Skilled workers across the country are making their position clear: they have no desire to go back to the way things were, and they’re willing to leave their job rather than return to the office. From an organizational standpoint, however, it’s not so straightforward. There are arguments for and against bringing people back into the workplace. Attempting to transition to a hybrid model is sure to be fraught with challenges. And for some organizations, a return to working face to face is the only way forward. To establish a post-pandemic model for work that prioritizes productivity, a plan for employee retention is imperative. Senior leaders must be able to clearly articulate the benefit of returning to in-person work and find ways to motivate individuals within the team to endure the change. To do so, organizations need to make full use of people leaders to ensure that understanding and motivation cascades to each individual contributor.

Give meaning to the change

While the value of returning to in-person work may be clear to the senior team, it’s unlikely that everyone in the organization will find it apparent.
In the absence of information, people tell themselves stories
In the absence of information, people tell themselves stories – and those stories are rarely positive. Without a clear understanding of the benefit of returning to work, people are likely to tell themselves that it’s because they’re not trusted to do their job while working remotely. Or, that it’s because of their leaders’ own discomfort with remote work. To combat this, organizations need to be able to clearly articulate the value of why people are being asked to come back to the office, beyond “you get to keep your job.” People need to understand how it benefits the organization, how it benefits their team, and how it benefits them personally. A client I work with, League, provides a useful example of this in their communication to employees about their plans for a hybrid model. Their Chief People Officer, Kim Tabac, has promised their people to, “strike the balance between the ‘I’ and the ‘We’ by focusing on the intersection of the employees needs for meaningful work, and a continued focus on their mental health and wellness, with the company’s focus on high performance, innovation, and connection to our mission.” In addition to helping motivate people who would rather continue to work remotely, being clear about the value of working in-person can help to ease the pain of change for everyone in the organization. A few months into the pandemic, we asked leaders about their challenges in the remote work environment and almost one in five said their biggest obstacle was others not being open to change. By giving the change meaning, organizations can reduce this friction point and accelerate the pace at which the benefit of the change begins to outweigh the discomfort of the change itself.

Ditch broad-reaching incentive programs in favour of personalized motivation

Skilled workers are leaving their jobs in droves because they don’t want to go back to the way things were. But it would be wrong to assume that people are most motivated by having flexibility in where and how they work. There are many different things that motivate people at an individual level, as diverse as the team itself. Organizations can drive performance, reduce turnover, and facilitate organizational change by discovering each contributor’s top motivator and connecting it with their work. We recently ran a workshop with 220 leaders at a financial services company on the subject of how to hold more effective career conversations. When we asked the leaders what motivates them in their careers, there was no consensus. A top three did emerge (interesting work, money, and meaningful work, respectively), but none showed a clear majority and only 10% said they are motivated by all three. What this tells us is that a broad-reaching program for this group focused on interesting work, money, and meaningful work would only be a perfect fit for one in ten leaders. What’s more, a program focused on improving work fit to life would only capture the attention of a little over one in three. To effectively motivate individuals through the return to in-person work, and beyond, organizations need to shift to an personalized approach.

Leverage people leaders to put plans into action

As the soccer coach John Herdman said, “People do things for people, not things.” For organizations to successfully communicate the value of returning to work and tap into what motivates individual contributors – and therefore retain skilled workers – people managers need to be at the centre of a culture shift that makes leadership their first job.
People do things for people, not things.
Too often, people leaders feel like managing their team is a “to do” along with the rest of their job. In fact, when we asked the same group of leaders what gets in their way of having career conversations with their people, 42% told us they don’t have the time. Organizations need to give leaders a clear expectation that helping their people grow and develop is their first job, rather than something to be fit in around other tasks. By investing in people and having these conversations, that’s how the work’s going to get done. It’s not the other way around. As the plan is set in motion, focus on three priorities to enable leaders through the transition to in-person work:

1. Encourage leaders to build relationships with their people

At the heart of all this is emotion. Whether someone would rather quit than come back to the office or whether they’re motivated in their job, all comes down to how they feel about the situation. In order to tap into the power within emotion, leaders need to build relationships with their people and earn permission to do so. And if they’re leading a team that’s distributed or working on a hybrid model, they need to pay close attention to their relationships with the people they don’t see in person on a daily basis.

2. Give leaders the skills to coach their people

Telling leaders to find out what motivates their people is about as helpful as a basketball coach telling you to shoot a three pointer. Leaders need to understand their role as a coach; they need questioning and listening skills to open and carry out effective conversations; they need the ability to give their people clarity on what “good work” looks like; and they need to be skilled at giving recognition in ways that’s going to motivate their people.

