61%: Flexibility, Autonomy, and Managing Through Hybrid

ELISE HU: That’s Dr. David Rock. He’s the co-founder and CEO of the NeuroLeadership Institute, a cognitive science consultancy. He’s also the author of four successful books, including the business bestseller Your Brain at Work. Sixty-one percent of workers surveyed in Microsoft’s recent Work Trend Index Pulse Report identified “social interaction” as the primary benefit of coming to the office. But the exact same percentage said that ditching their daily commutes was a top reason to work from home. Today, David will share how managers who offer greater flexibility and a greater sense of autonomy can help employees feel motivated—no matter where they choose to work.

Later in this episode, we’ll check in with Joe Whittinghill, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for talent, learning, and insights. He’ll discuss how the company defines leadership, and talk about Microsoft’s managerial framework called Model, Coach, Care. It’s super cool.

But first, my conversation with Dr. David Rock.

Dr. David Rock, welcome.

DAVID ROCK: Thank you. Great to be here with you.

ELISE HU: So David, this season we’ve been exploring some of the shake ups that have accompanied pandemic lockdowns during this shift to hybrid work. U.S. Labor Department numbers show that 4.3 million people quit their jobs in August of 2021. Many of them were frontline workers, but information workers are also leaving jobs in huge numbers. So what’s going on here, and what can managers do to retain talent?

DAVID ROCK: There’s several factors. One is this was a really life-changing activity for a lot of people. People spend their lives searching for different ways to distract themselves from themselves, right? Netflix, games, books and movies and friends and social media, like, in many ways, that’s what the digital world does—gives people a tool to distract themselves from themselves so they never have to have a quiet moment to really reflect.

Well, for a lot of people, they got to the end of Netflix—

ELISE HU: ( Laughter ) Oh no, I’m stuck alone with my thoughts.

DAVID ROCK: I mean, I make a joke of it, but a lot of people had the most deeply reflective time that they’ve ever had in their life, and they thought about what mattered to them, and what was important to them, and how they wanted their life to be, and all this stuff. For a lot of people, they didn’t like what they saw.

That’s one factor. I think another factor—actually is back to autonomy—it’s not just changing jobs. There’s also a huge number of people changing relationships and a huge number of people changing houses. So those are the three big things that are in our lives: who was our partner, where did we live, and what did we work on are the three things that influence everything.

There’s a huge amount of change in all three, and guess what, it’s because it’s a way of feeling in control. Boy, we did not feel in control the last year and a half. Doing these things helps us feel in control, and that perception of autonomy, of feeling like you’re in control of your life, is super-helpful for turning down the anxiety and stress in the brain and turning up reward networks. It literally will make you healthier and happier, and it will open up your brain to being more creative, all sorts of things.

So people are trying to increase their sense of autonomy any way they can, and the job is one of the easier ways. It’s easier to change jobs than it is to change partners, for many people, or houses even.

ELISE HU: So the lockdown has given people a lot of time to think very hard about how they work and why they work, which is pretty much what you do for a living. David, can you tell us a little more about yourself and what you study?

DAVID ROCK: You know, I started out as a facilitator, a change agent in the leadership development space. And I noticed that everything I was reading in leadership development, and even teaching, just felt like a rehash. Everything was saying the same thing over and over. And I realized, either everyone in leadership development was a plagiarist or there was a biological foundation to what we were doing. And I got really obsessed with that thought and ended up kind of writing a book about it, starting a whole field based on the actual neuroscience of leadership. Basically, how to follow the brain when you’re doing culture work, leadership development work, all of that.

ELISE HU: You coined the term neuroleadership to describe this. How do you describe this field to folks who haven’t heard of it before?

DAVID ROCK: It’s really the science of everything to do with leading and managing and organizing people. So, it’s the CEO’s world, but it’s also the CHRO’s world, the chief talent officer’s world, the chief diversity officer’s world, the chief learning officer’s world, but even very relevant to the CFO and the COO and others. It’s kind of, how do you get people to actually do what you want, which is obviously one of the hardest questions.

