Open, Honest, and Direct

by Aaron Levy

  If you’re the leader, you may wonder why it would be necessary for you to ultimately have to modify any of your original agreements. Don’t you get to call the shots? Wouldn’t you know what’s best for your people? Remember the purpose and intention of the agreements: They are not and were never intended to be only your expectations for the team. At their heart, they are a set of guidelines to help your team operate at its best, created by all of you together. If you don’t achieve alignment with the team, this won’t happen. People don’t operate at their best when they feel their boss is unable to truly hear and understand them.

  In my experience, it is rare that your agreements will be so off base with how your team feels that they will reject them. Usually, there is one agreement that needs to be revised, reworded, or—in some cases—scrapped. It’s much scarier preparing for this, thinking about all the what-if scenarios, than it actually is when you roll out the agreements with your team. If you are open to feedback, willing to make changes, and intend to create a set of common norms for how people on your team treat one another, you’ll come out on the other side of this process a much stronger team. Your people will be happier and more invested, and you will have worked together to create the kind of environment that they want to be a part of.

  What if you seem to have a good meeting of the minds with your team in establishing the new agreements, but they aren’t ultimately willing to follow them in practice? Even once everyone becomes clear on who you are as a team, what you’re about, and how you need to work together to be at your best, you’ll still find people who don’t go along with the plan. I’ve found that these people are usually the ones on your team who have likely not been a fit for a while. It’s not necessarily their fault, and it doesn’t mean they are bad people. It simply means their values no longer match the team’s. After you have clear language establishing your agreements, you can typically identify these people more easily and help them find a better fit on another team or with another company.

  Rick, the co-founder and president of RGE, a rapidly growing engineering company, was in the process of separating from his cofounder and buying back the business. He knew it was critical for his full team to be on board, aligned, and ready to move forward together. My team came in to clarify his company’s values, vision, and mission as they were coming out of a transition period and to create a plan for moving forward together. To do this, he first elevated three of his key employees into leadership roles and created a new leadership team to guide the company. When we sat down to craft their values, the process flowed fairly smoothly with Rick and his new team. We’d aligned and were preparing the communication plan to share with the company when Rick paused and asked the group, “What if Sheena and Dejaun don’t agree to these? Can we make an exception for them?” We’d just spent hours reaching agreement on the values defining the new RGE. Was Rick now trying to go back on them? What was happening?

  Rick was the president of the company, and he, like many of us, still had fears about what happens when someone is no longer a fit. I explained to Rick how these team members would have a chance to align with the agreements, and if they couldn’t, he would have to let them know that they were no longer a fit for the organization. Rick knew it was the right thing to do and took the leap of faith that it would work out.

  A month later, at their annual meeting, neither Sheena nor Dejaun showed up. They saw they did not fit in the next phase of RGE and opted out on their own. Although I imagine Rick would have preferred not to lose Sheena and Dejaun, the clear language of the agreements ultimately helped Sheena and Dejaun understand what they wanted to work toward professionally and that RGE was moving in a different direction.

  When you clarify who you are as a business and team, there will be people who either can’t or don’t want to make the transition to the new way of working as a team. Expect this. And when it’s time, be ready to do the next hard thing you need to do. It will show the power of your words, that these new agreements really matter, and it will make your team and business stronger as a result. Rick and RGE are now coming off one of their best years as a business, a year where they had to buy out their co-founder and yet still nearly doubled in revenue. They’re looking to do the same in the coming year. Rick and his team confidently stood by their values and who they are as a business, and it’s made them stronger.

  Turning your agreements into aligned actions makes sure there is no space for confusion. You and your entire team should know exactly what’s expected of each of you. Once the agreements are in place, you’ve created a space where clarity and psychological safety are not only accepted but also anticipated and expected. Change does not happen overnight. People on your team will likely be unable to change course and their behaviors so quickly. So, as the leader, you’ll need to embed it into their day-to-day workflow.

  Step 3: Embed your agreements into your day-to-day work

  After you have alignment on your agreements, you can start to make them a part of everyday life within your organization or team. They can now be the foundation for the type of culture you want to create, and you’ll be able to tell your employees, unapologetically, what it means to work together here. Agreements are not just words that go up on a wall in your office, on your website careers page, or in your employee handbook. To really stick, they need to be ingrained in the actions your people take on a daily basis. This happens only when you incorporate them into your team’s people practices—when they become the criteria for hiring, firing, and promotion.

