From time-to-time studies highlight that it is important for managers to understand that need to lead human beings with human centric approach. Wow… Is it where today’s leadership really stands? I hardly believe that managers are so stupid that they don’t understand this. I do not question the importance to repeat the message (some authors even argue to implement the role of a Chief Repeating Officer in organizations), however it is a self-deception to believe that it is sufficient to make a real change in the behaviours of managers. Most efforts fail mainly because they focus on reinforcing, repackaging the message and training the managers, and only a few of them focus on initiatives that drive real behavioural change.

Anyway, let me shed a light on a trend that is seriously underestimated, very seldom discussed and taken into consideration. Let’s come back to Gartner: they report that human leadership is characterized by three key components: 

• Authenticity: Leaders act with purpose and enable true self-expression, both for themselves and their teams. This means creating an environment where employees feel safe to express their true selves without fear of judgment. 
• Empathy: Leaders show genuine care, respect, and concern for their employees' well-being. This involves understanding and addressing the life needs of employees, not just their work needs. 
• Adaptability: Leaders provide flexibility and support that fits the unique needs of their team members. This includes managing tailored, flexible workflows that accommodate the diverse circumstances of employees. 

They have found that organizations that develop human leaders will find that their teams experience less turnover, higher engagement scores, and better overall well-being. Gartner's research found a significant increase in employee engagement among those who report to human leaders. Highly engaged employees can improve their team's performance by up to 27%.

It makes quite a great sense to push managers to employ more of the concept of human leadership. But we fail to recognize how much we overload managers. I am not to say that we do the wrong thing, however we must consider how difficult it is for the managers to change their behaviours. 

On one hand, HR departments often shift responsibilities onto managers, further increasing their workload. Research by the CIPD highlights that HR tasks such as recruitment, absence management, learning and development, and conflict management are frequently devolved to line managers. This devolution can lead to frustration and challenges for managers, who may lack the capacity, training, and support to effectively handle these additional responsibilities. 

Additionally, it's important to acknowledge that team members also place a significant burden on managers. The demands for flexibility, empathy, and authenticity require managers to constantly adapt and support their teams, which can lead to increased stress and potential burnout. 

Therefore, it's crucial for organizations to provide managers with the necessary resources and support to manage these challenges effectively. Gartner has identified three best practices for HR to develop more human leaders: 

1. Make the case for change: HR should leverage trusted sources, such as peers and employees, to make the business case for human leadership. Convening a group of impactful leaders who believe in and act on human leadership can help set new leadership expectations for the organization. 
2. Teach positive behaviours: HR should provide leaders with development and training on navigating sensitive situations and creating a psychologically safe environment. This helps leaders exhibit positive behaviours despite fear of scrutiny. 
3. Provide ongoing support: continuous support and reinforcement are crucial for leaders to internalize and practice human leadership behaviours. This includes establishing employee-leader mentorship groups and providing intensive preparation for high-stakes opportunities. 

Gallup reports that great leadership is defined not by authority alone, but by how much the people who follow leaders trust and support them. Keeping all this in mind, we may think of how we can ease the burden on the managers so that to make their behavioural change a bit easier. Following Gartner’s proposal to teach positive behaviours and provide ongoing support to managers gives us a chance to ease the burden on managers by making their team members capable to resolve more and more workplace challenges on their own, and require less support from their direct supervisor.

Individual contributors are the biggest population in any company, it is unrealistic to provide training, coaching and other developmental tools in such a large scale. However, it might make a good case for an on-the-job behavioural change app. Of course, no app can provide equal impact like any of the initiatives above, but we can achieve much better results with it than “giving almost nothing” to incrementally improve soft skills that help resolve their challenging situations a bit better, on-the-job.

To ease the burden that employees place on managers, the Act2Manage app offers practical, in-situ solutions for the most frequent workplace dilemmas. The app provides bite-sized, 3–5-minute micro-learning chunks that colleagues can access from their smartphones, tablets, or desktops, allowing them to stay engaged with their daily tasks and routines. Act2Manage supports colleagues in developing their skills and performance through gamification elements that make learning enjoyable and motivating. The app also offers follow-up commitments and reminders to ensure that knowledge is turned into concrete action steps.

