Most people have heard a version of the saying ‘good leaders ask good questions’. It’s less common, however, to think about asking a good mix of different types of questions.

“When you read about this in management literature, you get insights like, ‘Good questions are follow-up questions or open-questions, but [leaders need] a little more guidance than that,”  says Arnaud Chevallier, strategy professor at IMD Business School in Switzerland.

Particularly for first-time leaders, the tendency to jump into solution mode before letting curiosity play out can put many organisational elements at risk, such as innovation (if we don’t ask questions to surface everyone’s ideas), psychological safety (if people don’t feel they can push back on an idea) and wasting time or resources (if we put all our energy into solving the wrong challenge).

That’s why Chevallier has spent years determining five types of questions that he and his co-researchers believe will help leaders and organisations to operate on a deeper, more strategic level.

“I think all executives and professionals should develop a mindful set of questions that they’re constantly updating to serve them better in the decisions they’re making,” says Chevallier.

5 types of questions

Over three years, Chevallier and his co-authors Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, also professors at IMD, conducted interviews with hundreds of top-performing executives to learn about their favourite types of questions.

“Then we refined them using the Delphi method and organised the questions into general buckets.”

They also conducted a robust literature review.

“Management executives aren’t trained to ask questions, but other professions are – physicians, psychologists, journalists, lawyers. We wanted to learn as much as we could from those other fields [whose workforces] have thought long and hard about the meaning of questions.”

From this research, they first determined four types of question, which are as follows:

1. Investigative questions

These types of questions follow a similar line of thinking to Toyota’s ‘five whys’, says Chevallier.

“This is epitomised by the ‘what’s known?’ type of question. Investigative questions help you probe the root causes of the problem, and help you to go deeper into the decision you need to make.”

Examples:

• What is and isn’t working?
• What are the causes of the problem?
• How feasible and desirable is each option?
• What evidence supports our proposed plan?

2. Speculative questions

Going deep with investigative questions is important, but not sufficient, says Chevallier. 

It’s also useful to go broader with your line of questioning. This is where speculative questioning comes into play.

“We epitomised speculative questions within ‘what if?’ For example, ‘What if we didn’t care about costs?’ or ‘What if we could relax these other constraints?’

“[These questions] foster innovation by challenging the implicit or the explicit assumptions we come to in our decisions.

“For HR professionals, who are addressing the human component of [work], you really need to develop your subjective question mix so you’re always asking yourself ‘what’s the actual meaning that’s going on behind the words?’”

Examples:

• What other scenarios might exist?
• Could we approach this differently?
• What else might we propose?
• What can we simplify, modify, combine or eliminate?
• What potential solutions have we not considered?

“All executives and professionals should develop a mindful set of questions that they’re constantly updating to serve them better in the decisions they’re making.” – Arnaud Chevallier, strategy professor, IMD Business School

3. Productive questions

It’s also important to have a set of questions that are designed to move processes along, says Chevallier. He refers to these as the ‘Now what?’ questions.

“They’re here to help us adjust the pace of the decision making – sometimes accelerating it because the deadline is coming, or sometimes slowing down because we’ve come to a decision with a preconceived mindset or there might be cognitive biases that are crowding our judgement.”

Examples:

• What do we need to achieve before we advance to the next stage?
• Do we know enough to move forward?
• Do we have the resources to move forward?
• Are we ready to make a decision?
  

4. Interpretative questions

Interpretative, or sense-making, questions help us take what we’ve learned from our investigative, speculative and productive questions and turn them into insights.

“[These questions] are epitomised by the ‘So what?’ Okay, we’ve figured out this one thing, what is that telling us about our overarching goal?'”

Examples:

• What did we learn from this new information?
• What could this mean for our present and future actions?
• How does this fit in with our overarching goal?
• What are we trying to achieve?

Chevallier and his colleagues were originally happy with these four types of questions, but after analysing the insights gleaned from their discovery sessions with the executives, they realised something was missing. 

They needed a question type that surfaced the many things that are often left unsaid, which led to the addition of a fifth type of question.

5. Subjective questions

“We’re not dealing with robots. We’re dealing with people. In every conversation, there are hidden emotional or possibly political sets of insights. [In these cases], it’s [important] to figure out the meaning behind the words,” says Chevallier.

For people managers, this is where you might uncover people’s frustrations, tensions or hidden agendas. People’s answers to these types of questions can often lead you down a completely unexpected (and often critical) pathway.

From an organisational perspective, subjective questions can protect a business from risks such as wasted budgets, reputational damage and causing dissent or disengagement to brew in teams.

Examples:

• How do you feel about this decision?
• What aspect of this most concerns you?
• Are there any differences between what was said, what was heard and what was meant?
• Are all stakeholders genuinely aligned?
• Have we consulted all the right people?

Learn how to hone your leadership and management skills with this short course from AHRI.

Curious cultures

While Chevallier and his colleague’s research didn’t go into detail about the cultural environments that are required to allow for these types of questions, his opinion is that trust and psychological safety are key to making these types of questions effective.

In an article for Harvard Business Review, they wrote: “Team members may be reluctant to explore emotional issues unless the leader provides encouragement and a safe space for discussion. 

“They may fail to share misgivings simply because no one else is doing so – a social dynamic known as pluralistic ignorance. Leaders must invite dissenting views and encourage doubters to share their concerns.”

You also need to choose your timing wisely when asking certain questions, says Chevallier.

“If you come into a new position and start asking a bunch of speculative questions, it might be too early. You might first need to establish those relationships with people.”

Read HRM’s article about how to build social capital in the workplace.

Auditing your question default

Chevallier and his colleagues have created an interactive tool – which will launch later this year – to help leaders assess which type of questions they default to. For example, you might complete the assessment and discover you have very few points allocated to speculative questions.

“[In that case], you could make a list of 10 speculative questions and, ahead of a meeting, highlight a couple that you’d like to ask,” he says.

There’s no specific mix of questions to ask, he adds. The research isn’t suggesting every situation calls for one of each type of question.

“You might ask five different investigative questions. It depends on the specific situation. 

“The five types of questions, hopefully, help people realise that there are various ways to look at a problem or a decision. Before we follow our muscle memory into one direction or another, we should periodically step back and ask, ‘Are we still going in a productive direction?’

“The world of today is not like the world of yesterday. We absolutely need to update the way we make sense of it or we’re at risk of not being able to decipher it.”

Example questions listed in this article sourced from Dalsace, Barsoux and Chevallier’s article on their research in Harvard Business Review print edition (May-June 2024). You can read the online version here.

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The rise of remote work and virtual teams has accelerated the demand for trust while also intensifying the challenge.

Fewer ad hoc social interactions between team members means people have less chance to demonstrate the three core elements of trust: benevolence or psychological safety; competence, and dependability or integrity.

Teams and high performance expert Rob Cross says the loss of face-to-face, complex communication means mistakes could be made more easily.

As Senior Vice President of Research for i4cp and Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, Cross says misintent or misunderstandings were common with the loss of social cues from remote work.

“It really cuts across all three forms of trust,” he says. “You might mistake when somebody’s committing to you, or mistake their abilities to do something, or you mistake their intent in what they’re saying. I think that’s a big deal.

“Also, the transience of people moving across organisations more rapidly and shifting across roles inside organisations more rapidly [creates challenges]. There’s less time to just rely on serendipity and hope to build trust in different places.”

Eroding social bonds

Remote work has created a raft of challenges for HR, including employees struggling with lower motivation, informal learning and engagement.

Social bonds are eroding, with Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report finding 67 per cent of Australian and New Zealand respondents were emotionally detached from their employment.

About 11 per cent were classified as “loud quitting” and actively disengaged, demonstrating a breakdown in trust between employees and their company. Daily anger and stress were reported by more hybrid employees than those based onsite.

While employees are keen to retain the flexibility of the home-office location, organisations are seeking new ways to overcome its constraints.

This comes back to clear and consistent systems to enable productive work and impact, coupled with regular feedback that is actioned.

“You might mistake when somebody’s committing to you, or mistake their abilities to do something, or you mistake their intent in what they’re saying. I think that’s a big deal.” – Rob Cross, Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Leadership, Babson College

Cross says some people are naturally more adept at rapidly earning trust, by providing proof points to demonstrate their competence.

“They have a tendency to issue some kind of evidence like, ‘Okay, here’s what we’ve done before, how could this apply here?’ They also talk about the boundaries of their expertise versus what they’re good at. This all creates trust more rapidly.”

When social cues are lost, we need systems

At an organisational level, more formalised structures, processes and even metrics can be implemented quickly to support people to form trusting relationships within their teams, says Cross.

“We have the analytics. I can go out and see where trust is breaking down, but companies haven’t adopted it yet,” he says. “As time goes on that will become an important feature that allows people to see [if they are] curating a culture of trust or not, and what do they need to do.”

What is not working are the attempts from many organisations to impose electronic surveillance of remote employees, termed “productivity paranoia”.

Research published in Harvard Business Review found the monitoring for control eroded supervisor-subordinate relationships and could be counterproductive.

“Our results show that when supervisors used monitoring for control purposes, employees were more prone to engage in deviant behaviour (e.g., time thievery, inattentiveness, cyberloafing, tardiness, etc.) and their performance decreased,” the report says.

