Author Archives: David Burkus

About David Burkus

Dr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, his forward-thinking ideas and books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. David is the author of five books about business and leadership and he's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and more. A former business school professor turned sought-after international speaker, he’s worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

Where Leaders Go Wrong with Emotional Intelligence

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Where Leaders Go Wrong with Emotional Intelligence

GUEST POST from David Burkus

We’ve been talking about emotional intelligence for decades now. And honestly? We’re still not doing it very well.

Daniel Goleman first popularized the concept back in the 1990s — yes, the 1990s — and broke it down into four key components: self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management. Since then, leaders have nodded along through countless workshops, flipped through slide decks filled with cartoon brains and empathy quotes, and then gone back to business as usual.

And for a while, they got away with it. But not anymore.

The dust has settled from the “Great Work From Home Experiment,” and most of us are now navigating a hybrid world. The lines between work and life are blurrier than ever. People aren’t just bringing their skills to work; they’re bringing stress, distractions, anxiety, and everything else from the rest of their lives.

And if you, as a leader, can’t navigate that minefield, if you can’t recognize and respond to the emotional undercurrents on your team, you’re setting yourself, and your people, up for failure.

What Emotional Intelligence Isn’t

When people hear “emotional intelligence,” they often jump to the wrong conclusions. They think it’s group hugs and office yoga. Or they think it’s about keeping everyone happy all the time. Or worse, they imagine tiptoeing around every feeling like they’re walking on emotional eggshells.

But that’s not it.

At its core, emotional intelligence is about recognizing the emotions on your team, and using that recognition to lead more effectively. It’s about paying attention. Noticing how people are feeling, why they’re feeling that way, and how those emotions are impacting their work.

Because like it or not, emotions drive behavior. And if you’re ignoring emotions, you’re not just missing a few soft skills – you’re missing one of the most powerful levers of performance, engagement, and collaboration.

Think about it. When someone is stressed, they don’t just feel stressed. They act stressed. They withdraw. They procrastinate. They avoid difficult conversations. Those behaviors ripple across the team and affect everyone’s performance.

But emotionally intelligent leaders don’t ignore those signals. They pick up on them. And they don’t respond by playing therapist. They adjust how they lead.

Emotional intelligence isn’t about coddling people. It’s about creating the conditions where people can do their best work – even when emotions are running high. Especially when emotions are running high. So what does that actually look like in practice?

Let’s break it down using Goleman’s four original competencies, updated for how work actually works now.

Self-Awareness: Know How You Show Up

Self-awareness isn’t just knowing whether you’re in a good mood or a bad one. It’s recognizing how your emotional state is affecting your team. Your team is always watching you. Your reactions under stress, your response to frustration, how you handle change – these become the template for how your team behaves.

In today’s workplace, where uncertainty is a constant, self-awareness matters more than ever. Because as a leader, you set the tone. Every. Single. Day.

Here’s the catch: research from organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich shows that 95% of people think they’re self-aware… but only 15% actually are. That means 80% of us are lying to ourselves about whether we’re lying to ourselves. And teams that have to deal with low self-awareness? Their performance can be cut in half.

So how do you actually build it?

One simple tactic: keep a decision journal. Not a flowery diary with a tiny lock. Just a running log. When you make a decision – especially under pressure – jot down what the situation was, what choice you made, how you felt at the time, and what you were hoping would happen. Then, a few weeks later, review it.

Over time, you’ll start to see patterns. You’ll get real data on how your emotions influence your decisions, and your outcomes.

Self-Regulation: Pause Before You Pounce

If self-awareness is knowing how you feel, self-regulation is choosing how you respond.

Emotionally intelligent leaders don’t react impulsively. They pause. They assess. They respond with intention.

And in many ways, hybrid and remote work can actually help here. When a Zoom meeting starts to spiral, you can turn off your camera for a breath. When an angry email hits your inbox, you can walk away before firing off a reply.

The key is to build space between stimulus and response. And in that space, ask yourself one simple question: “How do I want my emotions to affect my team?” Let that guide how you show up.

Social Awareness: Lead With Empathy, Not Assumptions

Social awareness is really about empathy. And empathetic leadership isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s a performance booster. Research shows that when leaders show empathy, teams see improvements in engagement, innovation, inclusion, and retention. People want to work for someone who sees them. Who gets what they’re going through. Who knows that sometimes the noise from real life—kids, aging parents, anxiety, burnout—leaks into work.

Your job isn’t to fix all that. It’s to notice when it’s happening, understand how it’s affecting performance, and help people refocus.

Sometimes, that just means asking.

Not with a weekly survey. In your one-on-ones. In hallway chats or virtual check-ins. Ask how people are doing. Listen for what they don’t say. And if your team’s not opening up? Check your own behavior. You might not be creating a space where honesty feels safe.

Relationship Management: Don’t Just Interact—Connect

The final pillar of emotional intelligence is relationship management. It’s not just about being nice. It’s about coaching, conflict resolution, and communication. It’s about managing the emotional dynamics of a team in real time. And in a hybrid world, that’s harder, and more important, than ever. You can’t build trust with your team while checking Slack during meetings. You can’t foster engagement while multitasking through 1:1s. Your team notices. And those small signals shape how connected, or disconnected, they feel.

The most effective tool here? Active listening.

Show your team they’re being heard. Nod. Maintain eye contact – or if you’re on Zoom, look into the camera to simulate it. Paraphrase what they say before you add your own thoughts. Ask clarifying questions. These small behaviors have a big impact. They reinforce trust. They model respect. And they create a climate where people feel safe enough to speak up, challenge assumptions, and do their best work.

Emotional Intelligence Isn’t Optional Anymore

The workplace of 2025 is fast, fluid, and often overwhelming. And emotional intelligence isn’t some soft-skill luxury. It’s a core leadership capability. It’s how you keep your team focused in chaos, connected in uncertainty, and committed to a shared goal—even when everything around them is in flux.

So, let’s stop pretending a one-off training or a colorful slide deck is enough. Let’s get it right this time. Emotional intelligence isn’t just something you learn. It’s something you practice. Every meeting. Every decision. Every day.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Don’t Let Corporate Jargon Hold Your Team Back

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Don’t Let Corporate Jargon Hold Your Team Back

GUEST POST from David Burkus

You’re in a meeting. Someone says, “Let’s circle back to ensure alignment on the KPIs so we can really move the needle across products.”

Everyone nods.

But in your head, you’re thinking… “What did they just say?”

That’s corporate jargon. It’s everywhere. Some people love it. Some people hate it. Most of us—well, we just tolerate it. And while jargon isn’t always bad, it can be a bigger problem than we realize. The real issue? When jargon stops making things faster and starts making things foggier. And that fog is slowing your team down.

When Language Obscures, Not Clarifies

Language is supposed to create clarity. It’s meant to connect people, to help them collaborate, and to make smart decisions quickly. But in many organizations, corporate jargon does the opposite. It confuses. It slows people down. And worse, it creates distance—between individuals, teams, and entire departments.