Essentially, what we’re doing in neuroleadership is putting a more biological foundation onto stuff that people are really challenged by. We’re not testing brains, like, is this brain good or bad? Is this leader going to be good or bad? We’re not doing brain training either. What we’re doing is developing a more accurate language for what leaders and managers do, so they can essentially be better at it because they know what’s actually happening in everyone’s brain in real time. So, it’s really building a language for leadership.

ELISE HU: Interesting. I understand your consultancy, the NeuroLeadership Institute, actually made this shift to hybrid rather early, right?

DAVID ROCK: So my company is very global. We’re a few hundred people, and we actually went hybrid several years before the pandemic, not because we can see the future, but the science was suggesting it was a good idea. We did some experiments, we followed the data, and what we found was it was just better for our business. The quality of work was better. The hiring was better and more diverse, and people could be more sustainable. It certainly took some work. But we just found it was a better model, and so we stuck with that.

ELISE HU: One of the potential issues with the move to hybrid work is that some people might get the impression there’s a one-size-fits-all solution that will suit everyone if we can just nail down what that is. What does the research say about that?

DAVID ROCK: We believe the fundamental challenge is something that Microsoft found in their recent study, which is, they basically found a similar number of people want to work from home and want to work at the office. But what we found from our data, and from the science, suggests basically a third of people really want to work at home because that’s where they’re most productive, not because they want to goof off, but actually they do their best work there.

And those people being forced back in—it feels like punishment. It’s like, on the one hand you’re telling me to work hard, and on the other hand you’re making it hard. And, you know, I got my life back when I was working at home, so why are you doing that? But there’s another third of people who are just polar opposite. They’re like, if you make me go home and work, it’s like suspension from school. I can’t get anything done. I hate it.

People are really passionate on both sides of this. And it turns out, both groups say the reason is because that’s where they’re most productive, and that’s what Microsoft found—that number one, a similar percentage of people said it’s because they’re most productive, whether it was at home or at the office. And then you’ve got about a third who say they’re most productive actually mixing it up.

Which everyone thinks, oh, that’s hybrid. Full hybrid basically addresses the fact that if you give people the choice of these three things, whichever one they choose, is not only going to be best for them, but they’ll be most motivated by the fact that they chose it.

And so, we think the real key to this is giving people the option to do any one of those three models: fully at home, fully in the office, or mixing it up.

ELISE HU: Okay, cool. That really crystallizes this paradox. So if you are a manager, and you want to get to this full hybrid that you described and offer a lot of flexibility, how do you prioritize?

DAVID ROCK: You want to understand how people work best. And then to maintain fairness and to make sure you’re still seeing everybody and everyone’s collaborating, most of your meetings are going to have to be virtual meetings. We have a saying: one virtual, all virtual. If everyone’s in the office, great, meet together. If one or two people are virtual, you’re all on a platform.

It does take some thinking, but you can make virtual meetings better than in-person in many ways. There are actually some really interesting upsides to virtual that everyone’s ignoring. You’ve got to kind of get really good at both the scheduling and the delivery of working virtually.

The effect here is actually about one of the brain’s big drivers, and it’s autonomy, or feeling of control. The reason it’s so important, so valuable, for people to feel like they’re able to choose here is because feeling a bit more in control of your time and your work was one of the few things that kept people together. We felt far less control than we’ve ever felt our whole life. The outside world was incredibly uncertain and we were disconnected from each other. But we had this increase in a sense of control of our work.

This experience of people having a say is really important. And if you do need to bring people back, there can be good reasons for that. If you want 100 percent, 50 percent, 25 percent, whatever, back in the office, do that, but do that in a way that maximizes people’s perception of autonomy. It’s important to understand that the perception of autonomy is the real driver of engagement here, not just where people work; it’s a combination of the two.

[Music]

ELISE HU: So managers can support their teams by helping each of them feel this sense of control he’s talking about. Now let’s hear from someone who helped Microsoft craft its current approach to management. He’s Joe Whittinghill. He is the corporate vice president for talent, learning, and insights at Microsoft, and he’s in conversation with correspondent Mary Melton.

