It just hit me recently that the way we are working now is going to be the way we will work for a long time. And a lot of us are finding it hard.
So Lindsay Satterfield, productivity coach and consultant, came on Coffee Time with Masterminds to share with her recommendations for maintaining productivity in a time of disruption and change. Lindsay shared a useful framework for helping teams to get work done based on the following elements:
- Plan forward
- Take the lead
- Communicate courageously
- Strengthen the culture
- Circle the team
You can read more about Lindsay and her approach here.
My big takeaway was that just as we are paring down our programs and focusing on mission, looking at how we work also provides an an opportunity to identify some of the assumptions that don't serve us. Check out the full conversation below.
Join the conversation live on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DataInformedPrograms/
Transcript
Today, we're going to learn how to manage productively during a time of disruption. Productivity consultant and coach Lindsay Satterfield joins us today. For over 15 years, Lindsey has been coaching and training thousands of professionals and leaders globally to boost their productivity and achieve the results that they want. Thanks for joining us today, Lindsay.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Oh, I'm delighted to be here. So happy to be here on this Friday.
Pieta Blakely:
Good to have you here. So lots of things about how we work are different now than they were before. What are the concerns that you're seeing?
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah, I think it's pretty straightforward what the concerns are, like it's right in our face. I think what I'm hearing from my clients is they're concerned about alignment. So we're all distributed all over the place. So how do we stay aligned? How do we stay productive? So what can happen is that little micromanagement freak out can happen, where you're like, "Oh my God, are they working? What's happening?" So how do we stay aligned? How do we stay productive? And how do I actually build a culture that was automatic in the workplace? So there were all the triggers and cues in the workplace. We were mimicking and mirroring each other, because we are pack animals and that's what we do. And now we're separated. So how do I create a culture that fosters alignment, fosters productivity? So those are what I'm hearing as the concerns, but I also want to mention one more thing.
This is not a situation, and I know you're going to know this, but I just want to put it out on the table. This is not a situation where we thought, "Oh, let's work remotely. And let's do a little change management process, and plan for this and make it happen and test it, and all those things." So that's not what the situation is. This is a disruption. This is a disruptive situation. So most of my clients, on Monday, they were working in the office. On Thursday, they were no longer working in the office. They thought it was going to be for maybe a week, and it turns out it's long-term. And for most of my clients, the minimum time a lot of them are returning is January 1st. And we know there are implications going forward.
So the reason I say that is because as leaders and managers, we're dealing with a workplace and work force that has high emotional resonance, high levels of emotions going on. There's lots of concerns. And I like to tell my clients, just as a reminder, that emotions are not a bug, they're a feature, right? Because we're trying to forget, oh my gosh, it's so hard, but there's so much happening emotionally for people, whether it's sort of survival issues, whether in terms of maybe my partner is going to be out of work. Maybe I won't have a job. How am I going to teach my kids? Are my kids going back to school? I have a parent who's sick. All these things are amplifying this stress response in our work. And so that component really needs to be factored in as we're going forward in this new time. So there's a bigger level of disruption, not to mention the fact that our work plan may be completely disrupted. So there you go.
Pieta Blakely:
Yeah. And as we've talked about a lot on this show, the people who are working in mission-based organizations and programs might've already been working in stressful settings and situations, and are concerned not just about getting their work done, but concerned about the populations that might not have access to their work or that they might not be serving right now.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's sort of a predisposed quality of people in mission-based organizations, that empathic quality that's looking at how do we serve more, how do we do more? How do we reach the people? What are their concerns? So definitely for sure. That's a really important thing to incorporate and think about.
Cynthia Rojas:
I really appreciate you starting with the construct that this is a disruption. Because I think expectations of our managers or leaders is that, okay, it is what it is, let's get back to work. And not all leaders, but some leaders. And it's hard. It's hard. We are all dysregulated by this. We've been disrupted. Parents are not teachers, and they've had to become teachers, and some people have had to become caretakers or bring people into their home. And others are working from home and weren't even set up to ever do so. So thank you for that. It's very validating, Lindsay.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah, I want to really underscore this, because I think there's been a habit, particularly with remote work, is proving you can do it the same way, at the same level, all the time. And so there's this hypersensitivity to that. And if we thought it was a good, productive idea to do childcare and teach our children and have a full-time job, we would have been doing it for a long time.
Cynthia Rojas:
Thank you.
