IO Leader Handbook

IO Leader Handbook

IOM Leader Handbook

Version 1.0
July 2020

1. Introduction
This Leader Handbook is not a “how to manage people”, rather it’s a quick reference so Leaders would  know what’s expected of them in various aspects of managing team members.

2. Our Leader Philosophy and Expectations
2.1. Our Management Philosophy

Vision
Endless Opportunities… for our Clients, Team Members and Partners 

Mission
The Trusted and Preferred Global Partner providing Customized, Quality Business Solutions

Our Values


 

Our Leadership Principles
  1. Leadership is respecting the past while being able to articulate a clear, concise vision of the future.
  2. Leadership is about being transparent and honest, especially when this is difficult.
  3. Leadership is building a competent, committed team. Good leaders value a plow-horse over a show-horse.  Good leaders know they are no better than their team. 
  4. Leadership is being laser-focused on priorities.  Good leaders insist on this behavior in their organizations.  At the same time, they are open minded; constantly probing, questioning, and learning.
  5. Leadership is setting clear, realistic, and challenging goals, and then holding people accountable. 
  6. Leadership is being a good coach.  Good leaders are teachers, mentors, supporters.  Good leaders must be good listeners.
  7. Leadership is making decisions based on principles rather than expediency.  Good decisions are based on facts, not hunches.  A good leader’s integrity is never challenged.
  8. Above all leadership is about caring.  Caring deeply and sincerely about customers, owners, partners and employees; and not being afraid to show it.
Non-Negotiable Expectations    


 

2.2. Tenets for People Management
  1. Managing professionals is a craft and is hard, and therefore great Leaders must continually learn to get better at it.
  2. Managing people is not an “add-on” responsibility to a job, it is the job.
  3. Upon becoming a people Leader, this individual transitions away from their previous day-to-day responsibilities within an explicit timeframe.
Responsibilities of a people Leader:
  1. To put their direct reports in a position to succeed, through comprehensive training, clear objectives, support, constructive feedback, and consistent evaluations.
  2. To actively help their direct reports grow and achieve their goals.
  3. Everything else (e.g. managing projects, client deliverables, etc.).
  4. Meeting with your team members frequently and informally is better than infrequent, in-depth, backwards-looking evaluations.
  5. Leaders have a responsibility to know and understand their team members as individuals, not just as “resources”.
  6. Good Leader-team member relationships are based on psychological safety and trust that enable candid conversations and feedback, and it is the Leader’s responsibility to take the lead on establishing such a relationship.
  7. Leaders are expected to frequently question their own processes and invest time in finding and implementing new technologies that help the team and the organization grow
  8. 2.3. Expectations of People Leaders
This is a summary list of the main expectations of our Leaders, with details provided throughout this Handbook.
  1. Ensure your team members understand the company goals, progress, and how their work contributes to those goals. This includes sharing and discussing updates from senior management. If company goals/strategy/progress are unclear to you and therefore you don’t feel sure about discussing with your direct reports, then raise that to the People Operations and Transformation Team so that we can improve top-level communication.
  2. Create a relationship where your direct reports feel comfortable coming to you with concerns and speaking honestly.
  3. Get to know your team members as individuals. Know their motivations, weaknesses, and strengths. Co-create opportunities for them to use and further develop their strengths. Align this with what skills and strengths are needed for current roles or desired future roles, so that you can identify areas for support or a role with a better potential fit.
  4. Model the company behaviors and bring values up with your team members by highlighting when someone has - or has not - demonstrated them.
  5. Adhere to established hiring processes (see section 3)
  6. Create an onboarding plan for each new hire based on the company’s guidelines, beyond the standard Core Onboarding (see section 4)
  7. Goals: Enter them on time, score on time, and hold quarterly review meetings with each direct report.
  8. Metrics: Defining metrics and the appropriate cadence frequency to help each direct report track progress towards larger goals
  9. Regular one-on-ones with each direct report, no less frequently than once every 2 weeks 
  10. Discuss career development at least twice a year.
  11. Demonstrate and support strong teamwork by collaborating effectively with other teams and supporting your direct reports to do the same
  12. Commit time to improving as a Leader. Read, learn, share resources with your peers.
  13. Say thank you  - it goes a long way.