By providing fast and easy access to practical help, Act2Manage empowers employees to solve workplace issues on their own, reducing the pressure on managers and fostering a more collaborative and efficient work environment.

We may say that most companies have vision and mission. It is truly beneficial to have them for several reasons: it helps define the customer base or selecting suppliers and represents the organization's identity. However, most of them are so complex that they are equivalent to understanding the space-time continuum. Or they may be simple but poorly executed.

One of my clients had a very cleverly worded, well-targeted, and easily understandable vision for their future. Despite this, employees were not doing things as outlined in the vision statement. A survey then revealed that employees did not understand the company's vision and did not see the direction it was heading.

Busy leaders tend to think that once they announce the direction, people have heard it, understood it, stood behind it, and executed it. They believe their employees are super-intelligent, understand what the leader says the first time. Sometimes they see the problem and they hire a management consultant who will preach about corporate missions, goals, and values, decorating all the corridors with useless posters about customers, quality, and teamwork.

We need to face it: commitment isn't that cheap!

The Gallup report provides a comprehensive guide for leaders to meet the evolving challenges of our time. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs of followers, knowing oneself, and comprehending the demands of the leadership role. By focusing on hope, trust, compassion, and stability, leaders can create a positive and lasting impact on their followers. Let’s explore some options the improve these four dimensions:

1. Hope: The Beacon of Leadership 

Hope emerges as the most critical need in the study, with 56% of attributes linked to influential leaders speaking to this theme. Hope inspires followers to envision a brighter future and motivates them to strive towards it. Leaders who instill hope can significantly reduce suffering and increase thriving among their followers.

2. Trust: The Foundation of Relationships 

Trust is the second most important need, closely following hope. Trustworthy leaders create an environment where followers feel safe and valued. This need is consistent across different countries, demographics, and types of leaders. Trust is the bedrock of any successful relationship, and leaders who prioritize building trust can foster loyalty and commitment among their followers.

3. Compassion: The Heart of Leadership 

Compassionate leaders understand and empathize with the needs and concerns of their followers. They create a supportive and nurturing environment where individuals feel cared for and respected. Compassion is a universal need that transcends cultural and geographical boundaries. Leaders who demonstrate compassion can build strong, positive relationships with their followers.

4. Stability: The Anchor in Turbulent Times 

Stability is the fourth primary need identified in the report. In times of uncertainty and change, followers look to their leaders for stability and reassurance. Leaders who provide a sense of stability can help their followers navigate challenges and maintain a sense of balance. Stability is essential for fostering a productive and harmonious environment.

And let me add a 5th element!

The Power of Follow-Up: 

Leaders may improve their communication about the company’s future, but it is important to make employees feel they really mean it. The good news is that there is a very simple remedy for this problem: follow-up. After communicating the vision, make sure that people understood it. Talk to them (instead of sending emails) to see if they agree with it, whether they have questions, need some more clarification, ask for their help in execution (e.g., which channels and how to communicate) to ensure they are committed. You can build trust them by asking for their help, you can show compassion to reflect to their concerns and provide stability by following-up on the most important thing. 

You are right, follow-up takes more time, but keep in mind that the effort you put in will strongly correlate to the results you can expect.

Don't sweat it! You can still be an outstanding employer because there's one thing that matters more to employees than all these perks: self-esteem.

Recently, a friend of mine was invited for a job interview. The company had him complete two tests before they even asked any questions. Later in the interview, he was asked about his degree.

• Humanities - he replied. 
• Well, that's a peculiar breed - came the mocking response. 

The test is fine, but the way the interviewer treated him is not. I don't think an interviewer could afford to humiliate a candidate.

We all remember of some stories when we also treated colleagues or peers bad. We raised our voice, rolled eyes at their nonsenses, smirked smugly, or made sarcastic comments about suggestions to show how smart we were.

Some colleagues don't perform remarkably, some come up with downright lousy work. Some are not very smart or don't work hard. Some make big mistakes and some eventually deserve to be fired. Regardless of all this, any colleague or candidate - no matter their performance - deserves to be treated with respect. Eye-rolling, mocking, sarcasm, and ego fight distract the focus from the problem and put the other person in the spotlight and her self-esteem diminishes by the very minute.

