Harvard Business School’s Frances Frei on Building Trust

ELISE HU: And that’s Frances Frei, a professor of technology and operations management at Harvard Business School. She has deep experience working with companies in crisis. She’ll share her insights to help leaders build trust and empathy, speak authentically, and empower their workers to succeed. Later in the episode, our correspondent Desmond Dickerson talks to Nancy Baym. She’s a senior principal research manager at Microsoft, and they’ll talk about what she’s learned about building stronger workplace relationships in the digital age. But first, I’m so excited to share my conversation with Frances.

ELISE HU: Frances Frei, thanks for being here.

FRANCES FREI: It’s an absolute pleasure, Elise.

ELISE HU: As a Harvard Business School professor, you have experience helping turn around companies in crisis, but what happens when we’re all collectively in crisis? What have you observed about this moment that we’re in when it comes to companies and wider work culture?

FRANCES FREI: Maybe it’s been true all along, but what’s certainly true now is that empathy is a superpower. Organizations that can harness more of it, individuals that can harness more of it, win. Empathy has always been needed, but now it’s needed by everyone. And it turns out some of us are better at empathy than others.

ELISE HU: For those leaders who kind of have to learn it, what advice do you give?

FRANCES FREI: I’d say that when you’re in the presence of others, be super present to their needs. So the biggest empathy killer a leader has is multitasking, using their personal technology device when they’re in front of other people. So if you want to signal to someone that it’s all about me and not very much about you, multitask in their presence. They’ll get the message super clearly. And so my first bit of advice is, please, it’s technology off and away when you’re dealing with other human beings. The other is that the people want to be heard and seen. We don’t have to do everything that everyone says, and this is the mistake we make. Really powerful words are: How might I help?

ELISE HU: It sounds so simple.

FRANCES FREI: I actually think most of the solutions are quite simple.

ELISE HU: Why does it feel hard, or why do we make it complicated, when it’s not?

FRANCES FREI: Empathy at its base is being centered on someone else. So the absence of empathy is self-centric. The presence of empathy is other-centric. When we’re tired, stressed, hungry, have deadlines, we just narrow in to becoming self-centered. And so our instincts become selfish. If we can be empathetic in those moments, not only is it better for us because more and more people will perform better, it’s just also the right thing to do. But it’s hard. If I haven’t had a sandwich, it’s hard for me to not be self-focused, which is why we all need wellness and rest and all of those things.

ELISE HU: Is there anything else that you have learned, maybe even pre-pandemic, in working with companies dealing with various changes, transformation, or crisis that’s transferable across the business world?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, so successful change has three parts to it, and if you miss any one of these three parts, it doesn’t work. So, part one is honor the past . Even though we need to change, we do not need to dishonor everyone that was here before and all of the things that happened before, so it’s important to honor the past , or the past will just keep pulling us back. We need a clear and compelling mandate for, Why now? So super clear, like, why can’t I wait a week or a month or a quarter or a year? The pandemic gave that to us, but in general, we need that. And then a rigorous and optimistic way forward. Both of those words are super important. If we don’t give people a rigorous way forward, we’re not going to hold their attention for very long. Similarly, if it’s not optimistic, we’re not going to get people that crave a noble purpose. It’s surprising how many pessimistically rigorous ideas people have for the future, and they just don’t work—and similarly, the optimistic "But, you know, trust me, it’s going to be great" compels no one.

ELISE HU: So when you say rigorous, what do you mean?

FRANCES FREI: So imagine a big competitor in another area just sets their sight in your industry, and everybody should be terrified. I don’t want to say, We’re going to be fine because our people make all the difference. That rigorous. Now, if we say, Look, this is what that company is great at—they’re great at mass scale—but we use customization.

ELISE HU: Got it. And it’s more of a strategy rather than just, Hey, feel good. Everything’s going to be fine.

FRANCES FREI: Feel good doesn’t work. I think it got an Emmy, but it really doesn’t work as a strategy.

ELISE HU: Okay, let’s hit the optimism side of it, then. When you say that, what do you mean?

FRANCES FREI: Some people are optimistic by nature, so it’s a little unfair. I’m optimistic by nature. But any of us can take an optimistic frame on things, which is, Am I seeing a better version of the future than we have today? Which one wins, an optimistic view or a pessimistic view? The jury has decided, like all performance, optimism wins.