Anthropologist David Graeber explored this in his book Bullshit Jobs, arguing that layers of meaningless work—and meaningless words—emerge in organizations to preserve the illusion of productivity. He called this “managerial feudalism”: leaders expand their scope by hiring people to do questionable work just to increase their headcount. Jargon plays a similar role. The more complex the words, the harder it becomes to question the necessity of the work behind them. But hey, at least it all sounds official, right?

Why We Still Use Corporate Jargon

Here’s the twist: jargon isn’t always a villain.

Research in organizational communication shows that companies adopt specialized language to gain legitimacy. Industry-specific jargon signals expertise. It shows professionalism and alignment with norms. If you’re a doctor, an engineer, or a pilot, technical jargon actually saves time and prevents errors because everyone on the team knows exactly what those terms mean.

But here’s the catch: those teams have a shared understanding.

Inside organizations, that shared understanding often breaks down. Research has also shown that managers who use little to no jargon are actually seen as more trustworthy by employees. In other words, jargon may impress people outside the organization, but inside, it creates headaches.

The real problem isn’t jargon itself—it’s forgetting who you’re talking to.

Know Your Audience

Before you use a term like “OKRs” or “value prop,” pause and ask yourself: Does everyone in this room actually know what that means?

Inside your core team, shared language can be a time-saver. If your product team refers to an MVP, everyone knows you mean minimum viable product—not most valuable player. But when you step outside that team bubble and into a meeting with sales, HR, or external partners, that same shortcut can become a speed bump.

What’s familiar in one department can feel like a foreign language in another. Marketing talks about “demand gen” and “funnels.” IT throws out “DNS propagation.” Finance focuses on “run rates” and “burn.” HR wants to “360” everybody. None of these terms are wrong—but they are highly contextual. And when people don’t know what you mean, they’ll do one of two things: nod and Google it later, or tune out completely.

Here’s a better approach: assume at least one person in the room is hearing the term for the first time. Maybe it’s a new hire. Maybe it’s a partner from another department. Maybe it’s someone from a different industry where that same acronym means something else entirely. Either way, when people feel excluded, they disengage.

The best communicators—and the best leaders—meet people where they are. They don’t oversimplify, but they do make sure no one gets left behind.

Clarity Is a Competitive Advantage

Clarity is kindness.

Whether you’re leading a team or sending a quick email, your words do more than convey information. They shape how people feel about the work—and about you. Nothing slows down a team like a message that has to be reread three times just to be understood. And as communication gets more informal—thanks to Slack, emojis, and even memes—clarity matters more than ever. You don’t need to send GIFs to the board of directors, but you can write like a real person instead of a corporate buzzword generator.

Here’s a simple contrast:

“We’ll leverage our core competencies to achieve stakeholder alignment.”

vs.

“Here’s how we’re using our strengths to meet what our stakeholders need.”

Which one would you rather read?

Clarity doesn’t just improve comprehension—it builds trust. When people don’t have to decode your message, they focus on what you’re actually saying. And they see that you respect their time.

So before you hit send or speak up in a meeting, ask yourself:

Would a smart, motivated outsider understand this?
Would I say this out loud in a conversation?
Can I cut any words without losing meaning?

Nobody ever complains that a message was too clear. Or too short.

Call Out Fake Complexity

Sometimes, jargon isn’t just confusing—it’s a smokescreen. In some organizations, language is used to make something sound more important than it is. If you’ve ever heard a sentence that sounds impressive but doesn’t actually say anything, you’ve seen this in action. Phrases like:

“We’re architecting a holistic transformation framework to unlock cross-functional synergies.”

Sound fancy. But what’s actually happening?

One of the easiest ways to spot unnecessary work—or questionable priorities—is to listen to how people talk about them. If you can’t understand what’s being said, you’re not the problem. The language is.

This is why it’s okay—important, even—to ask, “What does that actually mean?” Or, “Can you give me an example?” You don’t have to be snarky. Just be curious. Either the person will clarify, and everyone will benefit, or they won’t—and you’ve just exposed a deeper issue.

Calling out fake complexity isn’t rude. It’s responsible. It saves time. It protects your team from wasting effort on meaningless work. And as a manager, you set the tone. When you say, “Let’s simplify that,” you give everyone else permission to do the same.

In the end, work that matters doesn’t need to hide behind big words. It speaks for itself.

The Real Role of Corporate Jargon

So let’s be clear: corporate jargon isn’t the enemy. It’s just a tool.

When used with the right audience, it speeds things up. But when it confuses or excludes people, it slows everyone down. The trouble is, jargon tends to creep in during moments of uncertainty. We use it to delay, to mask doubt, or to sound like we’re in control when we’re really just treading water.

But you don’t need jargon to sound competent. You need clarity. Clarity builds trust. Trust builds momentum. And that’s what drives high-performing teams forward.

Image credit: David Burkus

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Goal-Setting That Actually Works

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Goal-Setting That Actually Works

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Goal-setting is one of the most powerful tools a leader has. But most leaders don’t wield it nearly as well as they think. And if we’re honest, many treat it as just another item on the management checklist. You draft goals at the beginning of the year, plug them into your HR system, and then forget about them until the next performance review cycle. That’s not leadership. That’s busywork.

And when goals are vague, misaligned, or constantly shifting, they don’t inspire effort—they create confusion. Your team stops trusting the process. Eventually, they stop trusting you. And when that happens, performance drops, motivation tanks, and the team dynamic starts to unravel.

That’s not the kind of team you want to lead. And it’s definitely not the kind of team you want to be on.

The good news is, goal-setting doesn’t have to go wrong. But before we talk about how to fix it, we need to talk about how most leaders get it wrong in the first place.

The Most Common Goal-Setting Mistakes Leaders Make

There are a few ways leaders unintentionally sabotage themselves—and their teams—when setting goals. And one of the most well-documented comes from a study with a surprisingly catchy title: Goals Gone Wild. Researchers at Harvard found that when leaders set too many goals, or overly aggressive ones, it actually hurt performance.

Instead of building focus and momentum, teams start scrambling to hit numbers without understanding the bigger picture. They cut corners. They burn out. And they start working in silos instead of collaborating. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: metrics aren’t meaning.

And then there’s the issue of stretch goals. They’re great in theory—designed to push the team beyond business-as-usual. But stretch quickly turns into stress when the goals are unrealistic. If your team is standing at the starting line thinking, There’s no way we’ll ever hit that target, the most common reaction isn’t motivation. It’s apathy. Why try if you’re already destined to fail?

Finally, there’s the confusion between learning goals and performance goals. Performance goals are about execution—hitting a number or completing a process. Learning goals are about experimentation—trying new things and embracing occasional failure. Both are valid. But when you try to hit both at the same time, you’re essentially slamming on the gas and the brakes. And teams stall out.