Don't think that your employees feel valued and appreciated because of the salary, benefits, or opportunities they receive. Tangible benefits don't have this effect. In fact, if you treat them disrespectfully or condescendingly, no reward or career opportunity can restore the bad feeling they have.

My humanities friend summed up his experience quite aptly: "they finally gave me the job, but they didn't let me be proud of myself”.

The most important thing you can give your employees is not the job itself, but self-esteem. If they make a mistake, warn them privately, focus on how they can learn from it, and they will quickly forget the shame they initially felt. Make a fool of them in front of others, and they will never forget that feeling. They won't really learn from the mistake because all they remember is how you treated them.

So, next time you're thinking about how to be a better employer or a manager, remember that the key to your employees' hearts isn't just in their paychecks or perks. It's in how you make them feel about themselves. Give them a chance to self-esteem, and you'll not only have a happier, more motivated team, but you'll also create a workplace where everyone feels valued and respected. And who knows, you might even find that treating your employees with respect is like giving them a raise without spending a dime.

"Do you feel like you have a good job?" I asked. 

"Well, honestly, good is the last word I’d use.” he replied. 

"What kind of job would you consider good?" 

"I think a good job is one where you can make decent money and work little." 

"Hmmm... Do you know anyone who has such a job?" 

"You mean someone I know personally?" 

"Not necessarily. Let me rephrase: what kind of job allows you to make a lot of money with little effort?" 

“Influencers or celebs?” 

"Yeah, some of them get paid well and it seems they don't have to work too hard. Sounds like a dream job..." 

“Look, they must be satisfied with their jobs." 

"Well, it seems to me that many of them struggle with eating disorders, are constantly in scandals with their private relationships, drink, and do drugs. I don't know about you, but I've never looked at them as truly happy people." 

"Okay, maybe it's not a dream job after all. What do you think makes a job good?" 

"I don't think there's a dream job...” 

If we ask people who love what they do, they do not tell us how they have spotted “the dream job” in the listings. They’ll tell us instead that they had clicked to an ad of an average job, and they transformed it to a good one. 

If you prefer, you can make a shortcut and discover your strengths and unlock your potential and find fulfilment in your work with CliftonStrengths. This powerful tool helps you identify your unique strengths and provides insights on how to leverage them for success. Whether you're looking to improve your current job or find a new path, it can guide you towards a more satisfying and productive career.

“Anyway” I said to my young friend “if you don’t like what you do you have two choices: either you do something else or you like something else. :)

From what I’ve seen, organizations try to do everything they can to keep employees from searching for the next employer. For example, they roll out all sorts of financial incentive programs, offer attractive benefit packages, move to nice offices, introduce fruit days to try to keep their employees engaged and make them more productive.

But do these "carrot and stick" really work? Do they actually attract and keep the top performers? 

We must face the hard truth: the mainstream approaches failed to improve engagement and performance. Gallup has reported in 2023 that only 23% of the employees were actively engaged globally. I am not sure of your standards, but I would not consider this a high number.  We might raise a question: how much is it really important to employees whether the company offers daycare, allows personal use of the internet or provides free coffee? Not that these initiatives are invaluable, but data show that they won’t take you far on the engagement scale. Anyway, if these perks are inefficient, are there dominant drivers behind employee engagement? In fact, Gallup's research shows that 70% of employee engagement is determined solely by the manager. This means that the relationship between an employee and their manager is the single most significant factor influencing employee satisfaction, performance, and overall engagement. It may explain the low impact of providing a gym in the basement, organizing family days or offering stock options. They might drive the remaining 30%. 

You may argue that (internal or external) surveys show that employees like and prefer these options. I do not doubt it. They may like it, but they do not make them more engaged! The best chance to improve employee engagement is havingbetter people managers. And we make the problem even worse: most of the universal benefits companies provide to employees are not under the direct control of the manager—or at least she has marginal influence on them—, practically they can’t do much about them.

