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Navigating Change (Live)
Dear HBR: answers your questions with the help of HubSpot executive Katie Burke.
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Is your organization going through some big shifts? In this episode of HBR’s advice podcast, Dear HBR:, cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Katie Burke, the chief people officer of HubSpot. They talk through what to do when you’re ready to move up but there’s no one to take over your role, you’re expected to work on too many projects with too little support, or layoffs are happening but your boss isn’t giving you more responsibility.
Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Email your questions about your workplace dilemmas to Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org.
From Alison and Dan’s reading list for this episode:
HubSpot Careers Blog: How to Embrace Change at a Fast-Paced Company by Emily Ricco — “If we all tried to communicate more, it would significantly impact everyone’s ability to cope with change. But instead of trying to control everyone else’s communication strategy, focus on starting with yours.”
HBR: The Network Secrets of Great Change Agents by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro— “First, formal authority may give you the illusion of power, but informal networks always matter, whether you are the boss or a middle manager. Second, think about what kind of network you have—or your appointed change agent has—and make sure it matches the type of change you’re after.”
HBR: 5 Behaviors of Leaders Who Embrace Change by Edith Onderick-Harvey — “To infuse change agility into your culture, mid- and front-line leaders — who are closest to the markets, customers, and daily operations — need to be encouraged and incented to see opportunities in what they do every day. They need to look beyond this month or this year to identify trends and take action.”
HBR: Research: To Get People to Embrace Change, Emphasize What Will Stay the Same by Merlijn Venus, Daan Stam, and Daan van Knippenberg— “ In overcoming resistance to change and building support for change, leaders need to communicate an appealing vision of change in combination with a vision of continuity. Unless they are able to ensure people that what defines the organization’s identity — ‘what makes us who we are’ — will be preserved despite the changes, leaders may have to brace themselves for a wave of resistance.”
DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR: from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.
DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts and help you move forward. Today we’re talking about navigating change in front of a live audience at INBOUND, a conference put on by HubSpot. Our guest is Katie Burke. Katie’s the company’s chief people officer. Katie, thanks for coming on.
KATIE BURKE: Thanks so much for having me. I’m so delighted to chat with you two.
DAN MCGINN: Now, when you started out at HubSpot, it was a small Boston company. Now it’s a large publicly traded global company. You’ve seen a lot of change. Why do people have such a hard time adapting to change at work?
KATIE BURKE: I think change is hard for any human beings. It just so happens that work is a laboratory in which all that human change tends to take place. The other thing I always come back to is work is personal for people.
ALISON BEARD: And so often change results in people being pushed into roles they don’t want to be in or being thrust into roles they’re not ready for. So, how do you as someone managing the HR of a large company handle that?
KATIE BURKE: I always remind people that with change always comes great opportunity. There’s a natural inclination when you hear so and so is changing, so and so is leaving. And I always remind people your natural inclination is just that gut [reaction] like ah this is going to be terrible! How can you change your posture and say what great things could come with this from a personal opportunity perspective, but also for the company as well?
DAN MCGINN: Do you find people are able, over time, to deal with change better, or do you find that there’s people who are adaptable and people who get that queasy feeling you describe?
KATIE BURKE: I don’t think any leader should ever say, I’m adaptable and you’re not. I believe people can come more adaptable over time.
DAN MCGINN: Ready to help our three letter writers deal with change?
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Let’s go to the first question. Dear HBR: I work in a family business which is suffering from growing pains. We’re going from being small to now being almost 100 employees. On top of that, the second-generation director is coming through to take over the business soon. I originally came into the company as a personal assistant to the new director after completing my university degree in business. I saw this as a great opportunity to jump into the career world and learn how the top end operates. However, three years on, I’m still a floater in the company. I cover reception and the other assistant when they take leave. I’m stuck doing tedious and entry-level tasks. I believe it’s stunting my career growth. I’ve taken ownership of the company’s social media and online marketing. However, I have no experience in this myself, and no one with experience to assist me or report to. We have no marketing department at all. The senior management has said to me numerous times that they will support me in whatever I want to do and that they understand that I’m worth more than administrator tasks, but they don’t do anything to help me. There’s no one to take my place. I’m left to create my own role. I have a formal review coming up shortly. I’m not sure how to approach it. I want to show I can take initiative and drive my work. Do you have any guidance on moving towards that clear cut role and more responsibilities? Katie, what do you think?