3. Make regular career conversations a formal part of performance management – and empower leaders to connect their people with what motivates them

With the relationships and skills in place, ask leaders to hold regular career conversations with their people. Make it every leader’s responsibility to understand what motivates each individual on their team and support them in using that information to create connection points between the work and what motivates them.

Avoid the “brain drain”

Enough companies have already learned their lesson the hard way – requiring an entire workforce to undergo a significant and rapid change can lead to a drop in engagement and a rapid “brain drain” if not handled carefully. To ease the transition and retain skilled workers, engage your leaders in a culture shift that puts leadership first, gives leaders the skills they need to motivate their people, and encourages them not just to have career conversations, but to create meaningful connections between what their team does and what motivates them.

Bring the Summer Learning Series to your team • Request a call • Send this page to your manager or HR team

Energize your team as we move out of the pandemic with a series of three, one-hour virtual learning events. The months ahead will present new challenges as business needs change, blended working environments begin to take shape, and leaders are once again forced to adjust to rapid change and uncertainty. Help ready your people to lead and perform through the next phase with a series of virtual learning events.

TWO TRACKS TO CHOOSE FROM

Develop your people in the areas that will benefit them most. Choose our leadership track to build your team’s coaching and collaboration capabilities, or choose our resilience track to build your team’s ability to perform under pressure.

LEADERSHIP TRACK Develop high performing leaders.

RESILIENCE TRACK Enhance performance under pressure.

DELIVERED BY A WORLD-CLASS FACULTY

Our speakers teach at top business schools, have coached Olympic and professional athletes, been Olympic athletes, consulted at the highest level of business, and practiced law. Their strong personalities and unique personal experience draw audiences in and keep learners engaged.

Dane Jensen

Dane Jensen teaches at UNC and Queen’s University, is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, and the author of The Power of Pressure.

Roy Rana

Roy Rana is an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings and one of the most decorated coaches in Canadian basketball history.

Cyndie Flett

Cyndie Flett is a successful leader of world-class teams in sport and business, a leading expert on coaching, and a former national team coach.

Garry Watanabe

Garry Watanabe is an inspirational speaker, former elite swim coach and an instructor at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University.

Karyn Garossino

Karyn is an Olympian with a Master’s Degree in psychology and adult education and years of experience coaching executives.

Kara Stelfox

Kara is a biofeedback practitioner who is an expert on the mental and physical aspects of human performance.

LEARN MORE

Want to learn more about bringing our Summer Learning Series to your organization? Leave your contact information below and we’ll get in touch.

Cyndie Flett

Principal Trainer, Third Factor

Gallup’s decades of research into employee engagement tells us that the number one driver of engagement isn’t how interesting your work is, how much you get paid, what your title is, or even the calibre of your co-workers: it’s the relationship you have with your immediate supervisor. And yet, in the crush of the day-to-day the relationship often takes a back seat to brass tacks. By shifting some of your focus away from task-orientation and towards strengthening the relationships you have with your people you can access deeper reservoirs of motivation, and drive productivity for your entire team.

The relationship is the engine; emotion is the fuel

Every engine needs fuel, and in the coaching relationship there is no stronger fuel than emotion. Much of the time in business we’re taught to keep emotions in check – especially negative emotions like anger, frustration and disappointment. Since it’s rare to see these kinds of emotions expressed, it can be triggering when our people show their dissatisfaction. It can feel like an attack, and the default response can be to mirror the emotion – meet anger with anger – or become defensive.
Every engine needs fuel, and in the coaching relationship there is no stronger fuel than emotion.
Falling into this trap, however, robs you of the opportunity to direct the energy in that emotion in a productive direction. When a team member expresses negative emotion, it means they care. When leaders make an effort to notice and acknowledge the emotion, they can deepen the relationship and build trust. And by exploring the emotion, they can help their people see what’s possible and use their feelings as motivation to take a step in the right direction. In these situations, the relationship is what allows the coach to lean into the emotion and explore it. In our 3×4 Coaching program, we give participants challenges to apply key learnings back on the job. In one of these challenges, a participant committed to asking their people simple questions like, “What’s new from the weekend?” much more frequently than they had before. Asking more, personal questions helped this leader build rapport with their people. And it provided the leader with new insight into their people’s emotions. In the course of these conversations, this leader noticed that the emotion in the person’s response provided a deeper view to valuable information. By leaning into those emotions and exploring them further, the leader was able to learn more about how they were interpreting their experiences. Noticing what made them frustrated, anxious, fearful, or even happy and excited, improved the leader’s ability to identify and address their team’s issues and challenges. With stronger relationships in place, and positive results beginning to emerge, it wasn’t long before the leader began asking more direct questions to gain a deeper understanding of their people’s feelings. Equipped with better information, the leader was able to give more and more targeted support and feedback to enable their team’s success. As a leader and a coach, the relationship you have with your people is what allows you to help them be at their best. When leaders give their relationships the care they need and lean into emotions, they can drive higher levels of performance, and ultimately results.

