Here, we will explore ten strategies and practices for employee management and engagement in small businesses.

1. Clear Communication and Expectations

Clear communication is vital to set expectations and ensure alignment between the business and its employees. Regularly communicate goals, priorities, and performance expectations to your team. Provide feedback and recognition for their achievements and address any concerns or issues promptly. Encourage an open-door policy and create channels for open dialogue and feedback.

2. Training and Development Opportunities

Investing in training and development opportunities for your employees demonstrates your commitment to their growth and success. Identify areas where employees can benefit from additional skills or knowledge and provide relevant training programs. This can include workshops, conferences, online courses, or mentoring programs. Encourage a culture of continuous learning and support employees’ professional development.

3. Employee Recognition and Rewards

Recognizing and rewarding employee contributions is essential for fostering motivation and engagement. Implement a recognition program that acknowledges outstanding performance, teamwork, and achievements. This can include verbal praise, written appreciation, or tangible rewards such as bonuses or incentives. Regularly celebrate milestones and accomplishments to show appreciation for your employees’ hard work.

4. Work-Life Balance and Well-being

Promote a healthy work-life balance and prioritize employee well-being. Offer flexible work arrangements when possible, such as remote work options or flexible scheduling. Encourage breaks and time off to prevent burnout. Provide resources and support for physical and mental well-being, such as access to wellness programs or employee assistance programs. Show genuine care and support for your employees’ overall well-being.

5. Foster a Collaborative and Inclusive Culture

Create a collaborative and inclusive culture that values diversity and fosters teamwork. Encourage open communication, idea sharing, and collaboration among employees. Foster an environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and included. Embrace diverse perspectives and leverage the unique strengths of your team members to drive innovation and growth.

6. Performance Management and Feedback

Establish a robust performance management system to set clear goals, provide regular feedback, and evaluate employee performance. Implement regular performance reviews to discuss progress, identify development areas, and set new objectives. Provide constructive feedback that focuses on both strengths and areas for improvement to support employee growth.

7. Empowerment and Autonomy

Encourage autonomy and empower employees to take ownership of their work. Delegate responsibilities and provide them with the necessary resources and authority to make decisions. Encourage innovation and creativity by allowing employees to explore new ideas and approaches. Trust their expertise and provide guidance when needed.

8. Career Growth and Advancement

Support your employees’ career growth and advancement within the organization. Provide opportunities for skill development, such as stretch assignments or cross-functional projects. Offer mentorship programs or coaching to help employees navigate their career paths. Create a clear path for advancement and communicate the potential growth opportunities available to them.

9. Team Building and Social Activities

Organize team-building activities and social events to foster strong relationships among your employees. This can include off-site retreats, team lunches, or recreational activities. Encourage team bonding and camaraderie to enhance collaboration and create a positive work culture.

10. Continuous Improvement

Establish a culture of continuous feedback and improvement. Encourage regular check-ins between managers and employees to discuss progress, challenges, and goals. Solicit feedback from employees on processes, policies, and workplace initiatives. Actively listen to their suggestions and make necessary improvements to enhance the work environment.

Takeaway

Effective employee management and engagement are critical for small businesses to thrive. By prioritizing clear communication, providing training and development opportunities, recognizing and rewarding employee contributions, promoting work-life balance and well-being, fostering a collaborative and inclusive culture, and implementing additional strategies such as performance management, empowerment, career growth, team building, and continuous feedback, small business owners can create a positive and engaging work environment.

Investing in your employees’ success and happiness not only benefits them individually but also contributes to the overall success and growth of your small business.

Amidst rising inflation, crippling student debt, unaffordable housing, rounds of layoffs, a lingering pandemic, and a looming recession, many young workers have reached a breaking point. New data from Sapien Labs’ Mental Health Million Project, which surveyed 48,000 young adults age 18–24 across 34 nations, reveals that mental health struggles among younger generations have accelerated and worsened throughout the pandemic. Data published in Sapien Labs’ May 2022 Rapid Report, “The Deteriorating Social Self in Younger Generations,” shows that nearly half of young adults experienced mental health decline during the pandemic’s second year, and that the ability to relate to and interact with others has been seriously impaired in over half of young adults across the world.

The disintegration of the “social self” in young people should be a wakeup call for workplace leaders. As the report notes:

[T]he ability to relate to and interact with others effectively has been crucial for human cooperation and the building of our modern world…It is also only through repeated interactions with others that we build the friendships and other relationships that establish our place in the social fabric. From feeling detached from reality to avoidance and withdrawal and suicidal thoughts, these symptoms represent the extreme of disconnection from or a failure to integrate into the social fabric.

It is imperative that leaders and managers do more to connect and support young employees in these volatile times, not only as a means of engaging the next generation of talent, but as an investment in a collaborative future. Here are four commitments your company can make to support an increasingly vulnerable generation.

1. Put mental health front and center

According to LinkedIn, 66% of Gen Z want a company culture built on mental health and wellness. Dr. Emily Anhalt, PsyD, cofounder and chief clinical officer of Coa, the online gym for mental health, told me that leaders must walk the walk — if leadership is not prioritizing their mental health, no one else will either. Wellable Labs’ 2022 Employee Wellness Industry Trends Report found that 90% of employers reported increasing their investment in mental health programs, 76% increased investment in stress management and resilience programs, and 71% increased investment in mindfulness and meditation programs.

