Ed Batista

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 2 (On Hiring)

In Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 1, I discuss the factors that cause leaders to delay a necessary termination. A mirror image of this fear can affect leaders during a hiring process, one that causes them to rush. They're so concerned about a role going unfilled that they make missteps or discount potential red flags along the way. Sometimes this is the result of inexperience, but even long-tenured leaders can be affected. What do leaders driven by a "fear of the empty chair" overlook or ignore when hiring? And if you're a leader preparing to make a hire, what can you do about it?

Cognitive Biases

There's ample research on the limitations of job interviews in predicting performance. [1] A particular problem is the unstructured interview, in which the interviewer lacks specific questions designed to elicit responses about the candidate's real-life experiences to test for a desired set of characteristics. The unstructured interview moves randomly from one topic to the next, with the candidate guessing what the interviewer wants to hear and eagerly seizing on any points in common. And the results are readily subject to cognitive biases, the mental shortcuts that preserve our limited capacity for logical reasoning at the cost of systematic errors:

• Confirmation bias: Searching for and promoting data consistent with pre-existing hypotheses about a candidate, while rejecting disconfirming data.
• Halo effect: Viewing a candidate's attributes more positively (or negatively) than is merited on the basis of positive (or negative) impressions of other attributes.
• Stereotypes: Assumptions about a candidate's fitness based on similarities to (or differences from) the interviewer's often vague assumptions about an "ideal candidate." [2]

Leaders will obviously continue to rely on interviews, despite their drawbacks. This isn't irrational behavior--even unstructured interviews have benefits [3], and structured interviews can be difficult to implement. [4] However, as organizational psychologist Robert Dipboye has noted, "The evidence is compelling that the inclusion of formal job analyses, standardized questioning of applicants, and behavioral rating scales improve the validity and reliability of interviewer judgments." [5]

If you're a leader who's feeling a sense of urgency about making a hire, it will likely be worth the effort to slow down and take the advice of Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman: 1) Create a structured set of questions to prevent you from simply pursuing the questions that you find most interesting, 2) Use the time available in an interview to obtain as much information as possible about the candidate's life in their normal environment, 3) Do not make decisions solely on the basis of your global evaluations, and 4) Rely upon statistical summaries of separately evaluated attributes. [6]

Defensiveness

More specifically, hiring processes should screen for defensiveness, which I define as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for setbacks, characterized by a disproportionately hostile, anxious or evasive response to critical feedback. When one of my clients has an under-performing employee, defensiveness is almost always an issue. Jean Leslie and Ellen Van Velsor of the Center for Creative Leadership studied "derailed" executives who left their organizations non-voluntarily or were plateaued at a level short of expectations. The two leading factors in such cases were "inability to develop or adapt" (61 percent) and "poor working relations" (57 percent), and in my experience defensiveness is a primary contributor to both. [7]

But a candidate is unlikely to show signs of defensiveness during hiring, when they're striving to be their best selves, so if you're a leader making a hire it's up to you to test for it. Here are three questions to ask candidates during the process, and in this order (although not all three may be necessary):

1. Tell me about a time when things went wrong.

If the candidate can't answer this question thoughtfully, that's an initial red flag, suggesting that they're unwilling to be forthright about their setbacks or unable to observe and interpret such situations without experiencing distress. But some candidates will provide an adequate answer while leaving themselves out of the story, blaming the setback on the failings of others or inescapable misfortune. In these cases, proceed to the next question:

2. Tell me about a time when you made a mistake.

The wording here is deliberate, providing the candidate with an opportunity to take responsibility for a setback without using unduly fraught language. We all "make mistakes," and only the most defensive among us will refuse to admit it. Still, some candidates will respond with an example in which the consequences of their mistake were relatively trivial, providing little data on their capacity to acknowledge and learn from serious missteps. In these cases, proceed to the final question:

3. Tell me about a time when you failed.

The wording here is also deliberate, inviting the candidate to identify a situation in which they bore personal responsibility for a meaningful setback. Some candidates who were less forthcoming in response to the first two questions will finally avail themselves of this opportunity--and others will not, providing examples of inconsequential "failures," or evading the idea that they failed, finding others to take the blame.