KATIE BURKE: So, first things first. I think this person has proven themselves to be invaluable at a growing company which I think is amazing. I would also say that creating and charting your own path is part of working for a family business. I have never met a family business that has, for example, formal career growth plans, formal interventions, tuition reimbursement, that kind of thing. It also sounds like there are no individuals within the company that can provide formal guidance or mentorship on specific things that are really important for this individual. So, as I would think about the formal review that’s happening, I would identify some external opportunities that would be helpful as a catalyst for this individual’s growth. So by way of example, it sounds like marketing is a real passion area. And so, what I would put together is a growth plan for marketing that includes some free stuff that I’m going to do on my own, but also some stuff that I would love for the company to support me on. And then it sounds like there’s a need for external mentorship or learning opportunities from someone outside the company. I would ask for the company’s permission because it’s a good place to start to take, let’s call it, three external leaders out for dinner, coffee, wine, you name it to learn from them. And oftentimes those things help give you inspiration, education, mentorship, and ideas to improve in your role.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. She has just been given full responsibility for social media and online marketing which seems like a pretty sweet job in a fast-growing company. And so, really what she has is not a responsibilities problem, it’s a learning problem. We’ve worked with Dorothy Leonard at HBS who covers deep smarts and she talks about how the best way to learn from another expert or learn how to be an expert is to observe them and to shadow. So, if she can get permission to do that and go into other organizations and see how the people who do social media and online marketing do their jobs well, I think that could really help her too.
KATIE BURKE: I could not agree more. What I would actually consider doing is writing a formal job description for where you want to be, but not with a timeline associated with it. So, for example, it seems to me a reasonable jump would be to a marketing coordinator role. Pull up relevant salary comp, pull up relative job descriptions from other family businesses. Do not pull it from a massive Fortune 10 company and expect them to do the same. I would pull that similar role and say, this is where I want to be. I would love your help figuring out how I get from where I am currently to this role and what I need to do to make that happen. And that way it becomes collaborative. You’re not holding them hostage by saying if I’m not a market coordinator by X date, I’ll leave. You are simply filling in the blanks for them on what happiness and your career would look like. And I find family businesses are incredibly busy, incredibly fast-moving and oftentimes there are an incredible number of personalities at play. So, if you’re able to give someone a concrete plan to help you grow, it becomes much more collaborative and clear what you want versus that ambiguous, I want a promotion or just to be off the front desk.
DAN MCGINN: Wow. That sounds like a lot of work.
KATIE BURKE: It does, but I actually think first things first. If you want to succeed in the family business, you have to be a self-starter. In some ways it’s the best training ground for entrepreneurs, is to work at a family business. Now, the upside of that is you don’t have to wait for archaic promotion guidelines and you have to be here for five years before you can do this. And so, rather than just thinking about this is a lot of work, also be thinking about gosh, if I worked at another company that had stringent rules around career mobility, I couldn’t even have this conversation.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah, a lot of companies, it seems like the big companies, sort of like the Army where you’re going to get promoted every couple of years and you’re sort of stepping on an escalator and if you do well, things are just sort of taken care of. Definitely not what you can expect in a 100 person company.
KATIE BURKE: No and that’s, I think that’s hugely incredibly valuable. One of my first jobs was at a small agency and I did everything. I got coffee. I wrote proposals. And I think back on my career, it was one of the most helpful education lessons I ever learned and it wasn’t formal training. And I’m sure at the time I said to someone, awful over wine, no one’s helping me with anything. And of course, it was a great lesson multitasking. A great lesson in entrepreneurial thinking. A great lesson in change management. So, if you can work at a family business, I think you’re getting an education that frankly is hard to pay for.