Now that we’ve identified the common traps, let’s talk about how to set goals the right way.

How To Set Goals That Actually Work

Here are four research-backed strategies for goal-setting that will strengthen performance, boost motivation, and build long-term trust with your team.

1. Choose a Clear Focus

Before you start drafting goals, get clear on the kind of work your team is doing right now.

If your team is executing on something known—like running a proven process or scaling an existing strategy—then set performance goals. These should be measurable, time-bound, and tied to operational excellence.

But if your team is exploring something new—developing a prototype, entering a new market, or experimenting with a different process—then it’s time for learning goals. These goals encourage experimentation, reflection, and iteration.

You can shift between learning and performance goals over time. In fact, most innovation cycles require both. But don’t mix them in the same cycle. When everything is both a test and a target, nobody knows what matters most.

Make it clear: are we in learning mode or performance mode?

2. Clarify the Purpose Behind the Goal

Most goals focus on what to do. But few explain why it matters. And that’s a missed opportunity. Because while some people are naturally competitive—motivated by the scoreboard—most people need more than a number to stay engaged. They need meaning.

So instead of saying, “Increase repeat customer business by 15% this quarter,” clarify what that number means. For example: “Increase repeat business by 15% because that shows customers trust us enough to keep coming back—and that we’re delivering value worth repeating.”

It’s not just about the number. It’s about the impact that number represents.

That doesn’t mean you abandon metrics. Specific, measurable goals still matter. But they work best when they’re connected to something deeper. Remember: metrics guide performance. Meaning fuels it.

3. Co-Create Goals and Take Feedback Seriously

Top-down goal-setting kills motivation. If your team has no say in how their goals are defined—or no visibility into how they’re progressing—then those goals won’t inspire action. They’ll be seen as arbitrary mandates. And people disengage.

Great leaders define the “what” but collaborate on the “how.” You can set the targets, milestones, and success metrics. But bring the team in to help design the approach. When people see themselves in the plan, they take ownership. And ownership drives motivation.

That collaboration shouldn’t stop after goals are set. Check in regularly—not to micromanage, but to monitor progress, solve challenges early, and adjust course if needed. Talk about what’s working, what’s not, and what the team is learning. That ongoing feedback loop keeps goals relevant and keeps people engaged.

4. Watch for Signs of Goal Fatigue

Even the best goals can backfire if they come too fast, too often, or without a break. Goal fatigue happens when every project is urgent and every metric is top priority. When your team is always sprinting, it’s only a matter of time before they burn out.

Your job as a leader isn’t just to set goals. It’s to sustain ambition.

That means watching for early signs of fatigue—slipping deadlines, fading creativity, or a drop in team energy. And when you see those signs, don’t push harder. Take a pause.

Ask: “What’s essential right now?” Maybe it’s time to scale back or switch from performance goals to learning goals for a while. Give your team space to recover, reflect, and rebuild their sense of purpose. When motivation returns, performance will follow.

The Real Goal of Goal-Setting

When done right, goal-setting doesn’t just drive results—it builds trust. It clarifies direction, reinforces purpose, and gives people ownership in the outcome. But when done wrong, it becomes just another bureaucratic task. A checkbox. A system no one believes in.

So if your current goal-setting approach isn’t energizing your team, it’s time to change the way you lead it.

Pick a focus. Tie goals to purpose. Build them together. Check in often. And don’t forget to rest.

Because the goal isn’t just to hit a number. The goal is to build a team that’s motivated, focused, and in it for the long haul.

Image credit: Pixabay

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The 8 Best Teamwork Books That Actually Improve Collaboration

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The 8 Best Teamwork Books That Actually Improve Collaboration

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Most leaders know teamwork matters. But few take the time to study what actually makes teams work.

We rely on instinct, gut feel, or experience from past teams—good or bad—and assume it’ll all work out. But in today’s complex, collaborative, cross-functional world, those assumptions often lead us astray.

If you want to lead high-performing teams consistently, you need better inputs. And for me, some of the best inputs have come from books—not just books about leadership, but books specifically about teamwork. The kind that change how you think about team culture, team dynamics, and the actual work of working together.

These aren’t just good reads. They’re the best teamwork books I’ve found, presented in no particular order because this isn’t a ranking… it’s a resource.

📚 Best Teamwork Books

1. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Probably the first one you thought of too. This is a business fable that somehow nails real team dysfunctions with precision. Lencioni’s model—from lack of trust to inattention to results—offers a practical, memorable way to diagnose and address breakdowns. I’ve referenced this book with dozens of leaders because it gets past the surface and straight to the relational heart of team performance.

2. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Coyle makes the case that talent alone doesn’t create great teams—culture does. He distills team culture into three key behaviors: build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose. What stood out to me is how much of team excellence is invisible, built in the small moments. It’s a great reminder that culture is less about slogans and more about habits.

3. Dream Teams by Shane Snow

This one turns a lot of conventional wisdom upside down. Shane Snow argues that the best teams aren’t the most harmonious—they’re the ones that learn how to disagree productively. With examples from science, sports, and even organized crime, he shows that friction (when handled well) makes teams smarter. A great read for leaders dealing with complexity and cognitive diversity.

4. Team of Teams by Stanley McChrystal

McChrystal’s story of transforming Joint Special Operations Command is a masterclass in breaking down silos. His team couldn’t win modern battles using traditional hierarchy. So they built a “team of teams” built on shared consciousness and empowered execution. It’s a great reminder that agility isn’t just for startups—it’s a requirement in any complex environment.

5. Collaboration by Morten Hansen

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: not all collaboration is good. Hansen shows that ineffective collaboration can actually make performance worse. His concept of disciplined collaboration—knowing when and how to collaborate—helped me see the difference between helpful alignment and wasted effort. Especially valuable for leaders in large or matrixed organizations.

6. Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King & Halee Fischer-Wright

This book maps out five stages of team culture, from toxic to world-changing. What makes it stand out is the focus on language—how the words people use reveal the tribe they belong to and the performance they can unlock. It gave me a new lens for diagnosing team dynamics and helping leaders upgrade their team’s shared narrative.

7. Teaming by Amy Edmondson

Unlike most books that treat teams as fixed entities, Teaming focuses on teamwork as a dynamic, ever-evolving process. Edmondson shows how people must learn to collaborate quickly across boundaries, roles, and expertise areas—especially in fast-moving environments. It reframed for me how learning and collaboration go hand in hand, especially when teams are temporary or fluid.

8. Best Team Ever by David Burkus

Yes, it’s mine. But if you noticed, a lot of these other books are pretty old. They’ve stood the test of time, but research is always evolving. And so I wanted to understand what consistently sets high-performing teams apart—based on the latest evidence. What I found were three repeatable habits: common understanding, psychological safety, and prosocial purpose. Best Team Ever is a blueprint for building teams where people do their best work—and genuinely want to.