A culture built on mental health and wellness goes beyond offering a meditation app; it infuses mental health throughout the organization through policies and programs that take care of your people. Dr. Anhalt recommends making sure your benefits plan covers things like therapy, or a stipend for mental health services. She also recommends hosting mental health experiences like Coa’s therapist-led emotional fitness class and gathering frequent feedback about what employees need to show up as their healthiest selves. 

Putting mental health front and center might look like offering competitive pay (commensurate with rising inflation), paid time off and expanded family leave policies, childcare subsidies and services, elder care support and parent support groups, and additional compensation for ERG and DEI-focused work. It also might mean doing more to address employee burnout and exhaustion: doubling down on flexible work policies, testing a four-day week pilot program, establishing “Friday rest days,” “Meeting Free days,” and “Do Not Disturb hours,” ensuring that employees have more time to rest and recharge.

2. Make onboarding a community-building exercise

Employee onboarding is your opportunity to showcase what a culture of mutual support and well-being looks like to new recruits. In a survey by BambooHR, over 80% of employees who rated their onboarding experience highly continue to hold their organizations in high regard, have higher role clarity, and feel strongly committed to their jobs. For many young employees, onboarding might be their first or second experience ever in a professional setting. It is incredibly important, especially in a remote or hybrid workforce, that onboarding establish a container of mutual support. Onboarding is less about delivering information about your company, and more about allowing new employees to get to know each other and ask questions in a safe and supportive setting. Onboarding isn’t the time to talk through a 234-page training manual. Onboarding is a community-building exercise where employees can make a new friend.

Onboarding might involve a shadowing exercise, where new hires shadow a co-worker for a day and see how their colleague actually does their job; a speed-friending exercise, where new hires meet managers across the organization; a personal purpose exercise, where new hires gain a better understanding of their personal goals; or a play exercise like improv, where new hires get comfortable trying new things and laughing in front of each other. One example of an unconventional but highly effective onboarding activity, offered both in-person and virtually, is Late Nite Art: a collaborative learning experience involving live art and music that incorporates risk-taking, deep conversations, and collaborative problem solving. Companies like Headspace, Southwest Airlines, and Accenture have used Late Nite Art to help employees go outside their comfort zone and get to know their colleagues in a meaningful way.

While virtual onboarding can be done successfully, it requires even more attention to designing for human connection. With alarming new data showing young employees’ increased loneliness and deteriorating “social self,” companies should consider the benefits that come from in-person onboarding and the monumental value that a strong first impression can have for Gen Z workers.

3. Support young talent with coaching  

According to Glint’s 2021 Employee Well-Being Report, having opportunities to learn and grow is now the number one factor that people say defines an exceptional work environment. An essential tool for learning and development is cross-organization mentorship and sponsorship, which makes it easier for next-gen talent to secure personal and professional development and promotion opportunities.

One successful example is DoorDash’s Elevate Program, a career accelerator designed specifically for women of color. Participants, known as “fellows,” engage in a six-month cohort experience that includes one-on-one coaching sessions with an external executive coach, career workshops, attendance at leadership meetings, and executive sponsor meetings with C-suite members. Within six months of completing the program, 38% of fellows earned promotions, a significant increase compared to their non-Elevate peers. As Gayle Allen and Bie Aweh write in Harvard Business Review, a career accelerator program’s success depends on getting genuine buy-in from senior leadership and managers.

Another way to support young talent is peer coaching, “a process in which two colleagues help each other reflect on experiences, offer support, build skills, and match their work to their sense of purpose.” In its 2022 Workforce Purpose Index, the peer coaching platform Imperative found that nearly half (46%) of those surveyed said they are finding it difficult to make work friends, and more than half (57%) said their managers are not helping.

In a peer coaching program with WebMD Health Services, written up in Strategy+business, 150 employees took an assessment to help them discover what gives them a strong sense of purpose. Peer-coaching platform Imperative then matched people with similar purpose drivers across the organization. The pairs of workers met every two weeks for an hour-long conversation over video with prompts that asked them to engage in deeper conversations regarding their experience and well-being. Imperative’s data shows that the overwhelming majority of participants (89%) in such programs develop meaningful connections. According to Andrea Herron, head of people at WebMD Health Services, and Aaron Hurst, CEO and cofounder of Imperative, peer coaching has helped participants build relationships beyond their paired peer coach, encouraging participants to take actions that help build relationships with others on their team and employees outside of their own team or department.

4. Trade screen time for connection time

Sapien Labs’ report notes that pandemic-era declines in “social self” mirror an acceleration of a trend that began in 2010, and research by psychologist Jean Twenge and her colleagues shows this trend strongly correlates with the growth of smartphone usage and social media.

The implications of these findings are alarming, since the pandemic has ushered in the necessity — and popularity — of remote and hybrid work, requiring more even more screen time for young workers (and workers of all ages). On the one hand, the vast majority of Gen Z employees (77%) prefer flexible work policies; on the other, they miss in-person face-to-face connection and feel like they are missing out on potential mentorship and career development opportunities by not being in physical proximity of their manager or coworkers.

