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You don't need overseers. You don't need people to, frankly, provide a command and control kind of directional approach to management. You've got amazingly smart, capable individual contributors who are somewhat entrepreneurial. They prefer to partner with others, to collaborate with others, to share ideas, to be creative, to provoke, and innovation.
Welcome to the Future of Work Podcast, with Berkeley Extension and EDGE in Tech at the University of California, focused on expanding diversity and gender equity in tech. EDGE in Tech is part of the Innovation Hub at CITRIS-- the Center for IT Research in the Interest of Society-- and the Banatao Institute. UC Berkeley Extension is the continuing education arm of UC Berkeley.
In this episode, we're diving into the critical transformation happening across industries, the decline of middle management. As companies flatten their structures in pursuit of efficiency, what happens to organizational communication? Workplace culture? Are we losing vital connectors who bridge leadership and employees, or is this the evolution of a more agile and collaborative workforce? To talk about this important topic, we're delighted to welcome Ron Coverson.
Ron is an executive-level human resources professional and business consultant, and is currently the Assistant Dean of the Academic Personnel and Human Resources for the University of California, Berkeley Law School. Ron is experienced as an executive director of human resources, training, and organizational development, and as an instructor, curriculum designer, strategic planner, and business development manager.
Ron's employers have included UC Berkeley, Stanford University, the America's Cup Event Authority, the McKesson Corporation, and Levi Strauss & Company. For the past 10 years, Ron has partnered with senior and middle managers, focusing on leadership development, strategic planning, culture change, talent, and performance management. He's also an esteemed instructor at the University of California Berkeley Extension. Welcome, Ron.
Thank you, Jill. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me today.
This is such a great topic to talk about because everybody's noticing a lot of change happening in the private sector in particular, but across the board, in organizations, certainly in government at this moment in time. So what does it mean when we say organizations are flattening?
What it means is we're going through, I would say, just another transformation, from the early stages of the technology revolution that occurred in the '80s and particularly in the '90s, and let's just say, at the beginning of the 21st century, into another level of industrial transformation in the technology sense. Meaning, AI is an unavoidable reality. It is the next level, the next so-called dimension, of technological evolution.
And the most significant changes we've seen, that will create some challenges for professionals and for leadership and managers, but also, offers an amazing array of opportunities for high-level efficiencies and solving problems in a much more dynamic and fast way, if you will, in allowing people to really pursue their approaches to building organizations more relationally in a way that gives them the time to do so. And that's, I think, part of what we'll be talking about today.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to digging into that relational piece. But as we think about-- like when I think about an organizational structure, I think of that pyramid, where you've got one person at the top, then two people, then eight people, and so forth, down this big triangle. Why is that organizational structure changing? You said AI was one reason, but why would AI change that? Why would that cut out a layer?
Well, I think the layer cutting out will continue, but it began really, in the 1980s. I'm a bit of a historian, and if you look at what happened in the 1980s, it was the beginning of the elimination of the middle manager, because we were on the cusp of this amazing transition from the industrial age, which was continuing through the '60s and '70s even to a certain extent, although Silicon Valley was emerging at that time.
And eventually, we realized that work gets done in teams, and that was much more so in the late '80s and the '90s, and you don't need overseers. You don't need people to, frankly, provide a command and control kind of directional approach to management. You've got amazingly smart, capable individual contributors who are somewhat entrepreneurial.
They prefer to partner with others, to collaborate with others, to share ideas, to be creative, to provoke an innovation, and to initiate actions more in the context of a project process with collaboratively-oriented, really smart people, Jill. So there's no need to have someone to oversee the work.
There must have been a need for middle managers. Why don't we need them now, or do we? Are there pros and cons to flattening?
What we saw in the early 2000s and beyond was that they were experimenting in Silicon Valley and of course, beyond, because what starts there goes across the nation, even across the globe. When they began to experiment with flattening the hierarchies, they had lots of success, but there were also some failures. So where were the failures? The failures were in the area of the lack of self-management within individual pods.
People were used to being directed or being told what to do, how to do it, what the timelines were, and they were just taking in information, and there was very little critical thinking. So that was happening in this transition that was occurring. What began to happen is, as middle managers and supervisors noticed that there was a lot of creativity, a lot of entrepreneurial ideas, a lot of things happening in a kinetic fashion, but there was not a lot of organization.