DAN MCGINN: So, it seems like one of the big pain points for her is that she can be doing the online marketing one moment, but then the next day she’s the receptionist covering the desk, or she’s doing data entry or entry-level tasks. How hard is that, the idea that you can give a young person a great opportunity, but they still have to do the work they don’t want to do?
KATIE BURKE: It’s really hard. We deal with that on a regular basis. But one thing I always remind people is, OK, if you’re sitting at the front desk, certainly there are a number of administrative tasks that need to get done. But also, some of the most interesting things at any given company happens at the front desk. So, what I would be doing if I were in her shoes is thinking about what Instagram post can you do where you interview the next person that comes up? What you can see at the front desk of a business can be the best possible marketing. And every family business that I know and proud to be a customer from, oftentimes the people are what makes their organization so special. And so, I think she should view it as a unique opportunity to actually blend those worlds and think about what she can see from the front desk that others might miss about their company narrative.
ALISON BEARD: I’m so glad that you said that Katie because we’ve published a lot of work on job crafting. But one of the pieces talked about three pillars and that’s tasks, relationships, and perceptions. And so, this idea that she can change her perception about this sort of tedious task, even being a personal assistant to the guy who’s about to be the new CEO of the company, that’s going to pay dividends many, many times over. So, if she can, if she’s so focused on the tasks, exactly what she’s doing, and surely there is room to maybe bring in a few interns, get some temps in to do the really tedious work, but being at the front desk, taking that over once in a while, that can be part of a great marketing job.
KATIE BURKE: Without question and what you said is so important, which is she has access as a result of her role as a personal assistant to information and context that other people in the company would beg to have access to. And so, rather than thinking about I have to do this, think about I get to do this and oh, by the way, I think you’re exactly right. Interns, temps are a great way, one of the best ways to do it is to say, look how wonderful this person is doing in my role. It would be much easier if I step back because I think those are all really good tactical solutions. But I also think thinking of it as I get to do this while I wait for my future as a marketing coordinator, helps you keep a positive attitude and frame as you have to complete some of those tasks.
DAN MCGINN: I get the impression that part of what she’s facing here is an organization where everybody thinks she’s pretty great, but there’s not the one person who’s willing to really fight for her. And it seems like especially in promotion decisions that it really takes one person to sort of take the ball and run with it. And it’s not clear to me that she has that person in her professional life.
KATIE BURKE: So, my takeaway and I could be wrong, but my takeaway was not that she doesn’t have it, it was that the person who is there that feels that way about her the most is also the busiest and getting ready or a big leadership change at the organization. And so, I actually think some of the most important work she can do is to stop time at some point, pick your timing and really make the ask of that person and say what’s important to you in the business. My sense is she has that relationship. My sense is just that that person is probably the busiest person and it’s not that they don’t care enough to help, it’s that they’re trying to juggle 18 balls, just as she is.
DAN MCGINN: And there’s also a dynamic there where if she’s a great personal assistant to this boss, the first thing that happens when he promotes her is he loses his personal assistant. So, there’s that push-pull there that it could be a loss for him and that might be an impediment to promoting her.
KATIE BURKE: And to the personal assistant job requires so much trust, they have so much access to your life. They know all of your wonderful qualities. They also know all of your flaws. And so the notion during a time of change of someone new having to learn those and frankly, seeing some of the things that maybe you’re not, you know are your flaws, can be incredibly daunting. So, I think you raise a good point and I think that’s really important empathy for her to have, and that’s why it would be even more important if she’s thinking about who could backfill her, to make sure that that person knows you wouldn’t be losing that. If anything you’d be getting someone’s fulltime attention on you so it doesn’t feel like something’s being taken away.
ALISON BEARD: Great.
DAN MCGINN: So Alison, what are we telling this listener?
