Summary

In this conversation, Erika Taylor-Beck emphasizes the critical role of documentation in leadership. She discusses how proper documentation fosters transparency, trust, and accountability among team members. Erika highlights the challenges leaders face in maintaining documentation and offers practical strategies to make the process easier. She also addresses the balance between formal documentation and maintaining a human touch in leadership. Ultimately, she stresses the importance of documenting conversations and decisions to protect both leaders and employees, ensuring clarity and consistency in the workplace.

Takeaways

• Documentation is essential for building transparency and trust.

• It helps reduce misunderstandings and keeps everyone accountable.

• Leaders should document important conversations, especially around performance.

• Having documentation protects against potential conflicts and misunderstandings.

• Documentation can help prevent unconscious bias and promote inclusivity.

• Assigning a note taker can ease the burden of documentation.

• Using templates and shared tools can streamline the documentation process.

• Documentation should empower communication, not control it.

• It's important to document expectations and next steps clearly.

• Having written records can protect you in case of unfair treatment or performance issues.

Sound Bites

• "Documentation is extremely important."

• "Cover your own ass."

• "You can start to assign a note taker."

Chapters

00:00The Importance of Documentation in Leadership

03:00Building Transparency and Trust

05:53Strategies for Effective Documentation

09:04Balancing Formality and Humanity in Documentation

11:55Protecting Yourself and Your Team through Documentation

Transcript

Erika Taylor-Beck (00:06)

Hey folks, it is Erika and I wanted to talk to you today about the power of recording and documenting in leadership. Why is this important? Nobody ever wants to think that things are going to go south. but things happen. So documentation is extremely important because it helps you to build transparency and trust.

when you are communicating with other people. It helps you to reduce any kind of misunderstandings that might happen or he said, she said, they said situations because it's documented. You can look back and see what was discussed. It also keeps everybody accountable, including you as a leader so that everyone knows what is expected, who is doing it, what the timeline is, what the deliverable looks like, what's been agreed upon. And it helps to provide clarity and consistency, especially when it's involving

multiple people, multiple teams, multiple anything. It's really just keeping everybody on the same page. It's also really good to cover your own butt. Usually called CYA,

Cover your own ass. it helps to just reduce any confusion that might pop up when situations go awry. And I hate to say it, but they do.

The challenge is that people don't necessarily enjoy documentation. It can be tedious. It's boring. I myself am an English major. I like to write. I love to type. I end up providing too much detail And that's not ideal when you are communicating for conciseness and clarity. But when you're documenting, it's really nice to have those details as far as anything that's been agreed upon.

It can help with covering any types of inconsistencies and expectations or policies. It can help with any types of challenges around deadlines and follow-ups, employee expectations, burnout due to having lack of boundaries or unclear expectations responsibilities. So if you feel like you are getting assigned a lot of work that maybe is beyond your actual scope, maybe it's something more that

You could earn a promotion or a pay raise or something different by taking on this level of work. Having it all documented will help you to then take that information to your higher up to say, hey, look, I'm doing all of these things. I either need to take something off my plate or we need to look at potentially giving me a promotion or we need to take this stuff off and assign it to somebody else. But it will help you to set those boundaries because you will have everything documented around what's happening and what is expected of you.

It's also really important to document any types of important conversations, especially if it's a conflict, if it's around performance, if it's different expectations, it's just clarity. Here's what we talked about, here's what we have agreed upon, here's what we're doing. Everything is outlined and that way you can send it to somebody. especially when you are managing performance. If you have somebody that you have given feedback to.

And we'll use Bob, my fake employee Bob, as an example. Bob has not been meeting expectations. So we have a quick sync in a one-on-one. We talk about what's going on. He just needs maybe some training or some time. Great. The expectation though is that by next week, I need to see some improvement by X percent. Or I need to see you doing whatever it might be, but there should be a measurable, but also realistic expectation that we're setting.

And then if next week comes and he doesn't meet that target, he could say, I didn't know that that was what was expected of me. And you could say, no, no, no, I talked to you about this. We had this conversation. There's nothing in writing to prove it. And in those small situations, not that serious. But if you start to get to a point where now we are putting Bob on a performance improvement plan or moving to termination and Bob.

talks to HR and says, I have no idea. I didn't realize I was doing that poorly. Even though you have met with him three, four, five plus weeks in a row and you've had these conversations, you've set very clear guidelines, there is nothing proving that you've done that. So documentation, sending a follow-up email. Today in our meeting, we talked about this. This is what is expected by next week. If this does not happen, this is what we're going to do for next steps.

So that way it's very clear for Bob what is happening. And again, it's that CYA factor of if you don't have it in writing, if it's not being documented, it's your word against Bob's. And that's never really a great place to be because even if they want to believe you and trust you as a manager, as the leader, it's still not a great place to put somebody in that circumstance. So cover your butt, document your stuff. It's also really great

for making sure that you have very fair and consistent practices when we're thinking about inclusivity and equity. So when we're thinking about DEI, having information and everything written down helps

to prevent any unconscious bias. It can also help to reduce any gaslighting. It can help to protect any of your marginalized employees from any kind of bias that might pop up. But it also makes sure that voices are not lost in translation or over time, or again, through the game of telephone where you tell one person and then that person and that person. And it helps to make sure that the message is

clear from A to Z, no matter who has repeated it, it's now in writing so we can see it, we can all be on the same page. As always, this is a short podcast. I'm not trying to make this super long or to belabor the point, but it might not be something that is part of your day to day right now. There are some things that you can do to make this a little bit easier and to start to implement it immediately. One is that you can start to assign a note taker.