Final Thoughts

You don’t have to read every book on teams to lead a great one. But you do need to rethink how you approach teamwork—what you reward, what you reinforce, and how you respond when things go sideways. These are the best teamwork books that helped me do that. They changed how I build, lead, and coach teams—and they might do the same for you.

Because great teams aren’t just born.

They’re built — habit by habit, choice by choice, leader by leader.

Image credit: David Burkus

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Leading to the Future of Work

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GUEST POST from David Burkus

If you led a team through 2025, you probably felt like you were trapped in a never-ending game of workplace buzzword bingo. Coffee badging. Quiet quitting. Quiet firing. Corporate catfishing. Every week came with a new term, a new “trend,” and a new reason to wonder whether you were falling behind in the future of work—or just drowning in noise.

That’s the challenge for leaders right now: not “keeping up,” but getting clear on what actually changed. Because some of what we saw in 2025 wasn’t a fad. It was a preview. And 2026 won’t be a clean break from the past; it’ll be the year those shifts harden into the new defaults.

Here’s what I mean. In hindsight, 2025 wasn’t a year of brand-new problems. It was a year when familiar tensions finally became impossible to ignore: autonomy versus control, speed versus security, loyalty versus flexibility, experience versus reinvention. The labels made it feel new. The underlying issues weren’t.

And the way most organizations responded? Predictable. Also, mostly wrong.

When leaders face uncertainty, they usually reach for what worked before. They tighten policies. They standardize schedules. They add approvals. They try to “fix” culture with perks. It’s a natural reflex—especially when performance pressure is high. But it assumes the problem is that people need more rules, more oversight, or more incentives.

In reality, the lesson of 2025 is simpler: the rules of work didn’t just bend. They rewired. And if you keep trying to manage 2026 with a 2016 playbook, your team won’t just feel frustrated—they’ll quietly build workarounds. That’s where the real risk lives.

The Future of Work Is Structured Flexibility, Not a Return to the Old Office

Take the return-to-office story. Early 2025 looked like a full-scale push back to “normal,” with big-name companies raising the stakes and making attendance a mandate instead of a suggestion. Plenty of leaders braced for a rebellion.

But the more interesting story was what happened after the headlines: most people returned. Not necessarily happily. Not necessarily five days a week. But they showed up — often because they felt they didn’t have a better option.

And then something else happened. Leaders started realizing that office time isn’t a strategy. It’s a setting. You don’t get collaboration just because you share a zip code.

In the data, the pattern has been consistent: the best outcomes show up when people have flexibility—and when that flexibility is designed with intention. Hybrid can work. Remote can work. In-office can work. What doesn’t work is forcing one model without explaining the purpose or giving people any control.

That’s why I don’t think 2026 will be the year “RTO wins” or “remote wins.” I think 2026 will be the year structured flexibility becomes the default. You’ll see more anchor days, where teams coordinate time together for the work that benefits from face-to-face interaction. You’ll see more meeting-free focus time. You’ll see more experiments that look like “summer Fridays,” only year-round.

The real debate was never about office chairs. It was always about autonomy.

And autonomy doesn’t mean chaos. It means leaders stop managing presence and start managing performance.

AI Didn’t Replace Your Team. It Joined It.

The second shift is happening just as fast, but with more confusion: AI stopped being a novelty and started becoming a coworker.

In 2025, a lot of organizations rolled out enterprise AI tools — often with the best of intentions. But leaders ran straight into a new kind of friction: security guardrails that made the tools less useful than the consumer versions people were already using.

So employees did what humans always do when systems slow them down: they routed around them. They used personal accounts. They used personal devices. They found ways to keep moving.

From a productivity standpoint, that makes sense. From a risk standpoint, it’s terrifying.

And it creates a trust problem on both sides. Leaders worry about data leakage and compliance. Employees feel like the company is handing them a power tool…then wrapping it in bubble wrap and asking why the job isn’t done faster.

Here’s what 2026 is likely to bring: less debate about whether AI belongs at work, and more expectation that everyone knows how to use it responsibly. Senior leaders will lean on it for strategic thinking and competitive analysis. Frontline employees will use it to automate the “gray work” that clogs calendars—summaries, drafts, templates, first passes—so they can spend more time doing what humans still do best: judgment, creativity, and problem-solving.

The winners won’t be the companies with the fanciest AI license. They’ll be the ones that treat AI like a teammate who needs onboarding, training, and clear norms.

Your Team Is Becoming a Network

Meanwhile, another major shift has been quietly becoming permanent: freelancing is no longer a side hustle. It’s becoming infrastructure.

Layoffs, hiring freezes, and reorganizations pushed a lot of talented people out of traditional roles. At the same time, organizations started pulling contractors in—not just for gig work, but for high-skill roles: finance, HR, operations, even fractional executives.

This blurs the line between “employee” and “teammate.” And in 2026, that line will blur even more.

That creates a leadership challenge most managers weren’t trained for. Traditional management assumes stable teams: the same people, the same roles, the same reporting lines. But the emerging reality looks more like a project-based network, where talent plugs in, contributes, and moves on—sometimes to your competitor, sometimes back to you, sometimes to three other clients at the same time.

If you keep treating contractors like “temporary labor,” you’ll get temporary commitment. But if you start treating them like part of the mission, you’ll get better work, better collaboration, and—over time—a stronger talent ecosystem around your team.

In the future of work, leadership is less about supervising a roster and more about stewarding a network.

Generational Change Isn’t a Culture War. It’s a Coordination Problem.

Finally, 2025 made one more shift impossible to ignore: the workforce mix is changing fast.

Millennials have moved into the largest share of management roles, Gen Z is stepping into leadership earlier than many expected, and boomers are retiring—but unevenly, and often later than planned. That means many teams now include people in radically different life stages, with different expectations about careers, technology, and what work is “for.”

A lot of leaders respond to this by stereotyping. “Gen Z doesn’t want to work.” “Millennials are entitled.” “Boomers won’t let go.” That framing is easy…and lazy.

The better framing is this: cross-generational teams aren’t doomed. They’re just harder to coordinate. And coordination improves with curiosity.

If you want the brilliance without the conflict, you can’t lead by assumption. You have to lead by inquiry.

What to Do Next: 5 Moves to Lead the Future of Work

The point of all these trends isn’t to predict the next buzzword. It’s to build a team that can adapt when the next shift arrives — because it will.

Start here.

First, design autonomy on purpose. Don’t “allow flexibility” as a perk; build it as a system. Get clear on which work truly benefits from synchronous time together — onboarding, creative collisions, complex problem-solving—and which work benefits from uninterrupted focus. Then build schedules around those moments. When people understand the “why,” they’ll stop treating policies like arbitrary rules and start treating them like shared commitments.