Instead, Harvard Business School expert in leadership Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, says trust must be explicitly and deliberately built in remote environments.

“You’ve got to name the reality of uncertainty and interdependence as a challenge, then problem solve together to figure out the best strategies for overcoming it,” she says.

She points out that trust and psychological safety must be paired with accountability, or a sense of psychological ownership and commitment to excellence, to generate effective performance.

This type of framework involves clear, regular and constructive communication between members of remote teams.

Starting with an explanation of the challenge and an appeal for shared responsibility, managers can then lead their teams in building trust by being open and candid themselves.

Edmondson says managers should also be vigilant to group dynamics and provide feedback and ongoing input to maintain transparency.

Develop the necessary skills to build and sustain a high performing work team and tap into the full potential of team members with this short course from AHRI.

Work-life balance or blur?

The transition to remote working over the past decade – from phones to the internet and mobiles, and now fully remote practices – has blurred the line between people’s work and social lives.

This raises the structural risk that the trust and reputation earned by a company over years of effort may not be demonstrated by an individual worker dialing into a meeting when in “home mode”, for example, from the train or from home.

Melbourne Business School Professor of Leadership Will Harvey said there is an increased organisational risk of misalignment of words and deeds.

“You’ve got to name the reality of uncertainty and interdependence as a challenge, then problem solve together to figure out the best strategies for overcoming it.” – Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

“There is a blurring of boundaries,” he says. “What people say and do, and how they behave outside of the work context, could actually create some tension between what that organisation is trying to do in terms of projecting both internally and externally.

“There is a risk that they undermine some of the messaging of the organisation.”’

He says HR professionals must make people aware of the risks and urge employees to carefully consider their actions outside the workplace.

Solutions to build trust

To reap the benefits of a high-trust culture – be it remote or in person – you first need to assess if there are potential risk areas to be aware of. With this information at hand, you can put measures in place to mitigate the risk of polarisation. Edmondson and Cross, plus other experts cited in this HBR article, share some insights.

Consider: Are there any existing weak spots in your culture that could grow into larger challenges, such as criticisms of certain leaders?

Actions to take:

• Identify groups that are standing on pre-existing fault lines, and design programs to bring them together on a regular basis.
  
• Encourage different employees to speak up each time you host a meeting, so people become more familiar with other voices in the company.

Consider: Do employees know what kind of behaviours are likely to build trust? Do you train for these skills already?

Actions to take:

• Help colleagues see each other as people to go to for transparent, credible expertise.
• Actively encourage colleagues to critique each other’s work in a safe environment.
• Help people connect over non-work matters.
• Coach team members to admit what they don’t know.

Consider: Are we inadvertently encouraging a culture of virtue signalling or zero-sum thinking?

Actions to take: 

• Appoint a ‘devil’s advocate’ in each meeting (and change this person each time) to normalise healthy dissent.
• Recognise and reward people who share their differing opinions in appropriate ways.
• As a leader, ask others to poke holes in your ideas and share alternative approaches.

AHRI members will have access to further discussion on the topic of trust, featuring insights from Amy Edmondson and Rob Cross, in this month’s edition of HRM Magazine. Not yet an AHRI member? Sign up today to receive a bi-monthly print magazine and access to a range of other benefits designed to support your HR career.

The post How to build trust in a distributed team appeared first on HRM online.

When considering solutions to Australia’s lagging productivity levels, our minds often turn to innovation growth, optimising workforces to operate in a streamlined manner and upskilling workers with critical skill sets. 

While these factors are all important and will play a part in getting Australia to meet its OECD counterparts’ productivity levels, there’s a more impactful lever that needs to be pulled which we often ignore.

“We should think about productivity as a concept that’s much more dispersed. Every person, everywhere, in every organisation, every day, plays a significant role,” says Christina Boedker, Professor at the University of Newcastle, who has researched the impacts of poor management practices via the Australian Workplace Index.

The Index found that in the past five years, Australia’s productivity growth has dropped to half of its 25-year average. The impact this is having on our economy reaches into the billions of dollars. For example, staff turnover alone is leading to a $3.8 billion-dollar loss to productivity.

Professor Boedker says when we think of productivity as more than just an innovation agenda, that gives us much more opportunity to intervene at an organisational level – and it positions HR leaders to design capability uplift programs that will have an impact.

How to measure management

In 2004, John Van Reenen, academic at London School of Economics and MIT, and Nicholas Bloom, Professor of Economics at Stanford, were among the first researchers to offer robust evidence on management quality’s effect on an organisation’s bottom line, when they established the World Management Survey (WMS). 

For nearly 20 years, the WMS team – which now also includes Raffaella Sadun (Harvard), Daniela Scur (Cornell) and Renata Lemos (Senior Economist at the World Bank) – has collected and measured management practice information from hundreds of medium-sized firms around the world.

They’ve found that managerial practice is strongly associated with productivity, profitability, stock market valuation and organisational survival. Following a wave of surveys in 2023, with data that spans 20,000 interviews across 35 countries, the key takeaway from nearly two decades’ worth of research was that around a third of global productivity gaps can be attributed to poor management.

“What’s stunning is how consistent the patterns are across industries and nations, and over time,” says Van Reenen, who is Ronald Coase School Professor at the London School of Economics and Digital Fellow at the Initiative for the Digital Economy at MIT.

“We’re starting to call some of these patterns ‘the natural laws of management’.”

Crucially, management scores are also strongly correlated with the wider economy and GDP per capita. For example, Van Reenen attributes management, or lack thereof, to around half of the gap between the UK and the US. 

“Given that low productivity is probably the number-one economic problem in the UK, this shows you how much could be gained from moving the dial on management.”

Kieron Meagher, economist and Professor at the Australian National University, who also contributed to the Australian Workplace Index, says the WMS is one of the most realistic measurements of management’s impacts on productivity.

Often public discourse around management’s impacts on productivity is solely focused on labour productivity data – the output per worker, he says.

“That’s because total factor productivity, which is how much you get for all the inputs you use, is very hard to measure, especially in service industries which [account for] about 80 per cent of the economy,” he says.

“[Management training] is usually something we do when things have gone wrong. It’s not something that all organisations will proactively invest in. Then they don’t understand why people are leaving or why they have low productivity.” –  Christina Boedker, Professor at the University of Newcastle

“But the thing is, labour productivity goes up with more capital regardless of whether it’s a good idea for the business to invest in the capital… because if you’re not counting the capital as an input, you get more output, then labour productivity has to go up even if you’re wasting those resources.”

But that’s not what the WMS has done; its researchers have encapsulated labour productivity as well as labour inputs, skill levels of the managers (based on those who’ve secured an MBA) and the capital investment of the organisations.

However, the WMS measures of management are mainly focused on management practices such as setting goals, monitoring people, providing them with incentives, holding employees accountable and hiring good people.

“They don’t really measure the psychological side of management. If you consider that, the productivity impacts could potentially be even larger. So I would view their numbers as somewhat conservative in that regard.”

Van Reenen’s 2017 research also shows Australia’s management scores lag behind those of most other developed nations.

Good management is directly correlated with improved business performance, says Van Reenen. This is why he believes management training should be a top priority for businesses in 2024 and beyond. 

“As an economist, I am flabbergasted at just how many badly managed firms there are. For example, businesses failing to collect sensible data on what they’re doing, setting impossible goals and promoting based on connections rather than ability and effort.

“There are some clear drivers of better management practices, so the good news is that there are many ways that business leaders can up their game.”

But how can HR help them get there?

Leadership empowerment

HR leaders have a role to play in addressing these challenges via targeted training programs fit for the modern-day worker, which need to account for the fact that work is becoming less routine, says Professor Meagher.

“People often think of this production-line type of economy, but we left that behind a long time ago. We now have a large proportion of people who are knowledge workers doing complex jobs.

“As a supervisor, you’re not just looking over people’s shoulders to see how fast they’re screwing the wheels on in the Ford production line. You can’t even tell what they’re doing because it’s all in their heads.”

Professor Boedker says part of the solution lies in moving away from prescriptive leadership styles and empowering employees to “be the custodians of their own productivity”.

“[Australia] is still far off in terms of the attitudes that most supervisors take. Scandinavia, for example, has been a lot more progressive in institutionalising and bringing into leadership this idea that people can think and act independently,” she says.

People management 101 needs to be the foundational skill set that we develop in future leaders and managers, she says, but we often just promote those who are technically accomplished and think of people skills as a secondary training element – and that’s if we consider them at all.

“[Management training] is usually something we do when things have gone wrong. It’s not something that all organisations will proactively invest in. Then they don’t understand why people are leaving or why they have low productivity.”

Empowering leadership styles are the answer, she says. The Australian Workplace Index found that if all Australian managers and leaders adopted an empowering mindset, we could reduce Australia’s work-related mental health costs by $1.7 billion, increase staff productivity by 10 per cent and reduce employee turnover by 25 per cent.

On a smaller scale, Professor Boedker says just a 10 per cent increase in empowering leadership translates to:

• A seven per cent increase in job satisfaction
• A 10 per cent reduction in employee turnover intentions
• A 6.5 per cent reduction in emotional exhaustion
• A six per cent boost to emotional wellbeing.

