Ambition In Motion

new manager

How to get your new managers to be more effective faster

The faster our managers are at effectively leading, the better off our team's are.
Grace Tripathy
Mon 23 May 2022
How important is it to help your managers succeed? 
Managers and how they manage their reporting staff members set the tone for your entire business operation. Managers are the front-line representation of your business.
It's easy to understand why managers make significant mistakes in their daily management of the people they employ. 
Many managers lack fundamental training in managing people, which is usually manifested in their inability to practice the significant soft skills necessary to lead.
But more importantly, many managers lack the values, sensitivity, and awareness needed to interact effectively all day long with people. 
The best managers fundamentally value and appreciate people. They also excel at letting people know how much they are valued and appreciated. 
 
Why is it important to prioritize the best training for your managers?
You want to make sure all of your managers are successful, right? After all, managers have a huge impact on their entire team.
They are the cogs that hold your organization together because all of your employees report to them, for better or for worse. 
The majority of communication about the business is funneled through your managers. For your business and employees to succeed, your mid-level managers must succeed and become adept at managing in a style that empowers and enables employees.
Skills and techniques are easier to teach, but values, beliefs, and attitudes are much harder to teach, and harder for managers to learn. 
These are the underlying issues that most managers struggle with being successful. 
This is why educating your managers to the best of your abilities and coaching them for success matters to you and your employees.
 
The current way that we equip new managers is flawed 
Many people aspire to get promoted and move into leadership positions. But with this exciting transition comes a natural challenge: one of the biggest tests new managers face is knowing how to go from being a peer to managing their peers.           
It’s important to be able to recognize the right employee to transition into a first-time manager, but it’s crucial to help them become the skilled leader that the organization needs. But more than likely, these new managers won’t have all of the skills they need right away.
Even if someone is excellent at their job, being a new manager comes with an entirely new skill set. They are not just responsible for themselves anymore; they have an entire team to manage.
Joining the leadership team is a great accomplishment, but it could also lead to the demise of a person’s career if not managed properly. 
The biggest flaw when equipping new managers is the outdated protocol for transitioning positions within the company. 
When anyone is given a new position, they must go through the transition process of paperwork and assessments to assure that they are fully aware of what the job entails and what their new duties are within the company. 
However, the duties of a manager include much more than just understanding how to direct their employees in a certain direction of goals that the company aims to accomplish. 
In order for a manager to fully have an impact on their new employees and the overall change of the company, they need training in more than just the protocol transition work. Understanding how to effectively make an impact as a manager, make close connections with their new direct reports and emulate a positive workplace are all things that must be implemented into the new manager transition period. 
Going into the job, managers will be more confident in their abilities to perform successfully if their training includes more than just the most basic protocol. 
New managers need to be confident in their promotions and know that it's possible to assimilate everyone successfully. For example, having the mindset of “I’m ready and willing to learn” will position new managers on a path toward a thriving managerial journey.
These are the kinds of things that need to be enclosed during the new manager training/transitioning period.
 
What do new managers need to have to succeed within their roles? 
It's always exciting to promote a member of your team to a management position. However, some of your other workers might not take kindly to their peer becoming their supervisor, especially if that means they’re missing out on the same opportunity.
As challenging as this may be, there are ways to get through these hoops! 
It starts with proper training. 
Beyond the basic transition guides and paperwork that a new manager must endure at the beginning of their term, it’s important for new managers to do some intentional observation of the work environment. 
Advising and teaching your new managers to observe the operations of the team through the lens of a manager rather than a peer will inspire your new managers to take notes and learn the inner workings of their new direct reports, and how they can best serve their needs. 
 
Here are a few insider tips for your new managers: 
 
●     Get to Know Their Employees
Developing a relationship with reporting employees is a key factor in managing. You don't want to be your employees' divorce counselor or therapist, but you do want to know what's happening in their lives. When you know where the employee is going on vacation or that his kids play soccer, you are taking a healthy interest in your employees' lives.
Knowing that the dog died, expressing sympathy, or that her daughter won a coveted award at school makes you an interested, involved manager. Understanding and connecting with your employees will make you a better manager who is more responsive to employee needs, moods, and life cycle events.
 
●     Provide Clear Direction 
Creating standards and giving people clear expectations as a manager is crucial so that people know what they’re supposed to do, and how they can manage their time. More importantly, they will always feel as if they have accomplished a complete task or goal if the timeline of everything is laid out in an easily understood way. 
Within your clear expectations, if you are either too rigid or too flexible, your direct reports will feel rudderless. You need to achieve an appropriate balance that allows you to lead employees and provide direction without dictating and destroying employee empowerment and employee engagement.
 
●     Trust From the Start
All managers should start out with all employees from a position of trust, which shouldn't change unless an employee proves themselves unworthy of that trust. When managers don't trust people to do their jobs, this lack of trust plays out in a number of injurious ways within the workplace.
Micromanaging and constantly checking up on others are examples of how to create an untrustworthy work environment. However, if you work to trust your employees from the start, you can create an environment that fuels creativity and trust within your direct reports’ work, allowing for an inspired and communicative work environment. 
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How to effectively promote individual contributors to managers

Effectively promoting people is one of the most critical components to building a healthy and successful business
Malhar Lakshman
Thu 26 May 2022
I’ve had the privilege to work a few different jobs in both managerial positions and entry-level positions. I’m sure that you can relate to me in feeling that some managers were great at what they do, while others weren’t as great. The old adage of “People don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers” continues to hold true. According to research by The Ken Blanchard Companies, the average organization is 50% as effective thanks to less than optimal leadership.  

How does a bad Manager get appointed?

                To understand the cause of these terrible managers, you need to understand what the key problem here is. The way that managers are trained and appointed simply is not enough and sets them up for failure. 

Take a standard software firm for example, and a specific account executive named Jake. Jake is particularly good at closing deals, with very little haggling required, and on top of that, is responsible for a majority of the company sales. So, upper-level management chooses to give him a reward somehow. If Jake is capable of doing all of this, imagine what he could teach his coworkers to do right? So the administration chooses to promote Jake to a sales manager, responsible for managing other account executives and training new associates. 

                Unfortunately, Jake has no experience in developing people and the patience it requires. He just knows how to sell software. However, since he knows his methodology works wonders, he decides to teach everyone how to use his method, and boost sales. But his jokes just don’t sound the same out of other people’s mouths, and the charm he uses just feels off. And since he has no time to sell software himself, the company is making fewer sales. Ultimately, many of the sales associates choose to leave because they don’t like the command and control style of leadership Jake has deployed and those that stay aren’t meeting quotas because nobody is as good at selling using the “Jake method” as good as Jake is.

                The key takeaway here is that high performance individually does not necessarily translate into high performance as a manager. Unfortunately, promotion is often used as a reward for high performance, with increased pay used as an additional incentive. Therefore, the individuals who may actually have manager potential (based on their ability to develop people) get overlooked because they aren’t rockstar individual contributors. 

                Finding a good candidate for management can be tricky. However, training new managers can be successful. Performance evaluation software such as AIM insights can help your new managers get coached and develop the skills they need to effectively lead their team based on the data their direct reports are sharing in the tool. Using tools such as this can help you identify who is particularly good at working with a team, or who works well with many different types of orientations of workers. 

How can a good manager still be failed by upper administration?

Regardless of how skilled a manager may be, if they aren’t properly set up for success, they may still not be well prepared for their new role, at the company’s expense. A manager is not born into the world with perfect skills. They may naturally be able to work with other people, but they still need to be trained. The best way to think about a manager is as a person, but also as an investment. Would you choose to buy a house that has a lot of space, but no bathrooms? It’s a very similar concept. A manager candidate has a lot of potential, but not necessarily the exact skills needed for the role. Fortunately, these can be easily trained. 
Training a manager involves a few different subjects. These subjects include some of the following:
·         How to have effective 1:1’s and soft skills
·         Training new employees
·         How to give a performance review

All of these subjects are critical to ensure the best possible manager. Can you imagine how bad an incompetent manager could be? Fortunately, you don’t have to imagine as such. According to the Society of Human Resource Management, 84% of U.S workers say that poorly trained managers create much more unnecessary work and stress for them. Interact even researched poor managers and found that 69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with employees and would prefer to not give any direct feedback unless absolutely necessary. These managers have been failed. With adequate training, they could have been truly amazing. However, because they failed to go through a proper vetting process, and then a training process, they quite simply are not capable enough to assume such an important role. 

The way we train our managers is nowhere near where it should be at this point in time. It is just too important of a role to not give due diligence to. Understanding how to choose a good manager, and then how to train them will be the best course of action for the future. Only through this can we hope to create a better work culture for the future. 

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Managers need more than data to effectively lead their team

Equipping managers with data is a great first stop to helping them improve their performance
Grace Tripathy
Mon 30 May 2022
             If you recently received a new position at your company and were handed a portfolio of various reports and charts regarding overall past performance analysis, and told to analyze them and start your position, what would you do? 
            Of course, you can analyze the charts, and look at the trends of performance over time within the company. But what does that tell you about your position, or how you should perform to receive the best results from your new direct reports? 
            There’s simply no training for a new position in analyzing charts. 
            What do the charts mean? Sometimes trends are low, and sometimes they are high. But that doesn’t tell you what the employees were thinking or experiencing when they filed these performance reviews. 
            Charts and reports are not training. 
            In my last article, How to get your new managers to be more effective faster, I discussed the flaws within the current way that we equip new managers. 
 
The current way that we equip new managers to lead with data is flawed
Joining the leadership team is a great accomplishment, but it could also lead to the demise of a person’s career if not managed properly. 
It’s important to be able to recognize the right employee to transition into a first-time manager, but it’s crucial to help them become the skilled leader that the organization needs. But more than likely, these new managers won’t have all of the skills they need right away.
Even if someone is excellent at their job, being a new manager comes with an entirely new skill set. They are not just responsible for themselves anymore; they have an entire team to manage.
The biggest flaw when equipping new managers is the outdated protocol for transitioning positions within the company. 
When anyone is given a new position, they must go through the transition process of paperwork and assessments to assure that they are fully aware of what the job entails and what their new duties are within the company. 
Are charts and reports the proper training protocol? Or does this only confuse and lengthen the process of transitioning into a great new manager? 
 
            In order for performance reviews to be effective and accurately represent a product that is meaningful to the viewer, there needs to be more training for employees and new managers regarding the importance of performance reviews. 
            If new managers are properly trained on the importance of performance reviews, they will be able to conduct more effective evaluations and produce responses that they can work with, and build off of. 
            If employees are properly trained on the importance of performance reviews, they will continue to stay engaged and give honest feedback, knowing that it will be used for the betterment of their time at the company. 
            With proper training for both new managers and employees, new managers will be able to look at the performance reviews and analyze what needs to be changed and continue to benefit their direct reports and the company, overall. 
            
Challenges include… 
  • Managers aren't trained in why the tool is being used, diminishing response rates from employees
  • When data is collected and shared with the managers, managers aren't trained in what the data means or what to do with the data, so response rates from employees diminish. 
  • Managers are busy so asking them to sift through a "knowledge base" of helpful tips based on the data that comes in does not actually lead to them doing anything with the direct reports with the data, even if the knowledge-based was curated for them using artificial intelligence. 
  • When managers don't do anything with the data that has been requested of them from the direct reports, the direct reports become frustrated and disengaged
  • When employees don't complete the regular surveys, the performance management tools are rendered useless because there is no data to review
 
All in all, the key to new managers effectively leading their teams starts with proper training. The duties of a manager include much more than just understanding how to direct their employees in a certain direction of goals that the company aims to accomplish. 
In order for a manager to fully have an impact on their new employees and the overall change of the company, they need training in more than just the protocol transition charts.
Understanding how to effectively make an impact as a manager, make close connections with their new direct reports and emulate a positive workplace are all things that must be implemented into the new manager transition period. 
After the proper training to understand what the position entails and how the new manager can get creative with their new implementation to the job and the company, it’s important for the new manager to understand the performance review process. 
The performance review process should accurately portray evidence from employees of likes/dislikes/struggles/strengths within the company so that the manager can identify strengths, weaknesses, and goals for their team. 
So how can a company get the most out of its performance management? 
 
Performance reviews must deliver meaningful results 
            After you’ve properly trained your new managers, it’s your company’s job to provide your new managers with meaningful performance reviews to analyze. Meaningful reviews include honest feedback from employees; a product that your new manager can use to effectively lead their new team. 
            Traditional performance reviews lack meaning. Charts measure trends, but trends don’t tell a new manager how to make a difference, and how to best lead their new team. 
            Minimize the learning curve of new managers becoming effective leaders and use AIM Insights to conduct performance reviews. 
 
AIM Insights Performance Review SOLUTIONS include… 
  • All managers are trained and onboarded in a live training coordinated with the host company
  • All managers receive custom walk-throughs with an executive coach of their team's data every month with the executive coach providing guidance for each direct report a manager is in charge of
  • Managers receive unlimited email coaching to help guide them as they encounter challenges and roadblocks with their direct reports
  • When managers have effective 1:1's with their direct reports based on the data their direct reports are submitting, response rates increase and stay high, creating immense value and tracking for the company
 


 
 
  • Increased employee retention and satisfaction
  • Enhanced productivity and goal achievement
  • Improved work-life balance 
  • Streamlined communication
  • Seamless accountability
  • Greater transparency between you and your direct reports 
  • Zero prep time performance reviews
  • Alignment between employee goals and organizational goals
  • Monthly personalized tips on your team from an executive coach
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The Power of a Great One on One as a New Manager

Giving one on one feedback is critical to a manager being effective
Malhar Lakshman
Mon 30 May 2022
Previously, we’ve talked about Performance Reviews in great detail.  One of the key aspects of a good Performance Review Process is to have periodic one on ones with your direct reports. As a new manager, this is especially important since it will help you make an impression on not only your direct reports but also on your peers and upper management. An effective one-on-one is the best way for a manager to not only share feedback but also engage with their employees.

What is a 1:1?

A 1:1, or One on One, is a meeting between two individuals, most frequently between a manager and an employee. This can be about a range of topics but is generally about work-related topics such as goals or tasks. However, it is also a personal space where you as a manager can help develop your employee’s professional skills and help them with issues that may be plaguing them in their personal or professional lives. It is beyond what a work meeting will go into, by delving into personal matters and allowing for venting if necessary.  

When should a new manager host a 1:1?

Knowing when to host one-on-ones as a new manager could definitely seem intimidating. One of the most important tasks of being a new manager is getting to know your team members in respect to your new relationship. In addition to that, you should be having at least two or three of these meetings with your team members each month. Some companies like to have 1:1s every week! These meetings need to be regularly scheduled and held to allow for increased communication between yourself and your direct reports. Each of these meetings should be scheduled for between 30 minutes to an hour. Finding that perfect amount of time can be tricky. If it’s too long, neither if you will be efficient and will get bored quickly. Too short, and you may rush through a meeting and not sufficiently discuss all of your planned topics on the itinerary. I recommend starting with a 45-minute meeting and adjusting from there depending on how the two attendees felt the meeting went.

What should a New Manager say in a 1:1?

Generally, a good 1:1 will have a few different topics discussed. Some of these goals can include goal setting, previous tasks, current tasks, future tasks, as well as personal issues. Keep in mind that communication of any type is important. However, the first 1:1 should definitely be for you to set goals, introduce yourselves, and get to know each other. The tone of this meeting can set the tone of your entire working relationship for the future. This especially applies to new employees, since this is how you create a first impression and introduce them to company culture.

This first 1:1 should allow you to really create a personal connection with your employees. One of my mentors used to say that “They don’t care what you know until they know you care.”  This applies to your management relationships as well. According to Forbes, Employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to perform their best work.  Some of the questions that you could ask are, “What can I help you with?”, “What makes you feel valued at work?”, “How do you work best?”, or “What do you want to know about me?” Personal Connections can really help you understand what makes your employee unique, such as their talents, interests, or skills. However, it is important to still maintain professional boundaries. Keep your wits about you to not only protect yourself and your company but also to avoid making your direct reports uncomfortable. Remember, the goal is to make your employee feel welcome and brought into the company culture, not to scare them away. According to Forbes, disengaged employees can cost U.S companies up to 550 Billion dollars per year. Try to engage them, but don’t scare them off. This doesn’t mean don’t be vulnerable with your team. It just means that you shouldn’t gossip or share personal information that isn’t pertinent to your role as a leader or the role itself. 

With these tips on the ideal starting 1:1, you should be able to begin these meetings with your staff, even as a new manager. Start slow and be friendly. You were made a manager for a reason; you have the skills. You just need to apply them to these meetings and without a doubt, you will be able to start a very fruitful working relationship.

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How to Upskill New Managers Quickly

Reducing the learning curve of new managers becoming effective leaders is critical to a company's success
Garrett Mintz
Fri 10 June 2022
LinkedIn News recently published an article about Walmart’s $200k store manager problem. The article shines a light on the fact that simply paying higher salaries doesn’t necessarily create great leaders. 

Leaders at Walmart realized that they needed a multi-pronged approach to developing reliable, effective managers, so they started investing in manager training and coaching to help develop their managers.

Walmart is learning the same lesson as many businesses: great leadership requires investment and effort. I’m going to cover how we got into this position and what we, leaders in organizations, need to do to minimize the learning curve of a new manager becoming an effective leader.

How did we get here?

The rapid increase in job transitions over the past few years (sometimes called The Great Resignation) has caused people to rethink their priorities for work. 

Some people qualified for leadership roles have learned that they just don’t like the responsibilities of being a leader.

Some new managers from outside the company fail to understand or adapt to the culture, and therefore struggle to get buy-in from the new teams they are inheriting.

Some new managers have never managed before. Their promotion to a management role is an opportunity for growth, but instead, they aren’t provided the guidance on how to effectively lead. 

These are just three examples of how manager development can go wrong. Without a strong system for training managers, replacement and resignation can rapidly spiral out of control and have long-term consequences on company culture and productivity. 

I recently wrote about how to maintain you’re a-game as a leader, where I described how many universities have downgraded degrees in management into co-majors or tag-along credits instead of being its own degree path. This happens because most recent graduates aren’t being hired to manage people so for universities to boost their placement rates and starting salary rates, it is more advantageous to train students in degrees that companies need from recent graduates right now. This shortsighted approach to management training is one of many contributing factors to the very issues facing companies today. 

The dearth of up-and-coming managers has led to greater turnover for both managers (e.g., they struggle with the transition) and the direct reports in their charge (they aren’t going to put up with a bad boss). This self-sustaining cycle of turnover can wash away company culture in months and take years to rebuild. 

What can we do about it?

1.       Equip managers with the tools and data to better understand their direct reports

There is no such thing as an effective one-size-fits-all management philosophy. That mode of thinking contributes to turnover.

Why?

Because people are driven by different motivations at different stages in their life.

One metric that we measure at Ambition In Motion (AIM) is Work Orientation. Our custom assessment measures what drives you at work and helps you understand how your work should fit into your life.

Some people are motivated by professional growth (Career Oriented), some people are motivated by work/life balance (Job Oriented), and some people are motivated by the value of their work for changing the world (Calling Oriented). Everyone has a mix of these motivations, but one type usually stands above the rest for an individual.

If you understand the Work Orientation of each of your direct reports *at that moment in time*, you can craft your leadership style for that person based on what drives them.

And that “at that moment in time” is important because Work Orientation is fluid. Unlike personality, which is generally consistent throughout life, Work Orientation is constantly in flux. Life events (starting a family?), professional events (getting a promotion?), epiphanies (deciding to start your own business?), influence from friends and colleagues (friend’s company has gone completely remote while yours hasn’t?), and more will mold your Work Orientation over time. Our job as managers is to be on top of these changes and adjust our leadership style and actions to manage your direct reports at that moment in time.

A good start for preparing to manage direct reports is reading about it. I’ve written about How to Manage Career Oriented Direct Reports, How to Manage Calling Oriented Direct Reports, and How to Manage Job Oriented Direct Reports in the hyperlinked articles.

The other big tool to equip managers with is a system for observing whether their perception of the workplace, productivity, and culture is shared by their direct reports. When leading a team, it’s difficult to get out of your head. This tool gives them the ability to observe and understand whether the team members agree (or disagree) with the manager’s assessment of individual productivity, team cohesion, and other metrics.    

This information is critical because perception gaps cause people to become disgruntled. People tend to judge themselves on their intentions and others on their perceptions. I was five minutes late because traffic was absurd today and nobody could predict it; you were late because you don’t care about being on time. Finding and understanding your perception gaps help you find real solutions.  

Managers need to understand where their people are coming from and empathize with their direct reports (and provide clarity) when there are gaps.

My team and I developed AIM Insights to identify the most important metrics for managers to understand their direct reports and cut through the noise. AIM Insights collects and measures everyone’s perception of their: task performance, team cohesion, team productivity, organizational citizenship, and manager performance.

If a direct report feels like they aren’t performing well, but a manager thinks they are performing great, this indicates that the direct report lacks clarity as to what success looks like in his role. Once the manager has this information, they can clarify expectations for that team member and help support long-term productivity and engagement.

And vice versa, if a direct report feels like they are performing great, but the manager disagrees, that indicates that the direct report lacks clarity as to what success looks like and that the manager must clarify expectations and help the team member improve their work.

2.                   Train managers how to act on that data and make their direct reports feel heard

The number 1 issue with any performance management tool in any HRIS platform is equipping managers with the training to interpret and act on the data to make tangible improvements. 

If a company surveys its employees but then doesn’t equip managers to do anything with that data, that company is wasting its employees’ time, creating frustration, and depleting engagement. 

Why? 

Because that data isn’t just for the executive team to review quarterly or annually. That data needs to be acted on!

If managers don’t identify productive actions from the data, there is no incentive for the direct reports to give an honest response, if they bother to respond at all. 

Therefore, it is critical that companies, if they ask for survey data from their employees, train their managers on how to interpret the data and have effective 1:1’s with their direct reports based on that data.

3.                   Actively coach managers throughout their tenure and support the need to adapt to the ever-changing nature of leadership

Leadership is an ever-evolving field. Economies are changing. Consumer demands are changing. Employee demands are changing.

Reviewing the employee salaries and benefits packages of companies even as recently as 5 years ago has drastically changed between now and then. What might have been thought of as outlandish and unnecessary is turning out to be required of job postings (my local Uhaul has a billboard that says “start today. Get paid today.” which was unheard of 5 years ago). 

Managers should be coached throughout their time as a leader with an organization, not just when they attend random offsite training. Leaders can’t just wait for the company to hire a speaker or host an event when they need to handle difficult circumstances. Life doesn’t consider the optimal timeline for you to get the training just in time. Sometimes stuff happens you need to be ready to handle it. 

Building rapport and offering consistent guidance helps managers handle the seemingly insignificant issues and builds the foundation for ensuring they won’t turn into massive issues.