Second, upgrade accountability from monitoring to check-ins. If your instinct is to measure hours, logins, or keystrokes, you’re solving the wrong problem. Accountability works best when it’s social and meaningful: clear goals, frequent progress conversations, and regular moments where people can ask for help before they’re stuck. When teammates feel counted on—not watched—they show up differently.

Third, onboard AI like you would a new hire. Make training normal, not optional and not reserved for “the tech people.” Give your team safe ways to experiment. Define guardrails in plain language: what data can be used, what outputs must be verified, what decisions require human judgment. And partner with IT and compliance to make policies usable in real work, not just defensible in audits.

Fourth, lead your contractors like they belong. Invite them into the rhythms that create cohesion: the kickoff, the retro, the celebration, the shared language of “what good looks like.” Show them how their work connects to outcomes, not just tasks. You don’t have to pretend they’re full-time. But you do need them to feel like insiders while they’re with you—or you’ll pay the tax later in misalignment and rework.

Fifth, build reverse mentoring into the culture. Don’t wait for it to happen organically. Create opportunities where Gen Z can teach tools and trends, while more experienced employees share context, judgment, and the “why” behind how the organization works. The goal isn’t to make everyone the same. The goal is to help people value what the others bring.

If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that change isn’t a season anymore. It’s the operating environment. High-performing teams aren’t the ones that finally “figure it out.” They’re the ones that keep learning faster than the world keeps shifting.

That’s what the future of work will reward in 2026: leaders who can replace control with clarity, replace policies with purpose, and replace rigid teams with resilient networks.

Image credit: Pixabay

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How to Lead Cross-Functional Teams Without Cracking

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How to Lead Cross-Functional Teams Without Cracking

GUEST POST from David Burkus

You’ve just been asked to lead a new team. But here’s the catch: it’s not really your team. It’s a group pulled together from different departments – sales, marketing, product, maybe even someone from legal whose job seems to be vetoing everything. These aren’t people you hired. They don’t report to you. And they probably don’t report to each other either.

You’ve been handed what might be called a “project committee” or “task force,” but what you really have is a cross-functional team. And while cross-functional teams should be engines of innovation, agility, and organizational alignment, the truth is most of them don’t work very well.

But they can, if you lead them the right way.

The Promise and Problem of Cross-Functional Teams

In theory, cross-functional teams are supposed to break down silos, accelerate execution, and bring diverse perspectives to complex problems. And sometimes they do.

But more often than not, they stall out. One study found that 75% of cross-functional teams are actually dysfunctional—they miss deadlines, blow budgets, or fail to stay aligned with organizational priorities. And it’s not because the individuals aren’t talented. It’s because collaboration across departments requires a different kind of leadership. One that starts with structure, not just speed.

Too many team leaders, especially those new to cross-functional work, start with the work itself. They jump straight into assigning tasks, setting up meetings, and building timelines. That seems logical, it’s a project after all.

But if you don’t pause to clarify goals, define roles, and build new communication norms, your team will default back to the ways of working they know best—the ways of working from their own silos. And that means your team will function more like a loosely affiliated group than a truly collaborative unit.

Why Most Approaches Fail

Cross-functional dysfunction isn’t about poor communication, it’s about misaligned expectations. Everyone brings different priorities, pressures, and mental models into the room. The marketer thinks about brand. The engineer thinks about feasibility. The legal team thinks about risk. And no one is wrong.

But if you don’t create a shared understanding early, those different viewpoints don’t complement each other—they compete. Left unchecked, people stick to their departmental defaults, and the very diversity that was supposed to spark innovation becomes a source of friction.

How Cross-Functional Teams Win

To lead a cross-functional team effectively, you don’t just manage the project, you design the team.

Here’s how.

1. Clarify Goals and Roles

Before anyone touches a task list, you need to get the team aligned on two foundational questions: What are we trying to achieve? Who is doing what to get us there?

That may sound obvious. But in cross-functional teams, ambiguity reigns. Everyone assumes someone else is handling a task. Or worse, two people assume they’re both in charge.

Start by mapping out the scope of the project together. Identify major deliverables. Then ask the group: “Who here feels best equipped to own this?” Let people step forward. If there’s debate, facilitate it. If someone volunteers for a stretch assignment, support them, perhaps by pairing them with a more experienced teammate.

This approach does more than assign work. It sends a message: this is a team, not a collection of departments. And you’re here not just to execute—but to develop.

2. Set Communication Norms

Every department has its own way of working. Some teams live in Slack. Others still rely on email. Some expect immediate responses. Others have a “48-hour rule.” If you don’t align early, miscommunication is inevitable.

At your kickoff meeting, have the team co-create its communication norms. Ask questions like:

How will we keep each other updated on progress?
What tools should we use, and for what?
How do we request help?
How often should we meet?
How will we make decisions?
How will we give and receive feedback?

Document the answers. Make them visible and accessible. Then refer back to them, especially when things get bumpy.

These shared norms help your team navigate differences in communication style and prevent misunderstandings from becoming major roadblocks.

3. Build Empathy Through Common Understanding

Communication norms help people speak to each other. Empathy helps them listen with each other.

People on a cross-functional team aren’t just bringing different skills—they’re bringing different definitions of success. One team member might be evaluated on speed, another on accuracy, another on cost control. If you don’t understand the pressures your teammates are under, you’ll misunderstand their decisions—and maybe their intentions.

One powerful exercise: ask each team member to explain how their performance is measured back in their “home” department. What does success look like? What’s their boss expecting from them? What’s at stake?

You can even create simple “user manuals” for each team member that explain how they like to work, how they make decisions, and what stresses them out.

The more your team understands each other, the easier it becomes to collaborate, and to resolve conflicts when they arise.

4. Foster Psychological Safety

Here’s something most people miss: a lack of disagreement on a cross-functional team isn’t a sign of alignment. It’s a sign of silence.

In the early days of a new team, people tend to be polite. They nod along. They bite their tongues. They say things like, “That’s interesting,” when they really mean, “That will never work.”

But innovation doesn’t happen through politeness. It happens through candor. And candor requires psychological safety—the belief that you can speak up without fear of rejection or ridicule.

To build that safety, model vulnerability as a leader. Say things like, “What am I missing?” or “This is a rough idea—feel free to poke holes.” When people challenge you, thank them. When disagreements emerge, guide the group to evaluate ideas based on assumptions, not egos. Ask, “What assumptions are we each making?” rather than “Who’s right?”

Psychological safety isn’t about eliminating conflict. It’s about making conflict productive.

5. Celebrate Small Wins

Cross-functional projects often span months or even years. And when the deadline feels distant, motivation can wane, especially when team members are juggling other priorities.

That’s why milestones matter. Break the project into phases. Define what success looks like for each one. Then, when your team hits a milestone, celebrate it. A shout-out in a meeting. A thank-you email. A Slack emoji reaction.

Research shows that even small wins, when recognized, can boost morale and performance. Just make sure your recognition is authentic and specific. People know when you’re faking it.

