Friendly Leadership

As we moved through the pandemic years, the hiring moved into multiple regions or geographies, bringing in extremely diverse talent from multiple parts of the country or even different parts of the world. While diversity is extremely important and amazing as it will bring great success in the long term, it comes with its own challenges.

Leading a team of highly energetic individuals, especially across multiple geographies is easier said than done. Each individual comes with their own culture, experiences, thoughts and perceptions. The major challenge is bringing all of them to common ground as everyone is unique and diverse.

My most recent challenge and a learning in leadership was about helping an employee with a very negative and pessimistic attitude towards work and towards people around him/her. Helping your employees with negative attitude strive is a journey and a very time taking process and there are multiple ups & downs which cause emotional stress, but nevertheless it comes with great learning.

Here are few things which helped me, but I am open for suggestions and thoughts from my network.

1)     Get over your Bias & Emotions – This is the extremely important first step, which is the most difficult to achieve, especially if your thought process does not match with theirs. Keep all the differences aside and the focus should be only on improving the overall team dynamics & performance.

2)     Listen – Not everyone may be very comfortable sharing everything and it becomes extremely important to be able to listen peacefully without interrupting and let them explain all their challenges, concerns and fears.

3)     Focus on the problem – The focus should always be on the problem and not on the individual. The human mind forms perceptions and biases very easily, but we should hold our emotional horses, and focus only on the problem, not on the person.

4)     Inclusion – Although each employee has their own culture and experiences based on the geography they come from, making them feel included within the team is very important. Once the employee feels he is not isolated, he will eventually understand the team’s dynamics. This may not be easy, but should constantly be demonstrated.

5)     Appreciation – The attitude may be negative, but they may be doing great work. Appreciate them for the good work done, which will make them feel valued. This will give them personal satisfaction, and over a period of time will help with the inclusion.

6)     Coaching – Slowly but steadily coach them with different scenarios to have them understand how their attitude may impact not just their performance, but the performance of the entire team.

7)     Be Ready with Facts – A negative employee often keeps complaining about the past and how something did not work in his favor, but as a leader you should always have the facts ready. These facts should be there to support the overall team, than countering the individual.

8)     Review & Feedback – Setup frequent connects with them to understand how things are progressing, while also ensuring they get constructive feedback over a period of time to improve their overall attitude and the situation.

All the above steps are easier said than done, but there should be constant pursuit to make yourself better, along with your team.

No wonder, everyone knows that Leadership is really tough, but the best part about Leadership & working with people every day is understanding that there is something new always. As you grow in your career you start to realize how important it is to work closely with everyone around you.