ELISE HU: How can leaders, especially in this moment, better understand what their company culture is or means in the minds of their employees, especially when empathy is so important right now?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, so I think there’s two ways. One is, look at what the information you already have. For sure, you’ve been asking employees some sentiment questions, satisfaction, whatever it is. Let’s go investigate where it’s sensational. So if you find out in marketing, Everyone feels awesome, the sentiment is great. We should go in and look at, What are the leaders in marketing doing? Every company has successes and failures. We want to pay attention to go and spread the best practices from that. Look at the variance in the data and investigate it as a treasure hunt, as it were, for the areas that are not going well. I would talk to people and ask them a form of the following question: Do you face any indignities? Indignity because it raises it up. It’s not an annoyance, it’s an indignity. And then just be prepared to write. People answer that question with unbelievable truths that you would never know. So I’ll give you an example. We were working with a healthcare company recently, and everyone says that nurses are the most important people, and they’re on the front line. One healthcare company asked us to come in because nurses were leaving in droves. When we went through this indignity thing we found out the cause—broken copiers. Here’s what was going on. You’re a nurse. You have to make copies of things. You go to the copy machine on your hall, it’s broken. So nurses were passing each other in the stairwells, saying, Oh yeah, we hear how important we are, but this is our lives. We are spending so much of the day in the stairwell.

ELISE HU: That’s so wild.

FRANCES FREI: They’re always that small, and they’re always that precious.

ELISE HU: So another question about this moment that we’re in is, how to build or sustain culture in hybrid work. When some people are in the workplace and some are at home, what are some of the best ideas that you’ve seen in action over the last year, year and a half?

FRANCES FREI: Well, first I’ll start with the punchline. Hybrid is going to be better than any single form. Hybrid is better than all in-person, hybrid is better than all remote. It offers more flexibility, more possibility. The number one obstacle to having a successful hybrid culture is the leaders reminiscing openly, and perhaps with frustration, about the good ol’ days when everyone used to be there. Every time they walked by, everybody was just sitting in their cubicle. Let’s be super strategic about what kind of work is done best in which contexts. When you open that up again to rigorous and optimistic , you’ll never come up with all in-person or all remote. You’ll definitely come up with hybrid.

ELISE HU: Operationally, what kind of ways of managing a hybrid workforce have worked in action?

FRANCES FREI: So a micro one is, if anyone is remote, everyone who’s in-person should also have a laptop in front of them as if they were remote. Now you also have a bird’s eye view of that room so that we can see everyone, so I can see everybody that I’m live with. I can also see teams in front of me and we all show up as Brady Bunch on there. So it’s this acknowledgment that we really are hybrid.

ELISE HU: Are there any other examples of ways that hybrid has been done well?

FRANCES FREI: Organizations that were truly global before the pandemic are much better at hybrid because they already were hybrid.

ELISE HU: And what do you say to leaders who don’t quite know yet how to think about productivity in the hybrid world? Or, they’re the ones who have been more leaning in on surveillance, for example?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. So first of all, that will never work—ever. So I’ll just start with that. So even if you were really good at it, it’s going to be negative to the culture, and it’s time to stop giving out participation trophies.

ELISE HU: What do you mean by that?

FRANCES FREI: We should measure people on outputs. It is a silly thing and maybe a luxury. We can no longer afford to measure people on inputs. Instead, allow them to earn their performance through what they produce.

ELISE HU: Does that mean that you would support getting rid of measuring input of time, for example, with time cards?

FRANCES FREI: I mean, there are some places that need a certain amount of coverage, and so you might have to do that, but for sure, if you offer employees more flexibility, everything about their job gets better. As a last resort, if I didn’t know how to measure someone’s outputs, and I needed a certain amount of coverage, I’d probably rely on time cards. But I bet I’d rely on time cards one-tenth as much as they’re relied on now. Maybe one-hundredth.

ELISE HU: Well, speaking of time, though, there is some data that hybrid workers struggle with when to come in, and then companies are struggling with if they’re going to mandate days to come in. How do we get around that?

FRANCES FREI: If you leave it all up to organic, it’s going to be a hot mess. So you can’t say to everyone, work whenever you want—it’s just not going to work. It needs to be designed. So first, we have to understand what kind of work needs to be collaborative with whom and what kind of work doesn’t. And then we want to understand preferences, but then we have to set boundaries. So, people thrive in the presence of constraints. If we need everyone to collaborate together for one day a week, as an example, now we’re just deciding which day of the week.

ELISE HU: We need some boundaries. Got it.

FRANCES FREI: All of us need boundaries to thrive. Boundaries can be so liberating. So, if we say, here are the constraints within which we’re working for, now go ahead and optimize. It’s like a beautiful thing.