There was not a lot of continuity from one stage of a project to the next stage and the following stage. So some of those experiments failed in the sense that timelines weren't met, product getting to market on time were delayed. And so then there was the reevaluation of OK, we don't want these overarching command and control, micromanaging hierarchies and management people and supervisors.
But how do we then, make sure that we have a cohesive operation that we can rely on, that's going to get product to market, or get the business solutions where they need to be in a timely fashion, so they could meet the expectations and demand of client groups? So that's when the team leader emerged.
And the teams became more performance teams or project teams that are performance management set of requirements, objectives, and a threshold that you can measure in terms of accomplishing those goals. And so the supervisor was no longer necessarily just the person who was demanding things to be done in a certain way. She was now, a colleague, but a leader, an expert in a certain way, and her role was much more collaborative.
Her role was much more involved in building trust, as we'll talk about, I'm sure, in really creating a powerful, synergistic team dynamic, which is a very different responsibility than we would see in the '80s and '90s and even early 2000s with supervisors and managers.
Yeah, the team leader concept. You have now, there's still a little bit of a hierarchy, right? You have a team that you're working with, but many times, they have expertise that you don't have, but you're still above them in rank. How does that work in terms of if you're not their supervisor, as it were, you're their team manager, how do you oversee people who have expertise that you don't have?
The role is a different role because in the old sort of command and control, directorial manager, supervisor responsibility, the currency of exchange was power. So people were rather intimidated because the perception was that person who was a manager not only had a level of expertise that was, let's say, above most of the rank and file-- if we can say it that way-- in the group, in the organization, in the old school of the hat.
But that person also had power, and the concern was they could report that you were either meeting expectations and performing at a high level or you weren't, and that they were sort of that go between, and were interpreting how the team was doing, or how an individual was doing as a narrative to the C-suite, if you will. And it undermines trust, and that's problematic.
And so instead of people feeling like they're empowered to get work done and to use their intelligence, their smarts, their collaborative abilities to share ideas, to hold each other accountable as adults in a new world of work, they were much more inclined to be concerned about their individual ability to stay relevant in the organization, depending upon how the manager viewed them. That's all changed. Now, the supervisor is a team member, a partner.
And to your point, Jill, certainly has a level of expertise, but not necessarily more than the team members, who, in a sense, are in a flattened, horizontal dynamic. And now, the team leader is responsible for, let's say, keeping the project moving on time, taking a look at how the measurements were going, meeting with individuals and subgroups within that team to make sure that even the subparts of a project or an initiative or a series of business objectives were being met.
And now that person is more of a coach, a feedback loop, leader, if you will, someone who is able to build trust at a high level, and needs to be open to being told that things were not working well, and they needed to work with the management to crunch the project by adding another person, taking a look at elongating the timeline, looking at the critical path to make sure that they were going to meet the expectations, ultimately, of what was expected in terms of the performance model
of the product or service. And also that they were going to be trusted to go to the senior management team or the C-suite was going to honestly and fairly and accurately represent how things were going. And so trust became the currency much more so than ever before.
And power, although it's there, there's a differential now, because when you're empowering people to get work done, then trust is a facilitative mechanism or energy that helps you to move forward in a way where you're going to ultimately get things done, and people are going to trust you, that if there has to be some tough decisions made, that you're going to make decisions that are in the best interest of everybody on the team, of course, in alignment with the expectations of the C-suite
or the senior manager.
So the world is less vertical, more horizontal. If you are trying to lead in this more horizontal, flat world, how do you build this new currency of trust? If you don't have automatic power, how do you build the trust that's the new currency?
I think there's a respect with team members because people are adult, and they are expert in their individual contributors, and they understand how important it is to get the project work done. So inherently, you've got people who are good at what they do, they're smart, they're capable, they have certainly, team-building skills, hopefully.
That's part of the requisite competency list that you're looking for when you're hiring people in the new world of work anyway, along with what we call emotional intelligence, the ability to work through differences and conflict. So inherently, you have people who respect a leader. That's expected, that they would have that respect for the leader. But there also has to be an expectation that leader is a good listener, seeks to understand first, and then to be understood later.
And that, that leader will facilitate a credible relationship by doing what they say they're going to do, following a collaborative process. And that's what I mean by trust becomes that currency. So the credibility of the leader is much higher because it isn't about power.
And that also speaks to the issue that there's an expectation that, that person is empowered to do their job, and they're not being micromanaged, so that they can also model this empowerment approach as they supervise and lead others in the team.
