Happy Monday fellow managers and leaders!
A lot has happened since the last issue of the Manager TLDR…
- We released Fellow version 3.2 (watch the event recording here) 🎬,
- announced our partner programs 💰,
- and welcomed an inspiring group of guests to the Supermanagers podcast ⬇
🎧 New on the Supermanagers podcast
- You won’t have all the answers: being intellectually honest and disassociating from ideas with Rémi Guyot (Chief Product Officer at BlaBlaCar).
- How to read signals and manage “Synthesizers” with Scott Williamson (Chief Product Officer at GitLab).
- How to motivate and acknowledge employees on an individual level with Paul Parisi (Head of Silicon Valley Bank Canada and former President of Paypal Canada).
- How to protect culture and eliminate hiring biases with Nick Dimitrov (former Bar Raiser at Amazon).
Highlights from the Fellow blog
- Why great leaders praise in public and criticize in private
- Gender equity: is your company really making progress?
- 10 ways to combat mental fatigue at work
📢 Praise in Public, Criticize in Private: What to Keep in Mind (7 min read)
TLDR: We’ve all been in a meeting where someone else has been criticized in front of others. It’s demeaning for the individual, and it’s uncomfortable for everyone… Author of the bestselling book Radical Candor, Kim Scott explains:
“A good rule of thumb for feedback is praise in public, criticize in private. Public criticism tends to trigger a defensive reaction and make it much harder for a person to accept they’ve made a mistake and to learn from it. Public praise tends to make the recipient feel great, and it encourages others to emulate whatever they did that was great.”
Here are 3 practical ways to put this advice into practice:
- Provide clear details for positive reinforcement: When offering public praise, be specific and explain why the job was well done, why it had a positive impact, and what came from it.
- Encourage employees to share constructive feedback with you: One way to normalize feedback in the workplace is to ask employees for feedback about the effectiveness of your meetings or current company processes.
- Coach, don’t just criticize: Whenever it’s time to share constructive feedback in a 1:1 setting, work with the other person to develop an approach to their professional development that works from them.
🤝 Gender Equity: Is Your Company Really Making Progress? (7 min read)
TLDR: As we round out year two of the pandemic, research shows that women’s participation in the workforce has plummeted. If you are a leader, a manager, or a person of influence inside a company, you have a duty to help your organization make advances in terms of gender equity. Here are some concrete actions shared by Samantha Rae Ayoub to encourage us all to continue moving the needle forward:
- Evaluate the impact of “flexible” work plans: If your company is considering a hybrid work approach, it’s important to consider the unintended impact that working from home could have on specific groups of people. Do you have more women on your team working at home than men? Are you giving more attention, feedback, or growth opportunities to employees in the office over employees who work from home? All these questions are worth considering as your team begins to return to the office.
- Move past “counting”: Simply because your staff complement is now 50% women, the work does not stop. Ask yourself some questions like: How many women on the team are in positions of leadership and influence? Numbers are important, yes, but participation, leadership, and influence of women inside organizations is the deeper issue.
- End the pay gap: In both Canada and the US, women still make less money than men for doing exactly the same job. To put it bluntly: this is unacceptable and every single hiring manager has a role to play in ensuring their direct reports are paid equally if they are doing the same job.
😴 10 ways to combat mental fatigue at work (8 min read)
TLDR: Being unable to concentrate, losing track of things, and taking a long time to do tasks that would typically only take you a few minutes are all common symptoms of mental fatigue. If mental fatigue isn’t addressed promptly by resting and slowing down, your brain fog can recur, leading to burnout and more severe implications for your mental health. Here are 3 (out of 10) ways to identify and manage your mental fatigue as early as possible:
- Note your ultradian rhythms: It’s a great idea to take some time to build some body awareness and note your energy levels throughout the day for a few weeks. Once you identify your high and low energy times, you can plan your work around them.
- Use the ‘touch it once’ rule: The ‘touch it once’ rule is the idea that as soon as you ‘touch’ something, whether it’s opening an email or beginning a project task, you act on it right away. Instead of flagging the email to respond to it later, you simply get it done.
- Take technology-free breaks: Whether it’s by going for a walk and listening to music, reading a book, or simply sitting in silence, we need to give our brains a break from constantly staring at screens. Taking some time away from your phone and your computer is going to help you maintain your alertness and reduce feelings of exhaustion.
📅 Meeting template of the week
Leverage the power of staff meetings with this framework curated by Claire Hughes Johnson, Corporate Officer and Advisor at Stripe.
… and that’s a wrap! We hope that the content we curated inspires you to continue growing as a leader! 🌱
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Thanks for being part of our community,
Manuela & the Fellow.app team