ALISON BEARD: So, we want her first to understand that in a family business, having to create your own job is pretty common. You do have to be a self-starter. She should take the reins, write a job description maybe for a marketing coordinator, design the role that she wants to play, present a growth plan for marketing to the higher-ups at the right moment, and also, a learning plan for herself that probably includes a lot of external classes, mentorships, conversations, maybe even shadowing someone outside the organization. We’d love for her to perhaps shift some of the more tedious tasks to interns or temps, other people that she trusts and knows that the bosses will trust, but also rethink the value of some of the things that she’s doing, especially being at the front desk. That’s a very public-facing, marketing role in and of itself. And also, her relationship with this new director. When it’s the right time, she should certainly have a conversation with him about her vision for her future at the company and how much she cares about it, and is ready for the next step.
DAN MCGINN: Next letter. Dear HBR: I’m a new employee at a mid-size European shipping company. I keep getting put in what feels like impossible or incredibly trying situations. I need your help. For instance, I was asked to work on a post-merger integration of an Asian company we bought. The project manager quit midway through and wasn’t replaced. So, the CFO took over, but of course, he had very little time to manage things. The upshot, high tensions between the owner of the acquired company and our own senior leadership. I feel we failed to build guanxi, that’s relationships and connections before the acquisition. This only complicated an integration that was already too complex. It felt like I was just spinning my wheels. At about the same time, I was put in charge of leading 19 improvement initiatives across our global offices. I had no teams or resources and barely any relationship with the people involved. I certainly lacked the official seniority to motivate cooperation from some of the very senior people effected. Some of these initiatives were already organized and nearly complete. Some were massive efforts that would be years in the making. Others had no existing organization or project charter to speak of. And in all the cases, the C-level executive who put me in charge offered no public show of support. This did nothing to overcome the strong resistance to some of these changes. I work hard and I’m flexible. I think I’m adept at expressing project benefits in terms of stakeholder interests and building support. And yet, I feel even the most seasoned professional would have had trouble managing this. What can I do?
KATIE BURKE: I feel tired just having to listen to this, 19 improvement initiatives feels like a lot for anyone to take on. But I will say at the risk of playing devil’s advocate, this person has been entrusted with a huge amount of responsibility and a huge remit, and frankly a huge opportunity to do great things. And I do worry a little bit that the letter writer outlined all the things the company has done wrong and all the things leaders have done wrong. And again, I would just come back to the fact that the narrative you tell yourself on a regular basis has such a profound impact on how you show up at work. And if you expect to lead 19 different initiatives across the company and rally people behind you, if you have that victim mentality, it’s going to be incredibly hard to get people to follow you. And frankly, that’s what you need for overall success.
ALISON BEARD: I love that you said that Katie because my first line in my notes is congratulations to him for getting assigned to these interesting and challenging tasks that he can learn a ton from.
KATIE BURKE: That’s so well said. I would echo your congratulations. There is clear leadership potential and clearly, some things that you see that your colleagues missed. View it as an opportunity to show how you can lead and bring people together. I will say to empathize with this individual, 19 things is too much for any person, any human being. So, I always think of it as a rule of five. And so, the first thing that I would do and this person chooses is narrow those 19 initiatives to let’s call it three things that the cross-culture, cross-project teams can really focus on and where they can create value. The other thing I will say in times of great change, junior people tend to ask for feedback on their actions, versus the plan. They want a reaction to: Is it OK if I do this? And frankly, you’re going to annoy the heck out of an already busy and overcommitted leadership team. Instead, your best bet is to get buy-in upfront on what success looks like and what are those key metrics? And what are the variables that you have control over? So, I would encourage this person to get buy-in up front, to reduce the scope of their, the things they’re expected to improve in a short interval of time. And third, to adopt a really positive attitude because the people that you’re leading and the people you’re expecting to influence are going to rally around them.