So if you're not a middle manager, you're a team leader. You actually have almost a different skill set that you need to develop and different processes to build those relational connections and the credibility? You talk about credibility, integrity. How do people show that they're credible? I mean, that's not something that you can just say, "I'm credible."
No. No, you're right. The business world today is, what we used to call, the show me state. You've got to be able to perform. And even if you're a strategist, as a team leader, you've got to also be tactician. You've got to model both. Sometimes you have to be able to show someone exactly the way something needs to happen or get done. You can't just say, "We'll figure it out." So you've got, credibility comes from modeling, Jill.
Credibility comes from keeping your word or saying, "I need to meet again with you all because I'm not going to be able to get that done on time. And I do apologize, but I was hoping to do it, but I wanted to at least be transparent and talk to you about that." So being honest, open, and transparent is a quality of trust building. But one of the things that I've introduced in classes and in some of the work I've done in leading teams is to talk about, how do we define trust?
What's a simple, straightforward way of actually articulating how trust performs or is activated in the real world? And so I have a formula that looks like this. There's a numerator and a denominator. In the numerator, there's the credibility factor, which we'll come back to talking about in a moment. And when you add rapport to that, which is the relational piece, you've got what you mainly need to move forward effectively in your efforts to build trust with individuals and groups.
When we say credibility, we don't just mean expertise. We don't just mean doing what you say you're going to do. We're talking about the way that you show up relationally, and we're talking about the way that you help get things done by rolling up your sleeves, by participating with the team, by collaborating effectively with them.
So that when they think about you as a leader, they not just think about you in terms of your leadership responsibility, but they also think about you as a full member of the team, that you're participating fully. You have everyone's not only best interest in mind, you have, what we call, skin in the game. You really see this as not what they're responsible to, but what we are responsible to. So you move from a "they" to a "we" thing. And those are the things that facilitate trust.
Now, I talked about the numerator, the credibility plus rapport. But on the denominator, we have risk. So in every single engagement, Jill, with every single project, there's something at risk. There's what's at risk for the client groups. There's what's at risk for the senior management team or the C-suite.
There's what's at risk for every participant on the team or cross-functional team, because oftentimes, there are cross-functional responsibilities to get things done between, let's say, IT and marketing, or between HR and finance, in terms of budgetary pieces. So there are all these dynamics happening, so everybody has risk.
So one of the things that you want to do when you're thinking about building trust with an individual is to think about what's that risk for them to participate in a way that's going to be meaningful for them and for all of us? And then when you look at the team dynamic, because there's certainly a performance element, and the team is going to be looked at as well, and people want the best possible outcome of how the team is viewed before the next project comes up, at least.
So I talk about what's at risk for people? In the classroom, we actually have fun exercises and case studies where we look at, what was that risk for so-and-so? What was that risk in terms of this currency of trust process for the senior management team to empower a team within the organizational structure to get an important initiative off the ground and ultimately, either hand it off or accomplished?
So it's really important to think about what's at risk for people, and to recognize that if there's a higher risk, you need more credibility. And if there's a higher risk, you need more rapport. So that requires time with people. And ultimately, business is always going to be relational, even in the new world of AI. JILL FINLAYSON: What do you think your students were most surprised by in doing these activities?
And thinking about changing their team management style, what surprised them the most? I think there were several things, Jill.
One is that because we do a lot of our exercises in teams, there are three in several classes, major projects that are done in teams, so one of the things that they learned or realized, whether they were currently functioning on a regular basis in a team or whether it was a relatively new construct for them or idea of business function in the work world, was that they had to make sure their communication skills and their approach to how they listened
and how they communicated with their team members to really come up with the best options to solve a case or address a case, was up to par. And they would come back with feedback and say, I realized, I'm not really listening to my team that well.
And they would actually confess that in the middle of a larger class review of the breakout sessions, and say, "I've got to listen better to Bob and Suzanne in order to understand how they view the complications of solving this case issue or meeting the expectation of this case." And the other thing that they would often say is that, "I'm more of an introvert.
I'm not really an extrovert, so I prefer not to really talk as much," or "I'll take on an assignment, but I don't necessarily want to partner with a bunch of people to do that assignment, so just the whole team dynamic is a little weird for me." So, we would ask people to go away and do some self-examination about what your work style is, so that other people can best understand how you work best so they can adjust and adapt to your work style.