Final Thought: It’s Never Too Late to Reset

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Great… but I’m already halfway through leading a cross-functional team that’s barely functioning.”

Good news: it’s never too late to pause and reset. Call a meeting. Clarify goals. Align on roles. Set communication norms. Celebrate any progress you’ve made. Then start fresh from there.

Cross-functional teams can be challenging. But when they’re led well, they become more than the sum of their parts. They become engines of innovation and drivers of real change across your organization.

And you? You become the kind of leader who makes collaboration work, even when no one reports to you.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Managing Your Work Friends

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Managing Your Work Friends

GUEST POST from David Burkus

You just got promoted. Congratulations! But now you’re managing your friends. The people you used to grab lunch with, the ones you vented to about the boss, and the folks who knew every inside joke from your team Slack channel — they’re your team. And you’re their boss.

Work friendships are powerful. They boost morale, improve collaboration, and make the workday more enjoyable. I don’t have to convince you that having friends at work is valuable. But when the power dynamic shifts, when you go from being “work friend” to “work boss,” things inevitably change. Suddenly your decisions carry weight — promotions, raises, performance reviews, and tough calls that impact livelihoods. At the same time, your team knows a lot about you. Maybe they’ve seen your Instagram stories or been with you at happy hours. That blurred line between friendship and authority can get messy fast.

And this is the dilemma of managing your friends: how do you maintain meaningful relationships without undermining your credibility as a leader? How do you stay approachable and authentic while also being consistent and fair?

The answer isn’t easy, but it is possible. It starts with understanding what doesn’t work, and then rebuilding those friendships into a new kind of relationship.

Why Most New Managers Struggle

Most new managers stumble into one of two extremes when they start managing their friends. They either pretend nothing has changed, or they change everything.

Some ignore the shift. They keep gossiping, keep oversharing, keep hanging out exactly the same way — hoping the friendship will buffer any awkwardness. But it doesn’t. That kind of behavior undermines authority when it’s time to make a hard call. A joke about a teammate suddenly looks like favoritism. A venting session about a senior leader sounds like open dissent. And the manager’s credibility takes the hit.

Others overcorrect. They pull back completely. They stop socializing. They stop texting. They stop grabbing coffee or lunch. They put up walls and operate only in “professional mode.” That comes across as cold — because it is. And the sudden distance damages trust and morale.

Both extremes backfire. Pretending nothing has changed creates resentment and perceptions of favoritism. Overcorrecting destroys connection and trust. Neither approach works long term. What new managers really need is a third path: redefining the friendship for the new reality.

Why The Old Dynamic Doesn’t Work Anymore

It helps to remember why friendships at work felt easy before. They were built on equality. You were in the trenches together — venting about the same boss, rolling your eyes in the same meetings, maybe even sneaking out early together on a Friday. But the key word there is were. You were equals. Now you’re not.

Power dynamics are like gravity. You don’t always see them, but they’re always pulling. Once you’re in charge, every interaction gets filtered through that shift. You may think you’re just being candid with an old friend, but now it sounds like the boss has picked a side. You may think you’re just cutting them some slack, but others see favoritism. And once your team suspects favoritism, everything else you do gets questioned — your motives, your decisions, even your integrity.

That’s why the old friendship dynamic doesn’t work anymore. It’s not because the friendship isn’t real — it’s because the context has changed. So if you want to keep both your friendships and your credibility, you’ll need to redefine the relationship.

Five Tips For Managing Your Friends

1. Address the Shift Directly

Pretending nothing has changed is like pretending you didn’t just get promoted. Everyone knows. They feel it already. And if you don’t address it, the tension just lingers like an awkward silence no one names.

The fix is surprisingly simple: talk about it. You don’t need to make a big speech or hold a formal meeting. Just have an honest one-on-one conversation with each friend. Something as short as:

“Hey, I know this feels a little different now that I’m in this role. I really value our friendship, and I want to make sure I’m being fair and consistent with the whole team. What boundaries make sense for us?”

That’s it. Short, honest, specific. And it shows you care enough to be proactive. Trust me, your friend is already wondering how things are going to change. By being the first to bring it up, you take away the uncertainty and replace it with clarity.

2. Embrace Your New Role

You can still be friendly, but you can’t be “one of the gang” anymore. Accepting that reality is part of stepping into leadership.

This is where many new managers trip up. They cling to the old dynamic. They keep venting frustrations, gossiping, and oversharing with their closest colleagues. But once you’re the boss, those conversations hit differently. A joke about a coworker is no longer harmless — it’s favoritism. Complaining about company policy isn’t just blowing off steam — it’s sowing dissent.

And those side conversations? They never stay side conversations. They spread. They change perceptions. They chip away at your authority.

That doesn’t mean you need to become robotic. You can still laugh with your team. You can still celebrate wins. You can still be approachable. But you’re “leader first, friend second” now. And when you need to vent, find a new outlet—a mentor, another manager, or someone outside the company. Your team isn’t your sounding board anymore.

3. Stay Consistent to Avoid Favoritism

Fairness isn’t just a leadership principle—it’s a credibility shield. The quickest way to lose trust is to treat your friends differently than the rest of the team.

That doesn’t mean you’ll intend to play favorites. It’s usually subtle. Giving your old buddy more slack on a deadline. Asking them for input first in meetings. Grabbing lunch with them a little more often than with others. None of those things seem like a big deal, but your team notices. They always notice. And once they suspect favoritism, the dynamic of the whole team changes.

So be deliberate about how you lead. Rotate lunch invites. Keep feedback tied to measurable goals so everyone sees the standard is the same. Spread recognition evenly and shine the spotlight on the whole team, not just the familiar faces. Consistency protects your credibility and reinforces trust across the group.

4. Reevaluate Social Media Boundaries

Before you were the boss, your social media interactions were harmless — liking memes, posting weekend selfies, swapping DMs. But now? Those same interactions can be seen as bias or favoritism, and worse, they come with receipts.

A casual photo at a backyard barbecue? Favoritism. Liking a slightly edgy meme your friend shared? Bias. Responding privately to a rant about another teammate? Favoritism again — this time with screenshots. You don’t have to ghost your entire digital life, but you do need to tighten boundaries. Adjust privacy settings. Consider unfollowing or at least limiting interactions. Keep work and social media in separate lanes. And follow this rule of thumb: if you wouldn’t put it in a company email, don’t put it in a DM.

5. Focus on Connection Through the Work

One of the best parts about working with friends is the sense of connection. The risk, when you become their boss, is thinking you need to pull away completely to preserve fairness. But you don’t. You just need to redirect that connection into the work itself.

Research on prosocial motivation—our drive to protect and promote the well-being of others—shows that teams thrive when they’re bonded around shared purpose. That’s your new role: to cultivate connection not through gossip or side chats, but through collaboration, recognition, and shared wins.

Keep the relationships, but root them in the team’s mission. That way you’re not just holding on to friendships—you’re strengthening the team.

