103: Critical People Skills for Hybrid Teams

1. Most people want to do a good job, but they may struggle when expectations are unclear.

By using task management software, setting KPIs, and documenting expectations for meeting and email etiquette, you can set your team up to perform at the highest level.

2. Great leaders are willing to be a launchpad.

When you’re truly invested in helping your team members succeed, you can celebrate if they choose to take the skills they learned from you and move on to something new.

3. Feedback is a two-way street.

One of the best ways to keep growing as a leader is to build a culture where your team is able to provide and receive frequent feedback.

Lisa Zeeveld on LinkedIn and Instagram

(1:56) Lisa explains why empathy is the most important soft skill for a leader

(3:37) How can someone lead a hybrid team without micromanaging? 

(6:37) Lisa describes how she sets clear expectations with her team

(9:34) Whether your team is virtual or in-person, building strong relationships is key for a great culture 

(16:37) Lisa explains how BELAY’s training process sets team members up for success

(23:14) Why are frequent one-on-one meetings vital for hybrid teams?

(26:57) Great leaders create channels for feedback at every level of the organization

Lisa Zeeveld:

Taking the time for that employee to share with you where they feel like they’re winning, what they want to celebrate with you, what they need help with, and you doing that in return, and we get that feedback all the time that people are like, “Oh, I just had an annual review.” Again, you’re missing all the details if you’re doing it that far apart. So do it quarterly, and offer that feedback. It’s going to make all the difference in the world with your team. I promise.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to One Next Step, the most practical business podcast in the world. You’re now one simple tip, practical tool, and small step away from growing your business. One Next Step is brought to you by BELAY, the incredible 100% remote organization revolutionizing productivity with virtual assistance, bookkeepers, and social media managers. Accomplish more, juggle less. Modern staffing from BELAY, and now to your hosts.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to One Next Step, the practical business podcast that helps you run your business so it stops running you. I’m one of your hosts, Ryan, and I’m so excited to be with you today because today, we’re talking about how you can lead anyone from anywhere as we talk through some critical skills to lead people more effectively and become a successful leader of a modern hybrid team. With 11 years of experience leading hybrid teams, our CFO, Lisa Zeeveld, definitely has some tips and tricks up her sleeve. But before we get started, let’s talk about time and how there’s never enough of it. But what if you could have an extra 15 hours every week?

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not. With the help of BELAY, the incredible organization revolutionizing productivity with subscription-based virtual assistant, bookkeeping, and social media strategist services, you could reclaim an average of 15 hours every week by delegating just five tasks. Tasks like email, scheduling, social media management, AP, AR, and expense reporting. Accomplish more, juggle less. Modern staffing from BELAY. Now, let’s jump into this week’s incredible conversation with Lisa.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

LZ, I am so excited to have this conversation with you today. As we get started, I guess I’d just love to hear what, in your opinion, is the most important people skill or soft skill that a leader should have?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. I’m going to say the very first thing that came to mind because of the first part of your question, and that’s the most important, people skill because I think that great leaders have to start… You just have to start being a great person first, and so empathy.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Empathy was the first thing that came to mind because I think that if you are not an empathetic leader, I think that you miss out an understanding where your team is coming from, where your client is coming from, where your business associates are coming from. I think it’s just critical to be empathetic.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I totally agree. I think the best leaders that I have had were the ones that tailored their leadership towards me, and that starts with empathy.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

It starts with their ability to approach each individual as a different human.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a pretty easy one. It just popped right in my head.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I totally agree. I totally agree. I hear one of my mentors, Andy Stanley, always talks about, “You have to work on your character before you work on your competency,” and I think empathy is right there in that category as well.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. When I think about the good and bad leaders that I’ve had over my career, I think overwhelmingly, the ones that I can think about and who have really molded me as a human, not just as a professional, but molded me as a human are those who came with empathy.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I totally agree. So in the context of a hybrid environment, an environment where you’ve got people maybe sharing four walls or maybe not.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

How would you say that you effectively coach and lead your team without the dreaded pitfall of micromanaging?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. Well, I think first and foremost, you have to hire the right people. Right? You have to hire adults that you think have the skillset, but overwhelmingly, I think that you have to start by building trust with them. I think trust is key in effectively coaching and leading a hybrid team. You have to know that because you’re not in the same room with them, the same building, the same state, and heck, there are some companies out there that’s not even in the same country right now.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

