How to boost your team’s performance during pandemic

Many organizational leaders enjoy analyzing what’s wrong with something so they can solve the problem and come up with solutions. But what happens when leaders try to motivate and engage their teams? Does this approach still serve them? Fixing people’s motivation rather than supporting them in finding one may not be the path to improve performance. But a coaching perspective might change things dramatically.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most companies moved a significant part of their workforce to remote working. For most leaders, motivation and engagement are top-of-mind issues right now. Vivian, a Senior Manager in one of the largest food companies in the world, told me these days, “During a conversation with my subordinates, I often find myself jumping to solutions and telling them what to do. But, even though I come up with the solution for their problem, they don’t seem to be engaged or motivated to implement it. I don’t know what else to do.” Some leaders have difficulty boosting team performance because they take the heat of a task-solver leader, not a task-enabling leader. Jane Dutton from the University of Michigan Business School pointed out that “task-enabling strategies improve others’ performance at the same time that they help build high-quality connections.” So, what a task-enabling leader should do right now to boost performance?

There are different possibilities, one of which is embodying a coaching mindset.

Set a positive and collaborative space 

While remote work proved feasible, motivation and engagement are dramatically affected. Distance is something that creates physical barriers. Thus, leaders who pay attention to psychological barriers will make impressive strides in improving people’s performance. Human beings are hardwired to mimic the moods of the people they come in contact with. Managers and leaders can make a profound difference in activating motivation and engagement by taking a compassionate approach and co-creating the foundation for qualitative relationships with coworkers, bosses, subordinates, and customers. How to do that if working together has effectively become just a screen most of the time?

Several aspects will be key:

• Embrace a positive stance. Take as much time as you need to get centered and ready emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, and professionally for meetings. Greet everybody with a smile and positive expectations. Show support, empathy, and concern.

Strong evidence suggests that positive emotions help broaden people’s momentary through-action repertoire. Professor Barabara L. Fredrickson from the University of Michigan argued that people experiencing positive affect are flexible, creative, open to information, and efficient.

• Remain focused, observant, empathetic, and responsive to others. Demonstrate curiosity and allow space for silence, pause or reflection. In this way, you may honor the presence of others, fostering participation and engagement.

People have moved into action most via emotions, not precise or perfect information. You may ask yourself, “What is one small change I could make that would  have the biggest impact on creating a positive and collaborative space for interaction?”     

Establish a shared goal

Without a doubt, our goals influence our behaviors and actions. A beneficial joint agreement embedded in a shared goal illustrates the mutual investment of resources and energy, strengthening relationships and increasing team engagement. There is extensive literature about goal setting and how conscious goals affect action.

In coaching, establishing goals is invariably one of the first steps of the process. Similarly, a leader could start by helping team members to articulate and define shared goals along with measures of success. Leaders who are comfortable with being vulnerable in a way that they don’t have all the answers and ask for collective wisdom to define common goals and connect with others on a human level. They inspire and empower others, fostering a culture of learning.

The type of goals also matters. In this pandemic, the odds of upholding motivation and overall performance are increasing for leaders who harness the power of learning goals – focused on growing abilities or mastering new tasks. Based on research findings learning objectives lead to better performance than performance goals. In a research review, Christopher H. Utman from Northeastern University pointed out that the advantage of focusing on self-improvement through learning goals increases in the presence of others. Thus, you may want to consider asking your subordinates, “What is one task that you want to perform masterfully to contribute to our team positively?” 

Clarify the current situation

Researchers argued that the principal obstacle to tapping into our inner strength lies in our cognitive style in interpreting events. Thus, leaders might encourage others to focus on facts and use descriptive rather than evaluative terminology to maintain detachment and objectivity and reduce the counterproductive self-criticism that distorts perception. “What evidence supports your statement?” might be an excellent question.

Another tool for unfolding reality is effective communication. Engaging in a way that respects others and listening in a way that demonstrates regard and an appreciation of others’ worth are key leaders’ competencies for boosting performance. As Jane Dutton pointed out, “everyone needs respectful engagement with others, but in many organizations, few get it.”  Respectful engagement is crucial in going beyond being present and looking for strengths, values, and meaning – the positive core – that unlocks the other’s potential.

Some coaching competencies, as defined by the International Coaching Federation, ICF, might be extremely valuable in this context:

• Ask questions that help others explore beyond current thinking
• Invite others to share more about their experience at the moment
• Reflect or summarize what other’s communicated to ensure clarity and understanding,
• Recognize, inquire, notice, acknowledge and explore the other’s emotions, non-verbal cues, or behaviors.

Generate options and define an actions plan

Exploring options, resources, barriers, and who might provide valuable support creates flexibility in mind and a sense of control. Leaders open to exploring options with their subordinates encourage initiatives to fulfill employees’ need for autonomy and competence and boost their internal motivation. The employees feel empowered by having choices and ownership of their actions, leading to increased motivation and overall performance. 

To help employees draw strategies and actions, mastering some coaching skills might be the difference in achieving outstanding results. Some of these coaching skills include:

• Invite others to generate ideas about how they can move forward, what they are willing or able to do, what resources, support, and potential barriers they might have
• Partner in designing accountability measures that integrate and expand learning and insights,
• Provide support in identifying potential results or learning from identified action steps,

Asking for commitment, for example, “Do you commit to me that you’ll do exactly what you just stated you want to do? If so, how you will do it? By when?” can maximize a sense of empowerment, progress, and ownership.

References:

Dutton, J.E.(2003). Energize your workplace: how to create and sustain high-quality connections at work. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass

Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 359(1449), 1367

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a Practical Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-year Odyssey. American Psychologist, 57 (9), 705-717.

Stephens. J.P., Heaphy, E., Dutton, J. (2011). High-quality connections. K. Cameron and G. Spreitzer (eds.), Handbook of positive organizational scholarship. New York, NY- Oxford University Press

Utman, C.H. (1997). Performance Effects of Motivational State: A Meta-Analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, 170-182