If you are a people manager and you feel that HR support is insufficient to do your job better you can try to excel in four key areas which you have direct control of: hiring team members, setting clear expectations, motivation, and development.

1. Acquiring the right people
   Start by defining the expectations for the role you’re hiring for. Study the top performers in similar roles to understand what drives their success. Pay attention to their natural talents, behaviour patterns, and fit to the team—these are often the best contributors to high performance.
   
   
2. Set clear and measurable goals
   Make your expectations crystal clear. The best is to align your approach with the metrics your company uses to execute its strategy. Together with your team members align these outcomes to their strengths to draw their natural talents to make positive and lasting change in their job responsibilities while challenging them to use their talents in new ways. The goals should be: specific, measurable, achievable, mutually beneficial for the company and the individual, and time-bound.
   
   
3. Motivate to improve performance
   Your team members might be more motivated at a time and less motivated at another. They may need your encouragement and support to stay engaged and make substantial progress. Try to figure out e.g. how do they prefer to be recognized? What factors motivate them to grow and achieve more? How can you individualize your approach recognizing them?
   
   
4. Develop along the way
   Ideally there is a gap between the goals and the capabilities of the team members, so it is important to focus on personal development. Help them to bridge the gap by developing their talents into strengths. You may ask your team members what skills they’d like to develop or what areas they want to improve in. You can help them find the right tasks, jobs, and career paths and create a sense of ownership and engagement in their growth.
   
   

Another common approach involves learning more about each other on the management team using a colour-coded test or something similar resulting in a four-letter label for each member. That way, you might better understand why your "red" teenage daughter just screamed at you again after you asked an innocent question after school.

I’m not saying these approaches are entirely pointless; any opportunity for team members to spend time together outside of work, share experiences, and talk has value. Even a shared dinner, drinks or a business trip could suffice — and these actually are all absolutely useful, by the way. However, there are slightly deeper approaches as well, or ones where the work context makes the program much more relevant, and where the practical application of insights is far more likely.

Our Behavioural Change Program for Team Cohesion, aimed at strengthening cooperation within the leadership team, uses a two-pronged approach. One focuses on strength-based collaboration development, and the other on working together towards a shared, cohesive goal, while we also address various dysfunctions in team dynamics. In this post, I’ll share some thoughts on the first approach, illustrated with a personal example.

Strength-Based Collaboration: Insights and Practice

In the above program, we use Gallup's CliftonStrengths assessment to identify participants' talent themes, articulate their strengths, and introduce strength-based work practices to enhance team collaboration. Beyond individual and team-level discussions of the CliftonStrengths report results, we also explore how closely collaborating colleagues' talent themes can either ease cooperation or hinder it. This heightened awareness greatly supports leaders in working together more effectively and tolerating each other better.

Let’s take a practical example: comparing the most dominant talent themes of my colleague, Dr. Róbert Dobay, with my own. It’s crystal clear where we move forward together like a hot knife through butter, where we complement each other pretty well, and what areas might drive each other crazy — requiring extra attention to ensure long-term, effective cooperation.

Here’s the comparison (top: Robert's dominant themes, empty circles show his rank; beside them, filled circles indicate my rank for each theme):

Synergy and Potential Pitfalls

It’s evident that three of our Top 5 talent themes overlap, making collaboration between us remarkably easy. Both of us are Maximizers, striving not only for personal excellence but also for the quality of our products and team members. You’ll never hear us say, “Good enough will do.” We are both Activators, go-getters: “No messing around — let’s just get the ball rolling!” We avoid actionless talk; if something is discussed, we either consciously let it go or act on it — today, tomorrow, or at a specific later time scheduled in our calendars. We also share Relator, building meaningful connections with people we find valuable, avoiding superficiality. Naturally, if one of us were less demanding or had a more laid-back style, we’d likely drive each other nuts in no time.

Further down, but still within our Top 10, we both have Input and Focus. While these aren’t our strongest talents, we can muster them when needed, so no significant friction tends to arise here.