Putting insights into action

Professors Boedker and Meagher share key areas to focus on, both from a training perspective and in order to set the right conditions for managers to thrive in. These include:

Helping employees find meaning in their work

Employees who feel their work is meaningful have improved energy, health, resilience and satisfaction in their work, according to research.

“If you can see the point in your work in a moral sense or derive personal satisfaction from it, then that can make your job easier to do. You feel like there’s less drudgery,” says Meagher.

Action: Read this HRM article about how to help employees search for meaning in their work.

Set long-term KPIs for managers

“When managers are given short-term goals to meet… they might sacrifice the long-term interest of the workers in order to achieve their short-term goals,” says Professor Meagher.

“We hear about CEOs doing that stuff all the time, right? Like stock price manipulation by doing something with the books. But middle managers can do that kind of stuff too.”

Action: Review management KPIs with the leadership team and consider adding in people-centric goals, such as ‘How many employees received a promotion in your team?’ Or ‘How many new skills have you introduced to the company via your coaching efforts?’

Make work less difficult for people

By removing friction points and ensuring employees have the resources, skills and information they need, employees are enabled to work in more streamlined ways. 

Action: Encourage managers to include a recurring agenda item in their one-on-ones to check that employees have the information they need to do their work for the week ahead and help them to remove any roadblocks that are in their way, such as excessive meetings or technology challenges.

Facilitate discretionary effort

Discretionary efforts are dipping in Australia. Gartner found that change fatigue paired with cost-of-living pressures could be contributing to this. We also know that engagement levels are currently low as employees continue to wrangle increased workloads, uncertain economic circumstances and more complex work tasks, among other things.

“Consider what motivates us to put in that discretionary effort,” says Professor Boedker. “It’s the relationships we build, right? Yes, there’s a job to be done, but people come to work because they have good relationships and feelings of being supported and recognised.

“We can’t underestimate the relational elements, and I think some managers tend to forget that.”

Action: Sign your managers up to AHRI’s Leadership and Management short course to help them learn the fundamental skills required to be an effective manager in 2024.

Weed out the bad apples

We know that the negative impacts of a bad apple in the workplace can be far-reaching, and it’s even worse when that bad apple is in management.

“The side of management that we don’t talk about enough is the negative sides of [managers’] behaviour. The ‘Dark Triad’ is psychopaths, Machiavellian behaviour and narcissistic behaviour.”

These personalities are huge productivity detractors. Rather than just adding more ‘good leaders’ into the mix, it’s more effective to either weed out toxic players or put in the work and structures to change their behaviours, as organisational psychologist Adam Grant pointed out in this article on ‘givers’ and ‘takers’ in the workplace.

Action: Read HRM’s article ‘How to turn a bad boss into a strong leader’ and ‘The three types of narcissist you might encounter at work‘.

“These are all skills that some people might be born with, but for most of us it might require training, so I think there’s a role for HR to help managers to be thinking about those,” says Professor Meagher. “These [factors] aren’t peripheral extras. They’re key to modern management.”

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When we think about high performance, our minds often wander to superstar athletes or the intellectual geniuses. But we all have the potential to be high performers in our fields, we just sometimes miss the crucial support needed to raise our own bar.

“I think about hidden potential as the capacity for growth,” says Grant, a US-based organisational psychologist, author, podcast host and Professor of Management and Psychology at the Wharton Business School in Philadelphia.

In a recent visit to Australia, as part of an event hosted by Growth Faculty, Grant shared

some research-backed practices to help employers uncover hidden potential in themselves and their teams. Below, HRM shares a summary of some of his advice.

1. Identify your givers

All workplaces have givers and takers, says Grant.

“The givers are people who are constantly asking, ‘What can I do for you?‘ Takers are the opposite. They want to know, ‘What are you doing to do for me?'”

Givers are worth their weight in gold, as they’re often helping people uncover their own capabilities.

“[Givers] share their knowledge. They teach their skills, they mentor junior people, they volunteer for unpopular [tasks],” he says.

This could lead one to believe that you should exclusively hire and build teams of givers. But keeping toxic ‘takers’ out of an organisation has proven to be much more effective, says Grant.

“If you bring one giver into your team… more often people are like, ‘Great, that person will do all my work’. So effective hiring and selection is less about bringing in the givers and is more about weeding out the takers who destroy the collective potential of the group.”

Action point: Create reciprocity rings

Grant cites the work of Australian researcher Sharon Parker, ARC Laureate Fellow at Curtin University and Director at the Centre for Transformative Work Design, who has helped shape his research over the past 25 years.

Proactive generosity in a work context is relatively rare, Parker’s research found.

“It turns out that 75 to 90 per cent of helping behaviour starts with a request,” says Grant. “Somebody saying, ‘I’m stuck on this. Could I get your advice? Can you help me solve this problem?’ 

“But a lot of us don’t ask. We don’t want to be too vulnerable. We want to look competent and self-reliant. If you’re a giver, there’s an extra barrier which is that you like to be on the giving end of every interaction. You don’t want to be a burden to others.”

Cheryl Baker, co-founder of Give and Take Inc, and her husband Wayne Baker, professor at the University of Michigan, came up with a solution for this called the ‘reciprocity ring’. 

Essentially, you gather a group of people who don’t know each other too well and invite them to make a request for something they need but feel they can’t get/do on their own. The whole group is then tasked to use their collective knowledge and networks to fulfil each other’s requests.

For example, employees might seek exposure to a mentor, expertise to build something new, or support getting a pitch over the line with the executive team.

Grant refers to an example of a pharmaceutical company that conducted a reciprocity ring. One researcher was trying to synthesise a strain of PSC alkaloid, but they didn’t have the budget to continue the work.

“Someone from a different unit said, ‘I have some slack in my lab at the moment and this sounds like it would be a great learning opportunity for my team. We can do it for free.’ And that saved the company 50 grand.

“I think this is a great exercise… because when everyone is asked to make a request, the givers start asking [for help], and when everyone is expected to help, the takers start giving. In one study, we found that takers tripled their contributions during this activity.”

2. Challenge assumptions

Learning how to find a diamond in the rough is a critically underrated skill, says Grant. In one of his former roles, Grant was in charge of hiring a team of salespeople for a travel company.

“I remember one [candidate] stood out to me as being a horrible fit for the job. This guy who applied was a maths major and built robots for fun… it was probably the worst interview I’ve ever witnessed. Afterwards, I made the decision to reject him.”

When he was debriefing with the company’s president and going through the list of candidates, she queried him on this decision.

“[She asked me], “Why did you reject him?” I said, “To be perfectly honest, he didn’t make eye contact for the first 45 minutes of the interview. There’s no way he’s going to have the social and emotional intelligence to be good at sales.” And our President said, “You realise this is a phone sales job, right?””

This was somewhat of a ‘light-bulb moment’ for Grant. He had an idea of what a ‘successful’ sales representative looked like and didn’t take the time to consider if this candidate might have other valuable skills to add to the mix. Perhaps he was neurodivergent, quiet or introverted, all of which carry their own unique benefits to an organisation.

Action point: Rethink job interviews

Grant decided to give this candidate, and others who’d been unsuccessful, a second chance. He also changed how the interview was conducted. Instead of asking them questions, he gave them a chance to sell something: a rotten apple.

“We figured, if you can sell us a rotten apple, you can sell pretty much anything. My all-time favourite pitch was someone who came in and said, “This might look like a rotten apple, but this is an aged, antique apple. And you know how they say, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away?’ Well, the nutrients that have formed in this apple during the ageing process mean you only need to eat one per week.’

“I hired him and he was the single best salesperson in our company, he broke multiple company records and he studied maths and built robots in his spare time. That was a great lesson for me.”

“When you ask for advice, people become more specific. They become more actionable. They give you suggestions that you can actually put into practice.” – Adam Grant

This experience has led Grant to believe that all job interviews should come with a do-over.

“There’s an entrepreneur, Guy Winch, who… at the end of the interview, asks, “How do you think it went?” And if you weren’t happy with your own performance, if you feel like the company didn’t give you a chance to shine, they invite you to try again. That is an incredible way to find people who have hidden potential.”

3. Normalise not knowing

Often, we think of imposter syndrome as a debilitating, chronic disease, says Grant. But, in certain circumstances, it could help us.

He refers to the research of Basima Tewfik, Assistant Professor, Work and Organisation Studies at MIT, who studies impostor thoughts, such as: ‘Am I good enough? Should I be here? Am I ready for the next step?’ 

“What the data suggests is that the more often you have those thoughts the better you perform. Basima studied investment professionals, military professionals and medical professionals, and [the results] showed that more frequent impostor thoughts lead to more persistence.

“And [it also leads to] better learning because you feel like there’s a gap between what other people expect of you and where you are right now. Also, you know you don’t know everything, so you become curious and start to let other people coach you.”

Action point: Encourage employees to stop thinking of impostor syndrome as ‘pathology’

While Tewfik’s research isn’t suggesting that Impostor Syndrome is a good thing, it does encourage employees to perhaps “dampen the initial stress and anxiety that comes with impostor thoughts by showing that there’s an interpersonal silver lining,” she said in an article for Harvard Business Review.