So we use a model called D-I-S-C-- DISC-- which I think is pretty familiar in most of the market places of least, the US, if not abroad. And that allows people to play around with work style differentials, and start to begin to think about how can I be a better team member to Bob and Lamar, who have a very different approach to the work than I do?
Empowering is kind of a two-way street, though. It isn't just the team manager or team leader. It's the person on the team. So how do you see empowerment and how do you make it work most effectively as you're guiding students in this process?
So one of the amazing things about UC Berkeley's performance management model-- it's the best I've ever seen-- it's really about mutuality. It's really about growing together in the workplace. It's really about negotiating with another person or a team to establish ground rules and objectives for how they're going to work together through the course of the year, and to establish goals along those same lines.
And so some of those goals would be individual goals for that person to meet for the sake of the team and their supervisor. And some of those goals are team-oriented goals that would even include the manager to be a part of it. And that should be articulated in the goal. And then, ultimately, an individual's success should be characterized by the team's success. So a supervisor that's following this model-- This Achieve Together model, that's what it's called.
It's very mutualistic-- needs to make sure that they are taking responsibility for facilitating an equitable, fair, just, and clearly metriced set of goals. And one of those goals should be a developmental goal for that person. And to me, these are the things that sort of represent and characterize what mutuality is all about. It's not about a top-down thing. It's not about what you have to do for me as your supervisor.
It's about us, and how we get this done together, how we achieve these goals together.
I like this work as a conversation and kind of bringing it up a level, making sure people understand the shared vision and how their role fits into that team goal. What happens when a team member isn't measuring up, isn't pulling their weight? What does the conversation look like then?
I think it starts with the initial relationship at the beginning of the year, the Achieve Together conversation. And it starts there, where you make agreements. "Claudia, I just want you to know that there are going to be times when you may disagree with me, and I just want to make sure that we can disagree and not be disagreeable.
And there are going to be times when, most of the time, there's going to be ideas coming from you and others, and I'm going to say that's a better idea than the ones we came up with before, or the one that I thought was the best approach, the best way forward.
And then there are going to be times when I need to make an executive decision, because that's my responsibility, and I've listened enough, and I've heard from people, and I've heard from our client groups, and I've heard from our senior management team, and now, we've got to move forward with this decision. All I'm asking is that, at some point, the conversation stops, and you're doing what you're supposed to do, and we move forward together.
The flip side of that is that if you're not meeting expectations, then we have to have those conversations. And my approach is going to be initially, what's getting in the way? What obstacles are there that I can remove? Is there training in intermediate, an Excel sheet work so that-- Excel spreadsheet that you're working on can be more accurate and more reliable? What is it that you need from me? And ultimately, here's what you're responsible for."
So what I believe is that every individual has to take responsibility for their contributions to challenges or problems that they may be either inadvertently or just unconsciously participating in. And that could be a lot of undermining of what they think should be done in the project. That could be not being respectful of others, a collaborative sense. The emotional intelligence piece, Jill, as you well know, is a huge factor in evaluating performance.
And that includes all the factors we're talking about, but also your communication skills, your listening skills, your ability to be a collaborator and a good partner. When I have a very difficult situation, I will call that person into my office, and I'll have, what I call, Jill, the you and you conversation.
And what that means is that I will take a look at-- Let's say, the person's been here for 18 months-- I'll take a look at back to the day we hired John, and how we were so excited, and how we agreed on the objectives back 18 months ago, and we agreed on how we'd go about doing the work, and we agreed that every aspect of the job description was what he agreed to was the expectation.
And I would say to him, "We've had several conversations over the last nine months, and what we've seen, what I've seen-- when I say we, the team-- in terms of the agreements we all made about every individual responsibility and the contributions that we're making to the success or the failure of this project, is that things have not gone well with you. It's a puzzle to me because we've tried a lot of different things to address it. So it's Friday afternoon.
You're who you are today, John, and you're not the person that you were 18 months ago when you signed up. So I would like for you to go home today and through the weekend and look in the mirror and have a conversation with the you that took the job and agreed to the objectives, and agreed to the job description, and agreed to work well with the team and with me. It's not an issue between you and me.
It's not an issue between you and the law school or the business team that you happen to be working on. It's you and you. The you that signed up for the role 18 months ago and you today. When you work that out, let me know. And if you need some help around that, because we've got a lot of resources, happy to help you with that. But you need to come back in the coming week or two with a new approach to what we're doing.