For an example of trying to strike a balance between a flexible work arrangement and in-person connection, see Airbnb’s recent announcement that employees can live and work from anywhere (and still be paid the same salary), as well as expect to gather in person every quarter for about a week at a time. In-person, offline gatherings are critical — especially for new employee onboarding and team retreats. Monthly, quarterly, or annual team retreats at office hubs or offsite locations should prioritize team building and human connection activities over PowerPoint shares and executive strategy presentations.

According to Cigna, employees who say they have colleagues they like eating lunch with, or have a best friend at work, or have more phone calls and in-person conversations with their coworkers are less lonely on the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Leaders should remember the power of picking up the phone and calling their team members (over sending an email, messaging them on Slack, or scheduling yet another Zoom meeting), and whenever possible, make time to see colleagues for coffee, lunch, or a walk. Taking five minutes at start of your weekly team meeting to do a well-being check-in (and listening to how people are doing and what they need) matters. Employees who feel like they can “leave work at work” are seven points less lonely on the UCLA Loneliness Scale. When in doubt, think about ways you can help employees spend less time on their screens and more time connecting face-to-face with their friends, family, and community.

In these overwhelming times, if you want to attract, retain, and engage young workers, and workers across generations, you must put human connection first.

As physicians, it is all too obvious to us that women’s health in the United States is in a state of crisis. Compared to other high-income countries, women of reproductive age in the United States have the highest rates of pregnancy-related death, preventable death, chronic health conditions, and mental health care needs. They are more likely to die during childbirth than their mothers, and the Supreme Court’s anticipated reversal of Roe v Wade will likely further increase pregnancy-related deaths.

Even more staggering are the inequities: Black women are three times more likely to die during pregnancy, regardless of education or income. The costs of health care are also burdensome, with women delaying care due to cost and suffering financial hardship due to medical bills, even if they have private health insurance.

These poor outcomes negatively affect society and the workplace. When faced with the challenges of navigating work and family without adequate support to do so, many women simply opt to leave the workforce. This attrition results in decreased diversity, lost talent, and less productivity. The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated these trends. Between 2020 and 2022, 1.1 million women left the workforce, accounting for 63% of jobs lost during the pandemic. While many are gradually rejoining the labor force, many — especially mothers — are choosing not to return.

Employers can take action today to combat these challenges. Investment in women’s health results in a healthier population overall. Companies that offer comprehensive support for women’s health have higher productivity, better retention of female employees, and most importantly, they help improve health outcomes for women.

Women’s Health Is a National Priority

At a national level, recognition of these poor outcomes in the United States has led to new efforts to improve them. In December 2021, the White House made a call to action to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity. This effort included a $3 billion investment in maternal health, encouraged states to increase Medicaid postpartum coverage from 60 days to 12 months, and established a “Birthing Friendly” designation for hospitals that take steps to improve maternity care. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently funds perinatal quality collaboratives that convene a variety of stakeholders to improve the safety and patient-centeredness of maternity care. The National Institutes of Health — whose 27 individual institutes strikingly does not include one dedicated to women’s health — recently announced new funding for research into improved maternal health diagnostics.

The private sector has not kept pace with these advances. Women account for more than half of the national workforce, and most obtain health insurance through their employer. These plans, however, often impose serious financial barriers for essential health care services.

While the Affordable Care Act requires private plans to cover many preventive services, such as prenatal visits and mammograms, other essential services are not covered, such as genetic screening and prescription medications during pregnancy, hospitalization for childbirth, and diagnostic testing after an abnormal mammogram or pap smear. This is in stark contrast to Medicaid plans, where the amount that patients have to spend out of pocket for these services is exceedingly low. Unfortunately, these gaps in coverage are often most detrimental to employees living on lower incomes and those in marginalized racial-ethnic groups.

Employers are powerfully positioned to advance women’s health in the United States. There are several ways in which they can support women and in doing so, ultimately create a healthier society.

1. Provide better health insurance.

Currently, even among women with private health insurance, 98% of new moms in the United States are left with thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket costs after childbirth as the result of “low cost,” high-deductible insurance plans. In fact, more than half of women with private insurance change their plan around the time of childbirth to seek savings. When employers try to maximize the aggregate value of insurance plans, critical gaps still exist at the individual level.

Therefore, it is essential for employers to seek comprehensive insurance plans that include coverage for pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care without high deductibles, co-pays, or out-of-pocket costs. These plans should also cover crucial mental health services, including treatment for substance-use disorders, and evidence-based management of chronic conditions across women’s lifespans. Women must have a seat at any table where insurance plan benefit design tradeoffs are being decided.

Since health care payers are sensitive to market pressures, demands by purchasers for high-quality women’s health insurance coverage will drive market change within the health care delivery system. This should not be seen as a short-term expense, but rather, as a long-term investment.

Employers’ comprehensive insurance plans should include access to safe abortion, which unequivocally saves lives, helps people achieve their life goals, and is an essential part of comprehensive health care. However, if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade, as a leaked draft opinion suggests it may do, abortion will become illegal in at least 13 states with trigger laws, and other states are also likely to restrict abortion access.