You have to trust your team members are doing what’s been delegated to them and what you hired them to do. So I would start there, first and foremost. I think too that there’s a lot of collaborative platforms and tools that you can use in order to have some oversight into what their daily workload is like, and so it’s not like you are asking all the time, “Hey, what are you working on? Hey, did you get this done?” Right? Nobody wants to be treated that way. So if you utilize really good platforms and really good tools, whether it’s a tasking system… CRMs come with a whole bunch of that kind of stuff. Then, you can run reports. You can look in, and check, and make sure stuff is getting done. Ultimately, that makes your team feel that you trust them. Crazy thing about trust is the more you give trust, the more trust you get in return. So, look at that. Then, they start to trust you more as a leader, and you can ask for bigger and better things. It’s really cool.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I totally agree. I’ve seen the tools that we use, shared calendars, things like that.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I remember one of the first initiatives for me when I started leading the team I lead now is I shared my calendar with them because I wanted them to know what I was working on in the same way that I asked to see theirs.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Right. Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

It was a way to lead in vulnerability that way, but also mutual accountability. It’s just like, “Hey, we’re all working towards the same thing, and we’re seeing what we’re working on.”

Lisa Zeeveld:

Oh, totally, and I find that it’s… Some team members, especially if they’re not coming from an environment where there’s been a lot of trust, their mind is blown. The fact that their leader would share their personal calendar with them, no way, and that just makes them want to work harder because they haven’t felt that before, which is sad in a way. Right?

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

But it’s cool once you’re in that environment.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Those high-trust environments, especially when you’re bringing people in from a place… You’ve identified great talent.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

You know they’re the right culture fit, but they have bad habits to unwind potentially from the previous employer.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

You have to lead with showing trust in the same way that you’re asking for it, and I think that’s a killer way to do that.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Oh, totally.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

In the context of limiting micromanagement, what role do you feel expectations play and clarifying those with the team that you’re leading?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. I mean, I think expectations are huge. I think, ultimately, I believe that everyone… Now, okay. Let me go back because somebody is going to write in and say not everyone. They’ve had that one bad employee. 99% of people, the people you hire want to do a good job.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

I honestly believe that people don’t show up to do a bad job. I don’t think that people show up to underperform. I think what happens is people start to underperform when they don’t have clear expectations, when it’s not obvious what the outcome should be, and so I think that it’s great to have that foundation of trust, it’s great to have all the tools, but you have to take it one step further and be very clear about what your expectations are, specifically when it comes around availability, productivity, meetings, all of those things that go into helping somebody be successful in their role.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. I know for us, we use KPIs as one of the tools to create expectations. Do you have other tools like that that you use with your team on a weekly basis or whatever that might be?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. I mean, KPIs are great. Again, we talked about those tools. I think that when you have a task management tool, it’s really easy to do that. One of the things that I love doing, and this is specifically what I’ve used with my virtual assistant, my executive assistant, but I’ve also used it with some team members is that we created a document together of what they expected from me as a leader and what I expected from them. That just helped clarify everything like, “Hey, we work in a virtual environment, but I’m going to let you know that you can expect me to be working from 9:00 to 6:00 on most days. Those are my working hours.” Then, I’ve had a team member go, “Hey, that’s awesome. But for me, you can expect me to be working from 7:00 to 4:00.”

Lisa Zeeveld:

If we had not done that that’s outside of a task management tool, that’s outside of some other tools that you’ve talked about, I could be working at 5:00, and sending an email, and going, “Huh, look at that. They’re not working. They’re just slacking off. They don’t even answer my email at 5:00.” Well, it was a really quick conversation of a document that we created that said, “Hey, these are my working hours. These are yours. Is there any problem with that? Hey, by the way, this is how I expect you to respond to emails.” We have a 24-hour virtual nod. I expect you to at least say, “Hey, I got this.” You don’t have to get it done, but creating a document just as something as easy as in Google, or it could be an email that you go back and forth, and then you put it in a note somewhere I think makes a huge difference when it comes to micromanaging and especially leading virtual teams.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. I think that really segues perfectly into my next question, and you are an expert at this. You’ve done this for 11 years. I started leading virtual teams during the pandemic, and then when I came to BELAY, went full… It was a hybrid team at that point, and came to BELAY, and it’s fully virtual, and that challenged so many assumptions that we’ve talked about on the podcast before for me.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

But how do you start building relationships with remote team members when you’re not sitting across from them? What have you done? This is something you’ve been very successful at because we have an unbelievable culture here, and your team is amazing, but how do you do that?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. Oh, well, thank you. Yeah. I mean, if I go back to 11 years ago, we had a… Our founders had a great idea to build this virtual team, but it had to start with a lot of intentionality because we could not be lazy in the fact that because we were in each other’s presence, that that meant that we were going to have a good culture and a good relationship. I think that’s what happens a lot of times in my experience with teams who are in person. You just assume it’s going to be haphazardly that you’re going to have a good working relationship and you’re going to have a good culture in that building.

