Yahoo Calls Teleworkers Back to the Office, but Opportunity Lies in How Employees are Led, Not Where they Work

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AppId is over the quota

Yahoo’s CEO sparked a firestorm of debate with her recent decision to call teleworkers back to the office. But in order for the company’s move to succeed, she may need to focus as much on how these workers are being led as where they are located.

“Marissa Mayer made what she believes to be the best choice for her company to create the dramatic performance changes they need,” says Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ. “But her move in no way represents a mass change for the many companies that will continue to build and thrive with telecommuting workers and often long-distance separation of leaders and employees.”

In fact, we’ve seen a steadily increasing demand for strategy and management advice around how to manage remote workforces. Advanced technology is leveling the field, allowing more companies than ever to operate in the global economy. Management concerns around managing remote employees remain a top worry for leaders worldwide.

“Employees want leadership,” says Murphy. In a Leadership IQ study of co-located and remote employees, 66% of employees studied said they have too little interaction with the boss. And it’s not just positive feedback or praise they’re looking for. Because while 67% of employees studied said they don’t get enough positive feedback, 51% said it’s actually more constructive criticism that they want.

Whether employees are in the office down the hall, across town or halfway around the world, there are three key issues managers must focus on to effectively manage a remote workforce: connection, alignment and accountability.

Connection: There are relationships and bonds managers must make with their employees. This is more difficult in remote environments. The best remote leaders are true company evangelists. They need to be pro-company kind of people if they want evangelism to spread across a phone line, video conference or email.

Alignment: It’s up to managers to ensure everybody is reading off the same page; that they’re focusing on the right things. The strength and clarity of message naturally degrades when employees are located at a distance from their leaders. Remote managers must increase the frequency and focus of their communication so employees know exactly what they’re intending and can respond.

Accountability: This is one of the biggest challenges in face-to-face environments. It is exacerbated in remote situations. Managers must balance the obvious autonomy that comes from working remotely with the need for transparency to achieve significant accountability with remote workers.

“We have to remember, Yahoo was one of the leaders in deploying technology and allowing workers to telecommute,” says Murphy. “Bringing those employees back to the office is a decision more indicative of the drive for fresh innovation and performance than a harbinger of a new workforce trend. CEOs must assess specifically what their organization needs to deliver results and ensure their managers are equipped to lead effectively.”

With more than 20 years in-role corporate executive experience, Lauryn has provided research, insight, information products and events that inspire dynamic growth by aligning people, plans and practices around a shared purpose to companies across the Global 1000.

As Leadership IQ’s President, Lauryn leads strategy development, execution and leadership communications initiatives. A creative strategist and inspirational communicator, she has recruited, trained and led high-performing creative and business teams for international research, media, and training companies in the U.S., U.K. and Europe in energy, telecommunications, financial services, health and wellness, social media, education and the performing arts.

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What Frontline Employees Don’t Know Can Hurt You: 3 Disturbing Findings

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AppId is over the quota

When employees are on the frontlines every day, most managers assume they already know a lot. But there are pieces of information that only leaders have, and too many companies do a lousy job of sharing that information with everyone who needs to know about it.

Consider this: one of our studies drawn from our employee survey data analyzed the strategic awareness of more than 30,000 employees. Specifically, those surveyed were asked whether they could articulate their organization’s strategic goals. This is foundational to success because if your people don’t know where they’re headed, how the heck are they supposed to get there?

Our study revealed these three disturbing findings:

Finding #1: Only 34% of employees said they could articulate the goals.

Finding #2: When we told this to CEOs many of them said, “Really, 34%? That’s better than I would’ve thought.”

Finding #3: When we asked the 34% that said they COULD articulate the strategic goals to ACTUALLY articulate those goals, 51% of them got it wrong.

