Working from home is here to stay, until September for many companies, and much longer for others. This deep change in the way we work calls for something that leaders often underestimate: Setting rules of engagement clearly. Now more than ever, employees need to know about the sweet-spots, boundaries, values and ways of thinking, that define your leadership style, expectations and commitments.
Rules are everywhere and, as Monica said in Friends: ”Rules are GOOD. Rules help control the FUN!”. Not stating them sets your team up for failure.
Not setting your rules of engagement discriminates members of your team. Leaving your rules of engagement to be understood or guessed by your team discriminates against people who are remote from you geographically or hierarchically, as they’ll take longer to figure out your rules, from such a distance. Not sharing rules clearly and equally with everyone is the equivalent of forgetting to invite ⅔ of your team to play ‘the game’.
Why shy away from rules?
What could be uncomfortable about giving clarity about the way you think and work and prefer others to when they relate to you?
When you borrow from a bank, the bank is clear about T&Cs: How you’ll reimburse, over what period of time, what happens if you miss a payment…
When you get married, it’s common practice to sign a prenuptial agreement that states clearly what is expected and what happens if it’s not respected
When you join a company, you not only sign an agreement that describes both parties’ deliverables, it also includes a code of conduct and sometimes even a dress code!
Yet, I see many leaders omit to communicate or explain their rules of engagement clearly to their team and peers. So I ask: For the benefit of whom? Is it strategic?
The risk here is what I call ‘corridor gossip”: Do you want your team to rely on hear-say to know how to work with you? I remember these gossips or myths about ‘big bosses’! They were as unverified as they were unhelpful!
“He refuses to look at documents longer than 7 slides”
“Never use the font Times New Roman, he hates it”
“She only gives people one chance”...
Take control, and set things right. Don’t let hear-say define you as a leader.
Whether you’ve just joined a company, got promoted to a new role, welcomed a new team, or embraced a different way of working (remote), and before you start ‘playing the game’, list and explain the rules of the game.
Rules are different from team values.
Team values are about how team members interact, collaborate, and communicate, they’re about the cohesion of the team.
A leader’s rules of engagement are about what he or she values and how he or she functions. It’s very personal.
Ahhh! “Personal”, I hear you cringe! There’s nothing wrong with going personal! In a time of limited in-the-flesh interactions, I think going 'personal' is the only way to stay humanly connected, actually.
When people are distanced, they lose out on information that is not verbal. In this challenging context, getting clarity about rules feels safe.
Think about the things you’ve decided about, along the years, from experience, and how you tend to function on a deep level, and how you like people to deal with you. Use concrete behavioral examples to illustrate your point. And if possible, make it fun! ('rules' do not imply a 'serious face'!)
I can list some of my rules of engagement, for instance, the ones I shared with my team when I joined Betsson Group as a CMO:
Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions
State your concerns early, don’t wait until the last minute to tell me about a problem
No gossiping, we communicate honestly, we feel comfortable asking tough questions
When making a case, use data. I don’t go with ‘hunches’
If you have something funny to say, please say it! Everyone should laugh out loud at least once a day at work
Teach others what you know
Criticise the work, don't criticise the person
Keep learning: What did you learn last month? What do you want to learn next month?
I won’t respect you more if you send me an email at 3am, I’ll just worry about workload and time management…
When I first addressed my team of 200 at Betsson, I wanted to introduce myself as well as hand over a ‘how to work with Marion’ manual. It was not meant to be limiting: Rules can be broken! It was meant to offer a shortcut for my team. It worked! After my intro presentation, most of my team members told me they had particularly appreciated the guidance on how to get the best of me. Some of their comments were:
“You made us save 6 months!”
“I love knowing where I stand”
I encourage leaders I coach to think about their own rules of engagement, and to make a habit of communicating them to people they work with.
This is obviously not about imposing rules based on hierarchy or telling your team how you like your coffee. Furthermore, anyone’s free to respect your rules or not. Rules act as guidance, not a threat! Stating your own rules of engagement simply is an attempt to define your attitude at work and way of thinking, using tangible situations.
The truth of the matter is that we all remember the rules of amazing bosses we’ve had! I can still to this day tell you how to work with Lorraine Twohill, CMO of Google, who was my manager and an incredible inspiration from the first day I joined this 'cool startup" in 2003! Her rules of engagement were clear and inspirational. They evolved in time. Good rules elevate the game, call for skills and tap into values.
In these times of digital interactions and rapid change, I urge leaders to take time this Summer to reflect on what their rules of engagement are and how they may have been evolving within the 'new normal'. Is it time to update some of them? Would it be helpful to share them with your team? It may not be a bad idea to talk about that in your September all-hands meeting…