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Harvard Business Review
30-04-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
How to Bring Out the Best in Your Team
HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei says the best measure of a leader's effectiveness isn't their charisma, vision, communication skills, or resilience. Actually, it's their ability to, as the tagline of this podcast suggests, bring out the best in those around them. Helping your team grow, elevating their talents, and keeping them engaged all starts with trust. In this IdeaCast episode from 2020, Frei talks to host Alison Beard about how to build that trust and, ultimately, help your team thrive. Frei starts by breaking down the three main components of trust. ALISON BEARD: So if trust is the starting point for good leadership today, how do you build it with employees? FRANCES FREI: Great question. And our big breakthrough came when we realized that building trust is a monolithic thing. It's super hard, in fact, close to impossible, for most of us. But when we found that trust had three component parts, that was helpful, and then also found that each one of those component parts are actionable. So we can actually build more trust tomorrow than we have today by diagnosing which component part is in the way and then coming up with a custom solution for that particular part. ALISON BEARD: So what are those three pieces? FRANCES FREI: The language we use is that its authenticity, logic and empathy. Which will feel a lot like those that have read Aristotle, feel a lot like logos, pathos and ethos. But what it really is that, do you sense that it's the real me talking to you? Or do you feel like I'm only bringing part of me, or I'm delivering a message perhaps that I don't really believe in, but I think I'm supposed to say. So is it the real me with sound and rigorous logic, and that I'm in it for you? If you question any of those three, the first thing to go is trust. ALISON BEARD: So you said that there are ways to improve on all of those fronts. Let's start first with authenticity. You know it can sometimes feel risky to show your full and total self at work. How do you get leaders to move into a more authentic mode? FRANCES FREI: What you're thinking about with leaders, leaders have two jobs right. One is to be authentic themselves, but the other is to create the conditions for other people's authenticity to show up. Because as a leader, my job is to enhance the performance of other people. What I have to do is make sure that people feel safe to be their authentic self. Regardless of the difference that I represent, I feel welcome. And then it starts getting really exciting. Because of any difference I represent, I'm celebrated and then I'm cherished because of it. each one of us can bring our authentic self, we get to make much more robust decisions and we get to include many more people. The challenge is for anyone of us, how do we do it? So, let's say that I'm, so I am a woman over 50 lesbian. Puts me in a couple of categories. If I was tempted not to bring my authentic self in any of those three categories, it's a leader's job who feels comfortable on age, sexuality, gender, to set the conditions for my authenticity to bloom. Note where your authenticity really shines. Like what triggers your most authentic version to show up? It's really hard to be authentic when you're reading a script for example. ALISON BEARD: So let's move onto the logic piece of it. How do you establish your credibility on that front? FRANCES FREI: So one part is, I'm not being very logical and I'm communicating that super clearly. Right. So that's, like, my logic is suspicious. The other part is, I actually have really good logic, but I'm struggling in the communication of it. So, is it substance – the real logic, or is it style – the communication? We find that it's far more often style than substance. There's two ways that we can communicate in the world. And one is using a beautiful storytelling technique where I take you on a journey, there's dramatic twists and turns, and then you ultimately get to the point. That's a beautiful way to communicate and it's lethal for a logic wobbler. Instead I would say flip it. Start with the point, even if it feels a little scary, and then give the supporting evidence. If I take you on a journey and you give me all of that context and you tell me all of your credentials and everything along the way, awesome if I stay with you to the end, but you can lose me at so many of the plot points. Start with the point, even though it feels artificial and then give the supporting evidence. ALISON BEARD: What do you do with the trickier problem of actually having flaws in your logic? FRANCES FREI: Yeah so, here the solution is even more straightforward. Which is, don't talk about things that you don't know well. ALISON BEARD: Makes sense. FRANCES FREI: I'm just going to pause for a moment for laughter. But so, I like, I draw a box and I say, this is what you know. And then I draw a circle in the box and say, this is what you're allowed to talk about. The temptation of course is that we talk about a circle that's much larger than the box. If we only talk about that which we know well, we won't have substance problems. ALISON BEARD: What about the third leg of trust, empathy? How do I build that as a leader? FRANCES FREI: In this one I would say that in the time of crisis, I normally say all three are important because if you don't have one of them you're, you don't have, you lose trust. But in a time of crisis, this is the one that is really important. And here's the thing about empathy. I have to be present to the needs of others in order to express empathy. If I am at all self-distracted with myself, it's about me and not about you. So when I'm in your presence, if I'm checking my email, or texting someone, I am not present to you. I'm multitasking between you and me. People will question my empathy immediately and trust is the thing that goes. The reason this is so important right now is that we're in a global pandemic. Everyone is going to be self-distracted right now. As a leader, when you're building trust, you can either be self-distracted or present to others. You can't do both at the same time. Put the oxygen mask on yourself as much as you need and I'm sure it's more now than it was two months ago. But understand that when you're putting the oxygen mask on yourself, you're not leading and you're not building trust. So, perhaps be in front of people less often, but be fully present when you are. ALISON BEARD: Yeah. OK, so let's focus on the next piece of effective leadership, something that you call love. Which seems pretty touchy feely for the corporate world. So how have you seen it work in practice? FRANCES FREI: Yeah. So, trust is the foundation. And then the way that we think about this is that if I want to bring out the best in one other person, we figured out how to do that. And it requires two levers. So if I wanted to bring out the best in you Alison, what I would do is I would make sure that you felt really high standards from me, because it's hard for you to achieve your best in the absence of high standards. That's necessary, but not sufficient. The only way that's going to work is if you also experience my deep devotion to your success. So if you experience my high standards and my deep devotion to your success, that's when I can bring out the best in you and that's what we call love. But here's where the pesky human nature comes in. Most of us when we're setting really high standards for people, we shield them from our humanity. We don't display our intense devotion to their success. And so we get, we come across as chilly, or uncaring. And then the story goes that I get some feedback that I'm cold and I'm not, it's all about me. I get horrified, so then I rush to revealing that I'm deeply devoted and I accidentally insidiously lower the standards, as I show my devotion. And then I get really frustrated with the lack of performance that comes from that. And then I scramble back up into high standards, low devotion and a lot of us spend our lives going back and forth between those two states. What we call severity and fidelity. So the trick is, how do I simultaneously show high standards and deep devotion? ALISON BEARD: That sounds like something that could work in a family as well as an office. FRANCES FREI: Well so here's the great breakthrough we had. So a woman named Carol Dweck who's a wonderful family psychologist, a Stanford professor. She wrote something that gave us a total breakthrough on this. She wrote, there are two ways to parent and one of them is the right way. So then she goes onto say, and she wrote this, I'll use her dated language. She goes onto say, you can either prepare the path for the boy, or prepare the boy for the path. And it was a bolt of lightning. I had been preparing every path, real and imagined so that my boys could travel them. I had been a weed wacker of a parent. So deep in fidelity, so deep in devotion that I didn't even want them to have to do the work of mitigating any paths. And what she showed us is that, or you can prepare the boy for the path, so that he will be able to thrive in our absence. ALISON BEARD: So how exactly does a manager do that in a corporate setting? My belief in humanity is that we all really want to achieve and the greatest expression of love is for me to set the conditions for you to thrive. Someone's not thriving if they're just doing well enough. Like I think we all want to be better tomorrow than we are today. And it's a leader's job to set those conditions. ALISON BEARD: So, who's a leader that you've seen do this in action? FRANCES FREI: Oh, the best example of it is a man named Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor. To those who know him, and to everyone in Peru where he's from, he's a CRP. He believes in the possibility of people. Like he believes that the way to bring Peru from a third world country to a first world country, which he plans to do in his lifetime, is by setting the conditions for individuals to thrive. So he cares more about the development of individuals than any CEO I have ever seen. Ranging from, I go down to Peru every year and teach, and we teach a new set of leaders every year, he sits in every one of the classes and takes notes on the people. I've never seen a CEO do that. He sets super high standards for people starting with the recruiting process. If you want to get hired at, in one of the Intercorp companies, which people are, it's a very long line to get hired there. It's going to take a really long time. And if you try to use any informal mechanisms to do it like, oh I have a friend, can you talk to him? If he senses that you're trying to use your connections, trying to do anything to mitigate a meritocracy, he does what he calls, he puts you in the freezer. He gives you a time out. Because he wants everyone to realize that at Intercorp, it's the meritocracy that rules. But he's also deeply devoted to people. And I think he gets to set even higher standards than anyone else in the world, because he is so devoted to his people. One famous example is that he and his top team, he decided to give them a reward for having done a very good job. And the reward was to go climb a mountain right near Mt. Everest. And so, this will reveal, his other rewards are like you get to go to school. And because he cares, he doesn't care about status. He cares about meritocracy. So the top people that were most responsible for this, there were some that were wealthy by then. And so they bought business class tickets to get from Peru all the way to the mountain, which is a very long journey. The others that were the young scrappy people that they had coach tickets. And then just at the last minute, right, like the day before they were going to take off, Carlos asked who has business class tickets? Everyone else and me, will meet you there. I'm going to take them on my