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In part one, we shared a few pitfalls of employee engagement surveys when you focus on scores and feedback that disappears into the metaverse! Today we are building on this to give you a few more pitfalls to consider the next time you're having a team huddle. Spreading your focus too thin When you first embark on culture transformation there may be a number of items brought to your attention as responses come through. And it’s tempting as a leader to want to address all the challenges at once; this approach has the potential to overwhelm team members and can feel quite surface level. Missed opportunity: Addressing too many challenges at once in most instances has the ability to lose impact and can be more of a distraction as opposed to focusing. Hone in on one priority at a time and give it the effort and focus it needs to get the lift it deserves. Practice: Discussing together as a team, which is the priority to focus on and explore right now, and what actions will be most impactful? Obsessing over who, what, when Leaders, we’ve all been here, we receive feedback we don’t agree with and our focus shifts to understanding the source of the feedback to make sense of it, or validate how we feel about it. In an anonymous survey, it might be tempting to go to lengths to find out who might have left a not so glowing perspective. Just don't! Missed opportunity: Feedback, whether anonymous or not, it's still feedback and that’s a gift! People don't invest time in giving feedback unless they trust you will do something productive with it. If you’re putting your effort into finding out whodunnit, you’re distracted from the main goal - cultivating a feedback culture where everyone’s voice and perspective matters. All feedback is useful, it provides insight into the diverse perspectives of our teams, so use it wisely! Practice: Applying a growth mindset. We are all here to learn and grow. Notice what you’re feeling and examine why you might be feeling this way about the feedback. Sit with that feedback and accept that this is someone’s perspective. Approach with curiosity; Is there something in this feedback that you can apply and take on board? To all the perfectionists out there, accept that it’s never going to be perfect, all at once or all of the time, we are working with humans, who are coming into the workplace with a diverse range of external factors. Our role is to perfect our ability to adapt to this changing sequence of events, or as we like to call it, humanising the workplace!. Seeing workplace culture as a 12 month project This is one of the most common pitfalls we see, leaders believe a solution will transform their organisation/teams in 12 months and so they take a project perspective when it comes to transforming workplace culture! If it took you years to get here, what makes you believe you'll transform in 12 or even 18 months? Like strategy, productivity, talent acquisition and marketing, your approach to workplace culture is not a project, it's not a once off and it certainly isn't short term. Missed Opportunity: A focus on workplace culture is a continuous effort by leaders to create forward positive momentum, and in the same way strategy incorporates productivity, financials and customers, so too should it include people and workplace culture, for they are the driving force of any business! And like a river ebbs and flows, so does workplace culture as people move within organisations. Practice: Incorporating workplace culture into your day to day accountabilities, engage everyone and ensure leaders understand they are key drivers of workplace culture. Take a top down approach to workplace culture, and at a strategy and board reporting level, include a culture measure along with your financials, productivity and customer measures. Hopefully you now have a few more ideas to implement, join us for part 3 coming your way soon! For more information on PQfactor, let's have a coffee meeting, you can contact us on suria@peopleq.com.au or melina@peopleq.com.au.

tool or better still check out our culture tool PQfactor, powered by Teamgage and let us support your journey

What not to do Part 1 Employee engagement and culture survey tools are a great way to invite and collate feedback from your employees in a meaningful way. The insights generated from this collection of data is useful not only to quickly gauge team and employee sentiment but also to empower leaders and organisations to identify where and how they can improve. The more transparent and action oriented the engagement tool, the better the outcomes, given transparency builds trust and actions naturally propel us forward. Whilst these tools are a game changer to how we design, measure and manage workplace culture, there are some potential pitfalls that leaders need to be aware of. Even the very best leaders can easily become caught up in one or more of these challenging scenarios. The good news is that with a bit of troubleshooting and practice, we can overcome pitfalls. Feedback that disappears into the metaverse This is the most common and detrimental pitfall. There is nothing worse than asking for feedback and for the organisation and leader to never make mention of the survey or results again. Without the right follow up to discuss results, you can be sure to erode trust. Employees naturally perceive the organisation and leader don’t take workplace culture improvement seriously. This also applies to inconsistent engagement with your culture tool by leaders. The end result? Overtime response rates drop, productivity may also drop and you may even notice an increase in staff turnover. Missed opportunity: The aim of most culture tools is to promote productive and focused team conversations. These discussions generate new questions, insights and ideas. It’s predicted that bringing teams together regularly to brainstorm enhances the sense of connection, improving engagement and morale. Practice: scheduling team meetings in advance as a show of commitment to prioritise, share and follow up on feedback as a way to build trust and team rituals. Score tunnel vision Setting goals and utilising your culture tool as a mechanism to measure your progress is a great way to help you and your team stay on track and drive continuous improvement. While culture and engagement tools are designed for leaders to pay close attention to survey scores, it can sometimes cause leaders to have tunnel vision which in turn can create some unintended behaviours. Missed opportunity: If you’re focused on simply attaining a particular score then you are at risk of missing the point of employee engagement. Culture tools should encourage leaders, teams and organisations to think deeply about what the team wants to achieve together and how they will get there. Practice: Nurture what’s in your control by prioritising productive team conversations. Through productive and genuine conversations and follow through on actions, scores will naturally follow. Hopefully we’ve given you some ideas that you can implement today ! And if a culture tool is on your list of ideas, speak to us about PQfactor, our thriving cultures tool powered by Teamgage! Look out for part 2 coming your way soon!