Lindsay Satterfield:
So now is the time to cut the crap, let's just say, and be honest, because people do not have a tolerance right now for spin or anything else. And I think as a manager, you have to make sure you're putting everyone's cards out on the table and that we're now looking for productive solutions to innovate and go higher. So there's the bad news. The good news, and there is good news, is I believe this is a time to reset business as usual, to really examine. So all of those automated habits that felt so easy, just walked in, chatted with a person, did this, went to meetings, and you all just did it, now we have to re-examine the validity of those things.
So we had a lot of automated lack of productivity in our system. And so now we can look at how do I reset this in a way that actually works with how human beings are designed? That's what I care about, is how are we designed and how do I maximize that going forward? So we can really rewrite the rules of business right now. They call it the fresh start effect. So it's like, oh, oh, oh, everything is new. So now we're paying attention. I'm looking at what really works. But we have to be honest in order to do that.
Pieta Blakely:
I think that that's, to me, that's one of the great unspoken opportunities of this crisis, is that we can't pretend anymore that people don't have home lives and children. Work was built on a certain fallacy that there was work people and then home people, and they were unrelated.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Whole people, yeah.
Pieta Blakely:
And now there's a level of transparency. It's an opportunity.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Well, you know, it's interesting, we're talking about disruption from a position of things are all jumbled, how do I adapt? But I think this disruption also has some positives, because as we're looking at the way that we used to do things, and the systems and the stressors, that's also been a tremendous opportunity for people to think internally about is this really the job or the position that I want, and exploring other things as they're listing off, as I think Cynthia had just done, about the childcare care, about all of these tasks that now you have to take care of, because someone who helped you with is no longer, you can say, "Wow, you know something? I'm really good at organizing, or I'm really good at scheduling. Maybe I'd like to shift my career a little, or grow it, or even start my own business." So I've seen a lot of that through this disruption.
Pieta Blakely:
Yeah, it's an opportunity.
Cynthia Rojas:
I wonder, and so I know you're going to talk about building culture in this virtual environment in a minute, but I also, I get asked all the time, how can you measure productivity? This usually comes from micromanagers. I think micromanagers are hurting and suffering in this environment, and you're right, we had a lot of unproductive time in the office. People walk into your office, they want to tell you about their weekend. All Monday morning was about what people did on the weekends. So what do you tell micromanagers?
Lindsay Satterfield:
Well, it's interesting, because I think micromanagers have probably gotten a few friends, as well, because of the disruption. So managers and leaders are also in that heightened stress state, as well. And so the first thing we want to do is control. We want to get control, because we need control, right, to feel safe. And so I've noticed different reactions, and I have a high preference from a productivity point of view, but the micromanagement is showing up. I actually saw an article about tracking software that actually tracks employees when they're working. Talk about surveillance. And also people having to fill out extensive time sheets and justify everything that they've been doing.
Now, that is going to have the exact opposite effect on your productivity, because what you're doing is in your effort to get control over employees and staff, is you are asking them to let go of their own control. And when you do that, so we know from just human behavior and how the brain works, is that motivation, and motivation is a neurochemical process, it is not just a fancy feeling that gosh knows why lands on your head. It is actually fueled, and we need motivation for action. So it's just not what we think it is. But it's fueled by two primary drivers. One is meaning, which is why repeating purpose and all of that is so important. The second is control. So if you start taking away meaning, and you start taking away control from people, you are going to find a disengaged staff, and you're not going to be operating at the leader-like, you want everyone to be leader-like, you want self leadership happening.
So you need different controls. Controlling the time isn't the thing. So the focus isn't about can you clock in, and clock out, and justify yourself? It should be more of a results focus. It should be more an outcome focus. So what are the outcomes? And I would say right now, as we're sort of going through what I call the bridge period into a new future, when we're really in disruption, when we're really like, "Oh my gosh, I don't have anyone to teach my kid," that we're in this bridge process. I know, I'm sure you all have been talking about planning, planning forward is so important, and two levels, the short term and the vision for the future, and letting people know that there is a future, like that I am thinking about it, that is already going to take their stress down.
But what I'd say about this bridge period is, and it's hard, because especially for mission-based organizations, they want to be all things to all people. And when you have no constraints, you can do that. And constraints actually create innovation and productivity, right? They constrain you to come up with new, better ways to serve. And that's what this opportunity is. So I would say, during this bridge period, if you can, how can I really focus, given the impacts on the people I serve, given the impacts internally on finances, on human resources, et cetera, how does that impact what I do and how I'm serving? And can I make the focus smaller? Can we get really good at this one thing?