I'm looking for the John that started with us in the fall of 2023, not the John that's here in front of me today. So I need you and you to go work that out."
I like that you and you approach, because it's very empowering in a way to the person who maybe isn't feeling a good fit at the moment. And it's allowing them to go reflect, is this the right place? Am I making the effort? Am I that person who took the job, and what's changed since then? If we want to take it up a level, I think, another thing, just sort on the macro level, people are thinking about is if the hierarchy is flat, how do I advance in my career? There's no up to go to.
Can you tell us what we should be thinking about?
I really think some of the best conversations that a supervisor can have, and I've certainly had with employees, and also as an HR professional with my direct reports, is to help them think about their career. And it still is one of those conversations, Jill, where we're asking them to own their career. We can help from a facilitative standpoint, from a chaperoning standpoint to guide and to dialogue and offer recommendations.
But ultimately, everybody has to take responsibility for their own career, for their own success track, if you will. We talk about that, and we talk about owning that, and that your supervisor and maybe someone in HR can help you figure that out better and create a roadmap for that.
In a way, this is like the middle management conversation. Your job may not be up, it may be over, or it may be diagonal because you're changing teams or changing companies or even changing role to advance. But that's kind of hard to do if you don't know what those roles are, or what you're equipped to move diagonally into.
Yeah. And I think it's a responsibility of talent management organizations and HR teams as a whole within schools and units or in the capital market spaces to be available to help people to either through the website or other means or consultation to take a look at what are the options, what are the possibilities here? Because once again, retention should be a goal of HR organizations, to encourage people to stay.
But not at the expense of-- and to grow-- but not the expense of their own career and vocational goals and interests. Because ultimately, if we are the masters of their fate, so to speak, then now, we're back into a command and control kind of thing, as opposed to empowering people to be adult and take responsibility for their life, their career, and their vocational interests. JILL FINLAYSON: There's a lot of data. Also says people don't want to become people managers.
They want to advance in their career, but they want to stay an individual contributor. So I was going to ask you, why you think that's the case, and what are the options or alternative paths for advancement if you want to remain an independent contributor?
Yeah, I still think, even though it's something I enjoy, being a people manager, and I really don't like the term people manager as much as I like the phrase people leader or a leader of others, because it's more reflective of what I've been describing about the modeling aspect of a leader or a supervisor or a team leader, as we've been describing, Jill.
I've had conversations, as I think about the many years I've been doing this, with managers and supervisors who've come to me and said, "Ron, how do I stop being a manager? I make good money. I need to keep making the same money I'm making, but how do I move out?" And I'll often say, "You're this level manager, but you could be a P5. You could be a professional at the five level. The salary scale is commensurate, and you've certainly earned it over the years you've been here.
And it's not going to be an easy outworking of it, but I think the university and the team and the leadership here would want to retain you. So let's start having that conversation with your supervisor and with others so that we can look at the prospect of things changing for you and where you start to unwind. Your responsibility might take six months, but you unwind your responsibility as a supervisor and go back to being an individual contributor."
Again, Jill, I've heard that conversation more in the past few years than I'd say, five or 10 years prior. And that's because it's really difficult, A, managing or leading people in general, and in a flatter world, where, again, the differential is not power, but the currency is trust, then that's a much more difficult dynamic to facilitate.
And the skill set is very different skill set than you would need if you were in a power kind of differential command and control role, which again, is, for the most part, disappearing.
So if people are kind of skirting around or moving around, what does this mean for institutional memory? What does this mean for succession planning?
I'm a big believer in apprenticeship. I know that it seems like an old world, 19th century, turn of phrase, but I'm just really a big believer in when you assign a person to lead a project or to have a certain set of responsibilities, it's a really good idea to join them with somebody else who has a similar group of skill sets, maybe working in a slightly different subteam role, but they can really add value to that person.
And also, the conversation should be, to lead that, let's say, team leader in that context-- Let's say I'm overseeing a group of professionals in several projects, several HR projects, really, more as a coach and a consultant than anything, and a strategist.
And I'll go to that person and say, "Margaret, I just really think that Homer is a great candidate to be an assistant to In this important project, because Homer has a lot of AI background, and we're talking about this transition in this area of HR. And I just would love you to work with him, and also for you to share a lot of the things about this business and this area or this particular functionality."