DAN MCGINN: Yeah. Nineteen is obviously too many, but that raises the question, OK, what’s the criteria he uses to pick which of the 19 he should tackle and does he need permission to let the other 14 fall by the wayside?
KATIE BURKE: So, there are always clues. Executives always leave clues. Even if they’re not explicit in what they’re saying in their communication with you. They leave clues behind. And so, if I were him I’d be a good detective and go OK. What if they said at company meetings, what actions are they working on and the structural changes they’re making? What frustrations have they expressed in previous initiatives? And use that to make assumptions around what you should prioritize. So, oftentimes what people do, especially new leadership positions is choose based on their position and impressions. So, for example, I care about this and that’s what we should prioritize. Actually, your clues for what to prioritize should come from what executives are saying around other changes in the business. If an executive hears something parroted back to them that sounds familiar, it makes it much more likely they’re going to do pattern matching and go, this person has been listening to me. They’re clearly onto something. So, oftentimes I find it’s a good hook to get buy-in because people actually notice that you’re paying attention to what they say.
ALISON BEARD: So Katie, how do you get from 19 initiatives down to three without saying, you can’t handle the work?
KATIE BURKE: What I would do is frame the focus on three as the start of a really successful shift within the company. And by saying hey, if we get human beings around the organization focused on these three things, the other remaining initiatives under that umbrella of 19 will still happen. One of the tactics that I use when people don’t believe me on things like that is I actually go, can you walk over to one of our frontline employees and ask them what our 19 things are that we’re working on? I have never seen an employee be able to recite 19 things or 19 values. And so, when you come back to that human element, it becomes much easier to say, focusing on three to five things is much more manageable. It means it’s much more likely that our people managers can explain it to people and it makes it much more likely that we’ll succeed, which is a win for all of us.
DAN MCGINN: Here’s a cynical suggestion. Shouldn’t he just pick projects where he thinks he can succeed?
KATIE BURKE: It’s so funny that you say that. I actually, I have a very strong perspective on this which is that oftentimes new leaders want wins and they think that’s what executives care about. That’s actually what you care about. So, a win is actually only a win to the degree that it’s a win for the company. And so, picking the things that you’re going to succeed on because they’re the easiest is often the easiest way to ensure that you will no longer be there in a year. What I will say is that rallying people around positive energy and getting some wins on the board is helpful for overall inertia of the project. So, I don’t think it’s a crazy suggestion at all to think of what those are. But I worry sometimes that advising leaders to think of that as their kind of lens for success as short term thinking that can sometimes catch up with them six months later.
ALISON BEARD: So, he needs to look for early wins, but after doing the analysis of which projects are most important.
KATIE BURKE: Exactly right. And on the early wins, what tends to happen if you’re a new leader is you get one of those wins and you go, I crushed it. That is the exact time where you say we and that frame is really important.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I was worried for our letter writer because he is a new employee. And everything that we’re talking about, any kind of organizational change, new initiatives, require great networks. So, how does he go about building the networks he needs within the organization to make sure that these initiatives that he’s chosen are successful?
KATIE BURKE: I think you’re spot on and it’s interesting. He picked up on the fact that before the merger there wasn’t that trust built. And so, I think he has to take his own advice which is to say, he is seeing the long term impact of not taking the time to build that trust, many, many months later. He has to block out time for building those strategic relationships. The question I would ask if I were in his shoes is where are my biggest weaknesses, my biggest blind spots as it relates to my network map within the company, and prioritize those first versus the most senior people. But I think you’re really on to something that trust in networks is going to be imperative long term for this.
ALISON BEARD: One point that came out of an article I worked on with Julie Battilana at HBS and Tiziana Casciaro who’s at Rotman, a few years ago, was that successful change agents really know how to access the informal network. So, those are the people that you need to get behind you for anything to work.
KATIE BURKE: In times of change, administrative assistants are some of the most powerful. They’re always powerful people in a company. But truly in times of change, I find administrative assistants, people who have been there for a really long time and so to your point, I would very much argue that this person should be focused less on titles, or years of experience and more on who is actually getting things done in this company, and how can he build meaningful relationships with them.