  Here are some best practices for incorporating your agreements into your everyday people practices:

  Add your agreements to your interview process

  Once you assess a candidate to see whether they have the ability to do the job, the next step is to assess them as a value fit. This means asking specific questions and looking for examples highlighting their expression of your team’s values. By interviewing for value matches, you’ll save yourself the trouble of having to let go of someone who’s not a fit for your company months later. Doing this kind of assessment up front also works in the best interests of the candidate, who, ideally, will wind up in a good work situation that is not only aligned with their own values but also makes them happy.

  Don’t just assess performance KPI; add in values KPI too

  Instead of only assessing an employee’s performance (quarterly or annually) based on how well they did against their performance metrics or KPI, include a section to assess how they did in light of your team agreements. One easy way to do this is to have employees score themselves on a scale of 1 to 5 (1, strongly disagree; 5, strongly agree) based on how well they believe they personally live into the team agreements. Then, you do the same assessment of them based on their peers and your observations.

  This is a great way not only to make sure that you and your employees are on the same page with their performance but also to show that your agreements really mean something. What gets measured matters, so if you’re not continually measuring and assessing your employees and yourself against your agreements, they begin to fade away.

  Follow up and follow through

  I frequently find myself talking to business leaders who complain about employees wanting to be promoted. They’ll say a particular employee is just not ready to be promoted, which I’ll begin prodding with these questions: What does that mean? What does the employee need to do in order to be ready? Usually, the response falls somewhere along the lines of this employee needing to more consistently meet the team agreements.

  Well, why doesn’t the employee know that? This brings us back both to the values KPI in your evaluation of the employee and to open, honest, and direct communication. The employee is probably asking for a promotion because they believe they’ve lived up to your team agreements and don’t understand why you don’t see that. Think of your agreements as both a tool and an opportunity. They offer an easy way for you as a leader to point out where growth is needed when the person performs w
ell but is not a fit for promotion. Make it clear what’s missing from their performance so you can get on the same page. They’ll know what’s required to earn that promotion, and you’ll have an employee ready to improve for a specific, reachable goal.

  This becomes much harder when someone is a top performer but they continually violate your team agreements. When this happens, you must fire that employee; otherwise, you’ll be sending the implicit message that your agreements don’t actually matter or, worse, that there are some people who are above the rules.* If your employees hear you talk about the importance of your agreements, but you put up with a top salesperson consistently disregarding the agreements, you send the message that it’s OK to violate any agreement, as long as you’re good at what you do. This does not create clarity or psychological safety, but rather discord and misalignment in your company. Is this the message you want to send to your team?

  Note:

  * Your first course of action with an employee not meeting an agreement should not be to fire. It should be to communicate the miss and give them the coaching and support they need to meet the team agreement. Rarely should an employee be surprised about being let go, as you should have had several conversations leading up to this final decision where they know what they need to work on and have the support to be successful.

  Step 4: Model open, honest, and direct communication with your team

  Team agreements are not meant to be used simply as inspirational quotes. To work, they need to be used daily. In the beginning, your team will have to get used to the new agreements—and it’s vital to share feedback with them both when they are honoring an agreement and when they’re violating one. As a rule, make sure to recognize, call out, and check in on agreements weekly with your team. Open, honest, and direct communication is not a one-time thing; it is meant to be a habit you practice every day. The more often you offer and receive feedback, the better the team can work.

  When I think of feedback, I look at sports teams for comparison. Consider Drew Brees, the quarterback of the New Orleans Saints. After each play, Brees huddles up with his team, and they discuss the next play. In the huddle, he’s receiving the play from his coaches, gets input from his teammates, and gives them actions to take. They break the huddle and set up for the play, all while Brees is looking at the defense and shouting changes to the rest of the team. At no point does Brees stop and think about how to politely give feedback. He doesn’t wait to send a well-crafted email or, worse, wait six to twelve months to tell someone what didn’t work on third down with two minutes left in the game. That’d be ridiculous, it’d be pointless, and it’d be too late. So why, at work, do we wait twelve months before giving feedback to our team? How can people truly develop like this or grow in their roles in real time?

  When you have feedback to give to a team member, whether it’s positive or negative, give it live, and make sure it’s actionable. Don’t wait weeks or months for a performance review. Share the feedback with them as an opportunity for development or understanding.

  Here are a few tips for giving live feedback:

  Give it in person, over the phone, or via video chat

  These are the highest fidelity modes of communicating, in which it’s easy to understand when someone is being sarcastic, joking, or simply asking a question with no intonation. When you give feedback via text, messaging, or email, you potentially leave room for misinterpretation. A rule I stick to is this: If an email is taking me more than five minutes to draft or respond to, I don’t send it. Instead, I pick up the phone or walk down the hall to connect with the person live. So many office conflicts would be solved by simply communicating with one another.

