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Hey fellow managers and leaders,
I hope your weekend wasn’t too spooky… and that you can carve out some time to read these posts.
In the spirit of Halloween, we asked a panel of experts to share some of their scary management mistakes. Check the top 10 management mistakes you should avoid!
Now, here are this week’s hand-picked tips to help you on your journey to becoming a great leader:
👩💻 Asynchronous Meetings: Everything You Need to Know | (7 min read) | Fellow Blog
TLDR: Asynchronous communication has a lag between when a message is sent and when the person receiving it interprets it. One of the best parts about doing things asynchronously is not having to find a time that works on everyone’s calendar! Here’s how we run asynchronous standup meetings at Fellow:
- Each person populates the meeting agenda with their daily priorities and questions for the team.
- We set a deadline to review and populate the agenda. For instance, everyone is expected to populate their section by 10 AM each morning.
- The meeting agenda acts as a historical record of the team’s work and ensures that everyone is caught up on each other’s updates and priorities – without the need to host an in-person meeting!
💡 Management homework: Check your calendar and determine which meetings don’t need to be held synchronously. Replace all status updates with asynchronous forms of communication. Pro Tip: some meetings, such as your weekly team meetings and one-on-ones are better held in real-time.
🤔 What Do You Do When Your Teammate Shares Their Grief? | (9 min read) | Lara Hogan
TLDR: Most of us aren’t taught how to respond when someone shares with us a really heavy piece of information. In this article, Lara Hogan (author of Resilient Management) shares some practical tips for managers who want to feel prepared to handle conversations around topics such as death, divorce, miscarriage, and grief.
1. Have a simple response ready.
- e.g. I’m so sorry / That sounds incredibly tough / Thank you so much for letting me know
2. Instead of immediately suggesting next steps, try asking open questions to understand what would be most helpful for your conversation to focus on, or what they need right now.
- e.g. What would be most helpful for us to think through or talk through together? / What do you think would be most helpful for you this week?
3. In the next few one-on-ones, take a really quick temperature check with your teammate.
- e.g. Just wanted to check in. Anything else that I can do right now to help?
⚡️ Employee Productivity: The Ultimate Guide for Managers | (12 min read) | Fellow Blog
TLDR: Increasing employee productivity is not about making people on your team work longer hours. Employee productivity starts with you (the leader) and your team’s level of engagement at work. Here are three expert tips to motivate your teammates and increase overall productivity:
- If your team has recently transitioned to remote work, check-in with everyone to make sure that they have the tools and equipment they need to work from home.
- Set core collaboration hours where everyone is expected to be online and encourage flexible working hours outside of those times.
- Build a culture where meetings don’t take place… unless there’s an agenda built ahead of time.
😓 On Burnout and How to Complete the Stress Cycle | (60 min podcast) | Brene Brown
TLDR: According to Doctors Emily and Amelia Nagoski, the 3 components of burnout are: emotional exhaustion (the fatigue that comes from caring too much for too long), decreased sense of accomplishment (feeling that nothing you do makes any difference), and depersonalization (the depletion of empathy, caring and compassion).
- Emotions are tunnels. If you go all the way through them, you get to the light at the end. Exhaustion happens when we get stuck in an emotion.
- Three efficient ways to complete your stress cycle are practicing physical activity, breathing exercises, and positive social interaction.
- To be well is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, back to safety and calm. Stress is not bad for you. Being stuck is bad for you.
🍿 Recommended Videos
🎙 New on the Supermanagers Podcast
- Episode 23: Andrew Waitman (CEO of Assent Compliance) reveals a unique way to structure your leadership meetings. Tune in to explore the concepts of agility and adaptability and why structure is such an important aspect of strategy, leadership and of course, team management.
- Episode 24: Camille Fournier (author of The Manager’s Path) talks about the art of managing technical teams and why leaders should always strive to develop and improve their own skills. Listen to this episode to learn about the importance of maturity and self-awareness as a leader.
And that’s it for today. I hope the content we curated inspires you to continue growing as a leader!
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Thanks for being part of our community,
Manuela and the Fellow.app Team 👋