And what I'll tell people is like, you can't be worried about someone else in a collaborative, flatter construct being seen as better or more capable than you are. You're responsible for who you are. You can create, design, and represent your own talent value proposition. I'm happy to help you figure out that formula. It's not complicated, and you should be confident about that. And just know that we're going to play, as you said, Jill, different roles and different times.
Even in my executive capacity, I may play an entirely different role in a certain season, because whatever the project or the initiative or the objective requires. Ego has to be-- talk about flattening. You have to flatten that ego and be willing to make adjustments and partner with other people to get things done right, because ultimately, that's what's the most important thing. It's not about the individual, it's about the team. So I like the idea of having an apprentice in certain scenarios.
So that if that person leaves, and they have the choice to do that, that lead person, you have someone who has some institutional memory, knowledge, and ability to take on the project, at least on an interim basis, if that makes sense. JILL FINLAYSON: What I really like about the apprenticeship model is it's also unlocking the pathway to advancement.
You may not have thought about this route, but if you're given that opportunity, it's going to open new doors, or just make visible roles that you might not have otherwise seen. That's exactly right. And that goes on your resume. I helped so and so, their title, and this big project, and I was able to help them in certain critical areas to perform certain tasks, and have responsibility in that area. So you're actually leveling up when you're getting to do that.
One of the things-- this thought came to mind-- that I enjoyed doing is challenging people to present. Instead of me presenting a project, process, or to provide a facilitation on where we're at in terms of our planning and the metric and so on, the measurement, I'll ask other people to do that or to co-facilitate. And I've had people say, "Oh, I'm terrible as a public speaker." And I say, "Well, we're here.
It's a us thing, but, why don't you take on at least the first 10 minutes, and talk about these things, and you can even solicit some of the rest of us to share as subject matter experts, around the table. We'll be ready for that. But I want you to lead because I want you to challenge yourself to be in these situations.
Because ultimately, based upon where you want to go, that's going to be presenting in front of lots of people is going to be part of what you're going to need to be able to develop a competency in." JILL FINLAYSON: I absolutely love giving people stretch assignments, giving them communication skills, and that actually leads me to talk about this. You said you have to flatten your ego to get things done, but you also have to communicate with other teams to get things done.
I don't feel like things happen in silos anymore. So as you talk about thriving in this flatter world, what are some specific strategies for improving your communication and cross-functional, multidisciplinary skills to interact with other teams effectively? Yeah. So I teach two courses, in particular, on communication. One is, literally, speaking and writing. It's the fundamentals of communication in a new world of work, which I'll come back to describing a little bit more.
And the other is the strategic communication piece for managers, organizational-related communication, which has several levels, and is matrixed in a lot of ways. And that particular course is filled with real-world case studies from real-world organizations and university stories. Of course, in some cases, the names have been redacted, but a lot of other cases with these capital market companies, the names are there, because it was publicly known.
I say that to let people know that you have to start with fundamental communication abilities, in terms of writing and speaking. And as you know, Jill, writing an email is very different than a DM, a chat, or even a phone call. And you have to think about your audience no matter what the scenario is, what the writing task is, whether it's a proposal, an email follow-up, an update on how the team is doing, how you're doing on a project, or it's just a short, chat, question kind of communication.
On the other side, you have to always make sure people are perceiving you as professional, as logical, as ordered in your explanation or your proposition, and as making a request in a clear way so somebody can actually respond to it. And you have to be able to take the time to do that.
So in our writing and speaking course, we start on a very basic level using the different types of media for our communication, including Zoom, and how you show up in those settings, and that you develop those skill sets to do that effectively. Then, there's also speaking. They're speaking in the public setting. They're speaking in a Zoom scenario. They're speaking to a group, a small group in a conference room. What are the important qualities? Are you pithy? Are you concise?
Do you stay on point? How do you answer questions? Are you honest in saying, "I don't have an answer to that, but I will get back to you within the next day, so thank you, and I'm going to write that down, or flip chart that, or put that on the whiteboard."
All these things reflect your professionalism, your credibility, your integrity, and writing and speaking are two of the most important elements that are never going to go away, that reflect your ability to engender confidence in the people that are asking you to get things done in a certain role.
The communication piece, the ability to collaborate effectively, to continue to improve your communication skills, to even take a course on voice and diction-- A course, I took in my undergraduate-- is going to make all the difference in the world.