plane. Which is like, he just never misses a chance to show you that it's not how much money you have, it's not how much, like he's devoted and he really cares about meritocracy. ALISON BEARD: Yeah. So this vision for leadership that you have from the very beginning, from the time that you're managing just one person all the way up, it seems to run a little bit counter to how people are noticed and rewarded in most organizations. You know, you're really sort of taking a backseat to your people and elevating them and their needs above your own. Is there a tension there? FRANCES FREI: I think that there, so yes there is. Because we, we sometimes get put into positions of leadership because we were a really good individual contributor. And then we form a team and we think well they're there to help us achieve even more. And so it's about me, me, me with more and more people. And it's, we find that that actually puts a pretty severe ceiling on what you can actually do which is that I'm thinking, how can I bring out the best in other people? So the second that I'm leading someone, it, how can I set the conditions for them to thrive? And I want there to be equal access to everyone thriving and I want more and more varied people to thrive. If I can do that, I will thump the team, that is, how can I get people to help me perform? ALISON BEARD: So that's a good transition from moving away from team managers to people leading larger groups and even organizations where they don't have day to day contact with all of their people. So how does someone like that make sure that everyone feels trust and love and a sense of belonging when they are absent? FRANCES FREI: The way to think about it is that if I can guide your discretionary behavior in my absence that's the whole game. So, you're making ten's, hundreds of decisions without my direct observation, even my direct knowledge. So if I can get you to make those decisions as well as if I was standing right next to you with my high standards and deep devotion and with our trust and you felt included, if I could get you to make those decisions as well as if I was right next to you, that's the whole ballgame. Because I can't be right next to you. There are two levers we have to guide discretionary behavior. And that's discretionary behavior in our absence. The first one is strategy. So usually we don't talk about strategy in a leadership book. I think it's essential for when people are in my absence, the strategy can help guide discretionary behavior. Go into a Walmart and watch 100 different employees confront the same situation and you will find 100 different employees do the same thing. Everyone at Walmart knows that their reason for being is on behalf of the customer so that they can make their lives more affordable. It's a disaster if you have 100 people confronting the same situation and there's a 100 different solutions. So when strategy is clear that takes a whole bunch of discretionary decisions off the table. It's surprising how many organizations the strategy isn't clear enough in the minds of everyone in the organization. Everywhere where strategy is silent, where strategy is not enough, that's where culture comes in. And culture is what describes to us how things are really done around here. I'm in a meeting and do I get to take up a lot of space or a little space? Strategy doesn't tell me that. Culture does. I'm junior at an organization. Is it my obligation to bring up any problems I have or should I do it more politely through the chain of command? Strategy doesn't tell us that, culture tells us that. So everything else for what's the way that things are done around here, that's the culture. Those are the only two levers that a senior person has for guiding, for leading in their absence. ALISON BEARD: You've been involved in some massive cultural transformations starting with your own organization, HBS. Tell me what you learned through that experience. FRANCES FREI: Yeah, so I think it starts with, culture change has to happen quickly. And so this is counterintuitive to most people. But meaningful change happens quickly or it doesn't happen at all. So if you're on a five year journey for a cultural change, I would just suggest you stop and use those efforts to do something else. So, meaningful change happens quickly and it's because otherwise you'll be sending mixed messages. Like I can change a culture when we're saying, changing the culture is the most important thing. So you should decide when you want to do it and then do it in an all in, and don't think oh, I'll change this part of the culture now and that part later, doesn't work. We have to do all of it now. That's the first thing. The second thing is make sure you have a really noble purpose and a really noble reason why you're changing the culture. What's the burning platform? If I didn't change the culture, what would be so bad about it? And in my experience, the easiest reason to change the culture is that we are, we are not living up to the dignity and humanity of a group of people. Whether its customers, suppliers, employees, there's some group of people who we have been systematically disadvantaging. And we're going to fix that. That's the easiest way to change a culture. There's like a burning platform, but about people so that we find it close to immoral that we've been doing it and now it's going to be the most important thing that we do. ALISON BEARD: And so, at HBS the concern was that it wasn't a welcoming environment for women. How did you quickly move to fix that? FRANCES FREI: Yeah so and that was, that was for students. And the burning platform that we had was that women had lower grades than men and women had lower self-reported satisfaction than men. Now, the truth is it gets talked a lot about in gender and I'll talk about it in gender. But it was also true for international students and domestic for LGBT. There were 12 categories because we collected a lot of data. We solved it for everyone in the same year. And here's the way to do it which is, one, make sure you have devastating data. It's best if the devastating data has to do with people. So, what is it that is like gnawing at you? So, for us it was achievement and sentiment. Women weren't achieving as well and they didn't have same self-reported satisfaction. So then we asked ourselves all right, what's getting in the way of achievement and sentiment for women? At HBS we grade on a forced curve. Half of every grade is class participation. It wasn't the grading difference, it wasn't in exams. It was really in class participation. And then when we went and double clicked on that more, it was that women were getting a much slower start in class participation. So there's some people that would come into the HBS classroom and they'd feel so comfortable speaking from day one. So what we did is we had to unlock what makes good class participation, but we also had to set the conditions so that people could find their mojo, their super power early. So one of the things we did is introduce the field method. So the case method, been at HBS for, since it's, practically since its beginning and it's everything you can learn by talking about what you would do. But there's also quite a bit that you can do of learning by doing. And that's what we call the field method, which is we'll put you in small group, experiential settings. We did the field method before the case method so that people that would feel really great in small groups, if they were good at that, that confidence would spill over into the classroom. So one is that we created, we wanted more varied people to thrive. So we gave more varied ways to find your superpower. We got much closer to meritocracy. And the benefit of that was that men and women got the same grades, the self-reported satisfaction, the gaps closed and here's the really awesome thing. All of the gaps closed in satisfaction as an example and it got better for everyone. ALISON BEARD: And then you applied some of those strategies at places like Uber and Riot Games. What did you do there and what types of outcomes did you see? FRANCES FREI: Yeah so applied the same strategies and got the same outcomes. So, at Riot Games they were facing a pretty public crisis. It was in August of 2018. And it's like every senior team's worst nightmare. Everybody wakes up to an article that has all of these claims of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct. And you just be like, oh my gosh, where have I been working that this has occurred? It's just a bombshell that goes off. Now, fast forward and much of what was written about in the paper by great journalists, much of what was written about, turned out not to be true. But some of what was written about was true. And so they had to do a complete refresh of this very culturally-driven organization. But the culture was now driving them unintentionally in the wrong direction. So what we did is looked at achievement and sentiment because that's the way we know to do this. And we found there to be enormous demographic tendencies associated with who was thriving. And so we set out to, we collected the devastating data and we set out to address those. We also in the cases of both Uber and Riot, they had really strong, cultural values that were each delineated. Like in one case there was 14 and in the other case there were six. So very culturally driven. And these cultural values were awesome. One of the famous ones at Uber was called toe stepping. And what it meant was that if you're a junior person and you have a good idea and you're being blocked by your manager, step on your manager's toes and go to their manager. Because we want great ideas to be surfaced, and that's what you want in a young company. Or one of them at Riot was default to trust. Well it turns out that over time, both of these had become weaponized. Toe stepping, instead of the junior person stepping on the toes going up, it was senior people stepping on the toes of going down. Default to trust, the same thing. Instead of when I'm explaining something to you and I want you to default to trust, so if I'm questioning you, default to trust so that like, understand that my questions are good and they're well intended. Instead I'm a senior person. You bring up a question and I'm like, look default to trust dude. Just do it. So you can see how, so the second a cultural value gets weaponized and cultural values, the more specific they are, the easier it is to get weaponized. As a cultural value gets weaponized, you got to take it out. There's no, and no matter how much you loved it, and founders have a really hard time with this. Oh, but it was good and it was well intentioned. There's no reversing it. So what we did in both cases is we got the entire, we invited the entire company to come up and author the new cultural values. Which is literally, you sit down with the old cultural values, you have a pen in hand and we all edit them together and then we talk about which of the cultural values would be super sad if we lost and why? And which are doing, which do we observe are doing real harm to other people and why? And then through that process we edited it and came up with new cultural values and these new cultural values are, because these are two strong cultural environments, the new ones got adopted super quickly because they were authored by everyone. ALISON BEARD: Frances, thanks so much for coming on the show. FRANCES FREI: Oh, I really loved it. Thank you for including me. HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School's Frances Frei in conversation with Alison Beard on HBR IdeaCast. Frei is the author of the book Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You. We'll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. When you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world's top business and management experts, find it all at This episode was produced Mary Dooe and me, Hannah Bates. Curt Nickisch is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.