And people don't like this, they want to do all the things, but priorities and focus are a powerful, powerful tool. And I think we can learn that in this time period. So I've been actually telling a lot of my people, "I know this is not going to go over for the mission-based people, but lower your expectations. Lower them a little bit."
Pieta Blakely:
We have been saying that on this show in a lot of different ways, actually variations of that.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Your fail forward, Pieta. That's your fail forward.
Pieta Blakely:
We've talked about failing forward, and we've talked about focusing on the core thing of your mission, and what is the one really important way that you're showing up for the people that you serve right now.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Absolutely.
Pieta Blakely:
And we talked about trimming the excess stuff.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah. So then when you're looking at what are we judging ... What are we judging? What are we judging? What are we measuring? We're really measuring outcome. And that may happen in a lot of different ways. So I think the incorrect thinking, that it's this many minutes on the job, and that's what we're measuring, is the wrong thing to measure. And you guys are the measurers, so I'll stay out of that [crosstalk 00:15:10].
Cynthia Rojas:
We can measure anything [crosstalk 00:15:14].
Pieta Blakely:
We can measure anything. So what do you advise a leader who says, "All my processes are not here, and I'm separated from my whiteboard, and I don't know how to move the work forward." What is their one thing to pay attention to right now?
Lindsay Satterfield:
Well, maybe I'll just give you that little overview of the frame in which I start thinking about it, because I think that's what the challenge is. There feels like there's so many issues that they're hard to tease apart, like what is what. So I'm a big believer in having some kind of framework to work with, and it isn't the end all and be all framework, or the ultimate framework. It's just a framework. So the way that I think about it is sort of five different areas. Plan forward, and I know you guys have done a ton on that, it sounds like. Take the lead. And I'll just say a few things in a minute. Take the lead, communicate courageously and constantly, strengthen culture, and circle the team. So those are the five elements, and these are an ecosystem. They're not a step-by-step, they're not discreet areas to work on. They interact with each other.
But it's a helpful way, I think, to kind of zero in on, what do I need to think about in that planning forward that we just talked about? What do I need to think about in communicating courageously? We talked about that. That's the cut the BS. Over communicate, I think you've mentioned that you've been talking about that. Say what you know and don't know, and repeat yourself, because just because you said something one time ... You should be a broken record as a leader, right? Like, you start saying it and everyone around you can finish your sentence.
So you want to have that, and be really clear about, more transparent about processes. In fact, from a work culture and circling the team point of view, I think it's more important now than ever to make every process or the key processes visible. You want to see them. What are the steps? How do we do this? What was sort of intuitive, and we just kind of agreed on it and it works, now we want to make more visible. Yeah. So let's communicate courageously.
Strengthen culture, I think here's where leaders, I think, want to focus in on emotional intelligence. I think it's so important. This is the skillset. It was the skillset of the past. We just missed it sometimes. It is the skillset of the future for leaders, is you aren't going to AI out the empathic capacity to deal with people. And now we need that more than ever.
So one thing that was interesting, and this kind of goes with both the culture and circling the team, I just read in Harvard Business Review a study done by Microsoft. They thought, oh, this is an opportunity that we're doing this. Let's see what's happening in working from home. And you mentioned being Zoomed out. And they were looking at just patterns of meetings and all sorts of interesting things. So that was one of the things that came out, was an uptick in one-on-one meetings that were shorter and an uptick in shorter meetings. There were more meetings, but over time.
So when this first started, every client I have was complaining about how exhausted they were from being on these video calls. And so I've been recommending, I recommended as a best practice, if you're all working together or if you're not, is make your meetings much shorter. In fact, as a rule of thumb, I would say make them half what you think they should be or half what's standard in your culture. Because what that does is narrow the focus. It gets the right people in the room, pay attention to the right people in the room. And so just to circle back to that study, what they were looking at is managers do need to connect one-on-one with everyone and understand what their issues are, understand what their challenges are, understand what their problems are, help with the alignment.
But it doesn't need to be a 90 minute meeting. It doesn't even need to be an hour meeting. It can be really short touch points. And so managers were seen as having more meetings at this time in order to do some of that work. The other thing that I would suggest, and this is sort of in the take the lead, you know, you don't want an absence of leadership during this time, because that's what's going to be the glue to help the culture, but you're more of a facilitator of leadership. So you want to think about ways to combine different groups of people together or different one-on-ones together. Is there a project where, you know, I was working with one client and she had these people kind of in all these different silos, because that's how they'd been working. And it wasn't working, and it was overwhelming.