Need some thought starters? Here are ways to engage with others that go beyond “how are you?”
  1. How have you been sleeping?
  2. What color is your heart today? Why?
  3. What story are you telling yourself today?
  4. How can I support you?
  5. What thoughts have been circling in your brain?
  6. What are your top 3 feelings today?
  7. What have you done just for you today?
  8. What am I interrupting? (to kick off a phone conversation)
  9. Are you still holding up okay?
  10. How are you coping?
  11. What’s your current state of mind?
  12. What’s your day been like so far?
  13. What was your favorite moment thus far today?
  14. What are you looking forward to this week?
  15. What was the last picture you took?
  16. What TV show are you watching right now?
  17. Is anything zapping your energy or creativity?
  18. Share some personal news, such as “I adopted a dog” or “I tried xyz new recipe.”
  19. What’s been on your mind lately?
  20. Or, follow up on a worry or concern mentioned before.
  21. What made you laugh today?
  22. What do you wish you did more of today?
  23. What do you wish you did less of today?
  24. What app did you open most today?

2.4. Managing and Scaling Distributed Teams
Whether you run or work on a remote team, or plan to transition your team to work remotely in the future, this guide contains bits of wisdom that can help you navigate the waters of the future of work.
Managing a remote team effectively is not about measuring the amount of time your employees spend online. It’s about:
  1. Choosing good team collaboration tools and sticking to them
First of all, make sure you are fully aware of the tools available, for your account or within the organization. To avoid chaos and disorganization, choose your tools wisely and stick to them. You should also decide on the communication style for each situation. For example, if the situation is urgent, your team should use a chat room on Zoom. If the situation can wait, you can email each other.
  1. Holding regular meetings
The most effective meetings that should be on your agenda include:
  1. Onboarding meetings: great for welcoming a new employee to your team.
  2. Daily (or weekly) standups: very necessary meetings for keeping your team up to date, discussing progress or blockers and bottlenecks.
  3. Brainstorming meetings: amazing for encouraging innovation, creativity, and awesome ideas.
  4. Kickoff meetings: use them to inform your employees about the details of a project, their part in it, and any significant due dates.
  5. Feedback meetings: an effective way to discuss what went well with the project, and what didn’t.
Creating procedures and implementing a project management system
We know how challenging it can get to stay up-to-date with projects and move forward in an orderly manner. That’s why you need to create procedures and use project management tools that will keep the entire team in sync.

2.5. Other general guidelines
Questions a people Leader should ask themselves, at least quarterly:
  1. Would you hire each direct report for their current role?
  2. If each direct report was given a job offer in another organization, how would you react? 
  3. Is each direct report in the right role for them? for the company?
Questions a people Leader should ask each direct report, at least quarterly:
  1. Are you happy with your current role?
  2. Do you have what you need to do your job and to do it at your best?
  3. What do you want to do in 1 year? 2 years? 3 years?
  4. Are you thinking about leaving the company? Why?
3. Hiring
To support making strong hires, the company expects that hiring Leaders:
  1. Understand and adhere to the recruitment and selection process
  2. Be responsive to recruiters and direct incoming job applicants, including fast responses to interview scheduling and providing candidate feedback within 24 hours of an interview using the Interview Feedback process.
  3. Be a partner to the recruiter rather than expect that the recruiter will deliver the right new hire to you - for example, help build the pipeline and push your team to do so as well (e.g. via social sharing and seeking referrals)
  4. Promptly and thoroughly complete a hiring packet when prompted to do so by the recruiter
Beyond the above “nuts and bolts” of the recruitment process, hiring Leaders need to become great at identifying and assessing top candidates. Evaluating skills and experience is paramount, but it’s also critical to:
  1. Evaluate:
    1. Cultural fit / Job Fit - Culture add
    2. Alignment with our mission
    3. Demonstrated alignment with our values
    4. Emotional intelligence
    5. Growth potential
  2. Ensure they understand, before accepting the role, company goals and strategy, how their role fits in, and what the role expectations are.
4. Onboarding
Successful onboarding programs can create a connection between your employees and the goals of the company. To help you create an effective onboarding process, we’ve put together an onboarding checklist that will need tailoring to your company. You can easily adapt it to your needs and preferences.