Navigating the feedback jungle. It's not surprising leaders find their authenticity compromised in certain conversations, particularly when they relate to conflict or performance issues. Other types of workplace conversations leaders have parallel struggles with, range from pay rises, scenarios misaligning with their values, senior management behaviour, situations with legal ramifications, personality clashes or managing someone with a fixed mindset. When we discussed this with senior leaders from both the private and public sector, this was what they had to say on the issue. Be present and mindful of how you show up – BE in the moment. Check the environment is right, this not only includes the setting, time needed and time of day, it’s also taking into consideration what else may be happening that could influence the conversation or skew perspectives. Don’t quell your empathy and avoid being caught up in the amiability of the person. Skirting around it wont aid you either, so get to the point. And if you’ve been advised to sandwich a message, now would be a good time to recall that advice! Instead, these senior managers suggest you step into empathy by inviting others to share their thoughts and feelings and consider sharing how you feel about the situation as well. Give feedback that is constructive, also presenting positive news where appropriate. Be mindful of your tone, eye contact and body language, relax your posture and if you’re struggling, we recommend our heart focused breathing technique; slow breath in 1,2,3,4,5, the same rhythm out, and imagine you are breathing in through your heart, and back out through your heart. It’s a scientifically proven technique to activate calm on the go and get coherent. And whilst you're being mindful of how you show up, take the opportunity to listen for the unspoken and exercise EQ! Stay with facts and have the conversations early on if your needing to raise a concern. If your organisation has policies and procedures, use these resources to guide you and at the heart of these conversations, ensure you have good intentions for the person, the team and the organisation. You may get derailed by behaviours that deflect, defend, deny, divert or responses that are aggressive, emotional or nebulous. When this happens, these leaders advise you wait, stay silent if you must, ask again or ask another open question, try rephrasing, reschedule or just listen, and our favourite 3Rs of refocusing to redirect and reframe the moment. Link your feedback to intention – to connect, cultivate cohesion, energise, motivate, share vision, create alignment or have a bit of fun, create reassurance, clarity or accountability. Use feedback to reward effort and as a way to reflect. You can also normalise feedback as a way of building better relationships with each other, so invest the time to get it right. Feedback is an investment in confidence, it builds belief and trust, empowers, supports and aids equality. It sets standards. It’s easier to have these conversations when you are being your authentic self. So anchor to hope and be a role model for your team.

Episode 1 - An introduction to this new Leadership series with Suria and Mel

And, in an ever-increasing talent scarce world, the need to develop leadership internally is vital, and Executed well, executive coaching enables leaders to transform their leadership resulting in improved mid-level leaders gained greater value from coaching, and coaching as the third most effective method in leadership Coaching has become so fundamental to leadership development, that some organisations are now turning start to develop more reflective practices that ultimately aid wellbeing, improved decision making and leadership

I would have actioned monthly changes to my leadership style, and perhaps those small steps would have

When you rise up to the challenge of your first leadership role, it is never quite what you expect, so When I reflect over my leadership journey, especially those first few months, it was a whirlwind of emotions No matter how much leadership content Suria digested, she claims she never quite felt prepared, “in the Seeing the future has always been the exciting part of leadership for Melina and finding new and novel As a new and emerging leader, while your journey is yours alone, it doesn’t have to be lonely when you

Core themes circle around a desire to work on themselves and muscle up their leadership skills and meta Whether you’re wanting to enhance your leadership capabilities, foster personal development or navigate Ultimately, coaching is about you—your journey, your growth, and your future. We offer executive coaching, leadership coaching, business coaching and integrated coaching as part of your leadership development programs.

It’s fair to say the quality of your leadership determines the experience of your people, which ultimately When we ask teams to define what great leadership is, essentially their NorthStar, we see a pull towards Let me finish off by sharing some of our experiences when it comes to starting your workplace culture journey Don’t see culture as a project, it requires continuous effort and accountability at a leadership level www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/high-performing-teams-a-timeless-leadership-topic

In today's fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape, leadership plays a crucial role in driving At PeopleQ, we embrace these aspects of leadership as the basis for growth, collaboration and success Leadership is not a destination; it's a lifelong journey of growth, learning, and purpose.

I recently delivered a workshop as part of an eight month leadership program on "empowering our teams drives ownership, and is a broad all encompassing concept that acts as a thread across all aspects of leadership You start to appreciate why empowerment is like a thread across all aspects of leadership. exceptional, results, goals and customer stories are regularly shared with everyone and not limited to leadership Empowerment is a leadership thread, requiring leaders to acknowledge their behaviour has the power to