It's really challenging because there are, what I would call, so many tech stacks. You mentioned Zoom and Gmail and texting and messaging. But there's also Slack and Notion and Asana and Jira and all of these project management tools. Does the same voice or tone work for all of these platforms? What are the problems that you've seen people have, and how do you help them to not have those kind of misunderstandings?
You've got to be able to know your audience and what their expectations are. If they're a group of IT professionals, software engineers, they're going to have a different set of expectations for the presentation or what you're writing to them than, let's say, an audience of marketing professionals or an audience of even HR professionals, right? So you've got to know your audience.
And if it's a diverse audience, cross-functional audience, then you've got to try to write or speak to the areas that are important to each group to the best of your ability. But it starts there. And I find that especially with very smart people who really respect data and research, it's really important to do research, do your homework.
So if you're bringing a proposal to bear either in PowerPoint slides, in a presentation on Zoom, Jill, or in person in a conference room, or you're writing a proposal in Word, or let's say, in an email-- I think it's probably better to have an introduction in the email and then attach a Word document, or attach it to a Google Doc, that people can actually even comment on-- you have to do your homework, and footnote the research and data points, because it brings an objective credibility
to what you're trying to get across to people, to help-- to educate them, to help them understand things, or to recommend a different course of action. Opinions, we all have them. But when you have objective data, you have evidence, you have case study with a brief on how it worked out, that brings a level of expertise that is impressive to an audience. And I recommend that.
So you really have to know your audience, understand whether it's going to be a long or short presentation or communication. If it's writing, be brief, concise, and to the point. As one writer said many years ago, "Brevity is the soul of wit." I think that was Shakespeare. So you really just need to be conscientious of those things, and just make sure that you're showing up professionally in whatever manner of communication that you represent that day or for that occasion.
So this applies to both leaders, as well as individual contributors. Everybody needs these skills. If you're an individual contributor and your manager goes away, what should you expect will happen to your role? How will things change? Are there other skills you need besides good communication skills when that happens?
That's a good case study because that does happen.
And if I'm, let's say, a strategic director in a division, and there's a manager, and there are team leaders, the first thing I want to say to that manager is, "Carl, I want to make sure that if you go on a long vacation or hopefully, you stay with us for a long time, you move forward with another opportunity, I want to make sure that Barbara and Jill are ready to, at least on an interim basis, take on the responsibilities that you hold currently.
So what are you going to do to make sure that they're ready, just in case you need to take a long vacation?" Because I think that's one of the responsibilities of a leader. When I was at Levi many years ago, Jill, I was part of an elaborate leadership training program that went on for several months, and it was just amazing set of learning technologies that we were using to develop leaders.
And one of the things we had to do was we had to write a memoir saying that I'm going to be gone on a sabbatical for three months. Is my team ready to take on the responsibilities of interim co-management or co-leadership in my absence? What does that look like?
And I'll tell you, there were a lot of eyes glazing over when that assignment was given out in that particular set of workshops, because most of the managers or leaders were not ready to write that memoir in an honest, open, and transparent way, which was part of the requirement, right? Because you're going to get feedback from consultants to help you on that.
So I think that should be part of what a division leader, let's just call it for the sake of looking at a matrix organization or dean of a law school or the dean of a business school, or the vice chancellor of fundraising, or whomever, should require that, and work with the HR leadership team to make sure that that's part of what's expected in the performance management process.
So I have a question. Statistically, middle managers, at this point in time, are 30% more likely to be laid off. If you are, what would be, considered a middle manager, what should you do to make yourself valuable, irreplaceable? Should you be pivoting? Should you be repositioning yourself? Because it seems like a pretty scary time for middle managers.
I think that's right. It's always going to be that way. My first answer to that question, Jill, is everybody, whether you're a middle manager or supervisor, individual contributor, but let's talk specifically about a middle manager, at all times and in all places, you should never be satisfied with where you're at. You should never be complacent. You should take a look at what is the market requiring of 0 person in this role in the future, or someone that's a team leader, or a supervisor?
Where do I need to upskill? Do I need to get my master's? And I'm not just saying get a master's for the sake of getting a master's, but maybe there's a credential in management or in leadership in the Extension program. In a very economically, doable way, I can get certificate program done. Also in HR, they have a really great certificate program there, and in other areas.
And I just think, nowadays, just having that experience in that and working with teams in those learning environments, having cohorts through the course of a 10-week course, you're just going to be able to develop all kinds of new skills, new approaches, different ways of working with other people, because a lot of work gets done in teams.