Getting new managers to become effective leaders takes time. It isn’t easy and it isn’t obvious. Hopefully, these tips help your company excel and thrive in the future.
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How Managers Can Foster Growth for Entry-Level Direct Reports

Developing entry level employees is critical to the success of an organization
Malhar Lakshman
Mon 13 June 2022
A good office is diverse in many ways, and a good manager has picked his staff with a sense of diversity in mind (or if the team was inherited, ideally diversity was considered when picking the team members). Race, Sex, Creed, Religion, and Work Orientation are all important aspects to keep in mind. However, one aspect of employees that is often understated is age.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics department, 34.9% of the working population is below the age of 30. With this age comes equally diverse amounts of experience. An effective workplace will have employees of vastly differing ages, from high-school-age interns, all the way to individuals contemplating retirement.   

Therefore, the key question that you may ask is, “how can I as a manager foster growth for entry-level employees and help them contribute regardless of their lack of experience?” The answers to this question are far simpler than you think.

Why are Younger employees so useful?

Younger and entry-level employees bring a lot to any company they work for. Firstly, entry-level positions pay less than more senior positions. Please recognize that less pay typically equates to fewer responsibilities. It is perfectly acceptable to expect a certain amount of work from your younger employees, but you should expect more work from your senior employees. 

Entry-level workers are also a clean slate for the most part. A very frequent issue while hiring is encountering certain philosophies or ingrained ideas. For example, if I had to hire for a data management job between John, who has 1 year of experience, but uses cloud-based storage, and Dave, who has over 20 years of experience and uses physical hard drives, I’d probably pick John. Industries are always adapting and evolving, and stagnancy can be harmful.

Finally, what entry-level workers lack in experience, they can make it up in enthusiasm and engagement. They are often willing to put in extra time to ensure the quality of their work and will be in constant communication with you and their coworkers to be the best they can be.

What should a manager teach newer direct reports?

Skills that a manager can best impart to a new direct report are primarily soft skills. Direct reports are often very knowledgeable about the topic or tasks that they have been assigned but may lack office etiquette or may also have trouble understanding workplace dynamics.

                 When you were an entry-level worker, what did you struggle with? According to Glassdoor, many entry-level positions are client-facing, and often also require intra-office communication. What tools of the trade do you use to pacify angry clients? How do you coordinate a meeting with your entire team? How did you learn to delegate all of the tasks your bosses gave you?

                Teach them about how to properly communicate with your coworkers. Should they email someone directly, or would it be better for them to call a secretary? How do they need to request time off? Does it have to go through Human Resources? Through a direct manager? Does their team need to know? All of these answers just went through your head in the blink of an eye. Entry-level workers don’t have those answers yet. 

                In addition to this, there are often tricks that you use in your daily work that not everyone has the knowledge to be able to utilize. Imagine the following scenario. Microsoft Excel has a feature where users can fill a cell and its contents down a column or in a row. This is especially useful in relation to formulas and expressions utilizing other cells since it can allow you to finish an entire table in minutes. 

                However, if a user were to manually enter data into every cell, it could take drastically longer. Simply teaching a worker this small trick could make their work more efficient and could allow them to work on other tasks. 

                Remember that your experience is a privilege that not everyone has been afforded yet. Use it to help the person who may one day help others down the line as well. 

Why should you help foster these younger workers?

1.       It’s the right thing to do. When you entered the workplace, I’m sure you had troubles at some point and had some form of mentorship. Without that initial leg up, how else do you think you succeeded in the workplace?
2.       Younger workers may often have a few ideas that in spite of their experience can be extremely valuable. Have you ever heard the saying “The way to solve an impossible task is to give it to someone that doesn’t know its impossible?” 

                The same concept can apply to these entry-level workers.  Due to the fact that they haven’t been with your company for a long time, they may approach problems in a different way than your coworkers that you may have been with longer. As a result, you then have a different perspective that can be very helpful.

3.       You need to realize that you and your coworkers will not be around forever. New opportunities arise, retirement beckons, and situations occur. Entry-level employees can be developed into senior positions, and the improvement in their skills can only help the company. 

                All in all, younger workers can be a tremendous boon to your company, but only if you can properly nurture them. Set them up almost like a sapling. Continue to help them, and eventually, they will grow into an asset that will change the way your company thrives. 

Even if they don’t stick around, be a reference for them. Let them use the experience that you have given them to help more and more people, and keep the training chain going. It will only help.

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What Happens When Salary Is The Only Thing That Holds You To Your Job?

Salary can create more harm than good if poorly managed
Grace Tripathy
Mon 13 June 2022
Brian is the Vice President of engineering for a high-growth startup with 800 employees. His company pays way above the market average but they hold an “earn your seat” mentality when it comes to the work. 
The challenge that he is facing is that his team will follow instructions and do everything they are asked to do, but won’t move the ball forward. They are always waiting for him to tell them what to do, rather than aspiring to set goals to impact the company on their own.
He would like for his team to better understand the company’s vision, both because it develops them and because most of his direct reports are interested in the compensation that comes with transitioning from a senior engineer to a staff engineer (the highest level software engineer at this company with almost a $200,000 increase per year).
Some of his direct reports want parity promotions, meaning that because they have been at the company for longer than others (which for everyone is less than a year), they deserve to get promoted.
The promotion process at his company is also really convoluted. Essentially, to get promoted, a manager has to sponsor the direct report with a 10-page overview as to why the direct report deserves the promotion.
It has gotten to the point where Brian will actually recommend his direct reports leave the company for the role they want (at a different company) for 6 months and then come back and interview for the role they wanted in the first place because it’s very difficult and time-consuming to move up in the workplace. This contributes to the job-oriented mentality that incentivizes employees to only do the bare minimum to get their paycheck.
As Brian is sharing his company’s processes with the Ambition In Motion mastermind group, he is realizing that the company may not be setting its employees up for success.
The well-above-market pay paired with the “earn your seat” mantra incentivizes people to sabotage each other, do the minimum work that doesn’t get them fired, and leave the company if they want to get to the next level.
The group suggested that Brian chat with his leadership team to discuss his thoughts because if things don’t change, they could have a bunch of people that are only there for the money and aren’t focused on the vision of the organization.
 
How does company culture impact employee motivation?
Employee motivation is the fuel that propels the organization forward. When motivation levels are high, there is growth; when it’s down, the momentum stalls. 
So, what motivates your employees? 
There are various reasons and needs that motivate employees. And your company culture has to address these reasons and needs to foster employee motivation and engagement.
Before we get into this any further, let’s start with the basics. Why do people work?
 
●     Purpose – They want to contribute to the company’s success.
●     Potential – They want to benefit in the long run in terms of promotions, salary hikes, or greater responsibilities.
●     Play – They enjoy their daily work as it ignites passion and curiosity in them.
●     Economic Pressure – The financial factors motivate them, such as a desire to earn more or fear of losing their source of income.
●     Inertia – They work because they have to; they have no goals or reasons to work.
 
If you notice, the first 3 reasons are positive, and the rest are negative. Employees with positive reasons to work tend to be productive and engaged at work. 
Companies with growth-oriented cultures encourage these positive reasons and build a culture around it.
 
How you can incentivize your employees to care about more than just salary 
Although Brian is part of a fast-growing startup, 8x growth in employee headcount within their first year, his desire for employees to care more is actually a quite common question that we hear from leaders of all company sizes; how do you make people care? 
It’s a more common problem than we’d all like to believe. It happens in every industry and workplace. This problem affects all of us. 
Unfortunately, you can’t make people care. But, you can provide all of the right elements that inspire them to choose to care about your business, your team, and their job. Here are four strategies for successful leaders that can skyrocket the results of your employees.
 
1. Share your care with your employees. 
As simple as it sounds, many leaders, even when they do care about their people, aren’t always very good at sharing that appreciation. Your employees won’t care about your company or your goals unless you care about them and their goals first. 
Learn, practice, and get good at recognizing your employees because appreciation is the number one thing that managers can do to inspire their teams to produce great work.
 
2. Cheer for effort, because it deserves it. 
As we travel and speak to organizations, we often find that many managers are confused by the difference between appreciation and incentives. Incentives can be seen as a transaction; if you accomplish “a-b-c”, then you receive “x-y-z.” 
Oftentimes incentives are presented before a project or assignment. 
Appreciation, on the other hand, isn’t solely focused on the outcome. Instead, it’s an acknowledgment of a person’s intention, hard work, and their results. When efforts and results are recognized, employees report:
a) increased confidence in their skills,
b) an understanding that they are on track and in good standing with their manager, and 
c) it creates an improved relationship with their leader.
 
3. Be crystal clear about what you value. 
Telling your employees that you expect the best from them doesn’t actually mean much to them because they don’t understand what that means to you. Employees want to know exactly what they value and appreciate.
 
4. Show them how they can make a difference 
Most people don’t apply for jobs and assume they’ll be mediocre at best. They apply for jobs at companies where they believe their skills and experiences will make an impact; where their thinking and effort will make a profound difference. 
Still, we’ve spoken with many struggling managers who can’t understand why a certain employee isn’t satisfied by simply becoming the mirrored version of a job description.
When employees are not shown that they have the capability to utilize their skills to make a difference, they may get in the habit of doing the same thing every day, without the incentive to do more. 
Encourage your employees right off the bat and throughout their time at your company to do the most that they can do, to benefit themselves and the company. AIM Insights can help you with suggested encouragement and questions you can ask your team to help convey this message. 
 
While it may seem frustrating that you can’t force your employees to care about your company, your goals, your customers, your teams, or even their own jobs, you have the ability to give them reasons to care. 
And, in our experience, when your employees care about more than just their salary, they’ll achieve at a level that surpasses anything you could have ever imagined.
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Leadership Failures that Drive Good Employees Away

How to avoid the mistakes that drive your best employees away
Grace Tripathy
Wed 22 June 2022
You can’t ignore employee resignations, although I would prefer to call them employee realignments. In the beginning, it looked like employees were leaving the workforce to retire early or join the gig economy (think Uber drivers, virtual assistants, etc.) and be their own boss. 
Today we know that unemployment is down, and employees aren’t leaving their jobs to altogether quit working. They are just leaving their current jobs for better jobs. 
This is employee realignment of the workforce, not true resignation from the workforce, and there are many reasons some companies can’t seem to hold onto their best people.
Oftentimes, there is a lack of self-awareness amongst managers and leaders that creates unhealthy patterns in the workplace and leads top employees to quit. 
To provide your employees with just and equal opportunities in your business, you must understand the potential for unethical workplace behaviors and the importance of avoiding them as a leader. 
 
Crucial Leadership Failure #1: Not recognizing that the employee is actually the primary customer. 
What’s happening on the inside of an organization is felt on the outside by customers. That means you start your customer service and CX efforts internally. 
Employees should be treated, cared for, managed, and responded to in a way that is consistent with what the company wants to see mirrored in their customers.
In other words, treat employees as if they are customers. Anything less is inconsistent and will erode your efforts to provide a good customer experience. 
And just as customers want to trust the companies they do business with, employees want to trust the companies (and people) they work for. When employees trust their leadership, are treated fairly, and are recognized for their good work, they will be working for the company, not just the paycheck.
 
Crucial Leadership Failure #2: The failure to recognize the difference between leadership and management. 
Management and leadership are not the same. Managers have to make people follow, but leaders make people want to follow.
Ultimately, leadership creates the culture of the company. 
Managers ensure compliance with company policies, processes, and other operational aspects to ensure continued business as usual. 
Once leaders understand the difference between management and leadership, they stand a better chance of getting employees to put forth their best effort, especially when it comes to taking care of customers.
 
Crucial Leadership Failure #3: The failure to recognize and end nepotism in the workplace.
Instances of nepotism create an unhealthy work environment wherein employees feel undervalued.
If nepotism occurs in the workplace, this could affect your employees’ job satisfaction and opinions about the company. If one person begins exhibiting low morale, other employees can also take on this approach. 
The result is a lack of loyalty and dedication to the job at hand.
If a company allows nepotism to occur, talented employees might look for employment opportunities elsewhere. Specifically, with companies that value skill and dedication over family relationships. 
This can be problematic for your company as it limits the ability to retain good, hardworking employees to help your business succeed. 
 
Crucial Leadership Failure #4: The failure to give credit to your direct reports.
Everyone has experienced or witnessed instances in which credit was assigned in an unfair manner: managers unabashedly took credit for the work of their invisible hard-working staff; quiet performers were inadequately recognized for their contributions; credit was assigned to the wrong individuals and for the wrong things.
Just as much as constructive feedback should be given in many forms, so should employee appreciation. Some employees may live for public praise at the end of a meeting or a company all-hands, while others may prefer the intimacy of a quick chat in the hallway or an individual email thanking them for a job well done. 
As a leader, giving out credit is essential in showing your employees that you see them, and motivating your employees to continue creating their best work. 
Employee recognition may take the form of an employee of the month award, a sales all-star of the quarter, or even a full employee appreciation day.
While every company may not have the size or resources to devote an entire day to employee appreciation, recognizing employees in big and small ways can make a huge difference to morale and culture.
 
Crucial Leadership Failure #5: The failure to recognize the importance of proper coaching over negative criticism in the workplace.  
Feedback is crucial. It improves performance, develops talent, aligns expectations, solves problems, guides promotion and pay, and boosts the bottom line.
Workplace coaching, employee coaching, or business coaching is the continuous two-way feedback between the employee and the coach with the intention to work on areas for improvement and reinforce strengths to sustain the progress of the employee’s performance. 
In other words, coaching in the workplace means empowering employees to be the best performers that they can be.
Workplace coaching (NOT criticism) is important to set employees up for success in the workplace by providing the tools that workers can use to increase their knowledge and improve their skills.
 
Crucial Leadership Failure #6: Failing to recognize that finances are not the only form of valued compensation. 
Multiple studies have proven that employees want more than money. Employees value flexibility over money, meaning that paying people more money to tolerate a toxic environment may have worked for previous generations, but it no longer appeases employees, especially the Millennial generation. 
They want to be valued for what they do. That means they want recognition for their work, opportunities to learn and grow, and fulfillment in their day-to-day responsibilities.
            Leaders need to be more empathetic and understanding of their employees. Doing so will bring out the best in their people, hence multiplying their capabilities.
 
Crucial Leadership Failure #7: Failing to recognize when to give your employees a break, and how much work is appropriate to assign in a given time. 
Nothing burns good employees out quite like overworking them. It’s so tempting to work your best people hard that managers frequently fall into this trap. 
Overworking good employees is perplexing; it makes them feel as if they’re being punished for great performance. Overworking employees is also counterproductive. 
If you must increase how much work your talented employees are doing, you’d better increase their status as well. Talented employees will take on a bigger workload, but they won’t stay if their job suffocates them in the process. 
Raises, promotions, and title changes are all acceptable ways to increase workload. If you simply increase workload because people are talented, without changing a thing, they will seek another job that gives them what they deserve.
 
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How a manager can best lead Older Direct Reports

Managing older direct reports is critical to becoming an effective leader
Malhar Lakshman
Mon 27 June 2022
Offices are often set up to be diverse, with employees differing in age, gender, race, mindset, work orientation, and many other aspects. 

While we have previously discussed how to best foster entry-level direct reports, another demographic that is often ignored are the most experienced workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics department, 22% of the current professional workforce is above the age of 55. However, there is an ongoing movement where older workers and their knowledge are treated as obsolete and are let go. 

                Therefore, if you are in a managerial role in which you are overseeing older individuals, there are certain considerations you can make to ensure that you are best leading older Direct Reports.

What can Older Employees offer?

                Older direct reports tend to have great experience and perspective that many younger employees lack. They tend to understand the structure of your office better than anyone else there. Many managers often pair them with entry-level workers as a mentor to help them understand the soft skills of being in an office. 

                When I entered my first office job, I was incredibly lost since it was an entry-level and client-facing position. Consequently, I made a few mistakes, as one does on their first job. Unfortunately, I got a very angry phone call from a customer, and regardless of what I was able to offer them, they gradually became more aggressive.

                As I was crying in the break room, an older gentleman named Jim noticed and came over. After exchanging a few pleasantries, I learned that he had worked for the company for 37 years and was about to retire. He asked what had put me in such a bad mood and was shocked to hear what had happened. 

                As soon as I got a call from the next customer who was known to get irate easily, Jim sat next to me and started typing notes as he listened to what they had to say. He gestured at me to use some of the phrases he had typed up, and to my pleasant surprise, worked without a hitch. I received a high customer satisfaction score and learned a lot from Jim about how to communicate with customers.

                Jim continued to coach me and taught me skills such as customer-facing techniques, along with how to communicate and correspond with my managers and coworkers. I can confidently say that without Jim, I would’ve quit that job.

                People like Jim exist all over the working population. Understanding how these older direct reports can teach and mentor younger direct reports can dramatically improve your employee’s efficiency.  

Why the diverse perspective an older employee brings is beneficial to the business?

In addition to the potential mentorship opportunities that older employees provide, they also have a few aspects unique to them that lend them a perspective that younger employees may lack.

First, they are often very cost-effective.  Due to the fact that they are more settled in their industry, you do not need to worry as much about turnover costs. According to the Wharton School,  there is a common misbelief that older employees may need more time off due to health restrictions and incur higher health insurance. This is untrue. On average, health costs are less for older workers due to them no longer having dependents on their healthcare plans. In addition to that, Medicare can further reduce healthcare bills after an employee passes the age of 65.

Second, older employees also have a bigger focus on customer-facing skills. Due to their years of experience, these workers tend to have much better communication skills, with not only customers and vendors, but also with their coworkers. 

They also have extremely high problem-solving skills. Since they have encountered so many problems of their own, older employees can draw upon some of the solutions that they have used in the past to help solve current problems. A key part of problem-solving skills is to learn from past mistakes. These employees have made mistakes in the past, and typically do not harbor fears of making more mistakes, unlike younger workers.  Their angles and techniques can be drawn upon without any problems.

Should employers be worried that older Employees are outdated?
 
 A current argument for hiring younger workers is that older workers simply don’t have the knowledge needed to survive in the current industry. An example of this could be in the technology industry, which is changing every day, and even newer employees struggle to keep up with it. 

This argument isn’t the best in my opinion, on the grounds that there are multiple areas in which an employee can be used. Not only can older employees be used in mentorship roles, but also in positions other than just the skills portion. 

It is important to remember that these employees grew up during a time when the internet and even smartphones weren’t as ubiquitous as they are now. Therefore, these employees grew up in a time where personal interaction and memos were mandatory for success. 

Due to the many changing environments that they’ve already been through, older employees are often extremely flexible and work hard. In addition to this, the power of a good network will never diminish. They can often set up future ventures for you that results in a large profit. Certain industries also have structures that have been in place for years, regardless of how trends develop. New workers may have trouble adjusting to these, but older workers thrive in them.

How can you best utilize these older and more experienced workers?

For starters, it's important to understand that these employees might even have more experience than you, regardless of your position. As such, you should acknowledge this, and be willing to learn just as much from them as they do from you.  Give them fair treatment as well. It is completely okay for an older person to make as much or more money as a younger person if they have more experience. 

Instruct your younger workers about the concepts of horizontal mentorship. Just like your younger workers may have biases, older workers can have the same biases. You can instruct and help your older workers in the same way that you would the newer workers. Give them opportunities to learn and develop, just like you would a younger direct report.

When recruiting, as mentioned before, try and eliminate race, gender, and age from your recruiters’ strategies. Longevity and age can be buzzwords for your strategies. It's important to recognize that not everyone has the same financial checkpoints at the same time. What one might accomplish by 65, might not be accomplished by someone else until the age of 70. According to the Harvard Business Review, it costs about a million dollars to retire at the age of 65.  Understand that everyone will have some form of motivation to work.  
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Leadership Tips to Retain Great Employees

How you treat your people will go a long way towards keeping them
Grace Tripathy
Fri 1 July 2022
Retention has become an increasingly critical metric for driving profitability, especially the retention of highly engaged employees. Turnover has become a big problem for a lot of companies. 
But, what if you’re looking at the problem wrong? What if it’s not about doing what you can to hold on to those employees, but perhaps it’s about focusing more on creating an environment where good employees thrive and stay?
Retaining employees is an important part of building a successful team. When managers and supervisors work to make their teams feel valued and motivated, employees are more likely to stay with a company that can contribute to the company’s overall growth and prosperity. 
 
Why is it important to retain your employees? 
●     It can build a strong workforce
Steady employee retention allows managers and supervisors to invest in their team members and helps them develop into more productive employees. When employees stay with a company long-term, they often accept more responsibilities, seek professional development, and help the company grow.
●     It increases productivity
Instead of spending time looking for and training new employees, managers and supervisors can focus on helping employees be more productive. A stable staff knows what needs to be done and how they can achieve it. They have a strong foundation for advancement based on institutional knowledge and developed skills.
●     It improves employee morale
Employee retention strategies are designed to increase employee happiness and job satisfaction. When managers regularly implement these strategies, they help increase employee morale overall. Employees who feel happy at work are often more willing to work toward the company's mission and contribute to a positive work environment.
●     It is more cost-effective
Hiring and training new employees are often more expensive than offering development opportunities to current employees. Consider offering current employees an educational stipend to advance their skills, on-site training, conference options or promotions, and/or extra benefits or perks.
 
How to retain your employees
If you want to keep more high-performing employees in-house, it’s important to start by creating an effective employee retention strategy.
In this article, we discuss the importance of employee retention and offer 8 effective employee retention strategies for leaders. 
 
1. Create an engaging onboarding process
During the onboarding process, take the opportunity to make a positive first impression on a new employee. Create a process where new employees get comfortably acclimated to the workplace. Do this by creating straightforward training materials, offering support and guidance, and explaining how the company operates.
Introducing new employees to others in the office can help them feel like they are a part of the team right away. Taking them out for a team lunch is another way to make new hires feel welcome and help them get to know their coworkers quickly.
 
2. Pair with a mentor
A strategy to pair an employee with a mentor can start with the onboarding process. It’s a good way to help new employees feel welcomed and know they have someone to turn to. However, mentorship shouldn’t be offered to just new employees. Everyone can benefit from a horizontal mentor relationship whether by helping others or knowing that they are supported by more experienced teammates.
 
3. Schedule employee performance reviews
Employee performance reviews are a great way for employees to grow in their roles. Meet periodically to discuss their strengths, weaknesses, and career goals. By learning their goals, you can help them continue to advance in the company. 
Offering positive feedback during this meeting can help employees feel valued and more satisfied at work. If the budget allows, use the performance review as a time to offer the employee a raise or a bonus.
 
4. Show your appreciation
When an employee is doing a good job or has recently earned a big achievement, recognize their hard work. You can show your appreciation by saying it directly to them or making a company-wide announcement. When employees feel their efforts are noticed, they are more likely to continue to work hard and stay with the company.
 
5. Encourage a work-life balance
A healthy work-life balance is when employees can effectively manage their work and home lives and feel like they have enough time and energy for both. This element has become increasingly important to many employees.
You can help employees achieve a more balanced work-life experience by giving staff more flexibility with their schedules. Consider allowing employees to come in late and make up their work if they need to leave for an appointment. If possible, give employees the option to work remotely. Employees who are feeling sick but can still work or those with a long commute may appreciate the opportunity to work from home occasionally.
Helping employees maintain a work-life balance shows that you value their well-being. They are more likely to stay with the company when they feel like they have a manager who cares about them.
 