Lisa Zeeveld:

So, number one, we knew that didn’t work, and number two, we had to be very intentional about creating spaces and time to build those relationships, and whether that was… Now, we have weekly staff meetings. In the beginning, we didn’t have that. It was every other week, the 10 of us would get on a call and talk about what we were doing for the week, and then from that… or the company grew, and then it was like, “Oh, well, let’s do quarterly meetings.” Then, we found out that quarterly in-person meetings wasn’t enough that we still needed to have those virtual meetings.

Lisa Zeeveld:

We also communicate a lot through instant messaging or Slack. Again, using those tools to constantly communicate. So I would say it starts with intentionality. It starts with knowing what you want to create, and then from that point, it goes to communicating what you want to create and how you’re going to do it, and then setting the schedule for it around how often you are going to meet.

Lisa Zeeveld:

It changes. Give yourself permission to change that from time to time. A lot of preparation. A lot of foundation-building. Yeah, and like I said, just overcommunicating all the time what is important to you because this is what I do know is that we tend to think that if we mention something once or even once per year, that people don’t like to hear things over and over. No one likes to have things repeated to them. But if you repeat it in a way that’s fun, and meaningful, and relevant in the space that we are in our world right now, I don’t think people mind, and so overcommunicating what your mission, and your vision, and your values are becomes a quick and easy way to build a deep relationship.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. It reminds me of a story. I have a friend who helped develop the whole cow campaign for Chick-fil-A.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

A couple years into it, there were some corporate team members that were like, “All right. Are moving on to the next thing?” The reminder was, “If we are just now starting to get tired of something, they’re just now starting to hear it,” and that’s obviously from a company to a customer relationship, but I think it’s true in vision casting as well, and expectations, and relationship development, especially in the context of a virtual relationship. You really can’t say stuff too much. You can’t be too clear too often.

Lisa Zeeveld:

No, and the other thing too. I think the keyword to the question you just asked is the relationship part of it, and there’s a lot of studies out there that will tell you that people actually need a friend at work. They need to have a deep relationship with someone at work. An appropriate relationship, of course, and so you have to create moments where your coworkers, your team members are able to understand each other on a deeper level. We do that for our leadership team in super cool ways. I mean, we have done… climbed mountains together when we could travel. There’s been other times where we didn’t travel, and it was just all of us sitting around a living room of a Airbnb that we rented or a hotel conference room. Maybe not in the conference room because those are a little sterile, but in the lobby, and we’re sitting around, and we’re talking about our hopes and our dreams or things that happened in our past. All of a sudden, you start to see your coworkers as human.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

You humanize them. They’re no longer just the person that does that task or that moves that ball forward. I think that that’s also what builds an amazing culture is because when you know that your office buddy, your virtual office buddy also has feelings and also has some things that are difficult in their family or there’s big things that they’re celebrating, I think that you work way better as a team, and I think that that resonates into that culture that builds unstoppable teams.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. Another way I’ve seen you do this in some of the teams and meetings that you lead is literally in your agenda, you build in water cooler talk at the top, the first five.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s a free way to do it, the first 5 or 10 minutes of a meeting because we don’t have those hallway conversations or the break room conversations. So, literally, building that into the structure and format of the meeting, I have seen, is another way to just create a touch base relationally for you to have those relationships.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. Yeah, and it could be just a silly question. So we use Slack here at BELAY and Team Administrator for the finance team. Monday morning, she’ll put out a silly question. This Monday, it was, “What are your top three favorite foods?”

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Okay. Cool. It’s just really quick and easy, but then that becomes a whole conversation throughout the day, or we have this thing that we do for our new employees called This or That, “Are you a fork or a spoon?” It’s just silly little things that you wouldn’t think would make such a huge difference, and all of a sudden, it takes on a life of its own.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

It is my favorite part of our staff meetings because I have a very strong opinion about if you could only have one utensil for the rest of your life, which one would it be, a fork or a spoon? So, LZ, I’m going to put you on the spot. What is it for you?