It’s scary to hear so many leaders react positively when learning that two thirds of employees can’t articulate the organization’s strategic goals. But even scarier are the only 17% of employees who can clearly articulate their organization’s strategic goals. Given all this, it’s easy to understand why so many employees look at a situation and come to a radically different conclusion than do their leaders about what needs to happen next.

And the root cause of this is not obtuse employees who are incapable of understanding our sophisticated goals. It’s something much simpler: too many leaders don’t communicate effectively, and too many leaders aren’t sharing all the necessary facts.

Great leaders, what we call 100% Leaders, give lots of information that is built around the facts. And they create strong communications with employees using the right levels of connection and challenge. That’s why they get better results than do leaders who are Intimidators, Appeasers and Avoiders.

Learn more about what kind of leader you are and discover what the world’s greatest leaders have in common by attending our special 4-part webinar series “What Great Leaders Do Differently“.

Mark Murphy is Founder & CEO of Leadership IQ, a top-rated research and consulting firm that delivers employee engagement and leadership development to the world’s most successful organizations and their leaders.

Mark leads one of the world’s largest leadership and goal-setting studies, and his work has appeared in such publications as the Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Post. Mark has also been a featured guest on programs including CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR.

Mark’s training and surveys have yielded remarkable results for organizations such as Harvard Business School, Aflac, Charles Schwab, Microsoft, IBM, MasterCard, Merck, MD Anderson Cancer Center, FirstEnergy, Volkswagen and Johns Hopkins.

Mark’s best-selling books are backed by rigorous research and offer leaders clear and actionable solutions. His most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, was featured in Fast Company, The Wall St Journal, and chosen as a top business book by CNBC. Some of his other titles include the international bestseller, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More, and HARD Goals: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

As a former turnaround specialist, Mark’s work has revolutionized how we view the link between leadership and bottom-line results. He was awarded the prestigious Healthcare Financial Management Association’s “Helen Yerger Award for Best Research” for being the first person to discover the link between layoff strategies and patient mortality rates. For his work in saving financially-distressed hospitals, he was a three-time nominee for Modern Healthcare’s “Most Powerful People in Healthcare Award,” joining a list of 300 luminaries including Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush. Some of his other groundbreaking research studies include “Are SMART Goals Dumb?,” “Why CEO's Get Fired,” “Why New Hires Fail” and “Don’t Expect Layoff Survivors to Be Grateful.”

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Move Difficult Employees Past the Drama and Into the Facts

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AppId is over the quota

Drama Queens and Kings need to be the center of attention and they’re emotionally and behaviorally provocative in how they try to make that happen. When one of these employees comes to you with a problem, they’re likely to be crying, or displaying crazy exaggerated happiness or even a false sense of intimacy; some kind of overblown emotion. What the Drama Queens and Kings are trying to effect with this are A) they want the attention that comes from bringing this problem and the more histrionics they produce the more likely they are to get noticed and B) they want to elicit a reaction from you so they can manipulate you and get you to do what they want.

This is why every action you take and conversation you have with these folks has to be factual.  And the more emotional the Drama Queen and King becomes, and the more reactive they become, the more factual we as leaders need to become. Let’s take a look at how it works:

Imagine the Drama Queen or King comes into your office to let you know there’s a small leak in the roof, for example. Only this problem gets blown up until it sounds something like this: “You don’t know what it was like. It was horrible. There was a torrent of water and I thought I was going to die. It was unbelievable. We should evacuate the whole building; probably the building should be condemned!” And they go on and on like this all over a tiny drip in the ceiling.

Fight the urge to react emotionally

The key here is not to get provoked into an emotional reaction that matches their intensity like anger or harsh criticism. We’re going to empathize with their feelings, but we’re not going to react emotionally with something like, “Hey listen, just suck it up. It was a water leak; you’ve only got two drops in your desk; get over it.” Instead, we’re going to redirect the conversation into the realm of the factual and put the accountability for the situation back on the employee.

We might do this by saying, “Listen, I hear you feel frightened by this but I need you to tell me the facts.”