6. Offer professional development opportunities
Helping employees meet their professional goals may influence them to stay with the company because they see it as a place with many opportunities. You can help them by spending time coaching and mentoring team members. Offer your team additional training or education opportunities, such as funding certifications, sending them to conferences, or providing education stipends. Update equipment so coworkers can learn and produce using the latest technology.
And when possible, promote from within. By investing in your team, they can develop their skills and take on more responsibilities, both of which can lead to improved employee retention.
 
7. Provide competitive compensation and benefits
In a competitive job market, it’s essential that you reward your employees with adequate compensation and benefits when you can. If you can’t afford salary adjustments, consider giving some type of bonus, adding a retirement plan, or improving health care benefits. 
You might offer reimbursement for fitness classes or schedule talks on stress management or retirement planning services. All will help raise employees’ job satisfaction and encourage them to stay with your company.
 
8. Keep communication lines open
Maintaining an open-door policy lets employees know they can come to managers with ideas, questions, and concerns at any time. As a manager, it’s your job to ensure your team, whether on-site or remote, feels a connection to the company and each other. The feeling of belonging and being heard can go a long way toward retaining employees.

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Comparing an MBA to a Management Certification

Getting the biggest bang for your buck is critical to determining the value of additional accolades
Malhar Lakshman
Wed 13 July 2022
More and more senior leaders are pushing for increased credentials from their managerial staff. In 2020, 43% of US firms had business managers holding an MBA or some form of advanced business degree.  This is almost twice that of the percentage in 1980, which was 26%. 

Recently, companies and schools have been creating certification programs in lieu of these postgraduate programs. These include Cornell’s business strategy certification, Harvard’s Executive Education Certification program, and Ambition in Motion’s AIM Insights People Leadership Certification. How do you choose what type of education you want? How do you choose between an MBA and a people leadership program?

The costs of an MBA vs the costs of a Certification

It goes without saying that college is expensive. An MBA holds true to this statement. According to Experian, the average tuition cost of an MBA is $66,300. However, this is an average and falls victim to outliers. The online MBA program from the University of Texas Rio Valley is relatively inexpensive $17,000. However, the MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania costs $161,810. 

MBA Today lists that among the top 30 MBA programs, the cheapest one would be $55,727 for a full-time two-year program. This means that working will be much more difficult due to academic commitments. In addition to tuition and administrative fees, students need to pay for textbooks, supplies, any equipment (such as laptops, computers, electronics), and transportation. If you are required to relocate to study in this MBA program, you may also need to pay for moving costs and rent. Out-of-state students may even need to pay additional tuition.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, over 50% of graduate students take out student loans for an MBA program and complete their programs with an average of $74,707 in debt. 

 In contrast, a leadership certification program rarely leaves the 4-figure mark at all. According to CIO,  the costs of these programs range from $1800 to $5700, while the leadership coaching for executive training ranges between $150 an hour to $500 an hour. There are generally no textbooks or supply costs, and most definitely no moving costs. Certification programs have the capability to be held completely online. 

In addition to this is the cost of lost wages. During a full-time MBA, it is difficult to hold a job, and you will often have to teach a course at the school you are matriculating in. At the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, full-time MBA students are required to teach managerial and financial accounting courses to undergraduate students. This holds true for many other schools. 

Under a certification program, you can actually hold your position and continue work as normal, since it will allow you to practice skills that are taught in these courses. Therefore, you don’t lose any wages.

Applications

Applying to an MBA program is completely different than applying for a certification program. An MBA program has a much more comprehensive application process and runs the risk of applicant rejection. 

Most MBA programs require either a Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT for short, or a Graduate Record Examinations, or GRE. Some schools actually require scores for both examinations. Applicants are also required to provide letters of recommendation from managers, colleagues, and mentors, and potentially provide references as well. In addition to this, undergraduate grade point averages are taken into consideration. Finally, to complete the first stage of the application, applicants are then required to write a statement of intent, which is similar to an undergraduate college application essay. 

After all of this is completed, applicants then need to wait a few months, and may have the opportunity to be granted an interview. Most MBA programs require an interview before officially accepting a student. The acceptance rate for the interview stage ranges from 34% to 75% in the top 20 MBA programs. The averages end up being a 62% rate of acceptance.  After a long and grueling interview, you have between a 10% and 40% chance of being accepted. 

A certification program is much easier. Simply verify your identity, provide billing information, and register for the course. If there is an executive coaching portion to the program, your company may have to meet some performance metrics as well. 

Time Commitment

The average MBA program takes about two years to fully complete, assuming that it is a full-time program. Online MBAs or Hybrid MBA programs can take a while longer. During this time, expect a majority of your day to be occupied by classes, homework, research, as well as any other responsibilities required by your programs, such as being a Teaching Assistant or an exam proctor. 

People leader certifications are more fluid. Since you can view most of the coursework asynchronously, or entirely online, you determine how long the program will take. If there are executive coaching or mentorship programs in your certification, you may have to give up an hour per month or a period of time similar to this.  

The Curriculum of an MBA vs the Curriculum of a Certification Program

Courses for an MBA are often very generalized, with a skill set focused on financial management and structural management.  Some of the courses include the following:

1)      Business Essentials
2)      Exploring Business Strategies
3)      Marketing for the 21st Century
4)      Business and Law
5)      Management Analytics
6)      Management Accounting
 
           These are all important topics and can definitely add value to a company if a manager executes them correctly. However, an MBA doesn’t necessarily help with soft skills and isn’t marketable in all scenarios. If you want practical and applied skills, an MBA isn’t for you.  For example, if you are working as a manager in a field outside of finance, such as in a scientific field, or engineering, it would be best to either get a leadership certification or a degree more relevant to that workplace.
            
            A people leadership certification utilizes soft skills and is much more specialized than an MBA. Examples of topics covered in a certification course include the following:
 
1)      Personal Leadership
2)      Intercultural Leadership
3)      Service Leadership
4)      Strategic Planning
5)      Conflict Negotiation and Resolution
6)      Organization
 
            These topics are frequently discussed and encountered in the workplace and are important points to address with your direct reports, peers, and superiors. 

Conclusion

            Without a doubt, an MBA can be a very powerful tool, and in the right hands, can dramatically improve a company. However, with all of the expenses and rigor in mind, along with the focus, it is also best to consider if a people leadership certification might be a better fit for you. Neither is worse than the other, but some may be better in certain scenarios. Evaluate yourself, and your ambitions. 

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How A Management Certification Ensures Credibility

A management certification should be measured against something and the AIM Insights People Leader Certification ensures that
Grace Tripathy
Thu 21 July 2022
There’s no better way to ensure that you, as a manager, are the utmost prepared to lead at your workplace than the AIM Insights People Leader Certification. 
            Taking the time to become AIM Insights People Leader Certified will evaluate how your leadership is impacting the quantitative output of your team paired with the qualitative sentiment of working for you as a leader, and overall it will show prospective employers why you are a great leader of people. 
            After all, managers and leaders provide direction to staff and ensure they are performing at or above expectations. They need to have the ability to assess problems, manage situations, and provide sensible solutions.
            However, this certification cannot be easily gained. Not only will this program test your skills and knowledge of management, and allow you as much or as little time as you need to practice these skills within your workplace, but you will also be challenged to learn more and be the best manager that you can be. 
            The AIM Insights People Leader Certification requires you to engage your direct reports in your certification process to prove your qualifications as a leader. 
            This is how the AIM Insights People Leader Certification is the only management certification that both teaches and evaluates a leader's ability to impact their team over time. 
 
How does the AIM Insights People Leader Certification engage your direct reports? 
 To get the aim insights certification, you need to have at least 75% positive response rates from your direct reports. 
This means that your employees will take surveys assessing their feelings about their task performance, team cohesion, team productivity, organizational citizenship, engagement, and how they feel about you as their manager. 
If the scores come back low, it reflects on the manager. However, if your direct reports like you and your management skills, they’ll give you great feedback, resulting in great scores. 
This is how the AIM Insights People Leader Certification drives accountability from managers. 
However, don’t let this scare you. Although this management certification must be earned, the AIM Insights team is ready to help you learn how to be the best manager that you can be in order to earn this certification. 
Employees want to feel like they belong, like their work matters (to the customer, team, or organization), like they have the tools and skills to do the job competently, and they are positioned for stability and relevance. 
In addition, many employees want to feel like they are growing and making progress. 
With these needs and concerns of the direct report in mind, let’s go through some general questions that you should be sure to ask your direct reports during regular check-ins to create a better and more inclusive employee experience.
 
1. How would you like to grow within this organization?
It’s important to figure out what growth opportunities each employee needs for optimum development, whether through coaching, mentoring, visibility, or challenging work assignments.
You might also ask, “What role would you love to do (whether it exists or not), and what can I do as your manager to encourage your development in this company?”
 
2. Do you feel a sense of purpose in your job?
Managers can play a meaningful role in helping employees understand how their roles contribute to the organization’s broader mission. But helping employees feel a sense of purpose must go deeper than this to tap into what’s purposeful to employees about their job and connects with their own values.
 
3. What do you need from me to do your best work?
The most effective managers respect and care about their employees by knowing them as individuals, acknowledging their achievements, having performance conversations, and conducting formal reviews. 
These supportive behaviors build a work environment where employees feel safe experimenting with new ideas, sharing information, exploring development opportunities, and supporting each other.
 
As you explore what your employees need to do their best work, you might also ask, “What is your biggest frustration, and what action can I take to help you deal with it? What have you been trying to tell me that I’ve not been hearing? How would you like to be recognized?”
 
4. What are we currently not doing as a company that you feel we should do?
The best managers let workers know that their opinions count by promoting open dialogue and providing honest feedback on employees’ opinions and suggestions, supporting good ideas, and addressing unfeasible ones. 
By asking individual team members what they feel the company could be doing better, what market opportunities the organization might be overlooking, and how to leverage company resources more effectively, you’re validating that their thoughts matter.
You might also ask things like, “Are you satisfied with our current work from home/hybrid policy? If not, what do you think needs to change? How satisfied are you with the tools you use to communicate with your colleagues when working remotely?”
 
5. Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
To determine whether your employees are focusing on their strengths, you might also ask, “What is the best part of your job? Which of your talents are you not using in your current role? What part of your job would you eliminate if you could?”
When managers make checking in with these five questions a regular part of how they interact with their employees, it helps ensure that people feel seen and valued. And when managers help individuals on their teams feel that way, they’re more likely to be rewarded by employees who become advocates for the department and organization, no matter how long they stay.
 
The AIM Insights People Leader Certification program is for managers who strive to become elite and grow to more senior roles in their careers. So what’s next? 
            To recap, this management certification cannot be gained. It has to be earned. And the work and relationships that you build with your direct reports will show to your certification, including the following: 
 
●     You need at least 75% positive response rates from your direct reports 
○     What they think about you as a leader 
○     Performance review from your direct reports
○     Good scores/feedback 
●     Your direct reports sign off on your certification by evaluating your performance
●     AIM Insights People Leader Certification drives accountability from managers
 
Begin by scheduling an interview to see if you qualify - you must be currently leading a team in a management role in order to qualify for the certification! 
            Proceed to set up AIM Insights for your team, and review your monthly data with an executive coach who guides you on how to improve your overall performance management scores. 
 
Become AIM Insights People Leader Certified after 12 months, and reap the benefits as follows! 
 
●     Understand how your performance as a leader compares to other leaders
●     Leverage this data (and certification) as a basis for negotiating a bonus, raise, or promotion
●     Gain insight into why certain team members are performing better than others
●     Receive executive coaching guidance to help you gain certification
●     Showcase your certification to prospective employers and on LinkedIn
●     Distinguish yourself as an incredible people leader from others vying for similar opportunities as you
 
The AIM Insights People Leader Certification is the only management certification that both teaches and evaluates a leader's ability to impact their team over time. 
 
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How to Know if You are An Above Average Manager

Here are some basic steps you can take to understand how strong of a leader you are
Malhar Lakshman
Thu 21 July 2022
Recently, I wrote an article on the differences between a professional degree and a people leader certification. While most people understand how a graduate degree is earned, such as the coursework, thesis, and potentially work-study, not many people really know the processes behind a leader certification program due to its novelty. Recently, Ambition in Motion pioneered their own AIM Insights People Leader Certification, and we’ll be giving you a little more information on it as well.

How to sign up for the AIM Insights People Leader Certification

                To be able to enroll in this program, you need to be leading a team. Direct Report reviews are a critical part of this program, and without them, you will not be able to receive the full benefits of the certification. In addition to this, you must have a certain level of engagement and response rates from your direct reports from the previous six months. You will also need to enroll in the AIM Insights program.  If you believe you fit these metrics, feel free to schedule an interview with CEO Garrett Mintz at your convenience.

What is included in the AIM Insights People Leader Certification Program?

·         Unlimited Email Executive Coaching Guidance
·         Conversation Prompts for your 1:1s
·         Certification
·         Customized monthly executive coaching videos and guidance

The First Tier of the  AIM Insights People Leader Certification

                There are three tiers to the AIM Insights People Leader Certification- Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. These can all be worked on concurrently, but each tier has certain requirements and unique features. 

                The first tier of certification allows you and your direct reports to get an understanding of AIM Insights and its platform. Ideally, this should take about six months, but can be retaken if necessary. The main goal of this tier is to become acquainted with AIM Insights but also to increase communication between you and your direct reports. 

Direct report responses are requested by the platform once a month, asking about goals, personal feelings, and feedback about the team. The primary requirement to pass Level 1 is to have at least 75% of your direct report responses within a 6-month period.  For example, if you were managing ten direct reports, the highest amount of reports you could have would be 60. Ideally, you should be aiming to get 60 every period. However, the minimum number of responses required to get a Level 1 Certification would be 45.

This certification signifies that you have been consistently measuring your team’s productivity throughout the period, as well as their sentiment. Level 1 also demonstrates how you have assisted your team and how they feel about their cohesion, productivity, and engagement. 

The Second Tier of the AIM Insights People Leader Certification

The second tier of certification can be worked towards starting on the fourth month that you are using AIM Insights. This is to allow you as a manager to work through an acclimation period for not only yourself but for your direct reports as well. Level 2 of the AIM Insights People Leader Certification not only focuses on consistent measurements, but also on Goal setting, Productivity, and Positive Sentiment.

To earn the Level 2 Certification, you will need a 75% response rate from your direct reports, just like in the Level 1 Program. However, you will now need to demonstrate this response rate over a period of 12 months or over 12 of whatever period length you have decided upon.

Your productivity metrics are evaluated, and must meet our average manager threshold in at least two of the following four categories:

·         SMART Goal Quantity- At least 70% of your goals should be rated as SMART 
·         Goal Relevancy- At least 70% of your goals must be rated as relevant to team goals
·         Goal Impact- At least 70% of your goals must be rated as either medium or high impact
·         SMART Impact Score- Each of your direct reports must have a SMART Impact Score of at least 30, with a maximum possible score of 108- This is flexible!

A Smart Impact score is designed to have each of your Direct Reports have at least 1 medium or high-impact goal per month. A 50/50 Split allows for 30 points.  For goals accomplished, each medium goal is worth 2 points, while a high impact goal is worth 3 points. 

For those of you who may also be unfamiliar with the term SMART, it is a mnemonic devised by Management Review to guide in the setting of goals. SMART describes the following descriptors for any goals that are set by management:

Goals should be:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Time-bound

In addition to this, you must achieve at least 80% in 3 areas of your sentiment review from your direct reports, or an average of 75% across all of these metrics. This requires at least 6 cycles of data, and only cycles with at least a 75% response rate will be counted in this. 

A level 2 Certification signifies that your team has higher productivity than the average manager and shows more concrete proof of how well you work with your team. With more quantitative data supporting this such as SMART Goals and tracking, combined with more qualitative data, your certification is much stronger. 

The Third Tier of the AIM Insights People Leader Certification

The final level of the AIM Insights People Leader certification is the Level 3 Certification. Similar to Level 2, this combines goal setting with productivity and team sentiment. However, in comparison to Level 2, Level 3 focuses on having even stronger productivity.

Like the Level 2 certification, you need to have at least a 75% response rate from your direct reports. You can’t improve without any feedback!  Once again, similar to the Level 2 Certification, your productivity is measured, but using higher numbers.

·         SMART Goal Quantity- At least 80% of your goals should be rated as SMART 
·         Goal Relevancy- At least 80% of your goals must be rated as relevant to team goals
·         Goal Impact- At least 80% of your goals must be rated as either medium or high impact
·         SMART Impact Score- Each of your direct reports must have a SMART Impact Score of at least 30, with a maximum possible score of 108- This is flexible!

Your sentiment rating needs to also be higher for every cycle. You now must have an 85% average across all of your metrics, with only cycles with more than a  75% response rate counting for this. The end goal of this certification is that your team’s productivity is now over 5% greater than the average team’s, and that you are also having better sentiment scores than the average manager. 

All in all, the AIM Insights People Leader Certification can offer a lot to both you as a manager, as well as to your team. 
Read

How to show senior leadership your team’s positive results (in highly volatile times!)

Showcasing your team's performance when factors outside of your control are inhibiting your team is critical to being a good manager
Grace Tripathy
Tue 2 August 2022
In the last couple of months, Sam’s team has grown immensely. They have good ideas, insights, and most importantly, engagement and the ambition to work together and take on more has spiked. 
Sam’s team’s engagement levels have been increasingly growing, making his team and company much stronger and ultimately more successful. However, he doesn’t have any quantitative results to show this because of economic and regulatory factors that have impacted his team’s ability to achieve the results they set out at the beginning of the quarter (before the economic and regulatory changes occurred).
It takes time and effort to grow a team to reach success. If people aren’t engaged, then a team’s overall efficiency and success rates will reflect that. However, when a team is engaged, the company is open to reaching high levels of success. 
In Sam’s case, the CEO found their lack of quantitative results concerning. Going into the meeting, Sam was excited to present their team’s growth and improvement as a unit. How can Sam approach this conversation with his boss, and show the team’s growth and improvement over the last couple of months, without quantitative results? 
 
Here are some helpful tips when having a performance review discussion with a boss who doesn’t think you’ve accomplished much: 
 
Mentally prepare yourself before the conversation
Before entering the meeting, tell yourself that regardless of how the meeting goes, it's just a meeting about one individual's perspective of your performance. Performance discussions are simply a way for you to receive information and feedback about how you're performing in a particular position within the company. 
It isn't an evaluation of your personal worth or how you would perform in a different position or with a different company. Don't take the feedback too personally. Instead, use their comments as you see fit to improve at your job and interact with colleagues.
 
Think before you react
When receiving negative feedback for poor work performance, it can stir some emotions that can quickly surface. If this happens to you, do your best to take a deep breath and count to three before you react with an outburst that might make matters worse. It's best to take the time to listen to your manager's input and allow yourself a few days to process the information before reacting or responding. 
If this is a case where your boss may not realize that your team is growing stronger and making improvements as a unit, but may not have reached a big goal yet, you can take a moment to show your boss that you hear what they’re saying, and then communicate the growth that is progressing between you and your team. At the end of the day, your boss may not empathize why regulatory/economic/any other factor outside of your control is impacting your team’s ability to perform, but it is critical that your boss understands that they are occurring and that your team is pivoting and making improvements given the circumstances.
 
Ask your boss for a performance improvement plan
If you believe there is validity to your manager's points, ask for an improvement plan that outlines specific goals and objectives. Make sure you align with your manager on specific ways to improve your work performance. This is a radical suggestion as typically performance improvement plans come from the top down. But if you specifically ask for it and craft it with your leader, you can control the outcomes in which you are being measured against versus them determining them for you (without their empathy or understanding of the situation).
The goals and objectives should be specific and quantitative with a specified time in which to reach them; the more specific, the clearer it will be that you have met the goals as requested.
 
Keep the communication open
Ask your manager if you could schedule some regular meetings with him or her so you can discuss your progress and the current state of performance. 
Having regular communication with your manager is beneficial regardless of performance, but especially when performance is a concern. 
Every month with AIM Insights, direct reports are sent to an automated survey from the AIM Insights platform. The average monthly survey is about 10 questions long and takes about two minutes each. The end of every quarter culminates with a 50-question survey, which is still fairly short, amounting to about 5-8 minutes each. 
 
 
Seek training and education
Ask your manager for suggestions or training resources that could help you improve in the work areas that were identified as your problem areas.
This type of action demonstrates initiative and shows that you genuinely care about your work performance.
Another simple and easy way to demonstrate this initiative is via AIM Insights.
Similar to other HRIS systems, AIM insights has a task management and assignment feature. This allows you to determine priorities, importance, deadlines, and many other important factors in goal setting. More importantly, you can also assess your direct reports’ goals, and then enter your own feedback through the program on how these tasks were completed. 
AIM Insights Executive Coaches can analyze all of this data as well and give you additional feedback on your goals.
 
 
Work with a career or personal coach
If you're struggling at work and genuinely want to improve, consider hiring a career or personal coach to help you. 
Sometimes hiring a coach can be very expensive. One cost-effective way to get coaching is via AIM Insights.
Not only can AIM Insights seamlessly work with the HRIS systems you already have in use, but it can then proceed to add to your current processes. Direct reports are sent regular monthly surveys to complete, which are then reviewed by AIM Insights Executive Coaches. After this review, these coaches will then discuss these responses with you and your fellow managers to see how you can improve and what topics you should discuss within your direct report 1:1s.   
These surveys are anonymous and are only between direct reports and AIM Insights. With anonymity, direct reports are more likely to give candid feedback, and more thorough feedback. The surveys do not require much time and are easy to take.  
 
 
Why is it important to track employee engagement as a form of team progression?
To analyze employee engagement, you need to know what your organization is doing well and where you can improve. Knowing how to measure employee engagement is the jumping-off point for evolving your engagement strategy.
Some things are easy to measure because they are concrete, individual concepts: like the time it takes you to drive to work or how many red lights you can hit without being late. But employee engagement is a bit more difficult. It isn’t concrete, and it’s influenced by many factors.
 
Before we talk about measuring engagement, let’s review how we define it:
Employee engagement is the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward their places of work.
According to Gallup, organizations with highly engaged employees have 17% higher productivity and 21% higher profitability. 
Bottom line: engaged employees work harder and stay longer.
 
Here are some key benefits of measuring employee engagement:
 
  1. To build trust. Asking for feedback from employees shows that you care about their opinions and how they feel at work. Prove that you’re there to listen and you want to create the best experience possible.
  2. To help everyone understand what’s going on. Once you have the data—share it with everyone—leaders, managers, and front-line employees. This gives everyone the opportunity to help contribute to a better culture.
  3. To understand trends. Understand what’s happening in your organization by location, team, over time, or compared to industry benchmarks. Keep a pulse on how and where the organization is (or isn’t) progressing.
Engagement is the culmination of how team members feel about:
·         Their camaraderie with other team members
·         Amount of energy they receive from doing the work
·         Whether or not the work compliments their strengths
·         How much they align to the mission of the company
 
How can I showcase my employee engagement?
            One unique element of AIM Insights is its ability to deliver data on a team-by-team basis in terms of engagement. E.g. it can inform me how engaged my team is which impacts engagement, productivity, and retention.
            There’s no better way to ensure that your managers are the utmost prepared to lead at your workplace than the AIM Insights People Leader Certification. 
            After all, managers and leaders provide direction to staff and ensure they are performing at or above expectations. They need to have the ability to assess problems, manage situations, and provide sensible solutions.
 