And as I mentioned before, in the cases that we use, and most of my instructor colleagues do the same thing, have the same similar model, and ultimately, you're going to look back and say, that was a very worthwhile 10 weeks. I'm going to keep doing this and be upskilled. So that you may not be a manager next time around, but if you are, you're going to be a much better manager than you were before, because you were not stilted, you're not complacent.
I have this model, and I learned it from my younger days of being an athlete and also working with artists, is that you got to get better every day. And what I noticed about athletes and others, about artists, in general, is that they're always rehearsing. They're always practicing. They're always upskilling. They want to get better every day. They're never satisfied with where they are. They want to maximize their capabilities, and that's an attitude of the mind and the heart.
And I think that if you're a middle manager, you need to do a little bit of introspection before you get laid off so that you're ready for that. It's never easy. I've been laid off in my career. It's never easy. I always try to look at the glass half full. OK, what's the opportunity ahead of me, and what do I need to do to get ready for that next opportunity?
And all of this flattening is causing a lot of change, which causes anxiety and stress. So do you have any final words of advice of how, whether you're a boss, team leader, or an individual contributor, how should you be thinking about the future of work differently because of this flat world that we're in?
I just think you have to look at the-- become a glass half full person. I'm not saying have a personality transformation or change. But I like the story, Christopher Robin's story, the Hundred Acre Woods. Most people tend to be Eeyore's, "Oh, no, the world is coming to an end, and AI is going to take over the world. It's "The Matrix," in reality." And then there are a lot of other people who are Tiggers. They just bounce.
I'm not saying we have to be either or, but I think it would be a good idea to do some personal work. I'm a big believer in therapy and coaching and feedback. Get a coach. Have an honest, transparent, and confidential relationship with that person. Whatever you're paying, it's worthwhile. Get the feedback and start working in those areas, and be honest with yourself. Just really be super honest with yourself. Have a reality check, but never lose confidence.
I'll tell you a quick story to wrap this up. When I was a sophomore in high school, I went through, I think, what teenagers tend to go through, just a real season of depression. And I wouldn't say it was full-fledged, but I was just really, "You're not good at anything. You keep failing at this. You get an A here and a C there. You're just kind of not really well-versed in anything that you can hang your hat on, Ron."
And I remember walking across the high school campus, and it was one of those moments of fate, and I believe in that. And an old friend of mine, Lenny Darden-- Lenny, if you ever see this podcast, this is for you-- he walks up to me, because he and I were on the newspaper staff in our middle school, and we also were on the yearbook staff together. And Lenny said, "Ron, come with me." And I said, "No, I'm not going anywhere with you."
And he said, "Come with me to the journalism department, because you're an amazing writer, and we need someone like you because we don't have that great a group of writers." And I said-- I mean, he dragged me, Jill, to the journalism department. The year later, I became the associate editor of that newspaper. The year after that, I became the editor of that newspaper, the only high school daily newspaper in the country. And it changed my life, right?
So when you find out what you do best, and you have confidence in those things, don't let anybody tell you what you can or cannot do. You figure out that out for yourself. You have confidence. You determine that. You have good friends who give you good, confidential feedback. Encouragement is the best thing to do with people that are struggling in that way. And ultimately, do some homework, do some work, and go to the next level. But never be satisfied with where you are.
Thank you, Ron. I love going to the next level. And I love the fact that people can see the flattening as actually expanding opportunities, because now they're not limited to the structure and the step-by-step ladder that you had to climb for hierarchy in the past. Now, you can almost chart your own path and go diagonally and go horizontally, rather than having to just have a very prescribed, vertical path.
Thank you, Jill. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for inviting me into it. JILL FINLAYSON: Thank you so much. And with that, I hope you enjoyed this latest in a long series of podcasts that we'll be sending your way every month.
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Please share with friends and colleagues who may be interested in taking this Future of Work journey with us. And make sure to check out extension.berkeley.edu, to find a variety of courses to help you thrive in this new working flat landscape. And to see what's coming up at EDGE in Tech, go ahead and visit edge.berkeley.edu. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll be back next month to continue our discussions on the Future of Work.
The Future of Work Podcast is hosted by Jill Finlayson, produced by Sarah Benzuly, edited by Matt Dipietro, Natalie Newman, and Alicia Liao.