And don’t be surprised if you get more drama in response. In this example perhaps something like, “It was just awful. It was so scary.”

And then all we’re going to do, is keep redirecting the conversation back to the facts until we start to elicit some actual facts: “I hear you feel frightened by this, but I need to know the facts.”  You can set some boundaries so this conversation doesn’t go on forever. Something like, “Look, I only have five minutes to listen before my meeting.” But you just want to keep asking for the facts. Psychologists sometimes call this the broken record technique and with good reason. You may have to repeat yourself five times in this conversation before you start to get at the facts.

Encourage self-sufficiency by pushing accountability 

Once we move them past the drama and onto the facts (there’s a small leak in the roof) we’re going to encourage self-sufficiency by asking, “Okay, then, there’s a leak and you’ve got some drops of water on your desk. I have confidence that you’ve got the skills to handle this so what can you do right now to take care of this problem by yourself?” We’re going to push them to be self-sufficient and to be accountable for this situation that they’ve brought you. Because again, what they want to do is get you sucked into this with their emotions and their reactions, and you’re not going to take the bait. Instead, you’re going to keep encouraging self-sufficiency and force them into adult behavior.

Dealing with the Drama Queens and Kings isn’t complicated. It may be tiresome and require some discipline so as not to become reactionary, but redirecting these conversations to the factual is relatively easy. And the reason why this approach works is that the facts are just the facts: “There’s a leak in the ceiling.” It’s the interpretations (“there were torrents of water”) and the emotional reactions (“I almost died”) that make these situations dramatic. The facts work because you can fix the facts, and the facts don’t allow Drama Queens and Kings to bring attention to themselves. Instead, drilling down to the facts forces Drama Queens and Kings to take accountability for the problems they bring you. And that’s going to greatly diminish the number of problems they bring to you, which is ultimately what you’re interested in achieving with these employees.

Learn more about how to encourage self-sufficiency and avoid giving Drama Queens and Kings the extra attention they feed on by attending our webinar, Managing Narcissists, Blamers, Drama Queens and More.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

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Yikes ~, these employees are finished!

Our survey of clients first words when one of our efforts showed the following table, said CEO "yikes-, closed for their employees! "Was OK, he didn't actually" yikes ~ "did not say that his words were repeated a bit too colorful open.

This is called the heat map of the engagement survey for the oft-use graph we. How company employees (i.e. tenure) of many years working at the top of his employee's age is a left-side is. Along the way, there is a 7-point scale from 1-7 until average employee engagement scores. Red, scores, lower (they are greener than they are).

What this very clear 6-8 37 had said over the years, the company had promised during the 40-year-old employee of company employees of other demographic groups. Many are.

Was quite why they score low? We are the Group discovered are neglected in some way, dug up in analysis.

First new in this particular company employees (low TE) get a lot of term employees long and get a lot of attention, and attention (and promotion that they are skilled. )? But gets forgotten somewhere in between employees. Like them, or they are not brand new but not made the leap to the next big management level if ones are ignored.

Ignoring secondary source is a young company employees ( aka Gen Y and the new Millennials ), hot topic, baby boomers retirement challenge is pushing the limelight. Get the elderly are basically young workers get the attention, attention. However, no one is really paying attention during the employee — disengaged these people in their late.

So they are age were ignored and neglected tenure group. Also discovered that it was hard to make that show they are not in the fast-track if they did not receive the promotion in this age group at this point in their career pattern of promotion, the next big leap. Also each year than other groups less conversation boss gives you actually they track and career mapping argument.

BTW, I asked several executives is whether a this group is dissolved engagement to life stage. Only bright red for that age group ( really low ) score 6-8, so you can see from the chart cohort year tenure was answer to "is really" is. The age worked moderately everybody else ( great certainly are not centrist ).

This is what all the points?

You can find.

If you are running such analysis in your company, really need to start second. By now.

