not having a destination, and making turns randomly. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t make decisions on which way to turn.

Issues may take longer to solve from this approach but the time spent clearly identifying and discussing the root issue will save you time and effort in the future.

Solving problems through IDS will provide structure to your process and force you to be intentional in tackling problems the right way, not the easiest way.

If you’d like to see how Strey can systemize IDS - or any other concepts from Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) - let us know, we love talking about this stuff!

","publish_immediately":true,"use_featured_image":true,"published_by_id":9725277,"published_at":1591876975051,"rss_body":"

Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them.

\n\n

If you find yourself continually punting problems down the road or solving issues you’d thought you’d already solved, it’s time to rethink how your organization approaches problem solving.

Identify

Discuss

Solve

The goal for solving any issue should be that once it’s solved, it’s gone away forever. To make that happen, you have to align the solution with the long term vision for your company.

Wickman likens it to driving a car, not having a destination, and making turns randomly. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t make decisions on which way to turn.

Issues may take longer to solve from this approach but the time spent clearly identifying and discussing the root issue will save you time and effort in the future.

Solving problems through IDS will provide structure to your process and force you to be intentional in tackling problems the right way, not the easiest way.

If you’d like to see how Strey can systemize IDS - or any other concepts from Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) - let us know, we love talking about this stuff!

","rss_summary":"

Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them.

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE"}

Management Tips

How to Handle Company Issues with Less Stress and Mess

Every company has issues. What separates an industry leader from its peers is their ability to effectively and efficiently solve them. According to ...

Written By: Derek Weaver

June 10, 2020

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The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

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The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n\n

That doesn’t mean you should stop searching for new tools to help your business grow. It means finding the RIGHT tools -- not MORE tools. You need implementation strategies that minimize tool fatigue and accelerate adoption so you can get more done.

Adoption is what delivers results from SaaS solutions. If a new technology isn’t used, it isn’t going to make a difference. I’m sure you can easily envision a more efficient and more effective version of your company. You know the changes that need to be made to realize your vision, that’s why you’re testing out new Saas in the first place. The largest obstacles in actualizing that vision are communicating through change and getting buy-in from key parties.

Buy-in is mandatory if you want to accurately assess whether a SaaS solution is right for you. You do not want to be the business leader who's unable to harvest transformative benefit potential from new SaaS because you can't get your team onboard.

Thankfully, there are plenty of things you can do to facilitate SaaS adoption from your team. Before you can overcome adoption issues, it’s best to understand where they’re rooted.

\n\n

Obstacles to Adoption

Tool Fatigue

Tool fatigue is real, it’s discouraging, and it isn’t going away. I’d be shocked if you’re a TSP and not dealing with tool fatigue in some capacity right now.

Tool fatigue is when you have:

Too many tools
Too much overlap between tools
Too much jumping between tools

As software management becomes increasingly decentralized, it’s common to find numerous SaaS tools with overlapping features. For example, most organizations use a combination of Google Docs, Slack/Teams bots, email, and employee surveys to collect feedback. What they choose is dependent on the team or use case, and in some instances, arbitrarily, without any thought to organizational cohesion. This can quickly spiral and create more trouble when trying to filter through threads to pull relevant feedback for 1:1 meetings or performance reviews.

As the work your team is doing spreads out across more and more apps, your team will struggle to find the data they need when they need it, adding complexity to their workflow. At that point, can you blame their reluctance in adding another tool to their stack?

Change in Mindset

No one looks forward to changing a well-worn workflow, not to mention the stress and the time commitment that comes with it. But adopting new software isn’t just about creating better, more user friendly processes. It’s also a mechanism to transition towards a new way of thinking.

For example, continuous feedback cultures require a totally different mindset. If your team isn’t prepared to receive feedback about themselves, feedback will come across as a top-down initiative rather than a company-wide culture shift. Instead, leaders must emphasize, communicate, and lead by example, demonstrating feedback and more regular conversations around performance are necessary to reach company objectives and a healthier work environment.

Be understanding that any approach intended to foster long term buy-in will likely take time to take hold.

Poor Communication

Deloitte reports that up to 70% of change initiatives fail because key stakeholders struggle to adapt. That struggle can begin before anyone even begins to use the product.

It’s one thing for you to see the value in a new tool, it’s another to effectively communicate that value to your team. Think about it through the lens of selling your clients on a new Managed Security Service that you use internally; you can’t position the solution as it benefits your security, you have to position the solution as they see it protecting their data.