And I said, why don't you shift it up? Why don't you switch around some of the talent? Because there were new activities they were doing as a result of what's going on. So you want to create new connections. And the other thing that I would say is connect people who have similar challenges in terms of the work from home challenge right now. So maybe childcare and taking care of kids, taking care of family members, that, but also mix them up. So here is my thesis, is that we don't want to create two teams of people that have kids and are dealing with this one issue, and then those that don't. And what can happen is, oh my gosh, well, they're not on at lunchtime. And why do I have to be? You don't want to create any division there.
You actually want the whole team to care about the well being of the whole team. And so helping people problem solve, and I'll cover for you. So have an investment, like I care that your kids get educated. It actually matters to me. They may not be my kids. But start to foster that kind of environment, where also it's very safe to say, "These are the real challenges that I have. What can we do to help each other?"
Cynthia Rojas:
So mix up the teams is what you're saying, Lindsay?
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yes [crosstalk 00:21:51].
Pieta Blakely:
That's an interesting point about ways to create cohesion. And I think a lot of managers have tried to do it through perfect fairness, like everybody has to be on site or nobody is on site. But you're saying there might be other ways to do it.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah. And engage everyone in solving that problem, so that it feels like, yes, we agree that it doesn't work for this person. And not that they have say in it as such, but they're invested in the empathy of it, like the situation of it, and recognizing we want everyone to be productive and successful. How can I help you do that?
Rebecca Tuttle:
I'm going to raise my hand. This is such a great conversation, but May has a comment from a few minutes ago. I just want to get to it. It's going to cover you, Lindsay, so if I pull this comment up here, I'll read it. Let's see, let's get this here. Okay, May says, "Disruption, what a great word, because it's exactly what we feel. And when I say we, I mean my team and I. Our executive directors believe that we'll be able to go back like nothing happened. The planning that's taking place is so unrealistic. And I get that we have to plan for a reopening, so my question is how can I lead my team to create different models for success? Because ultimately, the goal is to provide quality instruction for our students and ensure that parents feel supported."
That's a big question, Lindsay [crosstalk 00:23:19].
Lindsay Satterfield:
Actually, I think part of the answer is in the question, because she's saying, I don't have it here now, but how do you create different models for success? I like that thinking of coming up with scenarios of what might work, and this is where influencing up matters, learning how to speak to what the issues are and frame them in a way that the person you're speaking to cares about also.
So if our goal is, instead of like, this is my goal, that's your goal, and we can't meet, it's like, I have my goal and I have my reasons for what my issue is, but how can I frame some solutions in a way that my executive team is going to actually pay attention to? What do they care about? So all of this takes more thought than we feel like we have time for. But I think it's honing skills of communication and influence that are important. I don't know if that totally answered it, but I liked, actually I felt like she answered it a little bit in the question, in saying, how do we create different? You create them, create them. Be the team that creates them.
Cynthia Rojas:
And be willing to, what Pieta says, fail forward, and try something new. So you pivot.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Experiment.
Cynthia Rojas:
[crosstalk 00:24:48] that you tried. So I have a pressing question, because I know we're getting close to time, but I have to know. So one of the recommendations I heard very early on, and it had a really cool tagline and I don't remember it, but it is about how, if you have a culture where your teams are used to just starting meetings and getting into work, that in a virtual environment, that does not work. We should check in. So check in before content is what the tagline I think is. Tell us a little bit why that's so important.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah. So the way I talk about is humans first, work second. So the reason it's important is because we're human, right? And we thrive off of connection, and we're actually designed and built for ... We're pack animals, as I said. We are designed for connection. So we perform our best when we feel seen, heard, and belong. But if we're constantly just navigating through a meeting of do I belong, do I not belong, how can I make my point, all of that, then we're not going to really tap into the genius, the intellect of the entire group.
So we know from the Google study on teams, the project Aristotle in 2012, that what predicts a high performing team is not the roles, the things, all the things we think it is, even the expertise. It is psychological safety. So you can have a collective IQ that is greater than the sum of its parts, if you install psychological safety. And how do you do that? You connect first. You are human first. You care about people first and provide different opportunities for that.
