The conundrum of pay equity

I'm usually less interested in concoction some monolithic, absolute definition of pay equity and more interested in what adult conversations we should be having.

These are conversations like: what are everyone's financial requirements, dreams and challenges? Are theee any clear ways to assess variances in value delivered by individuals and the team? Is there enough collaboration to make team dominated compensation more realistic? When and how should anyone ask for differences in pay, hours or benefits? And what would make these conversations trustworthy and trust building?

Do team personalities matter?

It depends if we take a fixed or growth mindset. In a fixed mindset, we don't expect people to grow strengths and passions beyond the edges of what we call their personalities. In a growth mindset, we expect the growth potentials of ourselves and others. It becomes a self-fulfilling expectation where we support growth and seeing the possibilities unfold.

3 things thriving leaders do

Thriving leaders creates spaces that makes it more possible for people to be aligned, learning and engaging their best. They do this primarily through formal and informal conversations. It's that simple.

Building stories

We can build stories from vignettes, anecdotes and experiences.

Vignette: short scene that captures a defining detail about a character, idea, or other element of a story

Anecdote: an incident, action or event that could be turned into a story or become part of another story

Experience: a sequence of events and actions that shows the timeline progression from beginning to end

Story: events and actions that take listeners from something that sparks their curiosity to resolution of this curiosity

Growing momentum

When people sign up to work on projects, day to day work can make project momentum a challenge. One way to get more momentum in a slow or stalled project is simple to increase the team huddle tempo, taking a month to 2 weeks, 2 weeks to 1 week, 1 week to multiple times a week, all the way to daily.

Dealing with disappointing others

Just as we do not always completely satisfy the expectations of others, others can just as easily not completely satisfy ours.

This can happen for three reasons, at least:

• They don't know how to do what we expect 
• They don't know how to do it consistently 
• They don't know how to resolve related conflicts in priorities

Knowing this puts in a position of understanding which often reveals productive options.

Coaching and mentor accessibility

The accessibility of people able and willing to coach or mentor others begins with the simple act of coaches and mentors being transparent about what they are interested in helping others develop. It's showing interest in the growth of others and story sharing to indicate they have value to share.

The benefits of working from strengths

When teams work from strengths rather than deficiencies, people:

• Know their own strengths and the strengths of others
• Identify each other's strengths in action
• Work explicitly from strengths in planning and problem solving
• Engage existing strengths in learning and developing new strengths
• Develop skills strengths into habit strengths
• Help each other grow existing and new strengths
• Cross-use strengths in work and life

Responding to negative people

It doesn't matter why people become negative at work. It doesn't matter it comes in the form of open denial of the truth of others, push back, yes-butting, opposition, cold silence, condescending questioning, bullying criticism. It's apt to shut others down, minimizing collaboration. 

The most important response is getting more context and detail from them on the nature of their negativity. It's far more useful than defensiveness or counter-attack. It's getting to their assumptions which are typically behind all forms of creativity. It's a lot of patient persistence 

Is there a best time to start your next career move?

It depends completely on how we define start. If start means start imagining, researching, exploring, expanding capabilities, the best time is now, and every time we enter into a new job or gig. 

Knowing when we need another team member

There are a few questions shaping this decision:

What typically doesn't get done, done easily, done well or on time?

Have shifts in our work and direction indicated a need for complementary strengths?

Would the benefits of a new team member outweigh the costs?

Do we have bandwidth to onboard someone new?

Those who can do, can't teach

In his NY Times piece, "Those who can do, can't teach," Adam Grant outlines why the best and the brilliant in any field can be the worst teachers possible. It's often a matter of unconscious competence. Some who can do can learn to teach. Otherwise, we need skilled intermediaries like grad students who can translate their unconscious competence into digestable and actionable conscious competence. 

Work as a prime source of learning and growth

Our work can be a prime source of learning and growth. We can learn from everything we do in our work. Learning from our work has several benefits:

• Building a strong learning culture
• Creating and sustaining growth mindsets
• Making resilience more possible
• Cultivating engagement and connection  
• Balancing responsive and proactive
• Limiting classroom time away from work
• Feeling a sense of personal responsibility for our learning
• Optimizing resident expertise and experience
• Growing leaders as learning facilitators
• Gaining performance improvements and innovations on all levels

Here are 5 ways to make work a prime source of personal and team learning and growth: curiosity, experimenting, reflection, pairing and habits. 