4. Consider the ‘second score’

The second score concept was first introduced to Grant by Sheila Heen, Thaddeus R. Beal Professor of Practice and Deputy Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project.

“When somebody gives us a D minus and says, ‘Your performance was terrible,’ we try to argue with that and convince them to change the first score. But we can’t change the first score because it has already been determined by the performance you gave yesterday.”

The second score, which you give to yourself, is about receiving an A+ for how well you took the challenging feedback.

“I think about this pretty much every day. Whenever someone tells me something I’ve done poorly or need to improve at… I’ve got to figure out how to prove myself and the best way to do that is to show that I’m willing to improve myself.”

Action point – turn your critics into coaches

Resist the temptation to tune out negative feedback, says Grant, as you don’t want to create a situation where “people are lining up to tell you comfortable lies instead of the unpleasant truth”.

We need to turn these “unpleasant truths” into important coaching.

To get people who’ve given you ‘negative’ feedback to coach you to do better next time, instead of asking for feedback ask for their advice, he says.

“The problem with feedback is people are backward-looking and will tell you what you screwed up yesterday. That doesn’t tell you anything helpful. What you want are coaches who look to the future and tell you what you can change.

“When you ask for advice, people become more specific. They become more actionable. They give you suggestions that you can actually put into practice.”

Need support uncovering your hidden potential as an HR professional? Take AHRI’s capabilities analysis test to learn where you can enhance your skill set and receive a personalised report outlining what your AHRI learning journey could look like. Learn more here.

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Clare Murphy FCPHR fell into HR by chance. While she was working as an Assistant Manager at a hotel in Darwin, her General Manager (GM) asked if she was interested in taking a 12-month parental leave cover as the hotel’s HR Manager.

“I don’t know anything about HR,” was Murphy’s first reaction, but the GM assured that her people skills would stand her in good stead.

“I went into the role and loved it. I’ve always been drawn to helping people and it was rewarding to look at how HR could work strategically with the business,” says Murphy, who is now the Organisational Enablement Executive Director at EACH, an organisation with almost 2000 staff delivering health and support services across the eastern seaboard.

The encouragement from her GM at the time led Murphy to pursue a career in HR; she went on to work in various industries, including education, hospitality and healthcare.

“Every time I’ve moved jobs, I’ve essentially changed industries. I think it’s been really beneficial for me to take different learnings from one industry to another. Some organisations will say they want someone who has experience in their industry, but I don’t think that’s overly relevant. HR is  a very transferable skill set.”

She says a better approach is to enter an industry with an open mind and a willingness to learn, before you start trying to change a system or apply a best-practice model.

Often, HR leaders can stumble when they implement a new strategy before they’ve understood the industry and broader context.

“The only way you can implement a strategy effectively is by taking the time to learn. You can’t underestimate the importance of listening deeply and authentically connecting with people.”

Co-designing the employee experience

Murphy has always placed emphasis on co-designing HR strategies alongside employees. Her former role as Director of People and Strategy at St Michael’s Grammar School in St Kilda, Melbourne, is a prime example. 

She attributes her success in this position as being in large part due to her focus on understanding employees’ needs.

“A best-practice strategy won’t have any impact on organisational strategy if you don’t know your workforce. I have always tried to ask staff what new programs or changes would make a difference to them. Once you understand that, you can think about putting a strategy in place,” says Murphy.

Another critical consideration when involving staff is to put aside any assumptions about reaching the end goal.

“HR needs to be an enabler to a solution. Don’t just come in with a predetermined plan about how you will reach your objective.”

She actively engaged employees in the design of St Michael’s health and wellbeing strategy, transforming the school’s wellbeing approach into a more holistic model.

“There were a lot of activities being organised, such as morning teas to facilitate connections between staff. But there was a gap in the organisational and strategic space.

“We created a strategy that was based around the issues that were important to staff. Through conversations and surveys, it became apparent that flexibility was key, especially for working parents.”

The school introduced a flexible part-time teacher role and initiatives to ensure staff were managing reasonable workloads, and for developing strong leaders as key pillars for health and wellbeing.

For this work, St Michael’s was named a finalist for the Martin Seligman Health and Wellbeing Award and the Best Health and Wellbeing Strategy at the 2013 AHRI Awards.

A few years later, Murphy was awarded AHRI’s Dave Ulrich HR Leader of the Year Award and was listed as a finalist for the Wayne Cascio Organisational Development and Leadership Award.

AHRI’s 2023 Award and Scholarship Program, recognising exceptional achievements and celebrating progress in HR practice, is now open for applications. Learn more here.

It was also during her time at St Michael’s that a mentor encouraged Murphy to become more involved in external organisations such as AHRI. She started out as a member of the IR-ER committee, before stepping into the role of Vice President of the Victorian State Council.

“My involvement with AHRI has been of huge benefit to my professional development and career growth,” she says.

“You have to be prepared to invest the time into building your network, but you get the opportunity to learn from so many people. I don’t think I’d be where I am now without having been connected with AHRI for a good part of my career.”

Her connection to the AHRI network proved even more fruitful when a fellow member told her about EACH, which she hadn’t heard of at the time. She applied, and was successful, for the role of HR Director in 2018.

“Chris Steinfort [former AHRI Vic State President] was doing a short-term consulting role at EACH when he told me about the vacancy,” says Murphy. “It was a big jump from managing a team of three in HR at St Michael’s to managing a team of 35 at EACH. If I had applied without a recommendation, I probably wouldn’t have gotten through because on paper it looked like I didn’t have the required experience.”

Murphy’s motivation to take up the new role stemmed from her desire to keep learning.

“I was ready for a new challenge. Once I start to feel like I’m going through the same motions, I like to move on to a new challenge. The role at EACH also stood out to me because of how the organisation contributes to society. I saw a real opportunity to make a difference.”

“A best-practice strategy won’t have any impact on organisational strategy if you don’t know your workforce.” – Clare Murphy FCPHR, Organisational Enablement Executive Director, EACH

Using employee insight to drive leadership development

One of the major projects Murphy has worked on during her time at EACH is Leading@EACH – a culture and capability transformation project to improve leadership skills and capabilities in the organisation.

When Murphy first started at EACH, she discovered there wasn’t a strategic approach to leadership development.

“I spent a lot of time talking to employees and leaders about what was working well, what wasn’t and what could be done differently. It became clear that levels of staff engagement varied significantly.

“Some managers were doing a brilliant job, and others, who might’ve been newer to a leadership role and didn’t have sufficient training, were lagging behind.”

EACH’s engagement scores garnered from an organisation-wide survey painted a similar picture, with a 92 per cent spread of scores relating to how leaders were managing.

Equipped with these insights, Murphy created an Organisational Culture and Capability team to meet EACH’s future needs. Led by EACH’s Managers of Organisational Culture and Capability, Meredith Carrington and Tam Bourke, the team brought together the areas of learning and development, inclusion and diversity, and leadership development.

One key objective was to create clear benchmarks for leaders to measure themselves against.

“Whether you’re a team leader, a middle manager, a senior leader or on the executive team, people need to know what expectations EACH has of them. How do you tell a leader that they’re not doing what they should be doing if there isn’t any benchmark against which to hold them accountable?”

EACH developed a framework that outlined the organisation’s expectations of leaders, and a leadership development program aligned to these expectations.

The program focused initially on building foundational skills and now extends into a senior leadership program, with learning bites offered regularly on a variety of relevant topics, such as providing feedback and conducting performance reviews.

Another key element was building relationships and connections across EACH.

“With about 60 sites and 150 programs at EACH, there were a lot of employees who hadn’t met each other. The program was designed so it wasn’t just about delivering content, but it gave people time to talk about their experiences and share their stories.”

Ensuring a minimum of two executives were present and involved at each program was key. 

“The feedback we had from staff was that it made the executives real people. Executives shared stories about situations they’d dealt with earlier on in their careers. They got involved in the program and took it seriously. This helped to bring everyone along on the journey.”

What progress has been made so far?

Since rolling out Leading@EACH, the organisation has experienced improvements on multiple fronts.

The overall engagement score has increased by 16 percentage points, from 56 per cent in 2019 to 72 per cent in 2022. 

Innovation increased by 22 points, the learning and development score increased by 20 and the number of staff recommending EACH as a great place to work rose by 19.

“I think these results highlight the importance of not rushing new initiatives. It’s been three years since we first started work on Leading@EACH. 

“We could have gone in and introduced all these things, but there was a significant cultural shift that needed to happen,” says Murphy.

“We also needed to clearly set out what we wanted to achieve, how we would get there and articulate that in a really clear vision. That’s the only way we could get executive buy-in.”

These results led to EACH being awarded an AHRI award in 2022 – the Sir Ken Robinson Innovation and Creativity Award.

“The award was great recognition for the whole team, who have invested significant effort into delivering strategic initiatives as well as keeping on top of BAU.”

As an advocate of HR leaders putting themselves out there and applying for such awards, Murphy says it’s a valuable exercise in professional development.