Failure to frame your messaging towards your team could easily lead to misaligned expectations, and sets up your new SaaS tool for an uphill battle towards team-wide adoption.

Improper Training

Even if you perfectly prepare your team for a new SaaS tool, it won’t make a difference if they are unable to derive value from it early-on.

First impressions are huge and whatever early impression your SaaS tool makes will drive the motivation towards buy-in going forward. So, what are your options when you need every employee onboard with a new SaaS tool? How can you work with leadership and your vendor to accelerate the spread of a SaaS tool within your company? Most importantly, what’s the right approach when you’re faced with employees struggling with change?

The wrong answers to these questions could deliver a death blow for fast adoption, leaving you flat footed with a discouraged team and without a solution.

\n\n

How to Drive Widespread Adoption

Choose the Right Tools

For any problem you’re trying to solve with SaaS, there are probably multiple solutions for you to choose from. When comparing similar solutions, keep two things top of mind:

Is the tool industry specific
How quickly can your team use it

First, Is the tool built for you or is it built for the broad market? It’s almost always the right move to go for the industry-specific tool. Vendors in your industry speak your language, understand your business problems and desired outcomes, and will be more likely to act on your feedback and feature requests, giving you greater opportunity to shape the tool for your needs. If there are comparable tools with comparable features, going with the MSP-specific solution is a no brainer.

Second, be proactive in countering tool fatigue. Much of the software you truly need already exists: Office 365, GSuite, Teams, Slack. This is where users are already spending time.

Look for tools that embed or layer into your existing processes and systems. Make it easy for them to adapt.

Third, weigh their UX. If a tool does exactly what you need it to do but it feels clunky and poorly designed, you won’t see efficiency or effective deployment when your team ultimately hates working with it. Probably rings a bell, doesn’t it?

Lastly, how much time will it take to onboard the average employee? If it has extensive training programs and a lot of digital resources/tutorials, it will likely take more time and effort to learn the tool, making the tool susceptible to pushback. Additionally, look at what sort of support is available from the vendor. Will it be easy for your team to get help when, where, and how they need it?

Communicate Change Management

The role of management in any situation is that of motivation. It’s your duty to help your team cross new bridges despite their tendency to look back. Best way to get them moving forward? Ready them for the other side. Communicate how to get there and why it’s going to be better.

For adoption to spread you need an effective internal marketing plan that will help ingrain these habits into people’s workflows. This is where you address the how and why:

Why will using this product benefit them?
How can they be successful using this tool?
How is this going to make their job easier/better?
Why is this better than the old way?
What do they need to do to start using it?

Think about what triggered the need for the tool in the first place. Are you struggling to train new or inexperienced managers? Are you growing too fast and need more effective systems in place to scale? Are you experiencing low engagement levels? Be genuine in what you expect the new tool to do for the organization and for them, and don’t focus solely on the practical uses, find fun ways to get your people excited about using the tool and your adoption rate will increase.

For example, even if you know introducing continuous feedback will help solve several overarching problems, culture change is a long-term benefit that will take time to implement and be felt by the team. Instead of selling the idealized result, start by focusing on a couple more immediate and specific pain points and explain why it’s critical to address it now. For example, ask weekly employee surveys that will form the foundation for tomorrow’s continuous feedback culture.

Strety Users: Use our customizable email templates to internally communicate what Strety is, what it does, how everyone benefits, and next steps all before you launch and increase your odds for faster adoption.

Encourage Participation

One of the most important factors in getting widespread adoption is widespread participation. If the vendor allows it, encourage your team to participate in the demo/trial period. Collect their feedback and let them know their input will be a part of the evaluation process. Early ownership can go a long way towards adoption.

Once you have your team using the product, lean on your superstars to crank up usage. Contrary to logical opinion, don’t look to early adopters (more on them in a minute) to help usage spread, look to your company’s key influencers. Focus on your team members who get it, you know the ones, and encourage them to be more active within the tool to set an example for the rest of the team. Even the most reluctant employees are much more likely to adapt if a coworker they trust is supporting new software and processes.

Your team is also likely to adopt new tools more quickly with rewards in place. Reward early adopters with positive reinforcement; It's far more effective than enforcing penalties or discipline over a lack of adoption.

Though you have your team’s best helping you out, you’ll need to lead by example. It’s critical that you show enthusiasm for the tool. A leader’s level of usage and promotion is a great indication of the success a product will have across an organization.