Curiosity

Curiosity: working from questions representing a sense of wonder, adventure, discovery and awe

Learning questions: questions about what we want to get better at
Expectation questions: questions about what would be helpful to others
Status questions: questions about progress and achievements of others
Planning questions: questions about what we need to research, decide and clarify 

Experimenting

Experimenting: trying new things in our work, things we can try for a few minutes or several weeks.

Communication experiments: trying new ways of sharing status, questions, asks, answers, feedback
Workflow experiments: trying new ways of getting things organized, timed, shared, done
Customer/client experience experiments: trying new ways of anticipating, knowing and fulfilling expectations
Task & question experiments: trying new ways of inquiry and getting things done

Reflecting

Reflecting: extracting lessons learned from experience, focusing on what went well and why and what other options we could consider in the future based on our experience.

Reflecting on successes: small wins, achievements, gains
Reflecting on failures: disappointments, setbacks, losses
Reflecting on patterns: repeated patterns of successes and failures
Reflecting on missed opportunities: being mindless, unaware, unlucky

Pairing

Pairing: working alongside someone with abilities we want to explore and develop 

Task pairing: pairing on everyday todo's, situational responses
Decision pairing: pairing on solo and shared, routine and rare decisions
Project pairing: pairing on planning, plan adjusting, coordination, throughput
Experiment pairing: pairing on the design and engagement experiments  

Habits

Habits: learning about what matters to us through the automatic, routine reactions we have in specific situations

Belief habits: habit patterns of expectations
Behavior habits: habit patterns of actions
Emotion habits: habit patterns of feelings and attitudes
Growth habits: habit patterns of expanding our abilities  

The Inner Game of Mindful Teams

Without trying hard, mindfulness has made it to the short list of conspicuous buzzwords. The mere mention of mindfulness can divide any group into fans and skeptics.

Even though business is all about psychology, talk about the mind seems at best esoteric and irrelevant to the numbers.

In many organizational cultures, it's still not apparent that the mind is the root cause of performance. There continues to be an inordinate belief that performance is caused by factors outside the mind.

Those of us who have been practicing and teaching mindfulness are clear that like any area of human performance, it's the "inner game" that makes the difference, especially in times of challenge and stretch. The inner game of work is about how mindful or mindless we are as we go about our everyday work. The critical difference between higher and lower performing teams is not necessarily about differences in personalities, resources, external conditions or constraints. It's about the difference in their inner game.

Harvard's Ellen Langer, considered the "mother of mindfulness" from her extensive research and practice, talks about mindfulness as "the simple act of noticing new things." The spirit of mindfulness is continuous curiosity. Always looking for what's new in our world and experience inspires rich and agile curiosity. Higher performing teams tend to be more mindful. Lower performing teams tend to be more mindless. 

In mindless teams, people work primarily from assumption based expectations.

They assume what peers and leaders should be doing based on existing roles and goals. They assume what people do and don't need when it comes to help and feedback. They assume what other people need to know from their reports. They assume who needs to be included and excluded in emails, conversations and texts. They assume to know the impacts they're having on others. They assume the strengths and passions of others. They assume to know how realistic their plans and goals are. They assume obedience to systems and processes will result in rewarded and uncriticized outcomes.

Assumption is the essence of mindless performance and interaction. Mindless team cultures are abundant in tensions, disconnects and missed opportunities. Not necessarily because of team member or leader deficiencies. All it takes is a fairly robust culture of mindlessness.

Mindful teams work from curiosity. They leave none of these assumptions unchecked. They work, interact, plan, lead and learn from questions. They expect that in a world where change is life's constant, intelligent work is work from continuous, agile, caring curiosity. 

They clarify together what's everyone's best use of time and talent. They clarify what kinds of feedback others find useful and clarify the kinds they find most useful. They clarify what others want from their reports. They work out loud in transparent shared text and document spaces so everyone can know whatever they want to know about the rhythms of everyday work. They clarify the impacts of everything they try and do. They take time to know the strengths and passions of others so they can engage them continuously. They use questions to keep goals and plans always realistic. They clear that only mindful habits have the power to create rewarding and satisfying outcomes.