Make the most of your investment

Investing time in building relationships pays dividends. And yet, all the other pressures don’t go away just because you’ve decided to put your time into this endeavour. To optimize the benefits of relationship building given the reality of time constraints, smart coaches create a strategy for how they’re going to build and maintain their relationships every day. What this comes down to is showing people that you care. That means making time for them, offering them support when they’re struggling, and doing both with unwavering consistency. But every person is different, and what works for one person might not work for another. When you’re working to build relationships with the people you lead, make a point of understanding: and use what you learn to create an approach that’s going to work for them.

Putting it all together

Productivity is the direct result of an effective team. When everyone is engaged and making a strong personal contribution, efficiency follows. And the greatest influence on performance and engagement is the team’s leader; their coach. But which leader garners the higher level of engagement and commitment: the leader who focuses first on task execution? Or the leader who works to build relationships and earn permission to coach their people to a higher level of performance? In your next round of one-on-one meetings, take the time to consider your relationship with the person you’re leading. You might just find that when you move your focus from the to-do list to the person, productivity follows.

Curious about 3×4 Coaching?

Maintaining Team Motivation Through The Troughs
Available on demand
Register Now

As the pandemic drags on, maintaining motivation and engagement is an increasing challenge for leaders. Significant prolonged uncertainty, a relentless volume of work, the collapse of a separation between work and home life, and – in some cases – the absence of traditional sources of motivation like raises, promotions, and informal camaraderie in the office, means motivation has rarely been harder to come by. In this 60-minute webinar, Third Factor CEO Dane Jensen will uncover research that will help you zero in on your team’s emotional state, and introduce four allies leaders can tap into to fight against the tide of disillusionment and keep people energized, resilient and motivated through the months to come. You’ll leave with a better understanding of your team’s emotional state, and practical ideas for maintaining motivation that you can start using right away. You should attend if:
Maintaining Team Motivation Through The Troughs

There are no lives sessions of this webinar upcoming. Fill out the form below to register to watch this webinar on demand.

About the presenter:

Dane Jensen advises senior leaders and their teams on how to perform under pressure in our disruptive world.

Dane has worked with executives in 23 countries on 5 continents. As CEO of Third Factor, Dane oversees delivery of the firm’s leadership development programs throughout North America. Dane is Affiliate Faculty with UNC Executive Development at Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, NC. He also teaches in the full-time and executive MBA programs at the Smith School of Business, Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.

In addition to his corporate and academic work, Dane advises athletes, coaches, leaders, and boards in the Olympic and Paralympic sport systems. He is author of The Power of Pressure: Why Pressure Isn’t the Problem, It’s the Solution (HarperCollins, 2021), and a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review. He lives in Toronto with his wife and their three children.

In our 3×4 Coaching virtual learning journey, participants are given challenges to apply what they’ve learned on the job. In this video, our Chief Learning Officer, Peggy Baumgartner, showcases how one program participant used a challenge activity to make a lasting difference in his organization.
When it comes to coaching, it’s not about what you know; it’s what you do that ultimately matters. That’s why we make challenge activities a part of our online learning journeys. Participants are given a challenge and encouraged to make note of what works for them and what impact it had. One participant, taking the 3×4 Coaching program through Queen’s Executive Education, really took his challenge on recognition to heart. Following the challenge, Dave Cooper shared that he had written a letter to his team to recognize their contributions through the pandemic. As the manager of retail leadership development for Sport Chek, a major retailer with approximately 250 stores, his team had been hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. “Our training team got very disconnected from the stores, which was really difficult for me personally and difficult for our team,” Dave told us. “After going through eight months of this constant stress, I wanted to see if I could write something to recognize what they’d accomplished how long they had endured. And maybe give them a little nudge that they have more in them.” Dave’s letter to his team was particularly effective because it took all the key concepts from the recognition module and used them in a very powerful way: The people in Dave’s organization are sure to feel seen, heard and incredibly valued after reading his letter. It’s always exciting to see the concepts we teach transferred back into the work world. If you’re excited about the possibilities coaching can open up, you can bring the 3×4 Coaching program to your organization or enrol as an individual through Queen’s Executive Education.

In this article

Explore our virtual leadership development options to meet your current needs.

