Carylynn Larson is an author and leadership coach who creates space for leaders, teams, and organizations to thrive.
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Companies are increasingly encouraging staff to come back to the office, travel and attend in-person meetings and events. Employees’ reactions vary widely. Those who have been in the office since the doors reopened feel that it’s about time for the hallways to be filled again. Those who have found great joy in working from home are dreading everything from the commute to the distractions of a busy office space. Still, others miss the collegiality of pre-pandemic times yet can’t quite get excited about the extra hassle and expenses that come with getting to the office on time with a dry-cleaned shirt and dress shoes. The way that supervisors navigate team member preferences and concerns will assuredly have a massive impact on long-term success—their own success, their team’s success and mission success.
Why place supervisors in the center of this equation? Why not point to human resources or to C-suite leadership, those who are making decisions about corporate policies and company-wide expectations? Because supervisors have always been the lynchpin between talent and results. One’s relationship with their direct supervisor has a significant impact on engagement and retention. Supervisors who recognize the importance of connecting with and understanding the individuals on their team have a huge advantage. Now, as employees grapple with the implications of commuting, traveling and being social at work, it is an exceptionally important time to invest in deep, meaningful one-on-one conversations.
Consider this: People around the globe have had two years of semi-forced self-reflection: What’s important to me? Who am I, and what am I doing with my life? How can I move beyond fitting life into work and instead fit work into the life I want to live? Now, these personal insights are colliding with questions about everyday workplace engagement: How much effort should I invest in getting to in-person meetings? Where do I really want to live? What’s my ideal work schedule? Do I really want to stay with my company, or should I look elsewhere? Neglecting to converse with team members about how they’ve changed over the past two years and how this impacts their choices at work is akin to putting your head in the sand. Ignoring the heart of the matter—that the pandemic has changed each of us in unique ways—might make life easier in the moment, but it will make leadership harder for years to come.
The time is now for supervisors to engage with their team members around these three intersecting themes.
• Values — e.g., who they are and what’s important to them these days.
• Preferences – e.g., how their values impact the way they work best.
• Choices – e.g., how to make the best choices for themselves, given the realities of corporate policies and culture.
Here are three tips to help you get started.
1. Leverage your coaching skills.
The purpose of these conversations is to help your staff reflect more deeply and consider these questions for themselves. You can’t answer these questions for them. Listen to understand. Ask powerful questions. Share insights without slipping into mentoring or advising. It’s not about you and what you think. It’s about them, their ideas and ultimately the choices they make for themselves.
2. Make it safe for people to be open and honest about changes in their perspectives on work and life.
Share how your own perspective has changed. Ask, “How have the past two years changed your perspective on work and life?” While many leaders have floated these questions in the context of team meetings, few have had these conversations one-on-one. Only in one-on-one conversations can you give your undevoted attention to any given person’s experience, insights and lingering questions.
3. Treat corporate policies as the starting point for conversation.
Policies are like boundaries—they make it safe to roam within them. Within every set of policies, there are many choices, and it is how team members navigate these choices that will ultimately determine their engagement, intention to stay, mental and emotional bandwidth and all sorts of other related outcomes. Don’t assume that employees’ initial choices when they return to the office are the best decisions for the long term. Keep the conversations going. It may take a while for the best new work patterns to emerge.
The world of work will never be quite the same, and while senior leaders may be responsible for policy decisions, direct supervisors have the largest impact on employees’ everyday decisions—including their decision to stay with the organization. For leaders whose conversations are typically more tactical, directional or advisory in nature, talking to employees about values, preferences and personal choices may be uncomfortable. For those who are already taking a coaching approach to conversations with their people, these conversations are a natural extension of the conversations they’re already having.
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