            Even if you haven’t had any big recent wins, tracking your overall employee engagement and metrics that showcase that you have been able to pivot, despite not many tangible outcomes yet, allows you to see your team’s progress over a period of time and show your boss that you are putting in the work to get on track.
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How to encourage Two-way Feedback as a Manager

Being a great manager means gathering critical feedback from your direct reports
Malhar Lakshman
Tue 2 August 2022
It is exceedingly important to build an environment conducive to allowing team members to communicate with each other as well as with you, their manager. This is particularly important as it pertains to feedback.

                In fact, according to Gallup, managers who receive feedback on their strengths and weaknesses show an 8.9% increase in profitability, while teams with managers that gave feedback report a 12.5% increase in profitability. 

                Feedback can truly add to the workplace. But while it is often a stated responsibility for a manager to give critical feedback, it is often difficult to encourage your direct reports to give feedback as well. This is a concept known as 360-degree feedback or two-way feedback. And you can alleviate this problem in a few ways. 

Creating an environment in which Feedback is appreciated

                Whenever you inherit or create a team, you should have a good 1:1 with any member of staff. This should help you not only inspire your team and show them your mindset but also allow you to set an environment in advance. While in this meeting, you should not hesitate to explain how you value both giving and receiving feedback, but also explain why you value this so much. The key is creating a culture where people feel enough psychological safety to give feedback – not a passive-aggressive culture that says the right words but doesn’t deliver psychological safety.

                In addition to this, you should also model certain behaviors through your own work to help demonstrate your passion for this. Try doing some of the following:

1)      Show interest in what your direct reports are doing- keeping a common image of you caring for their interests will help foster this environment where they don’t feel uncomfortable with conversations with you.
2)      Accept your mistakes and acknowledge them- most people will feel more comfortable with telling someone if they’ve made a mistake if this person frequently acknowledges their errors. Own up to your mistakes!
3)      Recognize the power dynamic- To your direct reports, you rank higher than them. There is an inherent power difference here, and it is natural for them to be nervous about calling you out. 
4)      Read Implicit Language- Before asking for feedback, it is important to figure out the ideal time and appropriateness of asking for feedback. Sometimes, when an employee is particularly stressed, they may not be able to give the most effective feedback. 
5)      Take Immediate Action- If you are getting feedback from your direct reports and proceeding to not act on it, do you really think that they will be giving you any more feedback in the future? Taking action on feedback signifies your dedication to your direct reports, as well as how much respect you have for them. Not acting on it would show that you either don’t care or don’t respect their feedback. Don’t be that person. 

How to Receive Feedback as a Manager

                Ironically, the same way that your employees should receive feedback is the exact same way that you should receive feedback. This is a process of grace and dignity. Here are some concepts to keep in mind while accepting feedback.

1)      Be an Active Listener- Being an active listener means asking for details, presenting interested body language, and being polite. Leaning in, using facial language, and using hand gestures are all good examples of body language. It is important to let the other person speak, and not try to stifle them though. 
2)      Cross-Check Feedback- The more people that are saying a specific topic, the higher chance that this topic holds true. For example, if most of your direct reports are noting that you have trouble issuing deadlines, then this is probably a very discerning feature of yours. If a topic is mentioned by one direct report, it still is worth looking into, but the more frequent a topic is, the higher priority it should be.
3)      Be Polite- This should go without saying, but at any point, if you feel that you are getting emotional, adjourn the meeting or discussion in favor of a later date. It is not a good idea to have emotions while in this discussion. 
4)      Ask for Examples- Anecdotes and specific examples can be very handy for the effectiveness of feedback. If an employee says that you have trouble delegating duties, it may be hard to understand how. But imagine if you received this feedback: “During the period of time that we were working with company A, you had a lot of tasks on your plate while we were unused, and you were frequently irritable.” That says a thousand times more than the former feedback. 
5)      Be Aware of What you Say or Do- The actions that you take while and after receiving feedback can dictate your entire reputation in the office.  If you overreact in front of one of your direct reports, imagine how the rest of them will feel about giving you feedback. 

Using Services to Garner Feedback

HRIS systems can often be your best friend in terms of getting feedback from your direct reports. Many of them can automatically prompt direct reports to submit their own feedback. 

Ambition In Motion also offers a service known as AIM Insights, which can assist you with communication between you and your direct reports. Each month, a survey is sent out to your direct reports to fill out. The most important questions on this survey pertain to performance, task completion, and rigor over a period of time. These allow you to get candid feedback and then see how your direct reports feel about their tasks.  

In addition to that, AIM Insights’ Executive Coaches will give further evaluation and feedback to you and your fellow managers. Feedback between you and your direct reports can also be anonymous, allowing your employees to feel safer expressing their opinions.  

Sometimes, it’s not only scary to receive feedback or criticism but equally scary to give it. Understand the position that your employees are in, because at the end of the day, it is their company just as much as it is yours. You might organize them, but their day-to-day work will define the company. Let them make it a better place for themselves, as well as you and your fellow managers. Be empathetic, welcoming, and an active listener, and you will turn out just fine. 

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What companies can do to best equip their new managerial hires for effective onboarding

Putting your new managers in a position to thrive is critical to them being effective leaders
Grace Tripathy
Thu 25 August 2022
Bridge the gap between hiring and onboarding
Welcoming new hires into your organization is an exciting process. An employee's onboarding can have a huge influence on their enthusiasm, motivation and performance. 
             As your new hires learn the fundamentals of their new jobs, you have the unique opportunity to make a meaningful first impression. 
 
Benefits of a good onboarding process
An employee's first impression of a new workplace can set the tone for their entire experience with a company. 
An engaging and exciting onboarding process can improve job performance in the long term by setting employees up for success from the moment they begin their training. In response, these employees see higher satisfaction in their jobs, increasing employee retention over time.
When a company makes the effort to create a captivating onboarding process, new employees are encouraged to engage immediately with their new surroundings, generating excitement about their role. 
An excited employee is likely to speak highly of the company they work for, improving a company's brand by word of mouth and contributing to the reputation that the organization is a great place to work.
 
Week one
During the new manager’s first week, they could be asked to think about and create a document outlining their 30-60-90 day plan. Here, they’d write down their main goals and their goals for their team, plus how they plan to achieve said objectives. 
Employees would include timelines for each set of goals and a description of what success would look like for them. 
As an employer, there are many benefits to asking your new hires to develop a 30-60-90-day plan, according to Indeed.com.
 
Benefits of a 30-60-90-day plan
-        Helps clarify their role. You can use the document to make sure new employees understand what they need to deliver.
-        Provides valuable insights. Discussions about the plan give you insight into your new employee, and you can also ask them to give you insight into your business.
-        Helps build relationships. Regular discussions with new hires can help you build a stronger team.
-        Aids in development plans. This document lets you see your new employee’s strengths and weaknesses so you can create their employee development plan.
-        Helps with time management. Starting a new role can be overwhelming, but a 30-60-90 plan gives a new employee focus and shows them where they should be spending their time.
 
With this, it’s important to keep in mind that it can be difficult for a new member of the leadership team to establish a set of goals when they aren’t 100 percent familiar with the company’s objectives or overall targets. 
It’s up to the HR team and the leader’s managers to provide any appropriate documentation and data that will help inform their goal-setting initiatives. 
This could include organizational charts, strategy and project documentation, and general company culture presentations.
 
30 days
After 30 days, the new manager may be ready to start diving deeper into their role. They may have set goals surrounding budgeting issues or cost-savings for their department or started seeking out ways to conserve other resources.
This is when they’re able to receive information and data that’s a bit more detailed, such as financial reports and forecasting analysis documents. 
As providing them with countless pages of context-less reports or stacks of old results can do more harm than good, it’s important to let them know what documents are most valuable to them and their role so they can prioritize their time most effectively.
 
60 days
Once they’ve been on the job for two months, the organization’s new manager will be expanding their company and product knowledge through multiple information streams. 
While their first month might have been more focused on high-level and general information and documentation, the second month gives them a chance to dig deeper into the areas of the business that are relevant to their own goals.
For example, if the new manager is a Director of Sales, they may want to meet with the Public Relations Team to discuss PR events that have positively (and negatively) impacted revenue.
With this in mind, it’s important that HR teams encourage members of different departments to create documents or info packets that can help new employees understand their team’s position and contributions to the business.
While it could be overwhelming for a new leader to try and get detailed information about each department across the organization right away, by having these dedicated resources created for onboarding, the new leaders are able to learn about other teams as they relate to their own goals and objectives.
 
90 days 
After three months, a new leader is usually ready to focus more heavily on their team’s development. While the new manager might have felt that they didn’t have the time or attention to properly foster their team’s growth during their first week or month, they’re usually more than ready by the third month.
They’ve completed the basic learnings required for their integration and are finally ready to turn their attention outward. This is when they can focus on their management-specific goals, such as aiming to lead a high-performing team.
Around the 90-day mark, the organization’s HR team could provide any documentation that relates to managing and supporting a team of employees. This might be formal leadership training documents, a company handbook on building and managing effective teams, or any other resource that concentrates on fostering talent within the organization.
 
Use the Right Tools
Adopting new technology and tools can streamline the onboarding process for all new leaders. These tools can help accelerate learning, maintain momentum, and make leader onboarding more effective than ever.
As mentioned above, it’s important to start the onboarding process before the new leader’s first day on the job. While setting them up with any necessary hardware and legal documents before day one is essential, understanding their team’s priorities before they’ve officially started gives them a massive head start. A tool like AIM Insights is made for exactly this purpose.
With AIM Insights, a team can participate in executive training prior to their new leader’s onboarding. This allows the newly hired leader to interact with the team in both group and 1:1 settings to understand each individual team member’s thoughts, pain points, and priorities. 
With AIM Insights training and executive coaching, the new leader is immediately privy to the issues most important to the team as a whole. These time-saving insights are incredibly valuable, allowing the new leader to get up to speed as quickly and smoothly as possible.
Once the leader has started, regular and ongoing AIM Insights coaching exchanges over their first few months help keep them on track and alert to any changes that might have occurred. 
They can gather honest, collective feedback and pulse-checks from their team, while benefiting from anti-bias software, which allows them to understand challenges and opportunities swiftly, plus build trust and connections.
Effective onboarding for leaders has long been a pain point for many organizations. With so much at stake, many businesses miss the mark when it comes to setting new managers up for success. 
With the tips and guidance above, organizations can help new leaders become valuable and impactful members of the business as quickly and effectively as possible.
And if you are a new manager interested in connecting with other people leaders to gain objectivity and improve your performance, you can check out the executive mastermind group.
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What Manufacturing Supervisors Can Do to Create Safer Working Environments

Creating safe working environments in the manufacturing space is critical to company's achieving success
Malhar Lakshman
Tue 30 August 2022
In a time when more and more workplace injuries are occurring, it is important for managers and leaders to improve safety in the workplace, particularly in areas where there is a higher risk of injury. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,  the Construction and Manufacturing industries make up 10 of the top 15 fields where injuries occur in the workplace. 

                      Safety incidents don’t even solely affect the workers involved. They also have a strong trickle-up effect, as a result of fines, litigation, and replacement training. In 2022, Dollar General was struck with a 1.3 million dollar fine by the Department of Labor for staggeringly dangerous work environments, including but not limited to obstructed exit routes, missing sprinklers, and inaccessible electrical panels. 

                      With all of this in mind, managers should not only care about their profit line but about the safety of their direct reports. But how can these leaders improve safety in the workplace while still maintaining their profits? 

Safety Costs Associated with Incidents

                      The first cost that a manager should recognize is one of the steepest scaling costs in the manufacturing industry- the EMR, or experience modifier rate. This is a number that insurance agencies will use to determine premiums and compensation rates. EMRs are determined based on a specific company’s historical cost of injuries and future risk chances. This number is then compared with the average losses other companies accrue in a specific state. 

                      The average EMR tends to gravitate around 1.0. The lower an EMR is, the lower the compensation amounts are, which also applies vice versa as well. In addition, the higher an EMR is, the higher the insurance premiums are. EMRs are considered to be very accurate due to a concept known as Experience Rating, which states that history tends to repeat itself. Losses in the future will probably be similar to those of the past. 

                      EMRs are extremely important in the Manufacturing and Construction Industry for one sole reason. Every business in these industries is required by State and Federal Law to have the following insurance coverages: 

·        General Liability Insurance
·        Professional Liability Insurance
·        Vehicle and Auto Insurance
·        Inland Marine Insurance (Refers to any equipment that is towed)
·        Contractor License Bonds
·        Workers Compensation Insurance

              Some states may even require further insurance. All of these insurances have periodic costs known as premiums, which can be increased depending on how often the insurance was used. Imagine how quickly this can add up. Insurance can be extremely expensive. It is important to note that insurance does not always cover negligent activity.

              Businesses should also account for costs associated with OSHA requirements. OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and is the federal board charged with “ensuring safe and healthy working conditions by setting and enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach, education, and assistance”. They can also audit workplaces, and determine if they are in violation of safety protocol. 

              OSHA also mandates that workers receive a certain amount of company-funded training. This is required to be kept up to date and does get checked frequently as well, so it can’t be completed in-house and under the radar. For example, when I worked as a lifeguard, I was required to receive training in managing bloodborne exposure, basic and advanced first aid, bodily waste management, and hazardous chemical management. 

How does a manager improve safety in the workplace?

              The first step in adding safety to the workplace is to conduct very thorough examinations of your personnel, equipment, and workspace. 

                      Personnel examination refers to checking any of their personal certifications and doing a thorough background check. Managers should also contact prior employers. User error is a common bane in the construction industry, and 86% of contractors admit to having made an error in the field. The severity of an error can make a very big difference, however. In addition to that, a common sanction placed on dangerous employees is for certifications to be voided. Checking into the history of a certification can make a big difference. While some managers believe that people may improve, it is important to remember that in the construction industry, safety should always be the number one priority. Background checks are important to read over due to potential liability. If a worker has been sued in the past for negligent behavior, bringing them onto staff could prove to be dangerous, and if a mistake is repeated, litigious. 

                      Equipment examination should be something that a manager not only trains workers on but should be proficient with themselves. Heavy machinery such as forklifts, cranes, and bulldozers, along with their associated equipment such as ratchets, braces, and supports should always be examined before any use. In addition to this, managers should frequently bring in experts and mechanics to determine the safety and longevity of their specialized equipment. While yes, these machines are expensive and built to last, nothing can be left up to chance with them, due to the inherent danger that they pose. 

                      Workplace examination is something that an outside entity or inspector should assess. The ideal goal of this is to ensure OSHA Compliance, as well as to ensure that the workplace is a safe area to be within.  OSHA will also conduct this examination, for a fee. 

                      The next step in adding safety to the workplace is to create a proper education program. Managers should facilitate a space in which it is not only okay but welcomed for workers to ask questions about safety compliance and regulations. The environment should be designed in a way to offer as many educational opportunities as possible for this. In my experience as a paramedic, I was also required to attend monthly in-services, where we would have our squad leader going over every safety feature and regulation in not only the house but also on our ambulances.  This not only gave us refreshers on the safety tools already present but ones that were brand new as well. This actually ended up saving one of my coworkers’ lives. In our in-service, we were taught about the C02 Fire Suppression System within the AIRTIGHT server room connecting us to 9-1-1 Dispatchers and our radio systems. One very important thing that was noted was the fire axe planted next to the door. C02 Fire Suppression Systems are designed to be waterless and can extinguish a fire without creating a mess or damaging electronics. However, the C02 removes the oxygen from the room, strangling the fire. Naturally, this is incredibly dangerous for individuals in the room.  This system ended up triggering while a technician was working in the room. If he didn’t know where the axe was to break the window and allow oxygen to come into the room, he would’ve most likely suffocated to death. Thanks to his safety training, he was able to escape with his life. 

                      Another thing managers in the manufacturing industry can do to increase safety is to implement AIM Insights. AIM Insights and the subsequent AIM Insights People Leader Certification can help companies improve their safety by deploying a bottom-up approach to helping employees identify innovative solutions to improving safety and communication guidance from executive coaches on how to handle difficult situations when a manager has an employee not abiding by safety rules. 

                      Safety is a product of tolerance. The more we tolerate bad behavior, the more likely accidents will occur. AIM Insights helps managers bridge a gap between the inconvenience of following safety procedures with the discomfort of confronting somebody in a manner that drives mutual understanding and compliance.

                      This should assist managers with starting to improve safety within their workplaces. It is important to note that incidents will always happen within the work sites. However, with proper management, this number should go down and enable a safer area.  

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5 best tools every new manager needs to effectively become a great leader

New managers should take advantage of every resource they have at their disposal to become successful
Grace Tripathy
Wed 31 August 2022
Effective leaders set clear expectations for their teams and align them with company objectives. This article is for new managers focused on becoming excellent leaders.
Stepping into a leadership position for the first time can be daunting, even if you feel prepared to handle your new responsibilities. Going from focusing primarily on your own work quality to overseeing an entire team’s output can feel overwhelming. 
However, effectively leading your team and experiencing success can be extremely rewarding. 
At a recent conference, a speaker mentioned that the average professional became a manager by age 25, but doesn’t receive their first leadership training until age 35. That creates 10 years of potentially bad habits to form before receiving guidance on what new managers can do to be effective in their roles.
Managers plan and coordinate tasks in a work team so that everyone does their job properly. Leaders focus on providing direction. They inspire their team to reach further and strive to maintain that level of motivation.
Each function is crucial for a company’s overall productivity although some view them as separate jobs, one can’t work without the other. The best managers are generally the best leaders. 
Few people can master both jobs, but when they do, they are able to generate great results out of engaged work teams. As a result of this train of thought, great companies see both functions as one job.
 
  1. Join an executive mastermind group 
Have you ever been faced with a new project and searched Google or YouTube to learn how to do it? Don’t you wish you had a direct resource for solving business problems? 
Many organizations recognize this need and have implemented mentorship programs to support new or rising employees. 
A mentorship program can help identify and groom high-potentials for management positions. 
Ambition in Motion is an Executive Mastermind group for servant leaders or leaders that believe the best way to lead is in service of the employees that report to them.   
This allows the use of both group and individual mentoring and group coaching and guidance as being in a leadership role can be a lonely place so having other leaders that can relate to and guide you as you work through your challenges is critical. You can be assigned to an executive mentor, personalized to your needs, interests, and field of work to guide you through any situation that may arise at your workplace. 
The executive mastermind groups also provide managers with a sounding board for problem-solving in the workplace and have been shown to increase job performance.
 
2. Participate in management training
As workforce demands keep getting more complex, management-level personnel need to adapt to the talent available. In the modern workplace, managers need to be active leaders in order to bring the best out of their teams. 
The relationship between a manager and their team can be complex to navigate. There’s more to it than telling everyone what to do; in fact, that management approach is highly discouraged. 
One great tool for management training is AIM Insights where a team of highly trained professionals will guide you through personalized training and professional development for your field of management. 
Guiding managers with 1:1's with their direct reports is a core component of AIM Insights and one of the biggest benefits the tool provides are guides to managers on how to have an effective 1:1 and what questions to ask each direct report based on each direct report's circumstances. 
It is crucial that managers and their direct reports are on the same page, and AIM Insights closes the perception gap between what a manager thinks of their direct reports and what they think of themselves.
 
3. Conflict resolution skills 
Conflict is a natural part of any relationship, working or personal. Resolving conflict is a learned skill and one that can be taught, developed, and refined. 
A study by Purdue University found that students who have hands-on learning experiences gain a deeper understanding of the concepts that are being taught. Attending a conflict resolution workshop can provide you with experience in a controlled environment so that you can better handle difficult and uncomfortable situations, and work towards a positive resolution.
 
4. Team building activities 
According to cmoe.com, Seventy-five percent of employees rate teamwork and collaboration as very important. 
Yet, 86 percent of employees and executives blamed a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication as the reason for workplace failings. 
A good leader recognizes that they are only as good as the people that surround them. Instituting team-building activities allows teams time to bond together as well as provides an opportunity for them to decompress from their jobs for a few minutes.
 
5. Value feedback culture 
In order to grow as a leader and the organization as a whole, you need to address the value of good and honest feedback. You give timely feedback to your team members and you should ask for that same feedback about your performance. 
That continuous exchange of feedback helps your entire team grow as a unit as well.
You can improve through others’ insights into your work. Honest feedback is fundamental for employee engagement and that should be one of your main priorities as a leader. 
AIM Insights focuses on providing leaders with the right tools and methods to gather feedback and build more engaged teams.
 
Bad leadership habits every manager should avoid 
Oftentimes, people believe that greatness happens when you are waiting for inspiration to hit you so that you can proceed to take action. 
In reality, a sturdy toolset consists of many processes involving brainstorming, collaboration, and trial and error. Much like conflict resolution, you can refine your methods and learn from yourself, your team, and other professionals. 
Constantly growing your leadership skills is essential, but paying close attention to your leadership failures is crucial to your growth as a leader. 
These are important habits to avoid: 
 
  1. Providing only negative feedback: Managers can fall into the trap of providing feedback only during performance reviews or when problems arise. Feedback is essential to an employee’s professional development. However, the feedback includes praise for specific tasks, not just criticism. When employees experience a carousel of negative – and only negative – feedback, they can become discouraged and thus disengage from their work.
  2. Micromanaging staff: While you must oversee your team’s workflow and help staff handle roadblocks, you shouldn’t try to control them completely. It’s essential to trust your team to complete tasks as a whole and respect each individual’s work style. Forcing your workers to perform tasks counter to their typical methods can cause a significant drop in productivity as they adjust. As long as the end result is the same, give your staff room for creativity.
  3. Not requesting feedback: Poor managers rarely solicit or address questions, feedback, and concerns. Good managers offer the floor to team members so they can freely express their questions and concerns. This will often clear up misunderstandings and create a more collaborative space. Keep in mind if one team member has a question, others may need the same guidance.
  4. Shutting themselves off from new ideas: Closed-minded managers won’t accept criticism or new ideas. They become a roadblock keeping the team from performing at its best. Each team member has their own perspective on the creative process and is uniquely suited to recognize inefficiencies within their workflow. Listen to your team’s input, and use their perspectives to enact positive change.
  5. Avoiding tricky conversations: Good managers must tackle challenging situations that affect the team’s productivity head-on. Avoiding these situations lets the problem fester and can cause employee engagement to drop significantly. 
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The 6 Tools Construction Managers Need to Be Safe and Successful

Here are the key things all construction leaders should be using with their teams
Malhar Lakshman
Thu 1 September 2022
Construction managers often face several challenges in the workplace, as well as outside of it. Whether it’s pulling permits or workplace injuries, there is almost always some form of challenge that they face. However, the following tools are what every construction manager should have to ensure that their day gets easier.