In about 90% of our conversations with clients, the first question we’re asked is “what can you deliver remotely?” And – the answer is ‘a lot!’ We’ve spent the past six months transforming our product line and, since April, we’ve had more than 5,000 learners go through our programs remotely – from webinars on leading remotely for 500+ people, to immersive 6-week learning journeys to Coaching mastery for smaller cohorts, to building resilience skills in the EMBA class at Queen’s Smith School of Business.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Depending on your goals for virtual learning, different approaches are required. We’ve taken a ‘small / medium / large’ approach to our product development to meet the needs of a variety of scenarios:

 Large Group Experiences

Webinars or a-synchronous content to spark ideas and motivation for groups of any size.

 Targeted Group Programs

Learning journeys that integrate video, synchronous learning, 1:1 coaching and application to build mastery for up to 49 people.

 In-depth Cohort Programs

Half-day interactive instructor-led sessions for up to 18 people to build core skills.

Whatever your needs – we’re likely to have a virtual solution that hits the mark in terms of depth, duration and class size.

Get the catalog

Download a full summary of our leadership development programs.

Let’s go

Timeless skills + the right tools for right now

Of course, we have a range of virtual options in our core competencies: coaching skills for managers, resilience skills for all, and self-awareness skills to enable more productive collaboration. And, we are continuously launching virtual programs that give learners the skills they need to be successful right now. Note that we are continuously developing new offers (and adapting our in-person programs to virtual delivery) so this list will be updated as new programs come online.

Coaching skills for managers

The 3×4 Coaching model explores the 3 plays and 4 skills consistently executed by world-leading coaches.

We have a full range of options for bringing our industry-leading 3×4 Coaching model to life virtually – with a specific eye to how to coach in a virtual environment.

In-depth Cohort Programs

3×4 Coaching Virtual Learning Journey

Coaches are leaders who do all they can to help people improve and succeed. It is a way of thinking and interacting with people that communicates high expectations, respect and caring. In this 4 – 6 week (depending on your desired pace) virtual program, individuals learn the concepts and skills of a coaching style of management that builds commitment, drives employee engagement, gets results, and integrates this learning into the flow of their work.

Get a feel for the learning experience in this 3-minute video overview of the program.

Targeted Group Programs

Coaching Remotely 1/2-day Virtual Program

Coaches are leaders who do all they can to help people improve and succeed. It is a way of thinking and interacting with people that communicates high expectations, respect and caring. In this 4 – 6 week (depending on your desired pace) virtual program, individuals learn the concepts and skills of a coaching style of management that builds commitment, drives employee engagement, gets results, and integrates this learning into the flow of their work.

Having Challenging Conversations from a Distance 1/2-day Virtual Program

Our practical, 4-step map for challenging conversations is rooted in our 25 years of experience helping elite athletes manage emotions under intense pressure. Participants explore methods of preparing to confront, learn an effective format for an opening statement, practice managing reactivity and discuss how to close the conversation with accountability built-in.

Large Group Experiences

3×4 Coaching Overview Webinar

Learning coaching skills is the best way to dramatically increase your people’s commitment level and performance. This interactive 1-hour online session starts your powerful coaching journey.

3×4 Coaching Asynchronous Video Program

The 3×4 Coaching Video Program is a self-paced, asynchronous learning journey that unpacks the 3 plays and 4 skills of exceptional coaches. It provides learners with a powerful, easy-to-understand model for coaching people to higher levels of results and engagement.

Watch a brief sample of the 3×4 Coaching video program

Resilience skills for all

Building Resilience is aimed at giving participants a toolkit of inner skills to navigate their high pressure realities.

Rarely has resilience been as relevant as it is right now. We take our 30+ years of experience in resilience, and bring it to life in a way that gives people the insight and skills needed right now.

In-depth Cohort Programs

Building Resilience Virtual Learning Journey

The virtual Building Resilience program synthesizes 30 years of science-backed and performance-proven strategies into a practical toolkit that participants can use to stay healthy under pressure and recover when they are thrown off balance. Our approach to resilience draws on work in elite sport, teaching and research in academia, and work with thousands of people in organizations of all sizes. Building Resilience is a transformative experience that allows participants to learn in the flow of work while changing the way they relate to pressure.

Targeted Group Programs

Building Resilience 1/2-day Virtual Program

A leader’s ability to stay resilient through setbacks and be predictable under pressure is the #1 indicator of how their team will weather the storm. Learn practical techniques for staying even-keeled when it matters most in this 1/2-day online workshop.

Large Group Experiences

Building Resilience Overview Webinar

This online session equips participants with an understanding of how uncertainty and pressure impact their performance and health, an awareness of the choices they have to enhance their resilience under pressure, and a guided, applied exercise that will specifically tackle how they are framing and taking direct action on the areas that will most impact their performance and resilience.