“Earlier in my career, applying for these awards felt a little unnatural. I saw it as waving my own flag. But I’ve realised it’s a great way of benchmarking your work. 

“Judges point out parts they were really impressed by, and suggest ways you could enhance your work further.”

Public recognition can also be an effective attraction tool, says Murphy.

“When you advertise a role, potential hires take note when you’ve won an award. People see that they will have an opportunity at EACH to do things differently; that they’ll be able to change things and come up with new ideas. That’s an attractive prospect for people.”

A longer version of this article first appeared in the May 2023 edition of HRM Magazine.

Clare Murphy FCPHR will be joining other Executive and HR leaders as a panelist at AHRI’s Convention in August. Secure your spot today!

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Editor’s note: This article was first published in 2020. We are reposting it as Craig Foster is a keynote speaker at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August 2023. Find more details here.

A young man you don’t know is arrested on another continent. While you are in a position to do something about it, nobody expects that of you. In fact, if you did nothing nobody would notice. And if you did nothing but send out a tweet, people would commend you.

But you do a lot more than tweet. You so ardently commit yourself to his cause that you find yourself sweating in the humidity and heat of a crowded corridor that leads to a Thai courtroom watching the man, who is in chains, and shouting your support with more emotion than you’ve ever felt in your life. “Your wife sends her love, Hakeem! Australia is with you. Stay strong, Hakeem!” 

This is the story of Craig Foster, former Socceroo captain and Australian Professional Footballers’ Association executive, and former sports analyst for SBS. The man in chains is Bahraini national and new Australian citizen Hakeem Al-Araibi.

In 2020, HRM spoke to Foster about his efforts and his book that details them, Fighting for Hakeem. The conversation focused on the two different sides to his advocacy – the public messaging and the private negotiations. It became clear that this dynamic is reflective of most advocacy efforts, whether they be in politics and the media, or in a workplace.

Someone is in trouble

Al-Araibi’s troubles with the Bahraini government date back to 2010 when the police came looking for his brother Emad in relation to participation in anti-government protests. They couldn’t find Emad, so they took Hakeem instead. He was released after three months but arrested again in 2012 for allegedly being in a group of people who attacked a police station.

Hakeem says he was playing a televised football match on the other side of the city at the time, but the police didn’t care about his alibi. He was tortured and released, and the trial went on, until he was convicted in absentia while travelling with the national football team in Qatar. 

Terrified for his life, he spent the next four months making his way to Australia. Here, he started anew in Melbourne, becoming a semi-profesional football player.

In 2016, he felt safe enough to speak about his experiences in Bahrain. Then in November 2018, he and his wife went on a belated honeymoon to Thailand, where he was detained on the basis of an Interpol ‘red notice’ which should have been cancelled.

Foster describes his decision to help as “incremental” but quick. “There was a moment when I realised that he wasn’t going to get out. There was a moment I felt he was going to die.

“I sat my wife down at one point and said, we need to go and save him. She asked, ‘Why you?’ And I said, ‘Well, who else?’”

You can see Foster’s logic. He had a platform, 40 years of football and human rights contacts and he was even about to finish a degree in international law. And those are just qualifications, not motivation.

“He is a football player, he’d been tortured, he was a refugee and he was being victimized by powerful forces. They’re four things that I feel extremely strongly about.”

The public battle

So how can you apply Foster’s tactics to your organisation? He says the first step to is to get some noise early and build momentum. He reached out to people who had significant platforms and a passion for social causes.

The second step was dispersion. You need the people you’ve persuaded to persuade others. Part of this is being a certain kind of leader, he says. 

“The key to any campaign is that it can’t be built on one person. It’s why I’ve been at pains to say that there were huge amounts of wonderful people working for us, because people have to own the campaign themselves.

“A natural part of leadership is to let people own the initiative, let them drive it and let them get credit for it. Half my day was just giving people suggestions to drive their advocacy. For example, if it was a student, I’d say, ‘Well done and fantastic work, why don’t you go and speak to your student body?’ If it was an actor, I’d say, ‘Wonderful work, how about you organise a video with a bunch of colleagues, or get one of your directors to do something?’”

At the campaign’s height it was trending in 81 countries and reached over 30 million people. It had the support of both local and international footballers, including the Socceroos, the Matildas, and Premier League legends such as Didier Drogba.

There was support across the Australian political spectrum, and the prime minister was personally intervening. Foster even went to FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich to present a petition with 50,000 signatures calling for Al-Araibi’s release. 

Hear more from Craig Foster and other influential speakers at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August 2023 in Brisbane. See the full line up here.

One of the thornier aspects of #savehakeem would be familiar to anyone that has undertaken an initiative to help a minority group. “Many people in the NGO space, including me, from time to time feel immense amounts of guilt because you have to make choices about where you direct your attention.”

The stakes aren’t the same but similar objections are raised against organisational diversity initiatives. Critics ask questions like, why is the focus on gender when the company could do a lot more to be inclusive of other ethnicities? Foster’s answer to this line of questioning – which he got from people who wondered why he was helping this particular refugee, and not those affected by offshore detention – is interesting.

“I would say to them privately, ‘I completely agree with you. But let’s save this kid first and then I give you my undertaking that I will then try and translate that goodwill across to them.’”

Foster kept this promise, and is right now heading up Game Over, a movement to get those still negatively affected by Australia’s offshore detention regime to safety.

The private war

The difference between public and private positions can sometimes be vast. In workplaces, someone who might be open to an initiative when you speak to them separately may balk at the idea if you bring it up in front of their team.

This was a dynamic Foster encountered during the #savehakeem campaign. For example, some Australian politicians gave private support but wanted more to happen before they supported it publicly.

“Every politician understands the importance of advocacy. In fact, quite often politicians will say to social activists, ‘You need to speak to these people so that they can then come to me and demand that I act in this way.’ In other words, advocacy and pressure open space for politicians to be able to do their work to the maximum level.”

You can see the tension it creates. How far is too far? How do you reassure someone you know on your side in private, but is afraid to speak out?

“I would explain to them, ‘You need to understand that I’m going to be strong publicly but firstly, this is non-partisan. And secondly, I won’t attack you, but I will be advocating for you to act to the limit of your powers.’ It was the discussion of reasonable openness, transparency and ultimately through that we were able to build trust.”

Another interesting dynamic that is replicated in workplaces is the difference between what you do, and what the team you are in charge of do. Foster wasn’t just a public advocate; he was leading a media team of which he is not the public face.

“If I needed a more vociferous message towards a Minister or the Government, I could then have my social media team advocate on that basis – a more extreme basis, if you like. And I [personally] could take the more moderate message publicly.”

While you can’t fully control something once it has gone viral, Foster’s social media team of about 10-12 people, who he says were working about 15 hours a day, made sure their messaging was tailored to the moment.

“I would say to them privately, ‘I completely agree with you. But let’s save this kid first and then I give you my undertaking that I will then try and translate that goodwill across to them.’” – Craig Foster.

“I was privy to the latest information much of which couldn’t be made public and therefore I could use that to shape messages for them to push certain buttons, push certain politicians, parties, countries, organisations. And by doing that we were able to keep the campaign on track and shape it in a way that was advantageous.”

This was crucial towards the end of the campaign when Foster got word from the Australian government that a deal for Al-Araibi’s release was on the table. He told the team to quieten the messaging down so as to not disrupt the private negotiations and make the right decision easier.

In the end, it was worth it. In February 2019, the Thai Office of the Attorney-General announced that the extradition case against Al-Araibi had been dropped at Bahrain’s request. No reason was given.

He was placed on a flight to Melbourne the very next day and welcomed by a huge crowd. He gained Australian citizenship a month later.

A feel-good story

The full tale of Al-Araibi’s life as a refugee and prisoner is worth hearing in full. But a lingering, immediate question you might have is why Foster acted. He had motivation, but how did he come to care about these issues? His answer could serve as a template for anyone.

“I transitioned naturally. And this is a process every athlete can go through and I like to think will go through. You go from lending your brand and your face to a cause or program, to then actually meeting the people working inside and understanding deeper issues. The third element is to start to advocating for them.”

Meeting with people from different backgrounds – that could be in your workplace through an internship or diverse recruitment program – makes the political personal. That feeling often doesn’t stop at that person alone.

Al-Araibi is a refugee with a feel-good story. But there are others like him who are not so lucky. Foster talks about three-time Pakistani kick-boxing champion Ezatullah Kakar as someone whose story mirrors Al-araibi’s.

“They are almost the same age, Ezatullah was persecuted in Pakistan, Hakeem was persecuted in Bahrain, they both fled. Hakeem had the good fortune to come by plane, and when he arrived at immigration he didn’t say he was going to seek asylum. He had a friend here who had sought asylum and so he knew how to come in and then seek asylum. Whereas Ezatullah simply came by boat. There’s absolutely no difference between the two.”

It’s hard not to feel inspired by Foster’s passion. What sticks the most is his insistence that even small things matter, and there is no reason you can’t try and do the right thing.

“By taking any action you make a difference and you are important. Even signing a petition is important because I’ve been in that position where I’ve handed them over, so I know the power of just one petition and getting a friend to sign. It is immense. People often think that it’s nothing. No, it’s significant.