1)     AIM Insights

Human Resources Information Systems are often one of the most useful tools by a manager for a few reasons, including tracking employee data, retaining demographics, and automation of tasks for HR staff.  AIM Insights integrates seamlessly into this, allowing managers to set goals, determine completion, as well as monitor the status of training. AIM Insights is particularly beneficial in the construction space as it leverages a bottom-up approach to helping front-line employees set goals that are safety-focused. Early studies have shown that when employees set their own goals focused on safety, they are much more likely to partake in safety activities.

For example, on a mining site, employees frequently wouldn’t wear goggles because they would fog up, blurring their vision, which is dangerous when drilling. So many employees wouldn’t wear their goggles or only temporarily wear them to appease their boss or senior leadership. Once they started implementing AIM Insights, different employees started proposing safety goals and solutions, and eventually, they were able to find a pair of goggles that were similar to pool goggles where they were close to their eyeballs and they didn’t fog up while still providing safety for their eyes. When the employees participated in the solution versus being told what to do, they were much more likely to follow the safety protocols.

In an industry marked by injury and litigation, tracking the status of training can help prevent both of these. Along with this, managers can earn a people leader certification to help improve their skills. This certification would include executive coaching as well. 

2)     Estimation Software

Contractors will always be asked for one number upfront by a client- how much a project will cost them.  This number is often devised by calculating the cost of all required materials, the cost of pulling permits, and the cost of labor.  The company’s own profit margin may be taken into account as well. Sometimes, creating a quote requires contacting multiple vendors to determine costs. However, this software can automatically request multiple quotes from different vendors at once. Using software can save an estimator hours of time that could then be better served elsewhere. Estimation software also has a lower margin of error than an individual. In addition to this, this type of software can also find where to cut costs as well. Software such as this can evaluate subcontractor bids and compare them to each other, and then to the schedule of the clients. It can then automatically find the most efficient and inexpensive option. Estimation software can also determine procurement timeframes as well, which is much harder to do by hand. 

3)     Cloud Storage

There are a lot of moving parts in creating a project. The two most important individuals in a project are often the Owner and the Manager. These two often have several important decisions to make regarding purchasing materials, assigning staff, and other logistical details. Having this information easily accessible to multiple people at once for both asynchronous and synchronous work can make a massive difference for users.  In addition to that, when determining budgets and expenditures, having multiple people working on a document at the same time can dramatically improve efficiency. Imagine using an online version of a database as opposed to Microsoft Access. Access databases are a great choice, but are limited to only one user being able to access them at a time. An online, cloud-stored database has no such weakness. 

4)     Construction Accounting Software (And an accountant)

The most common practice for accounting is to operate around a period of time. For example, most companies tend to release quarterly or yearly, or maybe even monthly statements. The problem with this for contractors though, is that most jobs have some form of unique input or requirement. They are also perpetually opening and closing projects during the year. 

Consequently, contractors have their own methods of accounting, known as Construction Accounting. This is centered around each project, as opposed to a period of time. Construction Accounting software is better designed to assist with contractors’ specific timelines and schedules, and as such, is a much better fit for them.  This will allow the average project manager to be able to track budgets, assets, and liabilities, while still receiving information pertinent to their industry.  It is important to note that this is not a substitute for finding a CPA. However, it may assist a manager in checking their finances. 

5)     Insurance

All state laws, and some federal laws, require contractors to have a certain amount of insurance.  The following are just examples of what most areas require.

·        General Liability Insurance- This covers bodily injury claims, medical payments, covers any property damage, as well as copyright infringement.
·        Professional Liability Insurance- This covers any financial damages from the services you provide. For example, if a web developer makes a mistake on an e-commerce site, he could be sued for missed sales opportunities. With professional liability, this would be covered.
·        Vehicle and Auto Insurance- This is insurance needed in order to drive or operate vehicles as a form of transportation. This would protect a contractor in the event of a car accident while driving to a site.
·        Inland Marine Insurance – Funnily enough, this does not in fact have anything to do with the sea or ocean. Inland Marine Insurance refers to covering any product, materials, or equipment when transported over land, or warehoused by a third party. This is especially important for project managers who are transporting heavy equipment or materials. Auto Insurance does not cover damage caused to these. However, Inland Marine Insurance will in fact do so.
·        Contractor License Bonds- These are purchased from state licensing boards and are often necessary in order to comply with building codes and are a condition for permits or licensure. 
·        Workers Compensation Insurance- This insurance is similar to General Liability Insurance but can cover gross damages on the worksite. It is far more specialized than general insurance, and typically has higher amounts of coverage.
6)     A Network

                      This is more often the case within construction, rather than general contracting, but most project managers have a network of subcontractors that they will use for each project. This network includes civil engineers, carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians, and often quite a few other trades. 

                      A powerful network enables managers to have a quality talent pool for any of their upcoming projects and eliminates the need to have to hire and file checks on every contractor they have, saving time down the line. Managers can often get preferred vendor rates from subcontractors in exchange for having them on retainer as well, cutting costs dramatically.  

                      With all of this in hand, a good manager should be able to make the most out of their projects, and will easily be able to succeed at their job. 

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The 5 Steps to Getting Your Company to Invest in Your Leadership Development (Even if They Have Never in the Past!)

These tips will help you garner budget for any project you would like your company to invest in
Mindy Honcoop
Fri 2 September 2022
Ask - Don’t Assume

As a new manager, it is easy to forget about budget planning. However, don’t assume you don’t have a budget for investing in your team’s growth. Ask your department leader or finance partner if you have employee training, engagement, morale, or a miscellaneous budget line item. The department budget is not often earmarked for this type of spending and HR's companywide program spending.

Don’t Let Uncertainty Stop You

If your department does not outline employee engagement or growth as budget line items, discover what price point your department lead or finance partner would be willing to invest in solutions to support key business objectives. Typically you will get a rough idea of a range that they would be willing to consider for future proposals. Again, understanding your budget helps you strategically be proactive in how you support your team member's growth equitably. 

Identify the Problem

Assess the underlying root cause to inform the best investment solution. After identifying the problem, you may be able to leverage a current solution your company already has in place. Not sure where to start? One easy tool I like is asking yourself WHY five times. This tool helps you become curious and review all the data to identify the problem. As a result, you can now quantify the gap you seek to solve to ensure your team's future success. You may need to contact your HR partner or department leaders for additional data.

Write a Business Case that Gets to Yes!

Now you are ready to write a clear business case that outlines your:
  • Desired future state
  • Current state
  • Gaps holding you back
  • Supporting data
  • Request to invest in the proposed solution to implement 
  • Expected assumptions for the return on investment
For example, 
  • Desired Future State: I would like to better understand the well-being of my team members, get on the same page as them, and have more impactful 1:1’s so then they are more productive and engaged at work.
  • Current State: I have 1:1’s with my team but they are unstructured and I still feel that there are opportunities to build team trust.
  • Gaps holding you back: Lack of data and coaching to inform next steps as to how each of my direct reports feel at work.
  • Supporting Data: Exit interviews, engagement surveys, and anecdotal feedback
  • Request to invest: $187 per month for the AIM Insights People Leader Certification (see details below).
  • Expected Assumptions: More engaged team, increased team productivity, increased team trust, improved morale, and less quiet quitting. 

Don’t have enough data?

If you don’t have enough data to support your expected assumptions, think about how you might implement a trial or beta test of the solution to see the outcomes. Many products have a freemium or trial period that you can utilize as a beta test. If a software download is needed, ensure it aligns with your company’s data policy guidelines. Ensure you have identified your baseline KPI metrics before starting the beta test to compare with the results. If there is a significant positive change, your business case is now stronger!

The AIM Insights People Leader Certification is a great way to boost your performance as a leader and distinguish yourself from other leaders as you seek promotion. The AIM Insights People Leader Certification gathers feedback from your direct reports and provides executive coaching to guide you as you improve your team’s performance. The Certification showcases that you are not only a leader that drives results, but that you care personally about your direct reports’ well-being and ability to thrive. 


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How to handle Intra Office Conflict as an Objective Manager

Handling conflict as a manager is critical to becoming a great leader
Malhar Lakshman
Thu 8 September 2022
Handling personnel conflict is an essential part of a manager’s position. Regardless of how strong the company culture is, human challenges are inevitable. Since many team members have different work styles and personalities, there’s always the possibility they will clash. However, proper management of these problems can not only rectify conflict but also set up the workplace to be better equipped for future mitigation.

What is Workplace Conflict?

Workplace Conflict is often defined by CPP Global, or the creators of the Myers-Briggs Test, as “any workplace disagreement that disrupts the flow of work.” CPP also noted that “85% of both individual contributors and leaders agreed they experienced some amount of inevitable conflict at work.” Conflict can manifest itself within the office in quite a few different ways, including some of the following:

·        Disagreements or Arguments
·        Verbal Abuse
·        Personality Clashes
·        Bullying
·        Difficult Relationships
·        Discriminatory Behavior
·        Physical Abuse or Harassment

Conflict is damaging in the workplace and can be a cause of a significant drop in productivity. According to Pollack Peacebuilding, each year an average of 485,000 individuals resign from their job as a result of conflicts with other coworkers. Replacing a direct report can be extremely expensive, since the hiring process often includes creating and distributing job postings, holding interviews, and going through training and onboarding processes. The easiest way to prevent this is to recognize the sources of conflict in the workplace as a manager.

What Causes Workplace Conflict?

            According to Gallup, one of the most frequent causes of all workplace conflict is inadequate communication. These communication breakdowns often pertain to the following causes:

·        Procedural Disagreements- These are typically when individuals cannot get on the same page regarding what work is required for completing a project. This can also include delegation of tasks.
·        Timeline/Deadline Disagreements- These occur when individuals have discrepancies on when a project or its pertaining components are to be completed.
·        Unrealistic Workloads- This will occur when certain direct reports have too much on their plate and either release their frustration on other coworkers, or gradually pull away to the point of what is known as “ghosting”, or disappear from the project either partially or completely.
·        Criticism- Many executive leaders often recommend following a constructive criticism structure to prevent unintentional verbal barrages onto recipients. However, some direct reports may not be able to take criticism well, and may consequently shut down, become overly defensive, and as a result, get into conflicts with other team members. 

How do Managers Prevent Conflict?

Managers can have many tools at their disposal to help mitigate or prevent conflict entirely. Many experts regard conflict with the same opinion as a fire- stopping it at the source will help prevent it from spreading. Looking for signs of conflict can be an important step for a manager in this venture.

Signs of Conflict are indicators that something may be amiss in the workplace. Many of these are often discovered in a 1:1 meeting, which should emphasize the importance of these meetings. Managers should not be afraid to ask about how a direct report is feeling about their coworkers and teammates during these meetings. 

Some signs of conflict within a team include the following:

·        Work is consistently late, or not of high quality
·        Requests to change groups, assignments, or transfers
·        Communication within teams is strictly for business, as opposed to being a mix of casual and professional
·        Issues directly brought up in manager/direct report 1:1 meetings
·        Tardiness
·        Frequent requests for Time off

Managers can also use Ambition in Motion’s AIM Insights to assist in tracking productivity and employee sentiment. AIM Insights allows managers to view how effectively and efficiently their direct reports completed the work that was assigned to them. It also has surveys explicitly for direct reports in regard to their feelings about their tasks. This metadata can help track a problem on its way to becoming a conflict. 

For example, let's say that Jake is a manager supervising Alicia, Bruno, and Hayley. Jake has been using AIM Insights for two months and is noticing that Alicia’s work has- by her own definition- not been up to par. He can also see that Alicia has been increasingly tardy with her work, often delivering her tasks well after deadlines, causing Bruno and Hayley to have to work overtime to ensure complete projects by company deadlines. Jake also can see how Bruno and Hayley feel about their work, and upon noticing that they are frequently having to do extra tasks without any overtime, can see the problem brewing. 

After using this data, Jake has the ability to approach Alicia and have a 1:1 with her and heading off any potential conflict between the teammates. 

Managers should also always be providing conflict recognition training to their direct reports. Creating a culture in the workplace that minimizes conflict, but can also recognize it will be invaluable to the company. 

This isn’t to say that all conflict is bad conflict. There is such a thing as healthy conflict. But for this article, we are focusing on eradicating negative conflict. 

Perhaps in this situation, Alicia could be going through something personal that is impacting her work output. As opposed to ignoring it and letting the frustration brew, or disciplining her without cause, it is critical that the manager better understand where she is coming from before determining the next step.

How to Manage Conflict that is already present

While heading off conflict before it erupts is ideal, it is unreasonable and naïve to believe that a manager will be able to always stop all conflict from even occurring. Therefore, professionalism will be of the utmost importance as they work with their direct reports. Here are some tips for managing conflict.

1.      Be objective- There is often no “good guy” vs “bad guy” situation set up. Conflict often goes both ways. 
2.      Acknowledge the conflict, and don’t be afraid to ask questions about it- Addressing an elephant in the room can often mitigate tensions, and then help to solve it.
3.      Facilitate a healthy discussion with the conflicting parties- Poor communication tends to cause many problems within a workplace. Sometimes addressing grievances can solve problems. 
4.      Use data- Stick to pure facts, and avoid bringing up sentiment. Telling a direct report that their coworker hates them will never help. However, explaining to them that they had a deadline that wasn’t met at the expense of their coworker’s time will have a much better impact. 
5.      Think about solving the problem, not the person- Having differing opinions helps the workplace so much more since workers can approach problems from different angles, often allowing managers to pick the most efficient solution for a problem. Fixing a problem between people is much more likely to be sustainable than changing the individual worker styles. 
6.      Create a plan for the future- It isn’t unlikely that the reason for this conflict could happen again in the future. Try to anticipate how it might manifest itself and create an action plan to avoid repeating history. 

Oftentimes, managers are quick to terminate before seeking to problem-solve with a direct report that is struggling or clashing with another team member(s). In most cases, this person isn’t intentionally trying to sabotage the team or create frustration for others. More often than not, they have pure intentions that aren’t being received in the way they were intended. The best managers seek to understand before diagnosing and rectifying a situation. Oftentimes, those solutions can be created by creating a lens as to how others are experiencing their actions and proposing new ways of doing things.

Conflict can be intimidating for any manager- especially newer ones. With the right skills, a manager need not worry about conflict and instead focus on being the most efficient they can be with their direct reports. 

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Striking the balance between manager and friend: Why you shouldn’t invite your direct reports to be in your fantasy football league

Finding the right balance between manager and friend is critical to identifying appropriate work relationships
Grace Tripathy
Thu 8 September 2022
It can be lonely at the top. Managers must make decisions, and there aren’t too many people they can turn to for advice. Some managers want to be the “cool boss” that is comfortable with anything (think Michael Scott hosting a meeting in the conference room). Other managers believe that there can’t be any cordiality between them and their direct reports.
 This article will explain how managers can determine what is appropriate and what is not regarding relationships with direct reports. It explains why boundaries are necessary, and how to maintain social distance from your direct reports while creating a positive work environment with open communication and feedback, which many teams struggle with.
How can you find the perfect balance in the friend-manager relationship? Should you even try?
 
The Need for Friendships at Work
Research shows that friendships at work lead to enhanced emotional well-being. It’s important to have relationships with people who you can trust. 
Sharing life events decreases anxiety, improves productivity, and satisfies our need for human connection.
Of course, this is the case for peer-to-peer friendships, not employee-manager relationships. The latter requires a much more delicate balancing act by both parties.
 
The Need for Boundaries
A peer-to-peer relationship is an equal one; at least it should be. In an ideal world, there are no power plays to be had, and the two parties can be relatively open with one another at a personal level. 
A manager, however, must maintain boundaries with direct reports because they have significant influence over the direct report's professional and financial status. And that's a game-changer.
It is really difficult to be in the same fantasy football league with a direct report that then has to be disciplined or potentially fired…talk about awkward if you are matched up against each other in the playoffs!
The manager’s role in the relationship is to promote teamwork and guide individuals in their careers. A manager-direct relationship that is too friendly can compromise this role and make effective management impossible. There would be an imbalance in the way that one employee is treated over another. 
Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor and leadership expert, delves into the “problem” of joining a workplace and being told to be “professional,” as if every other aspect of you and your character stays at home, and you’re supposed to be strictly professional at work. 
            But that feels more robotic than realistic to the way people interact with each other. Professionalism training has been pounded into everyone’s heads since their first job. 
How can managers deal with the situation of being friendly with their employees, and also maintaining structured policies and professionalism in the workplace?
Scott relays the idea of “radical candor” as a guide to moving specific conversations between employees and managers to a better place. 
 
What is Radical Candor?
Radical Candor is a philosophy of management based on the concept of “caring personally” while “challenging directly.”
●       Practices to get, give and encourage guidance and feedback at work (praise and criticism) 
●       Strategies for building a cohesive team 
●       Tools to help you and your team get stuff done with less drama 
●       It’s not a license to act like a jerk 
●       It’s not an invitation to get creepily personal
●       It’s not just for managers, we all want to succeed 
 
Radical Candor is practiced at companies all around the world, including Amazon, The New York Times, Forbes, Qualtrics, The Wall Street Journal, and many more. 
 
Use the Radical Candor Framework to Guide Your Conversations 
Understanding what is not Radical Candor can help you better understand what is. These are the behaviors that everyone falls into at one time or another: 
 
●       Obnoxious Aggression: Obnoxious Aggression, also called brutal honesty or front stabbing, is what happens when you challenge someone directly, but don’t show you care about them personally. It’s praise that doesn’t feel sincere or criticism and feedback that isn’t delivered kindly.
●       Ruinous Empathy: Ruinous Empathy is what happens when you want to spare someone’s short-term feelings, so you don’t tell them something they need to know. You Care Personally, but fail to Challenge Directly. It’s praise that isn’t specific enough to help the person understand what was good or criticism that is sugar-coated and unclear. Or simply silence. Ruinous Empathy may feel nice or safe, but is ultimately unhelpful and even damaging. This is a feedback fail.
●       Manipulative Insincerity: Manipulative Insincerity (backstabbing, political or passive-aggressive behavior) is what happens when you neither Care Personally nor Challenge Directly. It’s praise that is insincere, flattery to a person’s face, and harsh criticism behind their back. Often it’s a self-protective reaction to Obnoxious Aggression. This is the worst kind of feedback failure.
 
            These are the behaviors that people can accidentally fall into in the workplace. These categories make up “radical candor.” The goal of this is to share your humble opinions directly, rather than talking badly about people behind their backs. 
            In a nutshell, radical candor is the ability to challenge others directly and show that you care about them personally at the same time. If done correctly, it will help you and all the people you surround yourself with do the best work of your/their lives and build trusted relationships throughout your career.
            However, as a manager, it can be difficult to manage these workplace relationships; constantly tweaking your approach to find the sweet spot between friendship and professionalism with your team. 
            As you’re working through this, remember that it’s important to have an outlet for yourself.
 
Managers Need Their Own Support Network
It can be lonely at the top where there must be boundaries set for working relationships. So, it's wise for managers to find their own support networks within the company culture and outside. 
A mentor can be someone within or outside your organization who has the experience and can provide you with advice. A professional career coach can also give you impartial advice and an objective opinion.
One highly-rated professional mentorship program is the Ambition In Motion Executive Mastermind Group. The key part of this program is that your mentor acts as a source of guidance and coaching, customized to your individual needs.
 
What is executive coaching? 
Executive coaches work with business leaders to enable their rapid development in the workplace. They also assist with specific problems that a board member, or senior manager, wants to work through outside of the normal business framework. 
This coaching focuses very specifically on the issues that an executive wants to work through. Thus it becomes a speedy way to improve skills and achieve personal and professional objectives.
The executive coach gives the executive feedback and a new perspective that enables them to set goals and work towards them. The coaching sessions use objective feedback to drive the executive's thought processes forward through their issues.
 
            As a manager or executive, having a support system such as an executive mentor is crucial. Following the radical candor framework will guide your conversations within the workplace. But be aware of your own need for support and friendship in the work environment and make a conscious effort to seek them out in the appropriate places. 
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What is the AIM Insights People Leader Certification?

Here is an overview of what it takes to become AIM Insights People Leader Certified
Garrett Mintz
Sat 10 September 2022
The AIM Insights People Leader Certification is the only management certification that both teaches and evaluates a leader's ability to impact their team over time. The AIM Insights People Leader Certification program is for managers who strive to become elite and grow to more senior roles in their careers.

Some of the core benefits of becoming AIM Insights People Leader Certified:

·        Highlight to your senior leadership why you should be promoted
·        Show prospective employers why you are a great leader of people
·        Compare your leadership score to other leaders
·        Evaluate how your leadership is impacting the quantitative output of your team paired with the qualitative sentiment of working for you as a leader
·        Distinguish yourself as an incredible people leader from others vying for similar opportunities as you

How does it work?

1.      Create an account and add your direct reports to your team
2.      AIM Insights prompts your direct reports to complete monthly assessments to better understand their sentiment about the work they are doing and the quantitative tasks they are focused on
3.      Managers receive executive coaching every month based on the results shared in the assessment
4.      After applying the advice given by the executive coach, managers can observe their team’s improvement in both sentiment and productivity over time

Are there different levels to the AIM Insights People Leader Certification?

Yes. And unlock traditional certifications which certify people based on time and exam completion (typically based on rote memorization), the AIM Insights People Leader Certification levels are determined based on your team’s scores over time.

What does it mean to become Level I Certified?

Timeline: First 6 cycles (typically 6 months) in AIM Insights - can be retried over the next 6 months if unsuccessful

Quantitative

  • You measured your team's productivity metrics (at least a 75% response rate) consistently over the first 6 months of the certification period - Example: With 4 Direct Reports over 6 months, you should expect 24 responses. You need to have 18 (or more) responses during that first six months to qualify. 
  • Productivity is measured by the percentage of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals set, the percentage of goals relevant to the outcomes you hope to achieve with your team (how your leader determines your team's success), the percentage of high and medium impact goals set compared to low impact goals, and the SMART-Impact Score (the number of SMART goals accomplished weighted by their impact)

Qualitative

  • You measured your team's sentiment scores consistently over the first 6 months of the certification process
  • Sentiment scores evaluate your direct reports' perception of their task performance, team cohesion, team productivity, organizational citizenship, engagement, and manager performance

What does it mean to become Level II Certified?

Timeline: First 12 cycles (typically 12 months) in AIM Insights

Quantitative

  • Your team's productivity metrics are greater than the average manager's scores (specific terms below)
  • Productivity is measured by the percentage of SMART goals set, the percentage of goals relevant to the outcomes you hope to achieve with your team (how your leader determines your team's success), the percentage of high and medium impact goals set compared to low impact goals, and the SMART-Impact Score (the number of SMART goals accomplished weighted by their impact)

Qualitative

  • Your team's sentiment scores have increased over the 12-month certification process and are greater than the average manager's scores (specific terms below)
  • Sentiment scores evaluate your direct reports' perception of their task performance, team cohesion, team productivity, organizational citizenship, engagement, and manager performance

Terms

·        60% of Goals were rated as SMART
·        60% of Goals were rated as relevant to team goals
·        60% of Goals were rated as medium or high impact
·        A minimum SMART Impact Score above 25 for each direct report
·        An average sentiment score of 75% or higher in all categories or at least 80% in 3 categories

What does it mean to become Level III Certified?