DAN MCGINN: What you’re saying cuts both ways though because I think bosses realize that in order to drive change, you’re going to need a network. They know that he’s a new employee, yet they asked him to do it. So, they must, somebody there must think that he’s really good, or he has the ability to do this. Somebody must see something in him to put him up against this set of challenges.
ALISON BEARD: Or, it’s just that he is seeing everything with fresh eyes. So, some of these programs that have taken a while to get off the ground, he can come in and revitalize them. He can look at the older ones, figure out how to change them. So, I think maybe they’re relying on him to be this novice.
KATIE BURKE: Yeah and I guess regardless of whether you’re, there’s a benefit to being the fresh eyes, or whether they’re frankly saying, hey, this seems like a good project for failure so let’s give it to the new guy. Regardless of which of those things is true, you want to be careful of being the new person against the old guard, because at some point, whether it’s in the next two months, two weeks, or two years, someone who’s an established leader of the company is going to need to be part of your change initiative. Don’t just be the new person who comes in basically saying, everything old has to be new. Try and figure out what’s really working so you can build meaningful relationships with some of the people that have been there for a while, who are open to change and can be meaningful collaborators to you.
ALISON BEARD: Great. So Dan, what are we telling this European executive?
DAN MCGINN: We’re telling him at first we think he needs to examine his mindset. At best he comes off as sort of the underdog. At worst he has kind of a victim’s mentality. We think he needs to have a more positive outlook to see this as an opportunity to put points on the board. The biggest point is he has too many low priorities things on his plate. He needs to narrow his focus. Pick three, maybe five. Focus on them. When he does that he should be thinking about the impact on the business, the pain points for the organization, the body language, and queues that his bosses have used about what’s most important. He shouldn’t necessarily look for early wins. Early wins are often the low hanging fruit, but that’s not the important fruit and he should think much more about the impact than just making himself feel good by having some early success. He should try to get buy into the initial plan and then just run with it and not constantly be checking in on every behavior. When he does have some success, he should make it a team win, a “we” victory, not an “I” victory. Long term he should be thinking about building his network and rallying people to the cause. Building some trust so that they’ll actually want to change and want to help him with the next 14 initiatives he has to do.
ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I work for a company that’s in the midst of a huge organizational change. We had substantial layoffs recently. In the past 12 months, we’ve gotten entirely new leadership. I’ve been in my current position for a little over three years. Last year around this time I was promised a promotion. However, it hasn’t happened yet. Each time I brought it up with my manager, I feel like I’m getting the brushoff. To make matters worse, since the layoffs, it seems like my good relationship with him has turned bad. Since one of the members of our team was let go, he’s taken on a lot of her work. I expected that with getting promoted. I would also get more responsibilities, but he’s not allowing me to help him with these additional tasks. He also keeps me out of important conversations related to my program and he’s become generally unsupportive of the decisions I make. I absolutely love the job. It’s a really good fit for me, but I feel like I’m getting forced out of my role. At first, I thought I could give all these changes six months to see how the dust settles, but I don’t know if I can wait that long anymore. What should I do?
