Onboarding
In the last two posts I’ve written about my ambiguous feelings about the concept of psychological safety.
On the one hand, I think it can be a misleading goal that gets in the way of developing people and organisations in a way that benefits all parties.
On the other hand, I think it’s good for people to feel they are “back stage” when they’re with their colleagues - a space where they can share less polished versions of their work, and (if they want) themselves.
In the last post in particular I talked about this as a key test:
Do you feel able to share your drafts?
Given that sharing something unfinished can be an uncomfortable experience1, how do we help people to feel more comfortable?
One thing that I have observed has an outsize impact on this question is: onboarding.
Unfortunately, most SMEs do on-boarding terribly. The full planning for a new team member goes something like this:
“When is Susie’s first day again? Monday? Great!”
And, honestly I know why this happens.
You are very excited about your new member of staff, but you’re so busy that you don’t stop to think about how to actively express that care. The thing is, it’s not enough to just love someone - you have to demonstrate it.2
If this is the way you are doing on-boarding, you are missing a big trick. A person’s first experiences in an organisation can have an outsize impact on them. With a bit of effort, you have the chance to make that a positive outsize impact. The ROI is potentially big. But why does it matter so much?
Firstly, for the reasons I talked about in the first post in this series: we are all social mammals. We scan new environments for signals:
“Am I welcome here? Do I belong?”
Some of us do this more actively than others of course, or react more strongly to any signals we pick up. But we all do it - how else would we survive? And if we feel we don’t belong, we retreat into our shell.3 We show up a bit less - and we keep our half-formed thoughts (our drafts) a bit more to ourselves.
Secondly, because first impressions can really set the tone. I have seen it happen that people struggle for six months if their first few days at a company were in a way that doesn’t reflect the way that organisation generally works. They are trying to fit into a culture that isn’t there, and it holds them back - and the wrong impression takes a long time to correct. If you want an organisation with high transparency, you have to make that impression immediately.4
The best advice I was ever given about on-boarding was this:
People will mostly figure out their role, and how the organisation works, for themselves. Just pick carefully what you put front and centre for them.
Since then my formula for on-boarding has been simple:
Make sure they have all the equipment and accounts they need ready for their first day. If you’re office based, this includes making sure there will be somewhere for them to sit.
Do the basic human needs first - this is the kitchen, these are the loos, this is the fire escape.
Then jump into the most important thing of all: the organisation’s purpose. What are you all there to do? A 1:1 with the CEO is the best way to do this. Lighting the fire under purpose, mission, strategy is a core part of the CEO job and skill set.
Help prime their mental filing system. The first few days and weeks at a new organisation are information overload. Help them manage that by giving them a rough shape of things, and then let them fill in the gaps. As part of this it’s important to show them where information lives, so they can find things out for themselves - a quick tour of the filing system is essential.
Set up introductory ‘coffee’ chats with everyone they’ll need to work with - or in a smaller office, everyone in the team. You can do this over a couple of weeks.
This formula I find helps proactively show people they are welcome. It accelerates the progress of them feeling ‘backstage’, and gets them faster out of the zone of being the new person ‘on their best behaviour’. It gets them into the valuable kind of psychological safety, where they are part of the team.
And if you were wondering ‘how do we demonstrate transparency in action as part of this?’ - as I earlier suggested you do! - I have some suggestions:
Build the coffee catch ups around it - have everyone share something they are currently working on but haven’t yet finished
The CEO has probably explained the strategy and mission 1,000 times - but maybe they do it a bit differently every time, to see how it lands?5 Invite them to name this. “I’m going to try explaining the strategy a slightly different way - so afterwards please let me know how it went so that I can keep refining it”.
When you give them the tour of the filing system, explicitly invite them to look at things that are works in progress.
You can probably think of others! The key thing is to do something that expresses you, and the organisation you are.
Next time, I want to talk about an ongoing practice that can continue to support this kind of culture, where productive collaboration can occur more often. Until then, I hope you all survive the heat!
Fearing the judgement of others is a normal part of the human condition - whatever the optimiser bros try and tell you. I’m still looking for sources on studies comparing social pain and physical pain. I saw something on my LinkedIn feed about it but then clicked away and of course now it’s gone forever until the algorithm so decides.
If any romantic partners want to buy me flowers, they know where to find me.
I once started at a company and turned up and there wasn’t a desk for me to sit at on my first day in the office. Everyone was just so busy they hadn’t really thought of it. But it rankled with me for a while, and definitely affected my behaviour.
Or, maybe you don’t have to, but let’s say you have the precious opportunity to do so.
This is certainly my process for my consultancy work: every conversation is a testing ground for an ever-evolving elevator pitch.