Quantitative

  • Your team's productivity metrics are far greater than the average manager's scores (specific terms below)
  • Productivity is measured by the percentage of SMART goals set, the percentage of goals relevant to the outcomes you hope to achieve with your team (how your leader determines your team's success), the percentage of high and medium impact goals set compared to low impact goals, and the SMART-Impact Score (the number of SMART goals accomplished weighted by their impact)

Qualitative

  • Your team's sentiment scores have increased over the 12-month certification and are on average far greater than the average manager (specific terms below)
  • Sentiment scores evaluate your direct reports' perception of their task performance, team cohesion, team productivity, organizational citizenship, engagement, and manager performance

Terms

·        75% of Goals were rated as SMART
·        75% of Goals were rated as relevant to team goals
·        75% of Goals were rated as medium or high impact
·        A minimum SMART Impact Score above 30 for each direct report
·        An average sentiment score of 85% or higher in all categories or at least 90% in 3 categories

How the AIM Insights People Leader Certification Helps You

Ø  Understand how your performance as a leader compares to other leaders
Ø  Leverage this data (and certification) as a basis for negotiating a bonus, raise, or promotion
Ø  Gain insight into why certain team members are performing better than others
Ø  Receive executive coaching guidance to help you gain certification
Ø  Showcase your certification to prospective employers and on LinkedIn
Ø  Distinguish yourself as an incredible people leader from others vying for similar opportunities as you

What are the elements of the AIM Insights People Leader Certification?

Executive Coaching

Receive monthly executive coaching based on your team’s scores so you can adjust your leadership style to best drive your team’s results.

Gap Analysis

Closing the perception gap between what you think of your direct reports and what they think of themselves is critical to helping you understand where you need to create clarity for your direct reports.

Goals Report

Giving you insight into what your direct reports think they need to be focused on can help you alter and adjust your direct reports' paths so your team doesn't waste time via miscommunication.

The goals report also helps you overcome subjectivity and recency bias when reviewing your direct reports because you will have a full understanding of everything your team has been working on over the time period being reviewed.

Org Chart View

Providing you access to skip-level teams down through your organizational unit can help you pinpoint where challenges might be existing and on which specific teams.

Communication Templates

Guiding you with your 1:1s with your direct reports is a core component of AIM Insights and one of the biggest benefits the certification process provides is guiding you on how to have an effective 1:1 and what questions to ask each direct report based on each direct report's circumstances.

Work Orientation

Learn what drives you at work as well as your direct reports so you can better understand your unconscious bias as a leader and craft a leadership strategy based on what drives each of your direct reports.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the first step to getting started with the AIM Insights People Leader Certification?

Schedule an interview with our team to see if you qualify to become certified.

If you are accepted, you will be prompted to get started using the AIM Insights Tool with your team and begin the certification process.

How do you implement it?

AIM Insights will remind your direct reports every month to complete a survey on your behalf. As their scores come in every month, it will inform us if you are or are not on track to receive your certification - your assigned executive coach will walk you through how to improve your scores every month.

Are there limits to the number of direct reports I can have using the tool?

There are no limits to the number of direct reports using the tool.

Do you offer support?

AIM Insights provides unlimited email executive coaching guidance and monthly coaching videos customized for you from executive coaches

Do I need to re-certify myself after receiving certification?

Yes, every 6 months after certification you will have your team re-assessed and every 3 years you will have to complete a new recertification to stay up to date - or you can keep using the tool on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Can I take the certification again in subsequent years if I want to increase my level?

Yes, you can re-certify as much as you would like to try and boost your scores.

Read

Why Your Firm Should be a Team - Not a Family

What is the best way to build a health culture? Here are some great tips!
Grace Tripathy
Fri 16 September 2022
When CEOs describe their company as being “like family,” they mean well with the idea. They’re searching for a model that represents the kind of relationships they want to have with their employees, a lifetime relationship with a sense of belonging. But using the term family makes it easy for misunderstandings to arise.
In a real family, parents can’t fire their children. Try to imagine disowning your child for poor performance: “We’re sorry daughter, but your mom and I have decided you’re just not a good fit. Your table-setting effort has been deteriorating for the past 6 months, and your obsession with ponies just isn’t adding any value. We’re going to have to let you go. But don’t take it the wrong way; it’s just family.”
Unthinkable, right? But that’s essentially what happens when a CEO describes the company as a family, then institutes strict policies and/or layoffs. Regardless of the situation, a “family-like” work culture will leave employees feeling hurt and betrayed. 
 
Why your company shouldn’t be a family
●       Families are dysfunctional. How many truly high-functioning families are you aware of? There are always a few weird uncles dragging the average down. Family situations are much different than professional ones. 
●       Families are impossible to get out of. There is a lot of safety in families because they’re something you’re born into and can never be born out of. However, this is the wrong kind of safety to cultivate. “Unconditional love” means you will put up with quite a bit of nonsense, bad work, and even poor effort. Yes, the goal is for your employees to feel safe in that they always know where they stand and they always know they can tell you the truth. However, you don’t want them feeling safe enough to be content with subpar performance.
●       Families instill too much loyalty. Some amount of loyalty is commendable, but families can often take this to the extreme. You don’t want employees so loyal to you that they’re unwilling to push back if you start making questionable decisions. You also don’t want employees so loyal to you that they have no drive to improve, thereby stagnating in their roles. As a leader, you want people that are willing to contribute, not just follow you blindly. 
 
Why your company should be a team
●       Teams are built around a common goal. First off, teams are built, not born. Presumably, you have a strong company mission in place, something you’re all working towards. Teams have goals – namely, to win. Families are typically more lenient.
●       You need people that can jump in and do just about anything, even if they can’t do it all well. As you grow, you need more specialists. You are constantly hiring people who are better than you at particular skills. There will be times when you grow to a size where some of your more tenured employees are no longer needed to take the company to the next level. This is a hard truth, but it’s also a natural part of building a team. Unless you’re a horrible person, it can be incredibly difficult to recognize and respond to employees that helped to build you into what you are today, but don’t have a clear future at the company.
●       Players choose you just as much as you choose them. You can join a team. You can’t join a family. A good team starts at the top, with ownership. That’s you. Hire good coaches, treat them well, and always work to improve, and the rest will trickle down.
 
 
Mission Drives and Improves Engagement
Employees who fall in love with their work experience have higher productivity levels and engagement, and they express loyalty to the company as they remain longer, costing the organization less over time. 
According to Marie-Claire Ross, Trust Leadership Speaker, mission-driven workers are 54 percent more likely to stay for five years at a company and 30 percent more likely to grow into high performers than those who arrive at work with only their paycheck as the motivator.
High-performance organizations are linked to being mission-driven companies. Mission statements must reflect a commitment to higher social good for the community they serve, both local and global. Authenticity and transparency build trust.
According to Deloitte, organizations high in trust are 2.5 times more likely to function as high-performance organizations with revenue growth than lower-performance organizations. Eighty-one percent of those working for companies with a strong mission stated their stakeholders hold trust in their leadership team, whereas that number was 54 percent for organizations without a strong mission.
Companies that cultivate a strong work culture driven by deep engagement and meaningful work find success, beat the competition, and retain and attract high-performing talent.
 
Are You a Leader Who Drives a Mission?
Many employees go to work to do their job and earn their take-home pay. How do employees feel beyond this point? What is the work experience like? Do they feel their job adds value to life? All of these factors are highly important to determining success.
Mission-driven leaders ingrain the “why” and “how” of an organization’s existence beyond the mere “what” of providing a product. They assist with aligning the team and individual employee to-dos with the mission, and the mission may have several interpretations among employees. 
Connection to the mission is commonly linked to why any given employee wanted to work for the company in the first place. Nurture those reasons and unite them with the company mission.
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How to work with an Employee Not Meeting Expectations

Giving direct feedback can be difficult but is critical
Malhar Lakshman
Fri 16 September 2022
Most managers and companies tend to prioritize results and goals over other aspects of the work like team chemistry or organizational citizenship. Generally, direct reports assume the role of a vital cog in this process. However, when direct reports fail to meet expectations, it can result in a lot of work for their peers, as well as their managers. Consequently, the first step a manager will take is often a reprimand followed by termination.

Why Terminations aren’t necessarily the Best Option

            Firstly, the most important aspect of terminating, or firing an employee, is that a replacement worker must be found. Sometimes, a manager can get lucky and find a good candidate in-house, but the majority of times, they need to go through the entire hiring process once more.  

The hiring process includes posting an advertisement, reading through applications, scheduling and hosting interviews, conducting background checks, validating certifications, and on top of that, an onboarding process. In addition to that, the former employee will typically receive some form of a severance package with the parting of ways.  Termination also eats up time with exit interviews, appeals, and potential litigation as a result of unlawful termination claims. 

All in all, terminations can be very expensive for time and money. But how else should a manager deal with an employee who isn’t necessarily living up to the expectations held of them?  There are typically a few options.

Understanding the Root of the Problem

As with many other discrepancies within the workplace, communicating with an employee can often result in finding the source of the problem. Oftentimes, people have personal baggage that may make its way within the workplace. In addition to baggage, worker stress is a very real phenomenon. In most circumstances, bad employees aren’t intentionally bad employees, they just made decisions that negatively impacted the business and didn’t have anyone to bounce the idea of logic off of before acting.

Signs of worker stress include the following:

·       Reclusive Behavior- This does not include introverted behavior, but rather the contrast between this and previous behavior.
·       Change in  Body Language- This once again, does not necessarily mean introverted behavior,  but rather withdrawn activity, slumps, and similar posture.
·       Personality Clashes- When someone is in distress or dealing with trauma, they may lash out at other people, or attempt to withhold their grief. 
·       Change in Productivity- Trauma survivors tend to have harsh changes in how much work they can accomplish.

One thing to take note of is that these are often signs of distress within most areas, but are often better exposed within the workplace. If a manager notices that one of their direct reports undergoes a sudden change in attitude, while also displaying signs of anxiety or depression, it may be best to have a 1:1 with them. Being empathetic will often yield much greater results than being confrontational within this 1:1. Understand that it takes a significant amount of trauma for a person to have changed a significant amount. 

A good example of this would be from one of my jobs while in high school, which was the role of a swim coach. I was a member of a team of 7, with shifts assigned to us by our aquatics director each week, and sometimes also by our camp director. We continued in this way for two to three years, and then all of a sudden, we were either missing pay, not getting our names on the schedule, or worst of all, not receiving a schedule whatsoever. We ended up complaining to our director since it appeared that our camp director was not fulfilling her job requirements, and as a result, damaging our financial abilities with no regard for or time. 

Our boss was a very thorough individual and was able to have a healthy conversation with our camp director, out of concern for her performance, as well as her well-being. It had turned out that she had not only lost her father the previous week but had also been given additional responsibilities by the overall site director. With no other relatives, she alone was in charge of managing all probate-related duties and processes, but also organizing funeral details and bills. All in all, she was completely overwhelmed. 

Now, in worse managed work environments, this camp director, despite boasting over 15 years of experience in the field, would’ve been terminated. However, our boss knew her potential, and that this was a life-changing period of time for her. Therefore, he took on additional responsibilities and gave her as much time off as she needed. About a month later, she came back and was able to not only resume her original responsibilities but also that of her new position, to much more success. 

The moral of this story is that being empathetic is well-advised. Proper communication with direct reports is not only better for workplace relationships, but also ideal for difficult situations such as this. Providing accommodations for workers can eliminate the need for a replacement process.

How to Help Employees who are having trouble meeting expectations

While there are often employees who are undergoing significant personal situations, some employees may be unaccustomed to their new workloads, and responsibilities, or just find the material difficult. In this case, it is the manager’s responsibility and duty to try to assist these individuals. 

Using an impartial process can often help employees who are struggling. These are often known as Performance Improvement Plans or PIPs. The one problem with these is that they are often viewed extremely negatively, and often as a pathway to termination. Rather than giving strong targets that must be hit in order to maintain a job, managers should give fluid and flexible objectives that will not only allow for more success, but also for employee education and improvement. Using a device such as AIM Insights can also allow for a manager to have greater ease checking what goals have been met, along with more aggregated data about these goals, such as percent of goals achieved, and similar functions.

No manager should want to terminate an employee but may feel pressure to do so. While termination may still be required, it is best to approach these situations with empathy, and attempt to solve the problem in-house without resorting to this step.

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How to Lead During Times of Recession Uncertainty

As a leader, providing certainty is one of the best things you can do for your team
Garrett Mintz
Thu 22 September 2022
As interest rates rise and consumer spending habits change, rumors of a recession have started to emerge as a strong possibility for the coming months.

Regardless of whether a recession happens, the mere rumors of a recession can have a massive impact on our employees and their feelings about work, and managers should be considering how to adapt their leadership style to handle any economic worries by their direct reports.

On a high level, below are a list of things that typically happen when there are concerns of a recession:

·        Companies go on hiring freezes or begin laying people off – Companies tend to hire based on what they believe they will need so when a recession strikes and their projections are incorrect, they are forced to change course and lay people off as they adjust their projections.
·        Employee confidence diminishes – Strong economies with low unemployment help employees feel confident asking for higher wages and greater perks.
·        Teams are consolidated – Companies create departments and teams based on projected growth, but when economies start to slow, teams tend to be merged, people are laid off and those remaining must pick up the additional workload. 

Some companies and industries and going to be more impacted than others. If you lead a team and feel that your direct reports show some concern about the economy, this article covers how to be a better leader in times of uncertainty.

As a professional, I am a firm believer that you are an entrepreneur of your own life. I am not writing that everyone should be an entrepreneur, but as a person, you have full agency to make the decisions that you believe are best for you. When it comes to work, especially if you lead a team, it is critical that you do your own research to identify if the company you work for will thrive for the foreseeable future.

For example, one of the executives in our mastermind group works for a company that does COVID tests. This business model boomed over the past few years, but as fewer people get COVID tests, our leader has recognized that something needs to change for his team to continue working for their company. 

As opposed to doing the same thing over and over again as business dwindles, he is being completely candid with his team. He has been identifying business opportunities that he and his company can pursue based on the infrastructure they have created over the past few years. Essentially, he is becoming an intrapreneur – or a person who is pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities within a company.

This openness, honesty, and candor has caused his team to feel excited about the work they are doing. They still complete the tasks that keep the lights on, but they are taking the additional time they have from diminished business and putting that towards identifying new opportunities they can leverage and deploy. 

Many of the ideas proposed won’t work out, but it is much better than doing nothing and hoping it works out. His team has greater clarity and understanding regarding the business’s health and prospects, and most employees are staying and trying to help find a new path for this business.

This team is still searching for the next business model that will reinvigorate their business, but this isn’t solely a task for the leadership team anymore. Now, the entire company can be a part of the solution.

Therefore, to recap, when your team feels uncertainty because of a potential recession:

1.      Lean into the concerns and share openly and candidly why the company’s current way of operating won’t be affected by a recession (e.g. if you work in healthcare or grocery, you can share multiple data points that show that those industries tend to be minimally affected by a recession) or what you are doing to pivot and stay agile even if a recession does come.
2.      Incorporate your team in the innovation process when it comes to identifying ways to cut costs and increase revenue (laying people off has a very negative impact on employee morale and confidence).
3.      Understand the risks and benefits because if your team is unsuccessful at effectively pivoting, your employees will understand why they are being laid off. The benefit of incorporating your team in the innovation process is that they will feel that they had a chance (an opportunity!) to help be a part of the solution that turned the company around as opposed to being left in the dark and then one day getting laid off.

The key when identifying the opportunities to innovate and pivot is to explicitly lay out the risk tolerance you have for ideas. You may not have a million dollars to test out every idea, but you might have $1,000 and that could be enough to garner some early data points of success or failure. Risk tolerance also applies to legal risk. Our executive in our mastermind group is in the healthcare space which has rules and regulations companies must follow. It is critical that your team understands those rules and regulations before trying different ideas.

·        Set up both team and 1:1 meetings to meet with your direct reports to ask them if they have concerns and if so, what concerns do they have. Don’t avoid the conversation because a solution is unknown.  
·        Once you have gathered all of the concerns shared, craft a response for each concern. A response could be why the current way the company operates won’t be affected by the concern proposed, a potential solution that is being implemented that should alleviate the concern, or incorporate them in the solution process to help alleviate the concern as a group.
·        Clearly lay out a plan for your team for what the next 3, 6, 9, and 12 months will look if a recession has little to no effect on the company, a moderate effect on the company, and a major effect on the company. The worst thing you can give your team is uncertainty so crafting this projection allows them to fully understand and prepare for the worst possible outcome (which is never as scary as the unknown negative possibilities they could come up with in their minds).

Regardless of whether or not you are right, people will follow those that are certain. Certainty can come in the form of processes, inclusion in the solution, metrics that show why things will be fine, or projections for the best, moderate, and worst-case scenarios. 

As a leader of people during times of uncertainty, you must give people certainty.
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How to Build a Company Culture Where Employees Feel Comfortable Challenging Leaders

Healthy conflict is critical to team success
Grace Tripathy
Tue 27 September 2022
Incentivizing your employees to feel free to give feedback and challenge ideas doesn’t just happen. 
Many long-standing organizations such as Kodak, Sears, and Borders have failed to adapt to the reality of today’s world and have found themselves becoming irrelevant. 
One of the reasons is that the leaders did not receive valuable information that may have helped the organization turn around. 
Many leaders find themselves in a vacuum, unwilling to receive or seek information crucial to the health of their organization. 
In today’s highly competitive, fast-moving environment, businesses need to have everyone, and their ideas, on board. It is crucial to develop an environment that promotes and encourages constant feedback and to challenge ideas at all levels. 
According to Vip Sandhir, CEO and founder of High Ground, creating a challenge culture is key to employee engagement and an organization’s growth and future.
'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni digs deep into five interrelated issues that undermine the performance of a team all in some way. So here are the 5 dysfunctions of a team and ways we recommend to counter them.
 
●       Issue 1: Absence of Trust. Without trust, teams cannot be completely honest with each other.
 
Solution: Confidence and building a team bond. Honesty, openness, and respect are key communication attributes of a successful culture, specifically in building trust. A culture of trust can do remarkable things for an organization. 
People who trust each other are more productive, feel a higher degree of loyalty to their team and organization, and are also known to give outstanding service.
 
What does trust look like in a workplace?
-        Confidence. If you are a person your colleagues or clients can trust, that means they have confidence in you. Confidence to:
-        Make decisions or work autonomously
-        Lead
-        Advise
-        Move up or take on more responsibilities
-        Be authentic
-        Have their back!
 
Developing trust and comfort is all about teams working together intelligently to achieve better results, reduce individual stress and create a successful culture that promotes customer loyalty. It’s where teams build collaborative relationships, communicate openly, and identify strategies for moving forward, quickly and easily, as a cohesive unit to its full potential.
 
It’s built through a process of establishing good habits in effective communication at all levels.
 
 
●       Issue 2: Fear of Conflict. Without trust, teams cannot have the healthy debate that is necessary to arrive at better understanding and decisions.
 
Solution: Feedback and strengthening your team performance helps facilitate a safe environment for authentic conversation that has space for safe conflict.
 
Feedback in dysfunctional organizations comes across as confrontational, feedback in organizations with successful cultures is regular, informal, constructive, and safe.
Safety is a fundamental human need. Your team needs to know where they stand over the short and long term. One of the best ways a team leader can do this is to provide regular feedback on performance and clarify goals, especially during times of change. The trouble with feedback is that it is often heard as criticism which could counter the feeling of safety.
Start incorporating a culture where feedback is welcomed and acknowledged for the powerful fuel it is for breakthroughs in growth and development. Set up the right environment for casual, non-confrontational feedback.
 
●       Issue 3: Lack of Commitment. If a team is not aligned with a decision, then it can naturally be difficult for everyone to be behind and committed to that decision.
 
Solution: Not everyone in the team is going to agree all the time, and nor should they but they do all need space for healthy debate. A safe space where they can say “convince me” if they need to.
 
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shared his "disagree and commit" approach to healthy debate within teams in this Inc article. ‘to "disagree and commit" doesn't mean "thinking your team is wrong and missing the point," which will prevent you from offering true support. Rather, it's a genuine, sincere commitment to go the team's way, even if you disagree. 
Of course, before you reach that stage, you should be able to explain your position, and the team should reasonably weigh your concerns. But if you decide to disagree and commit, you're all in. No sabotaging the project, directly or indirectly. By trusting your team's gut, you give them room to experiment and grow, and your people gain confidence.
Having defined the right core values for your business and your team is also one of the best ways to keep your team on track and working toward commitment and your ultimate goals. 
 
●       Issue 4: Avoidance of accountability. If they are not committed to the course of action, then they are less likely to feel accountable (or hold other people accountable).
 
Solution: Follow these 5 accountability actions:
-        Giving up excuses.
-        Giving up blame.
-        Seeking Solutions.
-        Doing something. Anything!
-        Keeping score on yourself.
 
There are many roads to success, whatever form you hope that success to be, but the one action common for every single successful person, team, or organization is accountability.
Where someone has not held themselves accountable, and the other team members can call out less than optimal behaviors, actions, or a ‘dropping of the ball’; then you have true team accountability. 
 
●       Issue 5: Inattention to results. This, according to the book, is considered the ultimate dysfunction of a team and refers to the tendency of team members to care about something other than the collective goal.
 
Solution: Be inspired as a team, by your team’s mission. Being a mission-driven team will allow you and your team to bond and work together at greater levels of impact in order to achieve a common goal (your mission) together, allowing your bond as a team to strengthen. 
 
Let’s look at the value of a straight question like: Why do we come to work?
Most people when asked ‘why do you come to work?’ Will first answer “money.” But that's not the real reason why. That is not the motivation for getting up at 6:30 in the morning, rushing around, organizing kids, or ironing shirts the night before. It's because of the kids, or the house deposit they are saving for, or the next mission to help in a developing country. That's the “why.” Every person has a “why.”
That's the reason why they get out of bed every morning. And when a team is engaged in each other’s why, they then understand why they should help each other. There’s an understanding of what their teammate is working towards.
According to Ambition In Motion’s Work Orientation, some people are motivated by work/life balance, some people are motivated by growth and learning new skills, and some people are motivated by having a positive impact on the world. You can learn your Work Orientation here.
At its highest level, this is understanding each other's “why” and helping each other achieve individual goals together. Championing each other to be the best and to have the best.
When team members know why and what they are each striving for personally, and from an organizational view, they will be focused on the right results. Each person will not be focused only on their own goals; they will be working to help their colleagues meet theirs too.
 
How can the 5 Dysfunctions of a team help you?
If your team is struggling, start breaking down the issues. Take a look at the 5 dysfunctions of a team to see if you recognize anything. Then get to work on understanding what's happening for the team personally and professionally.
If you are seeking help with implementing the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team with your executive team, reach out to [email protected] to see how Ambition In Motion can help your executive team implement the methodologies taught in the book.
Read

How to Make Performance Improvement Plans Better

Let's remove the stigma around performance improvement plans and leverage them for what they are meant to accomplish
Malhar Lakshman
Tue 27 September 2022
When a company has a direct report that isn’t necessarily meeting expectations, its managers generally take action. This is not an unreasonable process, since a direct report that isn’t performing can cause complications for the rest of the team members. One of the most frequent actions taken by a manager, or potentially even Human Resources, is what is known as a Performance Improvement Plan, or a PIP. 