Strety Users: Acknowledge when your team participates. Leave a comment whenever a team member responds to a Check in or updates their Goal. If your team doesn’t see your feedback in the early stages, they’ll be less inclined to respond to the next prompt.

Reinforce Usage

Once a tool is in place and you know you’re moving forward, force change away from existing tools or old behaviors. According to Charles Duhigg’s research on habit formation, “to change a habit, you must keep the old cue and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine”.

For example some employees just don’t feel as comfortable providing feedback or expressing themselves in written form. Changing to a more documented approach presents an extra barrier for them to adopt.

Help them through the transition by tailoring new processes to their individual needs. One size fits all will not apply. Be patient and flexible, but make sure incremental progress is being made; do not settle for a complete absence of participation or reverting back to old processes

You must encourage and reinforce usage until it becomes habitual. If there’s always the option of returning to the old way, you’ll continue to fight tool fatigue and fall short of actualizing full value from your new solution.

Strety Users: Start by setting up Check ins around what your team discusses during their Daily Huddle, i.e ‘What are your priorities for the day”. No need to reinvent the wheel. Your team will be more comfortable responding to what they’re familiar with. They’ll soon see their Daily Huddles become more productive and efficient, increasing adoption.

$\"Daily$

Set Milestones

Set SMART goals and milestones to measure success at each implementation phase for key stakeholders in your company. Be clear what you want to accomplish, for example, at 1 month, after 3, and in 12. Goals will vary depending on the pain you need to solve, so work with your CSM to help you come up with goals you can track with the tool.

Once you hit those goals, draw attention to the quick wins that come through early adopters. Celebrate any example of the product improving specifics; i.e “Jessica’s team has knocked 15 minutes from their daily stand-up as a result of enacting new processes”. It’s vital for the team to know how the new software is making an impact across the organization.

Strety Users: We want you to be successful using Strety. Schedule time with a CSM to discuss what success looks like for your organization and let’s work together to get you there

Finding new tools to unlock your business’s potential is hard work. Once you’ve found the right solution, it can be a real challenge to take those tools and implement them company-wide, especially when you’re working with teams of varying personalities and preferences.

In order to receive the full benefit of your new tool, an intentional, strategic adoption approach is a must. Be mindful of the technology you select and the way in which you implement it and make sure adoption is top of mind when deciding on new tools, and you’ll see ROI much more quickly.

","publish_immediately":false,"use_featured_image":true,"published_by_id":9725277,"published_at":1593181571794,"rss_body":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n\n

Thankfully, there are plenty of things you can do to facilitate SaaS adoption from your team. Before you can overcome adoption issues, it’s best to understand where they’re rooted.

\n\n

Obstacles to Adoption

Tool Fatigue

Tool fatigue is real, it’s discouraging, and it isn’t going away. I’d be shocked if you’re a TSP and not dealing with tool fatigue in some capacity right now.

Tool fatigue is when you have:

Too many tools
Too much overlap between tools
Too much jumping between tools

Change in Mindset

Be understanding that any approach intended to foster long term buy-in will likely take time to take hold.

Poor Communication

Deloitte reports that up to 70% of change initiatives fail because key stakeholders struggle to adapt. That struggle can begin before anyone even begins to use the product.

Failure to frame your messaging towards your team could easily lead to misaligned expectations, and sets up your new SaaS tool for an uphill battle towards team-wide adoption.

Improper Training

Even if you perfectly prepare your team for a new SaaS tool, it won’t make a difference if they are unable to derive value from it early-on.

The wrong answers to these questions could deliver a death blow for fast adoption, leaving you flat footed with a discouraged team and without a solution.

\n\n

How to Drive Widespread Adoption

Choose the Right Tools

For any problem you’re trying to solve with SaaS, there are probably multiple solutions for you to choose from. When comparing similar solutions, keep two things top of mind:

Is the tool industry specific
How quickly can your team use it

Second, be proactive in countering tool fatigue. Much of the software you truly need already exists: Office 365, GSuite, Teams, Slack. This is where users are already spending time.

Look for tools that embed or layer into your existing processes and systems. Make it easy for them to adapt.

Communicate Change Management

For adoption to spread you need an effective internal marketing plan that will help ingrain these habits into people’s workflows. This is where you address the how and why:

Why will using this product benefit them?
How can they be successful using this tool?
How is this going to make their job easier/better?
Why is this better than the old way?
What do they need to do to start using it?