Harvard Business Review
23-04-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
When Over-Collaboration Leads to Indecision
HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Collaboration is a good thing—until it gets in the way of action. Too much collaboration can stall decision-making and hold you back. In this HBR IdeaCast episode from 2018, host Sarah Green Carmichael speaks with leadership coach Rebecca Shambaugh about how to curb over-collaboration in yourself and on your team. They discuss how perfectionism, workplace culture, and even well-intended leadership messages can lead employees to over-consult and under-decide. Their conversation starts with how to spot the behavior. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What does the classic over-collaborator's life look like, and feel like? REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: (laughs) Well, I was probably on one of those spectrums, you know, and I think one of the things that you – as a manager, if I have a direct report or a team member who's over-collaborative, they tend to not have a lot of self-confidence within themselves. So that's why they continue to reach out and get other people's inputs. They want to please everyone, right? And it's impossible these days to please everyone. They may not be able to prioritize very much. So, there may be key areas where you have to prioritize or collaborate and get key influencers – your managers, if you will – input or ideas and perspective. But there are other things that, you know what? You should just really make that decision, or you should really delegate that. So they're doing a lot of activities that aren't really producing a lot of progress – i.e., getting to a decision. And they come to you and they say: 'I just don't have time for the high value projects, because they're eating their time and continuing for months and weeks to collaborate with people and not really come to agreements, or decisions.' SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: One question I have about that is how much can we emphasize the individual's responsibility for that situation, versus the company culture or the managers' mixed messages? In some cases, it's easy to see that, you know, people might not have a bias for action because they'd been kind of told to wait for permission to act. How can you diagnose whether it's you or your company that's causing the problem? REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: Well, it could be a combination of both or sometimes it's just the direct relationship with your manager, more than anything. I always say, you know, look in. And I invite people to first examine their own belief system, their own narrative, that's causing them to show up and seek out everyone else's opinion or you know, doing things that are more task-related. Or, perhaps you tend to be more in the perfectionism zone, where everything has to be 100 percent right before it goes out the door. Hence you over-collaborate, right? You try to get to consensus with everybody because you tend to be a pleaser. I think also when we coach individuals, we sort of put in front of them an activity-based tool where they look at their whole day or their whole week, and [we] invite them to do a personal audit. And say: 'Okay, what are the priority areas that you know, you really feel like you are responsible for – your key objectives?' And when I'm personally coaching women in particular – and sometimes men – they'll give me 10 or 15 key priorities. And that's the first thing – you can only have three to five, and do three to five very well. So you've got to somehow re-prioritize or delegate or take something off of that to-do list. You could be spending 60 percent of your time in low-priority areas. So, [the] first thing is to do that critical self-assessment of ourselves. The other thing is, what good managers do, they help you to provide context. So sitting down or meeting with your manager and saying: 'Look, here are all the activities I'm doing. Help me to really prioritize what you see as the top areas.' And the first response managers will give you, after they see your personal audit, they'll say, 'I had no idea you were doing all this, and I didn't know you were making all of these phone calls to get an agreement on something that probably one or two people could really help you to make that decision.' SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So often, the advice that we tell ourselves or that we give to other people is about learning to say 'No.' So while aas a manager we might say, 'This person really just needs to learn to say no.' You might even tell that person this is what you need to do. We often blame ourselves if we're feeling overstretched, like 'God, I should just be better at saying no.' Is that realistic? I mean is just declining to take on more work a realistic solution? REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: Yeah, I mean the whole piece around is it important to say no and, how do I do that, I guess is perhaps more of the question there too… I think before you say no, I think you need to understand the bigger picture and the rationale of their thinking and why they want to give you this project. For example, sponsorship. Notably, women have a lot of mentors, but they're under sponsored. And the sponsors are the ones that give you the lift; they give you the visibility; they give you those projects that aren't in your sight that could really give you greater opportunities to be more engaged in the business and so on and so forth. So if a woman is totally stretched on a rack and doing her best job, but she says, 'How can I just take on one more project?' I invite women to really step back and put on the pause button and say, 'Help me to better understand what's your vision for this project? How do you see this mapping out to my growth goals – areas that I can really benefit from, from a career growth perspective, from a visibility perspective and just from a pure advancement and promotion perspective?' And they may know something that you don't know. And then to me it's all about negotiations: 'Okay, well if I am going to be doing this extra project – which sounds something like I've always wanted to do but didn't really have the access to it – something else has to give. And so I'd like to propose that I re-source a couple of these other activities out, so I can be putting all my best discretionary effort into this project.' And so build the business case around that – be solution based. Sometimes you don't have to say no, but also looking at other alternatives to really redesign your day-to-day activities [and] responsibilities so that you can do this. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL:And why do you tend to focus on women when you're talking about this topic? REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: I think women tend to, by virtue of their socialization early on – and I don't want to generalize and put women just in a box, and this doesn't mean that men aren't in this position as well. But women tend to want to please their, they tend to be more facilitative in nature, hence more collaborative. They tend to like a little bit more harmony, you know – less competitive. And so, sometimes we default to some of these styles that disempower us. It doesn't mean that women don't have it within them to be more strategic in terms of how they're spending their time. But I think they need to, number one, give themselves permission to do that. And they need sometimes the feedback and the coaching and the tools and the skills to shift – number one, their narrative and their belief system about themselves. And be able to believe that they, that they can do this role, that they can speak up, they can make an ask, versus the concern they're gonna rock the boat. So in the first book I wrote, 'The Sticky Floors,' a lot of times women – their own beliefs – will sabotage their best interest, right? And self-limit their ability to grow and advance and to really evolve beyond. So we have a tendency to disempower ourselves and you know, be more critical on ourselves than sometimes men do. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: It's interesting because I recently read some research that we published in that suggests that in single sex groups, women will share sort of unglamorous tasks equally. Whereas groups of men, it tends to be like the same two guys doing those tasks over and over again. And so I wonder if that's a case where womens' collaborativeness helps – like if you happened to work in a group of all women, you're kind of rotating those chores. Whereas you know, men, it seems like that the two same guys are kind of out of luck over and over again. So even though I agree with you that there's a lot of research on over collaboration and women, I do think there are guys out there who really struggle with this too, and I think the evidence bears that out. REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: Well, there's no question about that. And again, you know, we need balanced leadership and I think a strength of women we need to embrace and tap into more is the spirit of collaboration, and how do you do that? Collaboration is all about building trust, and trust is down in most companies. So it's important to be able to connect the dots and be cross-supportive to achieve a unified goal together. I think men tend to just go and do it, right? They just go and do it. They tend to be more transactional, to some degree. So I think it's important to have both. But this is an area where we coach men on quite a bit, is to be inclusive, is to be more collaborative and to open up your aperture to a variety of different relationships beyond just you, to go to, to ask their perspective or view on a problem or issue or just their advice is to broaden and diversify your network so it is diverse, and you're not always going to the same people who look and think like you. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So if you're managing someone who is genuinely roo collaborative, male or female, one of the pieces of advice you've given to managers is to help them get over this by giving feedback that's goal-oriented. Can you give me an example of kind of what non-goal-oriented feedback would sound like but then fix it so that it's goal-oriented and proper feedback? REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: I think if you're a manager, this is not always an easy conversation, but I always start off in coaching men or women to say, 'Tell me about how you're spending your time, what do you see as the key priorities?' And really have them map that out for you – what their assumptions are around that. Because all they know is what they know and they could be operating in a vacuum that they don't know some of the top priorities. Or perhaps they may not understand that, you know, honestly, we don't need to get to consensus on this. You really need to step back, and let me give you a better sense from a feedback perspective of the organizational dynamics. And in this case, on this particular project, you know, while you share with me [that] you reached out and got consensus with 10 people. The key people that will be advocating and sponsoring this, and moving this through for us, and who politically we need to really connect the dots with and help them to be aware and get their input are these three people. And helping them to understand why it's those three people as opposed to those 10 or 12. Sometimes our team members just don't have that bigger-picture thinking or understand the organizational dynamics [or] what are some of the changes happening around the corner. So I think that that's really important. And helping them to go through self-discovery, versus telling them 'You're spending too much time here. You need to get over and be more collaborative or be more directive.' We hear this all the time, but women, or people, just don't know what to do with that. You might be efficient, you're checking off all the boxes, but at the end of the day, It's holding you back from really tapping into the right relationships to really get the project moving versus stalling. And then helping them to see that – you know, gosh, you feel like you need to get agreement from everyone. Well, you know what? Empowering them and letting them know that you are the one who knows more than anybody else on this project. I remember I got this feedback many, many years ago when I was still working in corporate America and I was a perfectionist. I felt like I needed to get everyone to agreement. And then my manager came by and gave me this helpful piece of feedback. He said, 'You know, I appreciate all the hard work you've done here, but the end of the day I hired you because you know more than anybody else around this particular project and area of expertise. And I'm really relying upon you at the end of the day to make this decision.' So empowering them and giving them the confidence to know that not only do they have the authority to do that, but you believe in their strengths and their experience and background to make those decisions. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: A common employee response to being told to spend time on higher value activities is to say, 'I don't have time to do those higher value activities because I've got too many of these low value tasks on my plate.' So if they've done the time audit, and they're spending most of their time on stuff that's really not a priority, they might come back and say 'That's the organization's fault or that's my manager's fault and this is just what I have to do. And this is the amount of time it takes.' How can you as a manager help them see that they do have control over this? How do you help them problem solve, so that they can free up time to do the stuff that really will get them promoted? REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: Yeah. A lot of times, again, it gets back to our own belief system: We need to do all these things. And they in sometimes they need to be done way that I think they need to be done because no one can do them better, right? Or I, I love all these projects and because I get a lot of fulfillment, satisfaction out of it, but you know what? It's getting me nowhere. So it's an incumbent upon a manager to help them to move further into the traditional Covey quadrant, the third quadrant there on the top right – to be more thoughtful, mindful about your time and how it's being spent. So I think it's really - and this is generally, not just necessarily women but men too is – is to really go over…you know, it's rare that a manager will sit down these days and say, 'Where would you like to grow? What's your future career lifeline look like?' And really together examine what they're doing and how those activities are growing new skillsets, are expanding their relationships, giving them more visible projects versus the mundane projects that really aren't seeding their growth and their confidence. Right? So it's really helping them to recalibrate those activities, and then really creating a plan of action to make that happen. And I think that it's incumbent upon that just waiting for the manager to come in and observe that, but it's important for us to come and say, 'Look, you know, here are some ideas. Here are some things that I need to really talk to you about,' before things do go off the tracks, or you realize that you just can't do this job anymore. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: The research does show that women are often expected to be more collaborative. We get asked to volunteer for more projects, especially having the low value ones. We're often expected to lead through consensus, and we do. So I'm wondering for male managers of women – because we have a lot of men who listen to the IdeaCast – what do you wish that they knew about this? REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: Well, I think this gets back to understanding the diverse spectrum of styles amongst your team and really opening up your lens to see where those different styles can bring value to the things that you're doing. That's really important. And, and I think sometimes, look, we all have bias, right? Which can turn into stereotypes about how we view a certain person. If I'm more collaborative, inclusive, you know, and the other person is more directive, right to the point, likes to make a decision and move on. You know, that's okay. But understand that people have different styles in terms of how they make decisions. So I think it's important to have a diverse spectrum on your team, of different ways of thinking about something, processing something; different communication styles. If not, you get the groupthink, you get the same people thinking the same way and communicating the same way. And that's just not going to work in today's environment. I don't think it's a negative necessarily for men to come up and say, 'Why does she talk that way so much? Why she overly collaborative? She could have made that decision?' It's just our lens and our norm of what we have been used to. So it's inviting men to – this is the same thing about diversity and inclusion, right? Companies have a lot of diversity, but we're not tapping into and leveraging the best styles, the best strengths and experiences of everyone. If we did, we would probably in most cases have better outcomes; greater levels of problem solving and decision making. So I encourage them to be open to those different styles and look at ways where you can utilize those styles for the benefit of everyone. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Because I could see if you were trying to get better at saying 'no' to tasks that don't add value, or acting more decisively while still being somewhat inclusive. I could really see it coming off kind of the wrong way – you know, 'No, I won't do that. And here's the decision I'm making!' And you know, it does seem that it's the kind of thing that does take a little bit of practice before it feels natural and before it comes across as natural to other people. REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: Yeah. And I just want to say say layered in that is, what's really important in that is having the emotional and social intelligence, right? There's a time and a place to say 'no.' There could be layoffs and reorganization. Your manager comes up and says, 'Look, this is a tough time for the next six to eight months. I need you to jump in and help out with this.' Right? You want to be a team player, you want to be understanding the needs and concerns of others and their schedules and their priorities. So I think when you are saying 'yes' or saying 'no,' it's just not a straight yes or straight no, it's really taking into consideration your colleagues, right? The bigger picture. And your rationale for the yes or no should really think and link to the needs in the context of others, that decision isn't just more of a self-serving, self-oriented decision. I think when people on the other end know that you've taken their best interest in mind and it still may be a 'no,' right, that you've thought through this – maybe not this, but I could do this in the context of what you're trying to do. That would be something I can best align with and support you. That's being inclusive in your decision-making in your ask, and how you say yes and how you say no. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Becky, you have mentioned that you earlier in your career struggled with some of these issues and I'm wondering for you, what really made the difference? How did you change your own mindset around some of this so that you can be free of this problem? REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: Well, you do have to look inside, and sometimes what got you here is not going to get you there. I think I was a perfectionist. I mean, I would rework PowerPoint decks. I would over-collaborate, you know, because I doubted my own worth and knowledge. I did a lot of the same things I coach people on. I went out and I talked about expectations and what's good enough and you know, how I needed to really better align my activities with the things that perhaps were more higher value. But I realized that all this is giving yourself permission, right? If I'm an over-collaborator, a perfectionist, one of the things that I realized in my journey of getting feedback and talking to other people around some of these similar challenges they have, but how did you navigate through this, right? How did you come out of this as a great leader? And a lot of it is just knowing and believing in yourself. And as a perfectionist, I said, 'You know, 88 percent of the people I spoke to are not perfectionist. Why am I being more difficult on myself? Why don't I just join the world of imperfection, and realize that everything doesn't have to be perfect?' So I think a lot of this starts within, in our own belief system and narrative and understanding how that can self-limiting for us, to a certain degree. Right? And I was lucky to have a manager who helped to empower me to believe in myself. And then after several experiences, after speaking up, after being more decisive, people sort of, the room shifted. People began to see me as a leader, right? Partly because I started to believe in myself and I started to get that confidence. And I was intentional then, eventually, about that. So it's not an overnight process, but I think those are just some of the things that I give advice and guidance to when making those shifts, you know, early on, or during these situations where you feel stuck. SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, Becky, thank you. This has been really helpful and I appreciate your time. REBECCA SHAMBAUGH: You're welcome. Sarah. Always enjoy it. HANNAH BATES: That was leadership coach Rebecca Shambaugh in conversation with Sarah Green Carmichael on HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. When you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world's top business and management experts, find it all at This episode was produced Mary Dooe and me, Hannah Bates. Curt Nickisch is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Amanda Kersey, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.