If a candidate's unable to provide a satisfactory response to any of these questions, consider that a likely sign of defensiveness. And if you're still bullish on their candidacy, ask whether your eagerness to fill the role might be distorting your judgment. [8]

Leverage

Once the top candidate has been identified, the leader has to close them, sometimes requiring multiple rounds of negotiation across a range of issues. The leader's goal shouldn't be to extract the most concessions possible from the candidate. By adopting such an aggressive stance, not only do they run the risk of losing the best candidates over relatively minor differences, they also increase the likelihood that a qualified candidate will accept the role begrudgingly, or that only less-qualified candidates will remain available, in either case sowing the seeds of future difficulties.

But it can be equally problematic when a leader is so anxious to fill a role that they give up their leverage in the negotiation, making concessions that they later regret. When the dust settles after the hire's completed, the result is an employee who's one of the following:

• Over-compensated: This can take the form of excessive base pay or equity grants, but it may also reflect unsound management practices, such as poorly-structured variable or bonus plans. Even confidential information about compensation rarely remains so indefinitely, and any arrangements that are outside the company's norms have the potential to wreak havoc should other employees come to feel that they're now under-compensated or have been treated unfairly.
• Over-titled: They candidate is really a Director, but they held out for VP. Or they're really a VP, but they held out for C-level. Or the role shouldn't even have a hierarchical title, but the leader felt obligated to award one to close the candidate. As I've written before, "at first...titles may seem cheap--I've even had clients call them 'free.' But not only are those hidden costs eventually revealed, they also tend to escalate--so supposedly 'free' titles ultimately become very expensive." [9]
• Over-scoped: This isn't to say that the candidate is unqualified per se, but, rather, that their ambitions extend beyond their current capabilities, and they negotiated for a set of duties that will stretch them to the point of failure.

Again, the solution isn't to adopt a bare-knuckles negotiation style and pick a fight over every single issue. But if you're a leader in the midst of making a hire, pay close attention to how you feel about the prospect of losing the candidate and the extent to which such feelings might be causing you to underplay the leverage you hold in the negotiations. In this context it can be helpful to better understand your strengths and weaknesses as a negotiator. There's no one right approach, but in my experience there are two distinct negotiating "cultures":

In a list-price culture, there's a high degree of transparency and very little flexibility. An opening offer may not be take-it-or-leave it, but there's relatively little gamesmanship... In a haggling culture, the opposite is true. There's very little transparency and a great deal of flexibility. Opening offers are never take-it-or-leave-it, and gamesmanship abounds. [10]

A challenge in hiring is that you and the candidate probably haven't negotiated before, so you may come from opposing cultures without realizing it, which is a recipe for miscommunication:

When a list-price leader meets a haggling candidate, the leader may be surprised by a seemingly outrageous counter-offer, and the candidate may be surprised by the leader's rigid inflexibility. And when a haggling leader meets a list-price candidate, the leader may be surprised by the candidate's apparent lack of responsiveness, and the candidate may be surprised by the insultingly low opening offer. [11]

Short-Term Pain vs. Long-Term Pain

As I noted in Part 1, a theme here is the belief that the short-term pain will be greater than the long-term pain. When filling an empty role, the short-term pain is evident: Important work is going undone. This includes not only the work that is the purview of the role, but also the work that the leader must defer or forego in order to dedicate time and energy to the hiring process.

It's also not uncommon for leaders to find hiring itself a somewhat painful experience. Even when recruiters or other employees are available to source a pool of candidates and conduct the initial screens, the leader must ultimately spend a substantial amount of time in later rounds with candidates who won't work out--and in many early stage companies the leader is doing all this work on their own. And some leaders enjoy negotiating, but many find it onerous at best. In most cases, the leader is driven to seek relief and put an end to the short-term pain by selecting a candidate and closing them quickly.