The Bottom Line

Managing your friends after a promotion is one of the trickiest leadership challenges you’ll face. If you pretend nothing’s changed, you’ll lose credibility. If you overcorrect, you’ll lose connection. The path forward is acknowledging the shift, embracing your new role, staying consistent, setting boundaries, and channeling friendship into shared purpose.

You don’t have to lose your friends when you become their boss. But you do have to lead them differently. And if you do it well, you won’t just keep your friendships — you’ll earn their respect.

Image credit: Gemini

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How to Keep Learning as a Leader

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How to Keep Learning as a Leader

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Leaders are learners.

That’s not really disputed. You have to be a pretty strong learner to even get into a leadership role. And most people agree that you have to be continuously learning as a leader as well.

The problem is that what is common knowledge is not always common practice. As the demands of the leadership role pile up, and the freely available time on the calendar shrink, it can become easy to cut learning from the schedule.

But what leaders who consistently excel know is that continuously learning has to be a priority. They know that resting on their past knowledge and foolishly believing they’ve learned enough is inviting disaster. Because as the world changes, leaders who rest on how much they know will find they know an awful lot about a world that doesn’t exist anymore.

Learning doesn’t have to dominate a leader’s calendar, but it cannot be removed from it. And a few simple habits, practiced regularly, can dramatically increase how much learning leaders can find time for.

So, in this article, we’ll outline four ways you can keep learning as a leader.

Linger On Failure

The first way to keep learning as a leader is to linger on failure. Failure is feedback. It’s uncomfortable feedback, but it’s the most potent form of feedback when it comes to learning. In addition, failure is inevitable. Projects will fall apart or go over budget. Clients will move to competitors. People will quit. But how you respond matters. You can shift blame and try to convince others it wasn’t your failure. Or you can linger on the failure long enough to analyze what happened and improve as a result.

Perhaps one of the best examples of modern-day learning from failure is Navy Seal turned leadership consultant, Jocko Willink. The worst day of Willink’s Navy service was also the one he learned the most from. He was leading a mission that turned into a friendly fire incident—with teams shooting at each other in the mistaken belief they were the enemy. Afterwards, Willink was told to prepare for a debrief and, instead of compiling reasons he was blameless, Willink reflected on the failure and decided to take ownership of it. And his choosing to take on the blame helped the rest of his battalion be honest and transparent about the incident—so they could learn how to keep it from happening again.

Stay Curious

The second way to keep learning as a leader is to stay curious. Be willing to ask others about their expertise. This sounds easy, but often we’re tempted to do the opposite and pretend we have the answers. In fact, research shows that faking certainty and displaying confidence may be what brought most people into a leadership role in the first place. But it’s not an effective way to keep learning. Something amazing happens when leaders admit they don’t know and start asking questions: people start teaching them.

One leader whose life is a testament to the power of curiosity is Brain Grazer. Grazer is the founder of Imagine Entertainment and a Hollywood executive responsible for dozens of hit television shows and movies. But inside Hollywood, he’s also known for his “curiosity conversations.” Starting early in his career, Grazer made it a goal to have at least one conversation per week with someone about a topic or industry he knew nothing about. This wasn’t a networking exercise where he was just trying to expand his contact list, although that happened. It was a regular habit of trying to expand his mind and a realization that the best way to do that was to stay curious and be genuinely interested in other people.

Experiment

The third way to keep learning as a leader is to experiment. When everything is working, it’s easy to forget the importance of trying new things to keep learning. But smart leaders know they must challenge the status quo when times are good in order to keep bad times from happening. In addition, being willing to let your team experiment can scale up everyone’s learning. You won’t always have successful experiments. There will be failures, but as we’ve already covered, those are learning opportunities as well

One overlooked form of experiments leaders make often is decisions. Admit it. Decisions don’t look like experiments. It was Peter Drucker who is often credited with pointing this out. Drucker knew that, at their core, every decision is a miniature experiment in what you think will happen as a result of your actions. In fact, he went so far as encouraging leaders to keep a “decision journal”—a record of what decision you made and what the intended result was—so that you can check back in a few months or years and learn the results of your decision experiment and actually learn from your decisions instead of just continuing to blindly act.

Cultivate Conflict

The final way to keep learning as a leader is to cultivate conflict. One unfortunate result of being in a leadership position is that people often self-censor ideas that conflict with the leader’s. They fear being see as a troublemaker or worse, and so they keep their ideas to themselves. But leaders need the benefit of those ideas and, as such, they need to embrace existing conflict and cultivate more. Obviously, this refers to task-focused conflict and not interpersonal conflict. But that task-focused conflict still needs to be respectful in tone and with a sense of team-wide trust. And it’s the leader’s job to model the way on how to have the respectful conflict to learn from diverse ideas.

Often that can mean openly calling for conflict over an idea or proposal. There’s a possibly apocryphal story about General Motors’ legendary CEO Alfred P Sloan that captures the idea behind cultivating conflict. During a meeting in which GM’s top management team was considering a weighty decision, Sloan closed the meeting by asking.” “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?” Sloan then waited as each member of the assembled committee nodded in agreement. Sloan continued, “Then, I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about.”

While these habits are simple to practice, they are not exactly comfortable—especially at first. It’s comfortable to be curious because curiosity comes with an admission that you don’t know something. It’s uncomfortable lingering on failure. It’s uncomfortable to hold yourself accountable for decisions or to cultivate conflict. But learning happens in discomfort. Discomfort is a sign that you’re growing. So, if you want to stay committed to keep learning as a leader, you’re unfortunately going to have to stay committed to being uncomfortable as a leader as well. And if you do, you’ll keep growing into new and better ways to lead your team and you’ll keep creating an environment where everyone can do their best work ever.

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on January 31, 2022.

Image credit: Pexels

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Five Keys to Building Trust on Teams

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Five Keys to Building Trust on Teams

GUEST POST from David Burkus

One of the easiest ways to predict how successful or not a given team will be, is to first measure how much trust exists on the team as a whole. When members of the team trust each other, they’re more likely to succeed because they’re more likely to share information.

They’re more likely to share feedback.

They’re more likely to take risks.

They’re more likely to support each other.

They’re more likely to express crazy ideas that lead to the brilliant ideas they need.

They’re more likely to admit failures and get the help that they need.

And they’re more likely to grow together and reach new levels of performance.

But how do you build trust on a team? How do you get people to trust each other? And how do you get people to trust the team and you as a leader?

In this article, we’ll outline five ways to build trust on teams. Trust is not built overnight, but these five simple actions will start the process of trust-building on your team.

Build Real Bonds

The first way to build trust on teams is to build real bonds. Specifically, build bonds between teammates that form for reasons beyond shared work or collaborative roles. In other words, build friendships. Research suggests those who report having friends at work are more productive, more committed, and yes more trusting (and trustworthy). And while you can’t force two people on your team to be friends, you can create opportunities for your team to have socialization and non-work conversations that will lead to the discovery of mutual interests. These “uncommon commonalities” make people more likely to become friends—and make it more likely they develop mutual trust.