Here are a few tips we’d like to share:
  1. Greet the new employee over a video conference session
Get off to a good start by meeting and greeting the new employee over a video conference. Your new employee will get the chance to ask questions and you’ll be able to strengthen your personal bond with the person. A video conference will simulate a real-life environment of welcoming your new employee in your office. You can maintain eye contact, observe the person’s body language, and learn more about them. 
  1. Have the new employee meet the team
Never underestimate the importance of social interactions and inclusiveness. As your remote employees can’t make meaningful bonds over water cooler talks, make sure to introduce them at the virtual water cooler: Zoom. Feeling welcomed by the whole team will help them feel like part of the family. Your new employee can easily ask questions, get help, and get up to speed with how things function at your company.
  1. Help new remote employees complete their paperwork
In the age of technology, you don’t have to waste time with HR paperwork. Instead of sending the paperwork to your new employee, waiting for them to print it, scan it, and email you all copies, you can use a tool like DocuSign. These are e-signature tools so that the new hire can sign the paperwork digitally and send them over in a secure environment.
  1. Introduce them to the PRIDE culture
Your company culture exists, whether your team is in an office or scattered around the world. Helping them understand your culture should definitely be part of the checklist. Here’s what you can do:
  1. Share any documents that outline your mission, vision, and values.
  2. Give them any presentations you have on your company values.
  3. Send any recorded videos you have from meetings.
  1. Get them up-to-date with the communication tools you’ll be using
Inform them of the tools you and your team use to maintain communication. Make sure you:
  1. Give them the login info for the software they’ll be using.
  2. Offer training or manuals for how to use the new tools.
  3. Create a company email.
  4. Share any software they need to download on their computers.
  1. Have detailed outlines of goals and expectations
It’s important to be highly organized and have detailed outlines of everything you need to be done from your new hire. A good way to do this is to:
  1. Put together and share a task calendar. 
  2. Inform them of your short-term and long-term goals.
  3. Schedule weekly meetings to discuss your ongoing projects and to resolve potential problems.
  4. Ensure the new hire attends the mandatory training on Moodle.
  5. Assignment of an onboarding mentor who can be a main contact for questions (either answering or pointing the individual in the right direction) in the first 90 days
  6. Outlining 90-day goals that support learning and ramping up

Infinit-O on boarding discussion is focusing on:
  1. Company Passion and Purpose
  2. Management Team Introduction
  3. Attendance, Tardiness and Payroll
  4. Performance Management System
  5. ISMS Awareness
  6. Policies: HIV/AIDS, Drugs and Alcohol, Harassment
  7. Employee Engagement Activities
  8. Introduction to Sprout
  9. Introduction to Moodle
5. Learning and Development Management
To prepare and upscale the skills of IO leaders, Learning and Development is initiating the conduct of leadership training anchored to IO’s Leadership Competency, People Management and Strategic Thinking.
A leader must be able to complete 6 days of Leadership 101 and 4 days of Leadership 102, while for managerial position, it is advised to also complete 4 days of Leadership 103. 
By utilizing IO’s Learning Management System (LMS), Moodle, leaders can also look for learning materials which could be books or courses that will serve as reference material and or address their learning needs. 

6. Performance Management
Our Performance System is available in MyHR under the section “My PTMS v2” available under the “My Account”.
The PTMS manual is also available in MyHR via the following link. Our performance system currently consists of 3 main pieces which together support the use of metrics, coaching, and a strengths orientation (the principles of our management philosophy).
  1. Leader responsibilities:
    1. Entering Goals and Objectives on time in the PTMS in MyHR, done post end of the quarter and before the 15th of the month following the end of the quarter.
    2. Quarterly review meetings with each direct report and monthly status should be discussed to ensure relevance and completion.
  2. Metrics are for tracking progress at appropriate frequencies so that we can
    1. Collectively and measurably  be focused on the same objectives
    2. Instill clarity and accountability
    3. More effectively and at the earliest opportunities take corrective actions when we are heading ’off target’.
  3. Leader responsibilities:
    1. Work with your direct reports to identify what metrics are appropriate, and at what frequency of review, to track progress. 
    2. Check in on those metrics as appropriate and update the relevant tracking documents.
  4. Regular 1:1’s
    1. We expect Leaders to hold frequent 1:1s with their team members, ideally weekly but no less frequently than every 2 weeks. Research shows that regular, frequent, timely feedback is more effective than an annual performance review.
    2. The one-on-one is the direct report's meeting, meaning they should be encouraged to provide and drive the agenda. Spend most of your time listening.
  5. In the spirit of coaching, recommendations for questions the Leader ask:
    1. What are you working on this week? (Checking in the weekly metrics)
    2. What challenges do you anticipate in accomplishing those?
    3. How can I help you?
  6. Addressing Performance Concerns
Sometimes you may have a team member who is not performing. If you see performance concerns, raise the issue to the People Operations and Transformation Team without delay. It will be the Leader’s responsibility to, with the guidance of the People Operations and Transformation Team, take all reasonable measures to turn around performance.