“Do the right thing. Step forward. Don’t think that any problem is too big to solve, it’s not. Because we can all solve it together. I mean, this is a great example. Three governments and two royal families eventually had to capitulate to the public advocacy of hundreds of thousands of Australians and millions of people.” 

This article originally appeared in the April 2020 edition of HRM magazine.

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Today’s world of work calls for leaders who know how to champion a cause.

Employee activism around social issues is growing, and organisations are under increasing pressure to take a stance on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG). As a result, senior leaders now have a greater responsibility to balance the interests of their business with what’s important to their people. 

Recognising the importance of keeping a finger on the pulse of the workforce when it comes to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), HR leaders at Ford have created a direct line between leaders and their people through what they call ‘leadership listening sessions’.

“Ford has been a pioneer in creating a diverse workforce right from the very beginning, when it was opened by Henry Ford more than 100 years ago,” says Anoop Chaudhuri FCPHR, Vice President of HR at Ford ANZ.

“But now, it’s about how we continue evolving our workplace to make people feel that they can belong.

“We have people from diverse backgrounds and different nationalities – for example, in Australia, more than 50 per cent of our employees were born overseas. We [want to show] that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, what you look like, what you say or don’t say – we want everyone to feel like they can belong. And this initiative was kicked off as an opportunity for leaders to come and listen – not talk, but listen.”

Chaudhuri discussed this initiative at this year’s AFR Summit in February, as part of a panel alongside AHRI’s CEO Sarah McCann-Bartlett as well as Nicky Sparshott, CEO of Unilever ANZ, and Simon Longstaff, Executive Director at The Ethics Centre.

Hosting a leadership listening session

The listening sessions held at Ford are made up of senior leaders at the company and selected employees who belong to a particular demographic group or a mixed demographic group.

“The sessions usually go for about an hour or so, and it’s generally preempted with a particular topic. Whatever the topic may be, it’s an opportunity for people from a particular background to come and share their views or opinions. Some were very general in nature, and some were around specific topics like gender equity or LGBTQI+ issues,” says Chaudhuri.

Both leaders and employees are briefed on the topic beforehand, and special focus is placed on setting the scene for executives to approach the sessions in the right way, he says.

“Leaders, being leaders, always want to solve problems. They are very solutions-driven – they want to fix things right now. And part of the pre-brief for them is getting them to pull back and remember that we’re not there to solve the problem, we are there to listen and learn.” 

Feedback on the initiative has been overwhelmingly positive, with employees appreciating the opportunity to have their voices heard at a senior level and leaders themselves gaining a thorough understanding of what needed to be done to advance DEI in the organisation. 

Chaudhuri offers some advice for HR leaders considering implementing a similar initiative.

“There are a few key success factors. One is to ask yourself why you’re doing it – what’s the intent behind it? [At Ford], we had two things in mind. One was that we wanted leaders to experience the world from someone else’s perspective. A second was to gather information and intelligence about where we could be doing better.

“Another factor is to make it clear what’s in it for the business, the individual and the team.”

In order to marry the interests of a business and its people, Chaudhuri suggests considering both top-down and bottom-up approaches to listening sessions.

“An example of a top-down approach would be [looking at] a strategic objective. For example, we are an industry that’s more [dominated by] men than women. So, maybe we want to increase women’s participation in the workforce,” he says.

“Leaders, being leaders, always want to solve problems. They are very solutions-driven – they want to fix things right now. And part of the pre-brief for them is getting them to pull back and remember that we’re not there to solve the problem, we are there to listen and learn.” – Anoop Chaudhuri FCPHR, Vice President of HR at Ford ANZ

“A bottom-up approach would be consulting with [employees] themselves. For example, at Ford, we have some very successful employee resource groups, or ERGs, that many of us are part of. And ERGs often champion a particular cause. 

“When you bring the two together, it’s a much more holistic way of addressing [these issues]. If you just tell them what to do, they won’t have an interest in sharing their ideas because there’s no involvement from them.”

Building a sense of belonging

While a great deal of progress has been made in the field of DEI, leaders at Ford are increasingly directing their focus on moving beyond inclusion and creating a true sense of belonging for the company’s diverse and dispersed workforce. Belonging was therefore the cornerstone of the leadership listening initiative.

“I think the sessions helped us to acknowledge that sometimes, we tend to think about diversity in very black-and-white terms,” says Chaudhuri.

“Beyond some of the more obvious differences we all have as humans, there are many that are not obvious. And the ability to appreciate that became very prominent in the sessions.

“For example, some of our people might have a medical condition that means they get a migraine if they’re in an office setting with particular lighting. Or some might have a condition that makes it difficult for them to lift and move things. 

“It made us think about how we can better support diverse needs in the organisation and how we, as leaders, can role model some of the behaviours we think will be instrumental in making the workplace more inclusive.”

Chaudhuri says leaders should also consider how they can champion the push for a more diverse workforce. For many leaders, he says, this means letting go of the idea of the ‘perfect fit’.

“If there’s a job opening to fill, the normal tendency for leaders is to try and look for the perfect person. But often, if you’re looking for a perfect fit in any type of role, you’re not going to get the best output, because there is nothing to challenge the individual.

“I would ask [leaders] to challenge themselves and think about how they might look to make accommodations from a DEI perspective, because there’s no such thing as a perfect fit.

“That ‘perfect’ persona that we have in our minds prevents us from opening up the candidate pool. If we can challenge ourselves to say, ‘How can we provide that level of flexibility?’, we end up with a much more diverse and inclusive organisation.”

Want to learn more about becoming an effective leader? Sign up for AHRI’s short course to understand your leadership style and learn how to create key performance indicators.

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What are the main reasons employees leave their jobs? According to Gartner, manager quality, respect and people management are the top three reasons, highlighting the need for businesses to prioritise quality leadership in order to retain and attract the best talent in a competitive market. 

The last few years have been turbulent for management, in a constantly changing landscape that has shifted from office to remote working, and now to hybrid models. During this time, the role of management has become more challenging – yet more important than ever.

Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, author, Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup, and Professor of Business Psychology at University College London and Columbia University, shares his insights on how HR can foster effective people management.

1. Understand what differentiates the good from bad leaders

“You measure good leadership in terms of team results and team engagement, and the things that good leaders do to engage the teams, which then translates into high performance or good results. They create trust, they create fairness, they treat people not the same, but as they want to be treated. They make an effort to understand the people in their teams,” says Chamorro-Premuzic, who will be dialling in virtually as a speaker at AHRI’s 2023 Convention in August.

“The really good [leaders] manage to have diverse and inclusive teams.

“If managers create environments that aren’t stressful, where people can have a good work-life balance, where people have freedom and flexibility and where they actually feel connected with others, results will come.” 

A good leader copes well under pressure, putting a buffer between their emotions and their behaviour by being deliberate in the language they use (using positive rather than negative language) in order to maintain high morale and engagement, he adds.

This is important because there’s always something that creates pressure for managers.

“If you as a manager or leader are impacted by it, you might inadvertently stress other people out, bring other people down or demoralise or disengage your people.”

When it comes to the characteristics of an unsuccessful leader, over-confidence is usually one of the main traits they possess, especially if it tips over into narcissism, says Chamorro-Premuzic.

“It detaches leaders from reality, and they construct their own delusional cocoons, where they reject any feedback or information that harms or can deflate their egos.”

Read HRM’s article on the three types of narcissists you might encounter at work.

So what other characteristics make a bad manager or leader?

“I think excitability to the point of being volatile and unpredictable, which can become a source of stress for their teams. And then I think selfishness and optimising everything for their own personal success, and prioritising their own interests at the expense of the groups.”

This, combined with a lack of technical competence or expertise, can exacerbate the detrimental effects of poor leadership, says Chamorro-Premuzic. 

“If [leaders] have these problematic personality characteristics and, on top of that, they’re not very qualified and don’t know what they’re talking about, it’s a big problem, as behaviours then become poor decision-making.” 

Other traits of a bad leader to look out for include not listening, not caring about their team, not empathising, being cruel, and being biased, says Chamorro-Premuzic. 

“Making nepotistic, unfair decisions and spending most of the time managing up, as opposed to managing their people, which, paradoxically, is likely to get them promoted even further,” he says.

Read HRM’s article about the four different listening styles that HR needs to adopt.

“Confoundingly, these are the same people who might impress others during an interview, that might come across as charismatic and likeable in short-term interactions.”

2. Hire good managers by minimising the role of the interview in your recruitment strategy 

This may seem obvious, but hiring good managers from the outset is a more effective way to ensure quality leadership than to train existing ones, says Chamorro-Premuzic. 

“If you start with people who are already not leadership material, and who are not interested in helping people function as a high-performing team, it’s a lot harder,” he says.

“I always say, when selection fails, there’s always coaching, training and development, but better selection would identify people with the right traits and the right behaviours.

“I would say, de-emphasise the role of the interview and de-emphasise the role of human interviewers, when a decision is being made about whether somebody is hired or promoted,” he says. “Focus more on science-based assessments, on the results of psychometric tests, on their past performance.

“We love to interview others because that’s the perfect opportunity to unleash our own biases,” he says. “And you cannot de-bias humans; humans are biased by design.”