However, as I also wrote in Part 1, what gets left out of this equation is the possibility that the long-term pain might outweigh the short-term pain, and perhaps by a substantial margin. Candidates who breezed through a series of unstructured interviews might look the part but be woefully underqualified. Candidates whose defensiveness wasn't surfaced during the process (or, worse, was ignored) will almost certainly fail to fulfill their potential. Candidates who extracted outsized concessions in their negotiation may be overmatched by the role or create perceptions of unfairness, undermining trust in management.  And someone who fits any of these criteria may well need to be managed out or terminated abruptly. The long-term pain of a poor hire is nearly limitless.

If you're a leader preparing for or in the middle of an important hire, you're undoubtedly feeling some pressure to fill the role. But managing your "fear of the empty chair" and tolerating some short-term pain in order to create a more structured interview process, test deliberately for defensiveness, and carefully assess your leverage as you conduct negotiations may well spare you from much more pain in the long run.

This is a companion piece to the following:

Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews

Fear of the Empty Chair, Part 1 (On Termination)

Footnotes

[1] For more on the shortcomings of interviews, see the following:

• Stubborn Reliance on Intuition and Subjectivity in Employee Selection (Scott Highhouse, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2008)
• Belief in the unstructured interview: The persistence of an illusion (Jason Dana, Robyn Dawes and Nathanial Peterson, Judgment and Decision Making, 2013)
• Overconfidence in personnel selection: When and why unstructured interview information can hurt hiring decisions (Edgar Kausel, Satoris Culbertson and Hector Madrid, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2016)
• The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews (Jason Dana, The New York Times, 2017)

[2] For more on cognitive biases in interviewing, see Structured and Unstructured Selection Interviews: Beyond the Job-Fit Model (Robert Dipboye, Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 1994) and How Cognitive Biases Make Interviews Unreliable (Huy Tran, TRG International, 2016).

[3] Dipboye, page 112:

Unstructured approaches allow for richer communication among interviewers and between interviewer and the applicant (Daft & Lengel, 1986); as a consequence, those involved in the selection process can achieve greater reductions in the equivocality associated with hiring decisions (Weick, 1979). Second, the political behavior that can emerge with an unstructured procedure can prove valuable in resolving conflict over underlying objectives and alternative job candidates. Third, when knowledge of cause-effect is incomplete and there is no consensus on standards, fairness becomes more of an issue, and the interactional quality of an unstructured interview can provide for greater procedural justice. Fourth, the overall fit of the individual to the job context becomes more important in these situations and as discussed earlier, unstructured procedures seem to provide a better basis for achieving a good fit to this broader context. Finally, it is in these ambiguous situations that the personal commitment of those conducting the interviews is especially important to the ultimate success of the decision, and through providing autonomy, an unstructured procedure may help build this commitment...

[4] Ibid, page 113:

There are several ways that a structured selection process can conflict with the existing system, and as a consequence can be rejected or destructured. In the search for personal satisfaction, interviewers deviate from guidelines by incorporating task characteristics such as variety and autonomy. In the attempt to achieve a good fit to the organization, interviewers stray from the job-related attributes to consider the personality, values, and goals and to allow recruiting, socialization, rind self-selection. Other deviations occur as a consequence of power tactics, such as building coalitions or controlling the decision process. In the attempt to be fair, interviewers deviate from the one-way interrogation."

[5] Ibid, page 94.

[6] Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews

[7] A Look at Derailment Today: North America and Europe, page 11 (Jean Leslie and Ellen Van Velsor, Center for Creative Leadership, 1996)

[8] Adapted from Surfacing Defensiveness (Three Questions for Candidates).

[9] Very Cheap, Then Very Expensive (On Job Titles)

[10] Culture, Compensation and Negotiation

[11] Ibid.

Photo by Votchitsev Viacheslav.

Are the Best Salespeople the Best Sales Leaders?