               The main goal of a Performance Improvement Plan is to correct an employee’s issues that management has grievances with. At least, that’s how they are perceived on paper. In actuality, PIPs are often used as a way to either remove responsibilities from a direct report or as a way to force an employee to quit of their own volition, thereby attempting to negate the need for unemployment. According to Lawyer Mike Carey, a Connecticut-based employment law attorney, only 5% to 10% of employees stay with a company after starting a PIP. 

               In many workplaces, leaders view a PIP as a “gateway” to getting that person off the team.

What else is wrong with a PIP?

               There are several problems with PIPs:

·        PIPs provide no formal legal protection- Employees under a PIP can still choose to go to litigation for wrongful termination or a hostile work environment. 
·        PIPs often cause additional work for team members- PIPs often mean that employees have reduced responsibilities to display improvement and competence, which often means that their removed responsibilities are passed along to their peers.
·        PIPs require a large amount of maintenance and supervision- A properly set up PIP with a responsible and empathetic manager requires near-constant communication and monitoring, which not only burns time but also can be overwhelming for the employee.

Can a PIP be beneficial?

               The modern-day definition of the Performance Improvement Plan, as stated above, is not sustainable, and overall, just doesn’t benefit employees or employers in any way.  However, a modified format of this plan can work but will be strongly dependent on how willing a manager is to assist the employee. 

How to determine if a PIP is appropriate to use

               The first step of a PIP should be to determine if it is even a good idea to implement or attempt to start. 

1)      Is termination the end goal? Or is the employee too good of a potential asset to consider terminating? Depending on a manager’s answers to these questions, a PIP may not be appropriate. The goal of a Performance Improvement Plan is to Improve employee performance, not intimidate them out of a position. If a manager is already dead-set on terminating an employee, it is better to do so than to attempt to not only patch this relationship and try to repair preconceived opinions. 
2)      Certain issues are better handled with a formal structured plan, while others will not benefit from that. If a direct report is having trouble with meeting deadlines, or similar performance issues, a performance improvement plan will be a good option. However, if they are encountering disciplinary issues, such as fighting with other staff, or insubordination, an improvement plan would not be the best option.
3)      Empathy can go a long way in regard to staff not necessarily meeting expectations. If a manager notices that one of their direct reports undergoes a sudden change in attitude, while also displaying signs of anxiety or depression, it may be best to have a 1:1 with them. Employees have personal lives as well, and issues can easily trickle over from the personal to professional realms. Managers should use this 1:1 to see if there are any underlying factors or circumstances that may have caused this decrease in quality from their subordinates.

Setting up a Performance Improvement Plan

               When setting up a performance improvement plan, a manager should be straight to the point with their direct reports. This conversation should include the following aspects:

·        Who- This refers to not only who will be undergoing this performance improvement plan, but also to whom they will report, as well as a contact for them within Human Resources.
·        What- This will include information such as what a performance improvement plan is since most direct reports will have a different outlook on PIPs in comparison to management.
·        Why- This will generally entail an explanation as to why the employee is being forced to undergo this PIP.  This explanation should include quantitative data, such as how often work was handed in after a deadline or a percentage of tasks that they have done that were deemed incomplete or lacking.
·        How- This would include what would be known as the “Terms and Conditions.” This will be further expanded on, but in short, the Terms and Conditions include what an employee will be required to do as part of their improvement plan. In addition to this, the terms should explicitly go into detail about what will happen if further expectations aren’t met. This is most often termination. While termination is not the desired outcome of a PIP, it is still a potential outcome, and often an option after this process.

The Terms of a Performance Improvement Plan

               The goal of a PIP is once again, to improve an employee’s performance, and help them either learn new skills or rectify previously known misconstructions. Therefore, a set of goals should be set for this employee to attempt. Similar to the goals that a manager should have, these should all be SMART Goals. As a note of reference, SMART Goals are designated as Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

·        Specific allows a manager to put more explicit details on their goals, such as what they may pertain to.
·        Measurable means that there is a quantitative element to the goal
·        Attainable means that these goals are actually possible to do
·        Relevant refers to how the goal relates to company goals and mindsets
·        Time-Bound means that there is a chronological element to the goal

Here are some examples of goals that can be proposed to prospective PIP targets.

·        Employee A must have a task competition rate of at least 75% over the next three weeks
·        Employee F must conclude 85% of their training modules within the next 2 weeks
·        Employee must increase their customer conversion rate to at least 5 customers per week by the start of next month. 

One great way to measure and track these goals you are measuring with an employee you have put on a performance improvement plan is with AIM Insights.

With this advice, a manager should be able to start, create, and implement a PIP. These can be difficult to follow through with but will help not only the company but also the employee. 

 

Read

How Managers Can Lead Under Pressure

Here are some tips on what managers can do to handle pressure
Grace Tripathy
Thu 6 October 2022
As economies are changing, the pressure to perform as a leader has intensified. Many companies are merging teams together or raising quotas/metrics for success that are difficult to achieve.
The demanding situations and crises you face over the course of your management career are likely to be the moments that define who you are as a leader. How you act in these scenarios can impact how your employees and co-workers remember you. 
Surrounded with elements of pressure, how can you, as a manager, combat these pressures? 
Jordan Christiansen of Crucial Learning sites that it’s common for leaders to react poorly in high-stress situations. Specifically, 53 percent become more closed-minded and controlling during times of crisis, instead of open and curious. A further 43 percent become more angry and heated.
As a leading manager, learning how to control yourself and maintain a level head during challenging times will serve you well over the course of your career. But that can be easier said than done. Here are three techniques that can help you manage your team during a crisis while also keeping calm.
 
  1. Communicating effectively with employees
As a manager, there can often be an element of distance from the rest of the team. This creates one of the biggest challenges for managers: bridging the distance with effective and timely communication skills.
Good managers need to develop advanced listening and speaking skills as they play a huge role in the success of their team. “A lack of interdepartmental communications” has been found to be one of the biggest causes of stress for UK employees in 2020. This means that when a manager isn’t communicating well with their team about business matters or individual progress, not only could it be damaging the manager-employee relationship, but it could also be greatly adding to employees’ work-related stress.
 
How to overcome this:
Everyone communicates differently; some methods of communication may work well for some employees, but won’t work for others. 
The best way to overcome any communication blockers is to discover the different personality types in your team.
Conducting personality tests and tests to uncover Work Orientation[1]  is a great way to find each team member’s strengths and weaknesses, how these different personality types communicate best and what they’ll respond best to.
2. Confronting performance problems
Performance problems are always going to be a concern for any manager. But in today’s fierce business environment, if your teams aren’t performing to a high standard, a competitor could easily come in and take your business.
You need to get to the root of any problems quickly. But be careful about getting the results you need and while avoiding damaging any relationships with your team members in the process. 
If you put your “strict manager” hat on too soon, you risk damaging the trust with other members of your team too.
 
How to overcome this:
If employees don’t have clear targets and goals in place, it can be easy to fall short of what is expected.
Clearly communicate targets and outline expected results to each of your team members. This way, if any results are falling short, you’re able to tackle the problem head-on by comparing expectations to actual performance.
Make sure that you’re continuously monitoring actual performance in comparison to these set targets. You can then spot any problems early on and provide constructive feedback – helping to avoid larger issues down the line.
If performance doesn’t improve, this is the time to follow up with a clear and fair discipline process.
3. Managing conflicts within your team
In a dream world, your team works well together. They’re great collaborators, feel comfortable being creative together and get on socially. Unfortunately, this dream doesn’t always come true. And when a conflict arises between two colleagues, it can be felt throughout the team.
When conflicts aren’t resolved, they can quickly affect productivity and morale, and even lead to top performers leaving the company. Managers are tasked with nipping any conflicts in the bud early before they become bigger concerns.
 
How to overcome this:
When a conflict between team members arises, it's important that you fully understand the issue before you take any action. A conflict over an area of work can be healthy and can actually lead to more innovative thinking and solutions, but it’s your job to nurture the conflict into a productive direction.
When a conflict between colleagues is personal, you should step in before it begins to affect the working relationship and the rest of the team.
One way to navigate conflict is to remind your team of your company’s culture and values. When your company’s values are built around trust, respect, and positivity, and you hire for these values, personal conflicts based on personality should be minimized.
Communicating these expectations from the start will make the type of behavior you expect and will tolerate clear during the recruitment process. This means there’s little room for deviation in the workplace.
 
4. Creating calm and reassurance in periods of turbulence
As businesses are developing and changing, they can bring a wealth of exciting opportunities. Unfortunately, these can occasionally bring less exciting consequences too.
Today’s fast-paced business environment includes scenarios such as redundancies. These situations can cause feelings of uncertainty, confusion, and frustration among teams, which managers have the extreme difficulty job of handling.
 
How to overcome this:
If a redundancy situation arises, it’s likely that, even as a manager, you may not know all the information until any final decisions have been made.
At this time your main priority becomes reassuring your employees and openly communicating what you can.
When you keep communication open with your employees and you welcome questions, you’ll keep their trust and reduce their frustrations as much as you can.
In turn, they’ll be reassured that when you know of any updates, they’ll know of them as well.
 
5. The fight against burnout
One of the hot topics in the business world over the past year has been burnout. A recent survey by Gallup found that out of 7,500 full-time employees, 23% said they felt burnout more often than not, with an additional 44% feeling burnt out sometimes. As a manager, finding the balance between great performance and taking care of both your own and your team’s health is vitally important.
Managers that don’t take time away from work and never recharge their batteries end up burning out. Not only does this harm your own well-being and engagement, but it also sets an unrealistic example for your employees.
When managers act in this way, a culture that normalizes overworking can sweep through the office, ultimately damaging productivity and morale.
 
How to overcome this:
People are at their most productive when they’re refreshed, happy and healthy. And, no surprise, this doesn’t come from working overly long hours or taking on extreme workloads.
Set an example by taking regular breaks and using your annual leave to recharge your batteries. When you do this, you let your employees know that you want them to do the same.

Read

How to Motivate Employees During Uncertain Times

Leading during times of uncertainty is critical to getting the most from our teams
Malhar Lakshman
Thu 6 October 2022
In a workplace setting, a manager is often viewed as the figurehead of the team, and sometimes even the company. The energy a manager gives is often reciprocated by their staff. A manager serves in a position similar to a quarterback for a football team. Not only are they often calling the shots for the business but are also responsible for setting the tone of the workplace. Managers are also the first tier when delivering employee engagement. As the adage goes ‘People don’t quit jobs. They quit bosses.’

               Employee motivation is defined as the way that a company fosters the daily amount of enthusiasm, energy level, commitment, and amount of creativity an employee brings to the table each day.  This can make a very large difference in employee retention and productivity rates. According to TeamStage and Gallop, motivated employees are 87% less likely to leave their company. At the same time, 81% of employees are thinking about quitting their jobs for better offers. Retaining employees can be hard enough while also striving to motivate them. These issues are often compounded when a company isn’t doing very well.

                Many employees feel engaged in their work based on their company’s success. The better a company does, the more motivation they have for their company mindset. Conversely, if a company is doing poorly, some employees may not be as interested in the company. As a result, they are not only more likely to leave, but also to not have the same standards for their work. So the key question is, “how does a manager engage employees without the company success to assist in engagement?”

Motivating Your Employees- The Platinum Rule

               Regardless of company success, managers have many ways to still continue to engage their employees. In 1996, Troy Alessandra and Michael O’Connor published a book known as “The Platinum Rule.” This rule differs from the Golden Rule of “Treat others as you want to be treated” and instead flips it to “Treat others how THEY want to be treated.” The reasoning for this is that not everyone will want to be treated the same way. Imagine this scenario:

               Manager A has two direct reports, B and C. Manager A is a former direct report that received a promotion and much public recognition for a hard-working attitude and success. She enjoyed the recognition and was looking for a promotion, so her rewards were very fitting. B and C have both been working very hard, and A would like to reward them in the same way that she had been. While C welcomed the attention, B started to pull away from everyone, and loathed the additional responsibilities of management.

               The Platinum Rule states that individuals should treat others the way that they want to be treated and ignores the fatal flaw of the Golden Rule. Not every individual wants to be treated the same way as you do. In the same way that direct reports have Work Orientation, they also have different preferences. A good manager should be able to see how an employee likes to be acknowledged and rewarded, and then act accordingly. This also gives direct reports a feeling of being recognized and valued. According to ApolloTechnical, a site specializing in HR Studies, “91% of HR Professionals believe that recognition and reward make employees more likely to stay.”
        

Utilizing The Platinum Rule

Getting to know employees as a manager and being open to communication can completely change how they feel about their occupation. While the Platinum Rule makes sense in theory, here are some ways that it can be utilized within the workplace.

1)      Talk about communication preferences – Everyone has a different method of preferred communication, while some may view it differently than others. Some people personally prefer to minimize communication to professional discussions, while some of professionals prefer to send memes and personal items in work group chats. Regardless, by opening that communication channel, we are able to use our Slack professionally, and they have added their own channel just to joke around, which others can mute. 
2)      Learn about your Employees - Using a good 1:1 can completely change a coworker dynamic for the better. Understanding what motivates them, what their goals are, what type of support they need, and what they enjoy working with can allow you as a manager to then tailor work for them that they will get the most enjoyment out of. It also opens the door for you to create better incentive programs for them.

Company Incentives

               A company not necessarily doing so well doesn’t always mean that managers can’t afford to help provide incentives for their employees. Not every incentive needs to be financial. While it is important to financially benefit employees, there are other ways to incentivize them without breaking the bank.

·        Casual Friday- In a Five Day work week, with about 50 to 60 hours a week, most people are tired and want nothing more than to relax by the time a weekend comes around. Removing or easing a corporate dress code can allow them to be as comfortable as possible while still being productive. In addition to this, managers should try to make tasks distributed over the course of the week, with more tasks toward the front of the week, allowing direct reports to ease into the weekend.
·        Time off and longer breaks- Time off can be worth its money in gold- especially around holidays. Employees coming back from time off are often much more motivated to work, and are more likely to stay on with a team.
·        Sponsoring education- This may be more expensive, and not necessarily available for every company. However, allowing opportunities for employees to receive higher education can completely change their life, and allow them to be a better worker.

Just because a company isn’t doing well at one point in time doesn’t mean that it won’t get better for them. However, losing a motivated employee base can mean a death sentence for a company. Appeal to the staff, and get to know how they are motivated, and follow up with them. It will make a massive difference. 

Read

What Drives Employees at Work: Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation

Knowing what drives our employees is critical to getting the most from our team
Grace Tripathy
Wed 12 October 2022
Do you ever find yourself or your team in a rut? Maybe this is an often occurrence, or maybe it happens sporadically. How can you maintain team motivation?
Workplace motivation can be broken down into two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic.
Intrinsic motivation is the desire to accomplish goals and develop professionally. Extrinsic motivation involves work factors such as pay and promotions. 
Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are important ways of driving behavior. When you understand the differences between the two types of motivation, you also gain a better understanding of how to encourage people.
Knowing how to motivate yourself and others is imperative to getting things done and reaching goals. Identifying your internal and external motivators can help you be more efficient, feel more satisfied and achieve growth in your career. 
 
What is intrinsic motivation?
Intrinsic motivation is when you feel inspired or energized to complete a task because it’s personally rewarding. In other words, you're performing the activity because of some internal drive as opposed to an external force or reward. 
With intrinsic motivation, the behavior itself becomes the reward. 
 
What is extrinsic motivation?
Extrinsic motivation is when you’re inspired to perform a task either to earn a reward or to avoid punishment. In the case of extrinsic motivation, you're not completing the task because you like it or find it satisfying. 
Instead, you're completing it because you think you'll avoid something unpleasant or you'll get something in return.
 
What are the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?
The main difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is that intrinsic motivation comes from within and extrinsic motivation comes from outside. 
However, the two types of motivation can also differ in their level of effectiveness.
Extrinsic motivation is beneficial in some cases. For example, working toward a reward of some kind can be helpful when you need to complete a task you might normally find unpleasant.
While extrinsic motivation is helpful in certain situations, it may eventually lead to burnout or lose its effectiveness over time. Intrinsic motivation is typically more effective long term for completing tasks and achieving goals in a way that makes you feel fulfilled. 
Here are some comparisons between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation:
 
Intrinsic motivation:
-        Cleaning your house because you like it tidy
-        Reading a book about a subject that interests you
-        Playing trivia because you like the challenge
-        From a work perspective, this could be choosing a pay cut to work for a nonprofit you are passionate about
 
Extrinsic motivation:
-        Cleaning your house so your house guests don’t label you as “messy”
-        Reading a book because you have to for work
-        Playing trivia because you want to win a prize 
-        From a work perspective, this could be choosing a job because of the pay
 
 
How can intrinsic and extrinsic motivation be used effectively in the workplace?
            Daniel Pink is a modern writer on business & management, with a strong focus on the changing nature of work and the workplace. 
His book published in 2009, “Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” focuses on the importance and effectiveness of three intrinsic elements to motivation at work: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Pink argues that the evidence of scientific studies on motivation and rewards suggests that, for any work task that involves more than the most basic cognitive challenge, basic financial reward systems do not work. In fact, they can lead to worse performance.
He accepts that money is a motivator at work, but once people perceive that they are paid fairly, then they become much more motivated by intrinsic elements. Once people are paid fairly, they look for more from their work.
This is why Pink concludes that autonomy, mastery and purpose are the most influential aspects of motivation.
 
Autonomy 
According to Pink, autonomy is the desire to direct our own lives. Pink argues that allowing employees autonomy runs counter to the traditional view of management which wants employees to "comply" with what is required of them.
However, if managers want employees to be more engaged in what they are doing (and they should - as tasks become more complicated) then allowing employees autonomy (self-direction) is better.
For example, some firms allow employees to have time at the workplace to do whatever they want. This freedom to spend time doing their own thing leads to many more innovative ideas and solutions.
The growth of flexible working practices is another good example of allowing staff more autonomy.
 
Mastery
Pink argues that humans love to "get better at stuff" - they enjoy the satisfaction from personal achievement and progress. Allowing employees to enjoy a sense of progress at work contributes to their inner drive.
By contrast, a lack of opportunity at work for self-improvement or personal and professional development is liable to make employees more bored and unmotivated.
A key implication for managers is to set tasks for employees that are neither too easy or excessively challenging. Pink calls such tasks "Goldilocks tasks,” otherwise known as tasks that are not "too hot or too cold.”
 
Purpose
Pink describes purpose as the desire to do things in service of something larger than ourselves. He also argues that people intrinsically want to do things that matter.
For example, entrepreneurs are often intrinsically motivated to "make a difference" rather than simply aiming for profit maximization.
Most of us spend more than half our waking hours at work. We want that time to matter.
In addition, employees need to know and understand the mission and goals of the organization and appreciate how their work and role fits into what the organization is about.
 
 
Intrinsic motivation
You can apply intrinsic motivation in several ways at work. Providing and receiving positive feedback is often an effective way to increase motivation. 
If you're interested in fostering intrinsic motivation among your team, consider the following:
 
●       For managers: To support intrinsic motivation among your team, be intentional with your feedback. Constructive criticism can help your team understand your standards and expectations while working together to achieve a goal or complete objectives effectively. Be sure you're not giving an abundance of praise for work that's not meaningful to your team. AIM Insights is a tool managers can use to help them give intentional feedback and ask intentional questions.
●       For employees: As an employee, you should consistently tell managers when and how their feedback helps you to be motivated. Consider positive feedback when their guidance was particularly helpful, which can help intrinsically motivate them to continue managing you successfully because they feel satisfied about the positive effect of their efforts. 
 
Extrinsic motivation 
In some settings, extrinsic motivation is necessary for day-to-day work. Extrinsic rewards like bonuses, commissions, or prizes may be the preferred way to promote interest in certain difficult or unfulfilling tasks. 
To successfully use extrinsic motivation, consider the following:

●       For managers: When you want to use extrinsic motivation as a manager, it's important to offer rewards strategically. While external rewards can effectively motivate your team to take on a new challenge, learn a new skill, or hit a quarterly goal, you should also make sure you're giving them the resources necessary to take on projects and skills they're passionate about.
●       For employees: Work for the rewards that please you, but be aware of your limits and take breaks when you need them. Reflect on what is motivating you and notify your manager about any lack of resources or misdirection that impedes the proper motivation, and therefore, reward.
Read

How Managers Get Employees to Take Initiative

Understanding intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivators is critical to being a great leader
Grace Tripathy
Fri 4 November 2022
We often display a natural tendency to put our own needs before others.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. As Psychology Today's Lisa Firestone notes, "Maintaining a certain regard for ourselves and engaging in self-compassion and self-care are actually fundamental to creating a good life for ourselves and the people who matter most to us."
Focusing on our own needs can protect us from burnout and other negative consequences. However, from a leadership perspective, this focus often crosses into a decidedly more selfish territory. In today's complicated workplace, if you don't put the needs of others before your own, you will lose in the long-term. 
If losing in the long-term isn't big enough, when you put the needs of others before your own as a leader you do two big things.
 
1.     Create an inspiring place to work
A leader who puts others first creates an uplifting, motivating culture that inspires confidence among their employees. 
These leaders maintain a high view of their people, show them respect, and listen receptively to their needs in a nonjudgmental way. This is powerful for a team’s positive performance environment as it instills a trust in the employees’ strengths, abilities, potential, and commitment to the job. 
This doesn't mean that you're going to become best friends with your employees. 
What it does mean, however, is that you will be continuously engaged in making sure that each team member has the resources they need to perform their job effectively. It means you will create a safe environment where everyone feels valued.
When you show genuine care for your employees' needs, as opposed to an obsession with the bottom line, you will enjoy better retention rates and productivity as everyone buys into the company culture.
 
2.     Improve the potential for widespread impact
When a leader focuses on their own needs, they limit their influence. Focusing on the needs of others is just good business sense. 
Additionally, leaders who put others first want to see them succeed. They understand that an employee's success doesn't threaten or diminish their position.
Instead, it creates new opportunities for growth. Taking on the role of a coach or mentor may not directly benefit your career, but it can help a new employee improve their skills so they can become a stronger contributor to the team.
When you focus on fulfilling employees' needs, they will be better able to meet their responsibilities toward your customers, putting your brand in a better position to reach its goals.
 
Instilling Intrinsic Motivation 
Adapting to a "people-first" mindset may be a bit of a challenge, but it can be done.
Start by getting to know your employees. Understand their challenges and concerns, as well as the things they're excited about. The better you get to know your team, the easier it will be to identify ways you can improve their experience in the workplace.
The leaders of people-centric companies understand that it’s people who make their company successful. These companies realize that when people feel valued and cared for, they do their work with stronger intrinsic motivation, a deeper sense of meaning, and a greater level of engagement. They go the extra mile simply because they want to contribute to an organization that cares about them.
The more you do to foster a positive, supportive atmosphere, the easier it will be for employees to feel like they can bring up concerns or new ideas. Giving everyone a voice by prioritizing their needs will cultivate a productive environment that allows everyone to succeed.
 