Harvard Business Review
16-04-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
How—and When—to Adapt Your Leadership Style
HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Historically, executives were told to be decisive and hierarchical. Today, the advice has shifted away from that—towards being nimble and collaborative. But great leaders, according to IMD professor and social psychologist Jennifer Jordan, understand there's a time and place for both traditional and new leadership styles. In this episode, Jordan breaks down leadership into seven key tensions—such as power-holding vs. power-sharing and tactical focus vs. big-picture vision—and she explains when to lean into each style to lead more effectively. JENNIFER JORDAN: Originally, my goal as a researcher was to figure out what are the competencies that leaders in this new world really need to be successful? And our research identified seven competencies. Being a power sharer, a visionary, being an adapter, being an accelerator, an analyst, a prospector, being a great listener. That said, as we work more and more with leaders in this VUCA disrupted world, we see that the best ones, they still dabble and they still have one foot in that more traditional leadership space and that more traditional leadership style. Sometimes they are more command and control. They're tellers, they're power holders. Yes, these new worlds or these emerging traits are important, but sometimes we still need to be traditional, and that's where these seven tensions were born. I call them the seven tensions of the digital age. It's a tension between the traditional and the emerging world. Power holder is somebody who holds power in a way that provides reassurance and security. So, when there is a lot changing, when people are feeling maybe insecure or unstable, a power holder really holds that authority in a way that creates security. Power share is somebody who shares power in a way that helps to develop others. They also see power-sharing as a way to free up their time for more strategic pursuits. So, what can I take off the table so I can really focus on what I need to focus on or what I'm good at? Tactician is somebody who's much more short-term focused. What are the next steps and can they break down that vision for how it's relevant for the different roles in the organization, the different levels? Visionary is somebody who sees the big picture, are able to create a vision that inspires. But on top of that, they can influence and persuade people to adopt that vision. Constant is somebody who has a very clear North Star. They say this is the non-negotiables. They are clear on their messaging, and that messaging is quite stable. And an adapter is somebody that understands that change is constant and sees adapting their message when new information becomes available as a strength rather than a weakness. A perfectionist is somebody who really is detail-oriented, ensures that a perfect finished product is delivered. An accelerator is somebody who sacrifices perfection for speed, says that we can satisfy sometimes, good is good enough, we need to move at speed. So, an intuitionist is someone who makes decisions from the gut. [inaudible 00:02:23] an analyst is somebody who brings in data and evidence to make their decisions. So, a miner is someone who goes deep. Really wants to understand a specific technology, a specific part of the market, et cetera. And a prospector's someone who goes more broad, understanding and is hyper aware of the opportunities and the threats in the environment around them. A teller is much more somebody who gives direction, they have the answer, maybe they're the expert, and so it is their responsibility as well to give the answer. A listener is somebody who listens to understand. They're curious. They have a learning mindset, so they are learners. A good leader is never standing fully on one side of that tension or fully on the other. Maybe at a moment when they're speaking or when they're in a meeting, they are, but then when they leave that context, they need to think, okay, is this still the right style that I need? And that requires a lot of emotional intelligence. I would never tell a leader, 'Aim for a great balance in all seven.' I think that's too much. Pick out the three or four that they think are really important for them to be able to move between and to focus on [inaudible 00:03:31]. If you rely on one side exclusively, the downsides of that side are going to become apparent. So, let's take the first tension we talk about, the listener and the teller. If I'm only a teller, what are the downsides of being a teller? Well, other people feel disengaged. Other people don't feel their voices heard. The expertise you bring in is going to be very narrowly focused on your expertise. The same with being a listener. If you're only a listener and you never speak, what are the downsides to being a listener? Well, you probably don't have your voice heard. You probably don't get to have a lot of say in the direction. You might indeed need to be a great listener. Add in that situation, you might also need to be able to hold power. Meaning, I listen to the people around me and I'm giving a clear frame, I'm giving them feedback, so maybe being a little bit of a teller. I'm giving them feedback, and I'm also creating that psychological safety where they can come back to me if they have questions. So I'm being a listener, but I'm also being a power holder in that situation. I have questions I ask. One is the situation, what's going on? So, what do I sense in the environment around me? What's going on? It might be a context question. I need to accelerate because the world is changing rapidly, so I need to accelerate. It might be a situational question and it can also be an emotional intelligent question. What am I sensing from the people around me? The people around me actually are feeling, I sense that they need to say something and I should shut up. Or I'm sensing that they're frustrated because I've shared all this power, but maybe they're not ready for it. I need to hold a little bit of power. I've certainly seen leaders who aren't able to do that. They have a message that is very clear, it is well-thought-out, it's smart, and yet the people below them are just not buying it. There's no change being made, there's no behavioral shift. And yet, the message stays the same. And they're just not able to grasp that, yeah, I've done all the work, I've listened, I've created a good strategy, but for some reason it's just not working. What do I need to do differently? How do I need to adapt? And that questioning, I think is what leaders need as well. One of the people that stands out for me is Angela Renz. She was the former CEO of Burberry and the head of retail at Apple. And for me, she balanced a listener and teller beautifully because she said, 'I'm not a digital person. The world is changing. I know that my future, our future customer at Burberry is going to be billennials. I don't really get them. I need to listen to them. What are they looking for? How do they want to shop? How do they think about fashion?' And she was an incredibly curious person, and yet she also said, 'These are some things that are non-negotiables. This is the history of Burberry. These are the things that we want to hold onto. And so, this is the frame. This is a non-negotiable for us. I'm here to help you. I'm here to support you, and I also want to learn from you. And I want to listen to the people that are at the bottom of the hierarchy, the next generation of leaders in this company so that I can bring this company to success.' Another leader that I admire is Mathias Dopfner. He was the head of the German media company, Axel Springer. He was the perfect balance on miner and prospector because advertising media, one of the most disrupted spaces when he came into the picture about 15, 20 years ago, really saying, 'I need to understand how this industry is changing, how our readers and our customers want to digest media differently.' So, very much a prospector. He took his top team to Silicon Valley. They stayed six months there. He took the next levels down with him and he said, 'We're going to live like start-ups. I know you are in your comfort zone of executive life. We're going to take you there. You're going to fly economy class. You're going to share rooms in a not-so-nice hotel so that you really feel like the world that we're trying to adapt to, the startup world.' And that was his prospecting part of the leadership, but then saying, 'Okay, there are a few areas where we already have competency. There's some that we don't. We're going to sell those off, but where we have competency, we're going to dive into this and we're going to invest and we're going to be miners here.' So, he was great at toggling between this prospector and miner. I see normally when leaders are on one side, so they have a sweet spot on one side and their range is very short, very focused. One of two things are happening, either a lack of skill. So, they're very much tacticians. They don't really know how to be visionaries. They don't know how to create a vision. They don't know how to influence people. Or they're very much power-sharers, they don't really know how to hold power, but more likely, I see they know how, but there's a fear that keeps them from going there. Let us say that they are an absolute power-sharer. What is their fear? Their fear is the downside to being, becoming a power-holder, being seen as authoritarian, being maybe too assertive, being too aggressive, pushing down the voice of the people that work for them, that's their fear. And so exploring, are all power-holders this? Why do you have that view? Give me some examples of power-holders that you think do so in a way that helps the team. Working through and understanding where those fears come from can release them to feel more emboldened, to explore that range. Same thing when I see the visionary versus tactician. Sometimes people are afraid to go onto the visionary side, to like, 'Oh, that's so fluffy and I don't know what exactly that would entail. And I'm not a very good storyteller. I'm not very inspiring.' So, they're afraid also of going there and failing, and exploring that visionary side of them and saying, 'What does a vision look like? What do you think would be inspiring for your team? Why do you think vision is sometimes fluffy? How can we create a vision that's not fluffy?' Challenging their fears or their misconceptions about what these other sides of the tensions might look like in a negative way. Many leaders come into my classroom utterly terrified of this world. They won't say it. Yes, the world is changing. There's no doubt about that. And yes, all of their expertise might not be so relevant anymore. And can they still be effective leaders if they share power and if they listen? Even with these younger generations that might have the technical answers and might want to have their voice heard, sometimes they're also looking for that leader to give them guidance and to provide security and to shelter them from the politics that are going above so that they can do their job. And those are very traditional qualities. And so, I think it does give some comfort to leaders. HANNAH BATES: That was IMD professor Jennifer Jordan in an HBR Quick Study video. You can find that video, and more like it, on HBR's YouTube channel. We'll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. When you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world's top business and management experts, find it all at This episode was produced Scott LaPierre and me, Hannah Bates. Curt Nickisch is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Amanda Kersey, Rob Eckhardt, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.