MARY MELTON: We’re hearing from Joe today about the transformation of Microsoft’s own leadership and management models and how the company has championed a growth mindset, which includes the internal rollout of a management framework that they’re calling Model, Coach, Care.

So, thank you, Joe, for being with us today.

JOE WHITTINGHILL: It’s great to be here. Thanks, Mary.

MARY MELTON: I’d love for you to talk us through this management framework known as Model, Coach, Care. How did you arrive at this? What exactly does it mean, and how has it been working?

JOE WHITTINGHILL: In 2019, as part of our ongoing culture transformation, we began the process of defining the role of manager in the digital age. We wanted to understand first, what are the expectations that we have of people managers of the company. Number two is, how do we help those managers develop the capabilities against those expectations. But the number three is, what is the overall experience we want the people managers of the company to have, in addition to having very productive, connected, and inclusive teams.

We did a lot of work with David Rock’s team. We also talked to literally thousands of managers. And where we ended is the role of managers at Microsoft is to deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.

So during the pandemic, we’ve really asked our managers to lean in on Model, Coach, and Care. We’ve asked them to model the behaviors that we need to create inclusive and connected teams and model our culture. We’ve asked them to coach their teams, not only on being productive and getting work done, but on how to stay healthy and stay connected with each other, and continue to learn and grow.

And most importantly, we found during the pandemic that care was critically important with their teams, and to really meet with their teams individually and ask them how they were doing, and to be empathetic to what the needs of those individual team members were, and to find ways to create as much flexibility as possible for them, in order for them as individuals, as a team member, and then, quite frankly, as the company to be successful.

MARY MELTON: That’s fascinating. We’ve been talking about how managers can help employees feel this greater sense of control, and one thing I find interesting is that Microsoft encourages everyone, regardless of their role, to feel that they can be a leader. Often, the word “leader” is used in lieu of “manager,” but it sounds like you all have a different approach to that. Can you tell us more about how Microsoft defines management versus leadership?

JOE WHITTINGHILL: There was a conversation around, so what is our belief on leadership? And my ask was, let’s redefine leadership so that leaders at Microsoft are no longer just the people managers and the executives, that every employee who so chooses can be a leader. And that is critically important when you think of leading virtual teams and hybrid teams.

So we have today around 22,000 managers at Microsoft, and I refer to it that we have 22,000 teams. So, that’s the primary team you sit on. But we have 150,000 leaders in the company, which is our employee base. And so, we declared when we released our leadership principles, everyone can be a leader. But we feel that the most important thing is that everyone has this understanding that modern work really involves people being able to be virtual team leaders.

MARY MELTON: Wonderful. Well, thank you for chatting with us today.

JOE WHITTINGHILL: And thank you for having me.

[Music]

ELISE HU: That was Microsoft’s Joe Whittinghill on the genesis of Model, Coach, Care.

[Music]

ELISE HU: Dr. Rock, we were talking about how employees’ desire for a sense of autonomy is clearly one of the big themes of hybrid work, and it’s awesome. What are some of the other major themes that have emerged in your research?

DAVID ROCK: A lot of organizations are really fearful about culture, they’re seeing turnover going up, people leaving. They’re like, oh my gosh, if we don’t get everyone back in the office, we’re going to keep losing lots of people. But that’s not really the reason they’re losing people.

A sense of connectedness to your organization is generated virtually or in person. You need to be on camera, you need authentic connections. You need small group interactions that are actually really intimate on camera. Interestingly, culture comes from watching faces, like, the way you connect to people is you literally look at their face, you resonate with the face. Culture is something we learn by osmosis, like by watching what people do, and in particular, we watch their face. If you can kind of get your scheduling right and have people mostly on camera most of the time, and leverage the upsides of platforms, there should be no diminishing in culture and you shouldn’t be losing any more people at all. In fact, you probably lose a lot more people forcing them all back in.

ELISE HU: Of course, it’s important to note there are many reasons employees may not want to be on camera during a virtual meeting, and organizations have to make sure they respect and empower those employees who want to work in ways that are best for them. So how would you encourage managers, people who lead teams, to communicate that sense to their employees.