KATIE BURKE: My first thoughts are this is a tough one and I also think that when you’re eager or promotions, six months feels like a really long time. In the grand scheme of your work life, six months is not all that long. And so, I think there are two things that I think this individual should consider. One is empathy both for her won situation, but also or her manager. So, people tend to think of change as hard on them. As an individual, employees sort of thing from your perspective this is really hard on me. It sounds like her manager has had a considerable amount of change and a considerable amount of work dumped on his plate as well. Now, on the flip side, I think she has demonstrated patience and one of the questions I think that’s thinly veiled in her letter is how much patience should one person have? And I think that’s a decision that other people can’t make for you. The challenge is that if you come in every single day, to your manager and say, what about my promotion now Alison? What about my promotion now? And then how about now? Your manager does tend to avoid you. I hate to say it. You do become like oh, gosh she’s coming around the corner. I can’t talk about this again. And so, what I would honestly do in her situation is say, hey I have been, I’ve really tried to be super adaptable and it’s really important to me the promotion isn’t just to check the box. Here’s why it’s important to me. This company is something I love. Here’s how I think I can deliver results. When would be a good time for us to revisit it? I will prepare a deck, I will prepare an agenda. I will come in prepared for discussion. I don’t want to annoy you by continuing to revisit this, but I can’t have any less patience as it comes to navigating my career. And then that deck should start with the benefit of the company. So, one of the things I always say to people, as people will go, I need a raise because I’m getting married. I need a raise because I’m moving. You’re like, no offense. The company’s decisions as it relates to those things don’t actually tie to your personal life choices. And so, start with the company benefits of running the program and the promotion that it would entail. Then ask specific questions around what she could do to advance. Does that help?
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I think your point about empathy is a really good one. When I read this letter the first thing I thought was her manager’s really stressed. Her manager wants to make sure his entire team including her won’t be laid off too. And so, he’s doing the very best he can and he can’t really be focused on her promotion right now. He can’t be an advocate for her in the way that she wants. So, I do think that she needs to understand that and have a little bit more patience.
DAN MCGINN: Whenever we get a letter that says I was promised a promotion, I always cringe a little bit. I wonder, why do managers make promises when they know they’re going to have a hard time actually doing it. Do you discourage managers from making promises in your organization?
KATIE BURKE: So, I had a similar reaction of how would you think that it would be helpful to offer someone a promotion, and oh, by the way, a timeline associated with it that doesn’t actually align with the business schools and that you’re not sure you’ll be able to deliver. But I also have to say, I think first-time people managers and people managers, in general, have some of the hardest jobs. And so, while I do not think it was the most advisable choice on the manager’s side of things, I do empathize with his perspective. The other thing I’ll say echoing your point Alison is, the story that you tell yourself going in matters. And so if you just think about her letter, on the one hand, she said I love this company and my manager and I had a great relationship before. So he’s clearly not this horrible Grinch of a guy. But then she said I wonder if it’s become toxic and he’s done all this stuff and I was promised this. If you go into any conversation thinking I was promised this, our relationship might be toxic, the changes you have a really productive open, fruitful conversation are very low. And so, you have to go into that conversation with the narrative of, my manager used to be a huge support to me and he’s had a really rough six months. How can we work together for the best of the company? And I think that leads to a much more productive conversation than hey, last time we talked you promised me X, Y or Z.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah.
DAN MCGINN: How do you think she should think about this in the context of the layoffs? This is a manager who just had to get rid of part of the team and he has to be worrying, is this the first round? Is there going to be a second round? It seems like that’s the backdrop to a lot of what’s going on here.
KATIE BURKE: Absolutely. And I think one of the challenges of a super competitive talent market at the moment and frankly, the last decade of huge economic success and a boom, is that people don’t understand that layoffs change how managers behave and how businesses actually think about promoting and growing people. And exactly as you said, if you’re a manager or you’re wondering, gosh I don’t want to promote her and make it more likely that she’s hitting a salary band that she would be someone who would be laid off. Or, I’m hoping I can get her over this certain tenure-line and then include her in those conversations. So, I think you’re exactly right that the business context may be a part of it. And that’s where I think the empathy for your manager comes in. So, I would just caution her against being the person who after, let’s call it dozens or maybe hundreds of your colleagues lost their job, to be the person in there going hey, what about me.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. She needs to, as you mentioned when we started this show, think about the fact that there is all this turmoil. There is all this change, but it does present an opportunity in a way, and her boss isn’t giving it to her right now in the form of this promotion, but surely there are other areas beyond this team member who’s been laid off where she can step in and help. We published a great piece called surviving M&A by Mitchell Lee Marks at San Francisco State University, and he talks about how during mergers and acquisitions there’re often entire teams laid off, but the people who survive and thrive are the people who do, start with a SWOT analysis. Say what are my strengths and how am I going to use them to help this changed organization. What are the opportunities, what are the weaknesses that might cause me to be one of the people laid off, and the threats that I need to avoid? If she starts looking at it that way and looking around and thinking, where else can I help? Who else needs help beyond my boss, with the permission of her boss, she doesn’t want to go around his back. I do think though that could be a sort of useful new approach that benefits the organization and benefits her career too.