Encourage Participation

Reinforce Usage

$\"Daily$

Set Milestones

Strety Users: We want you to be successful using Strety. Schedule time with a CSM to discuss what success looks like for your organization and let’s work together to get you there

","rss_summary":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"layout_sections":{},"blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","head_html":null}

Management Tips

Tool Fatigue is Real: 5 Steps to Combat Adoption Issues

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many SaaS tools, it’s more ...

Written By: Derek Weaver

May 14, 2020

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Plateaus are invisible enemies.

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Plateaus are invisible enemies.

\n\n

Hitting a plateau feels like writer’s block, or hitting the wall midway through a tough workout, or like endless monotony with no clear path forward. If we’re not constantly achieving, we feel like we’re failing -- even when we might be able to progress with the right coaching. Since that failure feels embarrassing, we don’t talk about plateaus with our managers or teammates.

As a leader, your job is to identify when someone on your team is starting to plateau so that you can coach appropriately. But how do you know if someone’s plateaued if they won’t bring it up?

\n\n

Signs of a Plateau

People on your team could be feeling the beginnings of a plateau at any time, hidden in plain sight. While performance may not yet be visibly slipping, teams and individuals that plateau tend to exhibit signs of complacency:

Lower engagement with their teammates
Poorer standards of quality on their outputs
Rushed projects
Lack of focus
Lack of energy

Complacency quickly turns into a lost sense of purpose, and with it, a lack of motivation and engagement. Once you reach this point, performance issues are likely to surface. And If there is no attempt to adjust and correct once the wall has been hit, blame may be - fairly or unfairly - put on their environment, leading them to leave your organization.

Your goal: tackle the plateau before performance issues become problematic. And definitely before it leads to attrition.

\n\n

Why Plateaus Happen

Growth isn’t linear. From the outside, growth might look like a straight line up and to the right, but from the inside, it’s a jumbled tangle of ups and downs that (hopefully) eventually lead to growth.

Temporary plateaus can be part of a normal growth process. Short plateaus are nothing to fear -- in fact, they’re productive because they serve as a brief interlude to recharge for more growth. The leader’s role in a healthy plateau is to keep that interlude from turning into inertia. Give your employee space to take a breath, then help them run when they’re recharged.

Not all plateaus are productive, however. Sometimes an employee plateaus for less-than-helpful reasons, like:

Lack of variance, interest, or challenge in their day-to-day
Unresolved frustrations or resentment on the team
Lack of opportunities to grow within their role or within the company
Insufficient coaching
Uncertainty over the value of their work
Misalignment between the employee’s sense of purpose and the company’s vision

It could even be a conscious decision -- sometimes, advancing in career just isn’t someone’s top priority in life. An employee might decide they’re okay with how good they are at something, turn on autopilot, collect their paycheck, and stop improving. This is referred to as hitting the “OK plateau”, and it’s super common. In some fields, that’s not a huge problem. In others, a lack of progression is effectively regression and must be mitigated.

Regardless of why your team is plateauing, it’s in your best interest as a leader to try to empower your employee to push through in the right way at the right time.

\n\n

How to Coach Someone Through a Plateau

Managers and leaders can have a huge impact in shortening plateaus. With the right coaching, a plateau can be more productive and less frustrating for all involved.

While sustained plateauing is a cause for concern, more often than not it’ll serve as a wake-up call telling you to shake things up or try something new.

Here’s how to foster newfound motivation during a plateau:

Change their responsibilities
Rethink recognition
Improve cross-department collaboration
Create new opportunities for development
Introduce written reflections

Change Their Responsibilities

If your team isn’t feeling challenged, they’ll lack a connection to the work they’re doing. A lack of challenge happens when a job role becomes one-note, making it too easy to run on autopilot.

Changing an employee’s responsibilities gives them more (and different) opportunities to develop, avoiding a plateau. As a manager, one of the most effective ways you can overcome that is by dishing out the right responsibilities to the right people.

To do that, align someone’s areas of ownership with their zone of genius. In a 1:1, ask your employee which tasks give them energy and which tasks feel exhausting. Sometimes, a 5-hour task can be more invigorating than something that takes 10 minutes but saps your motivation. It’s not always about the amount of work, it’s about how that work feels to the employee.