Not necessarily--and sometimes they're terrible. A common figure in my clients' companies is the high-performing salesperson who aspires to sales leadership, is promoted to a managerial role, and promptly fails to meet expectations. In some cases this stumble motivates them to improve their managerial skills, but just as often they have to be replaced, and occasionally they drag the entire sales org down with them. I'm not merely relying on observations from my practice--this dynamic has been documented in the management literature:

Using detailed microdata on sales workers in U.S. firms, we provide the first large-scale empirical evidence showing that firms prioritize current performance in promotion decisions at the expense of promoting the best potential managers. Our findings are consistent with the "Peter Principle," which, in its extreme form, states that firms promote competent workers until they become incompetent managers. In particular, we show that high-performing sales workers are more likely to be promoted, but that prior sales performance negatively predicts managerial performance. [1]

And by sales expert Bruce Sevy, who advises companies on their talent strategies:

GrowthPlay has assessed hundreds of thousands of candidates for sales and sales management roles and we do this in a way that lets us empirically assess a person’s fit to both roles. What we found is more than a bit counter-intuitive. First, only about one out of every six candidates who is a strong fit for a sales role is also a strong fit for a sales management role. Perhaps equally surprisingly, as many as five out of every seven candidates who are poor fits for sales roles are strong fits for sales manager roles. [2]

And by sales SaaS founder Steli Efti, an exceptional salesman himself:

My style of pitching only worked for me. It was a unique way of doing things for a unique person. And by trying to inspire my team to do the same instead of coaching them on the fundamentals, I was taking good, hardworking, ambitious people and setting them up for failure. [3]

What's happening here? There are three underlying factors:

• The characteristics that support exceptional sales performance don't correlate with exceptional sales leadership.
• But many ambitious salespeople remain motivated by status, titles and managerial responsibilities.
• So companies strive to retain top salespeople through promotions while mitigating the costs of their mismanagement.

Part 1: Why (So Many) Great Salespeople Can't Lead

David McClelland was a prominent social psychologist in the 20th century, and his "motivational needs theory" explains the surprising disconnect between exceptional sales performance and exceptional sales leadership. [4] McClelland's research suggests that people have three primary needs--for achievement, power, and affiliation--and that an individual's combination of needs renders them more or less suitable for different professional roles. People with a high need for achievement tend to make outstanding salespeople, as sales expert Sevy underscores:

At the heart of every great sales person you will find a strong achievement motive... What’s special about the achievement motive is that it’s only ever really satisfied by personal accomplishment. It’s not enough that the team did well, I have to excel. And the achievement motive simply adores sales. Sales is the perfect environment for achievement. Sales has everything achievement needs to take root, grow and flourish. [5]

So sales as a profession attracts high achievers, but such people don't make the best leaders. Their emphasis on individual excellence and personal autonomy can cause them to view colleagues as obstacles rather than resources. They prioritize activities that require their direct involvement over building systems that enable groups to accomplish more at scale.

In contrast, great leaders are much more strongly motivated by power. To be clear, as McClelland and his co-author David Burnham note, "Power motivation refers not to dictatorial behavior but to a desire to have impact, to be strong and influential." [6]. The best leaders recognize that power in organizational life is realized through others, and there's a necessary tradeoff between accomplishments achieved through individual effort, and the ability to have extensive influence without being directly involved.

Such leaders also have a relatively low need for affiliation--put simply, they care about power more than being liked. This doesn't mean that they're unpleasant or abrasive, but they're not going to let a desire for interpersonal harmony get in the way of accumulating or exerting the power that's necessary to accomplish their goals.

What does all this look like in practice? In my work with clients I've observed three primary ways in which their highly-effective salespeople typically fail as sales leaders: They're poor systematizers, unable to distill their methods into a teachable playbook. Or they're reluctant delegators, slow to hand off accounts and quick to re-insert themselves at the slightest sign of trouble. Or they're people-pleasers, scared to offer critical feedback and hesitant to hold under-performers accountable. (These failings are distinct but not mutually exclusive.)