Lisa Zeeveld:

I’m controversial. I’m a spoon.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Oh, see. I’m a fork, adamantly a fork, so I…

Lisa Zeeveld:

Adamantly a fork.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I would say this is one of those questions that has shocked me because I think it’s one of those things that in your mind, you just think everyone is going to think like you, and then to see that they don’t is really surprising, and questions like that really do bring life to the culture and just a really safe way to relate to the people you’re around.

Lisa Zeeveld:

I like the way you put that. Yes, very safe way to relate to. That’s awesome, except for those that are passionately forks.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I literally have a Zoom background that I put up every time we ask the question because I just am really adamant, you know?

Lisa Zeeveld:

That’s awesome. Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Here, I have in my notes for this conversation this quote, and I’d love to hear how you think it applies to the culture we’ve built at BELAY and how this could help our listeners.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Sir Richard Branson says that we should “train people well enough that they can leave, but treat them well enough that they don’t want to.” I’d love to hear your thoughts on that quote and how BELAY has followed it with the way that we lead our people here.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. I mean, training is so huge. Again, it goes back to those. I think of training as expectations too. Right? So you have to be very deliberate and intentional about creating a training plan and onboarding that feels like you are ready for that person to start and that you thought of them long before they ever got there. Again, I hate to say it, but I think there’s been too many times, a lot of what we do at BELAY…. Now that I’m sitting here thinking about this, a lot of what we do at bet is based off of poor previous experiences.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

It’s a reaction, right?

Lisa Zeeveld:

I feel like we’re the company that was like, “Let’s not suck like some of the other companies have sucked.”

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

But yeah. I mean, even in… It’s more important in a virtual space. I’m going to get there in just a second, but I can remember starting a job, and showing up, and feeling like nobody even knew that I was supposed to show up that day like, “Oh, gosh. Yeah. Let me… What office are you in? Hold on. Is IT here? Do you actually have a computer or laptop, any of those kinds of things?” So that does not start to build a great culture. It does not start to build a great employee experience, and that is something that I would say that we do really good here at BELAY is that every touch point for a person, whether it’s a contractor, an employee, a partner of ours that we think about the experience from start to finish.

Lisa Zeeveld:

So, onboarding… or actually, it starts with the interview process. We review our interview process to make sure that all through that steps, you know what is going to come next. Nobody wants to sit around for two weeks, wondering if they’re going to get the rejection letter or not. We spell all that out. “Hey, these are the steps you’re going to go through to interview.” Once that happens and you get a job offer, “Hey, this is what it’s going to look to onboard.” Then, we complete a two-week training plan, and it is hour by hour. We go ahead, and we send you all the calendar invites. All of that is going to be ready for you because you were going to feel like you were thought of long before you ever agreed to take that job.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Again, it sets them up for success because nobody wants to be a failure. Nobody is going to show up to their first day of work and say, “Let me think about how I can do all this wrong.” With that training, it’s ongoing. We do a lot of professional development. I want people to have increased their skillset, increased their emotional intelligence, became a better person by working at BELAY that they could go elsewhere to get a job. Gosh, is it bad? I mean, I want to celebrate that. I want to celebrate the fact that we help make you a better person. There’s nothing wrong with that. Also, accepting the fact that not everybody is going to be with you for the entire time. Some people are just supposed to be there for a short amount of time to give you something that you needed, but then celebrate when they move on and know that you made a difference in their life.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

One of my mentors who I know was a friend of our founders as well, he said, “Let people walk away, but you never burn the bridge for them to be able to walk back.” I think creating a culture that is just…

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

It’s interesting. You outlined the flow, which is start with empathy. So it’s being others-focused. It’s overcommunicate and provide clarity. Then, it’s like, “Hey, create a relationship that allows you to celebrate them no matter what is happening, whether they’re flourishing where they’re at now or they’re going somewhere else to celebrate.”