And thirdly, ask yourself: high turnover risk and low involvement of the Pocket are your company's needs? Do you know? How much risk lurks there really?

We feel if you've done this kind of analysis is lacking survey is a employee engagement before the webinar "survey include involvement of employees of the deadly sins, that obviously you want to" wrong and how to fix it.

Alignment of people with the goal to create a thriving organization expert, mark one of the leads the largest research leadership and employee involvement.

Has previously received the award of marks is covers many publications such as the Wall St. Journal fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg business week, Washington Post. His media appearances have CBS News Sunday morning, Fox Business News NPR, abc's 20 / 20. Mark the sessions at Harvard Graduate School of business, University of Rochester, Yale University and University of Florida. Is the author of five books including mark 100 Percenters McGraw-Hill international bestselling book: challenge they give all of it give those of you who, even more and hard targets. With engagement adopted attitudes for the mark's most recent book, how hiring decisions and the latest research on team goals, reflects the insight into cultural characteristics.

Has been recognized in a diverse set of industries, including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, hospitality through a change in culture, leadership IQ turnaround and performance enhancing employee engagement work. Deal with the problems before they hit the bottom line mark leadership IQ, created from the roots of his reconstruction of professional performance.

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Use the “Frustration Technique” to Help Employees Understand Change

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AppId is over the quota

One factor that regularly gets in the way of successful change initiatives is when organizations fail to provide employees with any real reason as to “why” a change is happening in the first place. This is especially prevalent in companies operating from a top-down organizational structure, and it can result in employees that catastrophize the message of change they hear, jumping to conclusions and making irrational interpretations about the impact the change will have on them.

When it comes to communicating the “why” of change, we need to create a deep sense of understanding so everyone involved is clear on: “why the status quo is no longer acceptable and we have no choice but to leave it behind.” This means not only do we need to give our people a legitimate reason why the change is happening, we also need to clearly communicate that we didn’t just come up with this change initiative because we didn’t have anything better to do. And especially if the organization has a history of stalled or abandoned change efforts, we have to let employees know that this time it’s not some “new flavor of the month” syndrome; that there is a good reason for this change and that it absolutely is going to happen.

To further add to the challenge, grasping the “why” is the hardest part of change. The good news is that it’s a message you can get employees to help self-deliver, which is a big plus because people tend to react better to ideas they come up with on their own versus ideas that are forced on them. That’s why we teach the “Frustration Technique” that gets people to set their own platform on fire and create their own sense of why there is no other choice but to make the leap to change.

Here’s how the “Frustration Technique” works

Before you pitch a change, start asking people, “Hey, is there anything frustrating you about where we’re at right now? They might answer, “Well, the process takes too long. It’s sort of irritating. And these things are getting in my way.” And the minute that light bulb comes on, you are in a much better position to turn around and say, “You know what, that’s wonderful insight. Based on that let me throw something out to you. This is a change, a solution to the ideas you just came up with.”

The Frustration Technique works because it highly eliminates the nostalgia that can set in when employees hear the announcement “We’re leaving this safe place you already know, and going someplace new.” Once you’ve pitched where you’re going, and you’ve said, “Folks, here it is. We’re going over here and we’re leaving that. Forget about it. It’s never coming back” people start to eulogize the past. They’ll say, “Do you remember back when? Remember before we had computers how great it used to be? How easy life was? We didn’t have these systems that were always crashing and it wasn’t so complicated?” Even if they didn’t like the paper systems, even if it took too long and was painful and arduous, the minute you insist that folks leave it, they turn back around and eulogize the “good old days” or “the way it used to be.” Once that happens it is very difficult to undo. So, if you can, catch it before it even starts.

Change is always going to be hard, but with techniques like this that invite employees to take an active role in finding their own acceptance and willingness to embrace the change, it gets much easier.

For more tips on managing change, join us for our webinar “Change Management that Lasts“.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

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