Part 2: Why (Some) Great Salespeople Want to Lead Anyway

Not every stellar salesperson aspires to a leadership position, and one of the most valuable resources a company can have is a sales star who just wants to get rich. They don't want to manage, they don't want to teach, and they don't really want to talk to anyone who's not a prospect. Give them the tools they need, and get out of their way.

And yet so many great salespeople yearn for more--why? The specifics vary, but the single most important reason is status, a topic discussed by contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton:

The predominant impulse behind our desire to rise in the social hierarchy may be rooted not so much in the material goods we can accrue or the power we can wield as in the amount of love we stand to receive as a consequence of high status. [7]

Great salespeople will get rich, but in some organizations (and in some domains of life) they won't be viewed as high status. I first realized this when I was an MBA student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business many years ago, where I was astonished to learn that there were no classes on sales. I eventually grasped that sales was viewed as a low-status function, presumably a consequence of the fact that there's no such thing as a PhD in Sales. The GSB has since added courses on sales to the curriculum, but it remains a surprisingly marginal discipline in academia relative to its vital importance in commerce.

Our desire for status isn't just the result of egomania or insecurity, although these can be exacerbating factors. Even the most well-adjusted among us are subject to social comparison, the psychological process by which we gauge our success in life relative to the accomplishments of those we consider peers. [8] Net worth plays a significant role here, but it's not always visible--and obvious displays of wealth will be viewed as low-status in certain settings.

But title, headcount, and managerial responsibility are the self-evident manifestations of status that accompany a leadership role. The great salesperson who's not content with getting rich and desires higher status, either within the organization or in their personal life, will invariably strive for a promotion--sometimes to their detriment.

Part 3: How Companies Respond (and What You Can Do Differently)

As a consequence of these factors, companies reliably promote the highest-performing salespeople into leadership roles--but why? Are they acting irrationally? Not according to the research cited above:

Finding evidence of the Peter Principle does not imply that firms make mistakes. Alternative promotion policies that maximize managerial match quality may lead to the loss of incentive benefits associated with existing promotion policies. Indeed, a promotion policy that favors top sales workers may provide a variety of incentive benefits that justify the costs of managerial mismatch. [9]

Further, as Sevy notes, "No salesperson worth their salt wants to work for a manager who hasn't 'carried a bag.' This is understandable--who doesn't want a manager who has the experience and battle scars to understand what I'm going through? But it leads to the common but mistaken belief that you can't lead a sales team unless you carried a bag." [10]

My clients who have promoted a great salesperson into a leadership role are by no means unaware of the risk that this person will under-perform as a sales leader--this is often one of our main discussion topics. But they also have to take into account the possibility that the great salesperson who's not promoted (or who's levelled under a proven sales leader) may well become a flight risk, seeking higher status elsewhere.

So if you're a CEO or another leader who oversees sales, what might you do differently? How can you keep ambitious salespeople happy while minimizing the likelihood that they'll flame out as sales leaders? The starting point is simply acknowledging that great sales performance alone is no guarantee of great sales leadership and may actually be a risk factor. Then consider the following:

Promote differently.

In addition to sales performance when making promotions, be sure to assess candidates' managerial abilities. One measure cited in the research is their willingness to collaborate, as determined by the number of colleagues with whom a salesperson shares credit on deals. Collaboration is positively correlated with subsequent managerial performance but is generally not a consistent factor in promotions. And yet in companies where sales managers lead relatively larger teams--and where the cost of poor management would be more significant--collaboration is weighted more heavily in promotion decisions, resulting in better sales management. [11]

You can employ any number of alternative metrics or incentives, from peer feedback to team compensation, but the overarching goal is ensuring that your salespeople know that promotions are contingent not only on their personal performance, but also on their ability to positively influence others' performance. Note that this isn't about rewarding likeability--great salespeople can summon that quality at will--but, rather, about creating an environment in which high achievers are motivated to look beyond their individual scorecard.

Manage differently.