Multiple companies have therefore pledged to reimburse travel and lodging expenses for employees seeking abortion services, since many may soon have to travel out of state. Should access to safe abortion become restricted, such corporate provisions, alongside insurance coverage for abortion care itself, will become increasingly important to foster access to the full scope of health care and avoid deleterious effects on employee retention and recruitment. Employers unable to cover costs of travel or treatment can protect safe abortion access by providing paid medical leave as some have done.

2. Provide paid parental leave.

The United States is the only high-income country without national paid parental leave. Lack of paid leave means that pregnant and postpartum people take less time off work, which is associated with increased birth complications and worse maternal and infant health.

Paid leave doesn’t just benefit maternal and infant health; it benefits everyone. A recent study compared companies in states that have enacted paid parental leave with those that haven’t. It found that in the states with paid leave, performance rose by 1%, productivity rose by 5%, and employee turnover decreased. What’s more, longer paid parental leave keeps more women in the workforce. Companies that have begun to invest in paid parental leave are already reaping rewards.

3. Redesign the workplace to support women.

Women face many barriers and stigmas around basic health and wellness in the workplace. A 2020 survey study found that only 10% of new mothers had designated breaks to support breastfeeding, and only 17% had support from supervisors or coworkers. Support for preventative health appointments, childcare, and mental health is often lacking as well.

With input from women employees, employers need to design a workplace that supports positive health behaviors and recognizes that women often shoulder an unequal burden of caregiving at home. Many have begun to reimagine the workplace as one that includes on-site subsidized childcare, spaces for pumping breaks and breastfeeding, and flexible work-hour arrangements to accommodate appointments and caregiving responsibilities.

Resources and guides are available to make these changes. By intentionally integrating support into the workplace itself, companies are more likely to retain talent and improve the employees’ health, wellness, engagement, and productivity.

In a social and political environment that sees growing threats to women’s health and autonomy, the steps outlined above represent ways for corporate leaders to make women’s health a priority. The moral case is obvious, but the business case is just as strong. By investing in comprehensive support for women’s health, companies can improve productivity, realize their employees’ full potential, and reverse the troubling health outcome trends that continue to unfold in the United States.

Leaders face rising pressure to include more voices in day-to-day decision making. Soliciting diverse perspectives across the organizational hierarchy makes good business sense: It’s been shown to improve innovation and help employees feel valued and avoid burnout. But have these pressures resulted in more ideas reaching fruition for the average team? Not really.

In our work as researchers, consultants, and teachers, we’ve seen that “good intentions” aren’t enough when it comes to implementing employees’ ideas. Leaders have plenty of stories and tactics to encourage people to share their ideas — and as many reasons for rejecting them. Research shows that asking people to speak up without listening to what they say can be counterproductive. Energetic star employees can become discouraged and even quit when they’re invited to share ideas that don’t go anywhere compared to when they’re not invited at all.

Many leaders feel stuck. They know that employee perspectives are crucial for retention and innovation, but they struggle to single-handedly create a culture where employees are empowered both to speak up with ideas and to see them through — where it’s the good idea that matters, rather than the role or status of the person who initially raises it. Based on our research on “voice cultivation,” we’ve identified several tactics leaders and their teams can use to help ensure good ideas make it to implementation.

Voice cultivation can overcome initial rejection

To understand how good ideas come to fruition or die on the vine, we spent two years in a health care organization tracking instances of “upward voice” — that is, employees’ constructive ideas for improving organizational or team functioning. We witnessed many rejections, but we also found that around a quarter of the hundreds of ideas we followed were ultimately implemented.

The ideas that made it shared a process we came to call “voice cultivation”: the collective, social process through which employees help lower-power team members’ voiced ideas reach implementation. There were five specific tactics we saw team members engage in to resuscitate initially rejected ideas and then keep them alive over time: amplifying, developing, legitimizing, exemplifying, and issue raising. Team members in most work settings can adapt and apply these tactics strategically.

Amplifying

Publicly repeating someone else’s good idea, especially at later times and through multiple communication channels, can help push an idea forward. This is particularly true for those trying to influence authority figures. In the clinic, we observed many instances of this. For example, a nurse shared how overwhelmed she was with clinic calls that limited her in-clinic nursing work and proposed different strategies for handling calls. The doctor thanked her but rejected her idea because the problem was huge and “[couldn’t] be fixed.” However, the idea lingered, and other team members brought up the nurse’s idea again even while she was out on maternity leave. By the time she returned, the team was experimenting with different call-routing strategies.

Similar amplification tactics were evident among women staffers in the Obama administration. According to the Washington Post, “When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.” And during a recent conversation at NYU Law, Justice Sonia Sotomayor described how she and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg overcame constant interruptions and appropriation of their ideas by amplifying each other’s ideas. In our latest executive workshop at Harvard, Dr. April Camilla Roslani, a surgeon and university dean, shared that she encouraged her team “to repeat or echo good ideas in the event that they are missed or not valued and to recognize the person who brought them up originally.” Amplifying allows anyone who hears a good idea to ensure that it’s not lost.

Developing

Sometimes giving an idea the benefit of the doubt is sufficient. We saw team members keep rejected ideas alive by asking clarifying questions that helped them and others better understand them. This strategy is particularly helpful in interdisciplinary teams, where people from different professions and genders often speak past each other, using different jargon and linguistic patterns. The difficulties and opportunities posed by an idea that are salient to some team members may be invisible to others. Developing one another’s ideas helps make them legible across the team.