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I think when you approach people’s leadership open-handed, they’re much more likely to stay. They’re much more likely to stay and be part of what you’re doing.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, and there’s been times when people have decided that they need to take time away from BELAY, what they’re doing here, and I’m super proud of the fact that we’ve had a good number of those folks come back.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Whether it could be to care for family members or they just wanted to try their hand at a different career, and then they came back. Then, there’s other people who have left to do amazing things, and we continue to be professional acquaintances and friends with them and celebrate them when they’re gone. I don’t think there’s anything better to me than to be a leader and know that you helped somebody go live out their dreams. I mean, shoot, we had somebody one time who literally wanted to make an entire career change, and we helped her do that. That feels good.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s amazing. There’s this famous quote, which is like, “People don’t quit jobs. They quit bosses,” and I think that’s true unless you’ve created a culture where you’ve developed a relationship of developing people, and it’s like, “Yeah, I’ve had people quit that I’ve led. Really high capacity people, but I’ve almost always felt like I’ve launched them into the next thing, not that they walked away.”

Lisa Zeeveld:

Oh, yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s always been a goal for me where it’s like no matter what happens next, I want it to feel more like a launchpad than a dock they’re walking away from or something like that, you know?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yes. I want to be a launchpad. I’m going to take that.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I found that more times than not, it either serves you now or serves you later. It all comes full circle so many times.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

If you’re loving this podcast, we’ve got an idea for you. Check out the System and Soul Podcast. The System and Soul Podcast is hosted by longtime entrepreneurs and business coaches, Chris White and Benj Miller. System and Soul is a holistic business framework that helps leadership teams get clear on what’s holding them back and helps them take the right steps to gain control. The System and Soul Podcast is your place to hear from business leaders who are sharing their experiences in the struggle, what’s helping them gain clarity and control, and what it looks to reach massive breakthrough. They’re serving up conversations with business leaders who not only have valuable expertise in their field, but also believe deeply in building soul into their business.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Learn from conversations on doing business without compromising your health, what makes a leader worth following, and moving culture from prescribed program to real-time practice. You’ll gain practical knowledge on how to run your business better and do it with authenticity, healthy leadership, and people at the heart. To listen, search the System and Soul Podcast on your favorite podcasting app. Now, let’s get back to today’s episode.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

All right, LZ. Let’s just get really, really practical now. What role do you feel like one-on-one meetings play in the context of interfacing with your team, especially in a hybrid environment?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, having one-on-ones. Now, I always recommend weekly one-on-ones. However, I do understand that some leaders have teams that prohibit them from doing that. Then, I would say at least every other week.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

If you can’t do that, your team is probably too big.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. That’s a great point.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Because you need to connect with your team at least every other week. Right? It’s so important in a hybrid virtual environment to, again, have that connection to see each other’s face. I’m also going to say it’s not just a phone call. It needs to be a video conference. You need to be able to see the emotion that is going on with your team member, whether they’re frustrated or excited. So much body language that happens that you can’t pick up on in a phone call. So, definitely, those one-on-ones are critical for building that trust, laying the foundation for that trust, but just continuing that connection. It’s relevant, and again, my background and my experience. My parents are divorced, and so I can remember when they first got divorced, it was… I would talk to my dad every day, and then as I got older, right, we started to connect twice a week. Then, I got a little older, then it was once a week. Right? Then, it just became a little bit haphazardly as I got older.

Lisa Zeeveld:

What I found is that I could tell the difference in our relationship when it went from every day to twice a week to once a week to haphazardly because the little details that you don’t think matter actually matter in order to continue to build the relationship. I relate that back to the one-on-ones with my team. If I don’t stop at least once a week to say, “Tell me all the little things that happen,” by the time we meet every two weeks, the little things are going to forget to share.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

The little things all compound into the big thing, so definitely meet one-on-one. Use a video tool if you are in a hybrid environment to connect with them. I’m also going to talk too about that I think it’s really important to give feedback during those one-on-ones. It’s not just connecting personally. It’s not just asking what’s on their plate, but give feedback. Then, I love it when teams do some sort of performance review. We call them CFPs here, but quarterly performance reviews. But taking the time for that employee to share with you where they feel like they’re winning, what they want to celebrate with you, what they need help with, and you doing that in return is super cool. We get that feedback all the time that people are like, “Oh, I just had an annual review.” Again, you’re missing all the details if you’re doing it that far apart, so do it quarterly, and offer that feedback. It’s going to make all the difference in the world with your team. I promise.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

We talk about all the time on this podcast that the secret to great organizations is hiring the very best talent you can and keeping them for as long as you can.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I feel like these types of relationships and this level of intentionality of leading your team is a secret weapon to retaining and attracting great talent. I think it’s one of the secrets to the success of BELAY, and I think many of the companies that we respect, it’s the same thing.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Mm-hmm.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

One of the really interesting things you said there was talking about feedback, and I don’t want to just buzz past that because I think feedback is such an interesting concept because it’s not just a one-way thing. It’s a two-way thing. It can go both ways. I’d love for you to just talk a little bit about the way that you’ve led your team over the last 11 years virtually and how feedback has been a big part of your leadership, both in how you’ve developed them, but also as you’ve grown as a leader.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. Totally. It has to be a two-way street. In case our listeners haven’t heard it, I hate to break it to them, but they’re not perfect. There’s no perfect people.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Oh, a controversial statement.