  One of my clients, Ozzie, the CEO of a fast-growing advertising agency, had two members of his executive team who’d been fighting. Their relationship had been degrading with each passing month, and Ozzie had failed to take action. At one point, Ozzie, frustrated himself, realized that their disagreements were affecting how the rest of their team worked with one another, and he could no longer stand for it. Ozzie looked at the situation, after having both employees come to him to plead their case and hoping he’d side with them, and decided to do the simplest of all actions. He brought them together in a room, shared how they were both failing to hold up their end of their team agreement to collaborate openly, and forced them to talk it out.

  Although their desks sat no more than fifteen feet away from each other, all of their arguments had taken place via email. They’d never actually sat down to truly hear one another’s perspective. As soon as they did, it was as if an invisible barrier had been removed. Their relationship immediately changed; they were both more ready and willing to work together, to truly listen to one another. They didn’t need to agree with the other’s perspective; they just needed to hear, understand, and appreciate it.

  Open, honest, and direct communication is not about agreeing with the other person. It’s about openly communicating disagreements and working together to reach the best possible outcome for the company and for one another.

  Avoid using absolutes like always and never

  Absolutes add a level of judgment to a situation that likely isn’t true and often leads to defensiveness. If you tell someone they always miss a deadline, the thought running through their head is all the deadlines they have hit. Even a positive piece of feedback gets watered down when framed as an absolute. Which of these two statements would be more effective for an employee to hear?

  • “Sunil, you always do such a great job!”

  • “Sunil, well done going above and beyond to get Eli at SandCare the reports two days early. Eli was so grateful you helped him out of a jam, we’re meeting next week to talk about another project!”

  Yes, statement two may take a few extra seconds to think about and share with your employee, but the impact is far more profound. This form of specificity makes the compliment more personal and helps your employee feel seen and heard, and shows the impact of their work. Remember, lack of impact is one of the key reasons people leave their company; being specific is a simple way to make sure you share the impact they’re having.

  This tip is not just about the positive. Even when sharing feedback on something that didn’t work, avoiding absolutes will help make it clearer and help the person feel less judged.

  The more specific you can be with a piece of constructive feedback, the easier it will be for your employee to know what to do or not do the next time. Instead of telling them to write emails that are more professional, share how the two grammatical errors in their email didn’t meet your expectations for emails going out to clients.

  Be timely: Deliver the feedback within three days of the incident

  The longer you wait to give a piece of feedback, the less effective it will be. Leaders often wait weeks until the time is right, and by then, so many other things have happened that the person you’re giving feedback to may not even remember the original event. The sooner you give the feedback, the sooner that person can do something about it.

  Share both good and bad

  If someone doesn’t get feedback, how can they grow, make a change, or continue doing the action you’re applauding? Don’t share the good and the bad together. Feedback sandwiches just don’t work; in fact, they undermine the positive feedback you give and diminish the importance of the constructive feedback.3 This is related to the last point: Don’t wait to combine multiple feedback items; instead, discuss positive actions when they happen, and give constructive criticism when an issue arises that requires it.

  Craig Wortmann, a clinical professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, first shared this 4-step process with me a few years back. I love the way he’s adapted it to make feedback a habit with your team.4

  ACTIVITY: MAKE FEEDBACK A HABIT WITH YOUR TEAM

  1. What’s one thing you did that worked well?

  2. Here’s one thing I think you did that worked we
ll . . .

  3. What’s one thing you would do differently?

  4. Here’s one thing I think you could do differently . . .

  I use this process after any presentation or sales meeting. We do a quick three-to five-minute debrief following the meeting, during which I’ll ask an employee what one thing is that they think they did well. I allow them time to respond and give one focused insight before sharing the specific action I thought they did well. Then, it’s a hard stop to let the feedback sit; sometimes, having them write it down is helpful, so they can remember what to repeat during their next presentation. Next, I ask the employee what one thing they could do better. I find that letting the employee share first gives them the opportunity to reflect on their growth area and share an opportunity that I may have been thinking about too.

  I love the focus of this model, because it only asks for one thing, not two or five or ten. Although the employee might have five to ten things they could improve on, this approach allows me to narrow my feedback to one item, potentially the most important element for them to focus their growth on. This is also important because the employee would likely be unable to change all ten of their mistakes at the same time anyway. Experience and science on behavior change has taught me this. But when I give one piece of feedback, it gives them a much better opportunity to make a change for next time. It’s doable rather than overwhelming, and specific rather than vague.