Leading from Home: Assuming Positive Intent

Leading a sales team remotely for the first time has been full of challenges - challenges that have brought some frustration but mostly opportunities and learnings. 

One particular learning has stood out to me: Assuming Positive Intent 

Although this should be broadly applied regardless of remote or office work circumstances, it takes on a new and fundamental meaning when leading remotely. The idea is simple - when employee actions do not meet your expectations, you fight that automatic urge to chasten and assume shortcomings and instead ask yourself what might that have employee intended with their actions? The answer is almost always never malicious, but it is easier to assume that is the case when not seeing our teams most of the day and passively observing their work.

One aspect of this challenge is academic, and there are most likely one or more of these elements at play:

• A misalignment of expectations. The simplest explanation. Consider a case where you and your rep have outlined a joint goal of a promotion at the end of the period. You both want the same end goal, but both sides have agreed to different paths that they both see as correct. This misalignment causes frustration on both sides that can be solved with a clearer action plan between manager and rep
• The employee is not bought in. A more complex challenge related to coaching and the manager-rep relationship. Directives, as outlined in this HBR article do little to motivate or change behavior. Instead, leaders can help gain buy-in through co-creating the action items and challenges to address and by working through tasks in manageable and measurable steps
• Something external has come up. Only a manager who has earned the trust of their reps will be able to have these conversations and be made aware of these hurdles. Sometimes these are small (“Car broke down -> late for work”), some are related to competing work priorities (“Another big proposal came up”), and others stem from larger outside distractions that may be influencing work performance

The second aspect is emotional. We as leaders often project our own internal struggles and concerns when we decide how to communicate a decision with our employees. In this new remote environment, a concern around our own ability to remain accountable at home and stay on task can influence how we react to our reps’ actions. Crucially, this also leads to assumptions about their day-to-day, which is largely unknown to us. If I think I have had an unproductive day and struggled to maintain focus, I am prone to think that in others and assume the worst. It is important to first identify our own personal feelings about our work and isolate this feeling against immediate decision making.

When we as leaders can isolate and remove that emotionally generated bias, we can begin to reflect on where the actions fell short and potentially why. Crucially, if we enter into this exercise assuming that the employee meant well in their work, it does wonders for building trust and seeing opportunities for growth and communication. Reps, conditioned to being called out for faults in their work, can instead see these conversations as a trust building exercise and an opportunity for growth. They will feel more encouraged to share challenges they are experiencing and be more willing to experiment with their work.

As leaders, we can take steps to help this process:

• Allow a moment of self-reflection. Can you identify a coaching gap that led to this outcome? Was there something else going on this week that could have gotten in the way? Did you and the rep clearly connect on expectations? This first moment of self-reflection can help frame the coming conversation
• Shift the language. As opposed to “Why didn’t you follow up with the Henderson account?”, a conversations starting with “Can you walk me through your work with the Henderson account and where we are?” allows manager and rep to start from a place of joint learning about the situation. Importantly, this conversation does not work if the rep knows the hammer is coming in both scenarios, so the well-intentioned curiosity needs to be sincere
• Find a point of learning to build from. While the conversation centers on a failure in outcome, the end learning can still be positive. Was there a miscommunication in stated goals? Does the rep need more manageable chunks to work towards their goal? Did you learn about your communication styles? This deeper joint learning should hopefully outweigh the challenges of the work itself

Finally, this exercise is not meant to let employees off the hook for agreed upon outcomes and standards of work. Consistent misses over time cannot be ignored. But by first assuming a positive intention, the communication around the work can become a productive one that is better suited to avoiding failures in the future