Cecile Alper-Leroux, a 20+-year HR tech veteran, is Ultimate Software's (recently merged with Kronos Inc) VP of Product and Innovation.
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In a remote work environment, interactions occur in a two-dimensional mode. In trying to infer how employees feel about their work and careers, traditional manager skills like delegating work and managing time fall short. It is difficult to ascertain if an employee feels “stuck” in a dissatisfying job or feels threatened by a new co-worker.
Listening and empathy skills help, but leaders also need a framework for these ongoing conversations. Understanding the right time to challenge a decision or explore new opportunities can make or break the employee-manager relationship.
Six Degrees Of Unification
One such framework is the Lifework Journey, a topic I’ve written about before. It entails managing an employee’s work and career progression not as a linear series of hire-to-retire jobs, but as a multidimensional voyage.
Much like life, work is chronological but not linear. Sequential progress is interrupted by unpredictable events. The Lifework Journey framework is structured across six phases: at risk, security, growth, self-realization, influence and legacy. The at-risk phase begins when an employee onboards; it’s a period of time when they are most stressed about their job status and income. Their anxiety induces them to watch what they say, and they are rarely comfortable enough to offer innovative ideas and be at the top of their game.
This changes during the security phase. The employee has reached a point where they are more confident about themselves in their work, resulting in less anxiety over the potential loss of income. At the same time, a less-than-satisfactory performance conversation can change their sense of security instantly, returning them to the at-risk phase.
By the growth phase, employees have gained enough confidence and are poised to take advantage of new opportunities and seek more demanding work assignments. As they undertake and succeed in such roles, employees enter the self-realization phase, in which they turn their gaze outward, ready to share ideas and begin to influence others, fully comfortable in themselves at work.
In the last two phases, influence and legacy, employees have realized their goals and begin to manage and lead others, both inside and outside the organization, with the aim of leaving the world a better place.
Deeper Understandings
Although the six phases of the Lifework Journey are chronological, they are not a linear road map. Divergent paths emerge, happenstance events cause disorder and confusion — an employee marries and has children, a reorganization happens, an illness in the family, the company is acquired, a global pandemic hits and everyone must work on a remote basis. Just like life, a career is “two steps forward, one step back.”
Managers must be cognizant of the complete interconnectedness of life and work that can have a profound impact on an employee’s work. And the best way to do that is to ask open-ended questions on an ongoing basis that can reveal where an employee is at each phase of the Lifework Journey, listening with empathy and guiding without bias or judgment.
For example, during the at-risk phase, when many employees are too focused on not losing their jobs to speak up, managers must go out of their way to offer positive encouragement, increasing people’s confidence to express their thoughts without fear of retribution. During the security phase, when employees begin to feel more stable with fewer financial worries, managers may want to probe employees about their longer-term goals, and open doors. During the growth phase, employees may seek more demanding assignments but lack connections, so managers can intervene and ask what other roles they might wish to explore.
As these interactions suggest, a great manager has all the traditional skills but also understands that life and work are rarely (if ever) in perfect balance.
Now is a good time for leaders to ask questions, listen with empathy and reach out to employees at all six stages — to talk about work and to talk about life. Their own Lifework Journey has taught them that.
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