For example, when looking for people to put forward for an internal promotion, he says one of the sources of data to evaluate their leadership potential is to assess their former 360 reviews. This tells you what others think of them.

“If you had a boss for a year or two, you can evaluate them very well based on what that person does, and [that information is] a really good measure of that person’s potential,” he says. 

3. Train only those who are trainable

Not all bad managers are able to be trained to become better, so start by identifying those who have the capacity to improve and be trained, says Chamorro-Premuzic. 

“My rule of thumb is that 30 per cent of people will improve by 30 per cent. So you have 30 per cent of people who might not need much coaching because they’re doing alright and you have 30 per cent of people who are probably close to uncoachable; they’re not willing to change, they’re not interested in changing, and they shouldn’t have been selected in the first place,” he says.  

“Most managers still struggle when they’re giving feedback… that can be improved if they pay attention to the signals language conveys.” –Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

“The best thing an organisation can do is identify the people who are in the middle, so you do not waste too much time with those who are not interested in this process.”

This isn’t to say that these people shouldn’t have access to training – it should be available to everyone in order to be fair – but you might choose to focus your efforts on those who are enthusiastic to learn.

Leadership training should focus on improving their emotional intelligence and communication, says Chamorro-Premuzic. “We have to ensure managers and employees try to show some empathy, try to understand other people’s perspective, and behave in a proper, decent way. I think social skills training and social etiquette awareness is very important.”

Read HRM’s article on power skills.

“Most managers still struggle when they’re giving feedback to their employees. A lot of that can be improved if they pay attention to the signals that their language conveys.”

4. Learn how to be an effective hybrid leader 

Having to a lead a hybrid team has made management more complex, says Chamorro-Premuzic. 

“It makes it very hard to be fair and equitable, and very hard to not be impacted by proximity bias. [It’s also] very hard to convey a sense of fairness in others, because people might be thinking, ‘Why am I coming in and they’re not?’”

An effective manager needs to understand how to leverage technology to create more equitable experiences, he adds.

“They need to ensure that the people who are in the room aren’t benefiting politically and the ones who are not aren’t disadvantaged. 

“You have to experiment; try things out and measure. Ask people how they’re feeling, ask people what they’re not happy with and measure the impact on performance.

“We have to give people freedom and flexibility, but also [monitor] how they’re contributing, and measure their value, performance and output, so they get the freedom and flexibility they deserve for contributing. A lot of people need to be in the office and need social connectedness with others, and some people really don’t.”

Want to learn more from Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic? Sign up for AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Secure your spot today.

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Growing up in Mount Eliza on the shores of Port Phillip Bay in Victoria was often a “very uncomfortable experience” for Dr Michelle Phipps FCPHR.

Even though she was born in Victoria, for a long time Phipps felt she didn’t belong in Australia. Her family tree, she says, can offer an explanation as to why.

Her mother is from British Hong Kong and her entire family come from all over the world, including in Ukraine, India, China, Malaysia, England, Canada, the U.S and New Zealand. 

“I’ve been to Hong Kong about 50 times and I lived there for a time to do my PhD,” says Phipps, who has held senior HR roles at QBE Insurance, Coca-Cola Amatil and Brown-Forman, and is currently Chief People Officer at VetPartners, a role she started ten days before being interviewed for this story.

She is also the recently appointed Chair of AHRI’s Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Panel, and will join Dr Susan Carland as a guest moderator at one of AHRI’s four upcoming state-based International Women’s Day breakfast events.

“My mother was brought up in British Hong Kong to be ‘more British than the British’, she used to tell me, proudly.”

This was one of the reasons Phipps felt her mother didn’t want her to learn Cantonese.

“It was to protect me from racism, which she experienced quite badly. But it would have been so useful, and I experienced racism anyway,” says Phipps.

“My mother played a big role in the way I see myself and the way I explored my identity. She made me acutely aware of my differences. Whether or not that was a good thing, she was trying to make me proud of my difference by making me aware of my otherness.” 

Phipps is still very aware of her otherness. While these days she chooses to view it as a strength, the dark side of otherness can crop up from time to time. For example, when outgoing Chair of AHRI’s D&I Advisory Panel Rhonda Brighton-Hall recently championed Phipps for the role, Phipps was deeply touched but surprised.

“I wondered for a moment if it was because I’m from an Asian background or because I’m good at what I do. 

“Then I realised Rhonda has a track record of making good decisions about good people. She has an unrelenting belief in forging ahead. I realised a lot of my reaction – my impostor syndrome – was shaped by the way I felt about myself when I was younger.”

The path to diversity and inclusion

For a long time Phipps wanted to work in sales. Her future, she felt early in her career, was about not leveraging her identity or lived experience in diversity.

“I went through a period where I just didn’t want anything to do with it. I was seeking to fit in. I wanted to be the ‘good Asian’. 

“Just as my mother said she was ‘more British than the British’, I wanted to be ‘more Australian than the Australians’. Now I wonder what that even means. To be honest, that was an angry time.”

The anger, of course, came from Phipps never feeling she had permission to be herself. But after spending time in sales and managing large teams, including at department store David Jones, she began to realise that diverse teams had a distinct performance advantage.

“That wasn’t just about cultural diversity,” she says. “There was also diversity in thinking, abilities, preferences, the environment and more. When I embraced this and had some wins, and also some failures, in leadership, I realised that I loved how HR enables leaders to manage people better.”

“I was seeking to fit in. I wanted to be the ‘good Asian’… I wanted to be ‘more Australian than the Australians.’” – Dr Michelle Phipps FCPHR

By giving people permission to be themselves at work, she discovered those people are usually happier, more engaged and higher performers. 

After a decade in sales and marketing in the early 2000s, Phipps shifted lanes to HR, culture and D&I. By learning to embrace her authentic self and her unique background, she found a career in which she could be engaged and make a difference in people’s lives.

Leadership behaviour

People say that everybody in a business has to own the culture. Of course that’s true, but leaders have the loudest voices and the largest share of attention. Success in D&I therefore comes down to the example they set and the language they use, says Phipps.

“The first change to organisational culture is around language. Leaders need to know the language of an inclusive leader. Why? Because an inclusive culture is an environment that allows agility of minds and agility of ideas. And an inclusive culture attracts talent.”

Want to hear more from Michelle? Secure your spot at AHRI’s Melbourne IWD breakfast event today.

Inclusive language means being welcoming of difference, she says, and using words that encourage engagement and belonging.

For almost five years, from February 2014, Phipps held the role of Vice-President HR, Asia-Pacific at global spirits business Brown-Forman. She was surrounded by leaders who appreciated the value of D&I done well and openly supported Phipps in designing and implementing a culture and D&I strategy across the business. 

She began with a gap analysis, which fed data back into a model – not unlike the AHRI D&I Maturity Model, which benchmarks best-practice organisations. She also launched a D&I council, including representatives from Brown-Forman’s executive leadership team, and developed a vision and purpose for D&I within the business.

“Then I had people look at what was happening inside the organisation in terms of the way we communicate and our internal and external processes.

“I had a group of people from all levels across the organisation, not just the ELT, talking about what good D&I looks like. 

We focussed on employee resource groups and built a strategy around the gaps to ensure we knew exactly what we needed to do to embed D&I throughout the organisation in an organic way.”

Hard data came from payroll and more broadly from the finance and HR systems. Then further research was conducted among leadership, employee and stakeholder groups to develop insights and build a strong business case for D&I, and ensure the right functions were in place, such as equal opportunities panels during the recruitment process.

It was a project that ended up being awarded with AHRI’s Michael Kirby LGBTIQ+ Inclusion Award in 2018.

“That roll-out was immensely satisfying,” she says. “It was a huge team effort carried out by incredibly knowledgeable and passionate people. And it really did change the culture,” she says.

“Our benchmarks were updated every year as we moved through the journey. We set timely targets for our own business, for how we worked with suppliers, for how we’d always ensure all stakeholders championed our values, etc.”

That program brought great and sometimes immeasurable returns to the business, says Phipps, from the bottom line to the employer value proposition, and more. 

This was determined by positive spikes in engagement, retention and applicant data, as well as a drop in absenteeism rates.

“In an [organisation] that doesn’t have a good understanding of D&I, people who work there will feel they have to do things a certain way to fit in,” she says. 

That can halt progress in a short and long-term way, so that’s why it’s important for these D&I initiatives to be co-created with employee groups and woven in at a foundational level.

“An inclusive culture is an environment that allows agility of minds and agility of ideas.” – Dr Michelle Phipps FCPHR

In her next role, as Group Head of Talent, Leadership and Inclusion at Coca-Cola Amatil, Phipps developed unique measures of cultural indicators, creating hard data around aspects of culture that some had previously considered immeasurable. These included how many people were promoted as a result of learning and development programs, how many women in the leadership program stayed with the business or had been promoted, and how many staff had lost time due to injury.

“These indicators can be used as a flag to tell the board and executives about the health of the business. They are a clear indicator of organisational health, and included various D&I measures.”

A thousand faces

While researching her PhD, which explored notions of identity, Phipps read the book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. It’s an exploration of the shared structures of mythological narratives, says Phipps, and develops an image of the common threads of any hero’s journey.