To change responsibilities, you might have to involve multiple teammates. It’s best to address shifts in job roles in the setting of a performance review so that everyone has a chance to talk about what they love about their jobs and what they wish they could hand over to someone else. Chances are, one teammate might be dying to stop owning a project that another is excited to take over. This doesn’t have to be a major job shift -- it might be a simple project shuffle that makes all the difference.

When you’re shuffling responsibilities, make sure to give ownership of work-related goals to the right people. Ownership of goals shouldn’t live with the manager, it should live with the person responsible for the work. If someone has zero input to the work they’re doing, it’s unlikely they’re going to care about that work -- and they’ll eventually plateau. Employees perform best when they feel a strong connection to purpose, and ownership of goals helps foster that purpose.

You can also transfer responsibility by being less visible as a leader.

Refrain from unnecessary micromanagement, like dictating tasks step-by-step or asking to be cc’d on every email. Instead, open up non-invasive lines of communication. Ask for high-level check-ins like a weekly performance recap or a daily “What are you working on” and only course-correct when necessary. In giving your team member more autonomy, you create more autonomy for yourself.

Rethink Recognition

Recognition doesn’t have to be complicated. People thrive when they feel like they’re being heard, and sometimes, that’s all it takes. Elevating a plateaued employee’s voice can reignite motivation by reminding your team member that their work -- and voice -- have value.

To elevate more voices, encourage everyone on the team to contribute to meetings by opening your meeting agendas. Ask your team to suggest agenda topics. Let your employee drive their 1:1. Using shared, collaborative meeting agendas will get more varied ideas on the table while proving your commitment to making sure everyone has an opportunity to contribute to the discussion.

Sometimes, people plateau because they don’t know where they stand or how they’re doing. Everyone wants to know how their work contributes to team success, and once-annual performance feedback is not enough. Continuous feedback is key.

In order to provide continuous feedback, you need a system in place to collect valuable, actionable responses. Our team provides weekly updates to their goals and self-determine if we’re on-track. We provide context to those updates so that any team member can quickly see what’s going on with a project or initiative. This gives our leadership an opportunity to acknowledge great performance and realign the team whenever necessary. With continuous feedback, plateaus are spotted early and mitigated quickly.

Pull from performance recaps, daily or weekly check ins, goal updates, and 1:1 meetings to find opportunities for recognition. A simple acknowledgement that you read and appreciated an update or check in goes a long way.

If you want to take it a step further, positive feedback can be incredibly powerful when shared publicly. Systems like Teams and Slack make it easy to publicly recognize a team member for their accomplishments. Sharing successes with the entire organization leaves no doubt that someone’s work is valued.

Strety Users: Automate 360 feedback 2-4x/year so you’ll have a well-rounded read on your team’s performance when it comes time for annual reviews

$\"360$

Improve Cross-Department Collaboration

Cross-departmental collaboration adds newness and variety which are crucial to finding a new sense of motivation. But the real impact of collaboration comes from pushing people outside of their comfort zone.

Once someone gains exposure to the real work of other teams, they may identify new skills to develop or an interest in new responsibilities. An engineer might find themselves excited to help customers solve their problems, which could lead them to consider product management. Or a support agent might discover they enjoy leveraging their product knowledge to help sell the product’s benefit to future customers, leading to an interest in sales or marketing.

Working alongside other teams gives exposure to different ways of thinking and new approaches to problem solving. This is not a new concept.

Here’s a personal anecdote: I’m a Customer Success Manager. I once traveled to a conference with a front-end developer and got a lot of exposure to how he worked. His approach to solving a customer problem was vastly different than mine and seeing that gave us each a newfound understanding and respect for each other’s role. It also showed us how wildly ineffective and inefficient communication can be across departmental lines. That exposure and improvement in communication was directly responsible for quicker time to resolution for our customer’s problems.

Lastly, cross-departmental collaboration eliminates unnecessary siloes. In any organization, finding the time to assess whether there’s a better approach to a process can be very difficult. Getting fresh eyes on old processes could lead to asking, “is there a better way we can do that?” Giving individuals the opportunity to ask those questions and make changes that improve your processes decreases the risk of plateauing for employees and organizations alike.

How you implement cross-departmental collaboration will vary depending on your business, but it has enormous potential to help individual team members and the organization at-large avoid plateauing.

Create New Opportunities for Development

Stagnation will lead to a plateau. It’s your responsibility to help your people see the ways which they can develop to avoid stagnation in the first place.