As high achievers, great salespeople value autonomy and will resist anything they perceive as "micro-management" after being promoted into a leadership role. But management isn't micro-management, and you can't simply make a promotion and hope for the best. As I've written before, "It's possible for a less-experienced CEO to get in the way of their senior leaders--but more typically I see the opposite problem. The CEO gives their executives a great deal of space, only to find several months or quarters later that they backed off too far, and some important objectives were neglected and fell into the gap." [12]

Even--and especially--if you're not an experienced salesperson yourself, you can still offer your sales leader meaningful guidance and support in the form of active management. But this may well entail revamping your understanding of what it means to manage, a topic I've discussed previously:

Senior leaders manage people who sit much closer to the problems being solved and who may have more expertise in their functional area than the leader. Directive guidance from a senior leader can be counterproductive by preventing execs and employees from making full use of their own knowledge or from taking responsibility for a problem they would rather leave to the leader. Such an approach also keeps senior leaders involved with tactical details and distracts them from larger strategic issues, which is a particular concern in rapidly growing or changing organizations. An alternative approach for the senior leader is to employ coaching skills to help direct reports come up with their own solutions to the problems they face. [13]

Provide status differently.

Finally, consider how to fulfill a great salesperson's legitimate need for status in ways other than a promotion. Leadership experts Allan Cohen and David Bradford discuss the concept of "currencies," resources that can be exchanged as a basis for mutual influence. [14] Of greatest significance here are what they call "position-related currencies," such as public recognition for accomplishments, visibility throughout and beyond the organization, a reputation for competence, a sense of belonging to a group of insiders, and opportunities to expand one's network.

These currencies are precisely the forms of status that cause a great salesperson to desire a promotion, but they can usually be made available via means other than a leadership role. A challenge in some technology-centric companies is that Product and Engineering are the dominant power centers, while Sales is viewed as less important. Occasionally this is a rational arrangement--product-led growth isn't always a fantasy--but it often reflects a set of biases, as I once observed at Stanford. The key is managing the balance of power across functions, so that your best salespeople don't feel that a leadership role is the only path to high status.

Footnotes

[1] Promotions and the Peter Principle (Alan Benson, Danielle Li & Kelly Shue, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2018). For a concise summary of the research that resulted in this paper, see The Best Salespeople Don't Make the Best Managers (Alex Verkhivker, Chicago Booth Review, 2017).

[2] Why Great Salespeople Make Terrible Sales Managers (Bruce Sevy, Forbes, 2016)

[3] Why Great Salespeople Make Terrible Managers (Steli Efti, Close, 2018)

[4] For a discussion of motivational needs theory and its broader implications for organizational life, see McClelland and Burnham on Power and Management. Their original work is best summarized here: Power Is the Great Motivator (David McClelland and David Burnham, Harvard Business Review, originally written 1976, revised 1995, republished 2003).

[5] Sevy doesn't mention McClelland or motivational needs theory in his Forbes piece, but I suspect that he drew specifically on this concept and (understandably) chose not to make an academic reference in an article for general readers.

[6] McClelland and Burnham, HBR.

[7] Status Anxiety, page 6 (Alain de Botton, 2005)

[8] For more on social comparison, see the following:

• Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, pages 33-34 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013)
• The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, pages 131-132 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)

[9] Benson, Li & Shue, NBER.

[10] Sevy, Forbes.

[11] Benson, Li & Shue, NBER.

[12] Mind the Gap (On Leading Senior Executives)

[13] Coaching and Feedback Tools for Leaders

[14] Influence Without Authority, Chapter 3 (Allan Cohen and David Bradford, 2005)

Image via moviememe1978. If you don't recognize Alec Baldwin as Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross, then you owe it to yourself to watch his (very NSFW) monologue, written by David Mamet:

A Leader's Offsite Survival Guide

I talk frequently with clients who are preparing to hold an offsite with their employees, and at the moment some of these gatherings are the first in-person events they've held in years. If you're in similar circumstances, whether it's a full-company retreat or a small gathering of the executive team, here are ten issues to consider before, during and after your event:

1. To Facilitate or Not to Facilitate?

The question of whether to engage an external facilitator will be influenced by your budget, timeline, and the availability of capable providers, but the determining factor should be the role you want to play during the event. An external facilitator can take on a number of functions often fulfilled by the leader, with a particular focus on process, group dynamics and time management. This can free you up to be a more active participant without dictating the outcome.