Harvard Business Review
09-04-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
When One of Your Employees Is Working Against You
HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Some employees don't just cause problems—they create them on purpose. Subversive employees manipulate office politics, undermine colleagues, and make themselves look indispensable—all while frustrating the people who actually see what's happening. So what can a leader do? In this episode of Dear HBR:, hosts Dan McGinn and Alison Beard tackle this tricky leadership challenge with Adrian Gostick, coauthor of Leading with Gratitude . They explore how to expose subversive behavior, make a compelling case to senior leadership, and set up systems that prevent manipulation. Here's Adrian, explaining why expressing gratitude to a subversive colleague should be the first step to getting to the bottom of their behavior: ADRIAN GOSTICK: There's some reason why somebody is being subversive, and the best thing for any leader to do is to start with positivity, start with the carrot versus the stick. Now, I'm not saying you won't get to the stick, but you always try to understand where somebody is coming from, why they may be acting the way they are, and you begin by valuing who they are, and you begin by identifying the good things they're doing versus just beating them up for the things that may be wrong. ALISON BEARD: That can be really hard though once an employee is making things difficult for you day after day after day. How do you begin to address those problems even if you're coming at it with an attitude of positivity? ADRIAN GOSTICK: It sounds like you have had some experience there, Alison, I can feel. It's true. There are difficult employees, and then there are toxic employees. The difficult we all have, and they can still make our lives miserable, and we have to find ways as leaders to work with them. Whereas those toxic employees, those are the ones where yeah, we do have to take a firmer, more disciplined approach in our leadership styles. ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I manage an IT system administrator and help desk employee who creates problems, then resolves them to make himself look to senior executives. For example, he'll set up a laptop for a new VP of sales but somehow misconfigure the VPN. Then when the VP calls about it, he'll act like it's a big issue, and show that he's working day and night to fix it, so the VP thinks he's so dedicated and supportive. He'll email at night and give out his personal mobile number instead of the general help desk number. Meanwhile, when he thinks an employee is insignificant, the case will sit for weeks before he helps them. He's one of only two system administrators, and once a case is assigned that person owns it until it's resolved. When I do spot reviews of cases and catch him doing this, I've warned him that he shouldn't be having problems after standard set-ups, but he just moves on and creates different kinds of fires. I'm unable to get rid of him, he has too many backers in management. He's been with the company for more than ten years and has systemically cultivated their support by doing these kinds of things. What can I do? ADRIAN GOSTICK: When I was listening to this, I had flashbacks because I had this employee. I had a guy, I'll call him Sam, who Chester, my coauthor and I, we had hired years ago when we were working together in a corporate environment. And the problem was like this, clients loved him, the senior leaders loved him, and his teammates thought he was the worst human being who ever lived. And he would be on the road a lot, and when he came in, he would actually just make rounds from each of the executive offices, pretty much spend the whole day out schmoozing with the executives, his teammates couldn't get anything out of him, we couldn't get anything out of him. When we complained to our boss, the CEO about him, he'd say work around him, he's a great guy, clients love him. Just could not get him, we couldn't help our senior leaders understand that this guy was really a challenge. And the team didn't like him. ALISON BEARD: So, what did you do? ADRIAN GOSTICK: Thankfully on this one, he ended up shooting himself in the foot, and finally ended up showing his colors. But that doesn't always happen. And there's a very good chance if this guy here has been doing this for ten years, this system administrator, he's not going to get caught, he's just going to keep doing this. And so, when you have this happen you've got to start working the senior leadership yourself, you've got to be a little political yourself, and a lot of leaders hate doing that. DAN MCGINN: I thought this was a fascinating letter and a fascinating problem. I'm naïve, I didn't think that people would do this kind of thing. We've been doing the show for a couple of years now and I don't think I've used the word diabolical. It's evil, but it's really cleverly evil. It reminded me of that cartoon that was on when I was a kid, there was that theme song, here I come to save the day. He creates a problem, and then he sort of swoops in, and sweats, and works hard, and solves it. I can see how annoying this would be to be his boss, but as a game goes, man, he's found a way to score the system. ALISON BEARD: It's interesting, Adrian, that you start with the idea of explaining to senior leadership exactly what he's doing, that actually he's a poor performer because he's not doing the initial tasks well, he's only solving problems. But how does he do that in a way that doesn't sound like he's winging, or unable to manage his own employee, or even jealous of him because he has these relationships with the top executives? ADRIAN GOSTICK: And you're exactly right, Alison. This is a really difficult one because it's very easy to come in here and look like you're being a little petty. This guy's the hero, and I'm a little petty. And so, you talk about efficiency. You say, look, we're not as efficient as we can be because of this. You talk about the steps that you're going to take, because I got some of my people that may be distracted, let me tell you what's happening with Sam here, and we're not as efficient as we can be. So, we're going to put together a ticketing system, and we're going to make sure people live by this because this is what's been happening. We've got 10% of our workforce who are the upper echelon, who are very happy and 90% of the people who are ticked off, and we can't run a help desk that way. So, you have to try and bring it back to the business need. DAN MCGINN: That ticket system was an idea that I thought of as well. When you place an order at a fast-food restaurant, there's a little clock on the screen that starts ticking, and it does that because time-to-service is really, really important in that industry. It would make sense in this context that the moment somebody puts a ticket into the help desk, a clock starts counting. So, it doesn't matter what the rank of the person submitting the ticket is, the time should be the metric that the helper is judged on, whether it's the VP or whether it's the admin, start to measure the time it takes them to close tickets and incentivize them against that. ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Adrian, I loved your idea about going to the senior leadership with some information on consequences. You could say, in one sense, 90% of the people rate our services very poorly because they're not being responded to in a timely fashion. You could also say, this is the percentage of time being wasted on dealing with senior leaders' technical issues because of this one employee. Cold hard facts do tend to work. ADRIAN GOSTICK: Yeah, there's no doubt. You come with your case ready. Because this guy's smart, you have to come in as if you're an attorney arguing a case before a jury here. And you've got to have your data and your facts that say here's how we can improve efficiency. And I love Dan's idea. So few teams do this. We did some work once with the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels, they're an elite fighter group, and they do these 200 performances a year, marvelous acrobatics in the air. And everything is verbal. I thought everything would be computerized, it's not. And you can't exactly go no, no, your other left. You have to be really careful when you're up in the air. But when they come down, I love this, what they did was they removed all their insignias of rank, all their lieutenant's bars, or their private's bars, whatever they had, and they would all sit around in a room and debrief each other. And they could say, somebody who was sweeping the floors could tell the commander of the group, you were off on your flight line. And he would say, yeah, I was, I was 50 feet off, and I won't let that happen again. And it's that idea of we're going to be very clear about what went right, and what went wrong, and there will be no elephants in the room. So, I think it's rare when teams really do that. And I think that's one thing that could help in this case. DAN MCGINN: I do think that part of this problem might be hard to solve because I've seen this in companies. Alison, do you have a favorite IT person? ALISON BEARD: No. DAN MCGINN: Oh, I do. ALISON BEARD: [LAGHTER] Who? DAN MCGINN: I'm not going to tell. I'm not going to play favorites. But I don't think it's uncommon. You do develop a relationship with these people, you get the sense that some of them are more responsive than others. It's like any other kind of service thing. This idea that everybody needs to be equal, you can't go to your favorite person, he is sort of bucking human nature in that, don't you think? ALISON BEARD: Yes, but if those executives begin to learn that the only reason they need to work with him so much is because he's creating problems with their computers, I feel like that might erode some of the trust that he's developed. But we seem to have skipped the idea of talking to this person directly. ADRIAN GOSTICK: Absolutely not. Of course, yeah, Alison, you're exactly right. And you know what, there's a very good chance he won't believe you, he won't buy into it, he'll want to know well, who said this, and you'll say, I'm hearing it from a lot of people, well, I don't believe so. So, there's a very good chance he's going to argue, but you still have to try. But you're right, Alison, of course, that's where we have to start. ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I think it's really important when he does have a direct conversation with the employee to come in very matter-of-factly with information, not make it person, make it very much about what the team's goals are, and outline what this means for him professionally, that you will be talking to senior leaders if this doesn't change, and that might change his status with him. DAN MCGINN: Adrian, instead of a random ticketing system where problems go to whichever IT person is available, should our letter writer assign cases, and do so in a way that the problem person is not getting all the senior people? ADRIAN GOSTICK: Yeah, I think this is the last kind of idea here that we might have with this issue, is that the manager does need to be a little stronger. The manager can take control of certain issues. One, that the manager says, look, I'm going to be doing the assigning from now on. And also, at this point, if everything is tried, and you've failed, you can control other things. You can control this person's ability to even get a raise. You can control this person's ability to work from home. What's the perk this person likes. At some point, you might get to that point that a manager has to exert some sort of influence to try and get the work in the performance parameters that he or she is looking for. DAN MCGINN: Alison, what's our advice? ALISON BEARD: We have two suggestions. First, it's always worthwhile to have a direct conversation with difficult employees. You come to that conversation armed with facts about his underperformance, how it's so important for everyone to play their roles and serve the entire organization. But you can also explain the consequences, that if his behavior doesn't change, you plan to talk to senior leadership, you might change the assignments he gets. It's probable that because this person does seem to be rather diabolical in his playing of office politics, that our letter writer will need to start working the senior leadership herself. We think that she should talk about the consequences for the organization. Perhaps the percentage of people who are unhappy with their service, the percentage of time being spent on unnecessary fixes. And then we also would like to see her suggest solutions. Her handling reassignments in a different way, even instituting a ticketing system that takes some of the choice out of the process and debriefing to get everyone working more efficiently in solving these tech problems. DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: I lead a diverse 15-person team at an IT company. We're all from a variety of backgrounds professionally, technically, and personally. One woman is our resident deep technical expert, but I've heard from her teammates that she hoards information and gets upset when she's asked to share her knowledge. There are communication issues, and she is poor at time management. She's always showing up late to meetings, missing them, or proposing reschedules. She often fails to follow through on action items. I don't want to over-generalize, but she comes from India where the corporate culture is more hierarchical, so maybe the problems stem from the fact that she is a middle manager, while the majority of the team is junior to her, with only a couple of peers, and a couple one level above her. When I've tried to talk with her about all this, she redirects to other team issues. When I ask her how things are going in areas where I know that there are interpersonal conflicts, she tells me, great. I've tried different ways to give her feedback at various times, and in various areas, but she usually defends herself and rejects it. She says she's being unfairly scapegoated. I've had similar conversations with others on the team, and they're open and receptive, so I don't think it's my style or delivery. How do I have these conversations with her in a more effective way? ADRIAN GOSTICK: This one is really interesting to me. I do a lot of executive coaching, and yesterday I was on the phone with a fellow who, it took us about 45 minutes, and everything was great, everything's fine, I'm beloved of my people. And yet, there was a reason that the organization had asked me to coach him. But nothing would break through until finally, I did suggest doing a 360 with his people. And at that point, he did kind of say well, I guess one thing they might say is that I'm kind of Doctor No . I've been here a long time, and I know what will work, and what won't, and I just don't want to listen to all their ideas. I'll tell them right away: this won't work. All of the sudden, we started opening up, and we started finding out the way he was being perceived. And so, I think this is a little what's happening here. This again, as we think about that idea of toxic versus difficult employees, I think this is just a difficult employee who is really overwhelmed. And I think probably would stand to benefit from maybe a little coaching, a 360 on her so that she can see how she's being perceived by others. ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I came at this letter really disliking the knowledge hoarder that's being described, but then I looked up some research that we've published that is really interesting and made me empathize with people who do have a lot of knowledge in organizations. Sometimes it's because they fear they're going to lose a competitive advantage, but it's often just because they are too pressed for time, and they feel that all these other people are depending on them, and always asking them for stuff. That pressure causes them to just seize up, and say: I can't, I don't have the time to do this. In one study, people would even pretend that they didn't have the information. And so, I feel like if we can find a way to break through that women's natural reaction, feeling pressured like everyone's coming to her, and she doesn't have the time for it, that's what our letter writer needs to do. ADRIAN GOSTICK: I couldn't agree more. I think that's exactly right. The first place we start is that she actually might be that busy. And you're right, the first time you might hear this, you might dislike this woman as this hoarder, and I've known somebody like that. But then as you think about this a little more, you might realize that she just doesn't even have 30 seconds sometimes to explain stuff to somebody because it's going to last five minutes, and I know it will! And so, I think there's a few things we might be able to do as leaders to help her. One would be to backfill, cross-train somebody else in what she's doing. DAN MCGINN: What about this business of her being hierarchical and paying too much attention to that? Is that a mindset that a manager can try to make less of an issue for a subordinate? Is there a way to sort of open her mind to people being equal regardless of who's a manager, who's a direct report, who's a vice president, who's not? ADRIAN GOSTICK: There were a few things I noticed in that. First, off he asked, he said, well, I don't know if this is an issue or not, but she's from India. And well, that's not an inclusive mindset today, so that's probably not a good mindset for this manager to have coming in. And now, let's say this person, this woman we're talking about here does have an issue with the level of person, well, then it is something to talk about. And like we talked about in the last issue, this is really not something that we can have, but again, it becomes a values-based discussion. It becomes an issue of we're going to help everybody, no matter where they are in the organization, we're going to respect. But that has to be a value that we really believe in our team, and we live up to. It can't just be lip service. I have to see it in you, my manager, and I expect it in my employees as well. ALISON BEARD: I completely agree that, as we said before, a direct conversation with this employee. And as you said, Adrian, making it easier for her. So, first of all, this is something we really care about, and we're going to incentivize you to do it. Secondly, what's the best way for you to do it? Should we assign you a mentee who you pass everything to, and then they pass it to the rest of the organization? Dorothy Leonard who's a former HBS professor has written a lot for us on knowledge cascades, trainings, challenge sessions, campfire meetings, just all different ways to get knowledge out of one person's head and disperse it to the organization without taxing that one person who has all the expertise. So, I think just a brainstorming session with her might help her be less resistant to change and being confronted and criticized. ADRIAN GOSTICK: One of the things as you sit and chat with this woman about this process, and I love Alison you're talking about the team: We're creating a team environment here, and how do we move forward? And she has got to be able to have the humility to say, I'm willing to change, and I need to change. And that's okay to have the courage to then move forward and to try this, but also to have the discipline to stick with this because as a manager, hopefully, you're going to be meeting with her at least once a month and saying, okay, how are we doing. And you're going to set aside at least an hour for this. And you're going to take a little time, because this is just as important as all of her other deliverables to help her grow, and develop, and become this team player that everybody needs. ALISON BEARD: I love that idea of ongoing coaching. DAN MCGINN: Adrian, when you hear that she's late to meetings, failing to show up, failing to follow up on things, she sounds like she has some organization problems, and time management problems. Is that an area you would attack here? ADRIAN GOSTICK: It's a good question, Dan, because we are making the assumption she's overwhelmed, she's incredibly taxed, she's putting out a lot of product. And one of the things that a manager has got to figure out, first off, is really: is this person producing all this output as well? One of the simple ways you can do that is Monday morning asking for a weekly check-in, saying what are you working on this week, great, okay, so these are your goals, these are your deliverables, great. Next Monday morning we're going to meet, and if you find out those deliverables are the same pretty much week after week, then you've got an issue that she's really not accomplishing all that you're thinking is happening, and then there really is a time management thing that's going on here, or a performance issue. But if she is crunching out a lot of stuff, then it might be also a prioritization issue. It might be the problem is she doesn't know which issues are the most important, and this is something that a manager can really help with, helping her understand these are the top five issues that you should be working on this week. ALISON BEARD: Let's assume that she tries to talk to this woman, encourages her to change, but she's still faced with this defensive posture rejecting that there's even a problem, what's the next step for our letter writer? ADRIAN GOSTICK: The last step really, after you've tried this as a leader, is to the idea that maybe somebody on the outside can help, maybe a coach can help. And this might not be a long process, it might be three months or six months, and it doesn't have to be tremendously expensive, but this is obviously a valued employee from what I'm hearing here. So, if this team member is that valuable to them, find them a coach who can help them, somebody from the outside. Sometimes just an outside perspective can help shake us up and help us realize that maybe we're not being perceived in the way that we should be. ALISON BEARD: Terrific. Dan, what are we advising our manager? DAN MCGINN: We see a couple of issues here. Clearly one of them is the way that this woman is managing her time. Maybe she needs more resources, they need more staff, maybe she needs help prioritizing, maybe she needs weekly check-ins. So, this issue of time, constantly running late, and dropping deliverables, we see that as part of the problem. The larger issue here is one of respect and values, she's not treating her co-workers with as much respect, that she's acting as if she's above them. We think this is probably not a cultural issue, and we don't think the fact that she's a native of India is p probably not a good mindset as a manager to assume that's the cause of this. We'd like the letter writer to have a direct conversation with her, let her know this is a problem, maybe do a 360 to show data and evidence that this is a problem, help her recognize that she needs to change. If nothing else works, consider an outside coach who can help her with both of these issues. And it might be as short as a three-month engagement in hopes of finding some results for this person. ALISON BEARD: Okay, let's go to the last letter. Dear HBR: I've been a senior manager in the home office of a membership organization for more than a decade. We have less than 50 employees, and most are women under age 40. Two people on my team come from non-traditional work environments, they sit next to one another in cubes, and have become best friends, a social powerhouse in our small office. Both are exceptionally good at their jobs. But here's the problem, they share the same dominant personality traits, and their mood or activities tend to set the tone for their whole work area. When challenged they're very good at seeming to be team players, but in reality, they're cliquish, and even subtle bullies. If there were only one of them, I probably wouldn't be writing this letter, but they gang up on everyone, including me. Due to their independent work, I don't always know where they are or what they're doing. Neither seems to think they need a boss, and that's pretty clear in how they treat me. They're not out and out rude, but I don't feel any support. I'd like to separate them, but our office can't accommodate that right now. I should note that they'd be surprised to hear themselves described this way. Many of us simply work around them, rather than inviting conflict. My question is, how much should I let them get away with as long as they do their work, and do it well? Co-workers at various levels tell me I should clamp down, exert my authority, and make them report what they're doing. Leaders above me see their professional limitations and are quick to call me out on their behavior when something goes awry. But micromanaging is not my style, and since much of their unpleasant behavior is subtle, I have a hard time telling them where the line is between okay, and not okay. When I provide corrective feedback they understandably want specifics, but they're so adept at cover-your-ass behavior that the examples I give end up looking like opinions that can be debated. I've involved our HR manager, and he agrees I'm in a tricky position. I've managed talented difficult people with success before and can tolerate it, but I'm weary of the conflict. Do you think one or both of the women have to go? Experience tells me they could be replaced, and life would go on. Or is there something else I could do to mitigate these issues? Wow, Adrian, what do you think about this one? ADRIAN GOSTICK: Now this is, now when we were thinking about is this person toxic, or are they difficult, these two are toxic, there's no doubt. And yet, I see a couple of big issues arising first up with this. The one problem is with the manager. You've got two younger employees, or junior employees I should call them, who aren't paying attention, and the manager needs to be more assertive. This is a weak manager who needs to, who's letting two people run amuck, and that's just not appropriate. The second big problem is with this HR guy who says, yeah, you've got a problem. And it's like nobody's helping each other here. I would say there's a big problem as well where this manager says, look, this is not my strong suit, I don't like to micromanage people, I expect people to be grown-ups, HR I need you to help me. And so, I think both of them working together, HR and this manager, both of them have a role in this that's going on, whose issue is this? Now, of course, these two employees are toxic, and we need to deal with them as well, but I think that's the first place we start is looking at the behavior of the manager, and the behavior of HR. ALISON BEARD: And even pulling in some of those leaders that are criticizing the employees, and how the manager's handling them, but then not offering suggestions for how to fix the situation. ADRIAN GOSTICK: Absolutely. Managing people is hard. We are all crazy in our own way, and these two are just being allowed to run amuck. And this manager has to bring them together, or probably better separately, and say, here's what's going to happen, this is not appropriate behavior, I can argue with you, but something has to change here. You're not happy because I'm hearing lots of things, and I'm not happy with this behavior. And so, while there's some limitations of space, I'm sure, you can still separate these people. You can move people around, and they can be removed from each other. And the question