As a leader, your role is to encourage employees to talk about their future. Start by discussing their career goals in your weekly 1:1s. If you aren’t having weekly 1:1s, start there! Once you know what an employee hopes to accomplish, you can coach them to achieve their goals.

To create new opportunities, expand their professional network by introducing them to professionals already doing what they’re interested in trying. Share resources that have helped you. Help them find quality training courses and create a budget to pay for it.

Once you’ve found opportunities together, hold them accountable; make sure they’re taking advantage of you as a resource. Collaborating on an employee’s development will build trust and, once again, prove to them that you are invested in their growth.

Strety Users: Set-up ‘Career Development Opportunities’ as a 1:1 Recurring Agenda Item so you can continually discuss any ongoing or upcoming opportunities with your direct report

Introduce Written Reflections

A performance recap is a written self-summary of one’s work. Recaps must be performed regularly, typically at the end of a workweek. They aren’t just about what an employee did and what they’re planning to tackle next -- recaps provide an opportunity to reflect on the work experience itself. Encourage your team to write openly and honestly about where they felt challenged, what they were proud of accomplishing, and what didn’t feel great. Invite them to share their recaps with you and, when appropriate, their teammates. Regular recaps have far-reaching benefits for both the leader and the employee.

For the employee, it provides an opportunity to see what they’ve accomplished. It’s easy to pass through a workweek without acknowledging growth. Slowing down, reflecting, and writing gives you a system to fuel a sense of purpose. An employee also has a chance to self-identify areas for improvement, which leads to more motivated action than if those areas for improvement were suggested by someone else.

As the manager, you’ll learn what motivates your team through their recaps. You’ll understand what type of work are they proud of accomplishing -- is it a company-led initiative or figuring something out on their own? Are they excited to learn and develop new skills? Do they love collaborating or are they happier working solo? Does the work they’re doing fall within their Zone of Genius, or are they constantly drained by simple tasks? What can you do to give them more of the work that gives them energy, and take exhausting tasks off their plate?

You’ll also learn what eats at your team. What types of issues linger? What causes toxic stress? Is there someone or something that’s in the way of their growth?

All these insights makes you a more informed manager and provide you an amazing opportunity to give better feedback. You can’t apply one size fits all approach to understanding the needs, motivations, and challenges your team is facing; you have to start by asking questions. Once you ask, you can begin to guide, but not before. A performance recap gives you actionable insights to move your team forward in a systematic way.

Strety Users: Set up a weekly private Check in to ask your team how their week went. Always comment to acknowledge the writing and provide a little feedback. If a response requires a deeper discussion, add it to your next 1:1 meeting.

$\"Performance$

Plateaus are inevitable, but they don’t have to be a problem. It’s up to you and your leadership team to find new ways to inspire and engage employees. The most important thing in helping your team through a plateau is communication and collaboration.

Your role is to help an employee feel secure in their challenges while suggesting solutions. And if you can do that, you’ll be accomplishing much more than just solving your team’s plateau problem. You’ll become a stronger leader in your own right!

","publish_immediately":false,"use_featured_image":true,"published_by_id":10284841,"published_at":1592408851140,"rss_body":"

Plateaus are invisible enemies.

\n\n

As a leader, your job is to identify when someone on your team is starting to plateau so that you can coach appropriately. But how do you know if someone’s plateaued if they won’t bring it up?

\n\n

Signs of a Plateau

Lower engagement with their teammates
Poorer standards of quality on their outputs
Rushed projects
Lack of focus
Lack of energy

Your goal: tackle the plateau before performance issues become problematic. And definitely before it leads to attrition.

\n\n

Why Plateaus Happen

Not all plateaus are productive, however. Sometimes an employee plateaus for less-than-helpful reasons, like:

Lack of variance, interest, or challenge in their day-to-day
Unresolved frustrations or resentment on the team
Lack of opportunities to grow within their role or within the company
Insufficient coaching
Uncertainty over the value of their work
Misalignment between the employee’s sense of purpose and the company’s vision

Regardless of why your team is plateauing, it’s in your best interest as a leader to try to empower your employee to push through in the right way at the right time.

\n\n

How to Coach Someone Through a Plateau

Managers and leaders can have a huge impact in shortening plateaus. With the right coaching, a plateau can be more productive and less frustrating for all involved.

While sustained plateauing is a cause for concern, more often than not it’ll serve as a wake-up call telling you to shake things up or try something new.