Phipps saw her own journey reflected in this book – a journey which, so far at least, had felt anything but heroic.

“We are all the hero of our own story,” she says. “We have to go through the journey of life and all of its challenges and initiations alone. The hero is always alone. 

“That comforted me because I realised I’m alone in this journey. And that’s okay, because while you’re on the journey alone, you are not lonely if those around you respect you.”

That’s what the very best businesses realise, says Phipps. Success in D&I means creating an environment in which people can be heroes by thriving in their uniqueness, rather than feeling they must conform.

“All success takes is a leader who’s happy to deal with the ambiguity of someone who has a different lived experience to them.”

This article first appeared in the April 2022 edition of HRM Magazine.

Hear more from Dr Michelle Phipps and other HR leaders, researchers and experts at AHRI’s 2023 annual National Convention & Exhibition. Register here.

The post How to advance diversity and inclusion by giving staff permission to be themselves appeared first on HRM online.

Not all bad leaders are made equally. It’s more likely to be a spectrum; on one end you might be dealing with a leader who shows traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism or even psychopathology (also known as a dark triad leader). On the more benevolent end, you might encounter a leader who is simply insecure or inexperienced and is trying to assert their power by making extreme decisions. 

Wherever they sit on the leadership spectrum, you can be sure of one thing: demanding, inconsiderate or combative leaders will harm employee morale and productivity.  

Elon Musk’s leadership style 

There are plenty of opinions floating around about Elon Musk’s leadership style.  

Many of his actions have to do with his worldview, says Jennifer Overbeck, Associate Professor of Management at Melbourne Business School. 

“Some leaders have a dominating worldview that leaves no room to assess the situation and determine where their worldview fits in. Instead, they simply impose their worldview on others,” she says.  

For example, Musk has a very absolutist view of free speech, says Overbeck. After taking the reins at Twitter, there was an increase in racism and hate speech on the platform. 

“Musk’s theory of absolute free speech didn’t account for the economic consequences of alienating advertisers who don’t like particular kinds of speech juxtaposed with their ads,” says Overbeck. 

This has resulted in advertisers pulling out in droves, which has had a negative impact on revenue.    

Another example HR leaders may also see at work is confirmation bias, which might result in a leader ignoring expert advice. For example, employees cautioned against the implementation of Twitter Blue, whereby Twitter users could pay for verification. In previous situations, Musk may have ignored expert recommendations and succeeded despite them, leading him to have confirmation bias that he can ignore recommendations in this scenario too. 

Authority bias could also take hold in this situation. For example, an employee might want to disagree or raise a point, but do not feel psychologically safe to do so. 

“For leaders with this narcissistic orientation, they’re less likely to take advice. They feel they’re the only ones they can count on and other people will lead them astray,” says Overbeck. 

“Musk may feel like he can rely on his own judgement and ignore advice that might be good for him.” 

Overbeck explains that the reason some of these extreme actions go ahead, such as mass layoffs, demanding perfection or mandating 20-hour workdays, is because they often bring about short-term benefits. 

“There’s reasonable evidence that a more coercive, less humanistic leadership style might generate short-term economic results,” she says. But the long-term consequences far outweigh short-term results, she says.

“It comes at the cost of employees’ mental health, physical health, and damaged relationships.”

“For leaders with this narcissistic orientation, they’re less likely to take advice. They feel they’re the only ones they can count on and other people will lead them astray,” – Jennifer Overbeck, Associate Professor of Management at Melbourne Business School

How can HR step in? 

First off, you need to understand what kind of leader you’re dealing with, says Overbeck. 

“You might have a leader who’s making bad decisions or who’s treating people negatively, but it’s not rooted in a strong and deeply-held fundamental worldview. Often it’s driven by insecurity or questions about their own competence as a leader.

“They might display this behaviour because they haven’t had training in leadership, or have observed other leaders who succeed using these tactics.”  

Here’s how Overbeck suggests HR can improve the situation: 

Understand their aims

To understand their underlying goals, Overbeck suggests having a conversation with that leader to understand what they want to achieve and how HR can help them achieve those goals.  

For example, let’s say a leader is advocating for redundancies so the business can cut costs and boost revenue. 

An HR professional can analyse the cost savings that might result from the redundancies, contrasted with the ongoing costs associated with the redundancies.  

“In that scenario, you could work with somebody in finance to do some modelling to show the longer-term impacts of those redundancies and identify other opportunities to help them achieve their goal of cutting costs and increasing profitability,” says Overbeck. 

Help them gain confidence

If you’re dealing with a leader who’s acting out because they don’t feel competent, respected or like they’ve earned their position, HR can subtly help the leader identify any competence gaps and present opportunities for upskilling. 

For example, Overbeck points to research about leaders who were promoted over their peers. 

“[Leaders in this situation] tend to become more coercive in the way they treat others. They assign them more humiliating and demeaning tasks,” says Overbeck.  

“My research has found that when there’s somebody in a position of power who’s not very respected, we anticipate that person is going to obstruct our goals and treat us badly. And so we preemptively become insubordinate and resistant and non-compliant with them,” she says.  

“To help boost their confidence, HR could amplify the person’s successes or team them up with partners who can help them achieve more wins. Or, you can find ways to give them credit by engineering situations where that person’s status becomes more salient.” 

Look for opportunities for coaching or upskilling

You can’t simply walk up to a leader and say, “I’ve noticed you’re incompetent, here’s how to upskill.” Instead, you need to find a subtle and gentle approach to helping them identify areas they can develop. 

An example Overbeck has come across is when a non-expert joins a team of experts. For example, say a finance person is put in charge of a team of engineers. 

“In these situations, the leader might be suspicious of the experts, get defensive, or withdraw from the team and keep their distance.” 

An HR professional could step in to acknowledge the situation and provide a solution. They could say something like: 

“I know your background is in finance so it must be tough being in this highly technical team of engineers. We’ve had a few people in a similar position and they’ve said it can be confronting and challenging. How are you feeling about it?” 

Whether or not they tell you the truth, you could follow up with something like: 

“One of the things we’ve found in the past is to provide some training for that leader, so when the engineers start throwing the jargon around you know what it means. Would you like to do something like that?” 

The key to doing this well is to point out deficiencies in the situation, not the leader.

What if you’re dealing with a more resistant leader? 

We have good news and bad news. 

The bad news is that if you’re dealing with a narcissistic or Machiavellian type who sits on the extreme end of the bad leader spectrum, know that they won’t be very influenceable, says Overbeck. 

“These leaders probably won’t be swayed by arguments about wellbeing, sustainability or collaborative benefits,” says Overbeck. “They pride themselves on not being influenceable – it’s part of their identity.” 

The good news? There are some meaningful actions you could take to improve the situation, but they need to be done strategically.  

Frame your argument to align with what this leader values

Whatever you need to achieve, you need to frame it in a way that matches this leader’s goal. To do so, you could use more strategic and instrumental language, even if what you’re trying to accomplish is benevolent or constructive. 

For example, if you want to encourage a leader to give employees an extra day of paid leave, you could phrase it like this: 

“If you give employees a day off, we know from reciprocity theory they’ll feel an even greater obligation to give something back to the company, which will improve productivity in the long run.” 

“By framing it like this, you’re telling the leader that the action might look soft, but it’s a way to get more out of people later,” says Overbeck. 

However, she cautions they might think you’re making them look weak if you try to influence them too much, and they will limit how often they acquiesce, no matter how rational your suggestions are. 

Seed the environment with micro-influencers

Another successful approach Overbeck has tried in the past is to make the leader think something was their idea by encouraging people to drop ideas in different settings. 

Overbeck shares a scenario she came across whereby the CEO couldn’t focus for long periods or follow along with complicated presentations. He was also likely to change his mind after everybody in the organisation had put energy and resources behind an initiative. 

“We took a coalition approach, so each member of the team took a different piece of the message. So nobody’s ever giving a half-hour presentation that the guy can’t follow when talking about financial implications.” 

Different people would have conversations about the issue around this leader, so he could pick up the entire narrative that could inform his opinion. Critically, he walked away thinking it was his idea. 

“You might have a leader who’s making bad decisions or who’s treating people negatively, but it’s not rooted in a strong and deeply-held fundamental worldview. Often it’s driven by insecurity or questions about their own competence as a leader. – Jennifer Overbeck, Associate Professor of Management at Melbourne Business School 

Managing upwards 

At some point in your HR career, you’ve probably needed to manage upwards to support a leader to make better decisions. The important thing for HR professionals is to practise empathy and understand what might be driving a leader’s behaviour.  

Most leaders are not trying to wreak havoc, and aren’t aware of the impact their behaviour is having on the workforce. It’s more likely that the leader has been observing certain kinds of behaviour and emulating it. 

“Sometimes when a leader is acting corrosively or cynically or making bad decisions, chances are that’s just how they’ve learned how to handle things,” says Overbeck. 

How HR steps up will be key to supporting them to learn new behaviours, and ultimately, become better leaders. 

Want to learn more about effective leadership and management? Sign up for AHRI’s short course to understand your leadership style and learn how to create key performance indicators. 

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