Legitimizing

Vouching for ideas that you believe in is critical for their success. We saw team members keep ideas alive by sharing examples of a similar personal experience or of how a similar idea worked at a competitor or admired peer institution, or by describing how the idea could be beneficial and doable at their organization. It prevented ideas from lower-power members from being dismissed.

We’ve seen the importance of this tactic even outside organizations. For example, La Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, an organization of farmworker women, wrote an open letter in which they legitimized the workplace sexual harassment experiences of their “sisters” in Hollywood, helping prompt the creation of the Time’s Up legal defense fund.

Exemplifying

Researchers who study innovation and conflict highlight the importance of discussing ideas that are tangible rather than amorphous. Finding a way to show preliminary evidence that a previously rejected idea is feasible and important can help revive it. In keeping with the saying that it is sometimes better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, if you’re lower in the organizational hierarchy, taking the initiative to demonstrate in small ways how an idea can actually work in practice or to collect data as part of your day-to-day work can prompt discussions that help keep an idea alive.

Allies can exemplify, but the idea holder can also engage in this work. For example, we observed a receptionist propose that staff should have a seat in leadership team meetings — an idea that was rejected when the team leader explained that a similar proposal didn’t receive enough support a few years back. Though the idea was rejected several more times, the receptionist volunteered to liaise between the team and leadership, making herself indispensable to both and earning a seat at the leadership table.

Issue-raising

Supporting an idea does not mean unconditional support. Publicly calling out the weaknesses associated with an idea can keep it alive by providing allies the chance to openly generate solutions and address concerns directly. In fact, we found the best way to “kill” an idea was to not raise issues or name specific weaknesses, preventing allies from having an opening to address concerns. Acknowledging all the barriers an idea would face helped the idea holder prepare and helped allies engage in joint problem solving. Issue-raising is not about silencing but rather acknowledging that it might take time and work for an idea to find its footing.

Promoting voice cultivation

To make sure their employees’ good ideas get a better chance at implementation, leaders should train their teams to engage in voice cultivation. By introducing voice cultivation to their teams, leaders:

• Set the tone that team members can build each other up or at minimum grant each other the benefit of the doubt
• Promote teamwork rather than competition by rewarding team members for developing others’ good ideas
• Provide practical behaviors the team can engage in and recognize
• Create accountability structures outside of the leaders’ own good intentions

That last point can be tricky for leaders since they’re setting up conditions through which their team can wield some collective power in pushing ideas through to implementation — ideas the leader may not always support. However, they might find longer-term benefits in employee morale by modeling voice cultivation in their teams, and they might also find it useful in meetings where they’re the lower-power team member.

Here are two tools leaders can use to promote voice cultivation on their teams.

Choose the right tactics

A vital feature of leadership is to name and give meaning to vital issues that others intuit but may lack the language to articulate or feel they have the permission to address. This is absolutely the case for voice cultivation. By sharing the concept of voice cultivation with their teams and helping team members reflect on opportunities to implement cultivation tactics, leaders can set the stage for active voice cultivation. Doing so may offer leaders the secondary benefit of setting a tone of psychological safety and inclusiveness on their teams, by emphasizing that they believe everyone has important contributions to make in both raising ideas and seeing them through.

To assist leaders in bringing voice cultivation to their teams, the following table presents an overview of the cultivation tactics and offers example reflection questions to help team members reflect on opportunities to implement these tactics in their own work. Leaders can share this information to spark a discussion as part of a launch for a new team or as part of a “relaunch” for a team seeking to reset its norms and work processes. Other teams that are ongoing may already be using voice cultivation tactics, and leaders can further advance progress by recognizing, naming, and encouraging their continued use.

Consider the environment

Voice cultivating tactics are most powerful when they’re responsive to why an idea was initially rejected. For example, if those with the power to greenlight an idea don’t think the idea is important or possible, amplifying is the wrong tactic, but legitimizing it could provide the support needed to push it forward. This is particularly true of ideas that ask those in power to give up or change something that’s important to them. In those instances, engaging in issue-selling is critical to fostering the opportunity for joint problem raising and joint problem solving. In the following table, we suggest some groupings of tactics — allyship, co-crafting, problematizing, and persistence — that can be responsive to specific forms of resistance.

***

From our work with leaders across industries, we’ve seen that many are embracing new behaviors to create more inclusive and participative work environments. Voice cultivation can be a helpful addition to their repertoire.

When building a team at a startup earlier in my career, our investors, advisors, and I crafted what looked like a bullet-proof recruiting strategy. Our advisory group collectively had more than 100 years of experience operating companies. But despite the wealth of expertise behind our hiring process, I learned an important lesson the hard way: Even the most rigorous recruiting strategy is only as strong as the decision-maker’s biggest blind spot.

“Elliot,” a media professional I interviewed, was articulate, energetic, and showed a natural affinity for our product. His credentials were solid, and — crucially — he was willing to take an equity position in lieu of a large salary. For a startup, this was a big factor. We hired him.*

But in recommending this decision, I overlooked a few red flags. Notably, Elliot admitted to leaving a trail of burned bridges with former employers and was convinced he’d been repeatedly victimized by unappreciative bosses and bad environments. He didn’t make a good impression on our lead investor, and his own references spoke about him in neutral tones. But he had what I thought counted: passion and potential. I believed I could fix the rest.