Until teams become more self-organizing, their leaders have an inordinate influence on the team's culture. Mindful leaders will enjoy more mindful teams. Mindless leaders will struggle with more mindless teams. As leaders become more mindful and coach their teams into more mindful work, the team thrives.

The good news is that everyone has what it takes to be mindful in work and life. Each of us is born with the endless gift of curiosity. It doesn't take any exotic rituals or vocabularies. It doesn't require taking time away from work. It's an infinite possibility awaiting us in every conversation, project and task. It’s the inner game of mindful teams.

The radical practice of Open Hiring

Greyston Bakery in New York is one of the premier champions of the radical practice of Open Hiring. Anyone who applies for a job, gets it and training in it. No background or drug checks. They've been doing this for years with homeless and felons and they continue to be a prime partner in the food and service industries. They lead the way in proving the model.

"In doing so, they might see some benefits: While the annual employee turnover rate in similar manufacturing and production industries hovers between 30% and 70%, at the Greyston bakery, it’s just around 12%. Furthermore, because Greyston does away with the typical hiring process–which, between background checks and drug tests, can cost up to $4,500 per hire–it’s able to use the money saved to pay its employees a higher wage. While apprentices start at minimum wage, production supervisors, like Dion, earn a salary of around $65,000 with full benefits."

Compass of joy

"Maslow found that everybody who was successful, creative, joyful and productive had one thing in common: they were doing chosen work that they found to be both intrinsically self-rewarding and of service to others. He discovered that self-rewarding action that is simultaneously of service to others is key. When you are doing what you love to do and expressing your potential, you experience an inner reward. And by helping others by engaging in this work, you become what he called self-actualizing. You are actualizing your own dormant potential by giving it to others, who can use it. It is beyond selfishness or selflessness. It is self-fulfillment and indeed self evolution.

Rather than wondering, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ ask, ‘What wants to be born in me?’

The lesson here is that you have to notice what attracts you and pay attention to what is happening. How do you tell? The signal is an inner feedback signal I call ‘the compass of joy.’ The compass turns on when you are with a person who attracts you to give your gift in such a way that the other person is able to give more of their gift with you. You feel a creative energy when you join your creativity with that of someone who also wants to create something new. ‘Synergy’ means creating a whole greater than the sum of the parts. It takes time, attention and nurturing. Almost all creative people join with others to cocreate.

~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

Goodness based coaching

Goodness includes the intentions and abilities that help us progress and succeed in work and life. Intentions include our hopes, wishes and dreams. Abilities include skills, strengths and expertise. We bring attention to goodness by focusing on any instances of success and progress.

We focus on goodness because engaging our goodness is the root cause of how we contribute, grow and enjoy the fruits of our efforts. The more we focus on our goodness the more these become possible. Focus on goodness helps people feel a sense of confidence and creativity. More options become more obvious.

We teach people how to respond to problems and disappointments with focus (instead) on success, progress and goodness. We spend no time discussing or debating what's wrong. We focus on intentions and abilities that can bring about more progress and success. People do better only when they become more conscious of their abilities and how they can engage their abilities in their best intentions. 

This includes the spectrum of unwanted feelings that people blame for not engaging their best intentions and abilities. We help them discover how feelings are natural events and conditions like the weather, always coming and going. When they no longer hold themselves responsible for their feelings, they become more free to act on their best intentions whatever their feelings are, just as they go about life whatever the weather. 

These strategies and awarenesses make it possible to practice and entirely goodness based approach to leadership.

What should leaders know?

 When it comes to knowing what their team is doing on an everyday basis, teams with high levels of freedom, trust and connection will be doing more than any one person could fully know. Teams with low levels of these do far less, making it more likely that leaders could know "everything going on" at any point in time. That's the reality of the tradeoff. Keeping the team transparent with Slack and Trello keeps everyone in the know.

Can leaders be fair?

If fair is what people perceived as personally considerate and caring to them, they will perceive a leader as fair to them if the leaders fulfills these wishes. "Equal" treatment can easily fall short. Just saying.

Work as a prime source of learning

There are at least four ways we can make our work itself a prime source of our learning from greater contribution and growth. We can ask more learning questions in any context. We can experiment with new ways of doing things. We can reflect on successes and failures to become more aware of the possibilities of our goodness. We can pair on any tasks with others more capable. We can practice skills into habits. We can share any learning with anyone anytime.