As leaders, we may be in positions that are insulated from some negatives that others on our team might face.

Or not. I don’t know your life.

But if, for example, you don’t have young kids, then you might not have the stress and expense of finding affordable, high-quality childcare.

If you have lived in the same house for the past 15 years, you might not feel the pain of rising rents and other living costs.

If you are currently healthy, you might not have the sticker-shock of rising co-pays and prescriptions.

If you are protected by your “demographics,” you might not experience the harassment that others face.

As leaders, we need to do what we can to take care of our team. Don’t minimize their challenges because they are not challenges for you. If you have the power to make things better for your people, do what you can! Consider “retention initiatives” that include childcare or first-time homebuyer assistance for your people. Keep benefits packages better-than-average. Don’t tolerate hostile work environment activities, etc.

Take care of your people.

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Make sure to choose the information framing that works best for the people you are talking to.

“Information framing” is a psychological concept; the way you tell the truth influences the other person. If you say, “this surgery has a 95% rate of successful recovery,” then people are more likely to consent to the surgery than if you say, “5% of the people who have this surgery die.”

The percentages are the same. What changes is the side being emphasized.

This has wide implications for leaders. If there is an issue or problem, you can focus discussion on the problem, or you can focus on solutions. If your “pep-talks” are about building things up and doing the best work, it’s more positive than “going scorched-earth” or “crushing the competition.” Both may motivate people, but the framing influences whether people act cooperatively or competitively, and whether they support or attack. Use the right framing for your goals.

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Be the kind of leader your people want to follow.

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Your people are the ones who make you a leader.

Build them up. Support them. Have their backs. Follow through on your commitments to them. Praise their successes and good efforts. Give them guidance, training, and opportunities. Always show them respect.

In short—be the kind of leader that you yourself would want to follow.

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Leading change requires confidence and vision.

If you want to make things better, make sure you have both. How do you see things will be once you are done? What do you like about the possibilities or the potential new order of things? Focus your energies on making that a reality. Have a vision worth sharing, and others will add to the efforts to make it happen.

For confidence, different people get it in different ways. Get buy-in from others, or run the numbers, create a strategy, or define the goal—do what you need to do to feel “I can do this.” And make sure you build that confidence in your team members.

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We all have the capacity to make decisions in several ways.

• We can go with the gut-check instinct.

• We can go with our feelings and intuition.

• We can go with the logical process.

Many of us default to one of these, but we all have the capacity to use any of them to make decisions, and some will work better (or worse) in certain situations. For example, logic is going to give you the right decision more often, but it takes longer, so it can’t always be used.

Give your people the opportunity to get it right more often. Don’t put anyone on the spot in meetings to give a response to newly-presented information or options. If you want people to speak up with intelligent solutions, give them think-time in advance, e.g., “I want us to decide at Friday’s meeting which option we are going to go with on the project, so please do any research you want to do before the meeting.”

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But that’s too late, at least for the people who are leaving.

So, talk to your people about their job satisfaction BEFORE they start considering “greener pastures.” Are they happy with what they are doing now? Are they positive and optimistic about the next few years? Do they see a career path they want with your firm?

Some people will be good with the current setup and don’t need any course corrections. But if you have others who are not satisfied, look at their current productivity and future potential. If they are top performers, what will it cost you if this person leaves? What do you need to add or change to get them to want to stay? If you bring it down to the math, it’s often a lot easier and less painful to invest in the people you want to keep than to replace them if they leave.

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If Mondays are “meh” for you and your team, do something to change that. Bring in aspects that make the day more positive.

“Muffin-Basket Mondays.”

“Dogs in the office Mondays.”

“Summer Hours late-start Mondays.”

At the very least, consider ways you can motivate each person on your team. Stop by and talk with each person and give them positive feedback on what they accomplished the previous week. Give them a pep talk about their upcoming tasks and projects. Connect on the personal side, e.g., “How was your weekend?” and validate their experiences, e.g., “How fun! Your kids must have had a blast!”

If you can start the week off with a positive, it can have longer lasting effects on productivity and morale.

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Don’t assume that “if we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting the same results.” If your company never changes how it does things—but the market, the industry, and the world change—your company will be left behind.

As leaders, we need to keep an eye on where things are headed, and then we need to guide our people toward a good outcome. For example, if AI is coming into your industry, consider how to use it safely and effectively. Maybe one of the junior staffers who has an interest can take a course in guiding, prompting, and quality-control of current AI models, and then report back to you and your team in a lunch-and-learn.

Sound out your team members for new tech, new ideas, new revenue opportunities, etc.—good ideas can come from anywhere in the organization, and it’s especially important to get the input of current users of the systems, especially if it has been a few years since you were “in the trenches” yourself. If there is a good idea, then create a pilot program for trying it out with a small group before rolling it out to everyone.

In the end, keeping or changing systems boils down to:
If it will still work well, then keep doing it. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

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Too often, people in charge of a project hold on to too many of the tasks for themselves. Some only delegate to people who already have proven competencies. And some only delegate at the 11th hour, when they realize that they don’t have enough time to finish, which means everyone needs to rush to complete tasks that didn’t need to be in crunch-time.

Don’t do that.

Build delegation into your plan from the start. Delegate everything that other people can do now. And then delegate several of the tasks that other people could do if they had training or assistance… and build in time early on for that training and assistance.

Given the time limits, you might not be able to delegate every one of these “they can do it with help” tasks on the first project. Select a couple, and then grow the skills of your people. They probably will need assistance again the second time those tasks are delegated, but they might be able to do them solo by the third time. And that will free up time in the planned actions to delegate the next couple of tasks that people could learn to do.

