Are you able to have productive conversations with irritable, defensive people or those who profoundly disagree with you? Since this is an incredibly valuable skill for any leader to master, there’s plenty of advice out there. But remembering those tips is hard in the middle of a potentially volatile discussion. To assist in such situations, Harvard conflict management expert Julia Minson offers a simple mnemonic device. Next time you find yourself in a challenging, uncomfortable conversation, remember the acronym H.E.A.R.
No acronym is a cure-all. Still, research shows that learning and deploying the H.E.A.R. approach is worth the effort, if you want to be a person that people want to talk to. Which of the H.E.A.R principles have you used lately? Did it defuse a touchy interaction? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022.
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Have you performed a random act of kindness lately? In a study published in the Journal d Experimental Psychology, researchers found that when you perform a random act of kindness it’s easy to underestimate how much the recipient will appreciate it. And that miscalculation holds many of us back from doing nice things for others more often. We know that kindness can boost well-being, writes New York Times reporter Catherine Pearson. But researchers who study the subject hope these new findings will strengthen the scientific case for making these types of gestures more often. “I have found that kindness can be a really hard sell,” said Tara Cousineau, a clinical psychologist, meditation teacher and author of The Kindness Cure: How The Science of Compassion Can Heal Your Heart and Your World. "People desire kindness yet often feel inconvenienced by the thought of being kind.” On the other hand, even the smallest gestures do get noticed. So if you are not already in the habit of performing random kind acts — or they do not come naturally to you — begin by telling people what you appreciate about them. Also consider what you like to do, what skills and talents you have, and how you might turn those into small offerings for other people. How did you feel the last time you performed a small act of kindness, and how did you feel the last time someone did this for you? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. People often look to Warren Buffet for investment tips. So we took note when Buffet claimed that often the best investment you can make is in your ability to communicate. Buffett has stated that investing in developing your communication skills can "improve your value by 50 percent." Buffett says, "If you can't communicate…nothing happens. You can have all the brainpower in the world, but you have to be able to transmit it. And the transmission is communication." Writing in Inc., contributing editor Marcel Schwantes offers these tips for heeding Buffet’s words:
Do you agree that improving your communication skills has upped your personal value? To join the conversation, click on "comments" above. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Have you talked to a friend today? A recent study published in Communication Research suggests that people who engage in meaningful conversations may be happier and experience better mental health. Researcher Jeffrey Hall identified seven types of communication commonly found in social interactions: Catching up, meaningful talk, joking, showing care, listening, valuing others and their opinions, and offering sincere compliments. The researchers instructed over 900 participants to engage in any one of the seven types of talk on a given day. Some participants performed the tasks via online messages or phone calls, but most spoke in person. At the end of the day, the participants reported how good or bad they felt, as measured by feelings of stress, connection, well-being, and loneliness. The results showed:
While one conversation was enough to increase positive feelings, more than one was even more effective. And while conversations by text or phone call were helpful, in-person conversations yielded the best results. The final takeaway: Stay intentional about maintaining your relationships! Have you had a meaningful conversation with a friend lately, and how did you feel afterward? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Do you want to stand out at work? Visibility is crucial for getting recognized by management, bolstering your reputation, and increasing opportunities for career growth. But getting noticed can be more challenging than ever if you are working remotely all or some of the time. In “Five Ways to Increase Your Visibility at Work" Forbes contributor Caroline Castrillon provides useful tips for those who want to be noticed and to overcome “proximity bias” (when managers treat workers who are physically closer to them more favorably).