Topical skills leaders need right now

Our Maintaining Team Motivation Through The Troughs program teaches leaders four allies for fighting disillusionment.

A collection of fit-for-purpose programs that address hot button issues like motivation through prolonged periods of uncertainty, challenging conversations from a distance, and the imperative for agility and personal ownership over re-skilling.

Targeted Group Programs

Maintaining Team Motivation Through the Troughs 1/2-day Virtual Program

As the pandemic drags on, maintaining motivation and engagement will become a primary challenge for leaders. Learn practical techniques to keep people energized, resilient and motivated, inspired by Olympic coaches and athletes, in this 1/2-day online workshop.

Large Group Experiences

The Meta-Skilled Organization

Meta-skills are the connective tissue that allow people and organizations to let go of the skills that have anchored their successful past and master and embrace new ways of working – in other words, to evolve. Packed with ideas on both how to foster the development of meta-skills for yourself, and how to build meta-skilled organizations as stewards of talent, this keynote lays out a framework for six key meta-skills that allow individuals and organizations to see clearly, move quickly, and stay the course.

Self-awareness & collaboration

The “player’s card” is one of our favourite tools for helping learners translate self-awareness to communication and action.

The Attentional and Interpersonal Styles Inventory (TAIS) was originally developed to help Olympic athletes and elite military units optimize performance in high-pressure situations. Every day, these individuals must make critical decisions under pressure with less than perfect information. Since its introduction, business leaders have recognized that their people face similar, if not identical, problems and have made the TAIS their assessment of choice. Our work with the TAIS and fostering self-awareness has never been more vital – or easier to deliver. 1:1 coaching and self-awareness work is a natural fit for a virtual environment.

Targeted Group Programs

The Self-Aware Leader Virtual Program

The Self-Aware Leader program combines the TAIS assessment, three one-on-one coaching sessions, the creation of a personal action plan to address a real business challenge, an ability to chart your progress and adjust your approach through the guidance of a coach. It will help leaders understand and leverage their strengths under pressure and identify what changes if made, would matter the most.

Large Group Experiences

TAIS Assessment + 1:1 Coaching

Whether you want to build self-awareness for a few executives or all of your people managers, the TAIS can help them identify environments and performance situations in which they will thrive and excel, when and how they are most likely to make mistakes and what they can do to ensure you will perform well under pressure. Participants receive an individual report detailing 18 personal styles as they relate to attention, information, leadership, social and communication and have the opportunity to build further clarity with a 1:1 coaching call.

Let’s talk!

If you’re interested in any the above – or anything that you don’t see here – let’s chat! You can get in touch at hello@thirdfactor.com.
Download the catalog.

Get a complete overview of our coaching, collaboration and resilience programs.

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Negative emotion is an incredibly volatile fuel. Our CEO, Dane Jensen, lays out how to harness its energy for building motivation in his latest article for Harvard Business Review titled Turn Your Team’s Frustration into Motivation. In the article, Dane offers three tools for leaders to motivate people facing a setback:

🏷 Label the negative emotion and engage. Right or wrong, giving it a name helps uncover important information that can be used for moving forward. 👏 Feed the self-coach, not the self-critic. Encourage them to look for the opportunity in the crisis. 🛴 Channel energy to action. Use the moment to build a vision of a better future and build clarity around what it takes to get there.

Strong leaders don’t shy away from negative emotions. They lean into them and help their people use them to recover and grow. Click here to read the article on hbr.org. The nature of work has changed. And for many, things won’t be going back to “normal” – ever. As people adapt to their new realities, the mix of new responsibilities, new communication systems, changes to meetings and protocols and the associated ambiguity can lead to friction, anxiety and stress. When we think about collaboration, we often go straight to tools and technology. But guess what? Your organization is full of human beings, and as humans our ability to work together begins with our individual interactions. Before any technology can enable effective collaboration, the people using it need skills to understand, engage and appreciate the people they work with. In this interactive, 60-minute online session, Cyndie Flett will explore the mindsets and behaviours that lead to productive and collaborative interactions, break down how individual interactions set the tone and influence how effectively a group works together, and look at a few practical tools you can use to manage relationships and enhance collaboration so you can achieve more of the results you want, and manage your own health and wellbeing along the way
You should attend if:
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About the presenter:
Cyndie Flett is one of Canada’s leading experts on coaching. As the former Vice President of Research and Development for the Coaching Association of Canada, and Director of the National Coaching Certification Program, Cyndie has dramatically impacted the way that literally millions of coaches are educated across the country.