Lisa Zeeveld:

I know, I know, and we’re not perfect leaders. So I think what happens is so often, we elevate ourselves as leaders, and our team elevates us as leaders, and we do not come to the table with open hands, willing to hear the areas that we need to improve on. It could be like, “Hey, I know you guys talk about your mission and your values a lot, but I don’t feel that. I don’t feel like I’m important,” or, “I know that you talk about that the client always comes first. Customers, number one. Well, I just heard one of my team members not offering the best service or not offering to help solve a problem. On one of our team members or team meetings, we were talking about it, and she didn’t seem very empathetic, and she didn’t seem like she was going out of her way to help solve that client’s problem.” So having the feedback both ways helps our team members see that we are human and that we know we’re not perfect and we are trying to learn right along with them. So I think it’s critical.

Lisa Zeeveld:

We do pulse surveys here as an organization. We do those quite often. It could be just about an event. It could be about training. It could be about just where are you in the company right now. It’s a great way. It’s anonymous for us to know where we stand on the things that we find important. Again, we do performance reviews. Every person in the organization has a performance review, even me. So my leader is giving me a performance review. We also do 360 evaluations. So it’s something that we just believe is super important is feedback. I like to say it’s telling the kind truth.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

So I do want to hit on that. Feedback is not meant to be malicious. It’s not meant to be hurtful. It’s meant to be helpful. So I think that’s a key too to remember to feedback is it’s that constant… It’s a two-way street of, “Am I meeting your expectations? If not, how can I improve?” and you coming to that conversation with open hands, and really listening, and going from there, so.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I think what I have seen at BELAY, I’ve seen you do this well, and I think it’s part of our culture is because we have such regular face-to-face on video touchpoints, and quarterly performance reviews, and pulse surveys throughout that, the feedback is much smaller and much more often than instead of one big thing at the end of the year. I have found in my leadership over the years that quicker, more regular feedback, like small course corrections avoid you really from almost ever having to have really hard, big conversations.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Right.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

There are obviously exceptions. My executive coach always said that even with the best testing, hiring is a 50-50 proposition. You just never know what’s going to happen.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I have found that the smaller, quicker conversations and feedback really do set us up to have much more trust-based relationships. That feedback has an appropriate weight and is right-sized in our psyche in the way that we’re leading, but it also is just a regular part of the conversation. It’s not something that’s like, “Oh, I’ve got bad news today.” It’s like, “Hey, this thing happened. I just want to have a conversation about it,” and, “Hey, obviously, we’re just approaching it with trust.” I feel like the more often you do that, and I think especially in a virtual environment because you’re not necessarily picking up on emotional cues or the vibe as much, being more proactive and clear with that on a more regular basis is really important.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. Well, I think that it also limits anxiety for some team members. “Oh my gosh, it’s my annual review. I don’t know what to expect,” and so they dread the annual review because they don’t know what’s coming their way. I also think it helps prevent a lot of animosity that happens too like, “Oh, so it’s November, and you’re going to tell me something I did wrong in February?”

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Like, “Come on. Whereas if I would’ve just heard it in February…” and then all of a sudden, that becomes a mountain instead of the molehill that it was, right, like, “Oh, I wish I let you know. Back in February, you missed that deadline.” “Uh, okay.” Well, maybe they kept missing deadlines, and maybe it finally got to a point where you had to talk about a performance improvement plan. Well, if you would’ve tackled that in February and didn’t wait until November, you would’ve been much happier as a leader too.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s interesting.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I’ve got a new team member that’s going through his first quarterly review right now, and he was asking me questions about what to expect, and I was like, “Hey, there should be nothing in this that is a surprise there, so you don’t need to worry. I don’t save feedback for this moment.”