And so on, and so on.

Delegation takes time, but it frees up time in the long run. It’s worth the investment.

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Praise their achievements and good efforts. Build their motivation to try something new, e.g. “ I think you’d be great at this.” When you have a good idea, share it and build buy-in and excitement, e.g. “It’s going to be so cool when we’re done!”

People would much rather follow the person who says, “Let’s go! It’s gonna be awesome!” than the person who says, “I dunno. What do you think we could do?”

Inspire confidence around you.

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If you say, “I’ll get this to you by Wednesday,” then make every effort to get it to them by Wednesday.

This has been a personal challenge recently since I developed a lingering case of bronchitis. I have been relieved that I typically use “under-promise and over-deliver” estimates—I’ve had that cushion to make sure I can get things done this past month. Highly recommended.

Make sure you give yourself a margin for error; you never know what will suddenly pop up. And teach your team members the same practice; if you think you can get it done in 10 hours, give yourself 12, just in case.

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Many people have a good idea. They know it’s a good idea. But they don’t get into action on it.

Figure out what you need to feel confident and motivated enough to get started. Some people like to run the idea by other people and get a consensus that it’s a good thing to do. Others have to analyze every facet. Still others want a team or group to do it with them. And there are some who want an authority figure to green-light it.

What do you need to get started? What does each member of your team need to get started?

Figure out what you and your people need, and supply that validation or confidence-builder. You can accomplish a lot more if you actually start doing the thing.

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When this happens, your ability to be an effective leader becomes even more important.

Don’t waste time placing blame or bemoaning the unfairness of it all.

Don’t lash out, yell, or lose your temper.

Build up morale for the individuals and the team — “We’re going to get through this together.”

Focus on the fix — “We’re going to do this, this, and that to get out of the hole, and then get back on course by doing X, Y, and Z.”

Get input from your team without looking lost or clueless — “So, that’s the plan to get back on track. Does anyone have any thoughts on how we can improve the plan?”

If you keep your people engaged, motivated, and on-course, most problems can be fixed, issues can be worked out, and setbacks can be overcome.

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Make sure you are using the right tone of voice when speaking. Some people are more sensitive to tone than others. Try to default to being respectful and positive.

Understand that texts and emails can also have tone… and that it might not be coming from you. If you send a very short text (“OK”) or direct email (“I need the file today.”), some people will read in an emotional context and think you are angry at them. A simple “Thanks!” often changes this. It’s worth a few extra seconds to make sure your tone isn’t misinterpreted.

My apologies for some recent missed and late days on this—I’ve been recovering from bronchitis. I’m pretty much back now, though.

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Please do it frequently, and when you FIRST get the task on your radar.

Some people wait until they have run out of time and realize that can’t get everything done, and THEN start delegating. You are then putting that time pressure onto the other person. However, if you had delegated it a week ago when you first knew it needed doing, then NEITHER of you would have had the time pressure. Everyone would have been better off.

Respect your people’s time and respect that they have other things on their plate—other deadlines to meet. Give them enough time to do things and do them well.

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Leaders build ways for their people to thrive. If they get ahead, they pull others up with them as they climb. Empower your people, and the team will accomplish far more than you could ever have accomplished as a solo act.

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Some people like to “go with their gut.” Others don’t trust their “gut” to make decisions.

If you have an instinct or intuition, that is a data point. It is coming from something—maybe you are picking up on the body language of others or doing a mental analysis that is conceptual, not verbal, so you can’t put words to what you are thinking. The point is—there could be something to it.

However, you can also have a “gut” reaction to something irrelevant. Maybe that other person uses the same shampoo as your ex. The scent is giving you information, so you don’t know why, but you feel like this person can’t be trusted.

So, use your “gut” reaction as a hypothesis—you have a feeling about the situation, but you don’t know what it is coming from. You can’t put words around it. In these situations: trust, but verify. If your instinct or intuition is saying something is wrong, don’t ignore it! Treat it like the “check engine” light in your car and look carefully to confirm your understanding. Do a quick cost-benefit analysis with that gut reaction—if it’s right, what will it cost me or benefit me to act on it? What will it cost me or benefit me to not do it?

This cost/benefit is apparent in the situation many women face when getting into an elevator with a lone man. If your instinct is saying that it feels dangerous, listen to that instinct! The cost of not getting into that elevator is a couple of minutes of your time, and a man you don’t know may feel a little offended. The cost of getting in might be ending up as the victim a murder investigation covered on Dateline, e.g. “She had a smile that could light up a room…”

When you are facing decisions at work or in life, you can listen to your instinct… and also should listen to your brain.

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It helps to look at the practical things we can all do today, this week, or this month.

• Check in with your people. If you can, set up a standing meeting with each person individually, either weekly or every two weeks. You might give them standard prompts like: “What did you do last week? What are you planning to do this week? Do you have any problems, issues, or questions?” Use this standing meeting to give positive feedback and motivation.

• Communicate with your people about current and future projects, so they know what is coming. When you are looking at these projects, consider who can do different tasks with their current skills and experience, and who could do more with some training or scaffolding. Plan according to these variables, as well as people’s existing workload. Delegate as much of the project as you can, so you have time for the things only you can do.

• Ask your people for their input and good ideas. Be open to improvements. Validate their contributions and course-correct when they have shown you a better way.

• Reward individuals (bonuses, etc.) when they go above-and-beyond. Reward teams collectively for collective successes.

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