DAVID ROCK: We did some research on this recently. One of the challenges of giving your team more autonomy is you as the manager feel less autonomy as a result. They’re going up in autonomy and you’re going down in autonomy because if people have more control, you’ve got less. And also, for managers, having people work remotely, they’re not watching them so they also have a drop in certainty. There’s also this drop in relatedness, which is a sense of feeling connected to people.

And there’s even an interesting drop in status for managers, they can’t just walk into someone’s office and demand five minutes. It’s more of a level playing field in a virtual world. It’s harder for the manager to kind of feel important in some ways. So, you’ve got a drop in three really important things to people—status, certainty, and autonomy—that would literally feel like a discomfort to many managers.

One way you can go with that as a manager is, you can try to fix the certainty and autonomy situation. That ends up looking like, okay, team, copy me on every email, give me a daily summary at the end of the day of what you did, check with me before you go offline, even for half an hour. And then we’re all going to meet for two hours every Friday to debrief on everything around it.

Some managers will go that way, that’s how they’ll deal with their distress, it is like distress, and others will say, all right, I used to be the coach on the side of the basketball game and I could interact with the team in real time. Now, I’m watching the game on television at the end of the week. How do I change my style?

ELISE HU: And how do they?

DAVID ROCK: Well, they’ve basically got to be much more outcome-focused and less reporting focused, so they’ve got to be much better at setting targets and letting people self-manage to those, and kind of get really good at identifying what great looks like.

So, the more you help people understand what great looks like, the more they can work towards that on their own, and then on a Friday or a Monday, or whatever, your meeting should be, hey, how are you? How did you win this week? What did you need help with? Rather than, give me the list of everything you did. And so, it’s shifting from a surveillance mindset to an outcomes mindset, which is a really good thing, by the way, that’s generally a better way to manage people, even before the pandemic.

ELISE HU: How would you define success for a manager now? And how do you encourage the folks that you work with to get there?

DAVID ROCK: I think you’ve just got to remember that there’s no one size fits all, that you’ve got these really different people with really different needs. You’ve got the people desperate to be back in the office and the people desperate to stay at home, and it’s for good reasons. For all of them, it’s because they want to be the most productive and do a great job.

So the first decision that teams need to make—if you’re going to really let people work at home, or come in, or mix it up half-half—you’re going to need to resolve your virtual meeting situation. Let’s study them like a science and make them much better than they are, both in terms of scheduling, managing, delivering—all of it. I think there’s a lot more work in that space that managers need to learn. It’s a whole skillset that they need to get much, much better at.

ELISE HU: It seems like all in all, managers are really having to level up as a result of these changes.

DAVID ROCK: What made up really good leadership and management before the pandemic, that was kind of important but you could get away without it. Now it’s become essential.

ELISE HU: How do managers see employees clearly when they’re not seeing them as often or seeing them in person? Are there signs that managers should be looking for that may indicate that some of their employees are feeling disconnected and that the manager needs to up their empathy game?

DAVID ROCK: The one-on-one that you have with your people is really important. You want some quality time, one on one, where you have an unrushed conversation that’s more than just perfunctory reporting. We call it a check-in. A weekly check-in with a team of four to eight people. You won’t need 30 minutes, and it’s literally these same questions: How are you? How have you been winning? What do you need help with? Those are three great questions. So you can do that as a group, but you really need that one-to-one time as well.

ELISE HU: And for employees who are struggling under managers who haven’t made the adjustments, or have become more, as you mentioned, surveillance-focused, how do employees advocate for themselves in order to try and have a more satisfying or fulfilling relationship with their jobs?

DAVID ROCK: It’s quite demotivating to feel micromanaged. It makes you feel like someone doesn’t trust you. It also feels kind of unfair. It activates a lot of different emotions, so I would just bring up just how much more motivated you would be, how much more engaged, how much more productive you would be if you had more control over your time. There’s a really interesting study. They basically gave people the ability to personalize their cubicle, and another group just stayed as normal, couldn’t do that. The people who were given permission to personalize their cubicle were not 5 percent more productive or 10 percent. They were 25 percent more productive.

