Eye on the Workforce

In today's work environments, we should be adept at receiving, understanding and acting on communications via different channels, right? (Different channels being emails, face-to-face, telephone conversations and voice mail and so on.) I remember seeing guidance for older workers telling them not to be surprised to receive communications via text message from their younger boss. We are really evolving away from the need for constant face-to-face contact, aren't we?

To get a little more clarity on this, a team of researchers conducted a study of digital communications between supervisors and employees. The researchers were looking to see if "more digitally centered communication satisfies employee's needs regarding the communication with their supervisors and influences attitudes toward the supervisor and the job." That's a good objective because as project managers, we want to ensure that our communication is effective and that it helps (and motivates) project teams and workers to complete their tasks as expected.

In the study, the research team has employees evaluate communication quantity and quality, and even report on ideal use of communication channels. They measured three things:

• Employees’ job satisfaction
• Employees’ perceptions of their supervisors’ effectiveness
• Employees’ team identification

Here's a summary of what they found:

• Employees prefer face-to-face communication over email and telephone.
• Employees studied desired more face-to-face communication with their supervisors than they actually received.
• The more face-to-face communication that occurred between supervisors and employees, the more the employees had higher job satisfaction and team identification. The employees were also more likely to see their supervisor as more effective. There was a strong correlation in all three areas.

So project managers who are also supervisors of workers, take note. There appears to be good evidence for you to prioritize face-to-face contact. Could be good for your career.

Let me suggest that these results are also instructive for project managers who are not direct supervisors. A future study may find that there is not as strong a correlation for "dotted line" project manager communications, but I would wager that project managers who prioritize face-to-face communications over email and telephone are seen as more effective and have project teams with higher job satisfaction and team identification.

It is up to you to find appropriate times to switch to face-to-face communications. Consider the following:

• Routine meetings that typically use conference line - change all or significant occurrences to face-to-face meetings
• Weekly phone meetings with key teams or individuals - find a conference room or use video conference
• Long, detailed emails typically sent out to distribution lists - evaluate whether topic is important or complex enough to warrant an initial face-to-face session to focus attention of busy participants
• Take special precautions to involve those who, for logistics reasons, cannot attend face-to-face meetings with the rest of team. The more important face-to-face meetings are, the more disadvantaged are those who cannot participate.

Perhaps those who are trying to use digital communications to become more efficient are not seeing the drawbacks. You can take a more wise course knowing the results of this study. The toughest part may be justifying the expense of face-to-face meetings and video conferences. What do you think?

How many of you depend on the SMART goal (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely) tactic for improving performance? A large number, I'll wager, no matter what other type of performance system is in place. It makes a lot of sense. Who would not want goals that met those criteria?

Unfortunately, such goals do not work as well as described and typically used. The evidence is overwhelming in the literature, it just has not filtered down to how workers are managed.

Kenneth M. Nowack, Ph.D, in his article, Urban Talent Myths Exposed in (Talent Management Magazine), explains that, as recently as 2012 there was a study of workers that found that 15% strongly agreed that their goals helped them "achieve great things." That fact shows there is a gap between the ingrained beliefs behind goal-setting performance management programs and what actually is effective.

This blog focuses on helping you get past these kinds of misconceptions by reviewing actual science that helps us understand what really works. So let's look more closely at the evidence. According to Nowack, "nearly 200 published studies…have shown that deciding in advance under what conditions you will plan to implement a new behavior can significantly increase your chances of actually doing it." This is the missing piece of the puzzle, the technique that will make goals more effective than they are now.

The technique, according to Nowack is to plan performance improvement in this way:

“If situation X occurs, then I will initiate behavior Y to reach goal X.” This takes an extra level of planning effort than just coming up with SMART goals, but is very practical.

Given this, what are you to do to improve performance in your project?

• Use the technique yourself. For those performance gaps you have, create statements using the structure above, keep them handy and at "top of your mind" and follow them.
• Now that you have experience using the technique, explain it to others.
• Communicate the technique as a tip for your workforce. It's not that difficult to explain and when everyone does not report to you, it a way to improve performance using your influence.
• Use this technique in your coaching. It should not be difficult, as it is usually specific situations that cause you to coach in the first place when you are a project manager. These situations are "Situation X" in the structure above. An example of how you would coach a less-experienced team lead:
  "When we are in the weekly meeting to report updates on tasks, if you give just basic information on percent complete and wait for follow-up questions before providing extensive background information, I could use that as an example for your manager of your improvement in working in projects."

However you use the technique, be proud of the fact that you may be a step ahead of other leaders and even the human resource professionals in your organization. And that, project managers, is smart.

Sure, we know that project managers can save their organizations by delivering projects that improve competitiveness in the marketplace or increase profitability. But according to new research, that's not all.

According to a study by Christopher G. Myers, Bradley R. Staats and Francesca Gino, project managers can do something else: help the organization learn better from failure. The authors did not mention project managers specifically, but bear with me for a few paragraphs and I will make the case.

The researchers found that one barrier to organizations learning from failure is "high perceived ambiguity of responsibility." Put in more basic terms, when responsibility for actions was not clear to workers, the tendency was to attribute failure to a source outside of their control. This tendency keeps the workforce - the organization - from learning from failure. This is why organizations continue to make the same mistakes.