Elliot ultimately stirred up numerous problems for the company. We believe that he stole information, lied, and destroyed intellectual property. While we couldn’t have foreseen the extent of this behavior, we dismissed warning signs right from the start. Our problem wasn’t a lack of knowledge about hiring best practices — it was my own blind spot. I downplayed the risk, thinking we could rehabilitate this troubled candidate and bring out his potential. So, despite the warning signs and a major investor’s concerns, I made the recommendation to bring him on board.

Having now worked with and mentored dozens of leaders and founders, I know I’m not alone. Nearly every hiring manager has a blind spot that, if left unidentified, can lead to devastating consequences even within well-planned systems. Over time, I’ve identified five of the most common blind spots that compromise recruitment outcomes.

Fixing and rescuing

This was my blind spot with Elliot, and one that is common among founders and other entrepreneurial leaders. Entrepreneurs are by nature more likely than average to believe they can affect massive change. This can extend to an overconfidence in their ability to “develop” employees, even in light of evidence that a person is lacking the requisite character traits for growth, like accountability and openness to feedback. A superstar sports coach rehabilitating a talented but self-destructive athlete makes for good television, but the reality is that most hiring managers don’t have the resources, skills, or time to reform troubled hires.

Beyond overconfidence in their problem-solving skills, entrepreneurs are also vulnerable to this pattern because of their tight budgets. They’re often looking for a deal, and a candidate willing to take a sizeable portion of their salary in equity represents just that. Leaders with pride in their organization will assume that the individual’s motivation is their passion for the business. They’ll overlook the possibility that other reasons may drive someone to take a step down financially — including a lack of options.

If you recognize this blind spot in yourself, one of the best ways to mitigate the danger is obvious but underused: Don’t make hiring decisions alone. Seek out a second opinion. If you already have a second opinion, don’t make my mistake — listen to it.

Validation seeking

“Emily,” a tech startup CEO, found her business in jeopardy when her product experienced a massive feature failure in beta testing. No one on her team had voiced any criticisms pre-launch. She didn’t understand how this was possible. But Emily admitted that she only hired people who showed unbounded enthusiasm in interviews. She deemed candidates who under-praised the product “not passionate enough.”

As a result, she overlooked contrarian candidates, the exact people who call out problems even when doing so is unpopular. A study out of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management warns that leaders who develop “heightened overconfidence from high levels of such ingratiatory behavior” will be less likely to “initiate needed strategic change.” Emily, who conflated validation with passion, was a case in point.

If you have a validation-seeking blind spot, also known as “affect-based” decision making, realize that pointing out flaws does take passion. It requires attention, analysis, and the courage to speak up. Praise is easy. Don’t overlook the candidates who offer thought-provoking criticism of your business, even if your knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss them.

Boundary breaching

“Anna,” a marketing executive, believed a selling point for job candidates was that her team was “like a family” — at least until a colleague confessed that the team resented how much time Anna spent helping “Jill,” one of her direct reports, navigate her divorce. With Jill, something was always wrong — with her partner, her parents, her social life, her car — and Anna felt it was her duty to indulge these “emergencies,” often at the expense of the rest of the team, who picked up the slack.

Anna remembered how drawn Jill was to the idea of a tight-knit team during the interview process. What Anna didn’t understand is that there is a time and place for empathy. Empathy can turn a good leader into a great leader, but it can also be misapplied.

In describing her team as a family, Anna thought she was signaling an empathetic culture to job candidates. But language like “we’re a family” or “we’re always there for each other no matter what,” actually signals a lack of professional boundaries.

If you find yourself attracting high-drama candidates who monopolize everyone’s time, make a note of any overly personalized language you might be using. Also be wary of oversharing by candidates, particularly when they present personal stories as mitigating factors for recurring problems at work.

Micromanaging

Most people accept, at least in theory, that micromanagement is an undesirable practice rooted in self-doubt and uncertainty. Nevertheless, many leaders still signal a micromanaged culture to candidates while recruiting them. Self-determination, autonomy, and a strong internal locus of control inspire the creative impulse. Enterprising people require the freedom to take risks, make mistakes, and challenge engrained suppositions.

Thus, a hiring manager who hints at heavy oversight during recruitment will likely attract candidates who tolerate inflexible environments well — individuals who lack passion, are not highly engaged, prefer linear work, and are not highly driven.

If you find yourself struggling to attract and hire self-managing, creative people, it’s worth considering the signals you’re sending. Think about whether you may be placing too much emphasis on rules and procedures, glamorizing the hierarchy or org chart, or suggesting that all conflict (some of which can be productive) is unwelcome.

Detachment

“Jamie,” a health care leader, was forced to fire someone she’d hired after he bullied colleagues. This was not the first time a hire of Jamie’s didn’t get along with the team, and she didn’t understand how it happened again. Upon review, we realized that Jamie touted “total freedom” in interviews as a hallmark of company culture, telling candidates she would only weigh in on an as-needed basis so as not to get in their way.

