Team Management: Navigating Challenges
Leadership must support their employees through difficult times. How do tech leaders help their reports navigate uncertainty and overcome challenges? Read on to find out.
One minute insights:
- Tech leaders feel like they’re successfully managing their employee engagement, performance and retention
- Employees discuss inflation, economic uncertainty and news of layoffs
- Team restructuring is a common source of challenge within organizations
- Many respondents opt to address divisive topics 1:1 with employees
- Toxic positivity, inappropriate behavior and narcissism are common examples of poor leadership
Most tech leaders feel like they’re successfully managing their teams
Most respondents feel like they’re successfully managing their team’s performance (75%), engagement (70%) and retention (70%).
Being transparent, being timely and doing what you say you’ll do are all important.
It is important to initiate open discussions face to face to address challenges in team management.
However, challenging news and situations are impacting their ability to work
Leaders have noticed their team discussing inflation (53%), economic uncertainty (47%) and news of layoffs at other organizations (44%).
HR and Top Management have to play [a] larger role in maintaining positivity in staff.
Leadership training is one way we are navigating challenges in team management.
Most leaders address divisive topics 1:1 and maintain an open-door policy to support employees
The most common approaches to addressing divisive topics in the workplace include 1:1s with individual employees (65%), internal comms from upper management (52%) and virtual group communication channels (50%).
31% will shut down conversations and only 22% see team meetings as an appropriate option.
Leaders offer support to their reports by keeping an open-door policy (62%), addressing challenges in team meetings (61%) and encouraging employees to adopt an optimistic outlook (54%).
Facing issues head-on is always the most important factor when navigating challenges.
We are exploring new ways [of navigating challenges in team management] like supporting mental health.
Most respondents have experienced some form of poor leadership from other leaders, but only some have chosen to report to HR
When it comes to respondents’ experiences with poor leadership, toxic positivity (43%) was the most commonly identified example. Inappropriate behavior (41%) and narcissism (38%) were also common.
40% of respondents have never reported another leader to HR, and 37% say they wish they had. 19% have made a formal complaint.
While fear of consequences prevented many from reporting poor leadership practices to HR, those who did usually saw a positive outcome
Among those who chose not to report an incident to HR, 63% said that they were concerned about the consequences of doing so. 43% didn’t think that filing a report would help the situation.
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