Cynthia Rojas:
That's awesome.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Lindsay, I've heard you use the word safe twice now. Can you talk just for a moment about what would make someone in a workplace feel unsafe? I mean, I don't mean safety by way of violence or anything. What would make them feel unsafe? Because I think that's really important, to get to the root of that, what's causing that or what brings that about, or else maybe you wouldn't see a favorable response in all of these great things that you're talking about. What is that safety?
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah, so safety has a lot to do with belonging. So we are sort of in an evolutionary way, our evolutionary DNA is to fit in. It's to not stick out, because if you stick out, the tiger may get you, right? So you want to fit in. So there's all sorts of ways that we don't create belonging, even in meetings. It's not everyone is heard. You don't ask somebody else's opinion. You start talking about ... I just had a client who was talking about how her manager just always goes to his favorite person. And so she's now struggling with sort of an emotional struggle of does he not think I'm good enough? That's what I'm talking about with a lack of safety, when there's a lack of feeling like you're heard and seen, and there's just simple ways in an environment to make sure you do that in a way and cultivate that.
And part of it is what Cynthia was saying, is checking in, like, what do you need? What's going on? How are you? I know one group, we did this thing called emotional rollercoaster, where you just draw a rollercoaster on your sheet of paper, and you put yourself on it and just put a name, like this is where I'm at. And there was nothing more than that, but it's like, I'm seen. I am having a hard day. I'm having a great day. I'm having whatever. So safety is really, I think, very highly correlated to belonging.
Cynthia Rojas:
That's awesome.
Rebecca Tuttle:
That is awesome, because [crosstalk 00:29:00] avoid a whole bunch of other scenarios, if you just understood that about people feeling unsafe.
Lindsay Satterfield:
And just to add the two things that in that psychological safety umbrella, the two things that create a high-performing team are equal voice and social sensitivity. So equal voice is not equal vote. It's that you literally in a meeting, in that Zoom meeting, hear roughly around the same time from each person, unless it's a presentation. But if we're having a meeting about our work, we should hear from everyone.
Pieta Blakely:
That's a tall order.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah.
Cynthia Rojas:
And what was the second one, Lindsay?
Lindsay Satterfield:
Social sensitivity.
Cynthia Rojas:
Social, okay, great.
Lindsay Satterfield:
So that, again, speaks to your point.
Cynthia Rojas:
We could [crosstalk 00:29:44] forever.
Pieta Blakely:
Yeah, I know. A link to Lindsay's website is in the comments. You should follow up and read more about it there. This has been incredibly helpful.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Absolutely.
Pieta Blakely:
Lindsay, what's the biggest thing you want people to take away with them today?
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah, I think it's just being a little easier on yourself, that this is a huge disruption and we should be talking about it like that. And checking in to see what the impacts are, not just for our communities that we serve, but also for the staff people, because they're the carriers of this. And it has to start at home, right? There has to be that alignment.
Pieta Blakely:
I think what's really striking me here is we have this opportunity to reinvent how we work. And Cynthia often says people are resisting change because they're mourning the things that they've lost. And so some of what I'm seeing as resistance to the new way of work is a form of mourning, but I'm also seeing that some of these challenges were already there and needed to be addressed. Maybe this is just a fantastic opportunity to be a lot more transparent and thoughtful as we think about how we work.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Yeah. And I think employees, some of the research from Microsoft is showing that that's happening at the staff level, is that they're coming up, they're deciding that Zoom meeting, everyone's complaining about the Zoom meetings, stop doing them. Just stop doing them that way.
Pieta Blakely:
Rebecca, what was your big takeaway today?
Rebecca Tuttle:
All of this is reminding me of when we get that letter in the mail that says your grant was not funded, and you can either say, "This is horrible. What are we going to do about it?" Or you can say, "Okay, how can we regroup and seek out a new opportunity?" All of this, Lindsay, has been framing new opportunities. This really charges me up. I get excited about [crosstalk 00:31:44] in general [crosstalk 00:31:46].
Pieta Blakely:
How about you? What's your big takeaway?
Cynthia Rojas:
Oh my gosh. So much stuff. I think after the show I'm going to do some research on the neural chemicals that are happening in your brain that breed motivation. I love that. First of all, I didn't know that it was so. I thought motivation was an external stimulus. And I love, love the concept of it's internal.
Lindsay Satterfield:
If people want any background on that, they can go to, I think it's Faster, Smarter, Better, that book. We can put it in the chat or whatever. We'll put it in the comments.
Pieta Blakely:
Okay. We will add it to the comments. Thank you for joining us, everybody, and have a great weekend.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Bye.
Lindsay Satterfield:
Bye.