Encourage Candor

The second way to build trust on teams is to encourage candor. Encourage the team to speak freely and even to disagree. While that might seem counterintuitive, respectful dissent and collaborative disagreement are signs of trust on a team. It’s inevitable that members of your team will disagree, if no one is speaking up that’s a sign that there is not yet enough trust built up. As a leader, you can fix this by encouraging dissent and disagreement with you, and then modelling what respectful behavior and civil disagreement look like. This not only demonstrates to the team how to behave when they disagree, it also demonstrates that they can trust that their ideas are heard.

Spotlight Wins

The third way to build trust on teams is to spotlight wins. Whenever members of the team have small wins—work related or not—make sure you take the time to let the whole team know. This is good for the overall culture and camaraderie of the team, but it also tells the individual members that you care and that you notice what matters to them. In addition, it makes it more likely they’ll trust you and come to you with successes and failures—and come to the whole team with successes and failures—because they know that you care.

Accept Failures

The fourth way to build trust on teams is to accept failures—and in some ways this is the opposite side of spotlighting wins. Failures happen. No one wins all of the time and no team is able to deliver on time and under budget every time. Mistakes get made. And situations outside of the team’s control happen. But how leaders and teams respond to those failures is what determines future success, and future trust. Leaders who seek to find blame, and teammates who offer quick excuses, undermine trust, and prevent the team from improving. But leaders who seek to find learning opportunities inside of failure make the team more trusting and, in the long run, much more successful.

Model Vulnerability

The final way to build trust on teams is to model vulnerability. Sometimes, all it takes for a team to start trusting each other is for the team leader to stop pretending to be perfect. When leaders admit their mistakes and own up to their biases, they send a strong message to the rest of the team that they can be trusted. And often that vulnerability is met with vulnerability from others. It’s impossible to build trust on a team without creating the opportunity to be trusted—and that opportunity comes from vulnerability.

While these five methods are not an exhaustive list of the ways trust develops on teams, they all have something in common. Each of these methods is a leader-initiated action that kick starts a cycle of trust. Each method creates space for team members to act on trust and feel trusted. And we know from research that trust is not given, and trust is not earned, trust is reciprocated. It’s a virtuous cycle that starts with one person — usually the leader—demonstrating trust and modeling what trustworthiness looks like. Over time that trust compounds and creates an environment where everyone on the team can do their best work ever.

Image credit: Gemini

This article originally appeared on DavidBurkus.com

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Making Employees Feel Appreciated

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Making Employees Feel Appreciated

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Appreciation is an underutilized part of organizational life.

It’s not that leaders think they don’t need to make employees feel appreciated. Most are in agreement that showing appreciation for great work is key to a positive organizational culture. And the research supports that belief. For example, Professors Adam Grant and Francesca Gino found that “a little thanks goes a long way” and experiencing even small moments of gratitude from managers significantly increases employee motivation. The same is true for teams. Researcher Perry Geue found that teams perform tasks better when their members believe that their colleagues respect and appreciate them.

But this research also points to why appreciation is underutilized.

Most organizations equate appreciation with rewards. They create bonus structures and gift-giving programs. But most research shows its expressions of gratitude that move the needle on feeling appreciated. And while saying something heartfelt while giving your team new coffee mugs might have some effect, it’s the day-to-day ways leaders express gratitude that really matter.

So, in this article, we’ll review four ways leaders can help make employees feel appreciated — we’ll cover the research and some practical ways to get started.

Touch Base Early And Often

The first way to help make employees feel appreciated is to touch base early and often. Especially in an era of hybrid and remote work, it can be easy to let a day or two (or more) go by without having a social conversation with your people. So, make a point to check-in often, and preferably early in the day. These check-ins don’t have to be formal, performance check-ins. They’re much more about making time to socialize and let them know you care.

Research from Jessica Methot suggests quick hellos and casual conversations mean more than you think. Small talk at work (or in Slack) is how people find the mutual interests or common background experiences that create bonds. These bonds lead to friendships and feelings of connection and appreciation on teams. So, make time for small talk and it’ll have a big effect on how appreciated your people feel.

Give Unscheduled Feedback

The second way to help make employees feel appreciated is to give unscheduled feedback. Many team leaders wait until formal performance reviews or regularly scheduled check-ins to give any feedback at all. But feedback that feels obligatory is not only less potent, it is less appreciated. Unscheduled feedback means taking the time after small wins or even just random moments to praise people for things they’re doing well. It also means finding time at the end of projects or when things go wrong to give constructive feedback as well.

When feedback is given more closely to the actions observed, it sends people the message that they’re so important the feedback can’t wait. And it’s not just about manager-employee feedback. Developing a culture on the team of unscheduled praise can go a long way toward helping employees feel appreciated. Research from Ron Friedman shows that high-performing teams reported receiving more frequent appreciation at work — from their manager and their colleagues.

Be Flexible And Trust

The third way to help make employees feel appreciated is to be flexible and trust your people. We know from decades of research into human behavior that having autonomy at work is a powerful motivator. But giving people autonomy also signals trust. Leaders who let their people determine how they’ll work, when they’ll work, and even where they’ll work send a clear and compelling signal that they trust their people. And research from Paul Zak shows that feeling trusted can improve not just motivation but outcome performance as well.

Of course, most important is that when we feel trusted, we feel appreciated by our leaders and our team. And Zak’s research suggests that those initial feelings set off a virtuous cycle: we respond to feelings of trust and appreciation with more trustworthy behavior, which triggers more appreciation, which triggers more positive behavior. And so on. And so on. So, get the cycle going by using any discussions about flexibility to also convey trust and appreciation.

Talk Growth

The final way to help make employees feel appreciated is to talk growth — their growth, not yours or the company’s. This means having regular conversations about people’s goals, career plans, and desires for their development. Professor Teresa Amabile has compiled the largest body of evidence to show that, of all the things that intrinsically motivate us, feeling that we’re making progress is one of the most powerful. But you can only help people show progress in their careers if you know about their career goals.

Unfortunately, a lot of leaders refrain from talking growth and career development outside of an annual review process. But plans change often, and the formalized process isn’t the most effective way to appear interested in someone’s desires — and hence not an effective way to signal to them that they’re appreciated. So, talk growth early and often, let people know you’re there to help them with their whole career and create opportunities that will help them grow.

Unlike gifts or awards, these four methods are not one-time offerings to people. They’re habits. Their effects may feel minimal at first, but they will grow in potency over time. Leaders who make their employees feel appreciated do so over the long-haul. Because the way to let employees know you care and that you support them, is to show them a track record of care and support. And overtime, that will prove how much they’re appreciated. And over even more time, that appreciation will help employees do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pexels

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