However, the middle and bottom of the list present a potential minefield: four areas where our talent themes differ significantly. My top themes include Responsibility, Ideation, Futuristic, and Intellection, which rank between 17th and 30th for Robert. My rigidity in certain matters and tendency to float “above the clouds” in other areas might drive him crazy. But instead of dwelling on this, we distribute tasks in ways that allow us to complement each other as business partners. In simple terms, I generate ideas and develop products, while Robert filters them and pursues the ones he sees potential in, taking them to market, presenting them to clients, sparking their interest, and often leading the process to closing deals. Given his own Maximizer talent, he actively gets involved in the final stages of product development to ensure we deliver the best possible offering to our clients.

Robert’s Top 5 also includes Achiever and Self-Assurance, which complement my strengths perfectly. This is why he takes care of all business matters, consulting me only when needed. If he can or wants to decide something on his own, he doesn’t even involve me. Additionally, Robert has Arranger in his Top 10, a theme I lack entirely. Once I propose the "what," he figures out the "how." Two other notable strengths of his are Woo and Communication, which are invaluable for our team. Robert heads our business development efforts, delivers conference speeches, and represents our company both locally and internationally. Although I can step into these roles when needed, they don’t play to my dominant strengths (I can do but don’t enjoy them), whereas Robert excels at all of these.

Strategic Thinking and Forward Planning

In Strategic Thinking, we’re not far apart, and we build on this consciously. Along with our colleague, László Filep, whose Futuristic talent is particularly strong, we retreat to an offsite partners’ meeting at least twice a year to chart the way forward.

Well, this is the level of depth at which collaboration can be enhanced among colleagues partnering closely, through a strength-based approach, consciously distributing tasks to leverage each other’s strengths. We don’t even have job titles in our team; instead, we focus on strengths and preferences. For example, among our senior team members, we assign tasks based on who is strongest in and enjoys a particular activity. Naturally, everyone also takes on some tasks they might not love or be particularly good at but need to get done. However, if we work to our strengths 70% of the time, that’s already pretty awesome.

I hope these personal examples provided some insight into strength-based work and collaboration development. It’s a highly effective way to boost efficiency, effectiveness, and employee engagement.

1. Growth – the top strategic priority. Business transformations needed to achieve this require stronger HR contributions than ever before.
2. AI – an area with more hype than practical application at this stage. Half of employees have no idea how to use generative AI tools to enhance efficiency, and 77% believe these tools have reduced productivity and increased workload.
3. Labor market challenges – 61% of talent management professionals report that workforce needs exceed their recruitment capacity. Moreover, industry transformations and AI are expected to impact nearly a quarter of job roles in some way over the next five years.

The Gartner report highlights five top priorities, three of which I find particularly relevant to our field.

Leader and Manager Development

• 75% of HR leaders report that managers are overwhelmed by the constant expansion of their responsibilities.
• 70% believe current senior leaders and managers are not adequately prepared to effectively develop middle managers.

Despite 76% of organizations significantly revamping their leadership development programs and planning to increase their budgets, the results still fall short:

• Only 36% of HR leaders think their current leadership development programs effectively prepare leaders for future challenges.
• Just 23% are confident that they have emerging leaders capable of meeting the organization’s future needs.
• 71% believe their middle managers are not being developed effectively.

I find it promising that HR leaders are acknowledging these issues. The next step is to replace outdated, less effective leadership training approaches with innovative ones. This has been the mission of our blended Behavioural Change Program for the past 16 years, with proven success in over 150 group cases.

Organizational Culture

• 57% of HR leaders agree that leaders are unable to instill the desired cultural vision within their teams.
• 53% report that leaders do not feel accountable for representing the desired culture.

It’s not enough to deliver presentations about corporate values or display them in reception areas and meeting rooms. Driving behavioral change requires much greater effort. For example, with one of our major banking clients, we used our Behavioural Design program to work with directors just below the board level, helping them integrate culturally aligned behaviours into their teams' daily routines.

Change Management

• 74% of HR leaders believe that their leaders are not adequately prepared to manage change.
• 73% agree that employees are exhausted by continuous changes.

Research shows that exhausted employees are less engaged, less likely to stay with their company, and feel less psychological safety. They often merely show up but deliver little beyond the basics.