is, do you fire one, do you get rid of both? Well, I think first off you start seeing if you can change this behavior. The good part about this, unlike the question we had a few questions ago, they don't have senior leadership support, they don't have HR support. Really, the only thing that's stopping them from improving their behavior is a manager who needs to be a little tougher here. DAN MCGINN: Yeah, this idea that I think it would improve the situation if I moved them apart in the office so they were no longer in adjoining cubes, but I just can't do that right now, I agree with you, we should lean a little bit harder on that, think creatively, find a space. I think location drives a lot of human interaction, and simply putting them 50 feet across the floor from each other could have a really profound change. And I think I'd urge this manager to get creative on solutions for that. ALISON BEARD: But I think that direct conversation that Adrian was suggesting is important first because I think that if my manager separated me from my best friend without explaining to me why I would get pretty ticked. Hopefully, Amy never does that to us, Dan. I think being very firm with them, you said, Adrian, completely agree with you on that that a direct conversation needs to happen immediately. DAN MCGINN: I wonder if this letter writer is feeling enough urgency around the potential personal costs that she could experience here. She says leaders are quick to call me out on their behavior when something goes awry. It sounds like there's a set of people that are getting fed up with our letter writer too, that she's not handling this very well. I wonder if she has enough urgency not around just sort of this is a problem I need to solve, but this is a problem for her in her career. ADRIAN GOSTICK: And I think the dialogue that you two are having is excellent because I think one of the things that as you sit down with these two independently, one at a time, you really have this discussion, and it has to be very clear that you aren't happy, I'm not happy, we have to come to an agreement, and I'm going to give you some time, but it may take six months, we're going to put this in place, I'm going to create some documentation, but it's taking a lot of my time and resources to manage this, and we've got to figure it out. Now, if my way doesn't work for you, that's okay, you won't be able to work here, but it's okay because we're all going to be a lot happier. And they need to know in very clear and concise terms that their jobs really are on the line with this, that this behavior cannot continue because right now she is the one being blamed for all of this. ALISON BEARD: How can she better enlist support from HR, from the senior leaders? Adrian, do you have any ideas on that? ADRIAN GOSTICK: Absolutely. This is one where this manager, and she's admitted I'm not the best micromanager, she needs intervention from HR. Which means HR will be involved in these conversations because they're going to throw up smokescreens, they're going to say that's not right, they don't sound like dummies, these two, and so there's going to be a lot of verbiage that's thrown at this manager. This manager needs the HR guy in there with her. The second bit of intervention that she needs from HR is training, that she needs these two to be coached, or brought in, or trained, or maybe the whole team needs, and there are appropriate respectful behaviors within the workforce that have to be respected. And again, this comes back to that idea of creating some values. DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I question whether the notion that you can just move one of them out is realistic. It sounds like their performance is okay, and as she says, a lot of their behavior is subtle, it just seems like it's not apparent to me that they've crossed an egregious line that would warrant termination. So, I wonder if her hands are a little bit tied on that front. ALISON BEARD: Especially because they are such good performers. She's not just going to have to replace one solid employee if this solution is firing them, she's going to have to replace two. ADRIAN GOSTICK: I hear that a lot, especially government organizations, or organizations with perhaps unionized employees where a manager will tell me, I can't just fire somebody. And so, it's a really good point is that the first step you always take is to try and work through this. But there may be other options where you might within different parts of the organization, be able to move people transfer them out, create new opportunities that don't involve your particular team. Sometimes a second chance can be just as good for somebody else on another team breaking these two apart. DAN MCGINN: Alison, what's our summary? ALISON BEARD: So, first we want our letter writer to recognize that this is a really big problem. She has a set of toxic employees on her hands, and people are starting to blame her for letting the situation fester. We think that she needs to talk to them, probably separately, be firm, explain that their behavior is inappropriate and that it needs to improve, outline all the ways that should happen, even mention that HR and senior leaders of the organization agree that there's a problem, and let them know that their jobs are on the line. While at the same time acknowledging their strong performance and explaining that they're valued. We think it's wise to enlist HR and other managers either in these direct conversations or in supporting team training about appropriate behavior, even coaching for these particular employees. There are creative solutions like splitting them up, but we think that this is a problem best tackled directly, and with a lot more backbone. DAN MCGINN: Adrian, thanks for coming on the show. ADRIAN GOSTICK: Dan, Alison, it was a real pleasure, and thank you so much. HANNAH BATES: That was executive coach Adrian Gostick in conversation with Alison Beard and Dan McGinn on Dear HBR: . Gostick is a coauthor of the book Leading with Gratitude . We'll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. When you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world's top business and management experts, find it all at This episode was produced by Curt Nickisch and me, Hannah Bates. Curt is also our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.
Harvard Business Review
02-04-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
Why Your Frontline Employee Turnover Is High
HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you. Many companies struggle to retain low-wage employees, and executives often assume they leave for higher pay. But research suggests money is only the tip of the iceberg; the reason has way more to do with how companies treat, support, and develop those workers. In this 2023 episode of HBR IdeaCast , host Curt Nickisch speaks with Harvard Business School's Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman, coauthors of the HBR article 'The High Cost of Neglecting Low-Wage Workers . ' They reveal how businesses underestimate the strategic importance of these essential employees—and how mentorship, career paths, and better job design can increase retention, performance, and morale. The conversation begins with the surprising findings from Fuller and Raman's research. CURT NICKISCH: For your research, you looked at some broad data on jobs and wages. You also surveyed executives, and you also surveyed more than a thousand low-wage workers. Why did you kind of put that combination of pictures together, and what did that help visualize for you? JOSEPH FULLER: Well, Curt, what we've done in our project on a number of occasions is to try to understand simultaneously the way business leaders' view of an issue or a problem and also the way employees or job seekers see that same problem. And what we've consistently found is they're very often significant misconceptions, almost always rooted in the business community, about how the labor market works, about the attitudes of workers, about what causes workers to respond to anything from offers of training, to quitting their job, and that by amplifying the opinions of workers, we can help inform decision-makers in ways that broaden their understanding of an issue, cause them to make different decisions. Give you a quick illustration. Most employers assume that when a low-wage worker quits their job, they're primarily motivated by the ability to make more at a different job. And that is a consideration about 40% of the time, but the dominant consideration when a low-wage worker quits a job is our transportation issues. How easy is it for me to get to and from work? That's almost two-thirds of the explanations are, 'It's easier for me to get through this new job than to my current job.' Employers are just not aware of that. CURT NICKISCH: So let's describe these workers some more. Who are we talking about here? MANJARI RAMAN: We're really talking about a rather large population of the U.S. workforce. These are about 40 to 44% of the U.S. workforce, which could come as a surprise to many. These are workers who were at or below the 200% of the poverty threshold, which quite simply translates into jobs and positions that had them earning, they were all early wage earners earning less than $20. Now, $20 sounds a lot; when we are talking about a metro like Boston and San Francisco with high expenses, it's not that much. But we also looked at many, many workers, a majority of them were earning below $15, below $10, and even $7 per hour. What we saw, and the pandemic highlighted actually, was that these workers were essential to the business model of most companies and most industries. We were able to see that a large number of women are overrepresented in low-wage workforces, and that has big implications for how we want to think about this. Also we saw that not all the folks in low-wage positions were less educated. There were folks who even had four-year college degrees who were in low-wage positions. The other thing we did, which was very interesting, which was pre-pandemic, was we looked at a database of more than 180,000 job resumes of low-wage workers, and we compared them between 2012 and 2017, and we found that over five years in that period, 60% of workers were trapped in these low-wage positions, even if they had moved in a job. CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. You wrote in your article about how hourly wage increases were kind of a short-term solution, and that may underscore the misconception that people are leaving for better pay, that it's really pay is just the simple motivating factor here for a low-wage worker. JOSEPH FULLER: I think it's rooted in the logic that employers apply to low-wage work. Low-wage workers are not really the subject of investment by companies. Many of them don't have career paths for low-wage workers. Often, low-wage workers are in fairly large work groups where there'll be 15, 20, even more than 20 workers per every supervisor. Meaning that the next leg up in the ladder is pretty hard arithmetically to achieve because that supervisor's got to retire or leave, and you have to be picked out of this group of 15, 20, 25 workers to get elevated to that role. I think the fixation on wages really betrays the fact that most companies think about this purely through the economics. They don't think about attachment to work. Low-wage workers or people who are capable of making great commitments to companies, loyal to companies want to stay where they're currently working. More than half of low-wage workers' aspirations is to grow with the company they're currently working with. That took many, many business people by surprise, who assume that a low-wage worker thinks about this in a mercenary way, which unfortunately, largely is the way most employers think about it. MANJARI RAMAN: A lot of these low-wage workers are actually dealing with many, many challenges. It's not simple and easy just to get to work. There's financial insecurity, there's food insecurity, there could be homelessness, and few companies think about what is happening to the lives of their workers outside the company. CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, that word security jumped out at me, you know you said in the article that it's not just more pay that these workers are looking for. They're looking for security, which is a different concept, but that also gives businesses more flexibility of what they can offer to those workers. JOSEPH FULLER: The nuanced picture that comes out of this research, I think puts low-wage workers in context, that they do face, as Manjari was saying, challenges in their lives that are familiar to all of us—that you're taking care of a parent or a child, that you have to have reliable transport because you've got to be home, because your kid's coming back from school and you don't want them to be alone. But that low-wage workers, once they get in an environment where they feel that they're being productive and they feel that they've got a supervisor that maybe isn't dedicated to advancing them, but is a decent person, isn't a sexist, isn't a racist, low-wage workers skewed to women, skewed to ethnic minorities and racial minorities, so I'm in a community where I'm being productive, I've got some friends here, I've overcome that learning curve effect of both learning the role, but also learning basic things like how we do things around here, and where do we all get lunch? Once people get settled in a comfortable environment like that, they will actually go to pretty great lengths to avoid putting themselves at risk by going to another unfamiliar environment where the workers, there might not be receptive to them coming on board, where the supervisor might demonstrate behaviors that are objectionable or frightening or otherwise demotivating to people. The notion of low-wage workers as people who are prepared to invest in building their future in a company, if opportunities are provided them, is something we very much want to impress on businesses. Most low-wage workers' aspiration, over 60%, is to stay where I am if there's some opportunities for me to advance. MANJARI RAMAN: The irony is that most companies have convinced themselves exactly in the opposite direction, which is high churn is a result and a constant phenomena in our low-wage positions. It's almost as if managers are telling themselves, 'We know these jobs are, we are under-investing in these jobs, we are not helping support these workers, so let me just accept the idea that there's going to be a tremendous amount of churn.' The research actually shows that people are keen to stay, and if you were to invest in them, they would stay even longer and be more productive, which is then how they earn more, and it's not just about paying $1 more, it's about paying $1 more linked to higher productivity. CURT NICKISCH: So you've got a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy here, where if you view them as mercenaries, they may end up acting like that, rather than estimating the goodwill that those workers have. I'm curious why you think companies have misjudged this so much? JOSEPH FULLER: In many instances, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you suggested, Curt, that the policies and procedures of the company are honed, they're understood by everybody, and the basic assumptions underlining their original design are not being questioned. Let's say I'm running a retailer, and I regularly experience 70% turnover in my frontline retail staff. That's an eye-watering number, and so now I'm saying, 'How do I think about the job design of an entry-level retail worker?' Well, it's got to be very simple, 'cause it's regularly occupied by somebody who's new to the job. 