Naiman Labs Newsletter #23. Leadership gap

Hi friends! This is Sunday and it means that you’re reading another issue of Naiman Labs Newsletter!

Last week I read a great post from BCH Henderson Institute about the “Empathy Amnesia” research. They wanted to explore if todays manager (who were individual contributors before) address the same problem they faced earlier working as individual contributors (ICs), or they make the same mistakes.

As a result of the research they identified the gap in 3 areas: transparency, recognition and promptness.

The Gap

Managers believe they are transparent, praise their team members, and are prompt, but what do ICs think?

• 57% of ICs receive enough information from their leaders. While all managers praise their team members,

• 30% of ICs mentioned that they do not receive any recognition.

• In terms of promptness, ICs expect replies within two hours, while managers consider eight hours prompt.

When we look at the results we can say there’s nothing new under the sun. Whenever we work with Employee engagement we often see the same gaps - it is a very common request from team members for their managers to be more present, to be more transparent, to give more feedback and recognition.

However it doesn’t mean we should just accept this.

The impact

Transparency and recognition are important factors in ensuring employees' engagement and productivity.

Just imagine:

1️⃣ Scenario 1. You worked hard on a project and submitted it on time. The manager, however, did not provide any feedback. How would you feel and what would you do? I bet you’d feel undervalued, and you’d lose your motivation (as well as your mind thinking whether you did right, or wrong).

2️⃣ Scenario 2: You’re assigned a task without being provided with enough context. You don’t know the impact that this task will make on the company. You spent 2 days working on it. And after these 2 days your manager remembered that 50% of this task was already completed by another team 6 months ago and you could use their deliverables. Or after 2 days your manager told remembered on some additional context that made your work irrelevant. Welcome to anger and frustration.

3️⃣ Scenario 3: You’re assigned a task with a tight deadline. You worked hard and submitted it on time. The manager told you: “I’ll review it next week if I have time”. Will you put as much effort next time?

Addressing the Gap

The funniest thing about this is that in most cases what is needed for manager is to add a bit of more time, a bit of more effort and a bit of more attention to solve this.

⏰ Spending an extra 20 seconds to explain the "why" behind a task can go a long way in preventing employees' frustration and maximizing their productivity.

📊 Spending a bit of extra effort for manager to get enough context and to provide some context to their team members will save the team a lot of time and energy and help everyone to do their job better.

Also a good reminder to the contributors - don’t hesitate to ask for more context about the tasks and projects you’re given. Ask about “The why”. Make sure you have enough information to begin working on your tasks - that’s your responsibility. Your managers should help you open the door, but nobody but you can walk through it.

That's all for today.

Have a great productive week ahead!