Now be mindful that if you're doing this that you're not asking your women employees or any minorities that you are taking turns, This is something that anyone on the team can do and it should be rotated. You can use templates or shared tools. There are Google Docs, there's Trello.

A lot of recording devices now for like Zoom and Teams meetings, they have built-in AI tools. Some of them are free, some things are not free, but you can use those where they will take notes for you and they will record and transcribe your meetings. You can also recap important points after a meeting to make sure that everybody who was invited to that meeting or is involved has a summary at the end of here's what we talked about, here are the action items, here are the important takeaways.

so that everybody is again on the same page.

From my experience, some examples that I can share, I was a vice president of a team. So I had managers, directors, team leads, different people that reported up through me. my employees would have conversations with their team members about performance. Sometimes it was about behavior or attitude. And they would meet with these people a couple of times and hope for improvement. And sometimes there would be improvement. We would see some improvement. But after...

a week or two, maybe a month, it would fall down again. And so they would have another conversation and then it would get better for a little bit and then it would fall down. And there was some confusion because, well, they are getting better. But if you took a step back and looked at it from a a broader lens, you would notice this pattern of up and down behavior, which means that there is a trend happening and that they only really do better or improve their performance or their attitude

when it was being monitored or pointed out by their manager. And that's not what you want. You don't want somebody to only perform well and act correctly when they're being

watched or monitored, you want them to maintain this level of performance and behavior every day.

Now, with that being said, there's also a balance between being formal, so formality, and humanity. You don't want to make it feel like you are doing surveillance and you're documenting every little thing that people are doing. That's too controlling. Documentation should help to empower and to communicate and provide clarity. It's not meant to control and...

make people feel like they are always under the watchful gaze of a supervisor. The language in the documentation should be clear. It should be kind and purpose-driven. It should focus on behaviors and outcomes and not necessarily on individuals themselves. But the thought behind it, again, is to cover your rear end, to communicate effectively, to make sure that everybody is on the same page, to set very clear expectations, and

when you think about it, if it's important enough to say, it's important enough to write down. you want to make sure that you are not just saying something to one or two people, that everybody who needs to hear it is receiving the message. And so that's another reason why it's really great to document everything, because if you are sharing something with your employees today, something really important,

and five of your people are out due to illness or due to time off, they didn't hear that message from you today. And if you forget to share it tomorrow, they're going to hear about it through word of mouth. So having something documented is really handy because then they can also hear and see what you shared exactly with everybody else. they might not be hearing it in the same moment, but they are getting the same message. not getting it translated to them from somebody else who maybe leaves out some key details or maybe

Again, that game of telephone where a couple pieces get a little bit flipped around and they're not getting the complete honest message, they're getting a new version of it. documentation is really, really important. again, this is great when you feel like you are being treated unfairly. If you get something in writing, you now have evidence of it. I always talk about it from a leadership standpoint that if you are communicating with your employees,

you have very clear expectations for them and that the conversations that you're having, the dates, the times, what has been talked about, what the expectations are, and next steps, that is all being documented so that it's again covering you, setting clear expectations for them, and then when it comes time, if it comes time, hopefully not, but if it comes time to having to talk to HR for performance improvement or for termination,

everything is clearly outlined. Here's when we started talking about this issue, here are the dates that we met along the way, here's what we talked about, and now we're here and it's still not better. it's very clear that you have been doing your job to help them meet those expectations and just they're not doing it. But on the other side of things, if you are an individual, if you are a manager who has also a manager above you, sometimes it's good to have this information in writing to cover yourself.

and to protect yourself if you feel like you are being treated unfairly, if you're getting way too much work assigned, if you're requesting days off and they're telling you no, and there really is no reason why But if there is no reason to tell you no, you don't take time off every week,

you are meeting your expectations, this is not a crunch time or a busy situation where we really can't afford to let folks off. If you're getting declined for your PTO requests or your time off requests, having that reason in writing, and if you have a consistent, I've asked for four different times off in the last three months and they've all been rejected and there's no clear reason, you now have a pattern again, that you can take to HR and.

potentially look into to make sure that you are getting the support that you need because maybe you have unfair leadership practices happening. And again, nobody wants to think about the worst or assume that that's going to happen. But that's why it's just important to have it documented. So performance conversations, decisions, one-on-one conversations, developmental conversations.

Maybe it's a development plan, but having everything documented, it might feel tedious and it might feel like you're doing too much. But when push comes to shove, I would rather have the documentation and not need it than to need it and not have it because then it's your word against somebody else's. And that's not enough to take to court. That's not enough to maybe make a decision to say, we do have to terminate Bob.

There's nothing in writing. I don't know that you have done your due diligence as a manager for us to fire him. So long story short, it is extremely important for really all levels, but always.

podcast is about leadership. So for leaders, but really for anybody to document what's happening. So have it in writing. You want evidence of it. You want proof. You want clarity. You want consistency.

Again, quick podcast, but that's really just the long and short of it. Make sure that you're documenting, cover your butt, and we'll see you on the next episode.

Erika Taylor-Beck (11:58)

If after listening to this episode of Leadership in Real Life, you are recognizing that maybe you need some assistance with communication, giving feedback, accountability, performance management, and documentation, I do have online courses on my website at AuthenticFoundations.Podia.com I also offer coaching to help anyone who may need specific guidance. And as always, if you enter code podcast10, you can receive 10 % off any purchase on the website. Thanks for listening.