'Am I going to make it more complex?' 'Am I going to train that new worker up?' Well, why would I invest their training when 70% of them leave every year? It'd be a foolish investment. I'd just be training my competitors' future workers or some other company's future workers.' And that whole logic is embedded how we hire, what skills we value when we evaluate applicants, what type of feedback we create, what types of attributes we value in that worker, what types of advancement opportunities we offer them. By having this logic, we create the very high level of turnover that we blame for imposing on us, the company, the obligation to have large numbers of low-skill, low-paid workers. It's so embedded in the thinking of management and their business models that undoing that fundamental logic is something that never occurs to them. MANJARI RAMAN: It was quite hilarious, actually, when we did a whole number of interviews with business leaders, and there were those who got it and had the right logic, and saw that there was much to be gained by investing in the three most important practices, which is provide mentorship to low-wage workers, help them figure out their career pathways, either inside the company or even outside the company, and thirdly, give them guidance on the learning and development and the skills that they needed. Most companies who get it figure out that the math on that works out much better than the hidden costs of high churn, high turnover, constant hiring, low morale, on and on and on. CURT NICKISCH: So let's talk through some of those things that companies can and should be doing. When you talk about providing mentorship to a low-wage worker and having career advancement discussions, what can that look like, and maybe we can talk about some companies that have some success stories here? JOSEPH FULLER: The best practices are, first of all, that there's a supervisor that's giving regular, actionable feedback. The feedback's got to be regular chronologically, not strictly limited to when there's an annual performance review cycle, and it's got to be comprehensible and actionable for the listener, for the worker. 'Don't do it this way, do it that way. Let me show you,' or, 'If you had knowledge of these two additional processes, did you know that you might get promoted?,' or, 'We're going to be changing the work environment here, let's say adding a new technology. Here are some ways for you to get familiar with that before we make the changeover.' It's very important also that companies have some set of pathways for people to advance, to become more productive, to be worthy of earning more, or to be qualified for a promotion when opportunities exist or when the company expands. Now, those pathways, they can't just exist in a binder. They have to be communicated regularly in a way that the workers understand both that they're there, what they require, how to access them. If you do those things, you're signaling that worker that you're committed to their improvement, that you care about their outcome, and you're providing workers with specific mechanisms for being in a position to deserve to earn more, to be earning more because they're more productive, they're more flexible, they're a worker that is adding more value to the enterprise. One thing that we found that was quite startling in the research, Curt, is that when you ask executives, managers, and frontline supervisors, they have very different understandings and beliefs about how effectively their company implements the types of policies I just talked about. The C-Suite is absolutely adamant that they do a very good job, but what they're really saying is, 'We have policies, we have practices, we have binders.' 'We tell supervisors to give good feedback,' but when you get closer to that shop floor and you're actually asking someone to execute those policies, the fall off is dramatic, and that disconnect between intentions and implementation is a big driver of the high turnover, low-wage cycle that actually damages the prospects of workers and their employers simultaneously. MANJARI RAMAN: It's ironic, but a lot of times, these practices are being implemented in the company for higher skills, higher wages jobs, and the implementation is weak for low-wage workers. In our interviews, we often heard, we interviewed workers who had grown within the organization in the last three years and those who hadn't, and the ones who grew were folks where somebody, a mentor on the shop floor reached out and said, 'I think you can do this. I think you're capable of doing this.' Even a little piece of positive feedback and a little bit of guidance went a long way. Many managers, on the other hand, said, 'Well, if a low-wage worker wants to grow within the organization, why don't they just speak up?,' but it's actually very difficult to speak up and ask for a promotion or a pay raise if you're living day-to-day, check-by-check and you're petrified that you lose the job you currently have. So one of the key things that we need to fix in all of this is break down the assumptions that let people ask us, just like higher-skill, higher-wage workers would do it. No, I think in this case, you have to work top-down and create the mechanisms, as Joe pointed out, for feedback to be given, for input, for the worker to be inspired and taken down a pathway of career enhancement. CURT NICKISCH: Are there companies or businesses that have successfully overcome this perception gap and have done good things that you think are good examples for other companies to look to? MANJARI RAMAN: Well, yes. We are starting to see that very large employers, companies like Disney, Walmart, and Amazon are putting in a lot of effort in terms of thinking about how they attract low-wage workers, retain them, train them while they are in employment for better positions, either within the organization or outside the organization. Disney, for example, has partnered with Valencia Community College in Florida, and imagine you have Haitian housekeepers. Now, housekeeping is a very difficult job and usually has very high turnover, but Disney will offer such a person the ability to perhaps take English courses to learn the language better, perhaps take front office management courses, and so they have created pathways where you might see a housekeeper move on to a front office customer-facing position, which is no longer an early position, and actually pays much better benefits and wages. JOSEPH FULLER: It's also, we're seeing some innovations, Curt, that are very encouraging from small and medium enterprises as well. Smaller companies and medium-sized companies, management is closer to the workers literally and physically, and they have a better appreciation often of the stories behind the job description and the paycheck. A very innovative program in western Michigan, called The Source is a good illustration of this. The Source is a confederation of local employers that have banded together to create essentially what amounts to case officers, who can help the low-wage workers that work for those companies access all the various services that are available to them in Western Michigan. They could be services offered by a not-for-profit or a social entrepreneur. They could be state or local programs, but it's designed to help workers solve problems that the HR department isn't equipped to solve, doesn't understand, doesn't have the resources to address. So if you go to the HR manager of your factory and say, 'I think I'm about to get evicted,' what are they going to say? 'I feel badly for you.' But if they can say, 'Here's a local social entrepreneur that both helps people avoid eviction, but also helps people who are about to be evicted, find a place to make a smooth transition to stable living circumstance,' that, of course, is very much in the interest of the employee, but this is doing well by doing good for the employer, because that worker isn't sleeping in their car. That worker isn't spending all their time on the job, being worried about their kids having nowhere to go anymore after school. That worker isn't preoccupied by having the sheriff come up with an eviction notice, and so a lot of it has to do do with companies saying, 'I understand these workers where they are, what their life is like, where the role work plays in their life, and I can get a more productive worker, more likely to stay, more likely to speak well of me in the community, more likely to be anxious to perform well if I make investments that really speak to their needs and their ambitions.' CURT NICKISCH: I mean, one thing you found in your research is that companies sort of disregard the strategic importance of what we've called here essential workers, which is counterintuitive, right? It's essential, but they're overlooking the strategic importance of this labor force. Do you think that companies need to sort of step back and approach this as kind of like a war for low-wage workers that they have underestimated up until this point? MANJARI RAMAN: That's a great point. The war for talent is a zero-sum game where everybody's fighting to get to the bottom of the barrel. What we are saying is you've already got the talent in your companies. Find a way to retain them, grow them, encourage them. They will put word out that you're a great place to work and bring in more friends, families, neighbors applying to your open positions, because if you don't do that and you have open positions, you have hotels that don't have housekeepers, you have airlines that don't have baggage handlers, you have restaurants that have to shut down early, you have pharmacies that can't deliver, basically, you're not able to deliver your business model. So instead of going to war, it's much better to think about this in a constructive way in peace times and say, 'What could I be doing constructively to retain the talent I already have, the workers who have already signed up and say they want to work with me?' JOSEPH FULLER: As a manager, it's a safe assumption that any process that you're supervising is perfectly designed to create the outcomes it regularly creates, not the outcomes you want it to create, so if companies are very satisfied with 70% turnover, with low levels of engagement with workers, with poor performance on diversity, equity, and inclusion, they should just keep executing their current policies because that's what they're getting, but if they want to get a more engaged workforce, if they want to escape the war for talent. What they need to start doing is engaging the workers where they live and where they are, and they need to be revisiting fundamental elements of the policies and procedures they use to hire, retain, train, upskill, manage low-wage workers. Low-wage workers are a disproportionately diverse, so they're an instant pool of talent for responding to DEI challenges. They already know your company. They already have shown commitment to your company, so rather than go into the spot, market for labor to meet your needs, invest in upskilling who you've got, and you're going to have better all in economics than the churn and burn model you're currently operating with. CURT NICKISCH: Joe and Manjari, thanks so much for coming on the show to talk about your research and sort of open our eyes here. MANJARI RAMAN: Thanks a lot. JOSEPH FULLER: A pleasure to be with you, Curt. HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School's Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman in conversation with Curt Nickisch on HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. When you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world's top business and management experts, find it all at This episode was produced Mary Dooe and me, Hannah Bates. Curt Nickisch is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.