ELISE HU: Frances, in your work, trust is a through line. How did you come to see trust as so crucial to leadership today?

FRANCES FREI: It was the repeated observation that people were talking about trust as if they were blessed to have it and cursed to not have it. Whereas everything else they were talking about—strategy, everything else—felt like they had agency in. And so, I got very curious, do we have agency in trust? And it turns out we have entire agency in trust.

ELISE HU: And how does that play out? How have you seen that play out to the boon of companies and their bottom lines?

FRANCES FREI: So if I can be more trusted by my clients, be more trusted by regulators, be more trusted by my partners, we see performance skyrocket—like, two-x, three-x, four-x, five-x. So in the presence of trust, everything gets better, and I don’t think there’s any disagreement about that. The myth was that trust was a Fabergé egg. If it ever, ever slips out of your hands, it breaks into a million pieces never to be repaired again. And that is simply not true. Trust can be rebuilt. It’s better not to break it, for sure, but it can be strengthened as a way to protect against future missteps.

ELISE HU: Here’s something adjacent, a dispiriting stat: just 20 percent of employees globally say they feel engaged at work, according to a Gallup poll. What does that kind of engagement number say to you?

FRANCES FREI: Oh, we have five-x chance for improvement. I don’t need any new technology. I don’t need any different people. If I can engage people from 20 percent to 100 percent, I get five-x the performance. It makes me super excited, makes me think I’m going to thump my competitors.

ELISE HU: So how to up that number then?

FRANCES FREI: Yes, and then how to engage people. So now we’re at the right question. The indignities list will go a long way. The atmosphere of trust will go a long way. Giving people meaningful work to do. Don’t say, Come into the office, and then you do individual work, and people are wondering, Why did I put up with the two-hour commute? All of the things that make us crazy, stop doing them all. All five-x of that is a self-inflicted wound.

ELISE HU: How much is this low engagement number linked to the Great Reshuffle or the great resignation?

FRANCES FREI: I don’t think much at all.

ELISE HU: And so you’re saying that the great resignation, the Great Reshuffle, is happening because of factors unrelated to engagement.

FRANCES FREI: Well, I’m by and large very pro the Great Reshuffle, but I’m fiercely optimistic, so please take all of that with bias. You know, employees were treated badly before and they stayed, and now they were treated badly and they don’t stay. I kind of am super psyched that employees have agency and have choice, and we have to earn it. I feel like we just finished the decade of the customer. I mean, my goodness, as customers, everyone’s life has gotten so much better. And sometimes we do it on the back of employees. And this is a moment of time of saying, No, I want us to take advantage of it.

ELISE HU: And what does this Great Reshuffle portend for the future, do you think, because you are so optimistic about it?

FRANCES FREI: So the same way we have to earn our customers and we want to have our customers’ loyalty and all of those things, the same thing applies to employees.

ELISE HU: How did employees fit into a customer-focused approach before? And how should employees fit into a customer-focused approach now, given what has happened?

FRANCES FREI: It’s always been ideal to have both employee and customer value propositions being great. But I saw many companies that were great for customers that were notoriously terrible for employees. And the employees stayed either because they had golden handcuffs, you know, you’re just getting paid so much, or because there was no other place you could go in the same geography. All of the reasons that we were held captive by bad jobs, many of those reasons we’re being liberated from, and I think that’s going to bring in competition for employees and competition is a great thing.

ELISE HU: Yes. We talked a little bit about this before, but what is the role of technology and operations in all of this? For example, Microsoft has Viva, which is an employee experience platform in part to measure employee sentiment. Have you seen how technology and more data on operations and people have helped in hybrid?

FRANCES FREI: You know, we used to ask employees how they were doing once a year, and progressive companies would do it every half a year. And I think what Microsoft is now doing is, it’s like real time, the same way we know what’s going on in our supply chain, super currently. Well, I would say our employees are just as important as our supply chain. So understanding sentiment and achievement in as close to real time as possible, that can only be done with technology. So that part I find enormously helpful. But we still rely on anonymous feedback, and we all accept that anonymous feedback is better than not anonymous feedback. And I just want to question why. And what does that mean about our culture? Imagine if we had a culture where we didn’t have to protect our names. That’s where my ultimate desire is.

ELISE HU: How does that work at scale? I guess we have such social constructs or stigmas around...

FRANCES FREI: We have so much of it. And I really think that that’s going to be the next frontier.

ELISE HU: While we’re talking about the next frontier, can you prognosticate for us? How will work and working change over the next six months?