KATIE BURKE: I think you’re really on to something and one of my favorite quotes of all time is often brought up in times of international tragedy, but Mr. Rogers said: look for the helpers. And I really believe that in times of change and uncertainty, you remember people who helped out and who disproportionately showed up with kindness and with optimism. And I think the reality is that’s ultimately I’m guessing what her manager’s looking for here. So, if she were able to step back and say where can I create the most value and I’m just going to focus on value creation, it gets a lot easier to think about your overall career and growing there, than just focusing on the promotion.
DAN MCGINN: Given that she and the manager had a good relationship, I wonder if there’s an opportunity to try to just have a candid conversation and say look, what’s going on. Should I be worried about the next round? Well, why am I not in these meetings? I know there’s layoffs and layoffs create weirdness, but just tell me the truth. I can handle it. What should I be thinking here? I wonder what kind of response that would get?
KATIE BURKE: I wonder too, the one thing that concerns me about that approach is that she said that her manager’s excluding her from some of those conversations already. So, I wonder a little bit, although I don’t know, if she’s asked for more business context and sort of been shut out. That is one option to consider and sometimes it can be a really successful option. The other option can actually be getting your manager out of the office. Taking your manager for a walk and be actually leaving the building and all the stress that comes with it. And I think sometimes doing that opens the opportunity to say, how are you holding up with all this? And it’s easier to go to that emotional place as a manager if you’re outside the office.
ALISON BEARD: I do agree with you that showing empathy directly for the manager is great. I feel like a manager that’s already brushing you off to say hey, let’s step out for a coffee, while they’re totally overworked might be really hard.
KATIE BURKE: And you’re exactly right. I can see how in a time of being super busy that if someone said, let’s take a lot I’d be like you take a hike. [LAUGHTER] But all kidding aside, I think what I try to do is find a personal connection. So, maybe you don’t leave the office and say hey, I know you’ve been going through a lot, but something to bring the human element into the fold. I think sometimes people think that has to be a grand gesture and sometimes that can be viewed as almost like, that’s syrupy sweet. I actually think just brining their favorite tea, or their favorite snack, or doing something that would make a difference can help open up the human side of the conversation.
DAN MCGINN: Alison, what’s our advice to this listener?
ALISON BEARD: So, we’d love for her to start with empathy. She had a great relationship with her boss previously. Right now he’s under a ton of stress. So, what would be most helpful to him, and to their relationship is for her to approach him with a positive attitude and a stance of wanting to work together to make the company more successful. She should perhaps consider asking when it would be a good time to revisit the promotion idea and when that does happen, empathize the benefits to this business. But in general, we think she should be a little bit more patient. Understand that the promotion might not happen right away, but during times of turmoil, there are huge opportunities. So, she needs to find out where they are and figure out which of her strengths she can use to help. We want her to focus on value creation.
DAN MCGINN: Katie, thanks for coming on the show.
KATIE BURKE: Thank you so much for having me.
DAN MCGINN: That’s Katie Burke. She’s the chief people officer at HubSpot.
ALISON BEARD: Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. If you, in this crowd or out there listening have a workplace dilemma, please email us and we’ll do our best to help. The email address is DearHBR@HBR.org.
DAN MCGINN: And if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe on your podcast app. And please review the show on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. You’re a great audience. [APPLAUSE] We really appreciate it.
ALISON BEARD: You just stole my line. We really appreciate it!
DAN MCGINN: Thanks. I’m Dan McGinn.
ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.