An external facilitator is also an independent figure operating outside of the organization's power structure, which enables them to do some things that you can't. This won't happen if a facilitator is too deferential to you (or is perceived to be), so it's essential that they have the ability to strike the right balance. But by serving as another source of authority without usurping yours, an experienced facilitator can have a liberating effect on everyone, including you.

2. The Agenda

It can be tempting to craft the agenda on your own and announce it to your team. This will be more efficient, but when people have no sense of ownership over the agenda, they feel no responsibility for the outcome. It can be equally tempting to delegate the agenda to employees or your facilitator. This will also be more efficient, but you may be unpleasantly surprised to find that the agenda fails to reflect your priorities. Instead, view the process of creating the agenda as an investment in the event's success and an opportunity to build commitment. [1]

Offsites serve various purposes, but they all have the potential to foster stronger relationships and an enhanced sense of social cohesion. This doesn't happen automatically, however, and these goals should be reflected in your agenda. This may involve formal activities explicitly aimed at interpersonal dynamics, but that's not always necessary or even desirable. But at the very least there should be ample time for informal interactions at the beginning and end of each day and in between all formal activities. One of the most common mistakes I see in offsite planning is an over-stuffed agenda that leaves no room for mingling and small talk, which are particularly valuable aspects of in-person experiences. [2]

3. The Welcome

A theme in my practice is the symbolic dimension of leadership. You don't merely make strategic decisions and allocate resources--you also serve as an avatar, a figure who personifies your organization. [3] This role takes on a heightened importance when your team gathers together and looks to you to signify the meaning and purpose of the event. There will be just such a moment at the offsite when everyone is finally assembled, and you'll have an opportunity to kick things off with a few remarks.

If the entire company is present this may take place in a ballroom or as a formal keynote, but no matter the size of the event it's a moment when you'll be onstage. There's no need to speak at great length--this may be counter-productive, especially if people are eager to get started or fatigued after a day of travel. But make the most of the opportunity by having some points prepared that will set the right tone.

4. The Spotlight and the Microscope

If the event is sufficiently large you may spend a portion of it on a literal stage, but remember that you'll be under a spotlight--and a microscope--the entire time. Your comments, demeanor and body language will be closely scrutinized. Even the most seemingly casual interactions will be viewed by your colleagues as potentially significant, a dynamic that will be heightened when facing junior employees who may be meeting you for the first and only time.

This can be exhausting, particularly if you haven't participated in many in-person events in recent years. While dinner and other evening activities are as important as everything else on the agenda--see below--be sure to plan for some downtime alone in your room or at home. Do not try to catch up with other work or personal responsibilities at the end of the day--get some rest instead.

5. Going Offline

Even if your entire company is participating in the offsite, you'll undoubtedly have other stakeholders whose daily lives will continue uninterrupted and who may expect you to be as readily available as always. Some parties may have a legitimate claim on your attention, such as users of mission-critical services who view you as the point of contact in the event of a crisis. But in my experience a great many "crises" can be handled without escalation as long as an appropriate contingency plan is in place.

The problem is that many leaders are unable to unplug from the constantly-available data alerting them to potential issues. [4] They short-circuit any contingency plans by diving into the weeds at the slightest provocation. There's no single solution, but recognize that one cost of such responsiveness will be a clear signal to your employees that neither they nor the offsite merit your full attention, and they will probably follow your example.

6. Eating (and Drinking)

An ample body of research suggests that eating together contributes to stronger relationships among colleagues. [5] In addition to opportunities for mingling and small talk, noted above, this is why meals and coffee breaks during an offsite can be as valuable as the formal sessions. You may choose to deepen existing relationships or to engage with people you don't see regularly, but bear in mind that while these activities may be optional for others, they're obligatory for you, and your presence (or absence) will be noted.

