If you are busy trying to understand whether your team should work remotely, in the office, or in an hybrid format, you are most likely busy with wrong kind of questions.
It might be yet another issue that distracts from focusing on the need to reassess what management means and what people seeks in organisations and their work.
Let’s stay on point.
Data about average salaries at a company, combined with data about average salaries at similar companies, is a huge and underutilized opportunity for any organization.
And not because one has to match or surpass the others, ensuring that they offer the top rates in the market. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is an opportunity because it gives the company the chance to start a conversation about an important piece of their culture and identity, and about how that compares with the rest of the market.
Money is but one motivator for most people, and not even the most relevant in many cases. Offering lower salaries and more of the rest can be a powerful statement and a winning strategy when done intentionally.
The alternative is what already happens in most cases: money as the main leverage in individual, secretive, transactional negotiations that leave each employee with the conviction that they can leave as soon as somebody will pay them more.
It is wasted potential.
There are two myths that new managers often fall for, and that have the potential to create immense damage to their teams and themselves.
Myth #1 – The manager knows everything. Of course, it is false. The easier it is for a manager to say that they do not know, even large chunks of what is considered their responsibility, the more their team will thrive (looking for answers) and the more they will enrich their experience (being exposed to things they had not done in the past). It is a myth that can be dispelled by asking and listening.
Myth #2 – The manager needs to protect the team from everything. Change, challenges, and crisis will be upon your team in no time. It is only by putting them on the front line that they will be able to learn (also to be a manager in the future) and that you will have the time to dedicate to what matters most (supporting them as they are out there). It is a myth that can be dispelled by opening doors and letting people roll.
People might do what you ask them to do for a number of reasons. It might be your charisma, or the position you hold, or fear, or compliance, or perhaps a new rule you just came up with. It is possible to get people to do things they don’t want to do. In fact, it is not even that difficult. But that is not change.
For change to happen, for it to bring a positive impact on the people around you and your environment, there needs to be a conversation. To build rapport, to draft a common way to view the world, to list a series of actions that might make sense in that world, and to eventually agree on which ones we will pursue that will make that world better.
It is extremely difficult, and that’s why many take the shortcut and jump right into the actions that will make the world better – essentially a list of tasks that they think might be the right thing to do.
It never has a lasting impact.
There is no behavior that you can promote without embracing it fully.
Telling your team that they should not work the weekends while you are working all weekends is not going to be effective.
Telling friends that they should call you more often while you never call is not going to be effective.
Telling your kids that they should not lie while they see you lying every day is not going to be effective.
We have a lot of power to influence others’ actions, we are just not confident enough to acknowledge that.
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