Here’s how to foster newfound motivation during a plateau:

Change their responsibilities
Rethink recognition
Improve cross-department collaboration
Create new opportunities for development
Introduce written reflections

Change Their Responsibilities

If your team isn’t feeling challenged, they’ll lack a connection to the work they’re doing. A lack of challenge happens when a job role becomes one-note, making it too easy to run on autopilot.

You can also transfer responsibility by being less visible as a leader.

Rethink Recognition

Strety Users: Automate 360 feedback 2-4x/year so you’ll have a well-rounded read on your team’s performance when it comes time for annual reviews

$\"360$

Improve Cross-Department Collaboration

Working alongside other teams gives exposure to different ways of thinking and new approaches to problem solving. This is not a new concept.

How you implement cross-departmental collaboration will vary depending on your business, but it has enormous potential to help individual team members and the organization at-large avoid plateauing.

Create New Opportunities for Development

Stagnation will lead to a plateau. It’s your responsibility to help your people see the ways which they can develop to avoid stagnation in the first place.

Strety Users: Set-up ‘Career Development Opportunities’ as a 1:1 Recurring Agenda Item so you can continually discuss any ongoing or upcoming opportunities with your direct report

Introduce Written Reflections

You’ll also learn what eats at your team. What types of issues linger? What causes toxic stress? Is there someone or something that’s in the way of their growth?

$\"Performance$

","rss_summary":"

Plateaus are invisible enemies.

\n","blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","layout_sections":{}}

Management Tips

What To Do When Your Team Has Plateaued

Plateaus are invisible enemies. Hitting a plateau feels like writer’s block, or hitting the wall midway through a tough workout, or like endless ...

Written By: Derek Weaver

May 6, 2020

How to Get Better at Virtual Meetings in 2020

How to Run a Virtual Meeting

How to Uncover Unspoken Issues in a Virtual Meeting

Default to Video

Listen With Your Eyes

Make Time to Check In

Follow Up Privately -- and Immediately

We're Here to Help

How to Run a Virtual Meeting

How to Uncover Unspoken Issues in a Virtual Meeting

Default to Video

Listen With Your Eyes

Make Time to Check In

Follow Up Privately -- and Immediately

We're Here to Help

How Do You Conduct a Performance Review?

How Do You Start a Performance Review?

How Do You Give Good Feedback in a Performance Review?

How do Goals Come Into Play?

In Review: The Template

How Do You Conduct a Performance Review?

How Do You Start a Performance Review?

How Do You Give Good Feedback in a Performance Review?

How do Goals Come Into Play?

In Review: The Template

A Performance Review Template that Really Works

Reset & Revitalize 2nd Half Performance: How to Run a Midyear Goal Review Meeting

How to Prepare for Productive Meetings

1. Know Why You’re Meeting

2. Collaborate on the Agenda

3. Curate Your Agenda

4. Share Meeting Responsibilities

5. Plan For Process

Summary

How to Prepare for Productive Meetings

1. Know Why You’re Meeting

2. Collaborate on the Agenda

3. Curate Your Agenda

4. Share Meeting Responsibilities

5. Plan For Process

Summary

Prepare for Team Meetings: 5 Keys to Building Impactful Agendas

Implementing Check Ins

Suggested Questions to Ask Your Team

Daily Check Ins

1. What are you working on today?

2. How was your day?

Weekly Check Ins

3. How are you feeling coming into this week?

4. What challenges are you facing?

5. What wins did you have this week?

6. How did you feel this week?

Monthly Check Ins

7. What part of your role are you most passionate about? Feels the most draining?

8. Have you been inspired or extra motivated by anything or anyone recently?

Culture Building Check Ins

9. What did you do this weekend?

10. If you were to recommend one ___ what would it be?

Implementing Check Ins

Suggested Questions to Ask Your Team

Daily Check Ins

1. What are you working on today?

2. How was your day?

Weekly Check Ins

3. How are you feeling coming into this week?

4. What challenges are you facing?

5. What wins did you have this week?

6. How did you feel this week?

Monthly Check Ins

7. What part of your role are you most passionate about? Feels the most draining?

8. Have you been inspired or extra motivated by anything or anyone recently?

Culture Building Check Ins

9. What did you do this weekend?

10. If you were to recommend one ___ what would it be?

10 Check In Questions to Keep Your Team On Track Between Meetings

Identify

Discuss

Solve

Identify

Discuss