Conversely, when workers perceived low ambiguity of responsibility - higher clarity on who is responsible for what - their tendency is to focus on themselves when attributing causes of failure. They then learn from failure. The organization as a whole can then improve.

Now think about this: One of your responsibilities as a project manager is to organize work and assign responsibility. So it follows that by doing this well, you are a key facilitator of organizational learning. Doing the following can help your organization improve:

• Spend plenty of time and get plenty of input on your work plan, aiming for assigning  responsibilities to precise tasks
• For those tasks that must be assigned to an individual that will be named later, monitor that these names are identified in a reasonable time.
• Ensure that tasks are defined precisely so that assignees know the scope of the task
• In early project communications to workers, make it a priority that everyone knows the scope of their activities and that they should bring up in advance any ambiguity. This will help create a work culture that fosters a sense of responsibility.
• Have teams work together to make sure that there is no "I thought you were going to do that."
• Monitor closely areas that are reorganizing or have had recent reorganizations where there is more risk of confusion over roles.
• Make sure any team actions are also assigned an owner as often as possible at the time the action is identified.

It seems simple to have clear tasks assigned to individuals, so people underestimate the work it takes to do this right on a continual basis. You should not underestimate the difficulty. You should also realize that by doing so, you help workers take responsibility for their own tasks.

The more we know about the benefits of project management, the closer we appear to being super heroes. Maybe we should be wearing Spandex and capes!

OK, that might be going too far.

The point of my last post was that coaching is both necessary and complex. Thinking about complexity  we were focusing on remote coaching of diverse individuals. Consider the complexity of coaching when you have individuals from different nationalities, work cultures, religions, geographies, ethnicities, economies, assumptions about working with supervisors, and so on.

Try these tips for coaching at a distance. They do not replace general good coaching practice, just help you with the special situation of diversity at a distance. (The term "coachee" refers to the individual who you are coaching.)

• In general, it is more important in these cases to listen actively. Being separated geographically means that it is more important to pick up on signals or ask the right questions when you are unsure.

• Make sure you know the coachee's understanding of the situation from the beginning. Explain briefly if the topic of the coaching session has not been discussed before. Then ask questions to confirm there is a common understanding - and acceptance.

• Validate signals you think you hear during the conversation so that you do not misinterpret. Ask the coachee questions such as

  • What do you mean when you say….?
  • Are you are frustrated given the circumstances?
  • Does your work environment present obstacles ?
  • Do you have the skills you need in this case? Does your team?

• Do you think you can make this change? Do you think you can be successful with the action plan we discussed?

• Ask open-ended questions. Remember the letter "W" as the beginning of great open-ended questions.

  • What are your obstacles to performing as expected?
  • What help do you need from me? How do you want me to provide that help?
  • How do you intend to meet the obstacles? Fill the gaps?

• To develop next steps, ask questions such as What is your goal? What will you measure to know that you are improving? Document this information and manage towards it in case it is uncommon to the coachee.

• Avoid trying to fill in silence, be patient.

• Prepare to make your comments in a respectful and constructive manner.

• Communicate your feelings or judgements to make sure the listener is clear where you stand and not assuming there is a problem when there is not.

  • I understand what you mean.
  • I am happy that you are finding this satisfactory
  • Let me repeat back to you to make sure I understand.
  • I think these steps will be useful.

• Let the coachee select the medium of communication, whether it be phone, video conference of some kind. That will put the individual more at ease.

With this special preparation and interaction, you can take an important step to getting the performance you need from your diverse and far-flung project team.

You hear people say things like, "If you take away everything but my ability to (sell, speak to the public, etc.), I will survive." For project managers, increasingly, coaching is becoming one of those skills. It is a skill so valuable that it can make up for weaknesses in other skills.  Certainly it's saved me from difficult situations over the years.

Coaching in today's projects is as necessary as it is complex. 

It is necessary because you need those who report to you (solid line or dotted line) to be at top performance. This includes contingent workers who may be new to your organization or entering your project mid-stream. It is necessary because there are times where you have to intervene quickly before one problem starts a stream of other problems. It is necessary when you must stop interpersonal conflicts before they make things worse in your project.

But, perhaps more importantly, this is becoming more common:  project workers are not trained enough early on, leaving you or your designees to train during your project. Much of this training will have to be completed as coaching.

But - make no mistake - coaching can be complex, made more difficult when you are not geographically co-located. You may not see the individual's facial expressions or body posture, always very important, and you may have some cultural differences that keep you from that initial full understanding that is imperative to coming to a resolution.

What to coach about related to performance does not change even if someone is far away and in different culture. Just a few examples:

• Coaching a team lead related to how a team is interacting
• Coaching an individual regarding how he/she is being perceived
• Closing an experienced worker's performance gap
• Connecting with each individual involved in a conflict about the best way to proceed
• Helping a new contingent worker navigate the current work culture

These are potentially difficult topics, and if you are working with a diverse workforce, you have to prepare in a special way to be sure you get it right, despite your desire to move quickly before things get any worse.

In a couple of days, I'll post tips for coaching "diversity remotely." Until then, consider the answer to this question about remote coaching:  What letter does the best coaching question begin with?