This makes it critical for senior leaders and team leaders to actively contribute to increasing engagement (which, according to Gallup, is influenced 70% by leadership behavior and only 30% by other workplace factors, like benefits). They must also skillfully navigate ongoing changes. That’s why our Behavioural Design program for experienced managers focuses on topics like intentional behavior design, engagement enhancement based on neuroscience, influencing through behavioural science, as well as understanding and mitigating cognitive biases. Recently, a HR leader approached us to explore how the Behavioural Design programcould support an ongoing LEAN transformation in a corporate manufacturing environment by embedding LEAN principles more deeply into employees’ and middle managers’ daily behaviours and habits.

Exciting challenges lie ahead for us, as service providers, if these truly are HR leaders' priorities for the coming year. From my conversations with HR colleagues and senior leaders, I see that these concerns resonate with them as well. However, service providers must break away from ineffective, 1 or 2-day, one-off training sessions with no follow-up, as these have very low impact. Both development firms and clients must level up professionally to make progress on these priorities.

A special thanks to my colleague Dr. Robert Dobay for bringing this fresh research to my attention.

W. Ickes and his research group has found that strangers read each other with 20% average accuracy rate when videotaped while close friends and married couples could gymnastic that up to 35%. Firstly, it looks that we do know what our spouse or a close friend prefers or not more than a random stranger would, but not by all that much. Secondly, the confidence we have in knowing the mind of a close friend or a significant other largely exceeds our actual accuracy.

How much emotions our bodies really show? Of course, we are not expected to pantomime complicated thoughts and feelings with our body alone, but how much of our emotions do our bodies show compared to e.g. our voices?

It was not too difficult for different research teams to design an experiment: a participant watched a person on videotape describing an emotional experience with either sound only or the camera off. The research team then compared the participant's guess about the speaker's emotions with the speaker's actual reported emotions. Or alternatively, volunteers listened to somebody describing either a very positive or a very negative emotional experience. Storytellers reported how positive or negative they felt by moving a slider on a scale, and the raters used the same type of slider to predict how the storyteller was feeling.

The researchers found that those who could only see the storyteller were significantly less accurate than those who could only hear the storyteller. That is, emotions are primarily carried on our voice. Those who could only see the storytellers were still more accurate than they would have been simply by random guessing, but not by all that much. We get less information from reading body language than we estimate.

If our body doesn’t convey that much of information during online meetings we still can argue that we lose the ones of facial expressions. Although, it is less the case when we have our cameras on.

In spite of the popular supposition, the scientific verification of facial expressions is currently very weak. In experiments, when people were asked to lie or to conceal strong emotions, they tended to think the truth would be uncovered significantly more often than it actually was. It looks that most of us are better liars than we think we are. :) Our intuition that our emotions are clearly visible to others seems to be more of an illusion than reality.

In another experiment, researchers asked volunteers to look at a series of emotionally arousing photographs and to either express their true emotion or hide it. The hits on target not only seemed to be exceptionally rare (only 2%) but also seemed just as likely to be shown when people were telling the truth as when they were lying. It is surprising to see that how little our true emotions are visible, how often they are misleading, and how hard it is to detect them accurately.

The benefit of taking the perspective of others is that we can get more and better information about the person that we may otherwise overlook. The weakness of perspective taking is that it relies on our ability to take the other person's perspective accurately. If we don't really know what it's like to be poor, in pain, being at the bottom of the corporate ladder, then the mental yoga of putting ourselves in someone else's shoes is not going to make us any more accurate. Nicholas Epley and his collaborators conducted a series of experiments and they have never found any evidence that perspective taking - imagining the world through others’ eyes - increased accuracy. In fact, perspective taking consistently decreased it.

This has a problematic consequence e.g. in conflict situations (when perspective taking is most often endorsed as a solution), where people have inaccurate views about each other. If we form a false image about the other side's circumstances, then considering ourselves in those circumstances could increase misunderstanding, and result in stereotypes.

There’s no reason to believe that most of our employees and managers are highly trained experts at reading body language and taking perspectives, so we may let our fixation on this skill to sink in the sea of cognitive illusions, at least until further evidence. All in all, it looks that we lose a lot less information during online meetings than we think, so maybe we can turn our worries down a bit…