Jamie thought she was signaling that she didn’t micromanage. But according to colleagues, she instead telegraphed that she didn’t really care.

While hands-off management can show your team that you trust them, emotional detachment tells people that they’re on their own. Research indicates that teams with an absent leader often end up feeling like they’re in a sink-or-swim environment, which can become a breeding ground for unhealthy conflict. A laissez-faire leadership style creates a vacuum that allows bullies to thrive. Jamie had never considered that her interview style attracted power-seekers instead of team players.

Going too far with the “you’re on your own, good luck” messaging can also result in a transactional group of individuals looking to clock in, clock out, and not be bothered. If this is your team, consider balancing the independence messaging with reassurance that a strong network and committed leadership are in place.

. . .

All of these blind spots are damaging not just because of who they attract — but because of what they lead you to miss out on. Every time a leader brings in a team member who lacks accountability or is unengaged or a bully, the rest of the team pays the price. With a bit of self-reflection and an honest assessment of the oversights that may be driving repeat hiring offenses, managers can nip many of these patterns in the bud — and begin to notice the superstars they’ve passed over.

* Some details have been changed for privacy.

It’s never been more important — or more difficult — for leaders to be good listeners. Job switching is rampant, and remote work means we don’t get the nonverbal cues we’d pick up from an in-person conversation. Employers who fail to listen and thoughtfully respond to their people’s concerns will see greater turnover. And given that the highest rates of turnover are among top performers who can take clients and projects with them, and the frontline employees responsible for the customer experience, the risk is clear.

While listening is a skill universally lauded, it’s rarely, if ever, explicitly taught as such, outside of training for therapists. A 2015 study showed that while 78% of accredited undergraduate business schools list “presenting” as a learning goal, only 11% identified “listening.”

Listening well is the kind of skill that benefits from not just teaching but coaching — ongoing, specialized instruction from someone who knows your personal strengths, weaknesses, and most importantly, habits. Reading this article won’t turn you into a champion listener any more than reading an article on balance will turn you into Simone Biles. Our aims are to increase your understanding of what good listening is, and offer research-backed advice to improve your listening skills.

Becoming a Better Listener

A participant in any conversation has two goals: first, to understand what the other person is communicating (both the overt meaning and the emotion behind it) and second, to convey interest, engagement, and caring to the other person. This second goal is not “merely” for the sake of kindness, which would be reason enough. If people do not feel listened to, they will cease to share information.

This is “active listening.” It has three aspects:

• Cognitive: Paying attention to all the information, both explicit and implicit, that you are receiving from the other person, comprehending, and integrating that information
• Emotional: Staying calm and compassionate during the conversation, including managing any emotional reactions (annoyance, boredom) you might experience
• Behavioral: Conveying interest and comprehension verbally and nonverbally

Getting good at active listening is a lifetime endeavor. However, even minor improvements can make a big difference in your listening effectiveness. Here’s a “cheat sheet” with nine helpful tips:

1. Repeat people’s last few words back to them.

If you remember nothing else, remember this simple practice that does so much. It makes the other person feel listened to, keeps you on track during the conversation, and provides a pause for both of you to gather thoughts or recover from an emotional reaction.

2. Don’t “put it in your own words” unless you need to.

Multiple studies have shown that direct repetition works, even though it may feel unnatural. Rephrasing what your interlocutor has said, however, can increase both emotional friction and the mental load on both parties. Use this tool only when you need to check your own comprehension — and say, explicitly, “I’m going to put this in my own words to make sure I understand.”

3. Offer nonverbal cues that you’re listening — but only if it comes naturally to you.

Eye contact, attentive posture, nodding and other nonverbal cues are important, but it’s hard to pay attention to someone’s words when you’re busy reminding yourself to make regular eye contact. If these sorts of behaviors would require a significant habit change, you can instead, let people know at the beginning of a conversation that you’re on the non-reactive side, and ask for their patience and understanding.

4. Pay attention to nonverbal cues.

Remember that active listening means paying attention to both the explicit and implicit information that you’re receiving in a conversation. Nonverbal cues, such as tone of voice, facial expression, and body language, are usually where the motivation and emotion behind the words is expressed.

5. Ask more questions than you think you need to.

This both improves the other person’s experience of feeling listened to, ensures that you fully understand their message, and can serve as a prompt to make sure important details aren’t overlooked.

6. Minimize distractions as much as possible.

You’ll want to avoid noise, interruptions, and other external distractions, but it’s important to minimize your internal distractions as well. If you are preoccupied with another topic, take time to re-center. If you know a conversation might be upsetting, calm yourself as much as possible before going in.

7. Acknowledge shortcomings.

If you know going into a conversation that you may be a subpar listener — because you’re exhausted from a dozen intense conversations earlier that day, unfamiliar with the topic under discussion, or any other reason — let the other person know right away. If you lose your footing during the conversation — a lapse of attention or comprehension — say you didn’t quite get it, and ask the person to repeat themselves.

8. Don’t rehearse your response while the other person is talking.

Take a brief pause after they finish speaking to compose your thoughts. This will require conscious effort! People think about four times faster than other people talk, so you’ve got spare brainpower when you’re a listener. Use it to stay focused and take in as much information as possible.