ELISE HU: Oh my goodness.

DAVID ROCK: Literally, a day a week. They did a day a week more work because they were allowed to bring in art and photos and plants and whatever to their cubicle.

ELISE HU: That’s wild.

DAVID ROCK: That’s a day a week. This autonomy effect is really not insignificant, so maybe folks can quote that study and say, hey, look, just give me a little leeway and I’ll probably produce a lot more.

ELISE HU: So beyond the people, are there places for transformation when it comes to systems or overall priorities of a company or a workplace?

DAVID ROCK: Absolutely. When cars first happened and the roads were laid down, there were just so many accidents because there were no road rules and no speed limits. The pandemic hit, and suddenly everyone’s calendar was open to virtual meetings. It was like, oh, amazing, I can meet anyone, and within a week or two, you had 12 hours a day of meetings, Monday to Friday, back-to-back with no break. And by Tuesday, you were done. So, we sort of need to develop the road rules and speed limits to help people not crash, cognitively. One of the things that’s really helpful is leaving space and time for your own work, and the best time to do that, honestly, is when your brain is fresh. We’ve been advising companies to make a company-wide principle.

It can’t be a rule because things happen, but a company-wide principle. We call it Minimal Meeting Mondays and Minimal Meeting Mornings, just because they’re fun alliterations. If you leave Mondays and mornings open for people to do their own work, they end up doing amazing work, much better work, because that’s the time your brain is most creative. That’s an example of an organizational-wide practice you can do that can really help people.

Obviously, the 15-, 25- and 50-minute meeting versus everything is a 60-minute meeting, being really thoughtful—is this a 15-minute conversation, a 25, or a 50? Ultimately, being really clear about your own brain and how many actual interactions you can be part of—you can’t do 10 Teams meetings back to front.

ELISE HU: I appreciate you saying that. So do the listeners.

DAVID ROCK: For some people, they can do five or six. For some people, it’s three. But start to notice. How many meetings can I do back-to-back before I’m just staring and being useless? And start to find ways to schedule accordingly. What I want to see is autonomy being woven into all of the principles and practices that you have around work—where, when, and how you’re working. If you sort of make the perception of autonomy, the central thing to solve for, then I think that’s a big win.

ELISE HU: Okay, so before we let you go, Dr. David Rock, where do you go when you’re trying to grow and get more leadership advice?

DAVID ROCK: To be honest, I get these amazing insights from just random interactions. I remember sitting at lunch a few weeks ago. I heard this guy saying, ‘Oh my god, they’re trying to make me work at home, I can’t believe it, I’ve got to get back into the office, I can’t do anything at home.’ He was really, really mad. And it just struck me that many people are equally upset having to work at home as they are in the office. So I’ve just got my ears open. I’ve got a really diverse network of friends and colleagues, and definitely some interesting mentors, but also, sometimes I learn a lot from going out for a drink with designers and creative people, and arguing about stuff. I think it’s really important to have lots of different kinds of inputs into our brain all of the time.

ELISE HU: Fantastic, and we have learned so much from you, Dr. David Rock. Thank you.

DAVID ROCK: Pleasure. Great to be with you. Thanks for the time.

[Music]

ELISE HU: That’s it for this episode of the WorkLab podcast, from Microsoft. Check out the WorkLab digital publication too, where you can find, among many other things, a transcript of this very episode. That is all at microsoft.com/WorkLab. And for this podcast, please rate us, review, and follow us wherever you listen.

The WorkLab podcast is a place for experts to share their insights and opinions. As students of the future of work, Microsoft values inputs from a diverse set of voices. That said, the opinions and findings of our guests are their own, and they may not necessarily reflect Microsoft’s own research or positions.

WorkLab is produced by Microsoft with Godfrey Dadich Partners and Reasonable Volume. I’m your host, Elise Hu. Our correspondents are Mary Melton and Desmond Dickerson. Sharon Kallander and Matthew Duncan produce this podcast. Jessica Voelker is the WorkLab editor. Thanks for listening.

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