7. Employee Career Growth
One of the most important long-term objectives of a people Leader is to encourage, identify and facilitate the growth of their direct reports.  This is beneficial for the employee as well as our company.
To support our team’s development and identify growth opportunities, career development conversations should take place at least twice a year (of course, more frequently is fine too). Aligning someone’s projects or path with their goals is a key way to keep them engaged and retain talent.
We are in a rapidly evolving marketplace.  Every month / quarter / year, there are many company requirements for employees to “step-up” and “step-into” new roles.  Some of these roles are permanent and some are temporary; some are a replacement of current responsibilities and some are additive.
Since the need for these new roles is not usually predictable, Leaders should constantly “groom” their direct reports for potential opportunities. In addition, some of these new roles might be outside of the people Leader’s current reporting structure. We ask that people Leaders encourage and support these opportunities.
Growth doesn’t always equate with a promotion or upward trajectory. Lateral moves can be equally expansive and growth-oriented. This approach also facilitates employees who want additional responsibilities, visibility and potential recognition, but do not want to really manage people.
To engage in conversations with their team members, leaders can follow the following framework to understand the needs and their team members

Ask the team members:
Step 1: Write down your primary career interest
Step 2: Identify long-term professional goals (including positions desired within the company if any)
Step 3: Identify the short-term goals that will contribute to long-term goals
Step 4: List 2-3 activities that will help you reach each goal. Be sure to specify how you will accomplish the activity, including any resources you might need, and when you will start and finish it
Step 5: Describe tasks in your current job that are contributing to long-term goals and that you would like to emphasize or perform more frequently
Step 6: Describe tasks in your current job that are not contributing to your long-term goals. Suggest ways to minimize, eliminate, or delegate them to others.
Step 7: Write down any additional skills, knowledge or experience you would like to acquire that may directly or indirectly help you in your current or future positions.
Step 8: Describe when and how progress checkpoints could occur (e.g., memos, phone calls, meetings, etc.) and what developmental activities will be completed or discussed at these times.

8. Compliance - Duties of Leaders
The company looks to all Leaders as leaders who will set the tone for an engaging and ethical culture within the Company. Leaders must demonstrate and guide others on how to conduct business honestly and in compliance with the law and company policy. A Leader is personally responsible for his or her team's compliance just as he or she would be accountable for the group's team performance.
As a Leader, you must:
  1. Comply with the Code, Company Policies, Laws and Regulations - you must make it your priority to personally understand and help other team members comply with the Code, company policy, and the law.
  2. Support Employees Who Raise Concerns - listen to any and all concerns brought to your attention, without interrupting, joking, or second guessing. Ensure that team members feel that they have been heard. Escalate any issues to be addressed as appropriate.
  3. Protect Confidentiality - respect the trust that the team member places in you and in the company by sharing their issues with you. Handle any concern as discreetly and as confidentially as possible.
  4. Recognize and Prevent Retaliation - ensure that a team member feels safe at work by recognizing signs of retaliation and not taking any sign lightly. Report these as required. Examples of forms of retaliation are:
    1. Direct or Indirect threats including harassment or discrimination
    2. Denying benefits or opportunities
    3. Withholding information or excluding someone from meetings, events or discussions
    4. Setting unrealistic deadlines to ensure failure
  5. Follow the escalation process described in the Team Member Handbook - discuss doubts with the People Operations and Transformation Team before meeting with a team member or taking disciplinary action, in order to ensure consistency in how we escalate and make sure you have support. When in doubt, speak with the People Operations and Transformation Team first.
9. What’s in MyHR?
The organization uses MyHR as its main Human Resources Information System. Under the downloadable documents section, you will find a series of forms and internal policies that you and your team members will be needing throughout their journey in the organization. You will also find a list of the platforms we use (such as Sprout or Moodle) via the ‘External Links’ menu.




10. How We Evaluate Leaders
Leaders’ effectiveness is ultimately reflected in their team results. We also use company-wide surveys to get team members’ feedback on their Leaders. The survey assesses key components of successful management and engagement with team members, such as:
  1. My Leader works with me to set my goals
  2. How often does your Leader meet with you to discuss career development?
  3. How often does your Leader meet with you to discuss goals and performance?
  4. My team’s goals are clear to me
We combine the following questions into an overall “engagement” score:
  1. I understand the company strategy
  2. The company goals are clear to me
  3. I enjoy working with my colleagues
  4. My Leader is developing me in my skills, knowledge, and abilities
  5. I am able to feel a sense of accomplishment from completing tasks/projects
  6. I feel valued at work
  7. I am recognized for my contributions
  8. I am able to be autonomous in my job
  9. I have the opportunity to use my strengths at work
  10. It is clear how my job contributes to the company’s success
  11. I have the tools and support I need to do my job
  12. My job is meaningful
  13. I am proud to work at IOM
  14. My Leader cares about me
  15. My Leader provides effective feedback to help me improve
  16. I am happy with my work-life balance
A. Appendix
A.1. Required reading list
  1. High Output Management
  2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
  3. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
A.2. Recommended reading list
  1. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
  2. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
  3. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
  4. Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
  5. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't
  6. The End of Average: Unlocking Our Potential by Embracing What Makes Us Different
A.3. Recommended publications
  1. Academy of Management
  2. Harvard Business Review (www.hbr.org)
  3. MIT Sloan Management Review
  4. Create an account at Medium.com and follow the Leadership and Management tags

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