9. Monitor your emotions.

If you have an emotional reaction, slow the pace of the conversation. Do more repetition, pay attention to your breathing. You don’t want to respond in a way that will cause the other person to disengage. Nor — and this is a subtler thing to avoid — do you want to fall into the easy defense mechanism of simply tuning out what you don’t want to hear, or rushing to discount or argue it away.

The Skills Involved in Active Listening

Listening is a complex job, with many different subtasks, and it’s possible to be good at some and bad at others. Rather than thinking of yourself as a “good listener” or a “bad listener,” it can be useful to evaluate yourself on the subskills of active listening. Below is a breakdown of these subskills along with recommendations for what to do if you’re struggling with any one of them.

First, let’s start with what we call the “picking-up skills,” the skills that allow you to gather the information you need.

1. Hearing

If you have hearing loss, be honest about it. For whatever reason, people will boast about their poor vision but hide hearing loss. Help break that stigma. Ask for what you need — e.g., for people to face you when talking, or give you written materials in advance. Let others know, so that they will be alert to indications that you may have missed something.

2. Auditory processing

This refers to how well the brain makes sense of the sound cues. If you’re struggling to understand someone, ask questions to clarify. If it’s helpful, from time to time recap your understanding of both the subject and the other person’s reason for bringing it up — and ask them to validate or refine it. (Make it clear that you are doing this for your own understanding.)

3. Reading body language, tone of voice, or social cues accurately

The advice for auditory processing applies here. Asking a trusted colleague to be your nonverbal communication translator may be helpful in situations where accurate listening is important, but confidentiality is not.

The next two skills involve staying mentally present in the conversational moment.

4. Maintaining attention

If you often find yourself distracted when trying to listen to someone, control your environment as much as possible. Before you begin, set an intention by taking a moment to deliberately focus on this person, in this moment, in a conversation that will be about this topic. If appropriate, use a written agenda or in-the-moment whiteboarding to keep yourself and the other person aligned. If you do have a lapse in attention, admit it, apologize, and ask the person to repeat what they said. (Yes, it’s embarrassing, but it happens to everyone occasionally and to some of us frequently.) Arrive a few minutes early to acclimate yourself if you are having a meeting in a new place.

5. Regulating your emotional response

Meditation has both immediate and short-term benefits for relaxation and emotional control, regardless of the particular practice. The key is to do it twice a day for 10 to 20 minutes, focusing on a mental image or repeating a phrase and dismissing other thoughts as they come.

In the moment, focus on your breathing and do a “grounding exercise” if you feel agitated. These are simple psychological practices that work to pull people back to the present moment by directing attention to the immediate environment. Typical exercises include naming five colored objects that you can see (e.g., green couch, black dog, gold lamp, white door, red rug) or identifying four things that you are hearing, seeing, feeling, and smelling (e.g., hearing birdsong, seeing chair, feeling chenille upholstery, smelling neighbors’ cooking).

Finally, the active listener has to pull the entire package — receiving the message and acknowledging its receipt — together, in the moment. It can be challenging!

6. Integrating multiple sources of information.

At the very least, you are both listening to words and watching body language. You may also be listening to multiple people at once, communicating on multiple platforms simultaneously, or listening while also taking in visual information, such as building plans or sales projections.Figure out what helps you listen best. Do you need information in advance? A “processing break”? A chance to circle back and confirm everyone’s understanding? This is another situation where it can be helpful to have another person taking in the same information, who can fill you in on what you might have missed.

7. “Performing” active listening (e.g., eye contact, nodding, appropriate facial expressions).

If you have a natural poker face, or find it easier to pay attention to people’s words if you don’t make eye contact, share that information with your conversation partner, and thank them for accommodating you. Do extra repetition to make up for the lack of nonverbal communication. You may want to practice better performativity skills, but don’t add that mental burden to important conversations. Ask a five-year-old to tell you about their favorite superhero, then practice acting like you’re listening.

Please note: This list is not intended to be diagnostic instrument, but if any of the skills listed above seem truly difficult to you, you may want to consult your doctor. Scientific understanding of these processes, from the sensory organs to the brain, has expanded greatly in the past years. Many successful adults have discovered mid-career that they have undiagnosed sensory, attention, information-processing, or other disorders than can impair listening ability.

For each of these subskills, there is also a range of natural ability, and your life experience may have enhanced or muted this potential. We know, for example, that music training improves auditory processing skills, and acting or improvisation training improves your ability to “read” people and perform the role of an active listener. Having power, by contrast, decreases your ability to read others and accurately grasp their message — don’t let this happen to you!

***

Listening is vitally important, sadly undertaught, physically and mentally taxing, and in the aftermath of Covid-19 has never been more difficult. As we close in on a third year of unprecedented upheaval in work and life, employees and managers alike have more questions than ever — concerns that they may find it difficult to articulate for a variety of reasons, from mental fog to the sheer novelty of the situation.

When this happens, take a moment to listen closely. Consider the questioner, not simply the question. Now is the time for leaders to really listen, understand the context, resist the temptation to respond with generic answers, and recognize your own listening limitations — and improve on them. Have compassion for yourself — you can’t scream at your own brain like a drill sergeant and whip that raw grey matter into shape. What you can do is recognize your weak points and make the necessary adjustments.