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s really unfair to them. I have an agreement with all of my team that I have for years where I’m like, “Hey, if I’ve got feedback, I’m going to give it to you because I don’t think it’s fair for me to think something until there’d be a relational withdrawal and you not know that.”

Lisa Zeeveld:

Right.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s a totally unfair relationship. So that’s just an agreement I have with my team emotionally, and I ask for the same thing.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Right. I love that.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I think as you navigate these conversations, that’s important, so.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. No, I love that. That’s really good. Yeah. I don’t want to withdraw because I’m thinking that you’re doing something intentionally, and that’s a great opportunity too to find out that maybe there is a training gap or a communication gap too by offering feedback.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

It just creates conversation.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

As you said earlier, if you hire well, more times than not, your staff members are not doing whatever is underperforming on purpose or it’s not malicious. It’s a gap in expectations, or communication, or clarity, or skill, or whatever it might be. It doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions in that. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t always end in a hard way, but more times than not, if you’ve done your due diligence on the front-end, your poor fits in the long run have more to do with much more complex issues than they do with just unmet expectations.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah, yeah, and I’m going to go back to the beginning of our conversation, but even talking about hiring, you just mentioned that 50-50 proposition. Right? I always take notes on the individuals that I interview and especially those when you’re getting down to the end. It’s like that, “Hey, these are the areas I think that they knock it out of the park when I compare it to the job description. This is that area that I’m a little concerned about.” I go back to that as we are training and as we’re talking, especially that, that first six months.

Lisa Zeeveld:

In a virtual environment, it can be a little bit longer, but I found that six months is really good because if I am noticing that maybe there’s a gap in their skillset or what I was expecting, how I was expecting them to perform, I can go back and check myself like, “Oh, you know what? Hmm. I said during the interview that I thought that they might miss the mark a little bit here.” Then, all of a sudden, it brings up that empathy, that, “Ugh, did I really train them well enough in that area, or did I coach them? Did I set the right expectations? Do I need to match them with somebody else in our department who excels in that area?” Again, it’s knowing what you are getting into and not expecting something out of someone that they didn’t even have in the beginning.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

More times than not, I have found that it’s like, “Oh, wait. This is a me problem, not a them problem because I changed. I knew this was going to be a problem, and then all of a sudden it was, and now I’m mad? No, that’s on us.”

Lisa Zeeveld:

Right.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I think the virtual environment… It’s one of the things I’ve loved so much is it challenged so many aspects of my leadership because it requires you to be the best version of yourself to be a great leader. It is challenging, but it really pulls out the best leadership skills out of a leader.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Well, LZ, thank you so much. This conversation was unbelievable. I’m walking away challenged as a leader, and I feel like I’ve got some new skills to take to managing my team. To our listeners, LZ is going to actually going to hang around just a little bit longer after this interview, and she’s going to answer one more question. We’re going to talk about vulnerability and transparency as a tool for leaders. So you’re not going to want to miss that, and the way that you hear that is you subscribe to our email list, and we will send you a link to our bonus content, or you can visit onenextsteppodcast.com where you can find a link in our show notes. LZ, thank you so much for this. This was so helpful.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Thank you, Ryan, for having me.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Well, that was a blast. A big thank you to LZ for continuing to share her leadership expertise with us on the podcast. Now, every week, we offer One Next Step for our listeners, and today, we have a free download of our brand new ebook, Lead Anyone From Anywhere, which is packed with leadership lessons for the modern hybrid team. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week’s One Next Step. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or follow us on Spotify. While you’re there, leave us a review. If you’re ready to start accomplishing more and juggling less, go to belaysolutions.com. Join us next time for more practical business tips and tools to help you advance your business one step at a time. For more episodes, show notes, and helpful resources, visit onenextsteppodcast.com.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Next week, we’ll be joined by not one, but two amazing team members for BELAY. Chief People Officer Krisha Buhler and HR Manager Lori Friedman will share the framework they use for having courageous conversations, including practical examples of the way they approach some common workplace situations. Now here’s a quick preview.

Krisha Buehler:

You set the tone as a leader. So if you walk in charged and ready to go, that’s what you’re going to get coming right back at you. Somebody’s going to be on the defense immediately, and that will not be a productive conversation.

Lori Freedman:

And I think it circles back again to relationship capital. If you have a strong relationship with that individual, they know you genuinely care about their success. And so you can have those feedback conversations and they’re much less awkward and much more comfortable.