If you don't drink, I'm certainly not suggesting that it's necessary. But in many settings moderate alcohol use contributes to a degree of sociability and informality that can make hierarchical relationships warmer and more personal, and your presence is more important than whether or not you imbibe. As the leader of a global professional services firm once told me, only half-jokingly, "At the end of the day, you have to join your team in the bar. You can't be among the last group there at closing time, but you do have to go." You can always order a Gibson. [6]

7. The Hot Tub

Hot tubs are an HR nightmare waiting to happen, and if your event planner has an ounce of sense there will be none at the venue, but sometimes this is unavoidable. While you may have to go to the bar, take the opposite approach here: Under no circumstances get in (or even near) the hot tub. If there are more than a hundred people in attendance over several nights, expect at least one incident that will require the attention of your senior People leader and possibly your labor & employment counsel, and make sure they're prepared. (I'm being a little flippant here, but I'm not joking!)

8. The Goodbye

Just as your opening remarks played a meaningful ceremonial role, you'll also have an opportunity to close the proceedings. Again, with large groups this may take place during a keynote in a ballroom or on a stage, but even with small teams in an informal setting people will look to you to demarcate the ending, and you may have to seize the moment before everyone begins drifting away.

One of the reasons this moment matters so much is what psychologists call the "peak-end rule"--our memories of events are disproportionately influenced by how we feel during the periods of greatest emotional intensity and at the ending. [7] No matter what happened beforehand, your closing remarks have the potential to shape everyone's perception of the offsite, for better and for worse. Brevity will be necessary--no one wants to hear a long speech on their way out the door--but don't opt out just to save a minute or two.

9. The Return Home

After an offsite leaders often return home to people who are eager to spend time with them and clamoring for their attention. If this describes your situation, you may find it a welcome respite or it may feel like another form of work--or some combination of the two. To the greatest extent possible, let these people know that you're looking forward to seeing them and that you'll be depleted, which may limit your ability to be present and available while you recharge.

Alternatively, you may be riding a high from the constant interpersonal stimulation at the offsite, and home may feel empty or even lonely in contrast. In this case, you'll be well served by reaching out in advance to people who care about you as a person, not as a leader, and enlisting their support in helping you decompress, whether it's over a meal, a movie, or a peaceful walk. The key is giving some thought in advance to what you're likely to need at home, rather than scrambling to figure it out after you arrive.

10. The Day After

A similar lesson applies to your first day back at work after the offsite. You'll probably feel behind in various ways, and as a result you may be inclined to overcommit yourself. But you may still be recuperating from the event, and you're unlikely to be doing your best thinking. Just as at home, at work there may be a number of people who've been waiting patiently for your return and now feel an urgent need to meet. But consider whether these conversations are truly important to you--they may not be. [8]

Try to keep your calendar clear, at least for one day, and if someone helps you manage your schedule let them know that this is a priority. Even--and sometimes especially--when an offsite goes well, the spaciousness will enable you not only to resume your routines at an orderly pace, but also to reflect on what you learned, making the entire experience that much more valuable.

Footnotes

[1] Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)

[2] Bosses and Birthdays (The Importance of Small Talk)

[3] Leader as Avatar

[4] The Siren Call of Constant Data

[5] For more on shared meals and team-building, see the following:

• Social eating connects communities (University of Oxford, 2017)
• Groups that eat together perform better together (Susan Kelley, Cornell Chronicle, 2015)
• Team Building in the Cafeteria (Harvard Business Review, 2015)

[6] If you actually order a Gibson, you'll get a Martini garnished with a cocktail onion rather than an olive or twist, but according to an undoubtedly apocryphal story, the drink was originally nothing but water, a subterfuge invented by a diplomat or banker to remain sober while fleecing his companions.

[7] Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 380 (Daniel Kahneman, 2013)

[8] Importance vs. Urgency

Photo by Bertram Nudelbach.