Intrinsic Motivation vs. Extrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivation is behavior driven by internal or intrinsic desire. 
In other words, it’s the motivation to engage in behavior that arises from within the individual rather than from without. This means that the motivation comes solely from oneself and not from external forces such as incentives like compensation or praise.
This is connected to the social psychology and self-determination theory, which is a framework for the study of motivation and suggests people become self-determined when their needs for competence, connection, and autonomy are filled. 
Intrinsic needs, like job satisfaction and human connection, stem from the self-determination theory and often drive us to do our best work. Intrinsic motivation can also improve team engagement, because it involves seeking out activities that bring us internal joy and help create purpose. 
Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, refers to behavior that is driven by external rewards or punishment rather than internal desires. This means external motivation can be both rewards-based and fear-based, as long as there is an external force driving the motivation.
Let’s break down the differences between the two: 
 
●       Intrinsic motivation is the means of finding satisfaction within yourself. Intrinsic motivators might include curiosity or taking on a new challenge.  
●       Extrinsic motivation involves avoiding external punishment or seeking rewards. External factors that motivate team members can include extrinsic rewards—such as sales incentives or performance merits.
 
Human motivation is inherently different from person to person, which means the types of effective motivation will also vary from team to team. While one person may respond better to intrinsic factors, another might respond better to extrinsic factors. The key is to consider your team's needs and what’s best for their well-being.
 
Building a better tomorrow
Putting others' needs ahead of your own may feel counterintuitive. But to become a successful business leader, it is a crucial trait that you will need to develop. By focusing on the needs of your employees, you can inspire better performance. 
When you focus on people, rather than numbers, you will be far better positioned to achieve the desired results.
 
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Why investing in your leaders is a great retention strategy

Leadership development is critical to a company effectively scaling
Grace Tripathy
Fri 20 January 2023
Do You Have an Intentional Leadership Development Strategy?
 
As Henry Ford once said, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”
 
Henry Ford’s words have never been more pertinent as organizations struggle to hang onto their top performers in this economy. And though it’s tempting to instinctively go for that new external hire with a lot of ideas, what if there was already an internal leader poised for the challenge?
 
Leadership development strategies will not only prepare future leaders but improve talent retention across the organization. 
 
When evaluating your own leadership development programs and strategies, there’s only one approach that will set you apart and improve talent performance and retention – and it can be applied to any strategy you already have in place.
 
Why Is Leadership Development Important?
 
Leadership development is important because it helps your employees grow. It teaches them how to lead while developing leadership skills and qualities to become better leaders today - and for the future.
 
Leadership development aims to develop an individual's skills and abilities for leadership. It can be done in many ways, such as through on-the-job training, mentoring or coaching, and self-development.
 
Another reason leadership development is essential is that it helps organizations grow while they develop their employees' skill sets. In addition, it helps businesses better understand what they need to do to succeed in the future.
 
Furthermore, it helps individuals understand how they can advance in their careers, take on more responsibility, and become more successful while earning a higher salary.
 
Employees who can develop their skills and become more effective will be able to serve your organization and its customers better. They will also feel more fulfilled in their jobs, which makes them more likely to stick around longer.
 
Leadership development helps employees learn new skills and become more effective, which improves their performance as well as the performance of those around them. This can positively impact the bottom line if it leads to increased sales or improved customer satisfaction scores.
 
After all, high salaries are not the only thing that make employees want to stay. Top-performing employees want to be valued and appreciated for their hard work; relationships and continuous opportunities in the workplace to let their talent shine will motivate them to stay at a company, rather than to leave. 
 
Investing more time to tailor your leadership development strategy though is necessary to stay competitive and increase retention rates. The generic classes and training programs that have been a product of traditional leadership development strategies are not going to cut it. You must intentionally invest in each leader you’ve identified as a top talent. One way you can do that is provide them with executive coaching and metrics via AIM Insights.
 
Take the 70:20:10 Model for Learning and Development. The learning and development model corresponds to a proportional breakdown of how people learn effectively, based on a survey asking nearly 200 executives to self-report how they believed they learned:
 
●       70% from challenging assignments
●       20% from developmental relationships
●       10% from coursework and training
 
This illustrates that every leader learns differently. It’s important to customize your leadership development strategy based on how a top performer processes information. Not only will this better prepare your internal leaders for their career trajectory within the organization, but it’s also a unique benefit that will improve your organizational retention and offer them an incentive to refuse external offers.
 
Customize your Leadership Development Strategy to Fit Your Organization
 
Customizing your strategy should build on what you already have in place. For example, pair your top performers with a leadership consultant who can give real-time executive coaching in the moment, whether for general leadership development or while integrating into a new leadership role.
 
Companies often spend a lot of time, effort, and money investing into their technology, operations, and facilities. While these areas are important places to invest, these companies often end up ignoring the best investment opportunity: leadership development. 
 
Businesses that invest in their employees achieve more success more often than those businesses that do not invest consistently in their people. Studies have shown that employees who went through leadership training programs increased their capability by 25% and their performance by 20%. 
 
During the age of the “Great Resignation,” initiatives that focused on retaining employees were more important than ever. As referenced in this Cornell post, 94% of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development. 
 
Having effective leaders who invest in their people’s development is one of the best ways to reduce turnover rates and improve employee satisfaction. Happy employees are more productive, and that energy will resonate throughout the rest of the company. 
 
By training employees in best leadership practices throughout the organization, you create a culture that shows you are invested in the success of employees. 
 
Hayden Brown, CEO of Upwork, who is passionate about “re-engaging and activating the managers in the business,” especially with so many employees working remotely.
 
Upwork holds a monthly Zoom gathering called One Upwork Forum, where managers can share information with each other about changes their driving, DEI initiatives, and anything they’re struggling with. While this is a candid, peer-to-peer gathering, it’s sponsored by a rotating executive, someone “who’s willing to kind of nurture and be the voice and the champion” of the group, Brown told me.
 
As Brown put it: “I think that’s been a really great way to drive that engagement and have that group kind of helping each other as they’ve gone through so much change.”
 
Peer support, as opposed to top-down feedback, offers several benefits, including “insight into diverse perspectives,” “opportunities to practice new skills in a safe space,” and an “enduring support network.” Having managers practice their skills together is also another opportunity for professional development.
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AI In Goal Setting

This is what the future of goal setting looks like in companies
Garrett Mintz
Mon 17 April 2023
With the ChatGPT revolution upon us, many business leaders have been wondering if there can be a productive application of AI (artificial intelligence) within their business.

Sure, AI can help students plagiarize an essay into a good grade,
but can it help companies increase their teams’ productivity?

One option that my team at Ambition In Motion has been testing is
integrating AI into our goal setting system via our AIM Insights program.

Here’s how it works. Every month we ask the direct reports of a
leader to input their goals. We ask direct reports to determine their own goals
(as opposed to the manager) because research shows that people who set their
own goals are much more likely to achieve them. 

This has been a great system so far, but one challenge is that not
every employee is adept at consistently setting SMART (Specific, Measurable,
Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals. The issue is that while most
people can understand the idea of a SMART goal, it takes practice to get
comfortable setting and achieving SMART goals each month. 

Some managers believe that their employees are incapable of
setting SMART goals. In those cases, those managers are likely micromanaging
and haven’t figured out how to find a balance between their perfectionist
ideals and the practical reality. People are more than just automatons, and
that kind of treatment builds resentment and enables reactive behavior instead
of proactive behavior. 

Employees that can independently set their own SMART goals have a
massive ripple effect on the entire company. When employees set their own SMART
goals, their leader trusts them and doesn’t need to be constantly looking over
their shoulder to make sure they are on track. 

When leaders aren’t constantly looking over their direct reports’ shoulders,
they can effectively lead more people and focus on tasks that can have a
multiplying effect on the business. 

Lastly, both leaders and employees can achieve greater balance
with their work. As opposed to checking, re-checking, and re-checking again a
direct report’s work, the time both leaders and employees are working can be
effectively utilized and allow them to stop working at reasonable hours.

How do we get to a point where employees are autonomously setting
their own SMART goals?

AI!

When a manager sets goals with their direct reports, the manager
thinks that their direct reports are fully participating in the goal-setting
process but in reality, that manager is setting the goals for their direct
reports. Essentially, those managers are enabling their direct reports to not
think for themselves and come up with their own goals and instead tell them
what they want them to do.

This is micromanagement.

The best leaders share an objective that their team needs to
achieve and the key results that they believe it takes to achieve that outcome.
They then empower their direct reports to achieve those key results in whatever
fashion they deem fit. Remember, you are paying these people for their skills
and expertise: learn to trust their instincts.

This leadership style works when direct reports know how to
effectively set SMART goals. It falls flat when employees don’t know how to set
SMART goals.

The reason why AI can be so powerful in this process is the
immediacy of the feedback.

Behavior change and positive habit formation occur when one’s
pattern is disrupted and the feedback they receive is immediate.

Leaders could make themselves available immediately after a direct
report has set their goals to share their feedback on whether the goal is SMART
or not, but that is incredibly time-intensive and not conducive to the leader
achieving their own tasks that they need to focus on. There is interesting
research from Cal Newport on the mental residue people build when they switch
tasks throughout the day. If a leader were to take this route and make
themselves available every time an employee sets a new goal, they would be
constantly switching tasks, building mental residue, and diminishing their own
productivity.

Essentially, leaders are busy and there needs to be a better way
for employees to get immediate feedback on their goals.

AI changes all of that with the immediacy of feedback. In our AIM
Insights program, when employees set goals every month, our AI integration
gives those employees immediate feedback as to whether or not their goal is
SMART. If it is SMART, AIM Insights gives immediate positive reinforcement to
employees that their goal is SMART. If it is not SMART, AIM Insights gives
employees suggestions on how they can re-write that goal as a SMART goal. 

This AI integration into AIM Insights has increased the number of
SMART goals set by employees, their ability to autonomously set SMART goals on
their own, and subsequently, those employees’ and leaders’ productivity.

The ripple effect ramifications from this type of innovation can
be huge for the productivity of teams. Sure, employees will be more productive
in less time worked, but they will also be more resilient. 

Employees (and really everyone) tend to be resistant to change, so
when a company pivots their business model or the way they work, there is
always some amount of resistance that is met with the proposed change. 

When the process in which employees set goals doesn’t change, only
the objective, they are more likely to embrace the change in direction because
the way in which they set goals and achieve key results doesn’t change. The way
in which they work doesn’t materially change, only the objective and key results.
This makes for a more resilient team and that’s able to adapt to change. 

This can positively affect the way in which companies integrate
people and strategies during mergers and acquisitions, enter new business
opportunities and markets, succession plan and promote people, and any other
action that might disrupt the way in which employees currently work.

Companies and leaders that can quickly adopt AI into productive
applications will give themselves a major boost into the future.

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How to Effectively Ingratiate New Employees in the First 90 Days

The first 90 days are critical to building an engaging culture
Grace Tripathy
Fri 12 May 2023
Starting a new job can be an exciting and overwhelming experience. From meeting new colleagues to learning the ins and outs of a company, there are many new things to adjust to. For managers and leaders, it's important to understand how their employees feel during this onboarding period, and to provide the necessary support to help them succeed. Unfortunately, not all managers prioritize this aspect of leadership. 

Recently, a new hire, Samantha, at a Fortune 500 company was excited to start her new job as a marketing coordinator at a tech startup. She had high hopes and was eager to prove herself. However, when Samantha arrived on her first day, she was given a brief orientation and then left to figure things out on her own.

She didn't know who to turn to for guidance or how to navigate the company's systems. Samantha felt lost and unsupported, and it wasn't long before she began to feel frustrated and discouraged. Within a week and a half, Samantha quit her job.

This scenario highlights the importance of guidance and support for new employees. Managers and leaders must take the time to onboard and provide clear direction to new hires. Without proper guidance, employees like Samantha can quickly become overwhelmed and feel unsupported, leading to a high turnover rate.

The first 90 days of employment are critical for new hires as they adjust to their new work environment, culture, and expectations. It's important for managers to make the onboarding process as smooth and welcoming as possible to set the tone for a successful work experience. This includes checking in regularly with new employees to understand how they're feeling and what support they may need. When employees feel that their manager cares about their experience, they're more likely to feel engaged, committed, and productive.

It's crucial for managers to understand that the first few weeks of an employee's new job are crucial to their success in the role. By providing guidance and support, managers can help new hires feel more comfortable and confident in their new position, which can lead to increased job satisfaction and better long-term retention rates.

What steps can managers take to improve the onboarding process?

Managers can take several steps to support new employees and better understand their feelings during the onboarding period. 
  1. First and foremost, they should make themselves available for questions and provide clear expectations for what is expected of the employee. Regular check-ins can also help managers understand how the employee is feeling and address any concerns or challenges they may be facing. 

2. Additionally, providing opportunities for employees to meet with other team members and learn about the company culture can also be beneficial.

3. AIM Insights is a tool that can help managers track and understand the first 90-day onboarding period for new employees. AIM Insights is a platform that allows managers and leaders to gain insights into their team's performance and engagement levels, and provides actionable steps to improve their team's success. One of the most important features of AIM Insights is its ability to track the onboarding progress of new employees.

Through the use of surveys and other assessment tools, AIM Insights helps managers understand how new employees feel about their onboarding experience. This allows managers to identify any potential issues and take proactive steps to address them before they become bigger problems. For example, if a new employee feels overwhelmed by their workload or doesn't feel like they have received enough guidance, AIM Insights can help managers identify these issues early on and provide the necessary support to help the employee succeed.

In addition to helping managers understand how new employees feel, AIM Insights can also help new employees adjust to their new workplace. By providing personalized coaching and mentoring, AIM Insights can help new employees develop the skills they need to succeed in their role and feel more confident in their abilities. This can help new employees feel more comfortable in their new workplace and can improve their overall job satisfaction.

With the help of AIM Insights, managers can avoid similar situations and ensure that their new employees are set up for success. By tracking the onboarding progress of new employees and providing personalized coaching and mentoring, AIM Insights can help managers identify any potential issues early on and provide the necessary support to help new employees succeed.


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How to Improve the Performance of Middle Management with AIM Insights

Middle management performance is critical to the success of a company
Kendall Barndollar
Sat 9 September 2023
Most companies struggle with middle management because they are quick to promote but slow to train. Serving as the intermediary between executives and their direct reports, middle management bears the weight of demands from both sides. In this unique position, many managers struggle with role alignment, work-life balance, and effectively connecting with their teams. Upper-level leadership goals are communicated to managers with little direction on how to attain that particular result. Managers seem to be given an end destination without a map of how to get there, leaving most feeling misplaced. Learning how to face this unique set of challenges is a daunting task yet, critical for both personal and organizational growth.  

How can someone new to middle management learn how to efficiently please both executives and their direct reports? How can executives provide managers with a better roadmap to reach their desired destination?

Once promoted, every individual is faced with a particular set of challenges. Commonly, these challenges include communication changes, leadership difficulties, role ambiguity, and trouble managing a practical work-life balance. Receiving feedback from both upper management and direct reports can help new managers get acquainted with their roles. However, receiving this feedback on an annual or semi-annual basis is not frequent enough to show growth. To help managers become better acquainted in their role, consider utilizing AIM insights. AIM Insights is a tool that works to provide accessible, quantitative feedback metrics to managers and provide better organization-wide alignment resulting in an improvement of overall productivity. 

Managers commonly face problems with a lack of control and alignment. Executives create organizational goals and managers are left to carry them out with insufficient guidance on the direction of the company goal. Managers are left to execute the goals set by executive management even if they find them impractical, unattainable, or struggle to understand the purpose. AIM insights displays a variety of tools to help leadership within an organization communicate and achieve or even exceed goals with improved transparency and alignment that improves satisfaction and productivity while reducing turnover.

Beginning with communication, AIM insights works to help middle managers streamline communication with direct reports and improve communication with executives to better understand organization goals. Creating personalized communication plans that lead to a better connection between managers and their direct reports. AIM insights works with managers and executives to promote constructive feedback and drive continuous improvement, allowing teams to reach their full potential. 

Additionally, AIM insights works to create plans that improve transparency and accountability with managers and direct reports. This software will enable managers to be more transparent about big picture and long-term goals with direct reports that will in turn be more accountable and more loyal to their organization. Being able to employ year-round performance metrics will enable managers to address problems as they arise and quickly analyze their team to work in a more efficient and productive manner. The accessibility of this important quantitative information allows managers and even executives to be more adaptable and agile in strategy, smoothly addressing issues and pivoting to avoid problems along the way. 

Data-driven goal setting allows employees to set SMART goals that are certainly attainable and timely, with the help of their managers. These goals allow managers to better identify problems and leaders within their team, frequently eliminating bias that may occur in evaluations. Being able to align each employee's goals with the organization will quickly exhibit strengths and differentiate firms from their competitors. Having clearer purpose and transparency improves productivity, leading to higher goal achievement and increased employee satisfaction, leading to higher retention rates organization-wide.  

Another important point of AIM insights is the development of feedback. Generally, once promoted, managers may go a few months without receiving direct feedback on their job performance. AIM insights enables managers to view goals and feedback constantly, having access to goals and utilizing specific metrics that clearly demonstrate different aspects of the organization and directly align performance areas with leaders’ goals. Being able to use these concrete metrics provides clarity and encourages managers to hold themselves and their direct reports accountable for reaching their own goals. 

Job satisfaction and job performance are directly linked. So to improve job satisfaction, managers should feel fully equipped with the tools to have high performance. This will reduce turnover and boost the efficient use of company resources. In addition to these benefits that would specifically aid managers, improved job performance and job satisfaction is crucial for direct reports as well. Having managers who are strong leaders, know how to communicate well, and genuinely enjoy their jobs will lead to the same traits in their direct reports. Having AIM Insights to provide clarity on these individuals will allow for streamlined objectives and goal-setting, making it easier for both managers and their direct reports to enjoy their workdays and be as productive as possible while maintaining their team. 

AIM Insights is just one aspect from a catalog of different tools to improve the experience of middle management. In addition to AIM insights, consider implementing mentorship programs that help managers better understand what personal steps they may take to better their careers and goals. Furthermore, managers should focus on not only being mentees but also becoming a mentor for their direct reports. Mentorship within an organization should focus on giving back so each person can have a mentor and a mentee to learn from and give advice to. This will help develop camaraderie within the organization and focus on open communication that will benefit all employees. 

To help mitigate burnout and exhaustion in managers, consider the use of software like AIM Insights to create transparent and instant tools to aid in the achievement of organization-wide goals. AIM Insights works to provide long-term solutions to organization-wide problems, once beginning your use of AIM Insights, managers are trained and on-boarded with continual resources and tools on employing this interactive feedback tool. It is impossible to grow without feedback and, challenging to show growth from feedback with infrequent reviews or evaluations. Focus on effective feedback that helps professionals at every level grow into stronger leaders, teammates, and employees. 


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How to Effectively Enact Change as a New Leader

Getting team buy-in as a new leader is difficult
Grace Tripathy
Fri 9 February 2024
You've recently been appointed as the new team leader of a marketing department within a technology company. The team comprises experienced marketers who have been working together for several years. Your mandate is to revamp the marketing strategy to align with the company's new product roadmap. To effectively assess the talent of your team, you conduct one-on-one meetings with each team member to understand their expertise, interests, and career aspirations. 

Based on your assessments, you reallocate roles and responsibilities to leverage each team member's strengths. Additionally, you involve the team in brainstorming sessions to co-create the new marketing strategy, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment. Despite initial resistance to changes in processes and priorities, transparent communication, ongoing support, and tangible results help garner support from the team, leading to successful implementation of the revamped marketing strategy.

You were brought in for a reason: to make change. However, joining a pre-established team as a new leader requires a delicate balance of assessment, communication, and leadership. 

As a newly appointed team leader, your task is not only to assess the talent of your team but also to initiate constructive changes that align with organizational goals. While the team may already be familiar with one another, your presence signifies a need for transformation and improvement. 

Before you start making any changes or decisions, take some time to understand the current state of your team, the organizational culture, and the expectations of your stakeholders. Observe how your team works, communicate with them, and solicit feedback from others. Identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your team and your role. This will help you avoid making assumptions, identify potential challenges, and align your goals with the team and the organization. 

Without this crucial step in the process of your transition into the team, and the team’s adjustment to your presence, you may risk falling into the trap of implementing changes based on incomplete or inaccurate information. This could lead to resistance, confusion, and ultimately, failure to achieve desired outcomes. By taking the time to understand the current state of your team and the organizational context, you lay the groundwork for informed decision-making and effective leadership.

Strategies for the Adjustment:

  1. Establishing Credibility: As a new leader, you must quickly establish credibility and earn the trust of your team members. Without trust, it can be challenging to implement changes effectively.
  2. Assessing Existing Talent: Understanding the strengths, weaknesses, and potential of each team member is crucial for making informed decisions about team composition and task assignments.
  3. Navigating Existing Dynamics: Pre-established teams often have their dynamics, communication styles, and power structures. Navigating these dynamics while introducing changes requires finesse and diplomacy.
  4. Overcoming Resistance to Change: Resistance to change is natural, especially when team members are accustomed to a certain way of working. Overcoming this resistance requires clear communication, transparency, and involvement in decision-making processes.

3 Strategies for Success:

  1. Build Relationships and Conduct Talent Assessments:
Take the time to understand each team member individually, including their backgrounds, motivations, and aspirations. This builds rapport and lays the foundation for trust and collaboration. Simultaneously, utilize assessments, feedback sessions, and performance reviews to gain insights into their skills, strengths, and areas for improvement. Objective data will inform decisions about team composition and development initiatives.

2. Communicate Vision, Involve the Team, and Lead by Example:
Clearly communicate your vision for the team and expected outcomes, aligning goals with organizational objectives to provide context and direction. Foster a culture of inclusivity by involving team members in decision-making processes, soliciting their input, ideas, and feedback. This increases buy-in, promotes ownership, and cultivates accountability. Additionally, lead by example by demonstrating expected behaviors and values such as professionalism, communication, and adaptability, setting the tone for team culture.

3. Manage Change Gradually, Address Resistance Proactively, and Monitor Progress:
Introduce changes gradually, allowing time for adaptation and feedback, as incremental changes are often more palatable and less disruptive. Provide support and resources to facilitate the transition. Anticipate resistance to change and address it proactively by acknowledging concerns, providing rationale, and creating a safe space for open dialogue. Monitor progress continuously, soliciting feedback from team members and stakeholders to identify areas for improvement, and adapt your approach based on evolving circumstances.

Implementing these strategies enables new leaders to effectively navigate the transition, mitigate risks, and foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement within their teams.

By building relationships, conducting talent assessments, and involving the team in decision-making, you can effectively navigate existing dynamics and implement constructive changes. Remember to lead by example, manage change gradually, and address resistance proactively to foster a culture of trust, collaboration, and continuous improvement. With patience, empathy, and strategic vision, you can transform a group of individuals into a high-performing team capable of achieving organizational success.


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