How do you ensure that you get noticed at work? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Got a job interview coming up? Of course you’ll research the organization you’re interviewing with and probably find a bio of your interviewer. But, according to senior Forbes contributor Mike Murphy, job interviewees often make one serious omission: They fail to come prepared with highly detailed experiences from the past few years of their career. When it comes to team or leadership experiences, you should be armed with specific details around moments of overcoming challenges, and of learning and growing. According to Hiring for Attitude Research, great candidates tend to give longer answers with more nitty-gritty details than lesser candidates. (Conversely, in the study Words That Cost You The Job Interview, it was discovered that low-performing candidates used 40 percent more vague adverbs ("very," "really," and "quickly") than their higher-performing peers. “You don't want to be the candidate that spews trite clichés,” writes Murphy. “It’s far better to wow the interviewer with great specifics about your past experiences.” To that end, start with some deep reflection about your past experiences. Identify the types of skills you'll need to have for this potential new job, and consider what you have done to prove you have those skills. Try not to exaggerate, says Murphy, “Puffery is pretty easy to spot…the fastest way to spot a liar is to listen for people who won't give direct and specific answers to your questions. If your interview responses don't contain enough specifics to convey your firsthand experience with an issue, your answers can end up sounding like they came from a book.” What kinds of specifics did you offer in your last job interview, and did they help land you the position? If you are an interviewer, have you noticed that specifics made a difference in your opinion of a candidate? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. You may have seen the letter “B” added to the three-letter acronym DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), which has become ubiquitous in the world of business, government, and academia. The B stands for Belonging. According to Forbes senior contributor William Arruda, “Belonging is critical for inspiring a productive, engaged culture within any team.” The hybrid/remote work environment has diluted human interaction, along with people’s sense of belonging. More than half of American employees reported feelings of isolation in the past year, and, according to McKinsey, 51% of people who left their jobs in 2022 did so in search of belonging and connection. Great Place to Work revealed that when employees experience belonging, “they’re three times more likely to say their workplace is fun and five times more likely to want to stay at their company for a long time.” So, how can organizations foster a sense of belonging?
Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. The best leaders motivate and inspire people. Writing in Inc., contributing editor Marcel Schwantes characterizes four simple, accessible behaviors that consistently create impact and drive performance:
Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Without quality leadership, employee engagement and retention are endangered. Turnover hurts the bottom line, since hiring a new employee to replace an old one can cost anywhere from an additional 50 – 200 percent of the role’s salary. A far better solution, according to Katy Tynan, a principal analyst at Forrester, a global research and consulting firm, is to invest in leadership training. According to a survey of more than 700 HR leaders conducted by Forrester and HR Executive Magazine, 65 percent of businesses spend up to $2500 per employee annually on such trainings. Consider that if five managers making $100,000 annually quit, a company might need to spend $500,000 replacing them. Of course, leadership development isn’t something you can simply throw money at, and there is no guarantee that one course will transform a person’s leadership ability. Tynan’s advice for retaining the best talent is to reinforce workshops and virtual learning programs with immediate opportunities for practice. For example, after a workshop on giving feedback, HR leaders could match attendees with learning partners to practice in simulated real situations. Time, of course, has its own cost, but creating a learning community of practice can have deep and lasting benefits. How much does your organization spend on leadership training, and how much time does it allocate for follow-up? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Sixty-two percent of Americans say they feel unsafe expressing their political opinions. When the right and the left are so polarized, it is tough to have a conversation that doesn't get overheated. But, according to Monica Guzman, who works in Communication at the nonprofit Braver Angels, and who authored the new book "I Never Thought of It That Way", says divergent viewpoints don't need to obliterate relationships. Guzmán notes that we have sorted ourselves into silos where we rarely have to confront those with different ideologies, making it easier to dehumanize them. But, she contends, we can have manageable conversations across our self-assigned blocs if we replace certainty with curiosity. Guzman proposes that we can all have INTUIT moments (“I Never Thought of It That Way”) if we:
This may sound simple, but simple is not the same as easy, writes Lisa Selin Davis, discussing Guzman’s book in The New York Times. But with consistent effort and an open-minded attitude, we may be able to reclaim some lost relationships. Have you had a recent conversation with someone on the other end of the political spectrum, and how did it go? Any insights you can share? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. Create lifetime communication mastery online, with our virtual programs, awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. If you’ve been swearing more in the past year or so — even at work — you’re not alone. The corporate and financial research platform Sentieo recently combed through a database of around 9,000 conference call transcripts looking for expletives. They found 166 transcripts that contained them from 2021. That's a significant jump from previous years. Just 104 transcripts contained profanity in 2020, 112 in 2019, and 92 in 2018. So swearing at work appears to be up. Frustration with the pandemic and a work-from-home informality may both be factors in the rise of swearing. Our question: Is cutting loose with language always a bad thing? Experts quoted in Inc. say “not necessarily.” Michael Adams, author of In Praise of Profanity, argues that swearing has many useful social functions including “bringing us together.” There’s an intimacy to profanity precisely because it is somewhat taboo. "Bad words," Adams writes, "are unexpectedly useful in fostering human relations because they carry risk.... We like to get away with things and sometimes we do so with like-minded people." Adams believes that swearing can also help us appear slightly more vulnerable and more authentic — both useful qualities in relationship building. No one is suggesting you begin your next Zoom meeting by imitating a drunken pirate. But for those who are savvy enough to navigate delicate situations, an occasional swear word, science attests, may have genuine utility. Have you ever uttered swear words at work, and how do you feel when co-workers do so? To join the conversation, click "comments" above just below the picture — we'd love to hear your thoughts! Relationships with our co-workers are important, but instead of characterizing them as “good” or “bad”, we should acknowledge that they are always shifting. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Professor Kerry Roberts Gibson of Babson College and Professor Beth Shinoff of Boston College discuss how to use “micromoves” to build the work relationships you want, instead of settling for those you have. Micromoves are “small actions or behaviors that seem inconsequential in the moment but affect how we relate to one another.” They are like the steps that constitute a dance, and each step can change its direction. A positive microwave (like saying thank you or supporting a colleague’s comment at a meeting) can have a resonating beneficial impact, while a negative one (neglecting an email or excluding one colleague in a group lunch) has the opposite impact. The following principles can help you make positive micromoves:
Can you think of a positive or negative micromove you may have made lately, and the results of each? To join the conversation, click "comments" just under the photo above. We'd really like to get your feedback! Research on resilience —our ability to bounce back from adversity — has shown that giving support to others has a significant impact on our well-being. Our bodies and minds benefit in a variety of ways when we help others, sometimes even generating a “helper’s high”. In fact, the act of giving advice has been shown to be even more beneficial than receiving it. In a series of studies of 2,274 people, researchers found that after middle-school students gave younger students help with studying, they ended up spending more time on their own homework. Overweight people who counseled others on weight loss were more motivated to lose weight themselves. In a New York Times article, Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant explained that we often are better at giving advice to people other than ourselves. “One of the best things you can do is call someone else facing a similar problem and talk them through it,” he said. Grant, who co-founded an online networking platform call Givitas, which connects people asking for or offering support and advice, added, “When you talk other people through their problems, you come up with wiser perspectives and solutions for yourself.” When was the last time you gave advice, and how did it make you feel? Did it benefit you, or the receiver, or both? To join the conversation, click "comments" just above this article, under the photo. We'd love to hear your thoughts! Conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion are actually just conversations about people. And storytelling, one of the most universal human experiences, gives us a chance to look through new lenses and gain new perspectives from co-workers who may have had different life experiences. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, inclusion consultants Selena Rezvani and Stacey A. Gordon offer steps to implement a story-based approach to DEI. In this approach, employees are encouraged to tell and own their stories, and consider how they impact their experiences at work. For those who are unsure how to unearth their own diversity stories, the authors offer some possible prompts:
As the authors say: “In our attempts to create more awake and aware environments, we’re forgetting that numbers typically don’t inspire us to change our behavior — people and stories do.” How might storytelling based on DEI benefit your organization? Do you have a story you would care to share? To join the conversation, click "comments" above this article, just under the photo. All day, every day, we are faced with decisions, from what to wear to whether to pursue a new job. Even deliberating in the toothpaste aisle at the drugstore can feel overwhelming. The pandemic added even more choices to our daily routine, as we pondered safety concerns and time allocation when work and school came into our homes. Faced with too many options, we can become anxious or even paralyzed. This is “decision fatigue” -- a state of mental overload that can impede our ability to make additional choices. When decision fatigue kicks in, you may feel you just don’t have the bandwidth to deal with more decisions. This can lead to depleted self-control, causing you to avoid making certain choices entirely, to go with the default option, or to make choices that don’t align with your values. In a series of experiments, researchers asked people to choose from an array of consumer goods or college course options or to simply think about the same options without making choices. The choice-makers experienced reduced self-control, less physical stamina, greater procrastination and lower performance on tasks; the choice-contemplators didn’t experience these depletions. We can't entirely eliminate decision fatigue, but experts say the following can help cope with an over-abundance of choices:
How do you cope with the feeling of having too many choices? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. |
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