FRANCES FREI: I think that the very vocal, nostalgic leaders will realize that they’ve been making a big mistake. So that is the people are like, You’re going to come back to the office in September. I mean, December. I mean, February. Shame is going to start to creep in, and they’re just going to stop it and start to acknowledge that the reason I want everyone here is because I want to see everyone because that’s how I grew up. And I really liked it that way. So I think that will be one. And then the other thing is that customers really care how employees are treated. And the more exposure that customers have to either the plight or the awesomeness of how employees are treated, the better. And part of that, I think, is due to Ryan Buell’s work on operational transparency, which just shows us that more is better. More transparency is better. This is one of those cases, and so I think our customers are going to make the world better for our employees, our employees make the world better for our customers, and so on and so on and so on.

ELISE HU: All right. Shout out to Ryan and the Harvard Business School, which is also where you can find Frances Frei. Frances, thank you so much.

FRANCES FREI: Such a pleasure.

ELISE HU: Okay, so we heard from Frances about creating a leadership culture of trust and empathy, and how companies have learned to value employees as much as they value their customers. Next up, do you have questions about making hybrid work work better for you and your team? We want to hear from you because we’ll take your questions straight to some thoughtful leaders. Helping out today for this segment is Nancy Baym, a senior principal research manager at Microsoft, whose work explores how organizations can thrive in the hybrid era. Our correspondent Desmond Dickerson will be doing the asking.

DESMOND DICKERSON: Hey there, Nancy, thanks for joining me today.

NANCY BAYM: Hey, Desmond, it’s really nice to be here.

DESMOND DICKERSON: Are you ready?

NANCY BAYM: Sure. Bring it on.

DESMOND DICKERSON: The listener says, I just had coffee in person with a co-worker for the first time in 22 months, and I’m still buzzed about it. We swore we wouldn’t talk about work, but we had a bunch of great ideas about an upcoming project, improving workflows, and, you know, everything related to that. How can I have moments like that with my colleagues who I only encounter online? How can I capture that fun, informal vibe with my whole hybrid team? Signed, Overcaffeinated in Oxnard.

NANCY BAYM: Well, first of all, stop drinking so much caffeine. Calm down. I’m going to go to my own experience here because I’m in a work group. We have a standing meeting, and one of the things we do in that standing meeting is, it’s not a one-way communication. We go around and we just give informal updates on what we’re up to. And we might include things like, Do I have to say yes to this or is this something I can say no to? Or, I’m a little confused about this, can you guys help me think through it? Or, Has anybody read anything about this? Or, Here’s something I’m just really excited about from my work this week. I can’t wait. And that process of every week we do that together, that really does create a fun, informal space. Again, it doesn’t have to be like, okay, we’re going to take the first 15 minutes and just chat about movies and sports and stuff, which some people will find alienating because they don’t like movies or sports, especially in hybrid work teams across places where they start talking about restaurants, and it’s not relevant for people who don’t live there. So it’s connected to the work, but it’s set up as a socially safe space where you can informally share what’s up. And there’s an expectation that, you know, for five, 10 minutes, you’ll hold the floor about what you’ve been up to this week and what’s on your mind. I would really encourage that kind of standing practice of just going around and checking in on what’s up, and it doesn’t have to be, Let me tell you about my accomplishments. It works a whole lot better if it’s not, that it’s, Let me tell you about the problems I’m having, or the questions I’ve got, or the things I could use some help thinking through.

DESMOND DICKERSON: Yeah, yeah. And are you sure the coffee isn’t a key ingredient there? Because I don’t know, it might be a part of it.

NANCY BAYM: So here’s a funny story. In our lab, we had visitors all the time, and Microsoft does provide quite a bit of caffeine on site. And one of our visitors, after being there for a while, he said, Unlimited free espresso: brilliant work device or dangerous psychological experiment?

DESMOND DICKERSON: More tonight at 8.

ELISE HU: That’s it for this episode of the WorkLab podcast from Microsoft. If you have a question you’d like us to pose to leaders, we have an email address where you can send those in. That is worklab@microsoft.com, worklab@microsoft.com if you have a question you’d like us to pose to leaders. And check out the WorkLab digital publication, too, where you can find, among many other things, a transcript of this very episode. You can find all of it at Microsoft.com/ WorkLab . As for this podcast, please rate us, review, and follow us wherever you listen. That helps us out a lot. 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 produced this podcast. Jessica Voelker is the WorkLab editor. Thanks for listening.